"He will present you with a magnificent alibi, an alibi that cannot be gainsaid." GABORIAU: L 'Affaire Lerouge.

The greatest apostle of the matter of fact is Mr. Freeman Wills Crofts. Mr. Crofts is an Irishman, born in Dublin of an old County Cork family. He is a keen musician; was organist at Coleraine Parish Church, and has trained many prize-winning choirs. By profession, however, he is a civil engineer, having worked for many years on the L.M.S. Railway as chief-assistant engineer to the Northern Counties Committee. This fact will at once account for the important part played by the railways in his novels and for his extraordinary knowledge of different localities.

Indeed, Mr. Crofts's writing derives much of its effectiveness from the introduction of local colour. His novels have their setting in some precise district. Thus, to those who already know that particular district, there is an added charm. Whether the scene is the Welsh coast, or the Yorkshire moors, or Southampton, or Castle Douglas, he retains throughout his uncanny accuracy. The denouement of The Starve] Tragedy takes place in the Waverley Station at Edinburgh, and not in some imaginary Grand Central. If he describes a lane, a level-crossing, or a bridge in some district, you can take a train there and see these self-same objects for yourself. For Mr. Crofts goes over his ground before he pens a line. I have seen actual snapshots taken by Mr. Crofts of several key positions described in Sir John Magill's Last Journey. Not the least interesting point about them was the pencilling on their backs of the most intriguing stage directions—"Path taken by So-and-So."

Mr. Crofts prefers the unvarnished narrative, and it is only when he would adorn his tale with these geographical asides, or when he would plunge into the treacherous waters of sensationalism, that his style seems to lose its hundred per cent. efficiency. Even his crimes, cold and premeditated as they appear in the dispassionate telling of them, lack that gusto which would serve to make them more attractive and also more credible. There is no careless rapture about his criminals, no sense of humour, no emotion. His writing is for the most part succinct and business-like, and resembles a well-informed newspaper article.

This treatment has two prominent weaknesses. In the first place the more matter of fact Mr. Crofts becomes, the more liable is he to fly to cliches of expression. Thus Inspector French is persuaded to "have something to fortify his inner man"; L'Affaire Magill is "terribly baffling," and so forth. The besprinkling of his text with these paste-jewelled phrases is an unnecessary fault, and, therefore, hard to forgive. Secondly, Mr. Crofts is so carried away by his love for detail that he exalts the trivial to a false prominence. Where any other writer would simply have said, "He travelled by night to Stranraer," Mr. Crofts gives us pages of description made up of paragraphs like the following:—

He began, therefore, by engaging a sleeping berth at Euston. On inquiry he was directed to a stationmaster's office on No. 6 platform. There a clerk made the reservations, handing him a voucher. This voucher he presented at the booking office when taking his tickets.… The train left at seven-forty from No. 12 platform.…His name was on the list on the window of the sleeping car.

Take again such a paragraph as the following:—

But later the excellent dinner served while the train ran through the pleasant country between Abbéville and Amiens brought him to a more quiescent mood, and over a good cigar and a cup of such coffee as he had seldom before tasted, he complacently watched day fade into night. About half-past six o'clock next morning he followed the example of the countless British predecessors, and climbed down on the long platform at Bale to drink his morning coffee.

One is at liberty to argue that by such devices the action is held up, that the rattle of coffee cups is out of place in the detective story. Yet (Mr. Crofts might reply) what better respite from concentration is there for the detective who scorns Trade Union hours? What more pleasant rest-and-be-thankful for the conscientious reader who takes a hand in the case?

Along with Dr. Austin Freeman, Mr. Crofts has acquired the unenviable reputation in certain quarters of being a "highbrow." This is a comic anomaly, for they both cultivate unashamedly a prosaic reality. The charge of high-browism—always snobbish or else it is a misnomer—denotes a strong dissatisfaction with certain alleged poses. Mr. Crofts cannot be a highbrow qua realist. Let us dismiss this absurd charge; but let us also mention the imputed faults which have given birth to the libel.

