Wreckers Must Breathe
Page 12
My last letter, if I remember rightly, was written on Sunday evening at the hotel in Cadgwith. On Monday morning I ran over to Penzance and had another talk to the agents who sold Carillon to Cutner. I don’t know whether it was a sort of hunch or just that, having drawn blank at Church Cove, I turned in desperation to the agents as the one possible link between Cutner and the others.
The agents were Messrs Gribble, Tolworth and Fickle—incredible, isn’t it? Previously I had only spoken with the chief clerk. This time I demanded to see the senior partner. This was Mr Fickle, the other two being dead! He was a pompous little Scotsman and vera vera careful. The police had apparently been at him and he was beginning to fear for his reputation. When I told him that I represented the Recorder, I feared he was going to throw me out. However, we played the old game and I said it would look as though he were concealing something if he was not prepared to discuss the matter openly with a representative of the press. In the end he told me everything I wanted to know, and it wasn’t much at that.
Cutner had purchased the cottage on February 2, 1937. He paid for it with a cheque on the branch at Gloucester where he had been manager—ergo, if my reasoning is correct, this makes him a passable forger as well. He had looked at a number of cottages before choosing Carillon. Several of these were inland, but Fickle seems to have been left with the impression that what Cutner was really interested in was one on the coast. An interesting point is that he offered him one at Sennen Cove, which was in every way ideal and much more suited to his stated requirements than Carillon, but he turned it down without even bothering to go and look at it. For some reason it had to be in South Cornwall. In all, Cutner spent the better part of a week in Penzance, motoring out daily in various directions to have a look at properties. An entry in the register at the Wheatsheaf Hotel, Penzance, where I stayed the night, shows that he was there from January 27 to February 1, 1937. He instructed his purchase agreement to be sent to his hotel at Torquay. He was resident at that hotel from December 4, 1936, to January 26, 1937, and again from February 2 to February 28, 1937, when he took up his residence at Carillon.
All this is getting nowhere, you’ll say. Quite right, but it shows that I’m being thorough. Now here we come to the little sequence of coincidence which is sending me scuttling down to St Just. The hall porter at the Wheatsheaf remembers Mr Cutner. And the reason he remembers him is that he tipped him with a dud ten shilling note. I know what you’re going to say. That dud ten shilling note shows, Miss Weston, that your reasoning is all wrong. Cutner was not ingeniously smuggled into this country by Germany. He is just a petty criminal passing dud notes and ready to take on anything, even a little espionage work, to keep himself in funds. But wait a minute. This man paid his bill by cheque, and it was honoured. He paid in two cheques at his Torquay hotel and both were honoured. As far as I can find out this was the one and only dud note that he passed. My conclusion is that it was just one of those things. But it has served my purpose, for to this day the hall porter remembers all about Mr George Cutner. He remembers that he wore brown boots with a dark grey suit and that he kept a big gold watch, which he would frequently consult, in his waistcoat pocket. And that during his stay at the hotel he had a visitor. This visitor was a man of the name of Robertson—short and thick-set, with rimless glasses, heavy cheeks and a way of puffing as he moved as though he were perpetually short of breath.
Using the office of Gribble, Tolworth and Fickle as a poste restante I wired this description to Cutner’s Torquay hotel and to Detective-inspector Fuller at the Falmouth police station. The reply from the Torquay hotel was not long delayed. It read—‘Man answering description visited Cutner several times stop Name Jones.’ I waited at the estate agents for some time, hoping for a reply from Fuller. In the end I gave it up and went along to see the editor of the local paper. Here I drew blank. No one in the office knew any one of the name of either Jones or Robertson who answered to the description. In fact, no one knew any one at all who answered to that description.
So back to the hotel and further talks with the porter. A genuine ten shilling note changes hands—this will be included in expenses—and from the depths of the remote past this worthy individual, who has needless to say the acquisitive nature of the Cornish wrecker well developed, conjures the memory of a telephone call from said Mr Robertson to Cutner when the latter was out. Later Mr Robertson rings through again and as Cutner is still out leaves a message. The message is to the effect that Cutner is to meet him in Redruth that evening. When the porter asks where and at what time, this Robertson says, ‘Seven o’clock. He knows where.’
