by David Pirie
THE RED CARDBOARD BOX
After that, Bell lapsed into silence as our cab turned back up the drive but, upon reaching the top, it slowed to make way for another grander carriage. Both of us looked at it inquisitively and there was light enough from the driver’s torches for us to see the occupant. It was Sir Henry Carlisle.
‘Well,’ said Bell turning to me, his eyes bright. ‘Crawford senior has a visitor, it would seem. I wonder what business the two men could possibly have together. Carlisle does not strike me as the kind of man who attends prayer meetings.’ But then he returned to his own reflections and did not say another word until he wished me goodnight.
The following day I had some urgent tasks to perform for my mother, which involved a long trudge through Edinburgh in order to pay some of the household bills. I returned home somewhat wearily in the early afternoon, reflecting on the irony that only criminal matters ever permitted me the luxury of riding in cabs. And to my surprise a message from the Doctor was waiting.
My dear Doyle,
There have been some developments at Miss Scott’s lodgings which would seem to be linked to this business. She is merely a little frightened but I would ask you to meet me there as soon as you receive this. I suspect now we will have to take further action to protect her.
Bell
Naturally I raced round to the lodgings at once and found Inspector Beecher coming out of the house’s front gate with a uniformed policeman. Beecher nodded at me but, when I asked what had happened, he only muttered that I would see soon enough and walked off to confer with his colleague. In my frustration I was about to knock fruitlessly on the door, knowing full well Miss Maitland would never let me in, when a cab arrived and Bell himself climbed out.
‘Good afternoon, Beecher, I see you got my message,’ he said politely, smiling at me. ‘It would seem our young friend at this address is the recipient of further unwanted attentions.’
Beecher responded to his politeness. ‘It is a strange business, sir. I doubt it is very grave, though, and for once we may be in agreement for it certainly seems one of the students is behind it.’
Beecher now led us back up to the door which was opened by the maid even before we reached it. Miss Maitland stood in the hall, evidently impressed by the police, but she scowled at me.
‘These dreadful things are in the back’ she said, addressing us generally. ‘I wish you would take them away altogether. The young lady is upstairs. We are a law-abiding house! In the circumstances I doubt she can continue to stay here very much longer.’
‘In the circumstances, madam,’ said Bell heartily, ‘I doubt she would wish to.’
The landlady led us through a door to the little yard at the back of the house. There was a bench at the end of it and on the bench lay a red cardboard box with brown paper and string. I stared at it. So here were the ‘unwanted attentions’ Bell had cited. Now he bent down and studied it eagerly without touching anything until finally he sat on the bench beside it and placed it in front of him, staring at the address.
‘Well,’ he said with all the old enthusiasm I knew so well, ‘the string is suggestive. What do you make of it, Beecher?’
‘It has been tarred,’ the policeman said.
‘Precisely, it is tarred twine. You will also see that Miss Scott cut the string with scissors. That is important.’
‘I cannot see why, Dr Bell.’
‘Because it leaves the knot,’ said Bell, who was like a child back in his own favourite playroom. ‘Rather a wild and fanciful one, would you not say?’
Now he picked up the wrapping paper. ‘Brown paper smelling distinctly of … coffee. No postmark, since it was handed to a boy in the grass market around noon. You are sure the boy did not see the man’s face?’
‘No, the landlady here had the presence of mind to detain him, so we talked to him. The man had a hood and was in a doorway. The boy cannot even say his age.’
Bell was staring at the writing on the paper. ‘I see a pencil mark, too, below. Faint, yet the numbers 1 and 1 and a 2 or 3 or 5 are legible, though this forms no part of the address. Which is written with a broad-pointed pen. Miss E. Scott. Box red half-pound. And inside …’
He opened it at last. The thing appeared to be full of rough salt. But two pink objects were perched on top. They were human ears.
Of course I had seen such things in the dissecting room, but there was something uniquely repellent about seeing them in an open parcel on a bench in a sunny domestic garden.
