Inspector French: Found Floating

INTRODUCTION

One Against the Yard

In 1936, Freeman Wills Crofts was one of six crime writers asked by the Daily Mail, one of Britain’s most popular newspapers, ‘to commit—in print—the perfect murder’. Along with Margery Allingham, Anthony Berkeley, Father Ronald Knox, Dorothy L. Sayers and Russell Thorndike, Crofts submitted the manuscript of his story—‘The Parcel’—to the newspaper. After removing the solution, the Mail then forwarded the six stories to ex-Superintendent George Cornish. Cornish, formerly one of the so-called ‘Big Five’ at Scotland Yard, had been compelled to retire in 1933 after thirty-nine years’ service as part of a drive to bring in younger officers. He had achieved fame for his work with the Murder Squad and his resolution of many high-profile cases, including the Charing Cross trunk murder of 1927 and the 1922 murder of Lady Elizabeth White in a West End hotel.

The ‘Six against the Yard’ stories were published over six weeks in July and August 1937, with Cornish providing a commentary at the end of each story, setting out how the Yard would have investigated the case in reality and highlighting possible flaws in each of the authors’ ‘perfect crimes’.

The stories were very popular with readers and the following year the Mail decided to repeat the concept of a challenge to the criminalist. The newspaper bought the serial rights to Freeman Wills Crofts’ new novel, Found Floating, and engaged another of the ‘Big Five’, ex-superintendent Walter Hambrook (1876–1966). Hambrook had been the first chief of the Flying Squad and retired in 1936 after thirty-eight years with the Metropolitan Police. In September that year his memoirs had been serialised in John Bull magazine, revealing the many cases he worked on, among them the investigation into the murder in 1929 of Mrs Rosaline Fox by her own son, the London Zoo murder in 1928 of elephant trainer Said Ali, the murder of Polly Walker at Camden Town in 1926, and the 1931 Dorset kennels mystery.

After Crofts had submitted his manuscript, Hambrook was given it in four quarters and tasked, like Cornish before him, with examining the fictional crime ‘with the eye of an expert’, attempting to identify the guilty parties and the clues by which their guilt would be established. His comments, including his suspicions and tips about suspects, were printed immediately after each section, and they are reprinted here for the first time since their original appearance.

TONY MEDAWAR

April 2022

1

The Indisposition of William

It was the look she surprised on Jim Musgrave’s face that first revealed to Katherine Shirley depths in her cousin’s mind which she had never before imagined could exist. For it was a very terrible look that had shone momentarily in the blue eyes and twisted the good-looking features into an evil and repulsive mask. A look of hate, of baffled rage, of desire to destroy. The vision amazed and horrified Katherine. For the first time in her life she saw murder stamped on a man’s face.

She had always liked her Cousin Jim. He really was a good fellow at heart, and up till now she would have said he was not the enemy of anyone in the world. He was tolerant and easy going: a lot too much so for his own good. In business indeed he was actually slack, slack enough, Katherine knew, to have injured his prospects of advancement. But though irritating in business, that slackness made him a pleasant companion socially. He was easy to get on with, remained unruffled in the minor adversities of everyday life, and never took offence at trifles.

This easy-going quality was what had made the revelation of his hidden passion so surprising and horrifying to Katherine. She feared that when a man like Jim looked as he had looked, he would stop at nothing to gratify his hate.

It was not against herself that his animosity was directed. When she had learnt Jim’s secret he was unaware of her presence. He had called one evening to see Mant on business, and when he was leaving, Mant had himself shown him to the door. Katherine had heard them in the hall and had come out of the sitting room to ask Jim to stay for a drink. As she opened the door they had bid each other good night, and it was when Jim was turning away that she had seen his face. Her invitation remained stillborn on her lips. After a glance at Mant she had pulled herself together. Obviously he had noticed nothing.

‘I was going to ask Jim to come in,’ she said, trying not to speak tremulously, ‘but he seems in a hurry.’

‘You can ask him another night,’ Mant had answered carelessly, passing down the hall to his study.

Thus Katherine had learnt that Jim Musgrave hated Mant Carrington with a deadly hatred. In the fact lay possibilities which might shatter the pleasant and happy lives of all of them. As she turned back to the sitting room Katherine shivered with dismay and foreboding.

She could not get the episode out of her mind, and picking up her sewing again, she let her thoughts run back over their family history, wondering what could have so incensed Jim.

