Freeman Crofts - Inspector French’s Greatest Case

The first is that he must necessarily succeed in his cases. He may become utterly discouraged and pessimistic—indeed, he does so at regular intervals. This, however, is merely a concession to the reader, who must often be feeling equally bored and wearied. But if French is discouraged it is his own fault. He knows very well—or he would know if he applied his own methods of reasoning—that he wouldn’t have been put into a book if he were going to fail. Success does not come at once—the value of suspense in a book cannot be overlooked—but that it will come, and that not later than about page three hundred, he is well aware.

His second great advantage over his colleagues really arises out of the first. It is that definitely he will find all the clues that he wants. He is bound to find them, because they have been laid down specially for that purpose, and he is led up to them in such a way that he could not avoid seeing them even if he wished to. These clues which he will find, moreover, are exactly those which lead to the solution of his problem, though naturally he does not see this at first. A decent interval always occurs between the picking up of the clue and the realization of its significance. This is necessary, as otherwise the book would run out too short.

This plan of finding just the clues necessary to lead the investigator to the correct conclusion seems to me such an extraordinarily good way of conducting an inquiry that I offer the idea, quite freely, to the heads of Scotland Yard.

I said that French had two advantages over his colleagues at the Yard, but really he has three. He cannot be killed. He cannot even be seriously injured. The reason, of course, is that he will be wanted for the next book. So if anyone fills the room with petrol vapour and attempts to light it, as was done at Newhaven, French will, if he thinks hard, know that either the person will not light the petrol, or that if he does it won’t burn. If the criminal he is attempting to arrest withdraws the pin from a Mills’s bomb he is carrying he will know, again if he thinks, that either he will be able to hold the lever down, or that the bomb will prove a dud. Of course, under such distressing circumstances he never does think, as otherwise he couldn’t register the amount of terror which is the reader’s right and proper due.

I’m afraid I’ve talked too much about French, but it’s really because I think a lot of him. However, with your permission I’ll call him now. I give a shout that would wake the dead, and he appears.

‘Yes, what is it?’ he asks.

‘Speak to these good folk, will you?’ I say.

He approaches the microphone in a hesitating way and, clearing his throat, begins deprecatingly: ‘Well, I’m very glad to be able to talk to all these kind friends, and to say it’s a proud day in my life when—’

I stop him. Goodness knows where he would otherwise get to. I ask him to tell how he solves his cases.

This is more in his line. He gives a little laugh, and starts off in his normal voice.

‘Huh, yes, I can do that. The answer is that I don’t—not always. But I’ll tell you ladies and gentlemen how I make things look pretty well: I just don’t mention the failures. Sir Mortimer and the boys at the Yard may know about them—as a matter of fact, they do; but you don’t. That’s my thoughtfulness for you, of course: I don’t want to worry you with anything that’s not just absolutely so.’

‘But,’ I tell him, ‘you know you usually do succeed. They would like to hear your methods.’

‘Well,’ he explains, ‘I have two principal ways. Either I get a good clue or I have a stroke of luck. And you may take it from me that the luck’s the best way. It saves endless trouble and difficulty.’

The stream of his inspiration seems to come to an end, and I start him off again.

‘You’ve been in one or two tight corners,’ I suggest. ‘You might tell them about your worst five minutes.’

He warms to it. ‘At the Yard we do get occasional nasty turns, but of course they’re all in the day’s work. Since you’ve asked me, I think my worst was in the case I just heard you speak of—Did you know the door wasn’t shut? I mean the case in which two financiers were murdered on an abandoned yacht off Newhaven, and a lot of diamonds were missing. You may remember it. Well, a man called Nolan was my suspect, though I couldn’t prove his guilt. But I thought there was just a chance that I might be able to make him commit himself. So I laid a trap for him. I pitched him a yarn that made him think he’d left a clue on his launch, in the hope that he’d try to destroy the launch and we could take him in the act.

‘The launch was lying in Newhaven Harbour, and the next night Sergeant Carter and I took cover on the wharf and settled down to watch. It was a wet night, and we got our fill of it. But it was worth it. About three in the morning we saw Nolan creeping down and slipping aboard. We followed him as close as we dared. He disappeared into the little engine-room. I crept after him to the door and peeped in. He was working with a torch, and you can imagine my feelings when I watched him take the missing diamonds from a hiding-place and put them in his pocket. This, of course, was all the proof I could have wanted. But then things grew nasty. He flooded the place with petrol and put a canister on the floor with a clock attached. So I thought it was about time to make a move.

‘As a matter of fact, it was past the time. Before I could do anything he had flashed his torch on me, and I found myself looking into the wrong end of a pistol. He spoke quite quietly. He said he had feared a trick, but that he had gone through with the thing on chance. He said that as long as I lived he was in danger of being hanged. Therefore he was going to kill me. If he could get away afterwards himself, he would; if not, we would die together.

‘You’ll understand that I could do nothing, for if I’d made a move he’d have fired, and if he’d fired, the whole place would have gone up in a sheet of flame. It was nasty, and no mistake.’

French pauses, and I prompt him again.

‘Tell them how you escaped.’

‘Ah, that was where my bit of luck came in. Carter was behind me, and Nolan didn’t see him. So Carter nipped on deck, lowered himself over the side, and shot Nolan through the porthole. He got him in the hand, but the flame from the gun didn’t get in, so there was no fire. But Nolan was desperate, and in spite of his wound he went for me all out. I tripped over a pipe and fell with my side against the motor. I broke some ribs, but managed to hold off Nolan till Carter got back and pulled him off.’

‘And after that you think you can be killed! French, my dear fellow, you’re a humbug!’

He grins, and indicates pointedly that he is now due at the Yard. So I have to let him go.

FREEMAN WILLS CROFTS

1935

The back streets surrounding Hatton Garden, in the City of London, do not form at the best of times a cheerful or inspiring prospect. Narrow and mean, and flanked with ugly, sordid-looking buildings grimy from exposure to the smoke and fogs of the town and drab from the want of fresh paint, they can hardly fail to strike discouragement into the heart of anyone eager for the uplift of our twentieth century civilisation.

But if on a day of cheerful sunshine the outlook is thus melancholy, it was vastly more so at ten o’clock on a certain dreary evening in mid-November. A watery moon, only partially visible through a damp mist, lit up pallidly the squalid, shuttered fronts of the houses. The air was cold and raw, and the pavements showed dark from a fine rain which had fallen some time earlier, but which had now ceased. Few were abroad, and no one whose business permitted it remained out of doors.