So then I get the car out and start for Redruth. And as the estate agents is on my way I stop off to see whether Fuller has answered my wire. I should have been warned by the sleek black roadster that is drawn up at the curb. Detective-inspector Fuller is waiting for me inside with a whole heap of questions. How did I get to know about this man? Who had seen him? Where did I get my description from?
‘So you recognize the description, do you?’ I asked.
And he said, ‘Like hell I do. I’ve been trying to trace this man ever since Cutner was arrested.’
‘Well, isn’t that a coincidence,’ I said, ‘I’m trying to trace him too.’
And then we start the questions all over again. But I get the answer to my wire. This fellow Robertson had visited Carillon several times. So I say good afternoon and thank him for being so kind as to come all the way over to Penzance in order to reply to my wire. He thinks I think I’ve made rather a hit and that makes him very embarrassed. Even so he sticks to the point and keeps on with the questions. We both get rather hot under the collar and in the end he takes himself off to go the round of the hotels and through the whole gamut of investigation that I’ve just been through, while I go on to Redruth.
And here everything tumbles right into my lap. The editor of the local paper listens to my description and says, ‘Sounds like Tubby Wilson. Started up the old Wheal Garth mine and packed up about a year back.’ Then he gets down two bound volumes of the paper and after about ten minutes’ search produces a photograph of a fat little man standing with feet apart, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and a broad grin on his moon-like face. The man has a battered trilby on the back of his head and I can see a faint mark on his waistcoat that looks like a watch chain. The photograph appeared in the issue of March 2, 1937—that is shortly after he had had these meetings with Cutner. And the reason the photograph is in the paper is that he has just floated a small private company called Cornish Coastal Wilson Mines Ltd. Then in the issue of March 16 of that year appears the announcement of the purchase of the Wheal Garth tin mine near St Just. Eighteen months later the mine closed down. But it evidently had good backing for there was no question of bankruptcy—all the creditors were paid in full and the mine is still the property of this now very nebulous company. Well, that’s the low down on Tubby Wilson. By the time you get this letter I shall be on my way to have a look at his mine and talk to people in the neighbourhood of St Just who worked there—that is if friend Tubby is the man I think he is. I obtained two back numbers of the issue in which his photograph appeared. One cutting I have sent to my friend, the hotel porter, with a request to wire me in the morning if he recognizes it as Robertson. The other I am keeping myself for identification purposes. In the meantime I am trying to ferret out Tubby’s antecedents and history. The editor of the local paper, a jovial old boy who regards me as something of an enfante terrible, is taking me to the local mineowner’s club tonight. I threatened to go on my own, but apparently he didn’t think that would be quite, quite. In the meantime, could you have someone go along to Bush House and look up Tubby’s ancestors? If you have any luck wire me at the St Just post office.
I suggest you keep these interminable reports and publish them under the title of ‘Letters of a Special Investigator to her Employer.’
Yours,
SHERLOCK WESTON.
Wire from Maureen W
eston to Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder dispatched from Hayle at 10.50 a.m. on September 13:
Porter corroborates identity stop John Desmond Wilson known in Redruth prior flotation stop Something of rolling stone been prospecting various goldfields also tin Malay stop Writing arrival Saint Just—Maureen.
Wire from Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder to Maureen Weston at the Post Office, St Just, dispatched from Fleet Street at 11.15 a.m. on September 13:
Born Dusseldorf ninety four naturalized British twenty two stop Keep going—Patterson.
