Inspector French and the Starvel Hollow Tragedy. Freeman Crofts Wills
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was two storied and ‘L’ shaped, with the remains of a single story porch in the angle of the two wings. French compared the ruins with the sketch plan given him by Kent and identified the places where the bodies had been found. Then after a general survey he stepped through the gaping hole that had evidently been the front door and ploughed his way across the debris to the safe.
It was red with fire and rust, but the maker’s name and number, in raised letters on a cast iron plate, were still legible. The safe had been lifted upright and fixed on a roughly built pile of stones, as the town officer of Thirsby had deposed at the inquest. The doors were now shut, but with some difficulty owing to the rusty hinges French was able to swing them open. Inside, as he had been told, was a mass of paper ash.
Fortunately it was a calm day or the heap might have whirled away in dust. As it was, French sat down on a stone, and putting his head into the safe, began to examine the ash in detail.
The greater part had been ground to dust, doubtless by the fall of the safe from the second story, and the churning of the sovereigns, though there still remained a number of small flakes of burnt paper. These French began to turn over with a pair of forceps, examining them at the same time with a lens.
He was delighted to find that on nearly all he could distinguish marks of printing. But, as he turned over piece after piece he became conscious of growing astonishment. For this printing was not the printing of bank notes. Rather it seemed to him like newspaper type. Wrapping paper, he supposed. But why should the contents of the safe have been wrapped up in newspapers? More important still, why should portions of the newspapers rather than of the notes have been preserved?
His interest keenly aroused, he set to work in his careful, methodical way to check over all the fragments he could find. As he did so something very like excitement took possession of him. There were no fragments of notes! Every single piece that bore any marking was newspaper!
What, he asked himself, could this portend? What other than robbery? And if robbery, then murder! Murder and arson! Could Tarkington and the chief constable be right, after all? Certainly, after this discovery he couldn’t drop the investigation until he had made sure.
He had brought with him a small case of apparatus, and from this he now took a bottle of gum and some thin cards. Painting over the cards with the gum, he laid on them such flakes of ash as bore legible words. From one piece in particular he thought he might be able to identify the newspaper of which it had been a part. It was a roundish scrap about the size of a shilling, along the top of which were the words: ‘—ing as we—’ in small type, with below it in capitals, as if the headline of a small paragraph: ‘RAT-CATCHER’S F—’
French secured the cards in a case specially designed to preserve specimens, and re-closed the safe. It certainly looked as if Tarkington’s suggestions might be true, and as he put the case away in his pocket, he wondered if there was any further investigation he could make while he was on the ground.
Stepping outside the building, he considered how a hypothetical burglar might have forced an entrance. The window frames and doors were all gone; moreover, any marks which might have been made approaching them must long since have been defaced by time and the footprints of sightseers and workmen. French, nevertheless, walked all round the house and about the grounds, looking everywhere in the hope of coming on some clue, though he was scarcely disappointed when his search ended in failure.
He was anxious, if possible, to find out what newspaper had been burned. He did not think the point of vital importance, but on general principles the information should be obtained. There was no knowing what clue it might not furnish. On his way back to Thirsby, therefore, he turned aside to Mr Oxley’s house and sent in his card.
In the privacy of the solicitor’s study French introduced himself and in confidence declared his mission to the town. He apologised for troubling the other on Sunday, but said that at the moment he wished only to ask one question: Could Mr Oxley tell him, or could he find out for him from Miss Averill, what daily paper the late Mr Averill had taken?
Mr Oxley did not know, and excused himself to interrogate Ruth. Presently he returned to say it was the Leeds Mercury.
Next morning French took the first train to Leeds, and going to the Mercury office, asked to see the files of the paper for the month of September. Commencing at the 15th, the day of the fire, he began working back through the papers, scrutinising each sheet for a paragraph headed ‘RAT-CATCHER’S F—’
He found it sooner than he had expected. Tucked in among a number of small news items in the paper of Tuesday, 14th September, he read: ‘RAT-CATCHER’S FATAL FALL.’ And when he saw that the type was similar to that on the burnt scrap and the last line of the preceding paragraph was ‘Mr Thomas is doing as well as can be expected,’ with the ‘—ing as we—’ in the correct position relative to the ‘RAT-CATCHER’S F—’ he knew he had really got what he wanted.
French was extraordinarily thorough. Long experience had taught him that everything in the nature of a clue should be followed up to the very end. He did not therefore desist when he had made his find. Instead he worked on to see if he could identify any of the other scraps he had found. And before he left he had found eight out of the eleven he had mounted, and proved that the burnt papers were those of the 13th, 14th, and 15th; the three days before the fire.
So far, then, the indications were at least for continuing the investigation. Leaving the Mercury office, French walked up the Briggate to Messrs Carter & Stephenson’s, the makers of the safe. He asked for one of the principals, and was presently shown into Mr Stephenson’s room. Introducing himself in the strictest confidence in his true guise, he propounded his question: Was the safe absolutely fireproof?
Mr Stephenson rose and went to a drawer from which he took a number of photographs.
‘Look at those,’ he invited, ‘and tell me was the fire at Starvel any worse than those fires?’
The views were all of burnt-out buildings, most of them completely gutted and resembling the wreckage of Starvel. French assured him that the cases seemed on all fours.
‘Very well, there were safes in all those fires—safes just the same as that at Starvel, and all those safes had papers in them, and there wasn’t a single paper in anyone of them so much as browned.’
French took out his burnt fragments.
‘Look at those, Mr Stephenson,’ he invited in his turn. ‘Suppose there were newspapers in that safe before the fire, could they have come out like that after it?’
‘Not under any conceivable circumstances,’ Mr Stephenson declared emphatically, ‘that is, of course, unless the door had been left open. With the door shut it’s absolutely impossible. And I’ll be prepared to stand by that in any court of law if you should want me to.’
The man’s manner was convincing, and French saw no reason to doubt his statement. But he saw also that its truth involved extremely serious consequences. If Mr Stephenson was right the newspapers had not been burnt during the Starvel fire. They could only have been burned while the safe door was open. But the door was locked during the fire; Kent had had to get an expert to open it. They must therefore have been burned before it was locked. A sinister fact truly, and terribly suggestive!
On his way back to Thirsby French sat smoking in the corner of a carriage; weighing in his mind the significance of his discoveries. He considered the points in order.
First. Old Averill was a miser who had filled up his safe with notes and gold. The notes had been seen on more than one occasion by Mr Tarkington’s clerk, Bloxham, the last time being only a few days before the tragedy. Mr Tarkington estimated there must have been some £30,000 to £40,000 worth of notes in the safe, though this was probably only a guess. But it was at least certain that before the fire it contained a very large sum in notes.
Second. After the fire the gold was intact, or at least part of it was there, but there was no trace of the notes. It was perfectly true that a number of notes might have been burned and been crushed to powder by the falling sovereigns. But it was straining the probabilities