by Various
‘Well, in due course, a letter came from Margate; it had been written at the bungalow, but the postmark was Margate and bore the same date – 16 July – as the letter itself. I have it with me. Mrs Crofton sent it for me to see and I haven’t returned it yet. But there is nothing of interest in it beyond the statement that he was going on to Margate by the next train and would write again when he had found rooms there. That was the last that was heard of him. He never wrote and nothing is known of his movements excepting that he left Seasalter and arrived at Margate. This is the letter.’
I handed it to Thorndyke, who glanced at the postmark and then laid it on the table for examination later. ‘Have any inquiries been made?’ he asked.
‘Yes. His photograph has been sent to the Margate police, but, of course – well, you know what Margate is like in July. Thousands of strangers coming and going every day. It is hopeless to look for him in that crowd; and it is quite possible that he isn’t there now. But his disappearance is most inopportune, for a big legacy has just fallen in, and, naturally, Mrs Crofton is frantically anxious to let him know. It is a matter of about thirty thousand pounds.’
‘Was this legacy expected?’ asked Thorndyke.
‘No. The Croftons knew nothing about it. They didn’t know that the old lady – Miss Shuler – had made a will or that she had very much to leave; and they didn’t know that she was likely to die, or even that she was ill. Which is rather odd; for she was ill for a month or two, and, as she suffered from a malignant abdominal tumour, it was known that she couldn’t recover.’
‘When did she die?’
‘On 13 July.’
Thorndyke raised his eyebrows. ‘Just three days before the date of this letter,’ he remarked; ‘so that, if he should never reappear, this letter will be the sole evidence that he survived her. It is an important document. It may come to represent a value of thirty thousand pounds.’
‘It isn’t really so important as it looks,’ said I. ‘Miss Shuler’s will provides that if Crofton should die before the testatrix, the legacy should go to his wife. So whether he is alive or not, the legacy is quite safe. But we must hope that he is alive, though I must confess to some little anxiety on his account.’
Thorndyke reflected awhile on this statement. Presently he asked:
‘Do you know if Crofton has made a will?’
‘Yes, he has,’ I replied; ‘quite recently. I was one of the witnesses and I read it through at Crofton’s request. It was full of the usual legal verbiage, but it might have been stated in a dozen words. He leaves practically everything to his wife, but instead of saying so it enumerates the property item by item.’
‘It was drafted, I suppose, by the solicitor?’
‘Yes; another friend of the family named Jobson, and he is the executor and residuary legatee.’
Thorndyke nodded and again became deeply reflective. Still meditating, he took up the letter, and as he inspected it, I watched him curiously and not without a certain secret amusement. First he looked over the envelope, back and front. Then he took from his pocket a powerful Coddington lens and with this examined the flap and the postmark. Next, he drew out the letter, held it up to the light, then read it through and finally examined various parts of the writing through his lens.
‘Well,’ I asked, with an irreverent grin, ‘I should think you have extracted the last grain of meaning from it.’
He smiled as he put away his lens and handed the letter back to me.
‘As this may have to be produced in proof of survival,’ said he, ‘it better be put in a place of safety. I notice that he speaks of returning later to the bungalow. I take it that it has been ascertained that he did not return there?’
‘I don’t think so. You see, they have been waiting for him to write. You think that someone ought—’
I paused; for it began to be borne in on me that Thorn-dyke was taking a somewhat gloomy view of the case.
‘My dear Jardine,’ said he. ‘I am merely following your own suggestion. Here is a man with an inherited tendency to melancholia and suicide who has suddenly disappeared. He went away from an empty house and announced his intention of returning to it later. As that house is the only known locality in which he could be sought, it is obvious that it ought to have been examined. And even if he never came back there, the house might contain some clues to his present whereabouts.’
This last sentence put an idea into my mind which I was a little shy of broaching. What was a clue to Thorndyke might be perfectly meaningless to an ordinary person. I recalled his amazing interpretations of the most commonplace facts in the mysterious Maddock case and the idea took fuller possession. At length I said tentatively:
‘I would go down myself if I felt competent. Tomorrow is Saturday and I could get a colleague to look after my practice; there isn’t much doing just now. But when you speak of clues, and when I remember what a duffer I was last time – I wish it were possible for you to have a look at the place.’
To my surprise, he assented almost with enthusiasm. ‘Why not?’ said he. ‘It is a weekend. We could put up at the bungalow, I suppose, and have a little gipsy holiday. And there are undoubtedly points of interest in the case. Let us go down tomorrow. We can lunch in the train and have the afternoon before us. You had better get a key from Mrs Crofton, or, if she hasn’t got one, an authority to visit the house. We may want that if we have to enter without a key. And we go alone, of course.’
I assented joyfully. Not that I had any expectations as to what we might learn from our inspection. But something in Thorndyke’s manner gave me the impression that he had extracted from my account of the case some significance that was not apparent to me.
The bungalow stood on a space of rough ground a little way behind the sea-wall, along which we walked towards it from Whitstable, passing on our way a shipbuilder’s yard and a slipway, on which a collier brigantine was hauled up for repairs. There were one or two other bungalows adjacent, but a considerable distance apart, and we looked at them as we approached to make out the names painted on the gates.
