Death on the Way

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  ‘As far as a triumph for me is concerned,’ Bragg returned, ‘you have as much to say to it as I. I may tell you that Marlowe is pleased with you about it.’

  Parry grinned crookedly. ‘I did nothing,’ he said, ‘but if Marlowe thinks I did, for goodness’ sake don’t disabuse his mind.’

  Presently Parry asked a question. ‘There’s one thing I don’t understand, and that is how Carey could have got the cash. D’you remember, you said yourself that one of the reasons he could scarcely have been guilty was that the cash would go to the firm and not to him?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Bragg, ‘we had a job to find that out. But Marlowe handled them well and they had to tell. They were giving Carey a huge commission on both extras and excess profits. No less than twenty per cent net. He would have made about three thousand out of the fraud, and I should be inclined to bet the whole three that no question about the savings would have been asked.’

  ‘Still,’ Parry persisted, ‘I don’t quite understand how it was done.’

  ‘Well, it’s simple enough. Each certificate showed so many yards excavated at so much per yard, totalling such a sum. Suppose it showed 8000 yards at half a crown. That would mean that the contractors were due £1000, and £1000 they were paid. Now, suppose their excavation costs for the period came to, say, £600: that was £400 profit on 8000 yards. But the normal profit they had reckoned on for those 8000 yards was, say, £200. Carey had, therefore, made an excess profit of £200, and of this they paid him twenty per cent, or £40. Follow it now?’

  ‘Yes, I see that,’ said Parry; ‘jolly cute.’ He paused in thought, then went on slowly: ‘But surely, Bragg, when these enormous profits began to come in, the Spences must have known there was something wrong. They must have known they couldn’t have been earned.’

  Bragg shrugged. ‘You may hold what opinion you like about that,’ he answered. ‘Marlowe put it to them in the neatest possible way. Naturally they weren’t admitting anything. They said the profits, even with the fraud, were not by any means abnormal, and that they put them down, partly to Carey’s organising ability, and partly to the use of those new Benbolt shovels with the direct delivery on to the conveyors. Of course, there was nothing to be said to that.’

  ‘No,’ Parry admitted, ‘but it’s damned fishy all the same.’

  Some days later Parry found himself nominated with Bragg and Mayers, of the clerical staff of the office, to represent the Company on the small committee which was to ascertain the amount of the contractors’ refund. In the end the sum was unanimously fixed at £11,465.

  It was about this time that a faint rumour began first to be whispered. In the extraordinary way that rumours have of coming into being without ascertainable cause or source, this rumour was born, took on shape and grew to maturity.

  Immediately that news of the fraud had leaked out it had become connected in the public mind with the suicide of Carey, it being believed that in some way that unhappy man had seen that discovery was inevitable, and being unable to face the consequences, he had taken the easiest way out. But this new rumour went farther.

  It began with the suggestion that a fraud of the magnitude of that which had just occurred, could not possibly have been carried out by one man. It was argued that a confederate on the Company’s side would have been absolutely essential. From this it required but a slight effort of the imagination to suggest that Ackerley had been the confederate in question. Finally it was hinted that not only was Ackerley’s death suicide, due to the fear that the affair was coming out, but that the railway officers knew this to be the case.

  Parry’s furious denunciations, when at last these suggestions were put to him, did little to discount them. It was immediately remembered that not only had Parry been a special friend of Ackerley’s, but that he was intimate with, if not actually in love with Ackerley’s sister. His view, it was assumed, would be biased.

  When matters were in this stage substance was given to the rumour by an altogether unexpected development. Mayers, the clerical member of the staff who had sat on the small committee with Bragg and Parry, came forward with an unpleasantly suggestive story.

