“But what do you suppose is Israel’s idea?” I asked.
“Why, as the body ought to have come up long before this, and it hasn’t, he thinks it has been sunk. It might have been taken up the river in a boat, and sunk in midstream with a weight of some sort. Or it might have got caught by a lost anchor or on some old moorings. That would account for its not coming up and for these oddments getting detached and drifting ashore. So old Israel is going to get to work with a creeper. I expect he spends his nights creeping over the likely spots, and that is what makes him so deuced secret about the place where he found that shoe. He reckons that the body is somewhere thereabouts.”
I made no comment on this rather horrible communication. Of course, it was necessary that the body should be searched for, since its discovery was the indispensable condition of the search for the murderer. But I did not want to hear more of the dreadful details than was absolutely unavoidable.
When we reached the Guildhall, I halted and was about to take leave of the sergeant when he said, somewhat hesitatingly:
“Do you remember, Doctor, when you met me last Saturday, you had a gentleman with you?”
“I remember,” said I.
“Now, I wonder if you would think I was taking a liberty if I were to ask what that gentleman’s name was. I had an idea that I knew his face.”
“Of course it wouldn’t be a liberty,” I replied. “His name is Thorndyke; Dr. John Thorndyke.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Cobbledick, “I thought I couldn’t be mistaken. It isn’t the sort of face that one would forget. I once heard him give evidence at the Old Bailey. Wonderful evidence it was, too. Since then I’ve read reports of his investigations from time to time. He’s a marvellous man. The way he has of raking up evidence from nowhere is perfectly astonishing. Did you happen to talk to him about this case at all?”
“Well, you see, Sergeant,” I answered, rather evasively, “he had come down here for the week-end as my guest——”
“Exactly, exactly,” Cobbledick interrupted, unconsciously helping me to avoid answering his question, “he came down for a rest and a change, and wouldn’t want to be bothered with professional matters. Still, you know, I think he would be interested in this case. It is quite in his own line. It is a queer case; a very queer case in some respects.”
“In what respects?” I asked.
It was Cobbledick’s turn to be evasive. He had apparently said more than he had intended, and now drew in his horns perceptibly.
“Why,” he replied, “when you come to think of—of the—er—the character of the lady, for instance. Why should anyone want to do her any harm? And then there is the mystery as to how it happened, and the place, and—in fact, there are a number of things that are difficult to understand. But I mustn’t keep you standing here. If you should happen to see Dr. Thorndyke again, it might be as well to tell him about the case. It would be sure to interest him; and if he should, by any chance, want to know anything that you are not in a position to tell him, why, you know where I am to be found. I shouldn’t want to make any secrets with him. And he might spot something that we haven’t noticed.”
I promised to follow the sergeant’s advice, and, having bid him adieu, turned back, and walked slowly homeward. As I went I reflected profoundly on my conversation with Cobbledick; from which, as it seemed to me, two conclusions emerged. First, there were elements in this mystery that were unknown to me. I had supposed that the essence of the mystery was the mere absence of data. But it now appeared from the sergeant’s utterances, and still more from his evasions, that he saw farther into the affair than I did; either because he had more facts, or because, by reason of his greater experience, the facts meant more to him than they did to me. The second conclusion was that he was in some way in difficulties; that he was conscious of an inability to interpret satisfactorily the facts that were known to him. His evident eagerness to get into touch with Thorndyke made this pretty clear; and the two conclusions together suggested a further question. How much did Thorndyke know? Did he know all that the sergeant knew? Did he perchance know more? From the scanty data with which I had supplied him, might he possibly have drawn some illuminating inferences that had carried his understanding of the case beyond either mine or Cobbledick’s? It was quite possible. Thorndyke’s great reputation rested upon his extraordinary power of inference and constructive reasoning from apparently unilluminating facts. The facts in this case seemed unilluminating enough. But they might not be so to him. And again I recalled how both he and the sergeant seemed to look to the finding of the body as probably furnishing the solution of the mystery.
CHAPTER XII.
THE PRINTS OF A VANISHED HAND
Mr. Bundy’s opinion that no particular significance attached to the finding of further relics of the missing woman was one that I was myself disposed to adopt. The disappearance of poor Angelina was an undeniable fact, and there seemed to be no doubt that her body had fallen, or been cast, into the river. On these facts, the recovery of further articles belonging to her, and presumably detached from the body, shed no additional light. From the body itself, whenever it should be surrendered by the river, one hoped that something fresh might be learned. But all that anyone could say was that Angelina Frood had disappeared, that her disappearance was almost certainly connected with a crime, and that the agents of that crime and their motives for committing it were alike an impenetrable mystery, a mystery that the finding of further detached articles tended in no way to solve.
I shall, therefore, pass somewhat lightly over the incidents of the succeeding discoveries, notwithstanding the keen interest in them displayed by Sergeant Cobbledick and even by Thorndyke. On Monday, the 25th of May, the second shoe was found (to Israel Bangs’ unspeakable indignation) by Samuel Hooper of Foul Anchor Alley, who discovered it shortly after high-water, lying on the gridiron close to Gas-house Point, and brought it in triumph to the police station.
After this, there followed a long interval, occupied by a feverish contest between Israel Bangs and Samuel Hooper. But the luck fell to the experienced Israel. On Saturday, the 20th of June, that investigator, having grounded his boat below a wharf between Gas-house Point and the bridge, discovered a silver-headed hat-pin lying on the shore between two of the piles of the wharf. Its identity was unmistakable. The silver poppy-head that crowned the pin was no trade production that might have had thousands of indistinguishable fellows. It was an individual work wrought by an artist in metal, and excepting its fellow, there was probably not another like it in the world.
The discovery of this object roused a positive frenzy of search. The stretch of muddy shore between Gas-house Point and the bridge literally swarmed with human shore-rats, male and female, adult and juvenile. Every day, and all the day, excepting at high-water, Israel Bangs hovered in his oozy little basket of a boat on the extreme edge of the mud, scanning every inch of slime, and glowering fiercely at the poachers ashore who were raking over his preserves. But nothing came of it. Day after day passed. The black and odorous mud was churned up by countless feet; the pebbles were sorted out severally by innumerable filthy hands; every derelict pot, pan, box, or meat-tin was picked up again and again, and explored to its inmost recesses. But in vain. Not a single relic of any kind was brought to light by all those searchings and grubbings in the mud. Presently the searchers began to grow discouraged. Some of them gave up the search; others migrated to the shore beyond the bridge, and were to be seen wading in the mud below the Esplanade, the cricket-ground, or the boat-building yards. So the month of June ran out, and the third month began. And still there was no sign of the body.
Meanwhile I watched the two professional investigators, and noted a certain similarity in their outlook and methods. Both were keenly interested in the discoveries; and both, I observed, personally examined the localities of the finds. The sergeant conducted me to each spot in turn, making appropriate, but not very illuminating, comments; and I perceived that he was keeping a careful account of time and place. So, too, with Thorndyke, who had now taken to coming down regularly each week-end. He visited each spot where anything had been found, marking it carefully on his map, together with a reference number, and inquiring minutely as to the character of the object, its condition, and the state of the tide and the hour of the day when it was discovered; all of which particulars he entered in his note-book under the appropriate reference number.
