CHAPTER 11

The owner of Eynon Brothers Company proved to be the Reverend Theobald Eynon. He also was listed as Vicar of Pangstead, Kent. If, in addition, he was presiding over a vast theft operation, he was keeping himself almost excessively busy. His combination of activities sounded unlikely enough without the thefts.

I had naïvely thought that England’s network of railways gave a traveller easy access to every part of the country, but Pangstead proved surprisingly difficult to reach. It had the disadvantage—or supreme virtue—of not being near anywhere. After a train ride and a tiresome, hilly drive in a rented trap, behind a horse that clearly found the trip far more tiresome than I did, I arrived in an exquisitely remote rural town less than forty miles from London. It was far larger than I expected. Perhaps not being close to anywhere added to its importance for the surrounding farmers. I drove through its several streets and pondered the variety of shops and businesses—the most prosperous of which seemed to be that of Z. Farncombe, the local blacksmith, whose sign ungrammatically proclaimed, General Smith and Shoeing.

Adopting a favourite role of mine, I became a visiting estate agent. I was looking for parcels of land which would form an estate for a gentleman who preferred to remain anonymous. Locals immediately assumed that some great nobleman wanted to build a stately home remote from the city for rural living, fishing, and shooting, which would have provided an important new source of money for the locality, and they reacted enthusiastically. They not only answered my questions eagerly, but they virtually pressed information upon me.

In less than an hour I knew all about Pangstead and its Vicar, and I felt far more confused than I had been when I arrived. The Reverend Theobald Eynon was not merely a rural clergyman; he was a saint. He helped the poor. He sent deserving young men to the university. He gave support to the sick and the elderly. The fine old medieval church that had been falling into disrepair when he arrived had been renovated and restored by him. A complete inventory of his virtues would have occupied me for a week. No one had an unkind word to say about him.

I next drove to the church and passed some time there before proceeding to the vicarage. I gave it a thorough inspection, first outside and then, under the watchful gaze of the sexton, inside. The sexton greeted me warmly, gave me the freedom of the place with a wave of his hand when I said I merely wanted to see the church, but kept an eye on me anyway.

The church dated from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. It was surprisingly large, like many of the old churches. It couldn’t have been in better condition if it had been built the previous year. From the outside, a new roof was evident along with numerous touches of restoration. The Vicar had had the entire fabric gone over with no thought to the expense. Townsfolk were especially proud of the stained glass windows he’d had added during the renovations. Observed from the inside, they proved to be of surprising beauty. The interior featured a magnificently carved rood-screen; bright, colourful wall paintings; a finely carved pulpit; a richly embroidered altarpiece; an ornate chest whose secure lock proclaimed that it contained the church’s plate—the inventory became staggering. An obviously new organ; box pews and benches with carving; a carved lectern; new choir stalls, also carved; the Reverend Theobald Eynon had invested a fortune in refurbishing and renovating a church that had been old but in no way remarkable.

Finally I allowed the sexton to relax and went to call on the author of these staggering improvements. At the vicarage, which also showed signs of recent renovation, a maid greeted me with the unwelcome news that the Vicar was down for the day. That startled me but only for a moment. The modest account of his personal history in Crockford’s Clerical Directory had mentioned that he was an alumnus of Lincoln College, Oxford; obviously he still employed the college expression for being in London, and the maid was mimicking him.

“When will he return?” I asked.

“He is always down on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. He has a business to see to. He leaves Monday night and usually returns Thursday morning.” She paused. “But not always. Would you care to consult with one of the curates?”

I concealed my surprise. The townsfolk hadn’t mentioned curates. The Vicar was given credit for everything. “How many are there?” I asked.

“There are three.”

A parish with an absentee vicar was, unfortunately, not a rarity, but this humble rural parish not only had a restored and refurbished church upon which huge sums of money had been lavished, but it had three curates to assist a vicar who should have been able to manage its affairs by himself.

Not wanting to stir up curiosity, I thanked the maid and told her I would prefer to call again on a day when the Vicar wasn’t down. I had ample time to spare before my return train, so I wandered about the village and picked up what additional information I could. Then I set out on the tedious journey back to London.

