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Synopsis
Hector Berrenton returns home from hospital after a serious car accident to find a terse note: San Podino. This is yours. Fallon next. Suspecting Berrenton's car has been tampered with, the North Sussex Police call in Scotland Yard. Chief Inspector John Poole, put in charge of the investigation, quickly discovers that three years earlier Berrenton and his partner, Jocelyn Fallon, had been on trial accused of fraud. The crime they were accused of was in connection with a Bolivian goldmine, San Podino, and though the two men were acquitted, a number of investors suffered considerable financial loss. Soon Inspector Poole is dealing with attempted murder . . .
Release date: July 28, 2016
Publisher: Orion
Print pages: 311
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Gold Was Our Grave
Henry Wade
“DOES THE name ‘Berrenton’ ring a bell with you, Peter?”
Chief-Inspector Lackett looked up sharply from the file which he had been reading.
“Hector Berrenton?” he asked.
His visitor nodded.
“That’s the chap.”
“Hector Berrenton; I should say it does. I shan’t forget that case in a hurry; proper headache it gave me. What about him? Not in trouble again?”
“Not your kind of trouble. Coming my way this time. I want to know all about him.”
John Poole sank into a vacant chair and pulled a pipe and pouch from his pocket.
“Any objection to smoking?”
Lackett grinned. He was seldom seen without a cigarette between his lips and his fingers were stained with nicotine.
“Tell you all about him?—a case that took six months off my young life? Tell you . . . as if I hadn’t got any work to do.”
“This’ll be work all right. I suppose even C.6 has to get down to it at times,” said Poole lightly.
The Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard is divided into seven departments, not counting the Special Branch, which is concerned with ‘Security’. Chief-Inspector
Poole was a leading light in C.1, which deals with major crimes and is by far the largest department of the seven. Chief-Inspector Lackett, on the other hand, was a member of C.6, the small but
highly trained department which specialises in involved fraud cases and is popularly known as ‘the fraud squad’. Lackett was the younger man of the two by five years, being only
forty-seven; but whereas Poole was one of sixteen Chief-Inspectors, with eight Superintendents and a Chief Superintendent above him, Lackett was one of two, with only a Chief Superintendent and two
Superintendents senior to him in his special hierarchy. He could therefore claim—and often did when Poole was teasing him—that he was the more indispensable officer of the two, his time
more precious and his work more exacting and important.
Now, however, he pushed his file aside and lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old. He knew that Poole would not have interrupted him without good reason.
“If he’s not our bird you’re welcome to him. He can fly all right; tricky as a woodcock.”
Poole grinned.
“Got away from you, anyhow, didn’t he? Was he guilty?”
Lackett leaned back in his chair, the hard wooden chair which keeps Chief-Inspectors awake, and watched the smoke drift up past his eyes.
“I’m not so sure,” he said at last. “I never was so sure. Old Franklin was and so was the D.P.P., but it never seemed to me that we had quite enough on him to prove
fraud. Clever chap; doesn’t necessarily mean he was crooked. Unlucky, perhaps. Ruined a lot of poor people, but I suppose that’s all part of the financial game.”
“Franklin was in charge of the case, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, his last case before he retired. Bit sour at going out on a loser, he was. I worked under him, just before my promotion. All the hard work, of course, but not the
decisions.”
“Naturally. And you yourself would not have advised a prosecution?”
Lackett shook his head.
“Wouldn’t be right to say that. I didn’t know all the facts. There may have been something on his record that I wasn’t shown. Anyway, he was prosecuted and acquitted. A
lot of public money wasted . . . unless one can feel that the case was a deterrent to others.”
“Sure to have been,” said Poole comfortingly. “And someone seems to have thought the acquittal was a mistake.”
Lackett pricked up his ears.
“Eh? How’s that?”
“About ten days ago Mr. Hector Berrenton had a nasty accident in his car. The North1 Sussex police don’t like the smell of that accident; they think someone was trying to
do him in.”
“Good Lord. You mean . . . because of this case?”
“That’s a possible idea.”
“But it’s an old story; what was it? 1949? Three years stale. Surely that’s a bit far-fetched?”
“Old sins have long shadows,” quoted Poole sententiously. “Mind, I’m not giving you my own opinion. The story has only just been handed to me. East Grinstead think the
accident was no accident, that it is a throw-back to the fraud case—there appears to have been a threatening letter of some kind—and that if it really is so connected, then we are the
boys to handle it. Strictly under their direction, of course. And Chief-Inspector Poole, with his well-known social tact, has been handed the job, because the victim was wearing an Old Marlvington
tie.”
Chief-Inspector Lackett laughed.
“Our Gentleman Johnny; and so you come to me to put you on the right lines—me fresh out of Hornsey Grammar School.”
“Fresh out of Mincing Lane or Threadneedle Street, or wherever it is these company-promoting gentlemen have their stamping ground. I don’t want to wade through the whole case, Peter;
I just want the rough outline of what Berrenton was tried for, so that I can get the background right.”
Lackett nodded.
“I expect I can give you that,” he said, “but if you want details you’ll have to go to the file. Three years are three years, and I’ve had a lot of fraud through my
fingers in that time. Berrenton was charged with circulating a prospectus inviting subscriptions to an issue of stock in the San Podino Gold Company, well knowing that prospectus to be false;
that’s just the bare bones. Another director was charged with him, a man named Fallon—they were joint managing directors—and also the Secretary of the Company; I forget his name
at the moment. All three were acquitted.”
“And was it false?”
