Crime at Guildford

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  ‘Excuse me, why didn’t you go to the hotel in the morning and leave your things there?’

  ‘Why should I have? It was out of my way, and all I wanted was a bath and breakfast, which I could get at the station I arrived at.’

  This also seemed reasonable, and French nodded. ‘Your appointment then?’

  ‘Yes, do you want to know all about it too?’

  ‘I want to know, sir, whom you met and when and where you met him or her or them. I don’t want to know your business.’

  ‘Oh, you don’t, don’t you? I’m surprised at that. Well, I’ll tell you all the same. I went over to see M. André Brissonnet, the film producer. I had worked with him before in historical stuff, and I had heard that he was starting a big Empire film. I went to see if I could get a job.’

  ‘Thank you, sir, but you needn’t have told me that. What I want to know is where you saw him and when.’

  ‘I saw him at the Elysée Palace, where he lives. My appointment was for nine o’clock, and you may bet I was on time.’

  If this story were true, it finally disposed of Lyde as a participant in the crime. But here again, was it true? It had one rather significant feature, or so French thought. From the moment at which Lyde had left the Norne building, about eight o’clock on Saturday night, until he reached his hotel in Paris between six and seven on Sunday, it contained no single item capable of confirmation. It was exceedingly unlikely that any of the railway or steamer officials would have noticed him, and the same applied to the Customs and passport men on both sides of the Channel. The bath attendant at St Lazare might remember him, as might also the waiter at the station restaurant, but again they might not. At all events, if they did not, it would be no proof that he hadn’t been there. Nor, apparently, was there anyone at Fontainebleau to whom he, French, could apply. No, whether by accident or design, Lyde’s movements for the essential twenty-four hours could not be established by any of the ordinary means.

  French pressed the man to give him some item which could be checked, or to mention someone whom he had met, but without success. Lyde had come across no one whom he knew. Again this was reasonable and might be true.

  French sat thinking over the story. Then suddenly he could have kicked himself. There to his hand was all the proof he could possibly require, and he had missed it.

  ‘Have you got your passport handy?’ he asked.

  With a bad grace Lyde got up and left the room. Presently he returned and threw down on the table a blue book of familiar shape. French took it up, satisfied himself that it really was Lyde’s, and turned to the last page of the visés.

  ‘It got knocked out of my hand by a lunatic who thought he was going to miss the train at Newhaven,’ Lyde explained. ‘It fell face downwards in the mud.’

  It was indeed in a mess. Smears of brown mud ran across it and in the crease between the pages small grains of sand still lodged. These, however, had not wholly obscured what French wanted to see. On the pages were four recent stamps, covered by smears, but still readable. There was one leaving Newhaven on the 20th October, one arriving at Dieppe on the 21st, and two leaving Dieppe and arriving at Newhaven on the 22nd. That was to say the bearer had left Newhaven on the Saturday, arrived at Dieppe on the Sunday, and returned to England on the Monday.

  These dates completely substantiated Lyde’s story. Travellers by the 8.20 from Victoria reached Newhaven before midnight and Dieppe after it. Unless someone else had travelled on the passport, Lyde was innocent. And this was unlikely, for the photograph of Lyde was particularly distinctive.

  ‘Tell me, did M. Brissonnet ask you to go over to meet him?’

  Lyde laughed scornfully. ‘No blooming fear. I thought he was doing well enough when he agreed to see me. He’s a big bug in the film world.’

  Though French was not very satisfied with the interview, he did not see what more he could do. Lyde had answered his questions, and though his manner had been unpleasant, French was accustomed to rudeness and thought little of it. Many people adopted a blustering manner when interrogated by the police. If they were innocent, they thought the questions insulting: if guilty, it was due to the fear of seeming afraid. French decided he would get the Paris men to check up on the interview with M. Brissonnet, and if that were satisfactory, as he was sure it would be, he would have to accept the alibi. Accordingly, he returned to the Yard and put through a call to the Sureté, asking for the required information.

