by E.
Doctor Manson’s eyes wrinkled over the Bone of Contention. He straightened himself up. “Well, that seems as far as we can go here,” he announced. “Suppose we follow the man’s tracks, Mackenzie, which you say lead to his cottage. Your men can then get the body to the mortuary for Dr. Gaunt. I think a casual examination of the body surface will be sufficient for the doctor to telephone me certain information.” He had a quiet word aside with the police surgeon.
The railway doctor pushed forward towards them. “I should like to be present at the post mortem, in the circumstances,” he requested.
“I shall be glad to accommodate you,” said the police surgeon. The two went off, happily, side by side.
The plate-layers prepared to carry the body of Canley to an ambulance waiting in the main road on the other side of the embankment. Doctor Manson halted them.
“We will keep the man’s shoes here,” he said. Inspector Kenway unlaced and removed them.
The cortège crossed the lines.
CHAPTER XIII
Standing at the top of the embankment Inspector Mackenzie pointed out to Doctor Manson, Inspector Kenway, and Merry, the double row of footprints pointing towards them.
“There, Doctor, is the story, as I see it,” he abrogated, “and plainly outlined. Canley’s cottage is some 200 yards down the lane there. You can’t see it because of the tall hedges on either side of the lane.”
“Now, he seems to have walked from his cottage down the centre of the lane.” He paused as Manson was about to speak. “I’m stating a fact now,” he hurried on. “I’ll show you the proof presently when we go down the lane. Er—where was I?”
“You were walking along the centre of the lane with the late Mr. Canley,” prompted the doctor, gravely.
“Oh, yes. Then he climbed up here, which is the normal way of reaching the cut. Whatever may have happened on the line”—the inspector showed plainly that he regarded the circumstances to be as plain as the handwriting on the wall of Belshazzar’s palace—“these facts are, I think you will agree, obvious.”
“The obvious is not altogether reliable, Inspector,” said the doctor, chidingly. “Quodcumque ostendis mihi sic incredulus odi.” He quoted Horace. “You may have seen the performance of sawing through a woman on the stage.”
He was kneeling down alongside one pair of the prints inspecting them closely through a lens. The result seemed to afford him matter for concern, for he moved farther down the slope subjecting the remainder of the prints to a similarly close scrutiny.
Finally, after a brief conference with Merry, the latter climbed slowly up the bank, collected the shoes of Canley and returned, whereupon the doctor compared the soles with the prints, again through his lens. Finally, he measured the depth of the impressions with micro-callipers, Merry noting the figures on a note-pad.
Mackenzie was shifting from foot to foot in exasperation—like a greyhound straining at the leash, thought Kenway, watching him. Presently he slipped his collar.
“We have already examined the prints, Doctor Manson,” he burst out. “I have had some experience of prints, and there is no doubt that these were made by the dead man.”
Doctor Manson glanced up. “There is no doubt at all in my mind,” he said mildly, “that these prints were made by the dead man’s shoes.” The inspector, mollified, relapsed into silence. It was not until considerably later that he appreciated the distinction drawn by the scientist’s phrasing.
“I was wondering, Inspector, if there was anything else you could tell me from the prints?”
“Yes. They were made after ten-thirty last night,” said Mackenzie, triumphantly. He emphasized his theory that rain would have washed out the details of the impressions shown in the steps. Manson nodded appreciation of the point.
“I give you marks for that,” he said. “But the fact does not help us a great deal further. We are already pretty certain of the time of the tragedy. The condition of the overcoat, you know,” he added. “I mean, do you see anything in the prints likely to give us any material help in solving the riddle of how he came to be on the railway line?”
The inspector, after a mental recapitulation of his examination, intimated that he saw no further facts of importance in them.
“Now, I find them extraordinarily interesting,” said the doctor. He oozed satisfaction. “I’ll give you a clue. You must have noticed that the outside of the heels of Canley’s shoes are considerably worn down. The natural assumption is that the man took long strides and came down with his feet splayed a little. Most men who stride do so.”
