Inspector French's Greatest Case

by Freeman Wills Crofts

  There still remained the difficulty of her nationality. Obviously it is easy to mimic the accent and manner of a foreigner, but French found it hard to believe that such mimicry could be so perfect as to deceive a large number of persons, many of whom were experts on that particular point. This, however, was only a small part of the general problem, and did not affect his next business, to find Mrs. Elizabeth Ward, Thirsk Road, York.

  He went ashore, and, turning into a telegraph office, sent a wire to the chief of police at York, asking him if a lady of that name lived at the address in question and, if so, to wire was she at home.

  His next business was at police headquarters, and thither he was directing his steps when a thought struck him, and he turned aside to the sheds in which the Transatlantic luggage is examined. Several of the Customs officers were still there, and he went up and spoke to one of them.

  “Now,” the young fellow answered in surprise, “it’s a darned queer thing that you came to me about that. Quite a coincidence, that is. I know the man who went through those trunks. He told me about it at the time. It seemed a darned silly thing that any one should want to bring trunks of blankets from America. If you come along I’ll find him for you. And so the lady’s wanted, is she? Say, Jack!” he called a colleague, another clean, efficient young fellow of the same type, “here’s some one wants you. He wants to know about those trunks of blankets you were telling me about two or three trips of the Olympic back. A darned queer coincidence that he should come to me about them. That’s what I call it!”

  “Yes, you’ve made a lucky shot, haven’t you?” the second man said to French. “I remember the trunks and the lady they belonged to, because I couldn’t understand why any one should want to bring trunks of blankets across the Atlantic. I’ve never known any one do it before.”

  “You didn’t make any remark about them,” French asked.

  “No, but she did. She said she reckoned I hadn’t often seen trunks of blankets brought over from America. You see, I was a bit suspicious at first, and was examining the things pretty carefully. I said that was so, and she said she was taking back a small but valuable collection of porcelain ornaments, which she would pack in the blankets, and that when she had to bring the trunks anyway, she thought she might as well bring the packing as well and so save buying new. I thought the whole business a bit off, but there was nothing dutiable in the case, and it wasn’t my job to interfere. It there anything wrong about it?”

  “I don’t know,” French told him. “I think the woman was a crook, but I’m not on to the blanket stunt yet. By the way, is she in one of those groups?”

  The young man identified Mrs. Ward without hesitation, and French, finding he had learned all that the Customs men could tell him, resumed his way to the police station.

  He wondered what this blanket business really did mean. Then as he walked slowly along with head bent forward and eyes vacantly scanning the pavement, a possible explanation occurred to him. These trunks, apparently, were required solely as properties to assist in the fraud. Mrs. Root, the wife of a Pittsburg magnate, would scarcely arrive at the Savoy from America without American trunks. But when Mrs. Root came to disappear, the trunks would become an embarrassment. They would have to be got rid of, and, as a matter of fact, they were got rid of. They must therefore contain nothing of the lady’s, no personal possession which might act as a clue to its owner. But they must contain something. Empty trunks would be too light, and might be observed by the chambermaid, and comments might be occasioned among the hotel staff which might reach the management, and which would become important if Mr. Williams rang up to make his inquiries. But blankets would exactly fill the bill; indeed, French could think of nothing more suitable for the purpose. They would give the trunks a moderate weight, they would not supply a clue to Mrs. Ward, and they would be cheap, while their presence could be accounted for sufficiently reasonably to the Customs officers. Yes, French thought, it was a probable enough explanation.

  Arrived at the police station, he sent in his name with a request to see the officer in charge.

  Superintendent Hayes had been stationed in London before he got his present appointment, and had come across French on more than one occasion. He therefore greeted the Inspector cordially, found him a comfortable chair, and supplied him with an excellent cigar.

  “From Trinidad,” he explained. “I get them direct from a man I know out there. And what’s the best news of you?”

  They discussed old times for some minutes, then French turned to the business in hand.

  “It’s an interesting case,” he said as he gave the other the details, continuing: “The woman must be a pretty cool hand. She could easily invent that tale about losing her passport, for old Williams’s edification, but under the circumstances her coming to you about it was a bit class.”

  “She had a nerve, yes,” the Superintendent admitted. “But, you see, it was necessary. She must have known that the absence of the passport would strike Williams as suspicious, and it was necessary for her to remove that suspicion. She couldn’t very well get a bag of that kind stolen without informing the police, so she had to inform them. She would see how easily Williams could check her statement, as indeed he did. No, I don’t see how she could have avoided coming to us. It was an obvious precaution.”

  “I quite agree with all you say,” French returned, “but it argues a cool customer for all that; not only, so to speak, putting her head into the lion’s mouth, but at the same time calling her attention to its being there. Anyway, I’ve got to find her, and I wish you’d let me have details about her. I’ve got some from the Olympic people, but I want to pick up everything I can.”

  The Superintendent telephoned to some one to “send up Sergeant McAfee,” and when a tall, cadaverous man entered, he introduced him as the man who had dealt with the business in question.