Both of my friends, too, expressed increasing surprise and uneasiness at the non-appearance of the body. The sergeant was really worried, and he expressed his sentiments in a tone of complaint as if he felt that he was not being fairly treated.
“It’s getting very serious, Doctor,” he protested. “Nearly three months gone—three summer months, mind you—and not a sign of it. I don’t like the look of things at all. This case means a lot to me. It’s my chance. It’s a detective-inspector’s job, and if I bring it off it’ll be a big feather in my cap. I want to get a conviction, and so far I haven’t got the material for a coroner’s verdict. I’ve half a mind to do a bit of creeping myself.”
Thorndyke’s observations on the case were much to the same effect. Discussing it one Saturday afternoon at the beginning of July, when I had met him at Strood Station and was walking with him into Rochester, he said:
“My feeling is that the crux of this case is going to be the question of identity—if the body ever comes to light. Of course, if it doesn’t, there is no case: it is simply an unexplained disappearance. But if the body is found and is unrecognizable excepting by clothing and other extrinsic evidence, it will be hard to get a conviction even if the unrecognizable corpse should give some clue to the circumstances of death.”
“I suppose,” said I, “the police are searching for Nicholas Frood.”
“I doubt it,” he replied. “They are not likely to be wasting efforts to find a murderer when there is no evidence that a murder has been committed. What could they do if they did find him? The woman was not in his custody or even living with him. And his previous conduct is not relevant in the absence of evidence of his wife’s death.”
“You said you were making some inquiries yourself.”
“So I am. And I am not without hopes of picking up his tracks. But that is a secondary matter. What we have to settle beyond the shadow of a doubt is the question, ‘What has become of Angelina Frood? Is she dead? And, if she is, what was the cause and what were the circumstances of her death?’ The evidence in our possession points to the conclusion that she is dead, and that she met her death by foul means. That is the belief that the known facts produce. But we have got to turn that belief into certainty. Then it will be time to inquire as to the identity of the criminal.”
“Do you suppose the body would be unrecognizable now?”
“I feel no doubt that it would be quite unrecognizable by ordinary means if it has been in the water all this time. But it would still be identifiable in the scientific sense, if we could only obtain the necessary data. It could, for instance, be tested by the Bertillon measurements, if we had them; and it would probably yield finger-prints, clear enough to recognize, long after the disappearance of all facial character or bodily traits.”
“Would it really?” I exclaimed.
“Certainly,” he replied. “Even if the whole outer skin of the hand had come off bodily, like a glove, as it commonly does in long-submerged bodies, that glove-like cast would yield fairly clear finger-prints if property treated—with dilute formalin, for instance. And then the fingers from which the outer skin had become detached would still yield recognizable finger-prints, if similarly treated; for you must remember that the papillary ridges which form the finger-print pattern, are in the true skin. The outer skin is merely moulded on them. But, unfortunately, the question is one of merely academic interest to us as we have no original finger-prints of Mrs. Frood’s by which to test the body. The only method of scientific identification that seems to be available is that of anthropometric measurements, as employed by Bertillon.”
“But,” I objected, “the Bertillon system is based on the existence of a record of the measurements of the person to be identified. We have no record of the measurements of Mrs. Frood.”
“True,” he agreed. “But you may remember that Dr. George Bertillon was accustomed to apply his system, not only to suspected persons who had been arrested, but also to stray garments, hat, gloves, shoes, and so forth, that came into the possession of the police. But it is clear that, if such garments can be compared with a table of recorded measurements, they can be used as standards of comparison to determine the identity of a dead body. Of course, the measurements would have to be taken, both of the garments and of the body, by someone having an expert knowledge of anthropometrical methods.”
“Of course,” I agreed. “But it seems a sound method. I must mention it to Cobbledick. He has the undoubted shoes, and I have no doubt that he could get a supply of worn garments from Mrs. Gillow.”
“Yes,” said Thorndyke. “And, speaking of Mrs. Gillow reminds me of another point that I have been intending to inquire into. You mentioned to me that Mrs. Gillow told you, at the time of the disappearance, that she had been expecting a tragedy of some kind. She must have had some grounds for that expectation.”
“She said it was nothing but a vague, general impression.”
“Still, there must have been something that gave her that impression. Don’t you think it would be well to question her a little more closely?”
“Perhaps it might,” said I, not very enthusiastically. “We are close to the house now. We can call in and see her, if you like.”
“I think we ought to leave no stone unturned,” said he; and a minute or two later, when we arrived opposite the office, he remarked, looking across attentively at the two houses: “I don’t see our friend Bundy’s face at the window.”
“No,” I replied, “he is playing tennis somewhere up at the Vines. But here is Mrs. Gillow, herself, all dressed up and evidently going out visiting.”
The landlady had appeared at the door just as we were crossing the road. Perceiving that we were bearing down on her, she paused, holding the door ajar. I ran up the steps, and having wished her “good afternoon” asked if she had time to answer one or two questions.
“Certainly,” she replied, “though I mustn’t stay long because I have promised to go to tea with my sister at Frinsbury. I usually go there on a Saturday. Perhaps we had better go into poor Mrs. Frood’s room.”
She opened the door of the sitting-room, and we all went in and sat down.
“I have been talking over this mysterious affair, Mrs. Gillow,” said I, “with my friend, Dr. Thorndyke, who is a lawyer, and he suggested that you might be able to throw some light on it. You remember that you had had some forebodings of some sort of trouble or disaster.”
“I had,” she replied, dismally, “but that was only because she always seemed so worried and depressed, poor dear. And, of course, I knew about that good-for-nothing husband of hers. That was all. Sergeant Cobbledick asked me the same question, but I had nothing to tell him.”
“Did the sergeant examine the rooms?” asked Thorndyke.
“Yes, he looked over the place, and he opened her little davenport—it isn’t locked—and read through one or two letters that he found there, but he didn’t take them away. All he took with him was a few torn-up letters that he found in the waste-paper basket.”
“If those other letters are still in the davenport,” said Thorndyke, “I think it would be well for us to look through them carefully, if you don’t mind, Mrs. Gillow.”
“I don’t see that there could be any harm in it,” she replied. “I’ve never touched anything in her rooms, myself, since she went away. I thought it better not to. I haven’t even washed up her tea-things. There they are, just as she left them, poor lamb. But if you are going to look through those letters, I will ask you to excuse me, or I shall keep my sister waiting for tea.”
“Certainly, Mrs. Gillow,” said I. “Don’t let us detain you. And, by the way,” I added, as I walked with her to the door, “it would be as well not to say anything to anybody about my having come here with my friend.”
“Very well, sir,” she replied. “I think you are right. The least said, the soonest mended”; and with this profound generalization she went out and I shut the street door after her.
When I returned to the sitting-room I found Thorndyke engaged in a minute examination of the tea-things, and in particular of the spoon. I proceeded at once to the davenport, and, finding it unlocked, lifted the desk-lid and peered into the interior. It contained a supply of papers and envelopes, neatly stacked, and one or two letters, which I took out. They all appeared to be from the same person—the Miss Cumbers, of whom I had heard, and a rapid glance at the contents showed that they were of no use as a source of information. I passed them to Thorndyke—who had laid down the spoon and was now looking inquisitively about the room—who scanned them rapidly and returned them to me.