The inspector took up the point. “You mean that the distance between the sets of prints is shorter than one would expect for the length of Canley’s legs, sir? I had thought of that, but the man, you remember, was mounting a slope.”
“Well,” said the doctor, who, after a momentary anticipation as the inspector began to speak, was now beginning to look unhappy. “I agree with that, so far as it goes. But what else?”
“M’m!” said the inspector. He felt that something more was expected of him, and gazed into nothingness.
“Possibly,” suggested the scientist, “a still closer scrutiny of the prints may lead you to a further conclusion.” He proffered his lens. Mackenzie bent down and stared hard through it, without adding anything further to his store of knowledge—and said so.
“Never mind.” The doctor sounded regretful. “Perhaps it will occur to you in the lane where there are, I think you told me, a number of other prints. In the meantime it may be advisable to preserve the more plainly marked of these impressions. The weather may deteriorate and we should lose some valuable evidence.”
Merry had forestalled the intention. He had opened the Box of Tricks and taken from it a collapsible bowl, a water-bottle and a packet of Plaster of Paris. He proceeded to mix the water and plaster in the bowl to the consistency of thick paste. The doctor himself, exploring the box, extracted an insecticide spray and from it blew a layer of dust into the first two of the prints. The inspector eyed the process with curiosity.
“Shellac,” Manson explained. “Just a safeguard to prevent the paste when it is poured in, obliterating the more delicate points of the impressions. It is not absolutely necessary, but in this case I think it advisable.”
He took from Merry the bowl of plaster and with the spoon ladled the mixture into the prints until the outline of the impress was covered. Then, while it was setting a little more stiffly, he broke a few twigs from a bush on the embankment and arranged them cross and longwise over the plaster afterwards pouring more plaster on to the thickness of the print.
“The twigs?” He answered the unspoken question of Mackenzie. “To strengthen the cast and bind it more firmly.”
Within a minute or so the casts were sufficiently hard to be lifted. Doctor Manson examined them closely.
“Excellent,” he pronounced, and wrapping them in separate rolls of tissue paper, placed them carefully in the Box of Tricks.
“Now, Inspector,” he said, “while Merry and Inspector Kenway here take one or two more casts here and elsewhere, we might walk to Canley’s cottage, making one or two observations in the lane, if necessary.”
Inspector Mackenzie led the way, keeping carefully to the grass verge and pointing out the trail of footsteps as they walked. He dilated on them.
“You see, Doctor Manson,” he said, “they are quite steady. That is why I do not think the man was drunk. There is no sign at all of staggering.”
The doctor protested. “I have never suggested that he was drunk,” he said, plaintively. “The suggestion came from you in the form of a question. Nor, on the other hand, have I denied it. It seems. . . . Ah! here is an excellent print.”
He had stopped beside a circle of clayey earth and was looking down at a perfect imprint of a shoe sharply outlined in soil that was still damp. Once again he examined the exhibit with cryptic concentration, and then turned his gaze speculatively on the inspector.
“
I should say, Mackenzie, that you at a rough guess are the same weight and height as Canley?”
“As near as makes no matter, I should think, sir.”
“Then would you go a few steps up the lane and then walk back, taking care to step in this soft spot alongside the mark already there. Proceed as you would if you were walking casually along to the short cut.”
On the print resulting from this operation the doctor expended more of the meticulous care with which he had hitherto examined all the other footprints.
“Illuminating,” he said. His voice exuded satisfaction. “Most illuminating. Much as I expected, but pleasantly confirming.”
“Of what, Doctor?” Mackenzie inspected the two prints without finding anything to cheer about.
“Not even in the heels, Mackenzie?” Manson chaffed him. “No? Well, let us get on.”