  He felt rather badly up against it. He had been on to what had seemed a promising clue, and now it looked like petering out. If Lyde had been in France during that critical weekend, he might as well dismiss him from his thoughts at once, for the man could not have been guilty of either murder or theft.

  However, before putting the idea of Lyde’s guilt finally out of his mind, French decided he would arrange a meeting between him and the pawnshop assistant with whom the camera had been pledged. This must be done unknown to Lyde, and French began to work out a suitable scheme.

  For a moment he did not see how it was to be accomplished, then he realised that Lyde himself had given him the hint. The man had said that he had an appointment with Otto Goldstein for twelve noon that day. Goldstein was a well-known man in the film world, and a glance at the directory showed that his office was in Stephen Street, a narrow street off Regent Street. French saw that he had just time for his plan, and running down from his office, he found Carter and bundled him into a taxi.

  ‘Messrs Dobson & Hall, Shaftesbury Avenue,’ he told the driver, and then to Carter: ‘Identification of man who popped the camera. If that blighter Lyde was telling the truth, he’s due at Goldstein’s in Stephen Street in half an hour. We’ll have the pawnbroker’s assistant to see him.’

  The manager of Dobson & Hall’s was accommodating, as French knew he would be. At once he arranged leave for his assistant, George Glave.

  ‘It’s that case I was speaking to you about before,’ French explained to Glave as they drove towards Regent Street. ‘The pledging of the ciné camera. I’ve a notion the man who did it will walk this morning through Stephen Street. I want you to sit back in the taxi and watch the people passing. If you see him don’t make a song about it, but point him out quietly to me.’

  Glave was obviously interested. He would be pleased, he said, to do what the chief-inspector wanted, and if the man passed he would certainly recognise him.

  Stephen Street was a narrow lane which carried but little moving traffic. Indeed, it was almost filled with commercial vehicles parking outside warehouses and offices. French arranged for their taxi to take its place outside a merchant tailor’s, from where a clear view could be obtained of persons entering Goldstein’s office.

  ‘Better move in behind, Carter,’ he went on. ‘We couldn’t risk the shock of him suddenly seeing anything like your face. If you can’t squeeze in between us, Mr Glave will give you his place and he can sit on your knee.’

  By the time their dispositions were complete it was ten minutes to twelve. French was not entirely hopeful as to the result of the experiment. If Glave were to pick out Lyde, he might take it as proof that the actor was mixed up in the crime. But the converse did not apply. If Lyde passed unnoticed, it did not follow that he was innocent. And, of course, there was a third contingency, perhaps more likely than either: that Lyde would not pass at all.

  However, there was nothing for it but to wait and see, and as twelve approached even French grew more eager and watched more intently the pavement in front of them.

  Suddenly he noticed Lyde turn into the street and walk towards Goldstein’s office. His direction of approach was the best that he could have taken for French’s plans, for he faced the taxi as he came forward. Now for it! Would Glave spot him?

  It made French more confident in the man’s evidence that he did so at once. Lyde had scarcely taken three steps forward when he whispered, ‘There he is.’

  ‘Don’t be in a hurry,’ French advised. ‘Look at him carefully as he pa
sses and be quite sure before you speak.’

  When Lyde had turned into Goldstein’s door Glave expressed himself in no uncertain terms. Lyde was the man who had popped the camera. Of that he was absolutely assured. The chief-inspector could count on his evidence if he wanted it.

  French was entirely delighted. Here was the greatest single step towards a solution that he had yet made. Lyde definitely was in the theft, and in all probability Sloley and Sheen were in it too. Knowing what he now knew, it should not be hard to get his proof.

  Inevitably French’s thoughts went back to the alibi. If Lyde were in the theft, had he really done no more than call at the office on that Saturday night? Before the man’s plausible explanation, there had been his denials. Had Lyde really gone to France? In the light of this new discovery all French’s doubts revived.

