The Paddington Mystery

by John Rhode

  For one wild second the thought of rebellion flashed through Denbigh’s mind. This was intolerable. How on earth was he to listen patiently to this old bore and watch the precious minutes slipping by? Once in the study, there would be no chance of securing that longed-for interview with April. There would be nothing for it but to sit on and on, until the inevitable time for his departure came.

  But there was no help for it. April had already risen to follow her father, and Denbigh trailed after them, fury in his heart and a smile on his lips. The Professor sank with a sigh into his favourite chair in front of his desk. April dropped on to a cushion before the fire.

  ‘Here you are, Denbigh,’ said the Professor, pointing to a sofa against the wall furthest from the door, and separated from the rest of the room by the big desk. ‘I can hear you better on my left side. One has to arrange these things at my time of life. April dear, turn out the lights, if you please? It is just as easy to talk in the dark, and I confess that I find the glare of these modern electric lights rather trying. Ah, thank you!’

  The study was thus left in comparative darkness. A heavily-shaded lamp on the Professor’s desk cast a bright circle of light upon the writing pad, but hardly penetrated the shadows beyond. A couple of big logs in the grate burned redly upon a carefully prepared bed of coal, but their occasional flames did little beyond casting a flickering, uncertain light upon the bookcases that lined the walls. It was, as April remarked, the ideal setting for professorial discussion.

  Denbigh acquiesced in the arrangement with a certain fatalism. Since all chance of seeing April alone seemed to have been denied him, he might as well submit to fate and employ his time earning the good opinion of her father. After all, this was merely a postponement; it ought to be easy for him to bring about another opportunity in a day or two. Meanwhile he schooled himself to listen attentively to the Professor’s exordium.

  But the three had hardly settled themselves before the door opened and Mary appeared, silhouetted against the comparative brightness of the hall. ‘Mr Merefield, sir,’ she announced, and Harold walked in, blinded by the unaccustomed gloom.

  ‘Ah, Harold, my boy, is that you?’ said the Professor equably. ‘There is no need for any of us to disturb ourselves. You will find a chair in front of the fire, close to where April is sitting. That’s right. I was explaining to Denbigh that the study of facts, if intelligently conducted, is capable of solving any problem which can confront the human brain.’

  ‘Can it, sir?’ said Harold with a touch of bitterness in his voice. He had received a note from the Professor asking him to come and see him at five o’clock that evening. Eagerly, feeling that something must have happened to throw a light upon the shadow that enwrapped him, he had hastened to the interview, only to find the Professor, Denbigh, and April sitting in what looked uncommonly like a family circle.

  ‘Yes, it can,’ replied the Professor. ‘Take your own case, for example. You were the victim of circumstances, of which hitherto it has been very difficult to trace the cause. But I have every reason to hope that by careful recognition of the facts, and the rejection of mere inference, it will be possible to reconstruct the truth.’

  ‘You don’t mean to say that you know what happened on that horrible night, do you, Daddy?’ exclaimed April. ‘It would be splendid if you could show how unfair everybody had been to poor Harold!’

  ‘I may say that I think we can arrive at the truth,’ replied the Professor oracularly. ‘The attempt will, in any case, form an admirable example of the methods which should be employed in such a case. You all know the general facts of the case, together with the mass of irrelevant matter which threatens to smother them. The only skill required is to detect the facts, to choose the precious metal, as it were, and to reject the dross.’

  The Professor paused for a moment, as though to collect his thoughts. His audience made no sign, each feeling that a light was to be thrown at length upon the famous Paddington Mystery.

  ‘Now, my first point is this,’ he continued. ‘Stripped of inference, there is only one main fact we can rely upon in the discovery of a dead body on Harold’s bed. We are forced to conclude that the man reached the position in which he was found through human agency, that he was not propelled there by the force of an explosion or any phenomenon of nature. Therefore, an entry was made into Harold’s rooms that night, or rather between the time of his departure, about four o’clock, and the time of his arrival, about three o’clock next morning.