A few more steps brought them to the end of the tall hedge which had hitherto lined the side of the lane, and Canley’s cottage came into view. It was a two-storey structure built with brownish-yellowish bricks in the square-box shape customary with rural cottages. Doctor Manson put its age at probably thirty years, since the roof was of rough tiles. They had probably been a shade of dark brown but were now green with moss and weather-stain, except where rain had poured down round the sides of the chimney-stack keeping a clear passage as does a centre stream of water in a weed-choked river.
The cottage stood some twenty yards back from the road. Its garden was bounded on the two sides by tall hedges, these being linked up by a privet. The inspector, pushing open the gate, drew attention to the path. Along it, here and there, a number of footprints stood muddily, but not obtrusively muddily, against the light cement of the stones.
“Coming and going, sir,” he said. Manson thought the explanation a trifle redundant. “And undoubtedly the same shoes as those in the lane.” He pointed to the marks of the patch.
“Yes,” said Manson, promptly. “Quite definitely, yes.”
This disconcerting and unexpected agreement with one of his suggestions encouraged Mackenzie to draw his bow at another venture. “I think they make things a little clearer, Doctor?” he said.
“They certainly do, Mackenzie.” Manson beamed. “I would go even further and look upon them as a definite pointer to the manner of Canley’s demise. But what evidence do you find in them yourself?”
The inspector mentally marshalled his facts and having filed them in due order, unloaded them in a rota. “There are two or three omissions, sir, which have a bearing on the evidence of the path,” he began. “One of them concerns this lane. Yesterday was a day of rain-showers. The lane is overhung by tall trees, as you can see. The result is that it is nearly always damp, even in summer-time.
“Now, the daily woman arrived at eight o’clock. She made breakfast. Canley left the house, according to her, at ten o’clock, and he was back again at eleven. He went out once more some time later. I don’t know when, but he was in again at five in the afternoon.”
“There is a note on a pad by the telephone with a number written on it. I telephoned the number and the person there said that he telephoned Canley at five, or a few minutes later, was to be called back and gave his phone number which Canley wrote down and repeated back to him. That places the time. Then at eight o’clock in the evening the woman arrived again to prepare the evening meal. Canley was not in the house then, nor had he come in when she left at nine o’clock. Is that clear, sir?”
“Splendidly clear, Inspector.”
“Now, all these comings and goings, in view of the state of the lane, would have left their marks on the path, except for one thing—the rain. There is none of them. Rain has washed them all clear. We are left with the sole prints of Canley himself.” The inspector became slightly dramatic.
“It ceased raining at ten-thirty o’clock. We know that Canley returned to the house at some time, because the meal prepared by the woman has been eaten. Therefore, these marks were made after the rain had ceased—after ten-thirty o’clock. They are Canley’s prints, coming and going, and there are no others. He was, therefore, alone in the house.”
“M’m!” said the doctor. The comment was strictly noncommittal. “And the order of the making of the prints? Have you any ideas on that?”
Mackenzie became fretfully petulant. “Well, sir, he couldn’t very well have come out if he had not gone in, could he?” It seemed a reasonable assumption. His eyes wandered casually over the prints, and then brightened suddenly. “But, as a matter of fact, you will see that in one or two instances the outward prints are imposed partly on those pointing inwards which seems to settle it.”
“Then that’s that,” said Doctor Manson. The inspector stole a glance at him; there was something in the intonation that sent a wave of misgiving over him.
Doctor Manson was walking up the path towards the cottage. He stretched out his hand to the knob and was a little jolted to find it slip through his fingers and the door turn slowly open, apparently of its own volition. “Open Sesame,” he muttered.
Mackenzie laughed, the first sign of light-heartedness he had shown since the inquiry began. “It will be the constable, I expect,” he explained, and peered into the dark interior of the hall. The constable did, in fact, materialize from the shadows and switched on a light. It disclosed the hall as a small oblong-shaped lobby, with doors each side facing each other, and one at the top end.
“That is the kitchen, Doctor,” said the inspector, and led the way into it. He pointed to the dinner things still in the sink, and unwashed. “The remains of Canley’s meal. I told the woman to leave them there as they were.”
“She did not put them there, then?”