  It appeared that some three or four days before his death, Ackerley had paid a visit to the Lydmouth office on business connected with the Widening. When there he saw Mayers. They were speaking of costs and quantities when Ackerley accidentally disclosed the fact that he was worried about the excavation. The question had arisen out of a discussion with one of the gangers as to the amount of clay held by a small ballast wagon, he and the ganger differing on the point. For his own information he had made a test. From the ballasting returns he had taken out the number of wagon loads carried from a certain cutting. The cube removed from this place was known from the cross sections, and from these two figures he was able to calculate the average wagon load. This came out higher than either Ackerley or the ganger had estimated. Ackerley had followed up the matter by selecting a dozen loaded wagons at random, and sending them into Redchurch to be run over the wagon weigh-bridge. To his surprise he found that the ganger’s lower figure was right after all.

  The calculated and actual weights were therefore different. Ackerley evidently had not considered the matter serious, but he had said he was going to make some further experiments. He had never had an opportunity to do so. Mayers had also considered the matter unimportant and had said nothing about it. But it was now seen that had Ackerley pursued his inquiries, he must have come on the fraud.

  Parry was able to remind Mayers that part of his recollection was inaccurate, for on that very day Mayers had repeated the story to him. Apparently, however, neither Parry nor Mayers had told it to anyone else.

  Now, however, when the matter was made public, Parry hotly argued that the story was in itself a proof of Ackerley’s innocence. Had he been involved, Parry pointed out, he would never have carried out those tests nor spoken of them to Mayers. But against this it was argued that even at this time Ackerley saw that the fraud was about to come out, and that he was preparing the way for a ‘discovery’ by himself. It was further suggested that he had seen the same danger as Carey, but that Carey had been able at that time to divert suspicion, though later this had passed beyond his power also.

  When, as eventually happened, the rumour reached Mr Ackerley’s ears, the old man’s distress was pitiable. Parry’s repeated assurances that no one in authority believed the story did little to comfort him. A slur had been cast on his son’s name, and he could not and would not rest till it was removed. But in the end he saw that he could do nothing. The suggestion was not printed in any paper nor had anyone made any direct statement about it before witnesses. No action at law was possible. Even, however, had it been, Mr Ackerley recognised that no such action would clear away the stain. At most it would show that Ronnie’s guilt could not be proved; under no circumstances could it establish his innocence.

  And then, as the days began to pass on, the police suddenly took drastic and unexpected action, causing a fresh shock to the workers on the Widening and extending public interest in the affair from a local to a national basis.

  12

  French on the Fraud

  While the Southern Railway Company and Messrs John Spence & Sons were composing their differences as to the true price of earthwork on the Whitness Widening, Inspector French had not been idle.

  He had gone to London on the Monday of Carey’s death to interview that unhappy man’s employers in the hope of picking up some hint of a possible motive for the murder of Ackerley. He had gone, not because he hoped for much result from the visit, but because he had worked out, or was in process of working out, every other vein which he had thought might contain ore. His prognostication had been justified. He had called at the firm’s offices in Victoria Street and seen Mr Hugh Spence, the junior partner. He had put to him all the questions he could think of relative to Carey and Carey’s relations with the other men on the Widening; he had received as complete answers to his questions as he
could have wished; and in them all there was not a single iota of information bearing on his quest. Why Carey should have desired Ackerley’s death, if he really had done so, remained to French an impenetrable mystery.

  Disappointed, though scarcely surprised, French took advantage of being in town to call next morning at the Yard to make a general report of his progress. Being human, he made the most of the portion which he had solved—that Ackerley had been murdered—minimising the question of who was guilty, upon which, he pointed out, he was still working.

  It was while discussing the affair with Chief Inspector Mitchell that he received a telephone call from Rhode, telling him of Carey’s suicide and asking him to return in time to attend the inquest.

  This message filled French with chagrin. He believed he understood what had occurred, and it looked bad for him. He had been guilty of the unpardonable sin! He had let his man slip through his fingers. Carey had murdered Ackerley. Carey had seen the net slowly closing. Carey had come to expect arrest, and before it was too late he had taken the only way out!

