The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others

by R. Austin Freeman

  “How does it show that?” asked the magistrate.

  “There are several distinctive points. For instance, the absence of the usual ‘kick off’ at the toe, the slight drag behind the heel, showing the direction in which the foot was lifted, and the undisturbed impression of the sole.”

  “You have spoken of moulds and casts. What is the difference between them?”

  “A mould is a direct, and therefore reversed, impression. A cast is the impression of a mould, and therefore a facsimile of the object. If I pour liquid plaster on a coin, when it sets I have a mould, a sunk impression, of the coin. If I pour melted wax into the mould I obtain a cast, a facsimile of the coin. A footprint is a mould of the foot. A mould of the footprint is a cast of the foot, and a cast from the mould reproduces the footprint.”

  “Thank you,” said the magistrate. “Then your moulds from these two footprints are really facsimiles of the murderer’s shoes, and can be compared with these shoes which have been put in evidence?”

  “Yes, and when we compare them they demonstrate a very important fact.”

  “What is that?”

  “It is that the prisoner’s shoes were not the shoes that made those footprints.” A buzz of astonishment ran through the court, but Thorndyke continued stolidly: “The prisoner’s shoes were not in my possession, so I went on to Barker’s pond, on the clay margin of which I had seen footprints actually made by the prisoner. I took moulds of those footprints, and compared them with these from the sand. There are several important differences, which you will see if you compare them. To facilitate the comparison I have made transparent photographs of both sets of moulds to the same scale. Now, if we put the photograph of the mould of the prisoner’s right shoe over that of the murderer’s right shoe, and hold the two superposed photographs up to the light, we cannot make the two pictures coincide. They are exactly of the same length, but the shoes are of different shape. Moreover, if we put one of the nails in one photograph over the corresponding nail in the other photograph, we cannot make the rest of the nails coincide. But the most conclusive fact of all—from which there is no possible escape—is that the number of nails in the two shoes is not the same. In the sole of the prisoner’s right shoe there are forty nails; in that of the murderer there are forty-one. The murderer has one nail too many.”

  There was a deathly silence in the court as the magistrates and Mr. Bashfield pored over the moulds and the prisoner’s shoes, and examined the photographs against the light. Then the chairman asked: “Are these all the facts, or have you something more to tell us?” He was evidently anxious to get the key to this riddle.

  “There is more evidence, your Worship,” said Anstey. “The witness examined the body of deceased.” Then, turning to Thorndyke, he asked:

  “You were present at the post-mortem examination?”

  “I was.”

  “Did you form any opinion as to the cause of death?”

  “Yes. I came to the conclusion that death was occasioned by an overdose of morphia.”

  A universal gasp of amazement greeted this statement. Then the presiding magistrate protested breathlessly:

  “But there was a wound, which we have been told was capable of causing instantaneous death. Was that not the case?”

  “There was undoubtedly such a wound,” replied Thorndyke. “But when that wound was inflicted the deceased had already been dead from a quarter to half an hour.”

  “This is incredible!” exclaimed the magistrate. “But, no doubt, you can give us your reasons for this amazing conclusion?”

  “My opinion,” said Thorndyke, “was based on several facts. In the first place, a wound inflicted on a living body gapes rather widely, owing to the retraction of the living skin. The skin of a dead body does not retract, and the wound, consequently, does not gape. This wound gaped very slightly, showing that death was recent, I should say, within half an hour. Then a wound on the living body becomes filled with blood, and blood is shed freely on the clothing. But the wound on the deceased contained only a little blood-clot. There was hardly any blood on the clothing, and I had already noticed that there was none on the sand where the body had lain.”

  “And you consider this quite conclusive?” the magistrate asked doubtfully.

  “I do,” answered Thorndyke. “But there was other evidence which was beyond all question. The weapon had partially divided both the aorta and the pulmonary artery—the main arteries of the body. Now, during life, these great vessels are full of blood at a high internal pressure, whereas after death they become almost empty. It follows that, if this wound had been inflicted during life, the cavity in which those vessels lie would have become filled with blood. As a matter of fact, it contained practically no blood, only the merest oozing from some small veins, so that it is certain that the wound was inflicted after death. The presence and nature of the poison I ascertained by analyzing certain secretions from the body, and the analysis enabled me to judge that the quantity of the poison was large; but the contents of the stomach were sent to Professor Copland for more exact examination.”

  “Is the result of Professor Copland’s analysis known?” the magistrate asked Anstey.

  “The professor is here, your Worship,” replied Anstey, “and is prepared to swear to having obtained over one grain of morphia from the contents of the stomach; and as this, which is in itself a poisonous dose, is only the unabsorbed residue of what was actually swallowed, the total quantity taken must have been very large indeed.”

  “Thank you,” said the magistrate. “And now, Dr. Thorndyke, if you have given us all the facts, perhaps you will tell us what conclusions you have drawn from them.”