  “Sergeant McAfee has just been transferred to us from Liverpool,” he explained. “Sit down, McAfee. Inspector French wants to know some details about that woman who lost her handbag coming off the Olympic some seven weeks ago. I think you handled the thing. Do you remember a Mrs. Root of Pittsburg?”

  “I mind her rightly, sir,” the man answered in what French believed was a Belfast accent. “But it wasn’t coming off the Olympic she lost it. It was later on that same day, though it was on the quays right enough.”

  “Tell us all you can about it.”

  The Sergeant pulled out his notebook. “I have it in me other book,” he announced. “If ye’ll excuse me, I’ll get it.”

  In a moment he returned, sat down, and turning over the dog’s-eared pages of a well-worn book, began as if reciting evidence in court:

  “On the 24th November last at about 3.00 p.m., I was passing through the crowd on the outer quays when I heard a woman cry out. ‘Thief, thief,’ she shouted, and she ran up and caught me by the arm. She was middling tall and thinnish, her face pale and her hair dark. She spoke in an American voice, and seemed upset or excited. She said to me, breathless like, ‘Say, officer,’ she said, ‘I’ve just had my despatch case stolen.’ I asked her where, and how, and what was in it. She said right there where we were standing, and not three seconds before. She was carrying it in her hand, and it was snatched out of it. She turned round and saw a man juke away in the crowd. She shouted and made after him, but he was away before she could get near. I asked her what the case was like, and she said a small square brown morocco leather one with gold fittings. I went and told the two men on duty close by, and we kept a watch on the exits, but we never saw a sign of it.” Sergeant McAfee shook his head gloomily as he concluded: “She hadn’t any call to be carrying a gold-fitted case in that crowd anyway.”

  “That’s a fact, Sergeant,” the Superintendent agreed. “And you never came on any trace of it?”

  “No, sir. I brought her up to the station, and took her name and all particulars. There’s the report.” He unfolded a paper and laid it on the Superintendent’s de
sk.

  In the document was a detailed description of the lady, of the alleged despatch case and its contents, and of the means that had been taken to try to trace it. The pawnbrokers had been advised and a special watch kept on fences and other usual channels for the disposal of stolen goods.

  When French had digested these particulars, he brought out once more his photographs and handed them to the Sergeant.

  “Look at those, Sergeant, and tell me if you see the woman among them.”

  Slowly the Sergeant turned them over, gazing at them in precisely the same puzzled way as had done Mr. Williams, Mr. Scarlett, and the other London men to whom they had been shown. And with the same doubt and hesitation he presently fixed on Mrs. Ward.

  “That would be to be her,” he declared slowly, “that is, if she’s there at all. It isn’t a good likeness, but I believe it’s her all the same.”

  “You wouldn’t swear to her?”

  “I’d hardly. But I believe it’s her for all that.”

  French nodded. The Sergeant’s statement, agreeing as it did with those of Messrs. Williams, Scarlett and Co., seemed capable of but one explanation. Mrs. X was Mrs. Ward all right, but before meeting these men she had made herself up to impersonate Mrs. Root. They saw a likeness to Mrs. Ward because it really was she, but they were doubtful because she was disguised.

  The Inspector leaned forward and tapped the photograph.

  “Put it this way, Sergeant,” he suggested. “Here is a picture of the lady as she really is. When you saw her she was made up to look like another woman. How’s that, do you think?”

  In Sergeant McAfee’s lacklustre eye there shone a sudden gleam. “That’s just what it is, sir,” he answered with an approach to something almost like interest in his manner. “That’s it and no mistake. She’s like the photograph by her features, but not by her make-up.” He nodded his head several times in appreciation.

  “Very good.” Inspector French invariably liked as many strings to his bow as he could get. “Now I want some hint from you that will help me trace her.”

  But this was just what Sergeant McAfee could not supply. The woman had given two addresses, the Savoy in London and Mrs. Root’s home in Pittsburg. There was no help in either, and no other information was forthcoming.

  He lunched with his friend the Superintendent, afterwards withdrawing to the lounge of his hotel to have a quiet smoke and to think things over.

  While he sat there, a page appeared with a telegram. It was a reply from the police at York and read:

  “Your wire. No one of that name or address known.”

  French swore disgustedly. He had, of course, realised that the name might be false, but yet he had hoped against hope that he might really have reached the end of at least this portion of his quest. But here he was, as far from the truth as ever! He would now have to make a fresh start to trace this elusive lady—he used another adjective in his mind—and he couldn’t see that he was any better equipped for the search now than when he had started out from Mr. Williams’s office. It was a confoundedly exasperating case—just bristling with promising clues which one after another petered out as he came to follow them up. Being on it was like trying to cross a stream on stepping-stones which invariably gave way when he came to place his weight on them. It was an annoying thought also that that would scarcely be the view his chief would take of the matter. The chief had not been over-complimentary already in his comments on his handling of the case, and French felt that he would view this new check in anything but a sympathetic spirit.

  However, grousing about it wouldn’t lead anywhere, and with an effort he switched his thoughts back to his problem. As he thought it over a further point occurred to him.

