The Dartmoor Enigma

by Basil Thomson

  Richardson laughed. ‘Yes, sir; I’m thoroughly accustomed to them.”

  “Then my clerk shall take them to a vacant room where you can have your sergeant to work with you.”

  For the first time since he undertook the case, Richardson began to feel that he was starting on the right road. He collected Jago and the two were conducted to a little room near that of the Detective Inspector, who told them that they could work without fear of interruption.

  “At last I’ve got something for us to work upon,” said Richardson.

  Sergeant Jago looked at the date on the file and said, “I don’t see how this is going to help us very much. This man must have been in prison for the past three years; he couldn’t have been our Charles Dearborn.”

  “I may be wrong, but I have a feeling that we shall find out the identity of our Charles Dearborn in this file.”

  “There’s a lot to go through here.”

  “Of course there is; I’ve always heard Mr. Walker, who dealt with those big fraud cases in the city twenty years ago, say that there is no more complicated detective work than cases of fraud. What I propose to do here is to dictate to you from these papers a précis of the evidence and the summing-up by the Judge. That’ll give us plenty to go upon when we are back at Winterton.”

  They worked steadily through the file for the whole of the morning. The case had opened through a complaint received by the Bristol police, on the part of a lady client, that she had been induced by the accused to invest a sum of £2,000 in the Sulanka Gold Mining Company in British North Borneo, which company had no assets; and that the defendant Sutcliffe figured as the solicitor to the company; that the whole company was fraudulent, since a prospectus alleged that its property consisted of a mountain largely composed of metallic gold; and that no work had been carried out on the property in question.

  When this complaint had been brought to the notice of Sutcliffe he had offered on behalf of his firm to make good the complainant’s loss, but it had been found that the assets of his firm amounted only to less than £200, and therefore nothing could be done in that direction. The police consulted the Director of Public Prosecutions as to whether the investment of a client’s funds in a fraudulent company, of which the solicitor was himself solicitor, amounted to a criminal offence.

  In the meantime other of Sutcliffe’s clients took alarm and began to press for a return of the money which they had given him to invest, and since he could produce no scrip or certificates showing that the money had been invested, it was decided to take criminal process against him. He conducted his own defence, but, since the cheques entrusted to him had been cashed and the money could not be produced, it could not prevail with the jury, nor with the judge, who in his summing-up expressed himself very severely against a solicitor, an officer of the High Court, having permitted his name to appear and having invested money for a client in a fraudulent gold-mining company. The jury had retired for half an hour and had returned a verdict of guilty. Sutcliffe was sentenced to four years’ penal servitude.

  “What’s your impression of the case, Jago?” asked Richardson, when the précis was completed.

  “It looks pretty black against Sutcliffe, especially as his clerk had warned him about the real character of that gold mine. It was that company promoter who ought to have been prosecuted.”

  “Yes, but he had left England for an unknown destination and they couldn’t get at him.”

  “It seems to me that a solicitor who only attended his office for twenty minutes a day to sign cheques and letters deserved all he got.”

  “Yes, you saw that he had banked very large sums in his private account, and a few days later had drawn them out again in cheques made out to ‘self.’ That was a curious thing to do, wasn’t it, especially in the case of a man who had under £200 to his credit in the bank when the case came to trial.”

  “I can’t make head or tail of it,” said Jago frankly.

  “I am beginning to see daylight,” responded Richardson. “You noticed when I was dictating that this company promoter, Frank Willis as he called himself, had qualified as a solicitor before he took to robbing the poor with prospectuses, and according to the evidence of Sutcliffe’s clerk there had been a question of him joining Sutcliffe as a partner.”

  “Yes; then there would have been two wrong ’uns instead of one.”

  “Perhaps you had better head your notes with a list of the witnesses who were called at the trial—Charles Instone, Sutcliffe’s managing clerk, John Reddy, the office boy, Walter Pedder, manager of Sutcliffe’s bank, Lady Penmore—she had given Sutcliffe £500 to invest in the bogus company, but afterwards said it had been a personal gift to him.