The sensational element, it is true, is minimised in the typical Wills Crofts novel. There is plenty of action, but not apparently of that type of action in request by the fault finder. The reports of pistol shots are often in "indirect speech." The suspense is thus sometimes more the detective's than our own. But even so there are exceptions. Several of his novels, in particular the early ones, combine adventure with detection. Even when in more serious vein, Mr. Crofts does let himself go at the denouement. A Mills bomb nearly wrecks the saloon bar in the penultimate chapter of The Starve] Tragedy. And Inspector French all but finds his quietus at the end of The Sea Mystery. In these close shaves, one must confess, Mr. Crofts seems rather off colour. He cannot keep his cake till it seemed a permanency, only to gobble it up for an effect so long despised.

Then again, the action being moulded to fit certain measurements, there is a similarity of situation, a clockwork movement. In reading the average Wills Crofts novel one is conscious each time of experiencing very much the same "thought-process." His plots run like his railway trains. This allows one's reason or intuition to take one a chapter ahead of Inspector French. The "leads," the "startling new lines" along which the detective plunges out of the blue at regular intervals beckon to one's intelligence and shout for premature recognition. To forecast the state of affairs twenty pages after is genuine solace to the reader; it is flattering. But there, as a rule, his self-sufficiency ends. If the solution of each step in the investigation actually coincides with his pretty prognostications, the denouement will shatter his complacency.

In construction he is the supreme technician. It is this quality that has earned for him an international reputation in Europe and America, and made him an Oracle of Detective Fiction, for whose praise publishers would go far to bartering their souls—this quality, too, that all but drew enthusiasm from the Saturday Review. No writer of detective fiction has ever produced a neater plot. Every brick fits exactly into the edifice. The plots of Gaboriau are not more exquisitely complicated. In Mr. Crofts's technique there are two great merits. The first is the cunning creation of the central idea, and the other the round-about rediscovery of it. A lesser artist than Mr. Crofts would have been severely handicapped by the conscientious deference to realism just mentioned.

To set off the sombre background he has his fireworks. He is an admirable conjurer, and a prolific "ideas-man." And because he is prolific, his tricks are seldom expanded into themes. Here is a haphazard selection—the changing of the numbers on the lorries and the smuggling of the pit-props in The Pit-Prop Syndicate. The drugging, and the solution of the diagrammatic cipher in The Cheyne Mystery. The solution of the dictionary cipher in Inspector French's Greatest Case. The planting of the twenty-pound notes in The Starvel Tragedy. The adventures with the rope ladder in Sir John Magill's Last Journey.

The realist having made his bed has got to lie in it. Of a necessity it must ever be sagging, for all the time he must be in the know. A knowledge of medicine and chemistry was indispensable to him even in the days of Sherlock Holmes. He must besides be as familiar with police methods as Mr. Edgar Wallace. Like Miss Sayers he must have common law and legal procedure at his finger tips. All this knowledge emanates without any gushing from Mr. Crofts. He is a criminologist and a cryptologist. I imagine he is a close student of the technical press, and files of Police Journals and Reviews adorn his shelves. He can tell one all about banking and brokerage; customs and excise; distilling; motor engines; seacraft, and a hundred and one different subjects. He approximates to the old-fashioned sleuth on whose omniscience emphasis was so plaintively but so necessarily laid.

In short, there are few writers in whom one could find such a wealth of interesting detail. If one were to count up to a hundred technical details in a story of his, one would be hard put to it to find a single flaw. I have heard that legal and medical experts have sat in judgement on his novels, prior to their publication and have picked out at the most three or four possible, but by no means certain, errors.