“Oh, yes, it was false all right. The whole case turned on whether the directors knew that it was false. The San Podino is a Bolivian gold-field. There had been small-scale placer mining
there for a good many years—you know, prospectors panning the streams and that sort of thing and winning small quantities of pay-dirt, or whatever the expression is; nothing to make a fortune
out of.”
“Enough to paint the town red and then start again.”
“That’s it; not a case for large-scale mining. Then in—somewhere in the late twenties—a young Mexican mining engineer did a more systematic survey and struck a
gold-bearing quartz lode not very far below the surface. He believed he was on to something big, and didn’t tell anyone on the spot; he went back to Mexico to try to form a company to work
it. The Mexicans laughed at him; they said that the San Podino area was well known to be simply a mass of pyrite, with just enough placer deposit in the streams to keep the old-timers
happy.”
“Pyrite?” said Poole. “That’s the stuff that has a yellow sparkle, isn’t it? ‘Fool’s Gold’, don’t they call it?”
“That’s the stuff. There is gold in it, or in some forms of it, but not enough to repay working, except as a byproduct from other forms of mining or quarrying—granite
and so on. The Mexican engineer, Mendez, still believed that he was on a winner, and he was just starting off for the States to try his luck there when Berrenton turned up. Berrenton had interests
in Mexico: two mining companies, tungsten and graphite I think they were, and . . .”
“Half a minute, Peter,” interrupted Poole. “Is Berrenton a practical mining engineer?”
“No, not exactly that, but he undoubtedly knows something about it. He started life in the Royal Engineers, fought in the Kaiser war—got an M.C., I think—but retired soon
afterwards and took up civil engineering. Then he came into some money and drifted into finance, company-promoting.”
“Then he might have enough knowledge of the dangerous kind but not enough to avoid being made a fool of?”
Lacket nodded.
“I think that was the conclusion that the jury came to. Rather the same with his financial knowledge; clever chap but not quite clever enough to keep out of trouble. Probably he fell
between two stools; he spent a lot of time travelling and inspecting his various interests, not enough time on his office stool in London. That’s what he said himself, anyhow.”
“Well, go on; sorry for the interruption.”
“Not at all; accustomed to it. Mendez met Berrenton and got him interested. Berrenton went and had a look himself and agreed to finance a serious gold-mining concern. At first it looked as
if he’d backed a loser; the vein petered out and they were on the point of chucking the whole thing. Then, during the war—this last war—they struck another—a real bonanza,
Berrenton called it—and the money rolled in; shares went sky-high and all the rest of it.”
“Genuine money? Nothing rigged?”
“Genuine money. Real gold coming out of the ground. But not for long. It began to peter out again, slowly, but enough to worry the directors. Then Mendez came up with another discovery; he
had been boring in the neighbourhood of this vein, using a diamond core drill, and he declared he had struck a new one, deep down but rich. It would need really big money to develop it, much more
than the existing capital of the Company could command. The good years hadn’t been enough to enable them to build up any substantial reserves; they had borrowed heavily during the lean years
and had to pay that off. And the good years were petering out with the shallow lode.”
“So the faithful shareholders were to be asked to take another chance?”
“Yes. The point was that if that deep vein was to be worked, a lot of new money was needed. Hence the prospectus and the invitation to the public to subscribe to an issue; something like
two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, I think it was, debentures and ordinary shares.”
“And was it subscribed?”
“It was; over-subscribed, mostly in small blocks by people of modest means—the trusting, optimistic sheep upon whom the wolves feed. Not that Berrenton and Fallon were wolves; not at
all; they were acquitted. But the type of subscriber is . . .”
The telephone on Lackett’s desk rang and for several minutes he was engaged in a detailed conversation connected with some other case. Chief-Inspector Poole re-lit his pipe and thought
over what he had been told. As soon as the telephone conversation ended Poole asked:
“But do you mean to say that these people launched a quarter million issue on the ipse dixit of a Mexican mining engineer?”
“Oh no, not exactly. At least . . . well, I’ll tell you. The Board of the Company . . .”
“Half a minute; what sort of a Board was it? A reputable Board?”
“So-so. The usual titled guinea-pigs, one or two soundish business men. But Berrenton and Fallon were the brains and the operating machinery. They were both concerned—they are
still—with a number of other companies, not all of a very gilt-edged standard. To be quite frank, we had had our eye on them for some time, but there was nothing definitely crooked—just
sailing a bit near the wind. I am afraid that applies to a lot of men in that line of business.”
“So I imagine. Well, go ahead; the Board did what?”
“Decided to get a second opinion. They sent out a consulting engineer from this country—a young Scotsman called Tattie, who had built up quite a reputation in that line. When I say
young, I think he was in the early forties.”
“Very sensible of them. And he reported favourably?”
“He didn’t report at all. By an extraordinary bit of bad luck he was drowned in a sudden spate when he was on his way down to the coast by river. The boat capsized and he and another
man were drowned. His body came ashore miles downstream, but his baggage was never recovered. His report must have been in that; there was nothing on the body.”
“Nothing at all? Had it been robbed?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so. There was money and so on and a note-book, with some rough notes that nobody could make head or tail of. Some personal shorthand, probably; he may not even
have written a report—may have got it all in his head. Anyway, no report was ever received.”
Poole frowned.
“Sounds a bit fishy, with all that money involved. Any suspicion of foul play? What about Master Mendez?”
“The Bolivian police were satisfied that it was a pure accident. Mendez was up at the gold-field; he couldn’t have had anything to do with the drowning.”
Poole sniffed.
“So what?”
