The Cask by Freeman Wills Crofts (feel good novels .txt) 📕

such a man as Le Gautier? All this, he thought, it should not be difficult to find out. He would get some more information from Felix and if necessary slip across to Paris and put the statements to the test. He broke the silence.

“Who is M. Le Gautier?”

“Junior partner in the firm of Le Gautier, Fils, wine merchants, in the rue Henri Quatre.”

“And M. Dumarchez?”

“A stockbroker.”

“Can you give me his address?”

“I don’t know his home address. His office is, I think, in the Boulevard Poissonière. But I could get you the address from M. Le Gautier.”

“Please give me an account of your relations with these gentlemen.”

“Well, I have known them both for years and we are good friends, but I cannot recall ever having had any money transactions with either until this matter of the lottery.”

“The details of that mentioned in the letter are correct?”

“Oh, perfectly.”

“Can you remember where precisely the conversation about the lottery took place?”

“It was in the ground floor room of the café, at the window to the right of the entrance, looking inwards.”

“You say other gentlemen were present?”

“Yes, a group of us were there and the conversation was general.”

“Was your arrangement to enter the lottery heard by the group?”

“Yes, we had quite a lot of good-natured chaff about it.”

“And can you remember who were present?”

Mr. Felix hesitated.

“I’m not sure that I can,” he said at last. “The group was quite a casual one and I only joined it for a few moments. Le Gautier was there, of course, and a man called Daubigny, and Henri Boisson, and I think, Jaques Rôget, but of him I’m not sure. There were a number of others also.”

Felix answered the questions readily and the Inspector noted his replies. He felt inclined to believe the lottery business was genuine. At all events inquiries in Paris would speedily establish the point. But even if it was all true, that did not prove that Le Gautier had written the letter. A number of people had heard the conversation, and anyone could have written it, even Felix himself. Ah, that was an idea! Could Felix be the writer? Was there any way of finding that out? The Inspector considered and then spoke again.

“Have you the envelope this letter came in?”

“Eh?” said Felix, “the envelope? Why, no, I’m sure I haven’t. I never keep them.”

“Or the card?”

Felix turned over the papers on his desk and rummaged in the drawers.

“No,” he answered, “I can’t find it. I must have destroyed it, too.”

There was then no proof that these communications had been received by Felix. On the other hand there was no reason to doubt it. The Inspector kept an open mind as he turned again to the letter.

It was typewritten on rather thin, matt surfaced paper and, though Burnley was not an expert, he believed the type was foreign. Some signs of wear were present which he thought might identify the typewriter. The n’s and the r’s were leaning slightly to the right, the t’s and the e’s were below alignment, and the l’s had lost the horizontal bar at the top of the downstroke. He held the paper up to the light. The watermark was somewhat obscured by the type, but after a time he made it out. It was undoubtedly French paper. This, of course, would not weigh much, as Felix by his own statement, was frequently in Paris, but still it did weigh.

The Inspector read the letter again. It was divided into four paragraphs and he pondered each in turn. The first was about the lottery. He did not know much about French lotteries, but the statements made could at least be verified. With the help of the French police it would be easy to find out if any drawings and payments had recently been made, and he could surely get a list of the winners. A winner of 50,000 francs, living in or near Paris, should be easily traced.

The second and third paragraphs were about the bet and the sending of the cask. Burnley turned the details over in his mind. Was the whole story a likely one? It certainly did not strike him as such. Even if such an unusual bet had been made, the test was an extremely poor one. He could hardly believe that a man who could invent the plan of the cask would not have done better. And yet it was undoubtedly possible.

Another idea entered the Inspector’s mind. He had, perhaps, been thinking too much of the £988, and too little of the woman’s hand. Suppose there really was a corpse in the cask. What then?

Such an assumption made all the circumstances more serious and explained partly the sending of the cask, but it did not, so far as the Inspector could see, throw light on the method of doing so. But when he came to the fourth paragraph he saw that it might easily bear two meanings. He read it again:⁠—

“I send you my best congratulations on the greatness of your coup, of which the visible evidence goes to you in the cask, and my only regret is that I shall be unable to be present to see you open it.”

This seemed at first sight obviously to mean congratulations on winning the lottery, the “visible evidence” of which, namely £988 in gold, was in the cask. But did it really mean this? Did a more sinister interpretation not also offer itself? Suppose the body was the “visible evidence”? Suppose the death was the result, possibly indirect, of something that Felix had done. If money only was being sent, why should Le Gautier experience regret that he could not see the cask opened? But if a corpse was unexpectedly hidden there, would not that statement be clarified? It certainly looked so. One thing at least seemed clear. If a corpse had been sent to Felix, he must know something of the circumstances leading up to it. The Inspector spoke again:⁠—

“I am obliged for your statement,