‘That will probably be the one,’ said Thorndyke, indicating a small building enclosed within a wooden fence and provided, like the others, with a bathing hut, just above high-water mark. Its solitary, deserted aspect and lowered blinds supported his opinion and when we reached the gate, the name ‘Middlewick’ painted on it settled the matter.
‘The next question is,’ said I, ‘how the deuce are we going to get in? The gate is locked, and there is no bell. Is it worth while to hammer at the fence?’
‘I wouldn’t do that,’ replied Thorndyke. ‘The place is pretty certainly empty or the gate wouldn’t be locked. We shall have to climb over unless there is a back gate unlocked, so the less noise we make the better.’
We walked round the enclosure, but there was no other gate, nor was there any tree or other cover to disguise our rather suspicious proceedings. ‘There’s no help for it, Jardine,’ said Thorndyke, ‘so here goes.’ He put his green canvas suitcase on the ground, grasped the top of the fence with both hands and went over like a harlequin. I picked up the case and handed it over to him, and, having taken a quick glance round, followed my leader.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘here we are. And now, how are we going to get into the house?’
‘We shall have to pick a lock if there is no door open, or else go in by a window. Let us take a look round.’
We walked round the house to the back door, but found it not only locked but bolted top and bottom, as Thorndyke ascertained with his knife-blade. The windows were all casements and all fastened with their catches.
‘The front door will be the best,’ said Thorndyke. ‘It can’t be bolted unless he got out by the chimney, and I think my “smoker’s companion” will be able to cope with an ordinary door-lock. It looked like a common builder’s fitting.’
As he spoke, we returned to the front of the house and he produced the ‘smoker’s companion’ from his pocket (I don
’t know what kind of smoker it was designed to accompany). The lock was apparently a simple affair, for the second trial with the ‘companion’ shot back the bolt, and when I turned the handle, the door opened. As a precaution, I called out to inquire if there was anybody within, and then, as there was no answer, we entered, walking straight into the living-room, as there was no hall or lobby.
A couple of paces from the threshold we halted to look round the room, and on me the aspect of the place produced a vague sense of discomfort. Though it was early in a bright afternoon, the room was almost completely dark, for not only were the blinds lowered, but the curtains were drawn as well.
‘It looks,’ said I, peering about the dim and gloomy apartment with sun-dazzled eyes, ‘as if he had gone away at night. He wouldn’t have drawn the curtains in the daytime.’
‘One would think not,’ Thorndyke agreed; ‘but it doesn’t follow.’ He stepped to the front window and drawing back the curtains pulled up the blind, revealing a half-curtain of green serge over the lower part of the window. As the bright daylight flooded the room, he stood with his back to the window looking about with deep attention, letting his eyes travel slowly over the walls, the furniture, and especially the floor. Presently he stooped to pick up a short match-end which lay just under the table opposite the door, and as he looked at it thoughtfully, he pointed to a couple of spots of candle grease on the linoleum near the table. Then he glanced at the mantelpiece and from that to an ash-bowl on the table.
‘These are only trifling discrepancies,’ said he, ‘but they are worth noting. You see,’ he continued in response to my look of inquiry, ‘that this room is severely trim and orderly. Everything seems to be in its place. The matchbox, for instance, has its fixed receptacle above the mantelpiece, and there is a bowl for the burnt matches, regularly used, as its contents show. Yet here is a burnt match thrown on the floor, although the bowl is on the table quite handy. And the match, you notice, is not of the same kind as those in the box over the mantelpiece, which is a large Bryant and May, or as the burnt matches in the bowl which have evidently come from it. But if you look in the bowl,’ he continued, picking it up, ‘you will see two burnt matches of this same kind – apparently the small size Bryant and May – one burnt quite short and one only half burnt. The suggestion is fairly obvious, but, as I say, there is a slight discrepancy.’
‘I don’t know,’ said I, ‘that either the suggestion or the discrepancy is very obvious to me.’
He walked over to the mantelpiece and took the matchbox from its case.
‘You see,’ said he, opening it, ‘that this box is nearly full. It has an appointed place and it was in that place. We find a small match, burnt right out, under the table opposite the door, and two more in the bowl under the hanging lamp. A reasonable inference is that someone came in in the dark and struck a match as he entered. That match must have come from a box that he brought with him in his pocket. It burnt out and he struck another, which also burnt out while he was raising the chimney of the lamp, and he struck a third to light the lamp. But if that person was Crofton, why did he need to strike a match to light the room when the matchbox was in its usual place; and why did he throw the match-end on the floor?’
‘You mean that the suggestion is that the person was not Crofton; and I think you are right. Crofton doesn’t carry matches in his pocket. He uses wax vestas and carries them in a silver case.’
‘It might possibly have been Ambrose,’ Thorndyke suggested.
‘I don’t think so,’ said I. ‘Ambrose uses a petrol lighter.’
Thorndyke nodded. ‘There may be nothing in it,’ said he, ‘but it offers a suggestion. Shall we look over the rest of the premises?’