“So Berrenton flew out there himself, and Mendez convinced him that it was a strike. There was a suspicion afterwards that the bore had been salted—that the gold brought up by the
drill had been dropped down the bore-hole by Mendez or someone else. Anyway, Berrenton was convinced; they floated the issue, and after they’d spent thousands of pounds on deep-mining they
found nothing. There was a terrific slump in the Company’s shares and thousands of people were ruined.”
“Including Berrenton and Fallon?”
“Not including Berrenton and Fallon. They had sold their holdings in the Company while the boom was on; to raise money for the exploitation of an Arabian oil-field in which they were
interested.”
“And which is now doing quite nicely, thank you?”
“Quite nicely.”
“And that, no doubt, was a smell in the nostrils of C.6 when San Podino flopped.”
“It certainly was, but there was nothing illegal about it, not even dishonest or dishonourable; quite a normal procedure in the tick-tock of company-promoting.”
“All right. Then answer me another. When Tattie was drowned, why didn’t they send out another consulting engineer? If Berrenton could fly out, why couldn’t another engineer fly
out?”
Chief-Inspector Lackett laughed.
“The bull’s-eye question,” he said. “It was that more than anything that put Berrenton in the dock. His prospectus, of course, made it appear that mining experts had
reported the discovery of a rich gold-bearing lode. After the bonanza boom the public accepted that and rushed in. Berrenton’s answer to your question was quite frank; he said that they
simply could not wait for another expert opinion; their money was finished, their skilled labour beginning to disperse; you see, that shallow vein really was worked out, and the men on the
spot knew it. They weren’t going to hang about without pay, and most of them were not native Bolivians; they wanted to get home—to Mexico and elsewhere—while there was still money
in their pockets. So Berrenton flew out there, satisfied himself about the prospects and managed to satisfy the engineers and others that more money was coming. He cabled home ‘Go
Ahead’ and the prospectus was issued; money poured in and for six months all was golden—except the ore.”
“And the jury believed that it was an honest mistake?”
“So it appeared. They acquitted them.”
“And they left the court without a stain on their characters?”
“On their official characters, anyhow. And now some misguided person is trying to show his disapproval. Is that the idea?”
“That seems to be the general idea. Or else.”
ON THE morning after his talk with Chief-Inspector Lackett of the ‘fraud squad’, Poole presented himself at the Headquarters of the North Sussex Constabulary at
East Grinstead and asked for Detective-Superintendent Mitten. The head of the North Sussex C.I.D. was a big, burly man with grizzled hair and moustache, slow of speech and movement but not of wit.
He had all the qualities of a bull-dog and was popularly known in his force as ‘Bonzo’. He greeted the London man with a friendly smile, waved him to a chair and pushed a packet of
cigarettes towards him.
“Pipe if I may, sir,” said Poole. “As you’ll know, I’ve come about this accident to Mr. Berrenton.”
Mitten nodded.
“The Chief thought it was a case the Yard ought to look into,” he said, “because of its possible connection with the San Podino case. I’ll tell you the local story and
then you’ll see why that possibility came into our minds. You know about the San Podino case, I suppose?”
“Just the outline of it, sir; the rise and fall of the Company, the prosecution for issuing a false prospectus, the acquittal. I had a talk with a Chief-Inspector who was working on the
case at the time, and he gave me a general idea of the character of the Company and the directors and the considerations that led up to the prosecution and the apparent reasons for acquittal. I
haven’t been through the file yet or read the verbatim report of the trial; I’ll do that as soon as I’ve got the up-to-date story at this end.”
“Might be as well to,” said Superintendent Mitten quietly. “Now, one thing before I start on the story, Mr. Poole. While you and I are alone together I suggest we don’t
be too formal. You have been good enough to call me ‘sir’, and quite right too, but I don’t reckon a Superintendent in a County C.I.D. has much on a Chief-Inspector from the Yard.
We’ll do better and get along easier if we call each other ‘Mitten’ and ‘Poole’; when we’ve got my subordinates with us you can throw in a ‘sir’
every now and then just as a matter of form. That suit you?”
Poole smiled.
“That’s very nice of you, Super,” he said. “It does make things easier if one’s not too formal, and it’s a help to a Yard man to be treated as a
friend.”
“Right; then that’s agreed. Now this Mr. Berrenton, Mr. Hector Berrenton, lives in a nice house at Dabridge—Dabridge Manor, it’s called—half-way between here and
Crawley. Of course, the ‘Manor’ is all my eye; it’s a modern house, built on land bought off somebody’s farm. Mr. Berrenton is well off, keeps a fair staff, man-servant and
so on, chauffeur, two or three gardeners—no lack of money, one would say. Couple of cars, a limousine for his wife and a two-seater coupé for himself. That’s the one that had the
trouble. It was on . . .”
“Any family?” asked Poole.
“Eh? Oh, yes; only son, mother’s darling, I’d say. Too much money and not enough work. Spends his time running about in his own car between there and London. I believe he does
have some kind of a job in one of these big motor businesses in London—a sort of super-salesman when he feels inclined. Round about twenty-six or seven, I’d say. Want to know
more?”
“Sorry, Mitten; I interrupted. I just wanted to get the family picture. And there’s a Mrs. Berrenton—all happy and so on?”
“So far as I know. I’d say they were a very devoted couple—on the surface, at any rate. I fancy she’s a year or two older than him, and he’s still a vigorous man.
That makes for trouble, sometimes, but I know nothing about that here.”
“Right; thank you.”
“Well, it was on Friday last week the accident happened—Friday, 19th September, just to get our record right.”
