Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective

by Andrew Forrester

The Newtons and Mr. Paterson had been passing an evening at the Dove Hotel, and had taken rather more brandy-and-water than any rational idea of temperance would sanction. Mr. Paterson left the Dove before the Newtons.

His way lay across a canal, and in the morning he was found drowned. He had tumbled, as it appeared, somehow over the low parapet into the water. The Newtons left the house after him, and found their way home to their beds in safety. A coroner’s inquest sat upon the body of the deceased, and returned an open verdict of “Found drowned.” Some people in the town and neighbourhood, among whom were the Newtons, professed much grief at the calamity. The new firm said, indeed, it appeared as if the place and all connected with it were under a spell or a brand. They declared that it seemed as if Providence had resolved nothing should prosper in connexion with this particular manufactory. How, or for what reason, they could not tell; but here was the death, it might be by accident, or it might be by suicide, in a state of drunkenness, of their predecessor, not long after they had lost every thing (as they in the freedom of their language said they had) through a fire on the premises.

The insurance company heard of the death of Mr. Paterson, and the secretary got it into his head that the Newtons were incendiaries and murderers—that they had killed this man for some evil reason best known to themselves. He consulted the solicitors of the company, and they employed me to sift the mystery, and, if it turned out that the secretary’s suspicions were justifiable, to spare no trouble or expense in obtaining evidence upon which to prosecute the alleged miscreants.

I went down secretly, and investigated all the circumstances as far as I could. I collected a variety of little scraps of fact, which left no doubt in my mind that the secretary was right. I came, indeed, to the conclusion that these Newtons were the vilest wretches who had for a long time been permitted to escape the hangman. Yet, frankly let me say, I could not gather enough information on which to rest an indictment with the likelihood of securing a conviction.

I need hardly point out to the reader how very complete my evidence must have been before I could have recommended the company to incur the risk of a prosecution. If, for instance, they failed in conclusively establishing the guilt of the insurers, the institution would be irreparably damaged in public estimation. Popular opinion, and newspaper commentators, would say the company set up this odious defence in order to escape payment of a just claim. The accused would be elevated into the ranks of martyrdom. The company would have to pay all that was demanded from them, with costs, and they might almost as well afterwards give up business, or set the lawyers to work to liquidate the affairs of their institution in Chancery. So that after laying my statement in detail before the solicitors of the company (who paid me handsomely for my services), they drew up a report with their comments and opinions upon my facts; the matter was considered by the board of directors, and there for the time it dropped.

It was not exactly dropped either. I was employed to keep my eye upon the Newtons without intermission for a couple of years, if I felt it necessary to prolong the scrutiny so far—which instructions I had no unwillingness to obey.

Through the medium of several of my assistants, who were changed from time to time, the subsequent career of these persons was noted down with a degree of accuracy which afterwards proved very useful to the interests of metropolitan insurance companies in particular, and to the interests of society and the cause of justice in general.

Among the persons in the town where the dismantled factory was situate whose acquaintance I made, and whose confidence I thought I had gained, was the widow of the drowned late proprietor. She grieved over the premature loss of her husband, but had no apparent suspicion, or at least disclosed to me no suspicion, that he had met his death by foul play. I, among other expedients, condoled with her, discoursed about the lamentable effects of intoxication, eulogised the memory of her husband, lightly and softly touching the subject of that peculiar weakness for the bottle which had led to his untimely death. But none of these conversations elicited from her any suggestion that he had been murdered by the Newtons.

Not long after the money had been paid I discovered that, clever as I thought I had been, I had been outwitted; but not by the Newtons, about whom let there be no further mystery with the reader. They were what the secretary had thought, and what I had become convinced—they were vile wretches, fit for the hangman, and rotten-ripe for the gallows. I had been outwitted by a woman’s ingenuity. No one suspected me or my mission in the town (as it afterwards turned out) except the widow Paterson. She had somehow got to know my name and real character, and had been fencing with me or humbugging me, and was prepared, when occasion or opportunity arose, to use me. At the risk of losing some of my prestige with the reader, I am frank enough to fairly admit this.

Shortly after Messrs. Newton Brothers had received the reward of their villany from the fears of the insurance company, and, so to speak, through the broken links in the evidence of their rascality and scoundrelism, an anonymous letter was received by me, the substance of which I may communicate to the reader. It was a statement in effect that the insurance company had been robbed by the Newtons, who had set fire to their own factory in order to achieve their ends; and that the writer was, under proper guarantees, disposed to put me on the track of a successful investigation into the mystery of the crime. The writer required that I should answer the letter, in the first place, by an advertisement in the second column of the Times, on the morning of the third day after receipt of the letter. The form of that advertisement was given me, which I was only to insert if I consented to the terms, could give the required guarantees, and was prepared to follow up the clue to be communicated to me.