  “There—I think we can hand back the file to the Chief Constable after lunch and hear what he has to tell us about Sutcliffe. Come along. I’m hungry.”

  They found a restaurant quite near the police station. Jago was in a conversational mood, for as a young man he had made two trips to Bristol, which was now a bustling modern city. But he found that his chief’s attention was wandering, and that he was monosyllabic in his replies. He knew him in this mood of deep thought and forbore to disturb him. He did venture on one observation.

  “It seemed to me when you were dictating, that the managing clerk Instone was very anxious to do his best for his chief when he was in the box. It’s possible that both he and that office boy with freckles may still be working somewhere in the town. Perhaps the Chief Constable may know where.”

  “It’s possible,” said Richardson without enthusiasm.

  Richardson’s first act on returning to police head-quarters was to go upstairs with the Sutcliffe file and knock at the Chief Constable’s door. “I’ve brought this back, sir, after making a précis of it. I find it a little difficult to make up my mind as to the character of Sutcliffe.”

  “If you’d known him as well as I did, you’d have no difficulty at all. He inherited the business from his father, who was one of the most respected men of his generation in Bristol. He doted on his two sons and perhaps gave them the wrong kind of education at a public school. Anyhow, Robert, the elder brother, developed a passion for travelling in foreign parts. He went off to Ceylon and when his father died he used his share of the estate to buy a tea plantation. Now he is a well-known tea merchant in Mincing Lane and quite well off. The younger son, Peter, passed his examinations for the law quite easily, but nature had never intended him for a solicitor. He neglected his practice, though many of his father’s clients remained to him. I don’t believe that that man spent more than about twenty minutes a day in his office. His routine was to dash in, sign a few papers, and then off to the golf-course. When I had a day off I used to play with him. You couldn’t have met a nicer fellow, but for months before the crash came I had been hearing how he was neglecting his business.”

  “Yes, but what can have become of all that money entrusted to him to invest?”

  “Ah! Now you’re asking me something which is not very easy to answer. If you had asked Willis, that rascally company promoter, I believe he could have told you. You see, Willis had a very charming sister, and there can be no doubt that poor Sutcliffe was very much in love with her. I didn’t wonder at that—she is a most attractive girl—and if those two had married I feel sure she would have kept him straight and made him work. It’s curious how often one member of a family turns out to be a wrong ’un; her younger brother, Percy, is as nice a young fellow as you could wish to meet and as straight as a die, but the elder brother is quite the reverse, although probably poor Sutcliffe took him at his own valuation, and being very deeply in love he couldn’t imagine that any member of the lady’s family could be otherwise than perfect.”

  “Do you know what has become of the family?”

  “No, except that they have left Bristol. I think I heard that they had moved up nearer London, where Percy has a job of some kind. Of course the swindler disappeared; I was told that he was somewhere in the Far East where peo
ple don’t inquire into each other’s pasts.”

  “And Sutcliffe’s clerk?”

  “No, I know nothing about him since the trial, poor fellow. At any rate he’s not in Bristol, or I should have heard of it.”

  “And John Reddy, the office boy?”

  “I’ve never heard of him either since the trial. I wish that I could have been of more use to you.”

  “You have been of the greatest use, Chief Constable. I feel already that things are beginning to fit together and that in a few days I shall be able to return to London with the case cleared up. If I am in any difficulty, I hope you’ll let me write to you.”

  “As often as you like, Chief Inspector.”

  The two men shook hands.

  Chapter Fifteen

  THERE WAS much to be done before Richardson could feel free to leave Bristol. Through the good offices of the Detective Inspector, who had a search made of the newspaper files of the time, he obtained the addresses of Charles Instone, Sutcliffe’s managing clerk, and of John Reddy, his office boy. He called at Instone’s and found that it was a boarding-house which had been in the same hands for more than five years. The landlady remembered Instone very well.

