Witness account · 3 min read · Set in Avonmouth ·
My Cargo of the Same Day
A forwarding clerk finds his consignment entered twice into the Avonmouth shed within one tide, in two hands that both belong to the tally clerk.
- reliability: uncorroborated
- witness: "Walter Mabbs, forwarding clerk"
I forward cargo through Avonmouth Shed 4, and the consignment I have to describe is a small one to carry such a difficulty: nine cases of lathe spares, four tons eight hundredweight, stencilled for an order at Exeter. It went into the shed on the morning tide of the fourteenth of June. It was signed into that shed twice on the same tide, in two hands, and both hands are the tally clerk's.
The shed takes its goods by the inward book, and the book is ridden by the tally clerk, whose name is Len Podmore and whose entries I have countersigned for six years, my firm's notes all passing through the shed. On the fourteenth the book's morning page shows the consignment received at six minutes past seven: nine cases, the make-weights, the marks, and his signature. I hold the carbon. It is correct to the case, and I collected against it on the Friday.
The trouble came the following week, and it came as arithmetic. The shed ledger ran four tons eight adrift, outwards against inwards, and the ledger does not drift; it is proved nightly. The clerk was set to proving his book, and he proved it, and the reconciliation that came out at the week's foot carries a second receipt nobody ordered: the fourteenth again, three minutes past three in the afternoon, nine cases, the make-weights, the marks, received.
I have seen the original page. The second entry is no copying of the first. The ink is the same make, the alphabet is his, every letter recognisable, and the figures are his figures; but the slope of the whole line runs the other way, upright and leaning left, the way a right-handed man's writing lies when it is done with the left. The shed called in no examiner to say otherwise. There was no examiner to call, the port's post having gone unstaffed since the spring, and the shed's position being that a book in order is not examined.
I put it to Podmore quietly at the counter, the two carbons side by side. He read them a long moment and gave me the following for an answer: that his left hand has been idle since school. Nothing beside. He turned the ledger to the week's closing line then, and the closing line is signed by him and squares the week over two receipts and one delivery, which arithmetic does not do, and the auditor has countersigned it without remark, the auditor being empowered to remark and preferring not to.
The shed holds the book to be in order, and so far as signing goes it is: every line entered, every sum carried, no erasure anywhere, and my consignment standing on the page at both ends of one tide. The cargo went out to Exeter complete and was delivered complete, so the firm has no claim for shortage and has been advised none lies. What was signed in twice was carted out once, and the office says goods signed in are goods in. The book is the truth of the shed, and the book took my consignment twice.
Nobody has corroborated me, and I know the reason why. The misreading takes five minutes and a ruler laid across the slope, and the shed will not lay a ruler across its own clerk, and I am a forwarding clerk with a carbon and no standing to examine a port book. The second entry sits on its page between two signature lines and waits. Should anyone besides me ever corroborate it, the whole June of that shed has to be taken in again, and I do not know how a ledger squares over itself twice and is then expected to unsquare on request.