  Then suddenly he could have kicked himself. He had been a fool! He believed now that he had been tricked.

  From his room at the Yard he rang up the Meteorological Office. Could they tell him what the weather had been like in Northern France and Southern England during the weekend of the 20th-22nd ultimo and for some days before it?

  Soon there was reply. Those days and the preceding week had been fine.

  Lyde, then, if he had dropped his passport on the Newhaven quay at all, had done it at the end of a week of fine weather. What about the mud with which it had been so thickly coated?

  French swore. That mud would usefully cover unsightly scrapes on the paper!

  He sent a man to Sheen’s house to watch for the return of Lyde, and when the constable rang up to say the quarry had arrived, he hurried out. He saw that if Lyde had been fully awake to his position he would have burnt the passport. French’s own evidence would have cleared him of participation in the crime. He could only hope the man had not been so acute.

  ‘I’m extremely sorry to trouble you again, Mr Lyde,’ French apologised when once more he and Carter were seated in the dining room. ‘This time I shall not keep you a moment. It’s just something I forgot this morning. I omitted to take the number and date of your passport. May I have these, as the regulations require that I check up that it was really issued to you.’

  Lyde at the beginning of this address had seemed to regain all his nervousness, but the latter portion reassured him and he became sarcastic about the way the Yard did its business. However, his tone changed once again when French slipped the book into his pocket and said that he was going to keep it for a day or so, and here was a receipt.

  Eagerly French took the book to the department which dealt with forgery of documents.

  ‘Have a look at that Newhaven stamp,’ he said, ‘and tell me if it’s quite all right?’

  ‘Looks all right,’ the officer in charge answered, ‘to the naked eye. But we’ll not try the naked eye on it.’ He slipped it beneath a low-powered microscope, fidgeted and focused till French could have screamed, and then went on coolly: ‘No, I guess you’ve got it this time, whatever it is. That date is a very neat forgery. It looks as if it had been changed from 21st to 20th. Would that help you any?’

  French choked. ‘That would about set me up for life,’ he said at length. ‘Blessings on you, my son! Incidentally, you’ve probably hanged three men!’

  17

  Enter a Picture

  So Lyde didn’t go to Paris on the Saturday night after all! For once in this difficult case French had attained something more than guesswork or theory: this was fact; fact definitely and adequately proven.

  On this Newhaven-Dieppe route there were only two outward services in the day, passing Newhaven shortly before midday and midnight respectively. The passport stamp showed that Lyde had crossed on the Sunday, and the fact that he had had an appointment in Paris on the Sunday evening—for French was sure he had kept it—proved that it was the morning service he had used.

  As if to set French’s mind at rest on this matter of the appointment, a call came in from the Paris police at that very moment. It appeared that M. Brissonnet had been interviewed and had confirmed on every point the statement made by Lyde.

  French felt equally certain that if inquiries were made at the Hotel de Belleville, a similar confirmation of Lyde’s story would be obtained. These were matters on which the man would be bound to tell the truth, for the simple reason that if he lied, the fact would at once become known.

  Lyde then had been in England on Saturday night and Sunday morning. What had he been doing during that time? It looked as if it must have been something criminal, since he had taken such trouble to provide himself with an alibi.

  French’s mind at once reverted to the murder. Had Lyde killed Minter, taken an impression of his key, cut a new key somewhere during the night, and burgled the safe on Sunday morning before starting for France?

  This was a promising idea as far as it went, but it didn’t go quite far enough. If Norne’s key had been made by photographic methods, why not Minter’s also? Then how could Lyde have reached the deceased’s room? And how could he have got back to Town, since there were no trains at that hour and it was unlikely that he would have borrowed a car?

  Another difficulty concerned the alibi. All that matter of the visit to France and the forging of the passport stamp must have been premeditated, indeed, must have been worked out some time beforehand. The interview with the film magnate in particular—which French now supposed had been arranged simply to provide a motive for the journey—could not have been achieved without preparation.

