The Loss of the Jane Vosper (22 page)

‘You’ve not heard from him since?’

‘No, he simply took the money and went off.’

‘Did you pay by cheque?’

‘No, he made a special point about that. He said his banking account was in the country, and he’d rather have cash.’

‘Did he give you any hint as to what the runway had been used for?’

‘Yes, he said he was a builder, and it was for lifting ferroconcrete slabs and beams from where they were cast to where they were stored, and out of store when they were required for use.’

French nodded. ‘One other question and I’ve finished. Did a Mr Sutton, a private detective acting for certain insurance companies, call on you within the last fortnight? I should explain that this Sutton has disappeared, and I am trying to trace him.’

About this Cleaver was sure. Sutton had not called. Before leaving, however, French made it his business to interview the rest of the staff, and made quite certain that Sutton had not applied to anyone connected with the firm.

With the exception of what it really had been used for, the history of the runway had now been established. French wondered could Rice’s statement as to its purpose have been true? In the shed were traces of cement, sand, stones, and marks of where these had been mixed to make concrete. For reinforced concrete work forms are required, and forms are made with timber by carpenters. In the shed was a carpenters’ bench and traces of sawdust and shavings. Was Rice really making concrete castings? The contents of the shed certainly tended to confirm his statement, and it was definitely a builder’s job.

In fact, there was still nothing suspicious about the shed except the two points: the fact that Sutton had expressed doubts about it, and the matter of the name of the firm. Sutton’s ideas were weighty because of his disappearance, but, of course, there was nothing to show that the Rice shed had anything to do with his fate. Nor was the matter of the name of serious significance. Rice Bros might be working under another name, and, if so, this would probably account for French’s failure to find them. No, while the affair was admittedly suspicious, there was no actual proof that anything was wrong.

Of course, this line of reasoning did not help French. Sutton had disappeared, and he had to find out where he had gone to. The Rice shed, so far, had been his only line of enquiry. It was still his only line of enquiry. He could only assume that the solution of his problem lay along it, and act accordingly.

What remained to be done? Only, so far as he could see, the completion of the detailed search of the shed. He had broken that off on discovering the Claygate label. He supposed there was nothing for it but to go back and finish it.

As he retuned with Carter to the Yard it occurred to him that one routine avenue of enquiry had so far been overlooked. Had Rice ever obtained a passport? If so, and if it could be traced, information about him should be forthcoming.

While not hopeful of a result, he sent a man to the passport office to make enquiries. Then, having instructed Carter to bring the apparatus for testing paper ashes, the two men set off again for Redliff Lane.

On arrival at the shed Carter produced a somewhat unusual collection of objects. There was first a small saucepan, a flat sieve which fitted across its top, a domed lid to go above the sieve, and a spirit lamp with a frame on which the saucepan could be heated. There were some small flat bits of wood, a small drawing board with pins, a roll of very transparent tracing paper, a bottle of colourless gum arabic, and a couple of spoons.

While French began to examine the ashes in the fireplace, Carter drew the carpenters’ bench over and laid out his apparatus. The saucepan he partially filled with water and lit the lamp beneath it. He put on the lid, but left the sieve out. Then he cut a piece of tracing paper and fastened it down with the pins on to the board. He cut some other scraps of tracing paper of various sizes.

French, meantime, had begun very carefully to remove the burnt fragments of wood from the top of the ashes. He could see that beneath these was paper. It was completely burnt, but he thought that some small flakes might remain, which might bear a word or words.

Slowly he worked, removing what he could with his fingers and as gently as possible picking up with the spoons what was already in dust. Under the dust the paper was in powder, but where the sheets had been protected by bits of charred wood a few tiny flakes remained. These French could see, bore writing. To get them out unbroken was the difficulty.

Taking one of the scraps of paper cut by Carter, he pushed it gently under one of the larger fragments. Then, raising it as one would a spade, he was able to lift the fragment out. He tried again with another scrap of tracing paper, continuing till he had removed all the fragments he could find.