  ‘An examination of the surroundings suggested that someone—and circumstances pointed to that someone being the dead man—had reached the canal bank from Great Western Road, swum the canal, crossed the waste land, and prised up the window of Harold’s bedroom with a tyre-lever. This, you will remember, was the view adopted by the police. The tracks of such an event were clearly visible. The dead man’s boots fitted the footprints on the waste land exactly, the tyre-lever found in his pocket corresponded exactly with the marks on the window-sash. Indeed, I am myself of opinion that the prints were made by those very boots, and the marks on the window-sash by that identical tyre-lever. I say merely of the opinion, for I have no incontrovertible proof to support that view. It is possible that exactly similar boots and tyre-levers exist. Indeed, as regards the tyre-lever, I know such to be the case.’

  ‘Then are you inclined to agree with Inspector Hanslet’s view of the case?’ suggested Denbigh.

  ‘Not entirely,’ replied the Professor. ‘I was struck by the fact that the tyre-lever was an insignificant tool with which to force open a well-made window, securely hasped. Have you had that window repaired, Harold?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ replied Harold. ‘I thought it best to leave everything alone for the present.’

  ‘Then the facts which I shall proceed to relate can be verified, if necessary,’ said the Professor. ‘Now, the police witnesses at the inquest explained that when the window was forced open, the hasp was not broken, but yielded through the screws which secured it withdrawing from the wood. This fact I verified for myself. But there was a further fact, overlooked in the shadow of preconceived inference. When a screw is forcibly torn from wood, the threads of it are clogged with wood fibre. In this case, although each screw was an inch and a half long, only the last quarter of an inch was clogged.’

  ‘By Jove!’ exclaimed Harold. ‘I never noticed that.’

  ‘Nor, apparently, did Inspector Hanslet,’ replied the Professor. ‘However, to proceed. My inspection of the wood of the window-frame convinced me that it was in perfectly sound condition. Further, the heads of the screws showed signs of a screw-driver having recently been used upon them. I have no hesitation, therefore, in deducing that, at the time the window was forced, the screws securing the hasp had already been partially withdrawn. Now this would not fail to have been noticed by anyone securing the window with a hasp. Did you do this before you went out that evening, Harold?’

  ‘I did, sir,’ replied Harold, ‘and I am quite certain the hasp was in order then.’

  ‘You see, now, how significant the apparently insignificant fact has become,’ continued the Professor. ‘The screws could not be tampered with from outside the window. Yet, on the other hand, there is very little doubt that the window was actually forced from outside, when the hasp had already been sufficiently weakened to enable the window to be prised open with the tyre-lever. We are thus forced to the conclusion that there were at least two separate entries into Harold’s rooms that night, one through the window and a previous one through some other means of access. In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I am inclined to assume for the present that this first means of access was the door, opened in the ordinary way by a key.’

  ‘But nobody else besides me has a key, sir!’ put in Harold. ‘And I am quite sure that I locked the door behind me.’

  The Professor shook his head impatiently. ‘Nobody who has a lease of premises can make such an assertion,’ he replied. ‘Unless he has actually had
a lock fitted himself, and even then the statement can only be accepted with reservations. I have no doubt that the conditions are the same in your case as in a thousand others, my own included. The tenant signs a lease, the landlord hands over a key or keys which fit the existing lock. How does the tenant know that he has the only keys which fit that lock? However, I do not wish to stress that point for the moment. I wish to make it clear that some means of access to the rooms existed, other than the window, since we have irrefutable evidence that such an entry was made.’

  ‘Daddy dear, you’re a marvel!’ exclaimed April. ‘Go on, this is most thrilling. What happened next?’

  ‘Not so fast, my dear,’ replied the Professor. ‘Let us consider for a moment who it was that effected this first entry. Now, abandoning for a moment the actual examination of facts, let us form a theory which we can test later. We have, to begin with, an apparent lack of motive for either entry, of the dead man’s presence in the room at all. It is unusual for a man to break into a stranger’s rooms for the express purpose of dying on his bed. There seem to me to be two alternatives. One is that the dead man effected both entries, and was overtaken by death before he was able to carry out his purpose. The second is that this man had an accomplice, who decamped as soon as he realised the fate that had overtaken his comrade.