The piece de re'sistance of his realism is his characterisation of the detective, that is of Inspector French, for the Burnleys, the Tanners and the Willises are only other editions of this favourite. The Inspector French that frowns on one from the insets on the dust wrappers seems quite an ordinary young man, clean-shaven, sharp of feature, well groomed and neatly dressed—just such a young man, in fact, as might adorn an advertisement of Austin Reed's or Three Nuns Tobacco. In the Elysian Fields he will assuredly be prejudged a gate-crasher by Sherlock Holmes and the super-detectives. His private life can boast no quixotry, no aesthetic capers. Being an ordinary sort of chap, it did not surprise us to learn that he was married. His Emily—true to the associations that that name has acquired—sits at home in their suburban villa knitting his socks. Mr. Crofts, seldom obsequious to the conventionalities, throws an unnecessary bouquet to contemporary fashion.

When Inspector French felt really up against it in the conduct of a case, it was his invariable habit to recount the circumstances in the fullest detail to his wife. Sometimes she interjected a remark, sometimes she didn't… but she listened to what he said, and occasionally expressed an opinion, or, as he called it, 'took a notion.' And more than once it happened that these notions had thrown quite a different light on the point at issue, a light which in at least two cases had indicated the line of research which had eventually cleared up the mystery.

In the circumstances it was natural that Mr. Crofts should have had no use for "the superior amateur." His detective is the professional expert, the C.I.D. man, caring more for the material guerdon of advancement and an increase of salary than the fulsome flattery of a neighbour. So far he remains in the force (although merely from the point of view of realism Mr. Crofts must have recently considered French's resignation). He is energetic, ambitious, but not infallible; deferential to his superiors, he recognises the guiding genius of Chief-Inspector Mitchell and the Big Four.

The Inspector's methods are a true reflection of the man. He worries things out and is always "up against it." He never jumps to a conclusion, and that is the great difference between him and the Father Browns and Hanauds. If one theory fails, he tries another. This point is of some importance; for it is tantamount to the laying of all cards on the table. The fairplay method inaugurated by the fragmentary Mystery of Marie Roget, and both tentatively and temporarily adopted by various hands, has at last found its complete expression. The data are given. The detective's inferences are assembled in detail and from time to time a résumé is presented demonstrating the point reached in the investigation, and the points remaining to be solved; the cruxes, as it were, underlined, and the "leads" tabulated. This is something to be going on with. This is business.

To the puzzle-worm the subjectivity of French's reasoning is reassuringly natural. Yet it would be strange if he did not from time to time realise that the other fellow was doing all the work; that the mystery was being taken entirely out of his hands; that all the clues with which his imagination might have dallied for brief intervals between the chapters, were exposed in detail one after the other.

French looks for his information in the likeliest quarters. He does not don fancy dress and slouch off to Soho or the docks. He does not readily impose upon people by facile impersonations of antiquarians desirous of seeing the reredos. One has usually not long to wait for the curt, formal introduction, so much more dignified after all than the Transatlantic seizure of the lapel. He spends many hours in hotels, chatting to their managers and studying the register. He is frequently to be seen in shops and banks. Somehow he reminds one of a commercial traveller, so ingratiating a way he has with tradesmen.

The alibi was Mr. Crofts's first love and he made it the pivot of his plots. In life the mere presentation of an alibi is three-quarters proof—thanks chiefly to politeness and a disinclination on the part of normal people to make a scene. The alibi has only to pass an elementary test of probability, and circumstantial evidence gains another victory. This was Mr. Crofts's chance and this his angle of approach. If the novelist never wearies of turning the handle of circumstantial evidence to incriminate the too innocent hero, why should the use of circumstantial evidence to shelter the villain be not equally legitimate? The comforting maxim that the prisoner is innocent until proved guilty—logically an impossible restriction to all juries as being prejudice ridden—was another string to Mr. Crofts's bow. Yet another fact exalted the alibi. To the public, press-fed and expecting sensation, the vital attraction is always the human interest of the trial. Public interest soon wanes if the criminal is not forthcoming. It is the pros and cons of the alibi, and failing that, as a bad second, the veracity of the statements of the accused, that lead from one pint to another at the Rose and Crown. And circumstantial evidence, by the way, although the object of the super-detective's contumely, will yet turn a one-reel Movie into an "attraction."