It was not a large bag. Seven tiny pieces of charred paper lay on seven bits of tracing paper on the bench. Most of the pieces he had seen had crumbled into dust on the touch of the tracing paper spades, and of the seven bits he had secured, not one was more than an inch across.

French now paused for a moment to take photographs of his treasure trove, so that if in his further operations he destroyed any of it, a record should remain.

The next step was to mount the pieces, so that they could be handled and, if necessary, used as evidence. Where such scraps are fairly flat this is not a difficult job, but these bits were badly twisted and warped, and it was therefore necessary to flatten them out before mounting could be attempted.

Taking the sieve, he laid the seven bits of tracing paper on it, each bearing its bit of distorted ash. Then he placed the sieve on the saucepan, which by this time had grown fairly hot, covering it with the lid. As most charred paper is hydroscopic, the scraps were likely to take up sufficient moisture from the steam to become soft, and so flatten by their own weight.

This expedient worked on the whole fairly well. When French considered his mixture was sufficiently cooked and removed the sieve, most of the pieces had flattened down well enough. Then he came to the most difficult part of the work. Pinning a piece of tracing paper down on a tiny scrap of wood, he brushed it over with the gum. Then he laid the gummed paper down on the top of the first charred fragment, and left it to dry. This he repeated in the case of the other six bits.

As the drying would take some time, French now left this part of the work, and resumed his general inspection of the shed. He was meticulously painstaking and careful, but he did not learn a great deal that he hadn’t known before.

In fact, he learned three things only. The first was that the timber worked was white deal or spruce, and that at least some of it was 11⁄8 inches thick. This was shown by the width of some of the shavings left by the planes. The second was that wire nails, 2 inches and 2½ inches long had been used, as well as 5⁄8-inch tacks and flat-headed 1-inch nails. The third point was that the clay had been deposited recently and for a short time only. It had covered a few bits of grass and weeds growing between the cobbles, and these remained as green as the adjoining untouched roots.

While he could think of no explanation of the presence of the clay, French had to admit to himself that the nails and timber worked in well with Rice’s statement that he had been making reinforced concrete forms. Spruce of the thickness in question would just work in for the purpose, as would also the 2-inch and 2½-inch nails. The stones and sand, which he had observed on his first visit, were also such as would have been used for concrete.

Having exhausted all the possibilities of the shed, French began with Carter to work on a fresh line: an interrogation of all those who lived close by.

This was a tedious and unpleasant enquiry, and very unprofitable it proved also. Persons had been seen entering and leaving, but no one who had seen them could describe them or seemed to have noticed anything whatever about them. The same applied to the vehicles. One woman who lived opposite had observed a Ford truck going in and out, but she hadn’t remarked the driver, and of course had not noted its registration number. She had seen other trucks and lorries going in and out, some of them quite large, but she didn’t know to whom they belonged, or anything individual about them.

Of course, in a way, there was no reason why anyone should have taken the necessary interest in the shed to cause him to observe and remember its visitors. Working men. Ford trucks, and vans and lorries are not so uncommon in East London as to arouse curiosity. Still, to a man like French, trained to continuous observation, it seemed strange that not one of all the people who must have seen arrivals and departures could tell him anything about them.

Tired and disappointed, French returned to the shed for the mounted fragments, which by this time were hard and dry. They had struck satisfactorily on the whole, and either side could be read, either directly or through the tracing paper. Packing them carefully, he returned to the Yard and began a preliminary examination of them before passing them over to the technical department which dealt with such matters.

French knew he wasn’t an expert, at the same time he tried to learn all he could from the blackened scraps. And first it seemed fairly obvious that he was dealing with three different documents or kinds of documents. Four of the scraps were of a very thin and poor-class paper, two others, though still of poor paper, were of a better type, while one was of a superior quality still. Again, on the first four, all the writing consisted of figures and x’s, with ‘s and “s, the signs for feet and inches. These four bits seemed parts of invoices or bills for timber.