Poole grinned and jotted the date down in his note-book.
“It’s Mr. Berrenton’s practice to drive himself into Crawley every day in his two-seater to catch the London train—9.28, I think it is. He drives very fast, but
he’s a skilful driver and I’ve never known him in any trouble, except for once or twice exceeding in a built-up area. There’s a nasty bend on the by-road that leads from Dabridge
Manor to the main road, a bend with a sharp drop on the outer side; the camber’s all wrong, too—the road leans the wrong way. Our people have spoken to the County Surveyor more than
once, but he says it’s a minor road and he hasn’t got the money even to put right the black spots on Class One and Two roads. So nothing gets done until someone’s killed—or
lucky not to be. Of course, Berrenton knows that bend like the back of his hand and he knows just how fast it’s safe to go round it, but on this particular morning the car doesn’t
answer the steering-wheel and just goes through the rails and over the edge.”
Superintendent Mitten pulled a one-inch ordnance survey map from a drawer and spread it out on his table.
“That’s the place, Poole. Quite true, it is a quiet road and not many cars go along it in the day, probably, besides the Berrentons. Still . . . well, that’s not my business.
Luckily for Mr. Berrenton there are bushes and scrub growing on the slope below the road where he went over. The car didn’t go far; it turned over on its side, but it didn’t catch fire.
Even so he had a nasty crash and was pretty badly shaken, his face cut and bruised and a rib or two broken against the steering-wheel. A carter found him and went back to the house; they telephoned
for an ambulance and took him to hospital, but he wouldn’t stay there once they’d patched him up. He’s back at home now.”
“Not much the worse?”
“Not much, the doctor says. Shock worse than injuries. Not to be wondered at. He’s not an old man—fifty-five, I think he told us—but one doesn’t like to be thrown
about even at that age. Still, he’s taken it all pretty calmly; I will say that.”
“Did he report it as an attack on him?”
“Oh no, and I’m not sure that he believes now that it is. No, it was our chaps who came to that conclusion. Of course, the accident was reported in the usual way and the Divisional
Superintendent went out there and examined the car—a Lorte Renton coupé—with one of the mechanics from our Headquarter garage. We run our own repair shops at Headquarters, you
know, and we’ve got some knowledgeable chaps in the mechanical line. Naturally, they examined the steering-gear, and they found that the steering-track rod was detached from the off-fore
wheel.”
“Is that a thing that could happen accidentally?” asked Poole.
Superintendent Mitten shrugged his heavy shoulders.
“Well, of course, accidents do happen, they say, and I suppose a split-pin can pull out. That’s what had happened here; the split-pin had come away from the ball cap on the track-rod
end. I’m told that in most cases it would be impossible for that to happen accidentally and next door to impossible for it to be mischievously pulled out, short of a major operation, but it
is a fact that such an accident did occur with a Lorte-Renton about three years ago; with their new models they have eliminated that risk, but Berrenton’s is a 1946 model, and so with his car
it was possible. What we have to find out is whether it was an accident or a deliberate attempt to smash the car and kill him.”
“I think you said the Berrentons keep a chauffeur. What has he got to say about it?”
“Well, of course, he thought he was going to get the blame, so he swore black and blue that the steering-gear was in perfect order. But when I asked him . . . I should say the case was put
in my hands when we heard about the letter; we’ll come to that . . . when I pressed him about it he admitted he hadn’t been under the car to overhaul it for a month or more. He was away
on his holiday when the accident happened, but he came back two days later.”
“What sort of a chap?”
Again that massive shrug.
“I didn’t cotton to him much. One of these slick young fellows with no manners for anyone but the people who pay them. Twist, his name is. Wilson—that’s our
mechanic—didn’t form much of an opinion of his knowledge or his keenness. He thought it just possible that Twist might have let the steering get into a dangerous condition from sheer
idleness. I might have thought that myself if it hadn’t been for this letter. I’d better get on to that now. When Berrenton got back home out of hospital he found this waiting for
him.”
From a folder on his table Superintendent Mitten drew an envelope and a sheet of common writing-paper, bluish in tinge and ruled in broad lines. On it was written in capitals, in black ink with
a spluttery pen:
SAN PODINO
“Short and to the point,” said Poole.
“No identifiable finger-prints. Posted London, E.C.1, the day before the accident, you’ll note.”
Poole nodded.
“Significant, certainly,” he said. “Anything like it before?”
“It seems there have been. Each year since the trial, on the date of acquittal, Berrenton has had the same sort of thing. Heading: San Podino, then some sort of threatening message. He
says he didn’t pay any attention, just burnt them; didn’t want to worry his wife. Directly after the trial he had a mass of letters; regular fan mail he called it. But they stopped,
except this one. He kept this one because the accident had made him think, and because of the mention of Fallon. But he’s still sceptical; thinks it was probably just a fluke, though he
admits that this is the first that hasn’t come on the day of acquittal.”
“Anything interesting about the paper or ink?”
“Nothing that I could find. I thought you chaps at the Yard might like to play with it.”
“I’ll take it, Mitten; it’ll make C.3 happy, but they’re not likely to find anything. Cheap and common. It’s difficult to believe that the timing was a fluke.
Posted after the country post collection, so there could be no warning. Someone who knew Berrenton’s habits and knew there was going to be an accident. That surely means that if the car was
tampered with it must have been done that night; if it had been some sort of delay-action sabotage the letter couldn’t have been so neatly timed.”
“That’s how it struck me. Looks all very neatly laid on.”
“The garage where this car is kept; locked at night, I suppose?”
