“His private friends are mostly my own, but of his official associates I know nothing. He was connected with the Foreign Office; but in what capacity I don’t know at all. He was extremely reticent on the subject. I only know that he travelled about a good deal, presumably on official business.”
This was not very illuminating, but it was all our client had to tell; and the conversation languished somewhat until the train drew up at Marylebone, when Thorndyke said, as if by an after-thought:
“You have your brother’s latchkey. How would it be if we just took a glance at the flat? Have you time now?”
“I will make time,” was the reply, “if you want to see the flat. I don’t see what you could learn from inspecting it; but that is your affair. I am in your hands.”
“I should like to look round the rooms,” Thorndyke answered; and as our client assented, we approached a taxi-cab and entered while Pedley gave the driver the necessary directions. A quarter of an hour later we drew up opposite a tall block of buildings, and Mr. Pedley, having paid off the cab, led the way to the lift.
The dead man’s flat was on the third floor, and, like the others, was distinguished only by the number on the door. Mr. Pedley inserted the key into the latch, and having opened the door, preceded us across the small lobby into the sitting-room.
“Ha!” he exclaimed, as he entered, “this solves your problem.” As he spoke, he pointed to the table, on which lay a small bunch of keys, including a latchkey similar to the one that he had shown us.
“But,” he continued, “it is rather extraordinary. It just shows what a very disturbed state his mind must have been in.”
“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, looking critically about the room; “and as the latchkey is there, it raises the question whether the keys may have been out of his possession. Do you know what the various locked receptacles contain?”
“I know pretty well what is in the bureau; but as to the cupboard above it, I have never seen it open and don’t know what he kept in it. I always assumed that he reserved it for his official papers. I will just see if anything seems to have been disturbed.”
He unlocked and opened the flap of the old-fashioned bureau and pulled out the small drawers one after the other, examining the contents of each. Then he opened each of the larger drawers and turned over the various articles in them. As he closed the last one, he reported: “Everything seems to be in order—cheque-book, insurance policy, a few share certificates, and so on. Nothing seems to have been touched. Now we will try the cupboard, though I don’t suppose its contents would be of much interest to anyone but himself. I wonder which is the key.”
He looked at the keyhole and made a selection from the bunch, but it was evidently the wrong key. He tried another and yet another with a like result, until he had exhausted the resources of the bunch.
“It is very remarkable,” he said. “None of these keys seems to fit. I wonder if he kept this particular key locked up or hidden. It wasn’t in the bureau. Will you try what you can do?”
He handed the bunch to Thorndyke, who tried all the keys in succession with the same result. None of them was the key belonging to the lock. At length, having tried them all, he inserted one and turned it as far as it would go. Then he gave a sharp pull; and immediately the door came open.
“Why, it was unlocked after all!” exclaimed Mr. Pedley. “And there is nothing in it. That is why there was no key on the bunch. Apparently he didn’t use the cupboard.”
Thorndyke looked critically at the single vacant shelf, drawing his finger along it in two places and inspecting his finger-tips. Then he turned his attention to the lock, which was of the kind that is screwed on the inside of the door, leaving the bolt partly exposed. He took the bolt in his fingers and pushed it out and then in again; and by the way it moved I could see that the spring was broken. On this he made no comment, but remarked:
“The cupboard has been in use pretty lately. You can see the trace of a largish volume—possibly a boxfile—on the shelf. There is hardly any dust there, whereas the rest of the shelf is fairly thickly coated. However, that does not carry us very far; and the appearance of the rooms is otherwise quite normal.”
“Quite,” agreed Pedley. “But why shouldn’t it be? You didn’t suspect— ”
“I was merely testing the suggestion offered by the absence of the keys,” said Thorndyke. “By the way, have you communicated with the Foreign Office?”
“No,” was the reply, “but I suppose I ought to. What had I better say to them?”
“I should merely state the facts in the first instance. But you can, if you like, say that I definitely reject the idea of suicide.”
“I am glad to hear you say that,” said Pedley. “Can I give any reasons for your opinion?”
“Not in the first place,” replied Thorndyke. “I will consider the case and let you have a reasoned report in a day or two, which you can show to the Foreign Office and also to the insurance company.”
Mr. Pedley looked as if he would have liked to ask some further questions, but as Thorndyke now made his way to the door, he followed in silence, pocketing the keys as we went out. He accompanied us down to the entry and there we left him, setting forth in the direction of South Kensington Station.
“It looked to me,” said I, as soon as we were out of ear-shot, “as if that lock had been forced. What do you think?”
“Well,” he answered, “locks get broken in ordinary use, but taking all the facts together, I think you are right. There are too many coincidences for reasonable probability. First, this man leaves his keys, including his latchkey, on the table, which is an extraordinary thing to do. On that very occasion, he is found dead under inexplicable circumstances. Then, of all the locks in his rooms, the one which happens to be broken is the one of which the key is not on the bunch. That is a very suspicious group of facts.”