French sat thinking. He wondered if the timber had been bought in sufficiently large quantities to enable him to trace the sale. If he could do so, the amount and scantling might give some clue to its purpose. Further, the timber salesmen might have noticed something about Rice, or whoever bought the stuff, which would enable him to be traced.

He decided that it might be worthwhile advertising in journals read by those in the timber trade. Having noted the point, he turned back to the papers.

Of the two pieces of medium quality, the first was little bigger than a sixpence and bore only four letters: ‘arm c’. They were in handwriting, and the paper was torn immediately in front of the ‘a’ and after the ‘c’. The second was larger and seemed to be the heading of a letter or bill. There were fragments of two lines. The upper was in script and read: ‘on, WC2.’, and the lower in small capitals, ‘T
EL
’. Whether these two scraps were parts of one and the same document French could not say, but, judging from the quality of the paper, they might well have been so.

The piece of superior quality bore parts of two words printed in capital letters. They were: ‘KE & NEW’. As in the previous case, the paper was torn close enough before the ‘K’ and after the ‘W’ for both of these to be internal letters of words. From the kind of type, as well as the ampersand, French imagined this might be part of the name of a firm, on the heading of a letter or bill.

French looked from scrap to scrap, then concentrated on the ‘arm c’. Arm chair seemed the obvious suggestion, though he couldn’t see how this would fit in with anything that could have gone on in the shed.

As this ‘arm c’ didn’t seem promising, he set to work on the other clues. First he put a man on to make a list from the directory of all the timber yards within a reasonable distance of the shed, with instructions to call at these and try to trace the sale.

Then he turned to the ‘KE & NEW’. If his idea were correct, the ‘KE’ must be the end of a proper name. He began by trying to think of as many names ending in ‘KE’ as he could. At once a number occurred to him:, Noake, Parke, Peake, Lake, Blake, Tuke, Romeike, Yorke, and many more.

With some men he began to go through the telephone directories of London, in the hope of finding one of these names followed by one beginning with ‘NEW’. They worked at it late that evening, several of them. When they knocked off about ten o’clock they had finished all the names that they had been able to think of, with the result that five possibles had been found. There were Warke & Newcome, Clarke & Newlands, Blake & Newington, O’Rorke & Newton, and Hooke & Newlands.

French had hoped that one of these would have proved a timber merchant’s, or a furniture or upholsterer’s – if the ‘arm c’ stood for ‘arm chair’. But none of them was represented. Of the five, one was a bookseller, one a house agent, one a tailor, one a solicitor, and one a grocer. Not, French thought, a very promising selection. None of them, moreover, could be the firm which had ‘on, WC2.’ on its paper, as not one of the five was in this division of London.

Obviously nothing more could be done that night, but next morning French set off with Carter to visit the five firms. His procedure with each was the same. He began by asking if they had had any dealings with the firm of Rice Bros of Redliff Lane, and when each, with monotonous regularity, said they had not, he went on to describe Rice, and ask if they knew such a man under a different name. None of them, however, recognized the description, and French at last had bitterly to admit that this clue, from which he had hoped for so much, had also petered out.

Fortunately for him, this was Saturday, and when he had finished with the five firms it was lunchtime. There was nothing more that he could do for the moment, and he decided to take a full weekend, in the hope that on Monday morning a fresh attack on the problem with a rested mind might give him a result.

On Monday morning two pieces of news had come in, one positive, the other negative. The negative did not disappoint French, as he had not really hoped for anything from it. The passport department reported that a passport had not been issued to anyone of the name of James Rice.

This meant nothing, except that still another line of research was closed. With a shrug French turned from it to the other message.

It was from one of his men and stated that he had found the timber merchants with whom Rice had dealt. It was the firm of Morgan & Trusett, of Cable Street, at the back of the London Docks. French at once rang them up and made an appointment with their manager, Mr Armstrong. Half an hour later he and Carter were at the place.