“Yes, but the damn fools keep the key under a brick, where any fool can find it. Say it saves trouble. Didn’t save this trouble.”
“The chauffeur live nearby?”
“Flat over. And he was away on holiday. All very neat and handy.”
“You’ve got no suspicions of anyone in the neighbourhood?”
“Not a one. We’ve nothing to go on, unless you ca. . .
Chief-Inspector Lackett looked up sharply from the file which he had been reading.
“Hector Berrenton?” he asked.
His visitor nodded.
“That’s the chap.”
“Hector Berrenton; I should say it does. I shan’t forget that case in a hurry; proper headache it gave me. What about him? Not in trouble again?”
“Not your kind of trouble. Coming my way this time. I want to know all about him.”
John Poole sank into a vacant chair and pulled a pipe and pouch from his pocket.
“Any objection to smoking?”
Lackett grinned. He was seldom seen without a cigarette between his lips and his fingers were stained with nicotine.
“Tell you all about him?—a case that took six months off my young life? Tell you . . . as if I hadn’t got any work to do.”
“This’ll be work all right. I suppose even C.6 has to get down to it at times,” said Poole lightly.
The Criminal Investigation Department of New Scotland Yard is divided into seven departments, not counting the Special Branch, which is concerned with ‘Security’. Chief-Inspector
Poole was a leading light in C.1, which deals with major crimes and is by far the largest department of the seven. Chief-Inspector Lackett, on the other hand, was a member of C.6, the small but
highly trained department which specialises in involved fraud cases and is popularly known as ‘the fraud squad’. Lackett was the younger man of the two by five years, being only
forty-seven; but whereas Poole was one of sixteen Chief-Inspectors, with eight Superintendents and a Chief Superintendent above him, Lackett was one of two, with only a Chief Superintendent and two
Superintendents senior to him in his special hierarchy. He could therefore claim—and often did when Poole was teasing him—that he was the more indispensable officer of the two, his time
more precious and his work more exacting and important.
Now, however, he pushed his file aside and lit a fresh cigarette from the stub of the old. He knew that Poole would not have interrupted him without good reason.
“If he’s not our bird you’re welcome to him. He can fly all right; tricky as a woodcock.”
Poole grinned.
“Got away from you, anyhow, didn’t he? Was he guilty?”
Lackett leaned back in his chair, the hard wooden chair which keeps Chief-Inspectors awake, and watched the smoke drift up past his eyes.
“I’m not so sure,” he said at last. “I never was so sure. Old Franklin was and so was the D.P.P., but it never seemed to me that we had quite enough on him to prove
fraud. Clever chap; doesn’t necessarily mean he was crooked. Unlucky, perhaps. Ruined a lot of poor people, but I suppose that’s all part of the financial game.”
“Franklin was in charge of the case, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, his last case before he retired. Bit sour at going out on a loser, he was. I worked under him, just before my promotion. All the hard work, of course, but not the
decisions.”
“Naturally. And you yourself would not have advised a prosecution?”
Lackett shook his head.
“Wouldn’t be right to say that. I didn’t know all the facts. There may have been something on his record that I wasn’t shown. Anyway, he was prosecuted and acquitted. A
lot of public money wasted . . . unless one can feel that the case was a deterrent to others.”
“Sure to have been,” said Poole comfortingly. “And someone seems to have thought the acquittal was a mistake.”
Lackett pricked up his ears.
“Eh? How’s that?”
“About ten days ago Mr. Hector Berrenton had a nasty accident in his car. The North1 Sussex police don’t like the smell of that accident; they think someone was trying to
do him in.”
“Good Lord. You mean . . . because of this case?”
“That’s a possible idea.”
“But it’s an old story; what was it? 1949? Three years stale. Surely that’s a bit far-fetched?”
“Old sins have long shadows,” quoted Poole sententiously. “Mind, I’m not giving you my own opinion. The story has only just been handed to me. East Grinstead think the
accident was no accident, that it is a throw-back to the fraud case—there appears to have been a threatening letter of some kind—and that if it really is so connected, then we are the
boys to handle it. Strictly under their direction, of course. And Chief-Inspector Poole, with his well-known social tact, has been handed the job, because the victim was wearing an Old Marlvington
tie.”
Chief-Inspector Lackett laughed.
“Our Gentleman Johnny; and so you come to me to put you on the right lines—me fresh out of Hornsey Grammar School.”
“Fresh out of Mincing Lane or Threadneedle Street, or wherever it is these company-promoting gentlemen have their stamping ground. I don’t want to wade through the whole case, Peter;
I just want the rough outline of what Berrenton was tried for, so that I can get the background right.”
Lackett nodded.
“I expect I can give you that,” he said, “but if you want details you’ll have to go to the file. Three years are three years, and I’ve had a lot of fraud through my
fingers in that time. Berrenton was charged with circulating a prospectus inviting subscriptions to an issue of stock in the San Podino Gold Company, well knowing that prospectus to be false;
that’s just the bare bones. Another director was charged with him, a man named Fallon—they were joint managing directors—and also the Secretary of the Company; I forget his name
at the moment. All three were acquitted.”
“And was it false?”
“Oh, yes, it was false all right. The whole case turned on whether the directors knew that it was false. The San Podino is a Bolivian gold-field. There had been small-scale placer mining
there for a good many years—you know, prospectors panning the streams and that sort of thing and winning small quantities of pay-dirt, or whatever the expression is; nothing to make a fortune
out of.”
“Enough to paint the town red and then start again.”