‘Surely,’ said Beecher, ‘it is just a vicious practical joke, Bell. Someone has taken human ears from a dissecting room. The women students are constantly the butt of such things.’
Bell was very still now, some of his humour gone. He was staring at the ears. ‘Yes,’ he said at last. ‘This was what I had expected.’
He had taken a pencil from his pocket and was using it to examine the ears. ‘But we should never anticipate, Beecher,’ he said solemnly. ‘How many times do we tell ourselves that, and yet still we do. Bodies in the dissecting room are injected with preservative, but there is no sign of it here. And the infirmary uses rectified spirits, never salt. These things have recently been cut away with a blunt instrument. No, this is not a joke. I have no doubt the owner’s body will be found.’
He got to his feet and turned away. Beecher nodded at the policeman, who proceeded to bundle up the evidence. Bell said nothing as we walked back into the house, but I noticed he was writing something down on a piece of paper. There was no sign of the landlady, but I was relieved to see Miss Scott standing there waiting for us. She looked a little pale but was otherwise in good spirits.
‘They have already accused us of entering the dissecting room. This is just more of their stupidity is it not, Dr Bell?’
At this Bell came to life, rewarding her with a gracious smile and handing her a piece of paper. ‘I wonder if you would do me the honour, Miss Scott, of having a private lunch with myself and Doyle tomorrow. Here is the address and a note from me with something I want you to consider. It will give us time for a long discussion of these matters, once we have looked into them, for I am quite happy we can resolve them to our satisfaction.’
She smiled back, though of course she was no fool and could see quite well that he had not answered her question. ‘I will be delighted.’
‘I would be grateful,’ he went on, ‘if you mention the arrangement to nobody, and I would ask again that you keep your doors and windows firmly locked tonight.’
Later I managed to have a reassuring word with her, pleased not only by her spirit but also by the fact that I would be seeing her properly the following day. Shortly after this Miss Maitland appeared and Bell moved at once to have a quiet talk with her. I could not hear what was said, but clearly some agreement was reached, and soon we were out on the street.
Generally, when Bell wanted to reflect on a case, he preferred either to be alone or to have absolute silence. Today was quite different. He was voluble, questioning, analytical. On our return to the university he did not repair upstairs but stood in his downstairs room among the bookshelves, asking question after question I could not answer. Why the progression? From eyes to blood to coins to ears? Could our man really be so feeble that he thought the box’s contents would cause true distress? What was it about Miss Scott that attracted his attention in any case?
I told him that everything pointed to Crawford and he agreed. Finally he asked me to fetch the large Bible that had a special place on his downstairs desk. Now at last he did lapse into silence, and for a long time he turned the pages. And then he gave a cry.
‘Yes, here. Psalm 115. “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.” The coins. “They have mouths but they speak not.” The beggar and his shattered violin. “Eyes have they but they see not.” The sheep’s eyes. “They have ears but they hear not.” He is following this psalm, Doyle. That must have been the number on the envelope.’
I rushed over to look at
it with him. Both of us stared at the next sentence. ‘Neither speak they through their throat.’
The Doctor got to his feet at once and went to put on his coat. ‘Well, judging by what we have seen of that household, Master Crawford would be likely to know his psalms. We must pay him another visit. Whatever state he is in, I want to search that den of his.’
In the event, it took longer than we might have liked to find a hansom. And, having alerted the police to our destination, it was mid-afternoon before we were trundling down the drive to Holy Well House. We saw nobody,and this time Bell ignored the front altogether and directed the cab to go round the back. The drive did not extend all the way, but the outhouse, where the younger Crawford lived in such squalor, was in sight before it came to a stop.
We climbed down and moved quickly towards the place. Its door was ajar but this hardly helped us to navigate the shadows inside, for there was no lamp now and the windows were small and covered with dirt. Here, it seemed, was one citadel the servants of Holy Well House were either forbidden or unwilling to enter.