“There is nothing in them,” said he. “Possibly the contents of the waste-paper basket were more illuminating. But I suspect not, as the sergeant appears to be as much in the dark as we are. Shall we have a look at the bedroom before we go?”
I saw no particular reason for doing so, but, assuming that he knew best, I made no objection. Going out into the hall, we entered the deserted bed-room, the door of which was locked, though the key had not been removed. At the threshold Thorndyke paused and stood for nearly half a minute looking about the room in the same queer, inquisitive way that I had noticed in the other room, as if he were trying to fix a mental picture of it. Meanwhile, full of the Bertillon system, I had walked across to the wardrobe to see what garments were available for measurement. I had my hand on the knob of the door when my glance fell on two objects on the dressing-table; an empty tumbler and a small water-bottle, half-full. There was nothing very remarkable about these objects, taken by themselves, but, even from where I stood, I could see that both bore a number of finger-marks which stood out conspicuously on the plain glass.
“By Jove!” I exclaimed. “Here is the very thing that you were speaking of. Do you see what it is?”
Apparently he had, for he had already taken his gloves out of his pocket and was putting them on.
“Don’t touch them, Strangeways,” said he, as I was approaching to inspect them more closely. “If these are Mrs. Frood’s finger-prints they may be invaluable. We mustn’t confuse them by adding our own.”
“Whose else could they be?” I asked.
“They might be Sergeant Cobbledick’s,” he replied. “The sergeant has been in here.” He drew a chair up to the table, and, taking a lens from his pocket, began systematically to examine the markings.
“They are a remarkably fine set,” he remarked, “and a complete set—the whole ten digits. Whoever made them held the bottle in the right hand and the tumbler in the left. And I don’t think they are the sergeant’s. They are too small and too clear and delicate.”
“No,” I agreed, “and the probabilities are against their being his. There is no reason why he should have wanted to take a drink of water during the few minutes that he spent here. It would have been different if it had been a beer bottle. But it would have been quite natural for Mrs. Frood to drink a glass of water while she was dressing or before she started out.”
“Yes,” said he. “Those are the obvious probabilities. But we must turn them into certainties if we can. Probabilities are not good data to work from. But the question is now, what are we to do? I have a small camera with me, but it would not be very convenient to take the photographs here, and it would occupy a good deal of time. On the other hand, these things would be difficult to pack without smearing the finger-prints. We want a couple of small boxes.”
“Perhaps,” said I, “we may find something that will do if we take a look round.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “we must explore the place. Meanwhile, I think I will develop up these prints for our immediate information, as we have to try to find some others to verify them.”
He went back to the sitting-room, where he had put down the two cases that he always brought with him: a small suit-case that contained his toilet necessaries and a similar-sized case covered with green canvas which had been rather a mystery to me. I had never seen it open, and had occasionally speculated on the nature of its contents. My curiosity was now to be satisfied, for, when he returned with it in his hand he explained: “This is what I call my research-case. It contains the materials and appliances for nearly every kind of medico-legal investigation, and I hardly ever travel without it.”
He placed it on a chair and opened it, when I saw that it formed a complete portable laboratory, containing, among other things a diminutive microscope, a little folding camera, and an insufflator, or powder-spray. The latter he now took from its compartment, and, lifting the tumbler with his gloved hand, stood it on a corner of the mantelpiece and blew over it with the insufflator a cloud of impalpably fine white powder, which settled evenly on the surface of the glass. He then tapped the tumbler gently once or twice with a lead pencil, when most of the powder coating either jarred off or crept down the surface. Finally, he blew at it lightly, which removed the rest of the powder, leaving the finger-prints standing out on the clear glass as if they had been painted on with Chinese white.
While he was operating in the same manner on the water-bottle—having first emptied it into the ewer—I examined the tumbler with the aid of his lens. The markings were amazingly clear and distinct. Through the lens I could see, not only the whole of the curious, complicated ridge-pattern, but even the rows of little round spots that marked the orifices of the sweat glands. For the first time, I realized what a perfect means of identification these remarkable imprints furnished.
“Now,” said Thorndyke, when he had finished with the bottle, “the two questions are, where shall we look for confirmatory finger-prints, and where are we to get the boxes that we want for packing these things? You said that Mrs. Frood had a kitchen.”
“Yes. But won’t you try the furniture here; the wardrobe door, for instance. The dark, polished mahogany ought to give good prints.”
“An excellent suggestion, Strangeways,” said he. “We might even find the sergeant’s finger-prints, as he has probably had the wardrobe open.”
He sprayed the three doors of the wardrobe, and when he had tapped them and blown away the surplus powder, there appeared near the edge of each a number of finger-marks, mostly rather indistinct, and none of them nearly so clear as those on the glass.
“This is very satisfactory,” said Thorndyke. “They are poor prints, but you can see quite plainly that there are two pairs of hands, one pair much larger than the other; and the prints of the larger hands are evidently not the same pattern as those on the glass, whereas those of the smaller ones are quite recognizable as the same, in spite of their indistinctness. As the large ones are almost certainly Cobbledick’s, the small ones are pretty certainly Mrs. Frood’s. But we mustn’t take anything for granted. Let us go down to the kitchen. We shall have a better chance there.”
The door of the basement staircase was still unlocked, as Mrs. Gillow had described it. I threw it open, and we descended together, I carrying the insufflator and he bearing the tumbler and bottle in his gloved hands. When he had put the two articles down on the kitchen table, he proceeded to powder first the kitchen door and then the side-door that gave on to the passage between the two houses. Both of them were painted a dark green and both yielded obvious finger-marks, and though these were mere oval smudges, devoid of any trace of pattern, their size and their groupings showed clearly enough that they appertained to a small hand. But we got more conclusive confirmation from a small aluminium frying-pan that had been left on the gas stove; for, on powdering the handle, Thorndyke brought into view a remarkably clear thumb-print, which was obviously identical with that on the water-bottle.
“I think,” said he, “that settles the question. If Mrs. Gillow has not touched anything in these premises—as she assures us that she has not—then we can safely assume that these are Mrs. Frood’s finger-prints.”
“Are you going to annex the frying-pan to produce in evidence?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “This verification is for our own information: to secure us against the chance of producing Cobbledick’s finger-prints to identify the body. I propose, for the present, to say nothing to anyone as to our possessing this knowledge. When the time comes we can tell what we know. Until then we shall keep our own counsel.”
Once more I found myself dimly surprised at my friend’s apparently unnecessary secrecy, but, assuming that he knew best, I made no comment, but watched with somewhat puzzled curiosity his further proceedings. His interest in the place was extraordinary. In a queer, cat-like fashion he prowled about the premises, examining the most trivial objects with almost ludicrous attention. He went carefully through the cooking appliances and the glass and china; he peered into cupboards, particularly into a large, deep cupboard in which spare crockery was stored, and which was, oddly enough, provided with a Yale lock; he sorted out the meagre contents of the refuse-bin, and incidentally salved from it a couple of cardboard boxes that had originally contained groceries, and he explored the, now somewhat unsavoury, larder.