“That’s it; not a case for large-scale mining. Then in—somewhere in the late twenties—a young Mexican mining engineer did a more systematic survey and struck a
gold-bearing quartz lode not very far below the surface. He believed he was on to something big, and didn’t tell anyone on the spot; he went back to Mexico to try to form a company to work
it. The Mexicans laughed at him; they said that the San Podino area was well known to be simply a mass of pyrite, with just enough placer deposit in the streams to keep the old-timers
happy.”
“Pyrite?” said Poole. “That’s the stuff that has a yellow sparkle, isn’t it? ‘Fool’s Gold’, don’t they call it?”
“That’s the stuff. There is gold in it, or in some forms of it, but not enough to repay working, except as a byproduct from other forms of mining or quarrying—granite
and so on. The Mexican engineer, Mendez, still believed that he was on a winner, and he was just starting off for the States to try his luck there when Berrenton turned up. Berrenton had interests
in Mexico: two mining companies, tungsten and graphite I think they were, and . . .”
“Half a minute, Peter,” interrupted Poole. “Is Berrenton a practical mining engineer?”
“No, not exactly that, but he undoubtedly knows something about it. He started life in the Royal Engineers, fought in the Kaiser war—got an M.C., I think—but retired soon
afterwards and took up civil engineering. Then he came into some money and drifted into finance, company-promoting.”
“Then he might have enough knowledge of the dangerous kind but not enough to avoid being made a fool of?”
Lacket nodded.
“I think that was the conclusion that the jury came to. Rather the same with his financial knowledge; clever chap but not quite clever enough to keep out of trouble. Probably he fell
between two stools; he spent a lot of time travelling and inspecting his various interests, not enough time on his office stool in London. That’s what he said himself, anyhow.”
“Well, go on; sorry for the interruption.”
“Not at all; accustomed to it. Mendez met Berrenton and got him interested. Berrenton went and had a look himself and agreed to finance a serious gold-mining concern. At first it looked as
if he’d backed a loser; the vein petered out and they were on the point of chucking the whole thing. Then, during the war—this last war—they struck another—a real bonanza,
Berrenton called it—and the money rolled in; shares went sky-high and all the rest of it.”
“Genuine money? Nothing rigged?”
“Genuine money. Real gold coming out of the ground. But not for long. It began to peter out again, slowly, but enough to worry the directors. Then Mendez came up with another discovery; he
had been boring in the neighbourhood of this vein, using a diamond core drill, and he declared he had struck a new one, deep down but rich. It would need really big money to develop it, much more
than the existing capital of the Company could command. The good years hadn’t been enough to enable them to build up any substantial reserves; they had borrowed heavily during the lean years
and had to pay that off. And the good years were petering out with the shallow lode.”
“So the faithful shareholders were to be asked to take another chance?”
“Yes. The point was that if that deep vein was to be worked, a lot of new money was needed. Hence the prospectus and the invitation to the public to subscribe to an issue; something like
two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, I think it was, debentures and ordinary shares.”
“And was it subscribed?”
“It was; over-subscribed, mostly in small blocks by people of modest means—the trusting, optimistic sheep upon whom the wolves feed. Not that Berrenton and Fallon were wolves; not at
all; they were acquitted. But the type of subscriber is . . .”
The telephone on Lackett’s desk rang and for several minutes he was engaged in a detailed conversation connected with some other case. Chief-Inspector Poole re-lit his pipe and thought
over what he had been told. As soon as the telephone conversation ended Poole asked:
“But do you mean to say that these people launched a quarter million issue on the ipse dixit of a Mexican mining engineer?”
“Oh no, not exactly. At least . . . well, I’ll tell you. The Board of the Company . . .”
“Half a minute; what sort of a Board was it? A reputable Board?”
“So-so. The usual titled guinea-pigs, one or two soundish business men. But Berrenton and Fallon were the brains and the operating machinery. They were both concerned—they are
still—with a number of other companies, not all of a very gilt-edged standard. To be quite frank, we had had our eye on them for some time, but there was nothing definitely crooked—just
sailing a bit near the wind. I am afraid that applies to a lot of men in that line of business.”
“So I imagine. Well, go ahead; the Board did what?”
“Decided to get a second opinion. They sent out a consulting engineer from this country—a young Scotsman called Tattie, who had built up quite a reputation in that line. When I say
young, I think he was in the early forties.”
“Very sensible of them. And he reported favourably?”
“He didn’t report at all. By an extraordinary bit of bad luck he was drowned in a sudden spate when he was on his way down to the coast by river. The boat capsized and he and another
man were drowned. His body came ashore miles downstream, but his baggage was never recovered. His report must have been in that; there was nothing on the body.”
“Nothing at all? Had it been robbed?”
“Oh no, I don’t think so. There was money and so on and a note-book, with some rough notes that nobody could make head or tail of. Some personal shorthand, probably; he may not even
have written a report—may have got it all in his head. Anyway, no report was ever received.”
Poole frowned.
“Sounds a bit fishy, with all that money involved. Any suspicion of foul play? What about Master Mendez?”
“The Bolivian police were satisfied that it was a pure accident. Mendez was up at the gold-field; he couldn’t have had anything to do with the drowning.”
Poole sniffed.
“So what?”
“So Berrenton flew out there himself, and Mendez convinced him that it was a strike. There was a suspicion afterwards that the bore had been salted—that the gold brought up by the
drill had been dropped down the bore-hole by Mendez or someone else. Anyway, Berrenton was convinced; they floated the issue, and after they’d spent thousands of pounds on deep-mining they
found nothing. There was a terrific slump in the Company’s shares and thousands of people were ruined.”
