51. THE CASE OF THE EMPTY WAREHOUSE

A warehouse is emptied at the dead of night....

Holmes gave the impression of being a man-sized arachnid as he pounced from point to point on the bare floor and peered so closely that I swear his nose touched it from time to time.

We were in a large warehouse in which all manner of goods had been stored for a major High Street department store and which had mysteriously been emptied of almost every single object over one night.

“It would have taken an army, Holmes,” I muttered, “the space is huge and Mr Tillotson said it was crammed from floor to ceiling and that most of the articles stolen were somewhat delicate and needed handling with care, especially, he said, the lady’s … er … lingerie.”

“It would seem that way,” admitted Holmes, “yet Mr Tillotson assures us that he saw it only yesterday before he left for his home in Drayton Edge and that every package was in place, every article whole and undamaged and everything satisfactory before he signed the stock sheet.”

“Then how could it have been emptied overnight with nobody noticing a fleet of vehicles lined up outside and nobody hearing anything?” I asked.

“It would seem to have been impossible, yet we are assured that it happened,” muttered Holmes.

“What about Mr Tillotson? Is he an honest broker?” I queried, though to tell the truth I had found the man to be a delight to deal with.

“I reckon myself to be as fair a judge of character as any man, and I would be prepared to stake my reputation on his honesty,” said Holmes, leaping once again to one side and peering through his unique magnifying glass at a mark on the floor. “Say, Watson, what do you make of this?” he asked.

I stared and could see nothing until he held the glass in front of my eyes. “A grain or two of sand?” I queried.

“Precisely, Watson,” he smiled at me, “and of itself I’m sure it has little significance, but I have seen several other traces of what looks to me like Eastbourne sand, too may to be explained away by calling them incidental. What, I am tempted to ask, is a floor in a London warehouse doing being smeared with Eastbourne sand?”

“There’s nothing special about Eastbourne sand surely?” I asked, “and even though you have detected several traces, not enough to mean very much?”

“It is a clue, Watson, and leads me towards the solution,” he smiled. “Now take a look here, along this wall where it meets the floor. What do you see?”

I looked, perplexed. “A wall and the floor, Holmes,” I grunted.

“And nothing else?” he asked.

“There are smears of a sort, maybe scratches, something like that,” I admitted.

“Exactly,” he grinned, “and where do they lead?”

“They appear to disappear under the wall,” I said, and then “but that’s not possible!” I ejaculated. “Surely the wall has been here since the warehouse was first erected, yet the scratches look to be fairly recent...”

“You are reading the evidence like a professional,” smiled Holmes. “Now attend to this,” and he led me towards the main entrance to the warehouse. “Look at the floor and what do you see?”

I gazed again at the floor. It seemed that Holmes had become obsessed by flooring in a way that I found hard, initially, to understand.

“It looks perfectly normal to me,” I confessed.

“It does indeed,” he said, nodding his head, “indeed, it is so normal as to indicate that whoever had the job of sweeping it had, over the years, been somewhat lazy and has left dust and dirt behind him when he should have more carefully swept it up. But it tells me more than that. If heavy containers, cases, boxes and the like, were moved in haste from this room to the world outside they would most probably have been pushed and slid along. They would have led marks of their passing, as would the feet of those doing the pushing. But there is nothing like that. There has been no coming and going by an army of men this way, Watson. We and a handful of others have been in, but nobody else.”

“Of course,” I nodded.

“So what do we have?” asked Holmes keenly.

“I shook my head. “It’s all a bit odd to me,” I confessed, “and we are no closer to the answer, I would have thought.”

The manager, Mr Tillotson, came through the door, shaking his head and looking thoroughly morose.

“I have been ordered off the premises,” he muttered, “by the owners who have decided that such a monumental theft is my fault. They maintain that I must have left some door unlocked or some entrance open, and therefore I am dismissed from their service.”

“That’s a bit harsh!” I exclaimed.