Letter from Maureen Weston, c/o Mrs Davies, Cap View, Pendeen, Cornwall, dated September 13 and received by Charles Patterson of the Daily Recorder on the afternoon of September 14:
DEAR CHARLIE,
I’m feeling a little scared. Your special investigator is going down the mine tomorrow morning, and she’s not the least bit keen. This is the most God-awful place. I’ve never seen these Cornish mining villages before—they’re even worse than the Welsh. They’re so drab and the coastal scenery is so colourful. Today, for instance, as I pottered around the cliffs looking at the mines, the sea was a brilliant turquoise blue with a white edge where it creamed against the cliffs. It reminded me of the Mediterranean, except that the coast here is much more ragged and deadly looking than anything I have seen before. From this I came back to Pendeen to make inquiries as to who had worked in Wheal Garth, and by comparison this little huddle of grey stone cottages is unbelievably squalid.
However, I have been quite lucky. I am installed in a little cottage half-way between Pendeen and Trewellard and clear of the depressing atmosphere of a mining village. But there is no opportunity to forget that I am in the mining district of Cornwall. There is open ground on the other side of the road and it is dotted with grass-grown slag heaps, piles of stones which were once miners’ houses and ruined chimneys that acted as flues for the ventilation shafts of the mines. This is what I look out on from my bedroom window. And, believe me, when it rained this evening it looked a scene of utter desolation. It is getting dark now and I’m writing this by the light of an oil lamp. A sea mist has come up and the lighthouse at Pendeen Watch is moaning dismally. However, when it’s fine it is possible to see right across to the cliffs, and I can just see the top of Cape Cornwall, which I gather is why the cottage is called Cap View. I feed in the kitchen with the family—mother, father, daughter aged seven, and an evacuee, male, aged five. And from the window there you look up the slope of the moors to the huge pyramid heaps of the china clay pits.
So much for the local colour. Now to the result of my labours. First thing I did on arrival was to locate the mine. Refer to your collection of Ward, Lock, and in the West Cornwall volume you will find it given as lying between mines Botallack and Levant, both now defunct. I have had quite an interesting prowl round. There is the remains of what looks like a miniature railway running for the better part of half a mile along the very edge of the cliffs. There is just the cutting left and an occasional wooden sleeper. In fact, but for the wooden sleepers, I should have said it was a water duct, for it is a definite cutting all the way. Maybe what I think are sleepers are old slats of wood that formed the framework for the wooden trough in which the water ran. Whatever it is, I think it once belonged to Wheal Garth. What I take to be the main shaft of the mine is about a hundred yards in from the cliff edge. There’s a high stone wall round it that looks fairly recent. I climbed over and had a look down, lying flat on my stomach. There’s a sheer drop of about a hundred feet to a lot of old pit props, and there’s the sound of water dripping—most unpleasant! The cliffs here are simply pitted with these shafts. Each has its stone wall, but that is the only protection. Others have been filled, some have fallen in, and the scars of diggings and the mounds of old slag heaps are everywhere.
Your acquisitive little Maureen was seen making for the local with several small-sized boulders clasped to her bosom. Some of the stones on the slag heaps are beautifully coloured, but actually what I had got were several pieces of greenish rock flecked with gold. Optimism outran intelligence and I pictured myself opening up Wheal Garth as a gold mine.
At the pub I find a most admirable and intelligent landlord. Note the style of Pepys! I order a gin and lime, dump my little pieces of rock on the bar and ask if the bright stuff is gold. Whereupon my drink is delivered to me with a huge guffaw and a smell of stale beer. ‘Aye, that’s raight foonny!’ he says. He hails from the North in case you hadn’t noticed my spelling. ‘That’s moondic, that is. Arsenic deposit. Ee, we allus gets a laff oot o’ t’ visitors wi’ moondic. They arl think it’s gold.’ He produced a piece of rock from the back of the bar that shone like solid gold only the look of it was rather more metallic. This was a lovely example of mundic. Then he showed me a piece of what they call mother tin from a new lode that had just been struck at Geevor. The whole village, incidentally, now seems to live on Geevor. It’s the only mine for miles around that is still working.
I know what you’re muttering to yourself—when is this so-and-so woman coming to the point? Well, here it is. The landlord recognized the picture of Tubby. As soon as he sees it, he says, ‘Ee, ’a knaw ’im raight enoof. That’s Toobby Wilson, that is.’ Then over a pint of mild and bitter he gives me the low down on the mine.