  Though French was careful not to put this view into words, he was uncomfortably satisfied as to its truth. He blamed himself wholly. He had been far too open in his interrogation of Carey. He should not have let the man know that he was suspected. It would have been quite easy to have obtained his information and still kept that essential fact a secret.

  French was not in the habit of crying over spilt milk, but this dénouement really worried him. It worried him more than mere failure in the case would have done. This was worse than failure. This was nothing more nor less than inefficiency. Well, it was a warning. He had been inclined latterly to be too pleased with himself. This was the result. He wondered whether or not this suicide of Carey’s would end his case. Was there any use in proceeding with his inquiries? Did Carey’s guilt or innocence now matter? The man was beyond the reach of the law. Suppose French proved him guilty: how would anyone be the better?

  Rhode, however, with whom he talked the affair over on arrival, was of a different opinion. Rhode apparently had kept a more open mind and did not accept the guilt of Carey as demonstrated.

  ‘If you don’t prove it,’ he pointed out, ‘we’ll always have it on our minds that it may have been someone else. I think you’ll have to go on, inspector. Are you quite up against it?’

  ‘By no means,’ French returned bravely. ‘All my conclusions so far were merely tentative.’ He paused, then went on: ‘It’s true I’ve not got formal proof of Carey’s guilt, as you say. But don’t you think his suicide in itself is proof?’

  Rhode shrugged. ‘I think his guilt is likely,’ he admitted. ‘But likely is not enough. I’d be better pleased if there was something more definite.’

  French smiled crookedly. ‘Not better pleased than I,’ he declared. ‘I’m perfectly aware that until we can put up a decent motive, the thing remains unsatisfactory.’

  Rhode nodded his large head. ‘That’s it, inspector. That’s just what I feel. Suppose you look into it again.’

  French thereupon went down to Whitness and attended the inquest on the body of Carey. He took no part in it, simply making sure afterwards from Sergeant Emery that no facts had come out, other than those mentioned at the inquiry.

  French, feeling really rather baffled, settled down to try to push a little farther the lines of investigation he had already explored. On the pretext that the boy Langton was his nephew, down for a holiday after measles, he brought him round the Widening, introducing him in turn to Bragg, Parry, Lowell, Pole, and Templeton. He was, however, unable to surprise a flicker of recognition in the eyes of anyone concerned. Next he got Peabody, as a prospective purchaser of a dozen old sleepers, to ring up each of his suspects in turn, in the hope that the man might recognise the voice which had ordered the bicycle: again without result. He made an intensive but fruitless search at Lydmouth railway station for anyone who might have noticed a patron use the telephone box at the time the message to Peabody was put through. He tried unsuccessfully to find someone who might have seen a man with a bicycle going to the cliff beneath which Mr Ewing had taken his walk, or a man without a bicycle returning from it. He chatted with anyone he could find who had known either of the deceased men, in the hope that some word, accidentally dropped, would indicate a fresh line of research, but no such word fell from the lips of any of these persons. In fact, for several days French worked hard and had nothing to show for it.

  Then Parry told him of the fraud.

  Parry did not volunteer the information. Parry, indeed, was obviously reluctant to give it. But a phrase he used suggested to French that there was here something of which he had not heard. The mere hint of such a possibility was enough for French. Soon he had wormed out all the particulars, so far as Parry knew them.

  To French the information was like the rolling away of a fog and the revealing of a landscape, till then invisible, but now clear and sharp in its every detail. Here at last was the key for which he had been searching! This fraud would supply all the motives he wanted to complete his case.

  Suppose Carey had learned that Ackerley was making those inquiries into the loading of the ballast wagons which must inevitably lead him to the discovery of the fraud. Such a discovery would mean for Carey disgrace and imprisonment; in fact, utter and complete ruin. Suppose, rather than face such an end, Carey had decided on a bold throw: that Ackerley should meet with a fatal accident. Suppose, the murder consummated, Carey found that in spite of his precautions the fraud, or the murder, or perhaps both, were about to come out. Suppose, indeed, that he believed that French was already on his track. What more likely, then, that he would have recourse to suicide as the only thing left him?