“They’re like that,” he grunted, “only last month they dismissed dear Mrs Florry from her work in the lingerie department after thirty years of honest service because a garment was found to have a tear in it. I mean, one tear after thirty years, and it can’t have been her that tore it!”

“Also harsh,” I agreed.

“That’s how they make so much profit,” he sighed. “They’re wealthy men, you know, very wealthy, and it’s all on the backs of we who toil long hours, and the only gratitude we receive is dismissal at the least difficulty.”

“You called the lingerie woman dear Miss Florrie,” remarked Holmes, “and I understand that to use the adjective dear usually means a special understanding?”

“A man can refer to a lady as a dear without there being anything in it!” objected Mr Tillotson. “I often do. Later, when I’m having a gill in the hostelry by my home I might tell my friends that I’ve been in the company of dear Sherlock Holmes, and that won’t mean anything special!”

Holmes smiled. “Point taken,” he concurred, “but in this instance I believe you have a special, what shall we call it, feeling for Mrs Florrie?”

“I’ve tried to help her since her man passed away, though Bert Florrie was hardly the nicest man around,” confessed Mr Tillotson. “he could be harsh to her, and that’s a fact.”

“And then the store managers dismiss her?” asked Holmes.

“They did, and for not her fault!” almost shouted the warehouse manager.

“Tell me, how often did the big men, the owners and managers of the store, come here, to the warehouse?” asked Holmes.

“What? Them? They never would, not ever!” almost laughed Tillotson. “They wouldn’t soil their feet on such a mundane task as looking at their stock in here!”

“So they wouldn’t instantly realise when it shrunk?” demanded Holmes.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at...” flustered Mr Tillotson.

“Oh, but I think you do,” murmured Holmes quietly. “I do believe that the huge theft you reported and which you were sure would lead to your dismissal never actually happened, but that you and with the assistance of the good Mrs Florrie, lingerie expert, spent last night in here, erecting a partition to look exactly like a wall, with a row of bricks cemented in place and a partition placed onto it, and placing all of the apparently stolen stock on one side of it whilst maintaining that the whole lot was stolen from the empty half. You thought that nobody would be any wiser, and to make your point solid you invited Sherlock Holmes to examine an apparently impossible theft. But it never happened did it, Mr Tillotson? How you must have laboured at home building a flimsy wall in sections and erecting them in here last night, and then sliding box after box into one side and hiding the whole lot by erecting a final section of artificial wall. And then, I suppose, you intended to siphon off the goodies in the concealed section at your convenience and maybe even selling them back to the store yourself, disguised, no doubt as a manufacturer’s agent. Very clever!”

“Holmes!” I gasped, “Well I never!”

“Oh, I’m undone...” wept Mr Tillotson.

“And the widow Florrie? What part did she really play?” asked Holmes.

“Tea,” sobbed Tillotson, “she kept me going with cups of tea… And when it was over we was to get wed. The two of us, and her in the best lingerie available this side of the channel!”

“And now?” asked Holmes.

“That’s up to you, sir,” wept Tillotson.

“Let’s say I never came,” decided Holmes, “let’s say your scheme works. Would you have been happy? Looking over yours and Mrs Florrie’s shoulders for a constable with his truncheon in his hand, to arrest you?”

He shook his head. “I hadn’t thought of it that way, sir,” he mumbled.

“Then this is what you must do. I judge you to be a decent and honest man, so return tonight and take away your false wall and tell the owners of the department store that you have solved their problem by employing the detective Sherlock Holmes at your own expense and on their behalf. And I will tell them what a gem you are and how lucky they are to employ you and that I will recommend you for a special award from the King… that should both return your job to you and, if you’re lucky, get you extra remuneration.”

“Oh, sir….” he wept.

“And tell Mrs Florrie to make sure she doesn’t wear the very special underwear she took away with her last night, not in the region of the store where it might be accidentally discovered anyway...”

© Peter Rogerson 28.09.17