“Including Berrenton and Fallon?”
“Not including Berrenton and Fallon. They had sold their holdings in the Company while the boom was on; to raise money for the exploitation of an Arabian oil-field in which they were
interested.”
“And which is now doing quite nicely, thank you?”
“Quite nicely.”
“And that, no doubt, was a smell in the nostrils of C.6 when San Podino flopped.”
“It certainly was, but there was nothing illegal about it, not even dishonest or dishonourable; quite a normal procedure in the tick-tock of company-promoting.”
“All right. Then answer me another. When Tattie was drowned, why didn’t they send out another consulting engineer? If Berrenton could fly out, why couldn’t another engineer fly
out?”
Chief-Inspector Lackett laughed.
“The bull’s-eye question,” he said. “It was that more than anything that put Berrenton in the dock. His prospectus, of course, made it appear that mining experts had
reported the discovery of a rich gold-bearing lode. After the bonanza boom the public accepted that and rushed in. Berrenton’s answer to your question was quite frank; he said that they
simply could not wait for another expert opinion; their money was finished, their skilled labour beginning to disperse; you see, that shallow vein really was worked out, and the men on the
spot knew it. They weren’t going to hang about without pay, and most of them were not native Bolivians; they wanted to get home—to Mexico and elsewhere—while there was still money
in their pockets. So Berrenton flew out there, satisfied himself about the prospects and managed to satisfy the engineers and others that more money was coming. He cabled home ‘Go
Ahead’ and the prospectus was issued; money poured in and for six months all was golden—except the ore.”
“And the jury believed that it was an honest mistake?”
“So it appeared. They acquitted them.”
“And they left the court without a stain on their characters?”
“On their official characters, anyhow. And now some misguided person is trying to show his disapproval. Is that the idea?”
“That seems to be the general idea. Or else.”
ON THE morning after his talk with Chief-Inspector Lackett of the ‘fraud squad’, Poole presented himself at the Headquarters of the North Sussex Constabulary at
East Grinstead and asked for Detective-Superintendent Mitten. The head of the North Sussex C.I.D. was a big, burly man with grizzled hair and moustache, slow of speech and movement but not of wit.
He had all the qualities of a bull-dog and was popularly known in his force as ‘Bonzo’. He greeted the London man with a friendly smile, waved him to a chair and pushed a packet of
cigarettes towards him.
“Pipe if I may, sir,” said Poole. “As you’ll know, I’ve come about this accident to Mr. Berrenton.”
Mitten nodded.
“The Chief thought it was a case the Yard ought to look into,” he said, “because of its possible connection with the San Podino case. I’ll tell you the local story and
then you’ll see why that possibility came into our minds. You know about the San Podino case, I suppose?”
“Just the outline of it, sir; the rise and fall of the Company, the prosecution for issuing a false prospectus, the acquittal. I had a talk with a Chief-Inspector who was working on the
case at the time, and he gave me a general idea of the character of the Company and the directors and the considerations that led up to the prosecution and the apparent reasons for acquittal. I
haven’t been through the file yet or read the verbatim report of the trial; I’ll do that as soon as I’ve got the up-to-date story at this end.”
“Might be as well to,” said Superintendent Mitten quietly. “Now, one thing before I start on the story, Mr. Poole. While you and I are alone together I suggest we don’t
be too formal. You have been good enough to call me ‘sir’, and quite right too, but I don’t reckon a Superintendent in a County C.I.D. has much on a Chief-Inspector from the Yard.
We’ll do better and get along easier if we call each other ‘Mitten’ and ‘Poole’; when we’ve got my subordinates with us you can throw in a ‘sir’
every now and then just as a matter of form. That suit you?”
Poole smiled.
“That’s very nice of you, Super,” he said. “It does make things easier if one’s not too formal, and it’s a help to a Yard man to be treated as a
friend.”
“Right; then that’s agreed. Now this Mr. Berrenton, Mr. Hector Berrenton, lives in a nice house at Dabridge—Dabridge Manor, it’s called—half-way between here and
Crawley. Of course, the ‘Manor’ is all my eye; it’s a modern house, built on land bought off somebody’s farm. Mr. Berrenton is well off, keeps a fair staff, man-servant and
so on, chauffeur, two or three gardeners—no lack of money, one would say. Couple of cars, a limousine for his wife and a two-seater coupé for himself. That’s the one that had the
trouble. It was on . . .”
“Any family?” asked Poole.
“Eh? Oh, yes; only son, mother’s darling, I’d say. Too much money and not enough work. Spends his time running about in his own car between there and London. I believe he does
have some kind of a job in one of these big motor businesses in London—a sort of super-salesman when he feels inclined. Round about twenty-six or seven, I’d say. Want to know
more?”
“Sorry, Mitten; I interrupted. I just wanted to get the family picture. And there’s a Mrs. Berrenton—all happy and so on?”
“So far as I know. I’d say they were a very devoted couple—on the surface, at any rate. I fancy she’s a year or two older than him, and he’s still a vigorous man.
That makes for trouble, sometimes, but I know nothing about that here.”
“Right; thank you.”
“Well, it was on Friday last week the accident happened—Friday, 19th September, just to get our record right.”
Poole grinned and jotted the date down in his note-book.