  But when Lyde had arranged his alibi, he couldn’t possibly have known that the other circumstances in the case would work in. Even with the help of Sloley and Sheen French didn’t believe he could have overcome this difficulty. There were too many details which he couldn’t have foreseen. Minter’s illness, involving a last minute change of plans, was one of these. The room at Norne’s which Minter would be given was another.

  While French believed there had been a partnership between Lyde, Sloley and Sheen, he felt this theory did not cover the whole ground. He might be, and probably was, close to the truth, but he was sure he hadn’t yet reached it. There must be some other factor, as yet unknown, which would throw a light on to these puzzling facts, and draw them into place in a comprehensive and consecutive whole.

  French puzzled over the affair till he grew stupid. Then realising that for the time being further concentration would get him nowhere, he decided to give up for the day.

  Before stopping, however, he planned his next piece of work. One obvious line of inquiry in connection with the photographing of the key was still untouched, and the sooner it was done, the better.

  Accordingly, next morning he called Carter and set off to the Ronder Lane office, where he asked for Norne. He began by saying he had not seen the managing-director for some time, and though unhappily he had no special progress to report, he thought it might be a help to talk over one or two aspects of the case. When he had touched on a number of points, and so had confused Norne as to the object of his visit, he turned to the matter at issue.

  ‘I want you,’ he said in as off-hand a manner as he could achieve, ‘to look back during the past few weeks and tell me if you can recall any occasion on which anyone put a despatch case or other yellowish box-like object on the top of your letter file, and stood beside it, probably leaning his arms on it, while the safe was being opened or closed?’

  Norne was at once curious. ‘What does that mean, chief-inspector?’ he asked. ‘Are you on to some clue?’

  ‘I don’t suppose it means anything,’ French returned, ‘but all the same I’d like the information. I should explain,’ he went on with a slight falling off from his usual veracity, ‘that what I have described was seen through the window.’

  ‘Through the window? No one can see in through the window.’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was seen by a lineman and he was up that telephone pole.’

  ‘Good heavens, I never should have thought of that. But how does it affect this case?’


  ‘I don’t say it does affect it, sir. I’m asking out of curiosity.’

  Norne’s expression changed to something like disappointment. ‘Yes, I remember what your lineman saw, but it won’t help you any.’

  ‘Perhaps not, sir. All the same, I’d be obliged if you’d answer the question.’

  Norne shrugged. ‘Well, it seems to me a bit of nonsense; however, if you insist … It was Mr Sloley.’ French’s hopes suddenly soared. ‘He was in here, oh, perhaps six weeks ago. He said he had just come from his solicitor and that he had the deeds of his house and some other important papers in his pocket. “Shove them into the safe for me, will you?” he said. “I’m going to a match and I don’t want to carry them about in my pocket.” He had the papers in a sealed envelope and he handed them to me. I was opening the safe shortly afterwards and I put them in.

  ‘Then on this occasion some week or so later, he came back. “You have some papers of mine in the safe,” he said; “I wonder could I have them now?” I called Minter and we opened the safe and gave them to him. I remember he had with him a yellow despatch case, and he put it on the top of the letter file and opened it there. It was a suitable height, you understand, when he was standing up. He put the papers in the case and then went out. Is that what you want to know?’

  French shook his head. ‘That’s not much help,’ he admitted in a crestfallen way. ‘Was that the only time anyone did such a thing?’

  ‘Yes, so far as I can remember.’

  French made a gesture of disappointment. ‘I’m afraid you were right after all,’ he declared. ‘There’s nothing there in the way of a clue. Were there many others present at the time?’

  ‘No: only Sloley, Minter and myself.’ Norne spoke with some impatience. ‘If that’s all, chief-inspector,’ he added, ‘I’d like to get on with my work.’