Once again I trod carefully over the floor, which was littered with those small and somewhat unnerving pink bottles. A rat jumped back from some dropped food and I noticed the whole place was suffused in a sweet, sweaty odour that must have come partly from the stuff itself and partly from its occupant. We both turned expectantly to the shape on the armchair but it did not stir and, approaching it, I saw we had been deceived. Here was only a pile of filthy blankets. I looked beyond it, fully expecting to find Crawford stretched out on the floor, but there was nothing. The place was empty.
Once sure of this, Bell set to work and began a methodical search. His eyes were remarkable, for I was still looking warily though old newspapers that lay under a plate of congealing food when Bell gave a cry from the fireplace. The ashes were still warm and he pulled out some twine and the remains of something brown and black.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Half-burned tarred twine, and this paper, too. Good quality.’ He held it up. ‘Even the coffee smell.’ Then he frowned. ‘And yet.’
‘You think it is not the same?’ I asked.
‘Oh, I would wager it is precisely the same. But—’
I interrupted him for I had spied something behind one of the bottles and pulled it out. ‘A broad-pointed pen.’
Bell took it and stared at it, but he still seemed out of sorts. ‘So where is Crawford?’
There was nothing else to see, so we gathered up the evidence and I was very glad to get out of that hellish place into the open air. A police cab had just arrived and a uniformed constable, who evidently knew Bell, came straight to us.
‘Dr Bell, you are to come at once, sir. There is a message from Inspector Beecher. A woman’s body was found some hours ago. The post-mortem is already in train.’
‘As I had expected,’ the Doctor said. ‘We will be there. Now I wonder if you could do something for us, Constable. It seems to me it would be worth your men checking these woods in the hour or so before darkness just in case there is anything to find.’
I could tell the Doctor was filled with excitement as we made the trek back into town and he fairly raced up the steps into the city morgue, a shadowy building where I had first discovered his strange speciality. Bell stood there impatiently as Summers pulled a sheet off the body of a middle-aged woman. The post-mortem had been thorough but I could still see the body had been in a somewhat desperate condition, skeletally thin with sores. The head was separately covered and Bell leaned forward eagerly as this was removed. The face was a horrible sight. On each side lay reddened stumps and little folds of hanging flesh where the ears had been cut away. The Doctor stared at them.
‘As you will observe, Bell,’ said Summers, ‘we have made the match and there is no doubt these things belong to her. Her name is Ellie Carswell. She lived in poverty in a small room on the grass market, and had not been seen for some days. Her neighbours found her and alerted us.’
Beecher had entered now with a uniformed colleague. Bell was studying the corpse’s head, giving all his attention to the somewhat frightful evidence of this callous mutilation.
‘So are you content now, Inspector, that crimes have been committed?’ he said to Beecher without turning round.
Beecher stepped forward. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘And, moreover, I feel sure young Crawford is the guilty party.’ But his face belied what he said, for he was grinning, and Summers – whose relationship with Beecher had its ups and down – again seemed to be sharing the joke. ‘But my original observation still applies, gentlemen. These are crimes of a very limited kind.’
I was already sickened by the bloody sight in front of me and this was too much. ‘What … ?’
I would have gone on but the Doctor held up his hand for silence. He was looking at Summers, evidently anticipating something I had missed.
‘The post-mortem,’ announced Summers, ‘showed that this woman died some time ago of heart failure brought on by alcohol poisoning and malnutrition. The mutilation took place after death. There has been no murder.’
The Doctor nodded, his face tense. ‘It is as before. He is playing games.’
‘But,’ said Beecher, ‘I have just had some good news, gentlemen. Your player is found. Only he is not about to explain himself to you or anyone else.’
And so it was that a few hours later I stood in the wood behind Holy Well as they cut my fellow student down from the tree, where he had hanged himself, at the back of that great gloomy house. It was quite dark now and torches had been placed all around the clearing in a way that horribly picked out his bulging eyes and the oddly angled head where the neck had broken. Dressed in a filthy red jacket, he looked like some grotesque marionette.