They were cousins, these three, Jim Musgrave, Mant Carrington, and herself. She and Jim were also lifelong friends, having been brought up together in the district in which they were still living. But Mant was a newcomer. Born in Australia, he had lived there until some six months earlier, when he had come to join the others in England.

The head of the family, now long deceased, was Thomas Carrington. Katherine remembered him as a tall emaciated man with a beard, like the pictures she afterwards saw of Abraham Lincoln. He had a habit of substituting ‘this little girl’ for the personal pronoun in speaking to her, saying, ‘Would this little girl like an apple?’ or, ‘What has this little girl been doing today?’ But in spite of his peculiarities and his portentously solemn manner, she had liked him, He had always been kind, and in her child’s mind she felt sure he meant well.

Old Thomas Carrington had flourished in the closing decades of the last century. ‘Flourished’ was indeed the word to apply to him. He had started, so Katherine had learnt, as message boy in the small St Elmo Electric Supply Works at Bromsley in the outskirts of Birmingham, and had ended up by owning the whole place; and not only the place as it was when he entered, but a vastly larger and more important concern.

Thomas had four children, two sons and two daughters, of whom the youngest was Katherine’s mother. The sons—her uncles—had early qualified in engineering—George in electric and William in civil—and had entered the works under their father. The firm not only supplied electric equipment, but erected it, and it was old Thomas’s custom to send his two sons as engineers-in-charge of the larger jobs. William superintended the erection of the buildings and the putting in of foundations for the machinery, while George saw to the assembly of the machines themselves.

A good many of their jobs were carried out abroad, and in the early years of the present century they reached their till then high-water mark with an order for a complete electrical installation for the town of Akkondi on the Gold Coast. The two young men were sent out, but during the work there occurred between them some disagreement, and after the job was finished they separated, George leaving the firm and going to Australia, while William returned home to his father. William made good in the works, and when his father died in 1910 he inherited them, with half the old man’s money to run them on.

George did not break entirely with his family. At long intervals letters were exchanged, by which those at home knew that he was married in Australia and had a son, the Mant who afterwards came to England. But George was not referred to with enthusiasm at Thomas’s residence, the Grey House, it being tacitly held that he had acted badly in leaving the firm. All this Katherine had picked up at various times as she grew older.

Her own mother, Edith Carrington that was, had married a solicitor called Shirley, and she had been an only child. Her aunt, Maude Carrington, had also married—an accountant named Musgrave. Both of these latter were dead, their son, Jim Musgrave, being the cousin about whom Katherine was now so distressed.

William Carrington before the coming of Mant was fine upstanding figure of a man in the late fifties. He had indeed always been something of an athlete. In his study were various trophies, cups and goblets mostly, for swimming, for the longer events in running, and for fencing. He had also been a skilful boxer, and as a young man had cleared 5 feet 4 inches with a running start. Though naturally he had long since given up these sports, he was in the habit of doing daily exercises and remained remarkably fit for a man of his years. Often he surprised Katherine by his strength and endurance. He dug in the garden with vastly more vigour than the man he hired for the work, and on their occasional works excursions to the moors or to North Wales he easily out-distanced all but the very young and energetic.

Mentally William was equally robust. To Katherine’s own knowledge he was extraordinarily resourceful in dealing with the small emergencies which arose about the house, and she believed he was equally ingenious in his engineering management, as well as tactful in dealing with men. He was quick to make up his mind, and a decision once reached, he put it into effect with an energy which at times approached ruthlessness. He had the reputation of being honest with his public and fair to his staff, and he was generally respected, though by no means universally beloved.

William had never married, and Katherine kept house for him. Though she might not have admitted it herself, she was a quiet, rather retiring young woman of some three and thirty, whose chief interest in life was watercolour sketching. She was imaginative and artistic, but a blow she had had some ten years earlier had thrown her in on herself and robbed her of a good deal of her vitality. She had become engaged to the son of a Yorkshire mill owner, a pleasant young fellow with excellent prospects. The engagement had been announced and all was going well. Katherine was happier than she could have believed possible and the date of the wedding was being discussed. Then tragedy had intervened. The young man was driving his car through a village when suddenly a child ran out of a side road just in front of him. He swerved, collided with a lorry coming in the opposite direction, and was instantly killed.

For a time Katherine was inconsolable, then the death of her father and mother within a short time of each other added to her trouble and broke up her home. She had nowhere to go and her zest in life for the time being was dead. It was then that William had offered her a home in his bachelor establishment.

Gradually a curious kind of unemotional friendship developed between uncle and niece. William began to talk to her about the business. Finding she was responsive and could keep her own counsel, he grew more and more to confide in her, till gradually there was little about the inner working of the concern that she didn’t know.

