The Ponson case

by Freeman Wills Crofts

‘Yes. I forget what it was, but I sent the shoes to the parcels office at St Pancras.’

In reply to a further question the man said he recalled the names of Ponson and Halford.

The Inspector was considerably puzzled by what he had heard, and that evening he lit a cigar and settled down to consider it. In the first place, Austin’s statement that he had bought the shoes on that Monday was true. But how did he know their number? The butler, Tanner remembered, had said that his master had never had a similar pair. For a long time he pondered over the problem, but the only thing that seemed to him clear was that some trick had been played. But at last a possible solution occurred to him. What if there were two of them in it—Austin and an accomplice? The accomplice buys a pair of shoes and sends Austin the number so that he may get a precisely similar pair. Then on the Wednesday night while Austin, wearing one pair, is at Luce Manor, the confederate, wearing the other, is making the tracks at the Abbey.

At first this seemed to Tanner to account for the facts, but then he recollected that the dent on the sole of one shoe proved that the pair which made the tracks at the Abbey was Austin’s pair—the pair which had been in the butler’s charge till he, Tanner, received it. Unless, therefore, Austin and his accomplice had exchanged shoes at the end of the excursion, this theory would not work.

Suddenly another idea came into the Inspector’s mind, at which he slapped his thigh, and smiled to himself. ‘Guess I’m on to it this time,’ he muttered, as he went up to bed, well pleased with his day’s work.

To test the soundness of his new supposition, he continued next morning the inquiry he had been making on the previous afternoon—interrogating the shoe shop salesmen for information as to Austin’s purchases. He began with the tenth branch, as if he had discovered nothing at the ninth. But here his efforts met with no success. Nor did they at the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth. But at the fourteenth, with a feeling of pleased triumph, he discovered what he had hoped to find.

At this shop he inquired, as before, if any of the assistants recollected a man like that of the photo he showed having purchased a pair of shoes of the given number. At once he had an affirmative response. One salesman remembered Austin having called on the Monday in question, and after having been carefully fitted, having bought the shoes. The salesman had according to his usual custom handed Austin a card bearing the number of the shoes. He had offered to send the parcel, but Austin had said he was running for a train and would take it with him. The transaction had occurred about three o’clock.

‘Bully for me!’ thought Tanner as he drove to St Pancras, en route for Halford. ‘See what a little imagination does!’

The theory he had evolved on the previous night now seemed not unlikely to be the truth. According to it, Austin had gone to town on the Monday and purchased two identical pairs of shoes. The first he had had fitted in the usual way in one shop; the second had been selected in another shop as being of the same number as the first. This had been rendered possible by carrying out the purchases in two different branch shops of the same firm. One pair he had bought openly giving his name and having the parcel sent to St Pancras; the other transaction he intended to remain a secret.

Arrived at his home, Austin had carried out the same tactics. One pair he had spoken of and given into his butler’s charge; the other he had locked away privately. No one was supposed to know, and no one did know, that he had purchased more than one pair.