Inspector French’s Greatest Case. Freeman Crofts Wills
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competence than her sister. He could imagine how her parents leaned on her. A good woman, he thought, using an adjective he did not often apply to the sex, and the phrase, in its fullest significance, seemed only just adequate.
Under the inspector’s skilful lead she described the somewhat humdrum existence which she and her parents had led for some years past. Her mother’s illness seemed to have been the ruling factor in their lives, everything being subordinated to the sufferer’s welfare, and the expenses in connection with it forming a heavy drain on the family exchequer. From Mr Duke’s records, French had learned that the dead man’s salary had been about £400 per annum, though quite recently it had been increased to £450, following a visit the merchant had paid to the house during a short illness of his head clerk. Mr Duke, Miss Gething said, had always acted as a considerate employer.
Asked if her father had continued in his usual health and spirits up to the end, she said no, that for some three weeks past he had seemed depressed and worried. On different occasions she had tried to find out the cause, but he had not enlightened her except to say that he had been having some trouble at the office. Once, however, he dropped a phrase which set her thinking, though she was unable to discover his meaning, and he had refused to explain. He had asked her did she believe that a man could ever be right in doing evil that good might come, and when she had answered that she could not tell, he had sighed and said, ‘Pray God you may never be called on to decide.’
On the evening of his death it had been arranged that he would sit with Mrs Gething, in order to allow his daughter to attend a social connected with the choir of the church to which she belonged. But that evening he came home more worried and upset than she had ever seen him, and he had told her with many expressions of regret that some unexpected work which had just come in would require his presence that evening in the office, and that unless she was able to get someone else to look after her mother, she would have to give up her social. He had been too nervous and ill at ease to make a good meal, and had gone off about eight o’clock, saying he did not know at what hour he would be back. That was the last time she had seen him alive, and she had heard nothing of him until the policeman had come with his terrible news about half-past eleven.
Miss Gething was clearly at one with her sister in her admiration and affection for her father, and French recognised that she was as mystified as to his death as he was himself. Seeing that he could learn no more, he presently took his leave, with renewed expressions of sympathy for her trouble.
When he reached the Yard he found that enlarged photographs of the various finger prints he had discovered were ready, and he sat down with some eagerness to compare the impressions with those on his cards. He spent some time counting and measuring lines and whorls, and at last reached the following conclusions. All the finger marks on the safe, both inside and out, belonged either to Mr Duke or to Mr Gething, the majority being the latter’s; the mark on the handle of the coal shovel was Mr Gething’s, and the remaining prints were those of various members of the office staff. His hopes of help from this source were therefore dashed.
With a sigh he looked at his watch. There would be time before the inquest to make some inquiries as to the truth of Orchard’s statement of his movements on the previous evening. Half an hour later he had found the man with whom the clerk had dined in Ilford, and he fully substantiated the other’s story. Orchard was therefore definitely eliminated from the inquiry.
The proceedings before the Coroner were practically formal. Orchard, Mr Duke, and Constable Alcorn told their stories, and with very little further examination were dismissed. French and the local superintendent watched the case on behalf of the police, but did not interfere, and the next of kin of the deceased were not legally represented. After half an hour, the Coroner summed up, and the jury without retiring brought in the obvious verdict of wilful murder against some person or persons unknown.
That evening, when French had dined and had settled himself before the fire in his sitting room with a pipe between his lips and his notebook on the table at his elbow, he set himself to take mental stock of his position and get a clear grasp of his new problem.
In the first place, it was obvious that this Charles Gething had been murdered for the sake of the diamonds in Mr Duke’s safe. It was certain from the position of the wound that it could not have been accidental, nor could it by any chance have been self-inflicted. Moreover, a planned robbery was indicated by the cutting of the duplicate key. But the stones were not on old Gething’s body. It therefore followed that someone else had taken them, though whether Gething had abstracted them from the safe in the first instance was not clear.
So far French had no trouble in marshalling his facts, but when he attempted to go further he found himself in difficulties.
There was first of all Gething’s poverty. Though his salary was not unreasonable for his position, the drain of his wife’s illness had kept him continually struggling to make ends meet. French let his imagination dwell on the wearing nature of such a struggle. To obtain relief a man would risk a good deal. Then there was his knowledge of the wealth which lay within his reach, provided only that he made a spirited effort to obtain it. Had the man fallen before the temptation?
That he had had something on his mind for two or three weeks before his death was obvious, and it was equally clear that this was something secret. When Mr Duke inquired as to the cause of the trouble, Gething had mentioned family matters and his wife’s health, but when his daughter had asked the same question he had said it was due to business worries. The old man had therefore carried his efforts at concealment to direct lying to one or other.
It seemed evident also that this worry or trouble had become intensified on the evening of his death. He had told his daughter that special business required his presence at the office. But Mr Duke knew of no such business, nor was any record of it obtainable.
But all these mysterious contradictions fell into line and became comprehensible if some two or three weeks back Gething had decided to rob the safe, and his special agitation on the evening of his death was accounted for if that were the date he had selected to make the attempt.
On the other hand, several considerations did not support such a view. The first was the man’s known character. He had worked for the firm for over twenty years, and after all that experience of him Mr Duke absolutely refused to believe in his guilt. His daughters also evidently had the warmest feelings towards him, and from what French had seen of the latter he felt that would have been impossible had Gething been a man of bad or weak character. Such other evidence as French had been able to obtain tended in the same direction.
Next, there was the open way in which Gething returned to the office. Had he intended to burgle the safe, would he not have kept the fact of his visit a secret? Yet he told the office boy he was returning when instructing him to keep up the fire in the inner office, and he also mentioned it to his daughter when discussing her proposed choir meeting.
Further, there was this matter of the fire in the private office. If Gething was going to rob the safe, what was the fire for? It was not merely that he had instructed the office boy to keep it up. He had himself afterwards put coal on, as was evidenced by his finger marks on the handle of the shovel. The robbing of the safe would have been a matter of minutes only. Did the episode of the fire not look as if Gething really was employed at some exceptional work, as he had stated to his daughter?
On the whole, French thought, the evidence for Gething’s guilt was stronger than that against it, and he began to form a tentative theory somewhat as follows: That Gething, finding the conditions of his home life onerous beyond further endurance, and realising the unusually valuable deposit in the safe, had decided to help himself, probably to a quite small portion, knowing that the loss would fall, not on Mr Duke, but on the insurance company; that he had obtained an impression of the key from which he had had a duplicate made; that he had invented the business in the office as a safeguard should he be accidentally found there during the evening; that he had been found there, probably accidentally, by someone who, seeing the possibilities opening out in front of him, had been swept off his feet by the sudden temptation and had killed the old man and made off with the swag.
This theory seemed to meet at least most of the facts. French was not pleased with it, but it