“I know where the profits from the river thefts are going,” I told Lady Sara when I arrived at Connaught Mews.

She frowned. She disapproved of what she called impetuous deductions. “Tell me,” she said.

I described Pangstead and detailed the repairs and improvements lavished on the church and vicarage. “Not only that, but the Reverend Theobald is benefactor to all of the poor families in the parish,” I added. “The local people revere him. He is the most popular spiritual leader the parish has ever had. This raises a fine point of religious dogma. If a vicar steals and uses the money for noble and generous purposes, is that as great a sin as if he were to steal and greedily spend the profits on himself?”

“You said he was down today and tomorrow. Call on him tomorrow before he goes back to Pangstead.”

She briefed me on what she had learned about Eynon Brothers Company. It had been founded with a family inheritance when Theobald was still a child, and he had been a one-third owner from the beginning. His two elder brothers ran the firm with immense success for many years, but from the time he left Oxford, he had spent one day a week in London keeping tabs on the family business. When, several years before, both of his brothers were lost at sea on one of their own ships, he became sole owner by inheritance of a thriving importing business. He decided to take charge of it himself until he found a suitable buyer, and, to his immense surprise, he found that he enjoyed the work and was able to make a considerable success of it.

“Can one learn to run an importing business successfully by spending one day a week at it?” I asked sceptically. “I had no idea it was so easy.”

“It was one day a week for almost thirty-five years,” Lady Sara pointed out. “What he accomplished would depend on how he spent that one day.”

Since then, he had been devoting two or three days a week to the business. Running Eynon Brothers Company on two or three days a week struck me as even more improbable than learning to run it on a one day a week.

The next morning I called at the Eynon Brothers Company headquarters, which was located a short distance below St. Katharine Dock at Brothers Wharf. The date over the door of the stately neo-gothic warehouse building informed me that it had been erected two decades earlier.

I sent in a card identifying me as Colin Quick, secretary to Lady Sara Varnley, and the Reverend Theobald sent for me at once, greeted me effusively, and asked what service he could offer me.

I expected to find a gaunt, ascetic type of person who had dedicated his life to good works. Instead, I found a plump, jovial, balding man who obviously enjoyed life, enjoyed people, and was enjoying the sense of power he experienced both in running a prosperous company and in disposing of an unneeded large income on worthy projects.

“I called to ask a small favour,” I said. “Lady Sara was traveling in Kent last summer, and she had the pleasure of visiting your church. She was impressed with all that you have done for it. Now she is considering a similar project with the church on her family’s estate in Somerset. She wonders if you would be so kind as to furnish her with the names of your artists and architects.”

He beamed his pleasure and wrote out names and addresses for me himself. We exchanged pleasantries, I remarked on the splendid view of the Thames he had from his office, and he took me to one of the windows and enthusiastically directed my attention to this and that. I mentioned in passing that he must have found the transition from cleric to trading magnate an odd one to master even though he obviously was thriving on it. He said candidly that it was far easier than he had expected, and he was enjoying it. I thanked him for his time and took my leave of him.

I told Lady Sara later, “Either he is innocent, or he is the most hypocritical villain I have ever encountered.”

“You have fallen into the deplorable habit of confusing your opinions with your facts,” she remarked irritably. “A fact remains a fact in any association. An opinion without facts to support it is no better than speculation.” She paused. “It is a fact that the river thefts started about the time the Reverend Theobald took over sole ownership of Eynon Brothers Company. It is also a fact that his church connection provides him with excellent cover for illicit activities. One puzzle remains, as you have already pointed out. Would he be able, during the two or three days a week he spends in London, to successfully run his trading company and a large and enormously complex theft ring as well?”

She had been curious about the attitude of the Reverend Theobald’s bishop toward such highly irregular activity, and she had telephoned him. Not only did the bishop know all about it, but the situation had his full approval. Eynon certainly wasn’t neglecting his parish duties. The bishop viewed Pangstead as the best-run parish in England. He was not aware of a single complaint, either on the part of parishioners or outsiders. The parish—in fact, the entire country—was benefiting enormously from Eynon’s two or three days in London. The wealth he acquired was supporting not only charities and church improvements in Pangstead but church projects all over England.