“It is,” I agreed. “And if there is, as you say—though I can’t imagine on what grounds—evidence of foul play, that makes it still more suspicious. But what is the next move? Have you anything in view?”
“The next move,” he replied, “is to clear up the mystery of the dead man’s movements on the day of his death. The railway receipt shows that on that day he travelled down somewhere into Essex. From that place, he took a long, cross-country journey of which the destination was a ditch by a lonely meadow in Buckinghamshire. The questions that we have to answer are, What was he doing in Essex? Why did he make that strange journey? Did he make it alone? and, if not, Who accompanied him?
“Now, obviously, the first thing to do is to locate that place in Essex; and when we have done that, to go down there and see if we can pick up any traces of the dead man.”
“That sounds like a pretty vague quest,” said I; “but if we fail, the police may be able to find out something. By the way, we want a new Bradshaw.”
“An excellent suggestion, Jervis,” said he. “I will get one as we go into the station.”
A few minutes later, as we sat on a bench waiting for our train, he passed to me the open copy of Bradshaw, with the crumpled railway receipt.
“You see,” said he, “it was apparently ‘G.B.Hlt.,’ and the fare from London was four and ninepence. Here is Great Buntingfield Halt, the fare to which is four and ninepence. That must be the place. At any rate, we will give it a trial. May I take it that you are coming to lend a hand? I shall start in good time tomorrow morning.”
I assented emphatically. Never had I been more completely in the dark than I was in this case, and seldom had I known Thorndyke to be more positive and confident. Obviously, he had something up his sleeve; and I was racked with curiosity as to what that something was.
***
On the following morning we made a fairly early start, and half-past ten found us seated in the train, looking out across a dreary waste of marshes, with the estuary of the Thames a mile
or so distant. For the first time in my recollection Thorndyke had come unprovided with his inevitable “research case,” but I noted that he had furnished himself with a botanist’s vasculum—or tin collecting-case—and that his pocket bulged as if he had some other appliances concealed about his person. Also that he carried a walking-stick that was strange to me.
“This will be our destination, I think,” he said, as the train slowed down; and sure enough it presently came to rest beside a little makeshift platform on which was displayed the name “Great Buntingfield Halt.” We were the only passengers to alight, and the guard, having noted the fact, blew his whistle and dismissed the little station with a contemptuous wave of his flag.
Thorndyke lingered on the platform after the train had gone, taking a general survey of the country. Half a mile away to the north a small village was visible; while to the south the marshes stretched away to the river, their bare expanse unbroken save by a solitary building whose unredeemed hideousness proclaimed it a factory of some kind. Presently the station-master approached deferentially, and as we proffered our tickets, Thorndyke remarked:
“You don’t seem overburdened with traffic here.”
“No, sir. You’re right,” was the emphatic reply. “ ’Tis a dead-alive place. Excepting the people at the Golomite Works and one now and then from the village, no one uses the halt. You’re the first strangers I’ve seen for more than a month.”
“Indeed,” said Thorndyke. “But I think you are forgetting one. An acquaintance of mine came here last Tuesday—and by the same token, he hadn’t got a ticket and had to pay his fare.”
“Oh, I remember,” the station-master replied. “You mean a gentleman with a scar on his cheek. But I don’t count him as a stranger. He has been here before; I think he is connected with the works, as he always goes up their road.”
“Do you happen to remember what time he came back?” Thorndyke asked.
“He didn’t come back at all,” was the reply. “I am sure of that, because I work the halt and level crossing by myself. I remember thinking it queer that he didn’t come back, because the ticket that he had lost was a return. He must have gone back in the van belonging to the works—that one that you see coming towards the crossing.”
As he spoke, he pointed to a van that was approaching down the factory road—a small covered van with the name “Golomite Works” painted, not on the cover, but on a board that was attached to it. The station-master walked towards the crossing to open the gates, and we followed; and when the van had passed, Thorndyke wished our friend “Good morning,” and led the way along the road, looking about him with lively interest and rather with the air of one looking for something in particular.
We had covered about two-thirds of the distance to the factory when the road approached a wide ditch; and from the attention with which my friend regarded it, I suspected that this was the something for which he had been looking. It was, however, quite unapproachable, for it was bordered by a wide expanse of soft mud thickly covered with rushes and trodden deeply by cattle. Nevertheless, Thorndyke followed its margin, still looking about him keenly, until, about a couple of hundred yards from the factory, I observed a small decayed wooden staging or quay, apparently the remains of a vanished footbridge. Here Thorndyke halted, and unbuttoning his coat, began to empty out his pockets, producing first the vasculum, then a small case containing three wide-mouthed bottles—both of which he deposited on the ground—and finally a sort of miniature landing-net, which he proceeded to screw on to the ferrule of his stick.
“I take it,” said I, “that these proceedings are a blind to cover some sort of observations.”
“Not at all,” he replied. “We are engaged in the study of pond and ditch natural history, and a most fascinating and instructive study it is. The variety of forms is endless. This ditch, you observe, like the one at Bantree, is covered with a dense growth of duck-weed: but whereas that ditch was swarming with succineae, here there is not a single succinea to be seen.”