  ‘The second of the possibilities appears to me to be most likely. If the man was alone, I find it difficult to account for his actions. For it is obvious that, when he had already obtained access to the rooms, he deliberately laid a trail, with his own feet and his own tools, by a route involving considerable difficulties, including swimming a canal and climbing at least two walls, and also the risk of observation. If, on the other hand, there were two men involved, it is more understandable that the first gained access to the rooms by the door, and the second by the window. This suggests that the tracks found by the police were deliberately made, for if one man could enter by the door, two could do so with equal ease. Again, why unscrew the fastenings of the hasp and then prise the window open? It would have been simpler, safer and quicker for the first man to have opened the window in the ordinary way for his comrade, supposing, for some reason that we have not yet ascertained, that it was necessary for that comrade to approach the rooms by that route. No, I am convinced that all the tracks subsequently found, the footsteps, the marks on the window, the tyre-lever in the dead man’s pocket, the wetness of the clothes, suggesting that he had swum the canal, were all of them made with the intention of their being seen and recognised.’

  The Professor paused. His listeners, intent upon his recital, were silent for a moment. Then Harold, who had been following every word with the greatest eagerness, ventured to speak.

  ‘But why, sir?’ he asked. ‘Why leave these deliberate tracks, I mean? I can understand the man making misleading tracks to hide the way in which he got in, but not, as you put it, with his own tools and his own boots. If he had got away, it would, at least, have given the police a clue to start on. And it seems to me, if he got in by the door, he could have got out by the same way and left no tracks whatever.’

  ‘Exactly!’ replied the Professor. ‘That is the very point which has interested me from the first. If he had made his escape. But suppose for a moment that it was never intended that he should make his escape. What then?’

  Denbigh from the sofa gave a slightly depreciating laugh. ‘But surely, Professor, you are asking us to assume too much. Followed to a logical conclusion, your suggestion that the man was never intended to escape implies that his accomplice murdered him in Merefield’s rooms. But you will remember that there was no trace whatever of a crime or even of a struggle. The man died from heart failure, there is very little doubt of that. I know your mistrust of medical evidence, but, speaking as a doctor, I am satisfied with the jury’s verdict. And it can hardly be assumed that the accomplice, whoever he was, could predict that the man would die then, even as a result of the physical strain involved in climbing walls and swimming canals.’

  The Professor nodded. ‘Thank you, Denbigh, you have exactly voiced the objections which I formed in my own mind. Do not imagine that I reject the medical evidence or the jury’s finding. I accept both freely, with limitations. The man died of failure of the heart’s action, undoubtedly. But, when, and under what circumstances? That the medical evidence is unable to tell us. The expert witnesses tell us that he died probably during the afternoon preceding the early morning in which he was found. Circumstantial evidence points to his having broken into Harold’s rooms between about five p.m. and two a.m. Hence the inference that he died there. But let me put another possibility before you. What if he were already dead when he arrived at Riverside Gardens?’

  There was a universal gasp of astonishment, then April laughed outright. ‘Daddy dear, you give me the creeps!’ she complained. ‘You aren’t going to suggest that his ghost made those tracks—they were his own boots; you have admitted that yourself.’

  ‘Besides, sir, you can’t wander about with a dead body, even in Riverside Gardens,’ put in Harold. ‘And the man’s clothing was soaked with filthy water. It doesn’t seem possible that he was put into the canal and then dragged in through my window. And there was no trace of any mess on the stairs.’

  ‘I will deal with your objections first,’ replied the Professor patiently. ‘We have, I think, established the probability of an accomplice, or second man, being connected with the matter. We have now to consider the probability of this man having, first, a dead body to dispose of, and, second, a means of access to Harold’s rooms. It occurs to him that he can use the second as a means to the first. By some means, which I will deal with later, he conveys the body to the front of Mr Boost’s house, lets himself in, and deposits the body on Harold’s bed. He has now before him the necessity of providing a plausible reason for the presence of that body, of leaving tracks which will lead the opinion of the police and of the public in an entirely wrong direction. I do not, of course, believe for a moment that his action was taken on the spur of the moment; every detail shows evidence of long premeditation.

