Dead Weight

僕にしか言えない言葉を今君に届けたい

「君に届け」（Flumpool）

I want to send you the words only I can say to you now

"Reaching You" (Flumpool)

 
'T was in the summer of 2012 that I first read a novel by Freeman Wills Crofts, as Mystery on Southampton Water had been selected as the topic of a book club session. I wasn't the only person at the session to never had read a Crofts before though, so the discussion eventually broadened to Crofts in general, and it didn't take long for Crofts' debut work to be mentioned. The people who had read The Cask (originally published in 1920), were quite reserved about it. While the reception of the plot was, by and large, positive, I distinctly remember several people point out it was tedious to read. Note that we're talking about a Japanese book club here, so the people here were talking specifically about the Japanese translation of the novel, but it appeared it was very old-fashioned, making it less enjoyable that it could've been. I had not read the book, so unfortunately, there was little I could comment on whether this was also true for the original text.

But the idea, the image of The Cask being a tedious to read book did stick with me. I have read some more Crofts in the meantime, both in Japanese and English, and I can definitely say the Japanese text is not always a smooth read (though I think there is a more modern translation available of some works). Still, the idea of "The Cask = Tedious Experience" was very much alive in my mind when I started reading the book, five years after my first encounter with Crofts. The novel starts at an English harbor, where a newly arrived ship is being relieved of its cargo. A small incident leads to damage to a cask, which is supposed to be a shipment of statues from France. Glimpsing through the hole they made in the cask, the workers however find that the thing is packed with gold sovereigns, as well as something that looks a lot like a human hand. The alarm is raised at the shipping company, but by the time management has informed the police about the incident, the recipient of the cask has already made off with his shipment. Inspector Burnley of Scotland Yard and the rest of the police force however soon give chase after the disappearing cask in Freeman Wills Crofts The Cask (1920).

Crofts' debut novel does not feature Inspector French, who starred in all the other Crofts I read, but The Cask certainly feels like a genuine Crofts, even at this earliest stage in his career as a mystery author. The introducing chapters of the novel for example are set at a harbor, detailing the work at a shipping company. Businesses are a setting very often utilized in Crofts' work, as seen in for example Murder on Southampton Water and Fatal Venture, where the settings are also two water-related companies. This story however does not stick with this setting, and jumps from setting to setting as the narrative follows the titular cask back to where it came from.

This does lead to one of the elements that can be seen as a source of tediousness. Soon after the harbor setting, we switch over to our main point of view, that of the police in their investigation of the whereabouts of the cask, and things are described rather meticulously here. We'll see a scene, then a report is made to a higher official explaining the scene we just saw, then the inspector talks about the scene we just saw twice already, then we see another party enter the scene who needs more explanation about that same event... Sure, police work is detailed, and one can at least say The Cask is very eager to make sure the reader is not left behind by its story, but it happens more than once that you might feel certain events could've been handled more briefly in the story. Sometimes it feels like we're just circling around the same matter again and again, and this can be a bit vexing.

This extreme focus on a singular point is also basically what this novel is about. The titular cask is without a doubt the most important object in the story, and very detailed enquiries are made about how it made its way to England with a body inside it. The mystery plot, I thought, was quite interesting, as leads to surprising reveals about the route the cask made on its way to the final destination, as well as an alibi deconstruction subplot, something very much associated with Crofts. There's of course a time table made over the course of the story, detailing a seemingly perfect alibi of a potential murderer, and it's up to the police, and readers, to find the weak spot and break it down. The precise method used is a bit shaky, as it relies slightly on faulty memory of third parties, but as an element of a much larger, and very carefullly constructed mystery plot, I thought it was entertaining enough. That said though, the fact the whole book is about the route a cask took can be bit boring for some readers, I can definitely imagine, especially combined with the way the narrative is set-up.

Though I guess that in this respect, it's better than Ayukawa Tetsuya's Kuroi Trunk (1956). Ayukawa was one of the most respected puzzle plot mystery authors, and was very much inspired by Crofts. His debut novel, Kuroi Trunk, was obviously an homage to The Cask, as it too revolves around a meticulous investigation around a recepticle containing a body (a black trunk in this case) and an alibi deconstruction subplot, but while I like the book, it's also even more detailed and tedious than The Cask, as it's packed with time tables, and you're expected to track the movements of persons and objects in units of minutes (over a distance from one side of Japan to the other). Again, I think Kuroi Trunk is a great mystery, but people who have trouble with The Cask will find this one even more a problem.

The Cask in the end was luckily not as awful as I had feared, and I actually quite liked it. Yes, it can be a very slow novel, but I guess I was already used to Crofts' style, and I have read books that do worse on aspect. I wouldn't consider this my favorite Crofts though, and even I think that of the few I have read, The Cask might be the one that that is the least suitable to start with, but this is certainly more than a worthy debut novel for Crofts.