I grunted a sulky assent, and watched suspiciously as he filled the bottles with water from the ditch and then made a preliminary sweep with his net.
“Here is a trial sample,” said he, holding the loaded net towards me. “Duck-weed, horn-weed, Planorbis nautileus, but no succineae. What do you think of it, Jervis?”
I looked distastefully at the repulsive mess, but yet with attention, for I realised that there was a meaning in his question. And then, suddenly, my attention sharpened. I picked out of the net a strand of dark green, plumy weed and examined it.
“So this is horn-weed,” I said. “Then it was a piece of horn-weed that Cyrus Pedley held grasped in his hand; and now I come to think of it, I don’t remember seeing any horn-weed in the ditch at Bantree.”
He nodded approvingly. “There wasn’t any,” said he.
“And these little ammonite-like shells are just like those that I noticed at the bottom of Dr. Parton’s jar. But I don’t remember seeing any in the Bantree ditch.”
“There were none there,” said he. “And the duck-weed?”
“Oh, well,” I replied, “duck-weed is duck-weed, and there’s an end of it.”
He chuckled aloud at my answer, and quoting:
“A primrose by the river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him,”
bestowed a part of the catch in the vasculum, then turned once more to the ditch and began to ply his net vigorously, emptying out each netful on the grass, looking it over quickly and then making a fresh sweep, dragging the net each time through the mud at the bottom. I watched him now with a new and very lively interest; for enlightenment was dawning, mingled with some self-contempt and much speculation as to how Thorndyke had got his start in this case.
But I was not the only interested watcher. At one of the windows of the factory I presently observed a man who seemed to be looking our way. After a few seconds’ inspection he disappeared, to reappear almost immediately with a pair of field-glasses, through which he took a long look at us. Then he disappeared again, but in less than a minute I saw him emerge from a side door and advance hurriedly towards us.
“We are going to have a notice of ejectment served on us, I fancy,” said I.
Thorndyke glanced quickly at the approaching stranger but continued to ply his net, working, as I noticed, methodically from left to right. When the man came within fifty yards he hailed us with a brusque inquiry as to what our business was. I went forward to meet him and, if possible, to detain him in conversation; but this plan failed, for he ignored me and bore straight down on Thorndyke.
“Now, then,” said he, “what’s the game? What are you doing here?”
Thorndyke was in the act of raising his net from the water, but he now suddenly let it fall to the bottom of the ditch while he turned to confront the stranger.
“I take it that you have some reason for asking,” said he.
“Yes, I have,” the other replied angrily and with a slight foreign accent that agreed with his appearance—he looked like a Slav of some sort. “This is private land. It belongs to the factory. I am the manager.”
“The land is not enclosed,” Thorndyke remarked.
“I tell you the land is private land,” the fellow retorted excitedly. “You have no business here. I want to know what you are doing.”
“My good sir,” said Thorndyke, “there is no need to excite yourself. My friend and I are just collecting botanical and other specimens.”
“How do I know that?” the manager demanded. He looked round suspiciously and his eye lighted on the vasculum. “What have you got in that thing?” he asked.
“Let him see what is in it,” said Thorndyke, with a significant look at me.
Interpreting this as an instruction to occupy the man’s attention for a few moments, I picked up the vasculum and placed myself so that he must turn his back to Thorndyke t
o look into it. I fumbled awhile with the catch, but at length opened the case and began to pick out the weed strand by strand. As soon as the stranger’s back was turned Thorndyke raised his net and quickly picked out of it something which he slipped into his pocket. Then he advanced towards us, sorting out the contents of his net as he came.
“Well,” he said, “you see we are just harmless naturalists. By the way, what did you think we were looking for?”
“Never mind what I thought,” the other replied fiercely. “This is private land. You have no business here, and you have got to clear out.”
“Very well,” said Thorndyke. “As you please. There are plenty of other ditches.” He took the vasculum and the case of bottles, and having put them in his pocket, unscrewed his net, wished the stranger “Good-morning,” and turned back towards the station. The man stood watching us until we were near the level crossing, when he, too, turned back and retired to the factory.
“I saw you take something out of the net,” said I. “What was it?”
He glanced back to make sure that the manager was out of sight. Then he put his hand in his pocket, drew it out closed, and suddenly opened it. In his palm lay a small gold dental plate with four teeth on it.
“My word!” I exclaimed; “this clenches the matter with a vengeance. That is certainly Cyrus Pedley’s plate. It corresponds exactly to the description.”
“Yes,” he replied, “it is practically a certainty. Of course, it will have to be identified by the dentist who made it. But it is a foregone conclusion.”
I reflected as we walked towards the station on the singular sureness with which Thorndyke had followed what was to me an invisible trail. Presently I said:
“What is puzzling me is how you got your start in this case. What gave you the first hint that it was homicide and not suicide or misadventure?”
“It was the old story, Jervis,” he replied; “just a matter of observing and remembering apparently trivial details. Here, by the way, is a case in point.”
Serpents in Paradise Page 17
