Daily Casefile · Forensic
The Sluice Gate Shortfall
≈ 4 min
Greenvale Canal Trust auditor Constance Birch arrived at Lock 7 on a Wednesday morning to find keeper Amos Drabb's transit register missing its final two pages and the trust's brass toll-collection tin — holding several weeks of barge passage fees — emptied. Drabb himself was found locked in the coal store, unharmed but unable to say how long he had been there. The Trust suspects an associate of Drabb's, a travelling merchant named Silas Oake, who passed through on his motor-barge Patience in the past two days. Birch must reconstruct the exact sequence of events before Oake's boat clears the next lock at Fenmore.
The scene
Greenvale Canal Trust, Lock 7 keeper's cottage and adjacent lock chamber, rural England, 1947
The events
- Oake slips into the cottage and empties the toll tin
- Auditor Birch arrives and discovers Drabb confined
- Oake moors Patience at Lock 7 and lodges overnight
- Oake tears the final register pages and works Patience through the lock
- Drabb locks the toll tin and writes the day's closing entry
- Drabb discovers the theft and is locked in the coal store
Play today’s Forensic.
This case first aired on July 30, 2026. A fresh forensic runs every morning — same rules, five minutes, one solution.