But recently a new and more normal interest had come into Katherine’s life. A Birmingham doctor, a middle-aged man, had bought a practice in Bromsley. Katherine had met him at a friend’s house. She had felt attracted to him, and to her surprise—she was in that frame of mind—he had appeared equally interested in her. They had had several other meetings, mostly, she noticed, through his contriving. Nothing had been said on either side, but she had come to believe that he loved her. The thought brought fresh life to her. She grew more like her old self, blossoming out as if her development, arrested during that dark ten years, had resumed its normal evolution. When she imagined what Dr Jellicoe might soon say to her, she smiled dreamily.

But now as she sat over her needlework her thoughts were far from happy. All was not well in her immediate circle. That revelation of Jim’s inmost feelings had left her dismayed, if not actually frightened. She looked towards the future with foreboding.

Jim Musgrave occupied a comparatively minor position in the works. There was unhappily not the same cordial feeling between uncle and nephew as there was between uncle and niece. Jim was too slack, too casual: lazy, in fact. William’s decisive and energetic mind chafed at Jim’s easy-going methods. And William seldom hid his opinions. His comment on Jim’s proceedings took some such form as, ‘Hang it all, man! Can’t you wake up and get a move on?’ while Jim’s reaction was: ‘What the blazes is the hurry? The thing can’t go till tomorrow, anyway.’

So it was that Jim’s standing in the works was satisfactory neither to himself nor his uncle. He was technically Assistant Works Manager. Actually he had little power and was trusted only with comparatively small jobs. Jim felt it. He couldn’t see why his handling of business, if less showy, was less efficient than William’s own, and he felt his position humiliated him before the workers. He had a grievance, in fact, and he would have liked nothing better than to leave the works and look for a job elsewhere. But here again his easy-going character operated. He lacked the initiative to make the move.

But in spite of this business friction, Jim’s personal relations with his uncle were normally good. He was a welcome visitor at the Grey House whenever he chose to put in an appearance, and he was asked to dine quite often. There was something likeable about Jim, in spite of his rather careless ways. Katherine, indeed, was sincerely attached to him.

So life had progressed up till about six months before Katherine had learnt the terrible secret of Jim’s hatred for Mant. But during that intervening period events took place which were to have a deep significance for the family.

First came William’s breakdown in health. It was one evening on his return from the works that Katherine first noticed the change. The moment he entered the house she saw that something was wrong. He was preoccupied and depressed, ate practically nothing for supper, and scarcely spoke a word. When Katherine asked what was the matter he seemed annoyed and answered shortly that there was nothing. At first she imagined the trouble was mental; that he had received some shock or bad news. But afterwards she heard that he had had a kind of seizure at the works and had sent out urgently for brandy. She pressed him to have the doctor, but he refused quite brusquely. She felt she had come within measurable distance of being told to mind her own business.

A week later he had occasion to go up to London and when he returned she saw that he was considerably worse. He now admitted to feeling ill, and after some questioning she learnt that in the train on the way back he had had another attack similar to the first. At once the thought of the athlete’s strained heart occurred to her, and she insisted on his seeing a doctor. He had been so healthy all his life that he had no regular medical man, and the question of selection therefore arose. In spite of Katherine’s anxiety it was with a thrill that she heard him say: ‘I can’t stand that old ass, Ponting. We’ll have the new man, Jellicoe.’

Dr Jellicoe came and was extraordinarily professional. But he was not extraordinarily illuminating. He sounded the old man and asked him questions. He took his blood pressure. He looked grave and very profound. Then he gave judgment.

‘I’m glad to tell you, Mr Carrington, that there’s nothing organic the matter with you. It looked at first, I admit, a little like your heart, but you’ll be pleased to know that your heart is perfectly sound. It seems to me you’ve been overworking and you’ve just got the resultant breakdown.’

‘Nothing of the kind,’ William answered helpfully. ‘I never overwork.’

But Dr Jellicoe was not to be beaten. He called Katherine.

‘Tell me, Miss Shirley,’ he asked innocently, ‘how long is it since your uncle has had a holiday?’

Katherine shook her head. ‘It’s ages,’ she declared. ‘Years! No proper holiday last year, though last February he did go out to Toulon on an Olympic cruise. But that was partly business: he wanted to see about contracts in Spain. However, it meant about a fortnight out of the office.’