  “Yes, sir, and one couldn’t have had a nicer or quieter gentleman than he was. He gave no trouble in the house, never grumbled at his food and was always friendly with the other boarders. He was a great church-goer. The vicar of St. John’s knew him well and used to come and see him, particularly after the trouble began over his employer. That case made a big sensation in the town, I can tell you, and poor Mr. Instone was so cut up over it that he couldn’t sleep nor eat.”

  “What became of him after the trial?”

  “Oh, he told me that he was going up to see Mr. Sutcliffe’s brother in London and try to get a job there. He paid up right to the day he left. I tell you I was sorry to lose him, because you know, sir, in these days one doesn’t get so many lodgers of the right sort. I’m sure that he was quite broke up when he had to leave.”

  “Did he leave you any address to forward letters to?”

  “Yes, sir, the Post Office, Charing Cross, London, but nothing ever came for him. He did promise to write to me, but he never did. Perhaps, poor gentleman, he never found another job.”

  “Is the vicar of St. John’s still the same clergyman that knew Mr. Instone?”

  “Yes, and very nice he is. If you thought of going up there to see him, I’m sure that he’d tell you all he knows about poor Mr. Instone. I expect he still hears from him.”

  Richardson’s next visit was to the vicarage of St. John’s Church. He did not send in his card, because to receive a visit from a detective chief inspector was a bad opening for a first interview. He gave the maid-servant his name.

  The vicar proved to be an active and alert man of between forty and fifty. Richardson began at once by asking him whether he remembered a former parishioner named Charles Instone.

  “Ah! You mean that poor man who was so hard hit by the trial of his employer, Mr. Sutcliffe. The case made a great sensation in the town. He was sent to prison.”

  “Have you heard from Mr. Instone since he left Bristol?”

  “Only once. He went to London to see Mr. Sutcliffe’s brother; he couldn’t bear to stay on here after the trouble. He wrote to me that he was trying hard to find work, so I’m afraid that Mr. Sutcliffe did not help him. I sent him the address of one of the agencies connected with the Church with a strong recommendation in his favour, but you know how hard it is for men belonging to what they call the black-coated unemployed to find work. I suppose, poor fellow, he had to sink in the social scale, and that is why he did not write to me again. The world is very hard for people in that walk of life.”

  “Do you happen to know the office boy, John Reddy, of that firm? They have given me his address as 17 Welby Street.”

  “Oh, that’s at the other end of the town; I’m afraid I can’t help you there.”

  Richardson thanked him and took his leave.

  A taxi carried him to Welby Street—a street of little four-roomed houses inhabited by working-class people. The woman who came to the door of number 17 was anxious to give him every information.

  “Yes, sir, the Reddys used to live in this house before we took it over. There were just the two of them, Mrs. Reddy and her boy—a nice little chap he was, covered with freckles. Mrs. Reddy had a year of her lease still to run, but she gave it over to us by arrangement with the landlord, because her boy’s employer had got into trouble and she told me that someone had got him a job in London. He was very lucky; it’s not so easy in these days for young boys to find jobs.”

  “What do you make of it all?” asked Jago when Richardson had recounted his inquiries of the afternoon. “What was the real name of the murdered man, do you think?”

  “It may have been Frank Willis, the company promoter,” suggested Richardson cautiously. “He may never have left the country at all.”

  “But would he have been in possession of all that money?”

  “Why not—if Sutcliffe paid over to him all that his clients had subscribed? You must remember that in these days of deflated currencies a gold mine cleverly presented is a very tempting bait. Remember too that this man, Frank Willis, was the source of all Peter Sutcliffe’s troubles. I wish we had a photograph to show to Mrs. Dearborn at Winterton, but people of that kind don’t spend money at photographers’ shops.”

  “Then you think that the murderer must have been the ex-convict, Peter Sutcliffe?”

