The Cask by Freeman Wills Croft
This 1920 novel is considered a masterpiece from the early days of the detective novel. It starts in dramatic fashion when a heavy, wooden cask splits whilst being unloaded at a busy London dock revealing some sovereigns and a human hand crammed inside. A dock worker is left to stand guard whilst a shipping clerk goes to fetch the police – remember, there are few phones or cars and life moves at a gentler pace. When the police arrive, the cask and its guard have disappeared and the plot begins to thicken.
Eventually Inspector Burnley of Scotland Yard tracks down the cask, and the body of a woman who has been strangled to death is recovered. From this point on, Croft takes us through a detailed procedural investigation as Burnley’s team painstakingly work out the movements of the cask, the identity of the dead woman and the range of possible suspects. This involves Burnley travelling over to Paris from where the cask had been despatched to work alongside the French police. There is great cordiality between Burnley and his counterpart Lafayette both of whom approach the investigation with a thoroughness that we have all seen in detective television series over the years. This book is a clear riposte to the brilliant deductions of detectives such as Holmes. The police here are presented as intelligent and assiduous, carefully checking all alibis and information. Yet Croft’s writing ensures the proceedings of the case never drag. Of course, the social history helps – Bradshaw is used to check train times from London to Brussels, witnesses are contacted through adverts in the local newspaper, and up to date technology, a Remington typewriter, provides a crucial clue.
About halfway through the book, Burnley and Lafayette’s hard work has built up a solid case against a particular suspect. However, friends of the suspect engage a private detective, La Touche, to reappraise the police investigation. There is no criticism of the police’s work, in fact La Touche admires the case they have put together, but he simply sifts through the evidence, digging ever more deeply until crucial anomalies in the evidence emerge.
The pleasure of this book comes from spending time with all the different detectives as they breakfast together, discuss the case, interview witnesses, hypothesise over a leisurely lunch and so on. They are all good chaps and congenial company. Yet the horrific nature of the crime is not ignored and there is a dramatic, action-packed ending as the truth is finally revealed.
Another one for lovers of traditional detective stories.