Circumstantial evidence's strongest foothold in fiction thus rested with the possibility of concocting a "cast iron" "honest to goodness," "unobjectionable" alibi—all these epithets meaning, of course, the very reverse, that the alibi was pre-arranged. In Gaboriau's L'Affaire Lerouge, Pere Tabaret discourses on the theme:—

He (the suspect) will present you with a magnificent alibi, an alibi that cannot be gainsaid. He will show that he passed the evening and the night of Tuesday with personages of the highest rank. He had dined with the Count de Machin, gamed with the Marquis of So-and-So, and supped with the Duke of What's-his-name.… In short, his little machine will be so cleverly constructed, so nicely arranged, all its little wheels will play so well, that there will be nothing left for you but to open the door and usher him out with the most humble apologies.

But Pere Tabaret's method of putting a cog in the wheels of the little machine presupposes a most alarming knowledge of the circumstances, and besides, if adopted to-day, would immediately bring into being a commission to report on third degree methods, ending in the dismissal of the detective.

I have my man arrested.… I go right to the mark. I overwhelm him at once by the weight of my certainty, prove to him so clearly that I know everything that he must surrender. I should say to him, "My good man, you bring me an alibi. It is very well, but we are acquainted with that system of defence. It will not do with me. Of course, I understand you have been elsewhere at the hour of the crime; a hundred persons have never lost sight of you. It is admitted. In the meantime, here is what you have done.…"

But the parallel is of value with reference to Mr. Crofts's alibis. He constructs his little machine so cleverly that the reader does feel that there is nothing left for him but to dismiss the alibi-mongers from the circle of suspects. This is because the work of pre-arrangement is so deft, and because again we are misled by a false law of probabilities. Then the Inspector proceeds to break the little machine to pieces, and we "knew all the time"—but not quite honestly—that there was a snag somewhere.

With this new element as the central motif the construction was bound to be modified. The suspects, for example, might be marshalled with promptitude as in The Ponson Case and their alibis be tested one after the other, and the artistic values of these alibis be enhanced by the juxtaposition. Or suspicion might be postponed until the tardy testing of the star alibi as in The Cask. In the earlier novels the alibi was a new toy to Mr. Crofts. Systematically he ran through a number of variations. In time he saw the tinsel, for it his plots were to be built up from the testing of unobjectionable alibis, the secret would soon be out; so he gave his tale a twist with the introduction of bogus impersonations and dual rôles.

In the execution of the alibi theme Mr. Crofts exploited to the full his professional knowledge of the railways and found in Bradshaw an indispensable vade mecum. The original composer cannot even in his fondest flights of fancy have imagined to what diverse uses his magnum opus would be turned—to the composition of Latin hexameters and the concoction of alibis for detective stories. The principal alibi in The Ponson Case was worked out from a careful examination of the L.N.E.R. main line to Scotland—the "Flying Scotsman's" track—and the local service from King's Cross to Grantham. Boirac's alibi in The Cask was also based on the railway time-table, and in The Cheyne Mystery a similar trick is played, although strictly speaking it is not an alibi. You see Mr. Crofts trades upon the reader's gullibility. The little machine is perfect. The reader never dreams of opening his Bradshaw. He is too lazy—or too polite. In passing, Mr. Crofts has not had the heart to keep his inspectors from the restaurant car whenever he has noticed in his time-table a capital "R" adjacent to the selected train. Realism achieved so easily has its points.

The Cask, Mr. Crofts's first book, is his most famous detective story. In fact Trent's Last Case and The Cask are judged by the critics to be the most scintillating stars in our crowded constellation. Mr. Crofts's own account of how The Cask came to be written is interesting:—

In 1916 I had a long illness, and it was after this that I tried writing a novel as a relief from the tedium of convalescence. I wrote most of The Cask, but on recovery, put it away and thought of other things. Some time later I re-read it, and thinking it did not seem so bad as I had imagined, I set to work to finish it.