  The more French considered this theory, the more adequate it seemed. It certainly covered the facts. True, it had not been proved, but with the information he now possessed its formal proof should not be difficult. Full of these ideas, he went in to have a consultation with Rhode. The superintendent’s first remark took a lot of the wind out of French’s sails.

  ‘I was just going to ring you up and ask you to come in and talk about it,’ he said. ‘Curious that we should both have heard about it at the same time. Old Mr Ackerley got on to the chief constable about it and Major Duke reacted on me. The rumour appears to be that so large a fraud couldn’t have been carried out by one man; that there must have been an accomplice on the railway side, and that that accomplice was Ackerley. The story has hit the father badly. He was almost in tears to the major, asking him to push on inquiries to clear his son’s name. I don’t blame the old man either; I would do so myself in his place.’

  ‘Reasonable enough,’ French agreed.

  ‘From the old man’s point of view, yes; but not from ours, I say. However, Major Duke was sorry for old Ackerley and said that if it would not cost us very much he would like to have a shot at clearing the boy’s name. Another reason, inspector, for your going on and straightening things out.’

  French made a gesture of impatience. ‘Surely the fact that Ackerley was murdered clears him?’ he protested. ‘If it had been suicide he might have been guilty all right, but I’m hanged if I can see how his murder and his guilt square up.’

  ‘I agree with you, but the rumour meets this difficulty. It is suggested that Ackerley must have been party to the fraud because Carey couldn’t have worked it alone. It is next suggested that Ackerley saw it was coming out and to save himself decided to “discover” it himself. Most unlikely, I agree. Still, we’d better have it settled.’

  It was in a much more hopeful frame of mind that French withdrew to his room at the hotel to think things over. This business of the fraud was going to make all the difference. It was the hinge on which his entire case turned. Instead of consisting of a couple of isolated acts, the drama was now a complete entity, properly motivated and bound together into a logical whole.

  As he began to consider his next step, French saw that he must first settle the question of whether
Ackerley was or was not party to the fraud. He did not himself believe in the young man’s guilt, but the matter was fundamental and no progress could be made till it was set at rest. What was the suggestion founded on? Nothing connected with Ackerley himself. It depended wholly on the question of whether Carey could or could not have carried through the fraud alone. If Carey could have done so, there was not the slightest particle of evidence for suspecting Ackerley.

  How was he to settle this point? Clearly by getting still more information about the fraud. French decided he would make more detailed inquiries, first from the Railway Company and then from the contractors.

  Next morning, therefore, he took an early train to Lydmouth and asked to see Bragg. French had already questioned Bragg on the general situation, and he now turned at once to the fraud. He listened while Bragg explained its details. ‘Of course,’ Bragg ended up, ‘a good deal of it we don’t fully understand. We were not present at the contractors’ inquiry except while giving evidence. But if it’s essential to your case I have no doubt that you could get further information from Messrs Spence.’

  ‘I shall do so,’ French agreed. ‘Now, Mr Bragg, I want your opinion upon another matter. It has been suggested, as you know, that Mr Ackerley was party to the fraud. What is your view on that?’

  Bragg had mentioned many things with an air of doubt, but this time he seemed convinced.

  ‘I don’t believe it for a moment,’ he declared emphatically, ‘and everyone who knew Ackerley would say the same.’

  French hitched himself a little closer to the desk.

  ‘But surely,’ he went on more confidentially, ‘a fraud like that did really require a confederate on the railway side? This, of course, has been suggested and it seems reasonable to me.’

  ‘It doesn’t to me,’ Bragg retorted.

  ‘It doesn’t? You think one man could have done it all?’

  Bragg passed his cigarette case to French.