Jellicoe looked severely at his patient, yet with a kind of triumph in his eye. ‘What did I tell you, Mr Carrington? Now you’ve got to drop work for at least a month. Go off to Madeira or somewhere of that kind and put business out of your mind. If you don’t,’ the doctor held up his finger and spoke as an oracle, ‘if you don’t, it may become a year’s job.’

But William did not take a holiday—not then. He worked on for some days longer, growing gradually more irritable, more silent, more depressed. Katherine called in Jellicoe again, and once more the doctor urged him to take some action. But still he would do nothing. Then one day he amazed and rather shocked Katherine.

‘I’ve cabled to Mant,’ he said, ‘offering him my place. He to do the work: I to act as consultant. I find the doctor is right. I can’t go on. I must have a rest to shake off this this illness.’

Katherine stared. ‘Mant!’ she exclaimed helplessly.

‘Yes, Mant,’ he repeated testily. ‘Who else?’

‘But you don’t know Mant,’ she protested.

‘I know about him. I’ve made very careful enquiries. He’s an able fellow, and what’s more, he’s a worker.’

The words were a hint to her not to make the suggestion he evidently saw in her mind; but she made it all the same. ‘What about Jim? Don’t you think that with your supervision he could do it? And after all’—she paused at a slight loss—‘after all Jim’s here and he’s—he’s a good fellow,’ she ended lamely.

‘He’s a very good fellow, I grant,’ William admitted, ‘but you know as well as I do he’s no businessman. In Jim’s hands the works would be down and out in a twelvemonth. No, I’ve cabled to Mant and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t come.’

Katherine knew her uncle too well to protest further, but she saw at once that this would be a dreadful blow to Jim. She was sorry for Jim, but she did not see what more she could do in the matter.

Both William’s elder brother George, who had gone to Australia from the Gold Coast job, and his wife had died, and at this time their son Mant was a man of some five and thirty, unmarried and alone in the world. Odd phrases in his occasional letters had thrown some light on his career. That he had been through college and had taken a degree in engineering was known, also that he had a fairly good job in an electricity supplies firm in Sydney. What William’s further information amounted to Katherine did not know. He volunteered no more, and she didn’t ask.

For three days William made no reference to the matter, then on his return from the works he told Katherine that he had had a reply from Mant. ‘He’s leaving his job at once and coming home by air. It’ll take him a few days to square things up in Sydney, but he should be here in less than a month. Then I’ll take all the holiday you want.’ He paused, then went on with an unusual hesitation: ‘I’m sorry about Jim, but what could I do? After all, Mant is my nephew too, and the son of my elder brother. If my father had been alive it is what he would have done. Your Uncle George was a good fellow, and though we had a row about a girl long ago; it never developed into a real quarrel, and I should like to do what I could for his son.’

This was the first time Katherine had ever heard her uncle refer to that unpleasantness which had taken place on the Gold Coast so many years before. She wondered what exactly had happened, but even with the opening he had given her, she did not like to ask him. He was very close, was her Uncle William, and he could never be drawn.

Mant’s acceptance of his invitation seemed to gratify William. He settled down to await his nephew’s arrival in a more contented frame of mind. He was taking things at the works more easily, Katherine knew, both from his frequent early arrivals home, and also from various things Jim told her. He seemed slightly better in himself also, and so far as she knew, had no further attacks. But even so, he had lost much of his former efficiency and energy. Indeed, at times she could not but see that he had been severely shaken, and was but little more than the wreck of his former self.

On his return one evening he told Katherine he had heard from Mant, ‘He’s arrived in London,’ he explained, ‘and he’ll be down here tomorrow for lunch.’

‘Here?’ Katherine asked.

‘Yes.’ For the second time William hesitated in a way utterly unlike himself. ‘As a matter of fact, Katherine, I’ve asked him to stay with us, at least for the present. I hope you won’t mind?’

‘Mind?’ Katherine repeated. ‘Oh no. Why should I?’

If Mant proved agreeable it would, she thought, be pleasant rather than otherwise to have him. Often she found their way of life lonely; just the two of them in the house with the maid. And William after all was not much of a companion. He talked to her about the business, it was true, but she sometimes got tired of the business, and they had little else in common. Of course she was her own mistress. She could come or go at her pleasure and invite her friends to the house as she chose. But this last was usually for lunch. William did not object in so many words to visitors for dinner, but she could see he didn’t like it. For one thing, it meant dressing, and he preferred his rather disreputable old smoking jacket; for another it gave him the trouble of making polite conversation, which he disliked extremely.