I was delighted when Messrs. Collins accepted it, even though this acceptance was accompanied by an extremely kind note from no less a person than Mr. J. D. Beresford, suggesting that Part III was unsatisfactory, and would I re-write it?

The Cask, like all Gaul, is "quartered into three halves." In the first part we read of the arrival of the cask; the clerk's discovery of the gruesome contents and disappearance of the cask; Inspector Burnley's discovery of it at Felix Leon's house; the opening of the cask and Leon's "My God! It's Annette," as the final curtain. An exquisite sandwich of action and detection.

In the second part Inspector Burnley and his colleague, Lefarge of the Sirete, carry out exhaustive researches. The information acquired, in particular the fact that the victim, a Mme. Boirac, had prima facie tried to elope with Leon, leads to the building up of a perfect case against him. Perfect but in one important detail—the question of motive. In the circumstances thus imagined, it would be Boirac who would have cause to hate his wife. But Boirac was found to have an unassailable alibi. So Leon is arrested. The reader naturally asks himself whether the unfortunate Leon has not had too large a share of suspicion or whether it is a "double bluff." Boirac is the only alternative, as there is no other character important enough to fill the rôle of the villain. Is the alibi really cast iron? Thus the problem consists in the choice of one of two characters. In this respect The Cask is unique.

In the third part we are introduced to Georges La Touche, a private detective engaged by Leon's legal adviser. La Touche's task is to prove Leon's innocence. To do this he had to assume that Boirac is the murderer, just as Bumley and Lefarge had come to assume that Leon was guilty. (Had there been more than two suspects it might have been necessary to call in a fresh supply of detectives, constituting a small crime circle like Roger Sheringham's in Mr. Anthony Berkeley's The Poisoned Chocolates Case. Mr. Crofts happily steers clear of an obvious pitfall. He makes all three detectives contribute to the solution.) The final section consists in the breaking down of Boirac's alibi. La Touche was lucky at the start, for there was no real reason why he should have noticed, qua detective, the dark typist. His interest in her led to his ascertaining that the typed message found inside the cask and a typed letter of Leon's had both been typed on one of Boirac's machines. La Touche's next step was to show that it was possible for Boirac to get to England, etc., and to check up the "times" of his alibi. Thereafter it was plain sailing.

The Cask is a splendid illustration of Mr. Crofts's unsurpassed exercises in detection. Maybe he relies now and again on catches (the faked telephone message, for example), but as a rule he relies more on the minutiae furnished by the evidence which the careless reader will not notice. "Careless" is used relatively, otherwise it would be gross hyperbole. Mr. Crofts believes in making it hard for the reader. In one particular he goes too far—his time schedules. He may be as optimistic as the B.B.C., but the average reader will not feel disposed to take out his pencil. Life is too short for that. Injustice to Mr. Crofts one is obliged to emphasise the significance that arises out of this attention to detail. And that is the raison d'étre of the attraction that detection has for us. There is no fun in merely putting two and two together. I have in mind Burnley's inferences from the two footprints:—

Well, I can only compare the heels (the sole of one of the footprints was missing) and there is not much difference between them.… "By Jove, Inspector," he went on, "I've got you at last." "They're the same marks. They were both made by the same foot.… The fourth nail on the left hand side is gone. That alone might be a coincidence, but if you compare the wear of the other nails and of the leather you will see they are the same beyond doubt.… How could Watty, if it was he, have produced them? Surely only in one of two ways. Firstly, he could have hopped on one foot. But there are three reasons why it is unlikely he did that. One is that he could hardly have done it without your noticing it. Another, that he could never have left so clear an impression in that way. The third, why should he hop? He simply wouldn't do it.… He walked up first with you to leave the cask. He walked up the second time with the empty dray to get it.…"

And this is only a detail; only one link in the long chain. Unfortunately it is impossible without a tortuous explanation to enlarge upon this topic.