  Since his first visit to the Savoy he had wondered why the lady had turned up there so much later than the other passengers from the Olympic, and now he saw the reason. The episode of the handbag had taken place some four hours after the vessel’s arrival, long after the special boat train had left. Mrs. X—for she was still Mrs. X—must therefore have travelled up by an afternoon train, probably the 5.26 or 6.22 p.m. from the West Station, which got in at 6.58 and 8.20 respectively. Now, why this delay? What had she done during these four hours?

  The answer was not far to seek. Was it not to give her time and opportunity to assume her disguise? He felt it must be so.

  The lady was her natural self—other than in name—on board the Olympic, and having no opportunity to alter her appearance, she had passed through the customs in the same character. Hence the ship’s staff and the customs officer had instantly recognised her photograph. But it was obvious that her impersonation of Mrs. Root must begin before she interviewed the Southampton police, and that accounted for the hesitation of Sergeant McAfee and the people in London in identifying her. She had therefore made herself up between passing through the customs at, say, eleven o’clock, and calling on the Sergeant at three. Where was she during those four hours?

  Gone to a hotel, unquestionably. Taken a room in which to assume the disguise. Had Mrs. X engaged a bedroom in one of the Southampton hotels for that afternoon?

  As he thought over the thing, further probabilities occurred to him. The lady would go up to her bedroom as one person and come down as another. Therefore, surely, the larger the hotel, the less chance of the transformation being observed. One of a crowd, she would go to the reception office and engage a room for a few hours’ rest, and pay for it then and there. Then, having accomplished the make-up, she would slip out, unobserved in the stream of passers-by. Yes, French felt sure he was on the right track, and, with a fresh accession of energy, he jumped to his feet, knocked out his pipe, and left the building.

  He called first at the South Western and made his inquiries. But here he drew blank. At the Dolphin he had no better luck, but at the Polygon he found what he wanted. After examining the records, the reception clerk there was able to recall the transaction. About midday an American lady had come in, and saying she wanted a few hours’ rest before catching the 5.26 to London, had engaged a bedroom on a quiet floor until that hour. She had registered, and French, on looking up the book, was delighted to find once more the handwriting of the lady of the cheques. It was true that on this occasion she figured as Mrs. Silas R. Clamm, of Hill Drive, Boston, Mass.; but knowing what he knew of her habits, French would have been surprised to have found a name he had seen before.

  At first he was delighted at so striking a confirmation of his theory, but as he pursued his inquiries his satisfaction vanished, and once more depression and exasperation swept over him. For the reception clerk could not remember anything more than the mere fact of the letting of the room, and no one else in the building remembered the woman at all. With his usual pertinacity, he questioned all who might have come in contact with her, but from none of them did he receive the slightest help. That Mrs. X had made herself up at the hotel for her impersonation stunt was clear, but unfortunately it was equally clear that she had vanished from the building without leaving any trace.

  The worst of the whole business was that he didn’t see what more he could do. The special clues upon which he had been building had failed him, and he felt there was now nothing for it but to fall back on the general one of the photographs. One of the portraits was excellently clear as to details, and he decided he would have an enlargement made of Mrs. X, and circulate it among the police in the hope that some member at some time might recognise the lady. Not a very hopeful method certainly, but all he had left.

  He took an evening train from the West Station, and a couple of hours afterwards reached his home, a thoroughly tired and disgruntled man.

  CHAPTER XIII

  MRS. FRENCH TAKES

  A NOTION

  By the time Inspector French had finished supper and lit up a pipe of the special mixture he affected, he felt in considerably better form. He determined that instead of going early to bed, as he had intended, while in the train, he would try to induce the long-suffer
ing Mrs. French to listen to a statement of his problem, in the hope that light thereon would be vouchsafed to her, in which in due course he would participate.

  Accordingly, when she had finished with the supper things he begged her to come and share his difficulties, and when she had taken her place in her accustomed arm-chair and had commenced her placid knitting, he took up the tale of his woes.

  Slowly and in the fullest detail he told her all he had done from the time he was sent to Messrs. Williams & Davies, when he first heard of the mysterious Mrs. X, up to his series of visits of that day, concluding by expressing his belief that Mrs. X and Mrs. Ward were one and the same person, and explaining the difficulty he found himself up against in tracing her. She heard him without comment, and when he had finished asked what he proposed to do next.

  “Why, that’s just it,” he exclaimed a trifle impatiently. “That’s the whole thing. If I was clear about that there would be no difficulty. What would you advise?”

  She shook her head, and bending forward seemed to concentrate her whole attention on her knitting. This, French knew, did not indicate lack of interest in his story. It was just her way. He therefore waited more or less hopefully, and when after a few minutes she began to question him, his hopes were strengthened.

  “You say that Mrs. Root and those steamer people thought the woman was English?”

  “That’s so.”

  “There were quite a lot of them thought she was English?”

  “Why, yes,” French agreed. “There was Mrs. Root and the doctor and the purser and her dinner steward and at least four stewardesses. They were all quite satisfied. And the other passengers and attendants must have been satisfied too, or the thing would have been talked about. But I don’t see exactly what you’re getting at.”

  Mrs. French was not to be turned aside from her catechism.