The Cask, Freeman Wills Crofts [snow like ashes series .txt] 📗

was an easy way to earn a bit of money without doing anyone any harm. For that’s the fact, monsieur. What I did, did no harm to anyone.

“It was on Monday, monsieur, Monday the 29th March, that I was out at Charenton delivering goods for Messrs. Corot. I stopped at a café there for a glass of beer. While I was drinking it a man came up to me and asked was that my cart? I said I was in charge of it, but it belonged to Messrs. Corot. ‘I want a little job done with a cart,’ he says, ‘and it’s not convenient for me to go into Paris to an agent’s, and if you would save me the trouble by doing it for me I’ll pay you well.’ ‘I couldn’t do that, monsieur,’ I says, ‘for if my employers got to know they’d give me the sack.’ ‘But how would they know?’ he asks, ‘I wouldn’t tell them, and I guess you wouldn’t either.’ Well, monsieur, we talked on, and first I refused, but afterwards I agreed to do it. I admit I was using the cart like that, but he tempted me. He said it would only take about an hour, and he would give me ten francs. So I agreed.”

“What was this man like?”

“He was a middle-sized man, monsieur, with a black pointed beard, and very well dressed.”

“And what did he want you to do?”

“On the next Thursday afternoon at half-past four I was to go to an address he gave me and load up a cask, and bring it to the corner of the rue de la Fayette, close to the Gare du Nord. He said he would meet me there and tell me where to take it.”

“And did he?”

“Yes. I got there first and waited about ten minutes, and then he came up. He took the old label off the cask and nailed on another he had with him. Then he told me to take the cask to the State Railway Goods Station in the rue Cardinet and book it to London. He gave me the freight as well as the ten francs for myself. He said he should know if the cask did not get to London, and threatened that if I played any tricks he would inform Messrs. Corot what I had done.”

This statement was not at all what La Touche had expected, and he was considerably puzzled.

“What was the address he gave you at which you were to get the cask?”

“I forget the exact address. It was from a large corner house in the Avenue de l’Alma.”

“What?” roared La Touche, springing excitedly to his feet. “The Avenue de l’Alma, do you say?” He laughed aloud.

So this was it! The cask that went to St. Katherine’s Docks⁠—the cask containing the body⁠—had gone, not from the Gare du Nord, but direct from Boirac’s house! Fool that he was not to have thought of this! Light was at last dawning. Boirac had killed his wife⁠—killed her in her own house⁠—and had there packed her body in the cask, sending it direct to Felix. At long last La Touche had got the evidence he wanted, evidence that would clear Felix⁠—evidence that would bring Boirac to the scaffold!

He was thrilled with his discovery. For a moment the whole affair seemed clear, but once again second thoughts showed him there was a good deal still to be explained. However, once he had got rid of this Dubois, he would see just where he stood.

He questioned the carter exhaustively, but without gaining much further information. That the man had no idea of the identity of his seducer was clear. The only name he had got hold of was that of Dupierre, for Boirac had instructed him to say at his house that he had called for Messrs. Dupierre’s cask. Asked if he had not seen the advertisements of rewards for the information he had now given, the man said he had, but that he was afraid to come forward. First he feared he would lose his job if the matter came to his employer’s ears, and then the very fact that so large a reward was offered had frightened him, as he assumed he had unwittingly helped with some crime. He had suspected the matter was one of robbery until he saw of the discovery of the cask in the papers. Then he had at once guessed that he had assisted a murderer to dispose of his victim’s body, and he had lived in a veritable nightmare lest his share in the business should be discovered. Failing to get anything further out of him, La Touche finally dismissed him somewhat contemptuously with his hundred francs. Then he settled himself to try and puzzle out his problem.

And first as to the movements of the cask. It had started from Boirac’s house; how did it get there? Clearly from Dupierre’s. It must have been the cask in which Boirac’s statue had been sent home. That cask, then, left Dupierre’s on the Saturday of the dinner party, reaching Boirac’s house the same day. It lay there until the following Thursday. During that time the statue was taken out and the body substituted. The cask then travelled to London, was taken by Felix to St. Malo, and finally got into the hands of the police at Scotland Yard.

But then, what about the cask which was met at Waterloo and sent back from London to the Gare du Nord?

This, La Touche saw, must have been a different cask, and there must therefore have been two moving about, and not one as they had believed. He tried to follow the movements of this second cask. It left Dupierre’s on the Tuesday evening, reached Waterloo on the following morning and on next day, Thursday, was sent back to Paris, reaching the Gare du Nord at 4:45 p.m. It had always been assumed this cask went from there to the rue Cardinet Goods Station. This was now proved to