“I suppose,” he said reflectively, “the dustman must have used the side door. Do you happen to know?”
“I don’t,” said I, inwardly wondering what the deuce the dustman had to do with the case. “I understand that the door of the passage was not used.”
“But she couldn’t have had the dust-bin carried up the stairs and out at the front door,” he objected.
“I should think not,” said I. “Perhaps we could judge better if we had a look at the passage.”
He adopted the suggestion and we opened the side-door—which had a Yale night-latch—and went out into the covered passage that was common to the two houses. The door that opened on to the street was bolted on the inside, but the bolts were in good working order, as we ascertained by drawing them gently; so this gave no evidence one way or the other. Then Thorndyke carefully examined the hard gravel floor of the passage, apparently searching for dropped fragments, or the dustman’s foot-prints; but though there were traces suggesting that the side-doors had been used, there were no perceptible tracks leading to the street or in any way specifically suggestive of dustmen.
“Japp seems fond of Yale locks,” observed Thorndyke, indicating the second side-door, which was also fitted with one. “I wonder where he keeps his dust-bin.”
“Would it be worth while to ask him?” said I, more and more mystified by this extraordinary investigation.
“No,” he replied, very definitely. “A question often gives more information than it elicits.”
“It might easily do that in my case,” I remarked with a grin; upon which he laughed softly and led the way back into the house. There I gathered up the two boxes and the insufflator and made my way up to the bed-room, he following with the tumbler and the water-bottle. Then came the critical business of packing these two precious objects in the boxes in such a way as to protect the finger-prints from contact with the sides; which was accomplished very neatly with the aid of a number of balls of plasticine from the inexhaustible research-case.
“This is a little disappointing,” said Thorndyke, looking at the hair-brush and comb as he took off his gloves. “I had hoped to collect a useful sample of hair. But her excessive tidiness defeats us. There seems to be only one or two short hairs and one full length. However, we may as well have them. They won’t be of much use for comparison with the naked eye, but even a single hair can be used as a colour control under the microscope.”
He combed the brush until the last hair was extracted from it, and then drew the little collection from the comb and arranged it on a sheet of paper. There were six short hairs, from two to four inches long, and one long hair, which seemed to have been broken off, as it had no bulb.
“Many ladies keep a combing-bag,” he remarked, as he bestowed the collection in a seed-envelope from the research-case; “but I gather from your description that Mrs. Frood’s hair was luxuriant enough to render that economy unnecessary. At any rate, there doesn’t seem to be such a bag. And now I think we have finished, and we haven’t done so badly.”
“We have certainly got an excellent set of finger-prints,” said I. “But it seems rather doubtful whether there will ever be an opportunity of using them; and if there isn’t, we shan’t be much more forward for our exploration. Of course, there is the hair.”
“Yes,” said Thorndyke, “there is the hair. That may be quite valuable. And perhaps there are some other matters—but time will show.”
With this somewhat cryptic conclusion he proceeded with great care to pack the two boxes in his suit-case, wedging them with his pyjamas so that they should not get shaken in transit.
As we walked home I reflected on Thorndyke’s last remark. It seemed to contain a suggestion that the mystery of Angelina’s death was not so complete to him as it was to me. For my own part, I could see no glimmer of light in any direction. She seemed to have vanished without leaving a trace excepting those few derelict objects which had been washed ashore and which told us nothing. But was it possible that those objects bore some significance that I had overlooked? That they were charged with some message that I had failed to decipher? I recalled a certain reticence on the part of Cobbledick which had made me suspect him of concealing from me some knowledge that he held or some inferences that he had drawn; and now there was this cryptic remark of Thorndyke’s, offering the same suggestion. Might it possibly be that the profound obscurity was only in my own mind, the product of my inexperience, and that to these skilled investigators the problem presented a more intelligible aspect? It might easily be. I determined cautiously to approach the question.
“You seemed,” said I, “to imply, just now, that there are certain data for forming hypotheses as to the solution of this mystery that envelops the disappearance of Mrs. Frood. But I am not aware of any such data. Are you?”
“Your question, Strangeways,” he replied, “turns on the meaning of the word ‘aware.’ If two men, one literate and the other illiterate, look at a page of a printed book, both may be said to be aware of it; that is to say that in both it produces a retinal image which makes them conscious of it as a visible object having certain optical properties. In the case of the illiterate man the perception of the optical properties is the total effect. But the literate man has something in his consciousness already, and this something combines, as it were, with the optical perception, and makes him aware of certain secondary properties of the printed characters. To both, the page yields a visual impression; but to one only does it yield what we may call a psychical impression. Are they both aware of the page?”
“I appreciate your point,” said I, with a sour smile, “and I seem to be aware of a rather skilful evasion of my question.”
He smiled in his turn and rejoined: “Your question was a little indirect. Shall we have it in a more direct form?”
“What I wanted to know,” said I, “though I suppose I have no right to ask, is whether there appears to you to be any prospect whatever of finding any solution of the mystery of Mrs. Frood’s death.”
“The answer to that question,” he replied, “is furnished by my own proceedings. I am not a communicative man, as you may have noticed, but I will say this much: that I have taken, and am taking, a good deal of trouble with this case, and am prepared to take more, and that I do not usually waste my efforts on problems that appear to be unsolvable. I am not disposed to say more than that, excepting to refer you again to the instance of the printed page and to remind you that whatever I know I have either learned from you or from the observation, in your company, of objects equally visible to both of us.”
This reply, if not very illuminating, at least answered my question, as it conveyed to me that I was not likely to get much more information out of my secretive friend. Nevertheless, I asked:
“About the man Frood: you were saying that you had some hopes of running him to earth.”
“Yes, I have made a start. I have ascertained that he did apparently set out for Brighton the day before Mrs. Frood’s disappearance, but he never arrived there. That is all I know at present. He was seen getting into the Brighton train, but he did not appear at the Brighton barrier—my informant had the curiosity to watch all the passengers go through—and he never made the visit which was the ostensible object of his journey. So he must have got out at an intermediate station. It may be difficult to trace him, but I am not without hope of succeeding eventually. Obviously, his whereabouts on the fatal day is a matter that has to be settled. At present he is the obvious suspect; but if an alibi should be proved in his case, a search would have to be initiated in some other direction.”
This conversation brought us to my house in time to relieve Mrs. Dunk’s anxieties on the subject of dinner; and as the daylight was already gone, the photographic operations were postponed until the following morning. Indeed, Thorndyke had thought of taking the objects to his chambers, where a more efficient outfit was available, but, on reflection, he decided to take the photographs in my presence so that I could, if necessary, attest their genuineness on oath. Accordingly, on the following morning, we very carefully extracted the tumbler and the bottle from their respective boxes and set them up, with a black coat of mine for a background, at the end of a table. Then Thorndyke produced his small folding camera—which pulled out to a surprising length—and, having fitted it with a short-focus objective, made the exposures, and developed the plates in a dark cupboard by the light of a little red lamp from the research case. When the plates were dry we inspected them through a lens, and found them microscopically sharp. Finally, at Thorndyke’s suggestion, I scratched my initials with a needle in the corner of each plate.