The next step was to maintain a continuous watch on Prout’s Mill and on the Eynon Brothers headquarters. This proved difficult, but Lady Sara equipped several costermongers with hidden cameras—one of the new models from the Eastman Company that took numerous photographs on a roll of film—and kept one or two of them in both neighbourhoods all day long. They were to photograph a certain type of caller. Our assumption was that the Reverend Theobald had to have help in his illicit enterprises. Two or three days a week simply was not enough to create the overwhelming crime wave we were contending with, and his background argued against his running such an enterprise by himself. We were looking for his partner or partners. They would be men of considerable affluence who were accustomed to controlling large enterprises and who had the ability to create an ingenious scheme for large-scale theft as well as the organization essential for carrying it out. In short, we were looking for Magnates of Crime.

Well-dressed businessmen were not often seen around the docks, and the results were meagre. The first week produced only four likely photographs. With the help of friends in the business community, Lady Sara was able to identify them, and she passed the names to me for further investigation and moved one set of pegs two holes forward on the cribbage board. Our river theft case finally had some suspects.

Malcolm Gavin owned and ran Malcolm Gavin Ltd., which impressed me as a piddling excuse for a trading company. Gavin, on the other hand, was surprisingly wealthy, and his insignificant company seemed to be his only source of income. He was the swashbuckling type with a tall, powerful body, and drooping moustaches. I told Lady Sara, “He should have been a pirate or a highwayman.” She answered, “Perhaps he is.”

Alban Ryman never would have attained magnate status if his father hadn’t founded and developed a successful business, Manley Ryman Ltd. The firm specialized in the Baltic trade. Ryman himself was a colourless individual who lived a quiet life with his family. Since his father’s death, he had extended the company’s operations—overextended them, some said—and he had been in financial difficulties a few years earlier. Now he was said to be recovering.

Innes Cameron was the head of Cameron & Company Ltd., a Scottish importing firm. He was a dour middle-aged man with a florid face. He was said to be generous to friends and totally unforgiving to enemies and competitors.

Grant Stoffer was another son who inherited a business and promptly overextended himself. George Stoffer & Company had been highly successful under his father’s guidence. Grant Stoffer merged it with two other firms and almost ruined it in the process. The firm had barely survived, but now its health was said to be improving.

With the Reverend Theobald Eynon, this gave us five candidates for the Magnate of Crime role or roles. I made my own choice at once—Malcolm Gavin, who not only had unexplained wealth, but who was the only one of the five who actually looked the part. Of course his adroitly making use of ships and warehouses belonging to Eynon Brothers Company pointed to the involvement of the Reverend Theobald as well.

We were debating this matter on a dreary, rainy Sunday afternoon when the routine watch on Clarke-Ivatt ended suddenly. There was a telephone call. Clarke-Ivatt had jumped his rails and taken a trip to Fulham. Parsimonious as ever, he had walked—in the rain—from the Hotel Suisse to Charing Cross Station, where he took the Metropolitan Railway to Gloucester Road. From the Gloucester Road Station he took a cab to Fulham. His destination was a house in a neighbourhood near Munster Road.

Lady Sara had prepared for this eventuality by stationing three street vendors near the hotel. They were men who worked for her often and could be relied upon. All three had followed Clarke-Ivatt by cab from Gloucester Road. Two were watching the house while the third telephoned his report.

“Clarke-Ivatt is finally passing along the information he has gathered,” Lady Sara told me. “Perhaps he is also collecting his wages. That means he may be leaving London soon. The vendors will watch the Fulham address until we can make other arrangements. Needless to say, we must find out who lives there as quickly as possible. You can go to Fulham now and decide what should be done. I’ll send Rick and Charles to watch the Hotel Suisse. They will be ready to follow Clarke-Ivatt when he leaves.”

One of the grooms drove me to Fulham in Lady Sara’s four wheeler. On a rainy Sunday, Munster Road was a thoroughly unattractive thoroughfare, though it probably bustled with excitement and commerce on Saturday nights. The neighbourhood Clarke-Ivatt was visiting also looked dreary despite the fact that someone had tried, unsuccessfully, to add a touch of elegance to the long, bleak rows of brick terraces by giving every house in the street a balcony over its front door.