“It’s Mr. Berrenton’s practice to drive himself into Crawley every day in his two-seater to catch the London train—9.28, I think it is. He drives very fast, but
he’s a skilful driver and I’ve never known him in any trouble, except for once or twice exceeding in a built-up area. There’s a nasty bend on the by-road that leads from Dabridge
Manor to the main road, a bend with a sharp drop on the outer side; the camber’s all wrong, too—the road leans the wrong way. Our people have spoken to the County Surveyor more than
once, but he says it’s a minor road and he hasn’t got the money even to put right the black spots on Class One and Two roads. So nothing gets done until someone’s killed—or
lucky not to be. Of course, Berrenton knows that bend like the back of his hand and he knows just how fast it’s safe to go round it, but on this particular morning the car doesn’t
answer the steering-wheel and just goes through the rails and over the edge.”
Superintendent Mitten pulled a one-inch ordnance survey map from a drawer and spread it out on his table.
“That’s the place, Poole. Quite true, it is a quiet road and not many cars go along it in the day, probably, besides the Berrentons. Still . . . well, that’s not my business.
Luckily for Mr. Berrenton there are bushes and scrub growing on the slope below the road where he went over. The car didn’t go far; it turned over on its side, but it didn’t catch fire.
Even so he had a nasty crash and was pretty badly shaken, his face cut and bruised and a rib or two broken against the steering-wheel. A carter found him and went back to the house; they telephoned
for an ambulance and took him to hospital, but he wouldn’t stay there once they’d patched him up. He’s back at home now.”
“Not much the worse?”
“Not much, the doctor says. Shock worse than injuries. Not to be wondered at. He’s not an old man—fifty-five, I think he told us—but one doesn’t like to be thrown
about even at that age. Still, he’s taken it all pretty calmly; I will say that.”
“Did he report it as an attack on him?”
“Oh no, and I’m not sure that he believes now that it is. No, it was our chaps who came to that conclusion. Of course, the accident was reported in the usual way and the Divisional
Superintendent went out there and examined the car—a Lorte Renton coupé—with one of the mechanics from our Headquarter garage. We run our own repair shops at Headquarters, you
know, and we’ve got some knowledgeable chaps in the mechanical line. Naturally, they examined the steering-gear, and they found that the steering-track rod was detached from the off-fore
wheel.”
“Is that a thing that could happen accidentally?” asked Poole.
Superintendent Mitten shrugged his heavy shoulders.
“Well, of course, accidents do happen, they say, and I suppose a split-pin can pull out. That’s what had happened here; the split-pin had come away from the ball cap on the track-rod
end. I’m told that in most cases it would be impossible for that to happen accidentally and next door to impossible for it to be mischievously pulled out, short of a major operation, but it
is a fact that such an accident did occur with a Lorte-Renton about three years ago; with their new models they have eliminated that risk, but Berrenton’s is a 1946 model, and so with his car
it was possible. What we have to find out is whether it was an accident or a deliberate attempt to smash the car and kill him.”
“I think you said the Berrentons keep a chauffeur. What has he got to say about it?”
“Well, of course, he thought he was going to get the blame, so he swore black and blue that the steering-gear was in perfect order. But when I asked him . . . I should say the case was put
in my hands when we heard about the letter; we’ll come to that . . . when I pressed him about it he admitted he hadn’t been under the car to overhaul it for a month or more. He was away
on his holiday when the accident happened, but he came back two days later.”
“What sort of a chap?”
Again that massive shrug.
“I didn’t cotton to him much. One of these slick young fellows with no manners for anyone but the people who pay them. Twist, his name is. Wilson—that’s our
mechanic—didn’t form much of an opinion of his knowledge or his keenness. He thought it just possible that Twist might have let the steering get into a dangerous condition from sheer
idleness. I might have thought that myself if it hadn’t been for this letter. I’d better get on to that now. When Berrenton got back home out of hospital he found this waiting for
him.”
From a folder on his table Superintendent Mitten drew an envelope and a sheet of common writing-paper, bluish in tinge and ruled in broad lines. On it was written in capitals, in black ink with
a spluttery pen:
SAN PODINO
“Short and to the point,” said Poole.
“No identifiable finger-prints. Posted London, E.C.1, the day before the accident, you’ll note.”
Poole nodded.
“Significant, certainly,” he said. “Anything like it before?”
“It seems there have been. Each year since the trial, on the date of acquittal, Berrenton has had the same sort of thing. Heading: San Podino, then some sort of threatening message. He
says he didn’t pay any attention, just burnt them; didn’t want to worry his wife. Directly after the trial he had a mass of letters; regular fan mail he called it. But they stopped,
except this one. He kept this one because the accident had made him think, and because of the mention of Fallon. But he’s still sceptical; thinks it was probably just a fluke, though he
admits that this is the first that hasn’t come on the day of acquittal.”
“Anything interesting about the paper or ink?”
“Nothing that I could find. I thought you chaps at the Yard might like to play with it.”
“I’ll take it, Mitten; it’ll make C.3 happy, but they’re not likely to find anything. Cheap and common. It’s difficult to believe that the timing was a fluke.
Posted after the country post collection, so there could be no warning. Someone who knew Berrenton’s habits and knew there was going to be an accident. That surely means that if the car was
tampered with it must have been done that night; if it had been some sort of delay-action sabotage the letter couldn’t have been so neatly timed.”
“That’s how it struck me. Looks all very neatly laid on.”
“The garage where this car is kept; locked at night, I suppose?”
“Yes, but the damn fools keep the key under a brick, where any fool can find it. Say it saves trouble. Didn’t save this trouble.”
“The chauffeur live nearby?”
“Flat over. And he was away on holiday. All very neat and handy.”
“You’ve got no suspicions of anyone in the neighbourhood?”
“Not a one. We’ve nothing to go on, unless you ca. . .
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