  ‘He has already provided himself with a screw-driver and a tyre-lever. The first thing he does is to loosen the screws of the hasp, as I have already described. The next thing he does is to leave Harold’s rooms in the way he came. The absence of foot-marks on the stairs is no objection to this theory; Mr Boost’s front garden is littered with mats and scraps of canvas with which he could have cleaned his boots adequately before entering. Now comes the only dangerous part of his exploit, and in this the foggy nature of the evening favours him. I am even inclined to believe that he waited for a foggy period to fulfil his purpose.’

  ‘But the man can only have died that evening,’ objected Denbigh. ‘He can’t—’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Evan!’ interrupted April. ‘Don’t spoil the story. Proceed, Professor Sherlock Priestley!’

  ‘Well, we will consider Denbigh’s objection later,’ said the Professor. ‘Aided by the fog, the second man, as we will call him, walks straight round to the bridge where the canal crosses the road. Waiting for an opportunity when there are no passers-by, he climbs over the parapet, following the route suggested by Inspector Hanslet, and so reaches the towing path. From there he wades into the canal, swims across, climbs the wall of the courtyard on to the sloping roof below Harold’s window, and forces the latter open with the tyre-lever. His task is now finished. All he has to do is to change clothes and boots with the dead man, leave the tyre-lever but not the screw-driver in his pocket, and retire quietly by the front door. An ingenious scheme, and very fascinating in its simplicity.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ said Harold. ‘I never thought of all that. But what about the other things found in the dead man’s pockets, the washers, and so forth?’

  ‘All easily procurable trifles, put there for the express purpose of setting any enquiry on the wrong scent,’ replied the Professor. ‘This second man took every care to render identification as difficult as pos
sible, realising, no doubt, that such identification would furnish a clue to his own identity.’

  The Professor paused, and then turned towards Denbigh. ‘What do you think of my theory now?’ he enquired with a touch of triumph.

  ‘It’s most plausible,’ confessed the young man. ‘But even so, we are not much further. We don’t know who the dead man was, and there is no possible clue to this mysterious second man.’

  ‘Perhaps not, at present,’ replied the Professor. ‘But if my theory is correct, we have at least established Harold’s innocence in the matter.’

  ‘Unless we assume that he had lent the man the keys of his rooms, that evening,’ put in April lightly. ‘That seems to me to be one of the weak points of your argument, Daddy. Besides, how did the man get the body to Riverside Gardens? He can hardly have driven it there in a taxi.’

  ‘If I am not greatly mistaken, the body was already there when he arrived,’ replied the Professor quietly.

  ‘Already there!’ exclaimed Harold. ‘No, that it can’t have been. Yet, by Jove! Mr Boost’s missing bale!’

  ‘Of course, of course!’ assented the Professor. ‘That bale had struck me as an admirable temporary receptacle for a dead body from the very moment I heard of it. But in order that it should have any significance in the present case it was necessary to establish the fact that the man Harold found was dead, or, at least, insensible, before he reached Harold’s room. It was also necessary to account for the tracks the police found. One cannot accept some of the facts of a series and ignore the rest. I believe that the body actually reached Riverside Gardens in that bale. You observe what an admirably chosen means of conveyance this was. The second man no doubt arranged for the delivery of this bale on an evening chosen during the time when Mr Boost was absent. It is delivered after Harold leaves his rooms, and all trace of it is removed before his return. Here again the matter is simple. The wrappings of the bale could be flung into Mr Boost’s front garden without attracting attention among the rest of the litter lying there. The fact that the bale had ever existed was not likely to come to light until Mr Boost returned to his shop, at the earliest. As it turned out, it was only through the accident of Mr Boost having business with George, the carter, that he became aware of the delivery of the bale as early as he did.’