“Well,” I said, when he had finished, “you have got the evidence that you wanted, and in a very complete form. It remains to be seen now whether you will ever get an opportunity to use it.”
“Don’t be pessimistic, Strangeways,” said he. “We have had exceptional luck in getting this splendid series of finger-prints. Let us hope that Fortune will not desert us after making us these gifts.”
“What is to be done with the originals?” I asked. “Shall I put them back where we found them?”
“I think not,” he replied. “If you have a safe or a secure lock-up cupboard, where they could be put away, out of sight, and from whence they could be produced if necessary, I will ask you to take charge of them.”
There was a cupboard with a good lock in the old bureau that I had found in my bedroom, and to this I conveyed the precious objects and locked them in. And so ended—at least, for the present—the episode of our raid on poor Angelina’s abode.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE DISCOVERY IN BLACK BOY-LANE
On a fine, sunny afternoon, about ten days after our raid on Angelina’s rooms (it was Tuesday, the 14th of July, to be exact), I was sitting in my dining-room, from which the traces of lunch had just been removed, idly glancing over the paper, and considering the advisability of taking a walk, when I heard the door-bell ring. There was a short interval; then the door was opened, and the sounds of strife and wrangling that followed this phenomenon informed me that the visitor was Mr. Bundy, between whom and Mrs. Dunk there existed a state of chronic warfare. Presently the dining-room door opened—in time for me to catch a concluding growl of defiance from Mrs. Dunk—and that lady announced gruffly: “Mr. Bundy.”
My visitor tripped in smilingly, “all teeth and eyeglass,” as his inveterate enemy had once expressed it, holding a Panama hat, which had temporarily superseded the velour.
“Well, John,” said he, “coming out to play?” He had lately taken to calling me John; in fact, a very close and pleasant intimacy had sprung up between us. It dated from the occasion when I had confided to him my unfortunate passion for poor Angelina. That confidence he had evidently taken as a great compliment, and the matter of it had struck a sympathetic chord in his kindly nature. From that moment there had been a sensible change in his manner towards me. Beneath his habitual flippancy there was an undertone of gentleness and sympathy, and even of affection. Nor had I been unresponsive. Like Thorndyke, I found in his sunny temperament, his invariable cheerfulness and high spirits, a communicable quality that took effect on my own state of mind. And then I had early recognized that, in spite of his apparent giddiness, Bundy was a man of excellent intelligence and considerable strength of character. So the friendship had ripened naturally enough.
I rose from my chair and, dropping the paper, stretched myself.
“You are an idle young dog,” said I. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Nothing doing at the office except some specifications. Japp is doing them. Come out and have a roll round.”
“Well, Jimmy,” said I. “Your name is Jimmy, isn’t it?”
“No, it is not,” he replied with dignity. “I am called Peter—like the Bishop of Rumtifoo, and, by a curious coincidence, for the very same reason.”
“Let me see,” said I, falling instantly into the trap, “what was that reason?”
“Why, you see,” he replied impressively, “the Bishop was called Peter because that was his name.”
“Look here, young fellow my lad,” said I, “you’ll get yourself into trouble if you come up here pulling your elder’s legs.”
“It was only a gentle tweak, old chap,” said he. “Besides, you aren’t so blooming senile, after all. You are only cutting your first crop of whiskers. Are you coming out? I saw old Cobbledick just now, turning down Blue Boar Lane and looking as miserable as a wet cat.”
“What was he looking miserable about?”
“The slump in relics, I expect. He is making no headway with his investigation. I fancy he had reckoned on getting an inspectorship out of this case, whereas, if he doesn’t reach some sort of conclusion, he is likely to get his rapples knucked, as old Miss Barman would say. I suspect he was on his way to the Ark to confer with Mr. Noah. What do you say to a stroll in the direction of Mount Ararat?”
It was a cunning suggestion on the part of Bundy, for it drew me instantly. Repulsive as old Israel’s activities were to me, the presence of those finger-prints, securely locked up in my bureau, had created in me a fresh anxiety to see the first state of the investigation completed so that the search for the murderer could be commenced in earnest. Not that my presence would help the sergeant, but that I was eager to hear the tidings of any new discovery.
Bundy’s inference had been quite correct. We arrived at the head of the Blue Boar pier just in time to see the sergeant slowly descending the ladder, watched gloomily by Israel Bangs. As the former reached terra firma he turned round and then observed us.
“Any news, Sergeant?” I asked, as he approached across the grass.
He shook his head discontentedly. “No,” he replied, “not a sign; not a vestige. It’s a most mysterious affair. The things seemed to be coming up quite regularly until that hatpin was found. Then everything came to an end. Not a trace of anything for nigh upon a month. And what, in the name of Fortune, can have become of the body? That’s what I can’t make out. If this goes on much longer, there won’t be any body: and then we shall be done. The case will have to be dropped.”
He took off his hat (he was in plain clothes as usual) and wiped his forehead, looking blankly first at me and then at Bundy. The latter also took off his hat and whisked out his handkerchief, bringing with it a little telescope which fell to the ground and was immediately picked up by the sergeant. “Neat little glass, this,” he remarked, dusting it with his handkerchief. “It’s lucky it fell on the turf.” He took off the cap, and pulling out the tubes, peered vaguely through it up and down the river. Presently he handed it to me. “Look at those craft down below the dockyard,” said he.
I took the little instrument from him and pointed it at the group of small, cutter-rigged vessels that he had indicated, of which the telescope, small as it was, gave a brilliantly sharp picture.
“What are they?” I asked. “Oyster dredgers?”
“No,” he replied. “They are bawleys with their shrimp-trawls down. But there are plenty of oyster-dredgers in the lower river and out in the estuary, and what beats me is why none of them ever brings up anything in the trawls or dredges—anything in our line, I mean.”
“What did you expect them to bring up?” Bundy asked.
“Well, there are the things that have washed ashore, and there are the other things that haven’t washed ashore yet. And then there is the body.”
“Mr. Noah would have something to say if they brought that up,” said Bundy. “By the way, what had he got to say when you called on him?”
“Old Bangs? Why he is getting a bit shirty. Wants me to pay him for all the time he has lost on creeping and searching. Of course, I can’t do that, I didn’t employ him.”
“Did he find the hat-pin that you spoke of?” Bundy asked.
“Yes; and he has been grubbing round the place where he found it ever since, as if he thought hat-pins grew there.”
“Still,” said Bundy, “it is not so unreasonable. A hat-pin couldn’t have floated ashore. If the hat came off, the two hat-pins must have fallen out at pretty much the same time and place.”
“Yes,” the sergeant agreed, reflectively, “that seems to be common sense; and, if it is, the other hat-pin ought to be lying somewhere close by. I must go and have a look there myself.” He again reflected for a few moments and then asked: “Would you like to see the place where Israel found the pin?”
As I had seen the place already and had shown it to Thorndyke, I left Bundy to answer.
