Ch 23A Question of Trust

A Question of Trust

Author: Victor Canning (1911–1986), a popular British writer of thrillers and crime fiction, known for stories with clever plots and surprise endings.

Introduction

"A Question of Trust" is a crime story with a delicious twist. It tells of Horace Danby, a "respectable" locksmith who robs one safe every year to feed his secret passion for rare books — until the day he meets a thief cleverer than himself. The story questions the popular idea of "honour among thieves" and shows, with sharp irony, that a person who cheats others can just as easily be cheated. It also warns that a life of crime, however carefully planned and however "noble" its motive, ultimately leads to ruin.

Detailed Summary

Horace Danby is about fifty years old, unmarried, and lives with a housekeeper who worries over his health — he suffers badly from hay fever every summer. He makes locks and is fairly successful in his business, with two helpers. Everyone thinks he is a good, honest citizen. In reality, Horace is not completely honest: he loves rare, expensive books so passionately that he robs a safe every year, and with the stolen money he secretly buys the books he loves through an agent.

This year he has planned to rob the safe at Shotover Grange. For two weeks he has studied the house: its rooms, its electric wiring, its paths and its garden. The family is away in London, and the two servants who look after the house have gone to the movies. Horace sees them go and comes out from behind the garden wall with his tools carefully packed in a bag on his back. He knows there are jewels worth about fifteen thousand pounds in the Grange safe, and calculates that if he sells them one by one, he can get at least five thousand — enough to buy the rare books he wants for another year.

Everything goes smoothly at first. The house key hangs on a hook outside the kitchen door, exactly where he expected. A small dog is in the kitchen, but it only wags its tail; Horace knows the way to keep dogs quiet is to call them by their right name and show them love, so he calls it "Sherry" and pats it. He wears gloves so as to leave no fingerprints. The safe is in the drawing room, behind a poor, shabby painting — Horace idly wonders why people who own valuable jewels do not keep them in a bank. There are flowers everywhere in the room — on the table and on the window ledges — and their scent tickles his nose. He sneezes once, buries his face in his handkerchief, and gets to work on the safe.

Then a quiet, kindly voice from the doorway asks, "What is it? A cold or hay fever?" A young woman dressed in red is standing there, pretty and confident. She talks to him in a friendly, amused way, and Horace assumes she is the lady of the house — young, sharp and a member of the family. She threatens, lightly, to call the police, and Horace, now truly frightened of prison, begs her to let him go. He even promises to give up crime forever.

The lady then makes a proposal. She says she has come down from London to fetch her jewels for a party that night, but she has forgotten the numbers to open the safe. If Horace opens it for her, she will let him go. Horace is delighted at this easy escape. To break open the safe he needs his sensitive fingers, and at her light-hearted urging he works without his gloves — the fatal mistake. Within an hour he opens the safe, hands her the jewels, and leaves happily, keeping his promise to himself to give up crime.

Two days later, however, a policeman arrests him. The real owner of the house — the real Lady of Shotover Grange, a grey-haired, sharp-tongued woman of sixty — had returned to find the safe robbed. Horace's fingerprints were all over the room, since he had opened the safe without gloves. His story about the pretty young lady in red sounded so absurd that no one believed it; even the real mistress said she had been in London that day. Horace realised too late that the young woman was herself a thief — a cleverer one — who had used him as her tool to rob the safe while leaving his fingerprints behind as evidence.

Now Horace is the assistant librarian in the prison, still among books after a fashion. And he gets furious whenever anyone talks about "honour among thieves" — for he was betrayed and trapped by a fellow thief.

Themes

• There is no honour among thieves: the central irony — one thief coolly betrays another; criminals cannot expect trust or fairness from each other.
• Crime never pays: however careful, "gentlemanly" or well-motivated a criminal is, one slip is enough to destroy him.
• Appearances are deceptive: the "respectable" locksmith is a robber; the charming "lady of the house" is a thief; a shabby painting hides a safe full of jewels.
• Intelligence versus over-confidence: Horace plans everything meticulously, yet his confidence makes him careless at the crucial moment.
• Wrong means for a "good" end: the love of books is noble, but stealing to satisfy it is still a crime, and it is punished.

Character Sketches

Horace Danby

Horace Danby is a fifty-year-old, unmarried lock-maker who appears to be a model citizen but robs one safe every year to buy rare books. He is intelligent, methodical and patient — he studies Shotover Grange for a fortnight, knows about the servants, the wiring, the key and even the dog's name. He is not a violent criminal; he is polite, timid, afraid of prison, and steals only to feed his one passion. But he is also gullible and easily flattered: a pretty face and a friendly voice make him drop all caution, remove his gloves and open the safe with his bare hands. His hay fever and his trusting nature together undo fifteen years of "successful" crime. In the end he is an ironic figure — a thief cheated by a thief, a book-lover reduced to a prison librarian.

The Lady in Red

The young woman in red is the real master-criminal of the story. She is beautiful, elegant, quick-witted and utterly cool under pressure. Entering a house she is robbing, she finds another burglar there — and instead of panicking, she instantly invents the role of the young mistress of the Grange, complete with easy authority (she speaks of the dog, the servants and her party in London). She uses charm, mild threats and false kindness to make Horace open the safe for her without gloves, so that he leaves his fingerprints as evidence while she walks away with jewels worth thousands. She proves far cleverer than the experienced Horace, and her betrayal gives the story its title: for Horace, trust between thieves turned out to be a question with a bitter answer.

Important Word Meanings