  “That is easy to calculate. Sutcliffe had to serve a sentence of four years. That means that his minimum sentence would have been three years. He would have been put in the Star Class by the Prison Commissioners, and being in good health he would have been sent to Maidstone to serve his sentence. He was the sort of man who would have earned his full remission. You can do the sum for yourself.”

  “Yes,” said Jago; “he would have been out of prison about three weeks when the murder was committed, but there is still a good deal to clear up before you submit your report. How could the prisoner have known where Willis, alias Dearborn, was living? Who could have told him about the man’s habit of motoring to Moorstead to pay the men in his quarry?”

  “I know. We are not half through the case yet. The first thing to do is to get from Maidstone the actual date on which Sutcliffe was discharged. No doubt a man like that would have been relieved of the condition of a monthly report to the police. He would have been a free man from the date of his discharge. Naturally he would first have applied to his brother for help.”

  “You mean the brother in Mincing Lane?”

  “Exactly. At that hotel where he stayed in Plymouth he registered under the name of Ellis, but he may have used his own name when he ordered that suit of clothes in Sackville Street. While I go to Maidstone to get his date of discharge, you must make a second tour of the tailors in Sackville Street and find out whether any of them made a suit of clothes for a man named Sutcliffe. Then you can find the brother’s address in Mincing Lane in the directory and I’ll meet you at Carter’s at two o’clock to-morrow. Whichever of us gets there first will wait for the other. We must get back to London to-night. Luckily we can both sleep on a train journey.”

  “Are you going to look in at C.O. before going on to Maidstone?”

  “No, I’ll wait until we’ve something more definite to tell them.”

  Next morning Richardson took an early train to Maidstone and made straight for the prison, where he was told that the Governor was in the adjudication-room, but would soon be at liberty. In the meantime, if he cared to see the chief warder…?

  He accepted the gatekeeper’s offer and the chief warder was sent for. Richardson explained the object of his visit.

  “You’ve come about Sutcliffe. Has he been getting into trouble again? I should never have thought it,” said the chief warder. “He was one of our model prisoners.”

  “On what day was he discharged?”


  “I’ll look it up,” replied the chief warder, taking down a book from the shelf and murmuring, “Sutcliffe…Sutcliffe…here we are. He went out on September 7; he was the only convict discharged that morning. But here comes the Governor. I’ll introduce you.”

  “Come into my room,” said the Governor, when he learned who Richardson was. “I’m always glad to help you people from Scotland Yard when I can.”

  “Thank you, sir. The chief warder has told me that the convict Peter Sutcliffe was discharged on September 7.”

  “I hope that you’re not on his track for a new offence. I had a long talk with him before he went out and asked him what he intended to do for a living now that his business had come to an end. He was perfectly frank; said that everybody had been very kind to him in the prison and that all he wanted was to make a new life for himself. He said that fortunately he still had loyal friends who believed in him and thought his sentence unjust. So many convicts say that; I was not impressed, but I did say that in his case, he seemed to have had a fair trial. ‘Yes,’ he admitted, ‘the trial was fair, but it never got to the bottom of my case.’ ‘Do you mean that you were wrongfully convicted?’ I asked him. ‘In one sense yes, but in another I was guilty. I neglected my business and altogether behaved like a fool. The fact was that I was quite unfit to be a solicitor.’ That is word for word what he told me.”

  “Did he receive any visits while he was here?”

  “Yes, he was visited once by his brother, who seems to be well known in the city, and once by a young woman—a lady and a very charming one. She asked to see me before applying to see him; she thought that he might decline to see her under such humiliating conditions as the prison rules lay down. She told me frankly that the prisoner Sutcliffe had come to grief through being too good-natured and too easily persuaded. ‘Weakness of character,’ I suggested, but she wouldn’t have that. She said that in all the essential things he was a man of scrupulous honour. I said, ‘You’ve come all this way; surely it would be a pity if you went back without seeing him.’ ‘I won’t see him if it will give him pain,’ she said.