“Why not?” he assented, rather, I suspected, to humour the sergeant than because he felt any particular interest in the place. Thereupon Cobbledick, whose enthusiasm appeared to have been revived by Bundy’s remark, led the way briskly towards the wilderness by the coal-wharves, through that desolate region and along a cart-track that skirted the marshes until we came out into a sort of lesser wilderness to the west of Gas-House Road. Here the sergeant slipped through a large hole in a corrugated iron fence which gave access to a wharf littered with the unpresentable debris resulting from the activities of a firm of ship-knackers. Advancing to the edge of the wharf, Cobbledick stood for a while looking down wistfully at the expanse of unspeakable mud that the receding tide had uncovered.
“I suppose it is too dirty to go down,” he said in a regretful tone.
Bundy’s assent to this proposition was most emphatic and unqualified, and the sergeant had to content himself with a bird’s-eye view. But he made a very thorough inspection, walking along the edge of the wharf, scrutinizing its base, pile by pile, and giving separate attention to each pot, tin, or scrap of driftwood on the slimy surface. He even borrowed Bundy’s telescope to enable him to examine the more distant parts of the mud, until the owner of the instrument was reduced to the necessity of standing behind him, for politeness’ sake, to get a comfortable yawn.
“Well,” said Cobbledick, at long last, handing back the telescope, “I suppose we must give it up. But it’s disappointing.”
“I don’t quite see why,” said Bundy. “You have found enough to prove that the body is in the river, and no number of further relics would prove any more.”
“No, there’s some truth in that,” Cobbledick agreed. “But I don’t like the way that everything seems to have come to a stop.” He crawled dejectedly through the hole in the fence and walked on for a minute or two without speaking. Presently he halted and looked about him. “I suppose Black Boy-lane will be our best way,” he remarked.
“Which is Black Boy-lane?” I asked.
“It is the lane we came down after we left Japp and Willard that day,” Bundy explained.
“I remember,” said I, “but I didn’t know it had a name.”
“It was named after a little inn that used to stand somewhere near the top; but it was pulled down years ago. Here’s the lane.”
We entered the little, tortuous alley that wound between the high, tarred fences, and as it was too narrow for us to walk abreast, Bundy dropped behind. A little way up the lane I noticed an old hat lying on the high grass at the foot of the fence. Bundy apparently noticed it, too, for just after we had passed it I heard the sound of a kick, and the hat flew over my shoulder. At the same moment, and impelled by the same kick, a small object, which I at first thought to be a pebble, hopped swiftly along the ground in front of us, then rolled a little way, and finally came to rest, when I saw that it was a button. I should probably have passed it without further notice, having no use for stray buttons. But the more thrifty sergeant stooped and picked it up; and the instant that he looked at it he stopped dead.
“My God! Doctor,” he exclaimed, holding it out towards me. “Look at this!”
I took it from him, though I had recognized it at a glance. It was a small bronze button with a Tudor Rose embossed on it.
“This is a most amazing thing,” said Cobbledick. “There can’t be any doubt as to what it is.”
“Not the slightest,” I agreed. “It is certainly one of the buttons from Mrs. Frood’s coat. The question is, how on earth did it get here?”
“Yes,” said the sergeant, “that is the question; and a very difficult question, too.”
“Aren’t you taking rather a lot for granted?” suggested Bundy, to whom I had passed the little object for inspection. “It doesn’t do to jump at conclusions too much. Mrs. Frood isn’t likely to have had her buttons made to order. She must have bought them somewhere. She might even have bought them in Rochester. In any case, there must be thousands of others like them.”
“I suppose there must be,” I admitted, “though I have never seen any buttons like them.”
“Neither have I,” said Cobbledick, “and I am going to stick to the obvious probabilities. The missing woman wore buttons like this, and I shall assume that this is one of her buttons unless someone can prove that it isn’t.”
“But how do you account for one of her buttons being here?” Bundy objected.
“I don’t account for it,” retorted Cobbledick. “It’s a regular puzzle. Of course, someone—a child, for instance—might have picked it up on the shore and dropped it here. But that is a mere guess, and not a very likely one. The obvious thing to do is to search this lane thoroughly and see if there are any other traces; and that is what I am going to do now. But don’t let me detain you two gentlemen if you had rather not stay.”
“I shall certainly stay and help you, Sergeant,” said I; and Bundy, assuming the virtue of enthusiasm, if he had it not, elected also to stay and join in the search.
“We had better go back to the bottom of the lane,” said Cobbledick, “and go through the grass at the foot of the fence from end to end. I will take the right hand side and you take the left.”
We retraced our steps to the bottom of the lane and began a systematic search, turning over the grass and weeds and exposing the earth inch by inch. It was a slow process and would have appeared a singular proceeding had any wayfarer passed through and observed us, but fortunately it was an unfrequented place, and no one came to spy upon us. We had traversed nearly half the lane when Bundy stood up and stretched himself. “I don’t know what your back is made of, John,” said he. “Mine feels as if it was made of broken bottles. How much more have we got to do?”
“We haven’t done half yet,” I replied, also standing up and rubbing my lumbar region; and at this moment the sergeant, who was a few yards ahead, hailed us with a triumphant shout. We both turned quickly and beheld him standing with one arm raised aloft and the hand grasping a silver-topped hat-pin.
“What do you say to that, Mr. Bundy?” he demanded as we hurried forward to examine the new “find.” “Shall we be jumping at conclusions if we say that this hat-pin is Mrs. Frood’s?”
“No,” Bundy admitted after a glance at the silver poppy-head. “This seems quite distinctive, and, of course, it confirms the button. But I don’t understand it in the least. How can they have come here?”
“We won’t go into that,” said the sergeant, in a tone of suppressed excitement that showed me pretty clearly that he had already gone into it. “They are here. And now the question arises, what became of the hat? It couldn’t have dropped off down at the wharf, or this hat-pin wouldn’t be here; but it must have fallen off when both hat-pins were gone. Now what can have become of it?”
“It might have been picked up and taken possession of by some woman,” I suggested. “It was a good hat, and if the body was brought here soon after the crime, as it must have been, it wouldn’t have been much damaged. But why trouble about the hat? Appearances suggest that the body was either brought up or taken down this lane. That is the new and astonishing fact that needs explaining.”
“We don’t want to do any explaining now,” said Cobbledick. “We are here to collect facts. If we can find out what became of the hat, that may help us when we come to consider the explanations.”
“Well, it obviously isn’t here,” said I.
“No,” he agreed, “and it wouldn’t have been left here. A murderer mightn’t have noticed the button, or even the hat-pin, on a dark, foggy night. But he’d have noticed the hat; and he wouldn’t have left it where it must have been seen, and probably led to inquiries. He might have taken it with him, or he might have got rid of it. I should say he would have got rid of it. What is on the other side of these fences?”