There were no shops nearer than Munster Road, and, on a Sunday night, there was no traffic. Probably there was little traffic at any time. It would be a difficult address to watch by day. On a rainy night there were no problems, however, and I noticed a “Vacancy” sign in a window across the street that could be investigated the next morning.

I left the three vendors to their chore of watching the house and went in the four wheeler to search for a public telephone—a frustrating task on a rainy night in a London Suburb where no post office was open. I finally found one in the Kensington High Street Metropolitan Railway station.

I telephoned Lady Sara. I knew without enquiring that none of the vendors would have been acceptable as a tenant in that neighbourhood. I thought the situation called for a quiet, respectable-looking, elderly couple. Lady Sara agreed.

Clarke-Ivatt left shortly before midnight, having had a conference lasting more than six hours. His host saw him to the door. Unfortunately, it wasn’t possible to see what the host looked like in the dim light that leaked out when the door was opened. Two of the vendors followed Clarke-Ivatt back to the Hotel Suisse, where they turned the watch on him over to Rick and Charles and went back to Fulham.

About the time the next morning that Clarke-Ivatt was boarding a Great Western train at Paddington with Rick and Charles on his heels, a polite, elderly couple, a Mr. and Mrs. Barugh, were calling at the Fulham home of a widow, a Mrs. Adnett, to discuss her “Vacancy” sign. By noon, they were settled in their new quarters. The three exhausted street vendors were permitted to go home.

Later that day, I called to see the Barughs and their new residence and was introduced to Mrs. Adnett as Mrs. Barugh’s nephew, a solicitor’s clerk. The moment the door closed, I went to the window and made use of a telescope the Barughs had brought with them in their luggage. The view was excellent.

The Barughs were soon on familiar terms with their landlady and several of the neighbors, and they learned as much as was known locally about the occupants of the house Clarke-Ivatt had visited. The head of the household was known as Douglas Forbes, a railway employee who frequently had to work nights. Every caller was studied carefully with the telescope and photographed when possible. The three street vendors kept a remote watch on the house during the day, a close watch at night, and followed those who called there.

Within three days, we had identified Mr. Douglas Forbes and several of the callers. Forbes was Fast Freddy Lipford, a veteran burglar with a long record of malefactions. He was called “Fast Freddy” because of his fleetness afoot, which sometimes enabled him to avoid the consequences of the occasional miscalculation or bad luck all burglers suffer from time to time. The visitors we identified also were burglars well known to the police.

In the meantime, Rick and Charles had learned that Clarke-Ivatt was one Travis McGill, black sheep of a respectable Scottish family that had educated him well, repeatedly paid off his debts, bought his way out of frequent scrapes, and finally given up and threw him out. Now he was a staid and well-to-do citizen of Bristol with a wife who had been his housekeeper, several small children, and a stationery shop his wife ran for him while he was away for several weeks each autumn on unexplained business. Although the shop was a small one, it seemed to be flourishing, and McGill the stationer always paid his bills promptly, caused no one any trouble, and was highly respected by his customers for his politeness, his willingness to be of service, and the variety of his stock. His only character defect seemed to be a ridiculous frugality, which his friends and neighbours found amusing—the more so because it was so obviously unnecessary in such a thriving shopkeeper.

Lady Sara frowned when she read the report about the wife and small children. The consequence of crime—and the apprehension of a criminal—weighed on her the heaviest when the criminal had a family. However, the burglary ring was making McGill and several others prosperous and had financed the move to Fulham of Fast Freddie and his family, and it had to be stopped.

Lady Sara jubilantly moved the Clarke-Ivatt pegs on the giant cribbage board two thirds of the way to the game holes and sent for Chief Inspector Mewer. The only question remaining was how best to bag the lot.

The Chief Inspector left the conference with a pleased look on his face. Fast Freddie’s elevation of himself and his family to social respectability in Fulham had escaped police notice. Scotland Yard was wondering what had happened to him. The breakup of his entire ring was now only a matter of time, and the Chief Inspector relished the prospect.

Lady Sara did not share his elation. This single success in no way compensated for the three byways where pegs were still stalled near the starting holes.