He paused for a moment to glance at a small key-board on the wall on which one or two keys were hanging, each distinguished by a little ivory label and by the name written underneath the peg; then he opened a door in the corner of the room. As this led into the kitchen, he closed it and opened an adjoining one which gave access to a bedroom.
‘This is probably the extra bedroom,’ he remarked as we entered. ‘The blinds have not been drawn down and there is a general air of trimness that suggests a tidy up of an unoccupied room. And the bed looks as if it had been out of use.’
After an attentive look round, he returned to the living-room and crossed to the remaining door. As he opened it, we looked into a nearly dark room, both the windows being covered by thick serge curtains.
‘Well,’ he observed, when he had drawn back the curtains and raised the blinds, ‘there is nothing painfully tidy here. That is a very roughly made bed, and the blanket is outside the counterpane.’
He looked critically about the room and especially at the bedside table.
‘Here are some more discrepancies,’ said he. ‘There are two candlesticks, in one of which the candle has burnt itself right out, leaving a fragment of wick. There are five burnt matches in it, two large ones from the box by its side, and three small ones, of which two are mere stumps. The second candle is very much guttered’, and I think’ – he lifted it out of the socket – ‘yes, it has been used out of the candlestick. You see that the grease has run down right to the bottom and there is a distinct impression of a thumb – apparently a left thumb – made while the grease was warm. Then you notice the mark on the table of a tumbler which had contained some liquid that was not water, but there is no tumbler. However, it may be an old mark, though it looks fresh.’
‘It is hardly like Crofton to leave an old mark on the table,’ said I. ‘He is a regular old maid. We had better see if the tumbler is in the kitchen.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Thorndyke. ‘But I wonder what he was doing with that candle. Apparently he took it out of doors, as there is a spot on the floor of the living-room; and you see that there are one or two spots on the floor here.’ He walked over to a chest of drawers near the door and was looking into a drawer which he had pulled out, and which I could see was full of clothes, when I observed a faint smile spreading over his face. ‘Come round here, Jardine,’ he said in a low voice, ‘and take a peep through the crack of the door.’
I walked round, and, applying my eye to the crack, looked across the living-room at the end window. Above the half-curtain I could distinguish the unmistakable top of a constabulary helmet.
‘Listen,’ said Thorndyke. ‘They are in force.’
As he spoke, there came from the neighbourhood of the kitchen a furtive scraping sound, suggestive of a pocket-knife persuading a window-catch. It was followed by the sound of an opening window and then of a stealthy entry. Finally, the kitchen door opened softly, someone tip-toed across the living-room and a burly police-sergeant appeared framed in the bedroom doorway.
‘Good afternoon, Sergeant,’ said Thorndyke, with a genial smile.
‘Yes, that’s all very well,’ was the response, ‘but the question is, who might you be, and what might you be doing in this house?’
Thorndyke briefly explained our business, and, when we had presented our cards and Mrs Crofton’s written authority, the sergeant’s professional stiffness vanished like magic.
‘It’s all right, Tomkins,’ he sang out to an invisible myrmidon. ‘You had better shut the window and go out by the front door. You must excuse me, gentlemen,’ he added; ‘but the tenant of the next bungalow cycled down and gave us the tip. He watched you through his glasses and saw you pick the front-door lock. It did look a bit queer, you must admit.’
Thorndyke admitted it freely with a faint chuckle, and we walked across the living-room to the kitchen. Here, the sergeant’s presence seemed to inhibit comments, but I noticed that my colleague cast a significant glance at a frying-pan that rested on a Primus stove. The congealed fat in it presented another ‘discrepancy’; for I could hardly imagine the fastidious Crofton going away and leaving it in that condition.
Noting that there was no unwashed tumbler in evidence, I followed my friend back to the living-room, where he paused with his eye
on the key-board.
‘Well,’ remarked the sergeant, ‘if he ever did come back here, it’s pretty clear that he isn’t here now. You’ve been all over the premises, I think?’
‘All excepting the bathing-hut,’ replied Thorndyke; and, as he spoke, he lifted the key so labelled from its hook.
The sergeant laughed softly. ‘He’s not very likely to have taken up his quarters there,’ said he. ‘Still, there’s nothing like being thorough. But you notice that the key of the front door and that of the gate have both been taken away, so we can assume that he has taken himself away too.’
‘That is a reasonable inference,’ Thorndyke admitted; ‘but we may as well make our survey complete.’
With this he led the way out into the garden and to the gate, where he unblushingly produced the ‘smoker’s companion’ and insinuated its prongs into the keyhole.
‘Well, I’m sure!’ exclaimed the sergeant as the lock clicked and the gate opened. ‘That’s a funny sort of tool; and you seem quite handy with it, too. Might I have a look at it?’
He looked at it so very long and attentively, when Thorn-dyke handed it to him, that I suspected him of an intention to infringe the patent. By the time he had finished his inspection we were at the bottom of the bank below the sea-wall and Thorndyke had inserted the key into the lock of the bathinghut. As the sergeant returned the ‘companion’ Thorndyke took it and pocketed it; then he turned the key and pushed the door open; and the officer started back with a shout of amazement.