We all hitched ourselves up the respective fences far enough to look over. On the one side was a space of bare, gravelly ground with thin patches of grass and numerous heaps of cinder; on the other was an area of old waste land thickly covered with thistles, ragwort, and other weeds. The sergeant elected to begin with the latter, as the less frequented and therefore more probably undisturbed. Setting his foot on the buttress of a post, he went over the fence with surprising agility, considering his figure, and was lost to view; but we could hear him raking about among the herbage close to the fence, and from time to time I stood on the buttress and was able to witness his proceedings. First he went to the bottom of the lane and from that point returned by the fence, searching eagerly among the high weeds. I saw him thus proceed, apparently to the top of the lane in the neighbourhood of the remains of the city wall. Thence he came back, but now at a greater distance from the fence, and as he was still eagerly peering and probing amongst the weeds, it was evident that he had had no success. Suddenly, when he was but a few yards away, he uttered an exclamation and ran forward. Then I saw him stoop, and the next moment he fairly ran towards me holding the unmistakable brown straw hat with the dull green ribbon.
“That tells us what we wanted to know,” he said breathlessly, handing the hat to me as he climbed over the fence; “at least, I think it does. I’ll tell you what I mean—but not now,” he added in a lower tone, though not unheard by Bundy, as I inferred later.
“I suppose we need hardly go on with the search any further?” I suggested, having had enough of groping amongst the grass.
“Well, no,” he replied. “I shall go over it again later on, but we’ve got enough to think about for the present. By the way, Mr. Bundy, I’ve found something belonging to you. Isn’t this your property?”
He produced from his pocket a largish key, to which was attached a wooden label legibly inscribed “Japp and Bundy, High-street, Rochester.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Bundy, “it is Japp’s precious key! Where on earth did you find it, Sergeant?”
“Right up at the top,” was the reply. “Close to the old wall.”
“Now, I wonder how the deuce it got there,” said Bundy. “Some fool must have thrown it over the fence from pure mischief. However, here it is. You know there was a reward of ten shillings for finding it, Sergeant. I had better settle up at once. You needn’t make any difficulties about it,” he added, as the sergeant seemed disposed to decline the payment. “It won’t come out of my pocket. It is the firm’s business.”
On this understanding Cobbledick pocketed the proffered note and we walked on up the lane, the sergeant slightly embarrassed, as we approached the town, by the palpably unconcealable hat. Very little was said by any of us, for these new discoveries, with the amazing inferences that they suggested, gave us all abundant material for thought. The sergeant walked with eyes bent on the ground, evidently cogitating profoundly; my mind surged with new speculations and hypotheses, while Bundy, if not similarly preoccupied, refrained from breaking in on our meditations.
When, at length, by devious ways, we reached the High-street in the neighbourhood of the Corn Exchange, we halted, and the sergeant looked at me as if framing a question. Bundy glanced up at the quaint old clock, and remarked:
“It is about time I got back to the office. Mustn’t leave poor old Japp to do all the work, though he never grumbles. So I will leave you here.”
I realized that this was only a polite excuse to enable the sergeant to have a few words with me alone, and I accepted it as such.
“Good-bye, then,” said I, “if you must be off, and in case I don’t see you before, I shall expect you to dinner on Saturday if you’ve got the evening free. Dr. Thorndyke is coming down for the week-end, and I know you enjoy ragging him.”
“He is pretty difficult to get a rise out of, all the same,” said Bundy, brightening up perceptibly at the invitation. “But I shall turn up with very great pleasure.” He bestowed a mock ceremonious salute on me and the sergeant, and, turning away, bustled off in the direction of the office. As soon as he was out of earshot Cobbledick opened the subject of the new discoveries.
“This is an extraordinary development of our case, Doctor,” said he. “I didn’t want to discuss it before Mr. Bundy, though he is really quite a discreet gentleman, and pretty much on the spot, too. But he isn’t a party to the case, and it is better not to talk too freely. You see the points that these fresh finds raise?”
“I see that they put a new complexion on the affair, but to me they only make the mystery deeper and more incomprehensible.”
“In a way they do,” Cobbledick agreed, “but, on the other hand, they put the case on a more satisfactory footing. For instance, we understand now why the body has never come to light. It was never in the river at all. Then as to the perpetrator; he was a local man—or, at least, there was a local man in it; a man who knew the town and the waterside neighbourhood thoroughly. No stranger would have found Black Boy-lane. Very few Rochester people know it.”
“But,” I asked, “what does the finding of these things suggest to you?”
“Well,” he replied, “it suggests several questions. Let me just put these things away in my office, and then we can talk the matter over.” He went into his office, and shortly returned relieved—very much relieved—of the conspicuous hat. We turned towards the bridge, and he resumed: “The first question and the most important one is, which way was the body travelling? It is obvious that it was carried through Black Boy-lane. But in which direction? Towards the town or towards the river? When you think of the circumstances; when you recall that it was a foggy night when she disappeared; it seems at first more probable that the crime might have been committed in, or near, the lane, and the body carried down to the river. But when you consider all the facts, that doesn’t seem possible. There is that box of tablets, picked up dry and clean on Chatham Hard. That seems to fix the locality where the crime occurred.”
“And there is the brooch,” said I.
“I don’t attach much importance to that,” he replied. “It might have been picked up anywhere. But the box of tablets couldn’t have got from Black Boy-lane to Chatham except by the river, and it hadn’t been in the river. But the hat seems to me to settle the question. You see, one hat-pin was found on the shore and the other in the lane near the hat. Now, one hat-pin might have dropped out and left the hat still fixed on the head. But when the hat came off, the pins must have come off with it. The hat came off near the top of the lane. If both the pins had been in it they would both have come out there. But one pin was found on the shore; therefore when the body was at the shore the hat must have been still on the head, though it had probably got loosened by all the dragging about in the boat and in landing the body. You agree to that, Doctor?”
“Yes, it seems undeniable,” I answered.
“Very well,” said he. “Then the body was being carried up the lane. The next question is: was it being carried by one person or by more than one? Well, I think you will agree with me, Doctor, that it could hardly have been done by one man. It is quite a considerable distance from the shore to the top of the lane. She was a good-sized woman, and a dead body is a mighty awkward thing to carry at the best of times. I should say there must have been at least two men.”
“It certainly does seem probable,” I admitted.
“I think so,” said he. “Then we come to another question. Was it really a dead body? Or might the woman have been merely insensible?”
“Good God, Sergeant!” I exclaimed. “You don’t think it possible that it could have been a case of forcible abduction, and that Mrs. Frood is still alive?”
“I wouldn’t say it was impossible,” he replied, “but I certainly don’t think it is the case. You see, nearly three months have passed and there is no sign of her. But in modern England you can’t hide a full-grown, able-bodied woman who has got all her wits about her. No, Doctor, I am afraid we must take the view that the woman who was carried up Black Boy-lane was a dead woman. All I want to point out is that the other view is a bare possibility, and that we mustn’t forget it.”
“But,” I urged, “don’t you think that the fact that she was being carried towards the town strongly suggests that she was alive? Why on earth should a murderer bring a body, at great risk of discovery, from the river, where it could easily have been disposed of, up into the town? It seems incredible.”
“It does,” he agreed. “It’s a regular facer. But, on the other hand, suppose she was alive. What could they have done with her? How could they have kept her out of sight all this time? And why should they have done it?”
“As to the motive,” said I, “that is incomprehensible in any case. But what do you suppose actually happened?”