Wheal Garth is what they call a wet mine, or rather it was in the old days. Its hey-day appears to have been about 1927–28. Tin was around £240 a ton at the time and they were working on a three-foot wide seam of mother tin. Profits of Wheal Garth for 1928 were something like £200,000. This was on a capital of some £60,000, the mine having been bought for a song in 1925. That’s the way with these Cornish mines, derelict one year and then some small speculating prospector strikes a seam and a fortune is made. Apparently this seam ran out under the sea. That was why it was a wet mine. It resulted in very bad silicosis. In the words of the landlord, ‘Nae boogger laiked t’ place.’
Then in November, 1928, the undersea workings collapsed and a whole shift—thirty-two men—were trapped and killed. It was, I understand, one of the worst disasters in the history of Cornish mining. An inquiry was held and it was found that a huge underwater cavern, which ran into the face of the cliff immediately above the galleries leading into the undersea workings, extended much deeper than had been thought. Thus, instead of having, as they thought, some twenty feet of solid rock above the underwater galleries, there had only been some three feet. The cave was known of course to the engineers and divers sent down when the galleries were first cut in 1916. But the sand that filled the bottom of the cave had proved deceptive. Frankly I doubt whether the engineers took full precautions. Owners are notoriously free with the lives of miners, and 1916 was a year in which every effort was being made by the Cornish mines to meet the demands of the war machine. There might be a story in that for you later—How Cornwall is Feeding the Tinplate Industry. As far as I can gather no effort was made by the company that took over in 1925 to check the safety of these galleries. They were in fact safe enough at the time. It was only when they came to widen them in order to lay a small railway and so increase the output of the mine that they collapsed.
You are probably wondering at my preoccupation with the mine rather than with Tubby Wilson. I must admit that when I last wrote you my idea in coming down here was simply to check up on the man and see if I could find out whether any other suspicious persons had contacted him at the mine. What decided me to pay close attention to the mine itself was the talk I heard at the mineowners’ club in Redruth last night. Apparently Tubby Wilson and his activities at Wheal Garth had always been something of an enigma to some members. The point to remember is that these boys have been in the business for years. They know how to run a mine. They know what to look for and what to go out for without involving themselves in terrific costs. When Noye, the local editor, collected a few of his particular cronies—big men in the tin business, as he told me—round the bar and explained that I worked for the Recorder and wanted info
rmation about Wilson, they were only too ready to discuss the business. When Tubby Wilson floated his company and opened up Wheal Garth, the price of tin was falling sharply. And they naturally thought that what he was going to do was drive another shaft and run fresh galleries out to pick up the undersea lode beyond the spot where the old workings had ceased, so by-passing the danger area. The only thing was, they thought his capital insufficient for the job. They told him this, but he throws a wide guy act and says he’s got other ideas. Well, these other ideas are apparently to go for the shore end of the lode. Now this is a bum idea and they tell him so. The lode was discovered only about twenty feet from the sea and some thirty feet below sea level. The shoreward end was worked out before ever they started on the undersea section. Moreover, prospecting work was carried out over a wide area at the shoreward end in a fruitless effort to discover the continuation of a lode. The boys at the club told him he’d be throwing his money away if he started looking for that end of the lode. His reply was that he had an idea. Well, his idea was to sink a new shaft about a hundred yards back from the cliffs dead in a line with the cave, then he throws new galleries out until he meets the cave which apparently extends some two hundred yards inland. Then he begins to cast about in a big semi-circle with broad adits running off every few yards into the cave. Then he casts inland in two great drives at each end of his main gallery. Then he runs adits off opposite the ones he has run into the cave. Then he tries a higher level. Then a higher level still. Then he goes bust and the mine closes down.
The boys I spoke to thought he must have spent in all four times the nominal capital of the company. He employed forty men on the job and an engineer who came down from London and didn’t know a thing about Cornish tin mining. They think he was nuts. What do you think?