“No. Canley himself always carried the dirty dishes into the kitchen and dumped them in the sink ready for her in the morning. So we know it was Canley who ate the meal.”
“Did he eat in here?”
“No. In the sitting-room. That is the door on the left of the hall as we came in. He carried the dishes from there. Then he seems to have returned to the sitting-room, settled down to drinks and a smoke and then, for some reason we don’t know, turned out again and walked to the railway line. Do you not think so?”
“Er—what, Inspector?” The doctor spoke absently. He was looking at the hall stand. “Is that day woman here now?” he asked.
“That I am.” The voice floated down from above them. It was followed by an angular belligerent figure in a dingy dress which swept the ground. The woman’s forbidding aspect was emphasized by a boned collar. She wore with it an air so militant as to look positively destructive.
“That I am,” she repeated, “and I want to know how long I’m supposed to stay. Skelton’s the name, Hannah Skelton, a respectable married woman, with five children what are waiting for me, and a husband to cook a meal for. I’ve got me work to do as well and can’t hang about here for—” She paused to draw breath, and Doctor Manson intervened before she succeeded.
“Tell me, Mrs. Skelton,” he asked, “did the late Mr. Canley wear a hat?”
“A hat!” she snorted. “’Course he wore a hat. Who do you suppose wore ’em if he didn’t?” She jerked her head in the direction of the hall stand.
“Then I wonder,” mused the doctor, quietly, “why he didn’t wear one last night?”
Mrs. Skelton stared at him and turned again to the stand. Two hats hung there. Sudden surprise illuminated her face. “Now, that’s funny,” she said. “They’re there. What was he a’thinking of to go out without his hat. And a night like last night. He might’a caught his death o’ cold.”
“As it happened, he caught it in another way, madam,” Manson reminded her, grimly humorous. “He hadn’t bought a new one, I suppose?”
“Not him, Mister. He wasn’t the sort to go buying new hats when he had two of ’em here.”
“A careful man, eh? All right, Mrs. Skelton. You hurry off home and cook your husband’s dinner now. But come back here for half an hour or so in the afte
rnoon.”
The woman’s going was followed by the arrival of Inspector Kenway, reporting progress. “Merry is just taking a last cast of a print in the lane. He thinks it’s interesting, Doctor,” he explained. “He’ll be along in a few minutes. Oh, and the men report that there is no sign of a hat anywhere. Your sergeant’s here, too, Inspector, and the constable is still on guard on the line. I think that’s all. You made any progress, Doctor?”
“A little, Kenway, I—”
The telephone rang. Kenway, standing beside it, lifted the receiver and listened. “For you, Doctor,” he said. Manson took it. A few smothered words came over the wire to the ears of the other three.
“And no other injuries of any kind?” inquired the doctor. “Many thanks. It’s what I expected you not to find.” He chuckled, at the laugh that came over the instrument at the bon mot, and hung up.
“That,” he announced, “was your police surgeon, Mackenzie. He found one or two abrasions on the hands and arms, but no other injuries other than the severed head.”
“Isn’t that enough, Doctor?” Kenway giggled. Inspector Mackenzie seemed stupefied.
“No. It is not enough, Kenway.”
Mackenzie found his voice. “His head was cut off,” he said. “That would kill any man. Why worry about any other wounds? We’ve got a mountain; no need to make one out of molehills.”
Doctor Manson stared at him in astonishment. He had not judged the inspector capable of a literary simile. Mackenzie met his stare with an abashed and faintly furtive look, as might have done a Roman leader venturing to question the prognostications of an Augur on the Capitoline Hill. He licked dry lips.
“There again, Inspector, you are accepting as definite what appears to be the obvious,” said Doctor Manson. “The very thing against which I warned you just now. I do not think you are doing yourself justice. Suppose that Canley had been knocked down by the train”—he propounded a theory—“and had not fallen with his head over the rail, and had not been killed. Would you have expected him to have risen and walked away, leaving the train trundling on at twenty miles an hour?”