Mr. Crofts's other works consist of pure detective stories—such as The Ponson Case, Inspector French's Greatest Case, Inspector French and the Starvel Tragedy, The Sea Mystery, Sir John Magill's Last Journey, and the hybrids—The Pit-Prop Syndicate, The Cheyne Mystery and possibly the Box Office Murders. The latter being a mixture of detection and adventure have several recurring features. The adventure portion is the excuse for the detection. The amateur, the conventional hero, has danger thrust upon him; for a time he struggles, quite effectively, with his antagonists. Suddenly he considers he is "up against it"—a conclusion prompted by the fact that he has fallen in love—and he rushes in a taxi to Scotland Yard. The professionals there magnificently smooth over the troubled waters; and detection is vindicated. (Really rather a pleasant allegory denoting the superiority of the intellectual detective story!) Whether it was necessary for the professionals to do it is another question. The amateurs were going great guns and the inspectors hadn't really very much to do.

The Ponson Case, The Starvel Tragedy and Sir John Magill's Last Journey are for many reasons the most interesting of the others. The success of the first is due to the brilliant central idea of accidental death upsetting a cartload of alibis. In the invention of the plot, it looks as if the alibi tricks preceded, and the original plot was suddenly modified by the afterthought. To be uncharitable, there is an outstanding weakness in the plot. The irritating love theme—reminiscent of Dr. Austin Freeman at his second best—is the only valid excuse for the continued silence of Austin and Cosgrove. As far as the latter is concerned, the thread is very slender. The love element does however, become pivotal when Lois Drew, the Wordsworthian heroine, steals a march on Inspector Tanner in the exposure of Cosgrove's alibi. Mr. Crofts makes great play with Cosgrove as a suspect. Observe the readiness with which one's suspicions immediately fasten on the business man whose finances are not too stable, and who has a liaison with an actress. The business man, as Van Dine discovered, is the perfect suspect.

Inspector French and the starvel Tragedy is probably the most satisfactory of all double murder plots. In the historical method Mr. Crofts shows his superiority to Gaboriau. For although Dr. Philpot's first murder—the murder of his wife at Kirkintilloch—and the Ropers' discovery of it—are the hinges of the plot, the earlier event is never allowed to dwarf in interest the Starvel affair. The confusion and suspense in the reader's mind as to the real identity of the victims of the fire are splendid proof of Mr. W. Crofts's technique. The conduct of the coroner at the inquest is, however, extremely questionable; and I believe that it is possible nowadays to tell the sex and age from a small piece of charred bone, let alone a complete skeleton. I should have liked to hear Sir Bernard Spilsbury on the Starvel Case.

Sir John Magill's Last Journey is in many respects the most typical of all Mr. Crofts's novels. It is a railway murder and never has he demonstrated his professional knowledge to greater advantage. The atmosphere has never been so vividly conveyed, and the descriptions of Stranraer, Castle-Douglas, Campbeltown, Lame and Whitehead help to intensify the realism. The problem is again paramountly a time-table one and involves the most intricate checking up of innumerable times. We have to contend with a quartet of alibis; and poor French has to follow up the itineraries of each member of the gang both on land and sea. The actual murder went off like clockwork—a particularly brilliant murder this. It is hardly necessary to add that all the details were worked out beforehand with the most extraordinary accuracy. The "Sillin" by-plot is one of the best red herrings ever dangled before a wary reader. One has only two minor grievances. When a villain is made to impersonate somebody, what obligation is there to mention that he had once been an actor? It gives the show away. Secondly, was it necessary for Mr. Crofts to borrow from The Cask the idea of the typewriter clue? But these are trifles, and the last journey of Sir John Magill is certainly French's greatest case to date.

H. Douglas Thomson, "The Realistic Detective Story," in his Masters of Mystery: A Study of the Detective Story, 1931. Reprint by Richard West, 1978, pp. 168-92.