Katherine had often thought of leaving the Grey House and going abroad, perhaps to Italy, where she could sketch and get among painting people. She could have afforded it. Her grandfather, old Thomas Carrington, had, as has been said, left half his money to William as necessary capital for the running of the works. The other half he had divided between his son George in Australia, and his daughters, the mothers of Katherine and Jim respectively. George had got a quarter of the whole, and Katherine and Jim, and Eva—Jim’s sister, through their mothers—one twelfth apiece. These twelfths, invested, brought each in some £200 a year. In addition William allowed Katherine another £200 a year with, of course, board and lodging, for keeping house for him and acting as his hostess. Of her £400 she never spent more than about a quarter, so she had a tidy nest egg in the bank to draw on in case of emergency.

Katherine had committed the terrible mistake of allowing her triple loss in the deaths of her lover, father and mother to rob her of her energy and initiative. When these blows had fallen she had felt it was no longer worthwhile making any exertion. And when she recovered from the shock she found she had formed a habit—the habit of living at the Grey House, and she had not made the effort necessary to break it. There was in fact a little more in it than that. She feared that if once she left the Grey House, say for a winter in Italy, her uncle would make different arrangements—perhaps marry—and though his house would doubtless still remain open to her, she would not care to stay in it otherwise than as its mistress.

So she remained on in what were after all very comfortable circumstances. She had, during the ten years of her residence there, formed many contacts outside the house. Though not specially good at games, she belonged both to the tennis and badminton clubs. What gave her more pleasure was her membership of the local dramatic society. She was no actress and got only small walking-on parts, but she painted with enthusiasm the sets which the society required for their various productions. She belonged also to the Bromsley Literary and Debating Society, though here her interest was but half hearted.

On the whole then the coming of Mant was a pleasant rather than a disagreeable prospect, and she looked forward to meeting him with quite considerable eagerness.

2

The Reception of Mant

Next day shortly before lunch William drove up to the Grey House with Mant beside him in the car. Katherine heard the crunching of the wheels and went out to meet them. The arrival of this new cousin from the opposite side of the world would affect all their lives, and she was anxious to see what he was like.

Her first impression was of his height. He was a tall man, a full inch taller than William, though William was all of six feet. Mant was also, so far as appearance went, every inch a Carrington. There was the same broad forehead, the same strongly marked features, the same heavy chin as appeared in the portraits of old Thomas, and which William also had inherited. And yet in spite of these, he did not give the same impression of force. Some little weakness about the mouth, a slightly shifty look in the eyes, robbed the face of its strength. His colouring also was different. While the elder men at his age had been swarthy of face and black of hair, Mant approached the albino type. His complexion was pale, his eyes light blue, and his hair the palest of straw.

As the car stopped he got out, and without waiting for an introduction, took off his hat and bowed low over Katherine’s hand,

‘I expect you’re Aunt Edith’s daughter,’ he said slowly, and with what seemed to her rather an American accent. ‘I’m pleased to meet my Cousin Katherine.’

It seemed a somewhat formal greeting, but Katherine was not to be outdone. ‘I’m pleased to meet my Cousin Mant,’ she assured him, adding largely, ‘welcome to England.’

‘Now that’s very good of you,’ he declared as he shot little questioning glances at her. ‘I think I should have recognised you. You’re like the pictures of your mother.’

His movements and speech were slow and deliberate, and Katherine sensed a sort of hesitation in his manner, as if he were not sure of himself or of his welcome. And yet there was no humility in his attitude. He gave her the impression that he could hold his own as well as anybody. He was well dressed, she noticed, English clothes, she was sure, and from a good tailor.

William now approached, followed by the gardener-chauffeur, carrying two suitcases. Mant turned to the latter.

Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll have them now.’ He took them out of the man’s hands, then went on to Katherine. ‘Our uncle has been good enough to say I may stay here. I hope that is in order from your point of view?’

‘Of course,’ Katherine said reassuringly. ‘Your room’s all ready for you.’

‘Thank you,’ he said again. ‘Then if I may I’ll take these grips up and get them out of the way.

‘It’s the blue room, uncle,’ Katherine directed. ‘Will you show Cousin Mant the way?’

As the two men went upstairs there had already arisen in Katherine’s mind a faint feeling of disappointment. Mant was no doubt ‘all right’; he seemed quiet and competent, and was probably quite decent. But somehow she didn’t take to him. He hadn’t looked her straight in the face for one thing, and for another there was a quality in the looks he had given her which she instinctively disliked.

But for the moment Katherine