Since he was obviously long dead when they found him, the constable had, greatly to his credit as Bell told him, delayed cutting the corpse down until a proper examination of the site could be made. Bell helped to conduct this himself but could find nothing apart from yet another of those hellish pink bottles, presumably the last that Crawford ever consumed on this earth.
Finally they were ready to lower the body, and two policemen climbed the tree and managed to cut through the rope and get it to the ground. I did not much wish to look at the man again, so I turned away and found myself staring at the spectators instead. All the faces in that clearing were lit by the flickering torches as they stared, and one face in particular showed the utmost misery. It was Crawford’s father. He was not crying, indeed he was bolt upright, but he was trembling and pale and all the fight had gone out of him. When he saw my eyes on him he turned away, but it was quite obvious he could not bear to look too closely on his dead son.
I walked back through the trees, hoping only that this business was now at an end. Until I felt a touch on my shoulder. And I turned to see the Doctor, evidently troubled by some strong emotion.
‘We are no further forward.’
At first I could not make sense of the words. The evidence, after all, was so overwhelming. ‘But we saw what was in the outhouse?’
‘Crawford has been dead at least twelve hours, probably far longer. He could not possibly have handed over the parcel. Our man is still at large.’ And he turned away to move back to the drive.
It is not easy to think you are at the end of a case and find that you have arrived nowhere at all. My first emotion was, I have to admit, one of indignation. So perhaps the box had not been handed over by Crawford himself. What of it? He might have paid someone to do it and then gone off to hang himself. I simply could not believe that the whole of our carefully contrived case against the man could now be swept away by one scientific observation.
Nor was my mood much improved by the Doctor, who sat in his upstairs room, a watch beside him, endlessly trying to duplicate the pile of coins we had seen. Slowly he became more proficient at building these little pyramids, but he was not satisfied. ‘They are not so easy,’ he observed quietly. ‘I doubt Crawford could ever have managed them in
his condition. And to do it quickly with a woman sleeping beside you!’
He swept his latest creation away and the coins fell with a clatter. I tried to control my temper. ‘Yet there is so much evidence …’
‘There is too much evidence!’ he retorted. ‘It was what irritated me when we found the twine and the paper. For a long time I have been troubled by the neatness of it all. In fact, to be truthful, I doubted Crawford was capable of it. We are dealing with a much more resourceful intelligence.’
‘But still you must concede we have built up a case of sorts.’ I spoke carefully, wanting to be sure of what evidence we still had after this setback. ‘The coins, the psalm, the paper.’
‘All intended to lead us to Crawford. He did not wrap or send the parcel, though whoever did wanted us to believe otherwise. And it was a matter of ease for anyone to access his outhouse. I am sorry to tell you, Doyle, this is no more interesting than the waiter with the icicle. There is no case at all.’
I am afraid my anger erupted, for it was only now that I was beginning to grasp the implications for Miss Scott. ‘No case!’ I got up from the table. ‘But surely we were at last reaping the fruit of your so-called method, Doctor. It would be folly to abandon all our painstaking deduction! More likely your timing of his death is wrong. Or Crawford paid someone else to hand over the box.’
As so often, my anger only served to make the Doctor more reflective: his voice became softer. ‘You fail to understand still,’ he said. ‘It is a mental system, Doyle, not a forcing press. If a piece fails, so be it. But once you start to invent connections and the criminal has you! Do you not grasp how lucky we have been today?’
This was too much. ‘Lucky?’
‘Crawford’s suicide. Whoever is behind all this had no idea of it, or the box would never have been sent when it was. We were given the psalm so we could conclude our case, a case that has led us precisely nowhere. It is all a false trail to distract us from the more serious crimes. But at last …’ And now he too got up. ‘At last one mistake has been made. Just one. A single ray of light in the darkness. But in the end, I swear, it will help us to see him.’