“My theory of it is,” he replied, “that two men, at least, did the job. Both may have been local waterside men, or there may have been a stranger with a water-rat in his pay. I imagine the crime was committed at Chatham, somewhere near the Sun Pier, and that the body was put in a boat and brought up here. It was a densely foggy night, you remember, so there would have been no great difficulty; and there wouldn’t be many people about. The part of it that beats me is what they meant to do with the body. They seem to have brought it deliberately from Chatham right up into Rochester Town; and they have got rid of it somehow. They must have had some place ready to stow it in, but what that place can have been I can’t form the ghost of a guess. It’s a fair knock-out.”
“You don’t suppose old Israel Bangs knows anything about it?” I suggested.
The sergeant shook his head. “I’ve no reason to suppose he does,” he replied. “And it is a bad plan to make guesses and name names.”
We walked up and down the Esplanade for nearly an hour, discussing various possibilities; but we could make nothing of the incredible thing that seemed to have happened in spite of its incredibility. At last we gave it up and returned to the Guildhall, where, as we parted, he said a little hesitatingly: “I heard you tell Mr. Bundy that Dr. Thorndyke was coming down for the week-end. It wouldn’t be amiss if you were to put the facts of the case before him. It’s quite in his line, and I think he would be interested to hear about it; and he might see something that I have missed. But, of course, it must be in strict confidence.”
I promised to try to find an opportunity to get Thorndyke’s opinion on the case, and with this we separated, the sergeant retiring to his office and I making my way homeward to prepare a report for dispatch by the last post.
CHAPTER XIV.
SERGEANT COBBLEDICK IS ENLIGHTENED
The custom which had grown upon my part of meeting Thorndyke at the station on the occasion of his visits was duly honoured on the present occasion, for the surprising discoveries in Black Boy-lane, which I had described in my report to him, made me eager to hear his comments. Unfortunately, on this occasion, he had come down by an unusually late train, and the opportunity for discussion was limited to the time occupied by the short walk from Rochester Station to my house. For it was close upon dinner time, and I rather expected to find Bundy awaiting us.
“Your report was quite a thrilling document,” he remarked, as we came out of the station approach. “These new discoveries seem to launch us on a fresh phase of the investigation.”
“Do they seem to you to offer any intelligible suggestions?” I asked.
“There is no lack of suggestions,” he replied. “To a person of ordinary powers of imagination, a number of hypotheses must present themselves. But, of course, the first thing to consider is not what might have happened, but what did happen, and what we can safely infer from those happenings. We can apparently take it as proved that the body was carried through the lane; and everything goes to show that it was carried from the river towards the town. The first clear inference is that we can completely exclude accident, pure and simple. The body—living or dead—may be assumed to have been carried by some person or persons. We can dismiss the idea that the woman walked up the lane. But if someone carried the body, someone is definitely implicated. The affair comes unquestionably into the category of crime.”
“That doesn’t carry us very far,” I said, with a sense of disappointment.
“It carries us a stage farther than our previous data did, for it excludes accident, which they did not. Then it suggests not only premeditation, but arrangement. If the body was brought up from the river, there must have been some place known to, and probably prepared by, those who brought it, in which it could be deposited; and that place must have been more secure than the river from which it was brought. But the river, itself, was a very secure hiding-place, especially if the body had been sunk with weights. Now, this is all very remarkable. If you consider the extraordinary procedure; the seizure of the victim at Chatham; the conveyance of the body from thence to this considerable distance; the landing of it at the wharf; the conveyance of it by an apparently selected route—at enormous risk of discovery, in spite of the fog—to an appointed destination: I say, Strangeways, that if you consider this astounding procedure, you cannot fail to be convinced that there was some definite purpose behind it.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “that seems to be so. But what could the purpose be? It appears perfectly incomprehensible. It only makes the mystery more unsolvable than ever.”
“Not at all,” he rejoined. “There is nothing so hopeless to investigate as the perfectly obvious and common-place. As soon as an apparently incomprehensible motive appears, we are within sight of a solution. There may be innumerable explanations of a common-place action; but an outrageously unreasonable action; pursued with definite and considered purpose, can admit of but one or two. The action, with its underlying purpose, must be adjusted to some unusual conditions. We have only to consider to what conditions it could be adjusted, and which, if any, of those conditions actually exist, and the explanation of the apparently incomprehensible action comes into view. But here we are at our destination, and there is our friend, Bundy, standing on the doorstep. By the way, I have brought one or two photographs of Mrs. Frood for you to look at.”
We arrived in time to intervene and put an end to a preliminary skirmish between the irrepressible Bundy and Mrs. Dunk, and when greetings had been exchanged, Thorndyke went up to his room to wash and deposit his luggage.
“Well, John,” said Bundy, when he had hung up his hat, “it is very pleasant to see my old friend after this long separation. Very good of him, too, to invite an insignificant outsider like me to meet his distinguished colleague. You are a benefactor to me, John.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Peterkin,” said I. “You know we are always glad to see you. I invite you for my own pleasure and Thorndyke’s, not for yours.”
Bundy gave my arm a grateful squeeze. “Good old John,” said he. “Nothing like doing it handsomely. But here is the great man himself,” he added, as Thorndyke entered the dining-room, carrying a cardboard box, “with instruments of magic. He’s going to do a conjuring trick.”
Thorndyke opened the box and delicately picked out four photographs, all mounted and all of cabinet size, which he stood up in a row on the mantelpiece. Two of them were from the same negative, one being printed in red carbon, the other in sepia. The remaining two were ordinary silver prints of the conventional trade type.
Bundy looked at the collection with not unnatural surprise.
“Where did these things come from?” he asked.
“They came from London,” replied Thorndyke, “where things of this kind grow. Strangeways asked me to get him some samples. How do you like them? My own preference is for the carbons, and of the two I think I like the red chalk print the better.”
I ran my eye along the row and found myself in strong agreement with Thorndyke. It was not only that the carbon prints had the advantage of the finer medium. The treatment was altogether more artistic, and the likeness seemed better, in spite of a rather over-strong top-lighting.
“Yes,” I said, “the carbons are infinitely superior to the silver prints, and of the two I think the red is the better because it emphasises the shadows less.”
“Is the likeness as good as in the silver prints?” Thorndyke asked.
“Better, I think. The expression is more natural and spontaneous. What do you say, Peter?”
As I spoke I looked at him, not for the first time, for I had already been struck by the intense concentration with which he had been examining the two carbons. And it was not only concentration. There was a curious expression of surprise, as if something in the appearance of the portraits puzzled him.
He looked up with a perplexed frown. “As to the likeness,” said he, “I don’t know that I am a particularly good judge. I only saw her once or twice. But, as far as I remember, it seems to be quite a good likeness, and there can be no question as to the superiority, in an artistic sense, of the carbons. And I agree with you that the shadows are less harsh in the red than in the sepia. Who is the photographer?”
He picked up the red print and, turning it over, looked at the back. Then, finding that the back of the card was blank, he picked up the sepia print and inspected it in the same way, but with the same result. There was no photographer’s name either on the back or front.