  “The facts which I have stated,” said Thorndyke, “appear to me to indicate the following sequence of events. The deceased died about midnight on September 27, from the effects of a poisonous dose of morphia, how or by whom administered I offer no opinion. I think that his body was conveyed in a boat to Sundersley Gap. The boat probably contained three men, of whom one remained in charge of it, one walked up the Gap and along the cliff towards St. Bridget’s Bay, and the third, having put on the shoes of the deceased, carried the body along the shore to the Bay. This would account for the great depth and short stride of the tracks that have been spoken of as those of the deceased. Having reached the Bay, I believe that this man laid the corpse down on his tracks, and then trampled the sand in the neighbourhood. He next took off deceased’s shoes and put them on the corpse; then he put on a pair of boots or shoes which he had been carrying—perhaps hung round his neck—and which had been prepared with nails to imitate Draper’s shoes. In these shoes he again trampled over the area near the corpse. Then he walked backwards to the Shepherd’s Path, and from it again, still backwards, to the face of the cliff. Here his accomplice had lowered a rope, by which he climbed up to the top. At the top he took off the nailed shoes, and the two men walked back to the Gap, where the man who had carried the rope took his confederate on his back, and carried him down to the boat to avoid leaving the tracks of stockinged feet. The tracks that I saw at the Gap certainly indicated that the man was carrying something very heavy when he returned to the boat.”

  “But why should the man have climbed a rope up the cliff when he could have walked up the Shepherd’s Path?” the magistrate asked.

  “Because,” replied Thorndyke, “there would then have been a set of tracks leading out of the Bay without a corresponding set leading into it; and this would have instantly suggested to a smart police-officer—such as Sergeant Payne—a landing from a boat.”

  “Your explanation is highly ingenious,” said the magistrate, “and appears to cover all the very remarkable facts. Have you anything more to tell us?”

  “No, your Worship,” was the reply, “excepting” (here he took from Polton the last pair of moulds and passed them up to the magistrate) “that you will probably find these moulds of importance presently.”

  As Thorndyke stepped from the box—for the
re was no cross-examination—the magistrates scrutinized the moulds with an air of perplexity; but they were too discreet to make any remark.

  When the evidence of Professor Copland (which showed that an unquestionably lethal dose of morphia must have been swallowed) had been taken, the clerk called out the—to me—unfamiliar name of Jacob Gummer. Thereupon an enormous pair of brown dreadnought trousers, from the upper end of which a smack-boy’s head and shoulders protruded, walked into the witness-box.

  Jacob admitted at the outset that he was a smack-master’s apprentice, and that he had been “hired out” by his master to one Mr. Jezzard as deck-hand and cabin-boy of the yacht Otter.

  “Now, Gummer,” said Anstey, “do you remember the prisoner coming on board the yacht?”

  “Yes. He has been on board twice. The first time was about a month ago. He went for a sail with us then. The second time was on the night when Mr. Hearn was murdered.”

  “Do you remember what sort of boots the prisoner was wearing the first time he came?”

  “Yes. They were shoes with a lot of nails in the soles. I remember them because Mr. Jezzard made him take them off and put on a canvas pair.”

  “What was done with the nailed shoes?”

  “Mr. Jezzard took ’em below to the cabin.”

  “And did Mr. Jezzard come up on deck again directly?”

  “No. He stayed down in the cabin about ten minutes.”

  “Do you remember a parcel being delivered on board from a London boot-maker?”

  “Yes. The postman brought it about four or five days after Mr. Draper had been on board. It was labelled ‘Walker Bros., Boot and Shoe Makers, London.’ Mr. Jezzard took a pair of shoes from it, for I saw them on the locker in the cabin the same day.”

  “Did you ever see him wear them?”

  “No. I never see ’em again.”

  “Have you ever heard sounds of hammering on the yacht?”

  “Yes. The night after the parcel came I was on the quay alongside, and I heard someone a-hammering in the cabin.”

  “What did the hammering sound like?”

  “It sounded like a cobbler a-hammering in nails.”

  “Have you over seen any boot-nails on the yacht?”

  “Yes. When I was a-clearin’ up the cabin the next mornin’, I found a hobnail on the floor in a corner by the locker.”

  “Were you on board on the night when Mr. Hearn died?”

  “Yes. I’d been ashore, but I came aboard about half-past nine.”

  “Did you see Mr. Hearn go ashore?”

  “I see him leave the yacht. I had turned into my bunk and gone to sleep, when Mr. Jezzard calls down to me: ‘We’re putting Mr. Hearn ashore,’ says he; ‘and then,’ he says, ‘we’re a-going for an hour’s fishing. You needn’t sit up,’ he says, and with that he shuts the scuttle. Then I got up and slid back the scuttle and put my head out, and I see Mr. Jezzard and Mr. Leach a-helpin’ Mr. Hearn acrost the deck. Mr. Hearn he looked as if he was drunk. They got him into the boat—and a rare job they had—and Mr. Pitford, what was in the boat already, he pushed off. And then I popped my head in again, ’cause I didn’t want them to see me.”

  “Did they row to the steps?”

  “No. I put my head out again when they were gone, and I heard ’em row round the yacht, and then pull out towards the mouth of the harbour. I couldn’t see the boat, ’cause it was a very dark night.”

  “Very well. Now I am going to ask you about another matter. Do you know anyone of the name of Polton?”

  “Yes,” replied Gummer, turning a dusky red. “I’ve just found out his real name. I thought he was called Simmons.”

  “Tell us what you know about him,” said Anstey, with a mischievous smile.

  “Well,” said the boy, with a ferocious scowl at the bland and smiling Polton, “one day he come down to the yacht when the gentlemen had gone ashore. I believe he’d seen ’em go. And he offers me ten shillin’ to let him see all the boots and shoes we’d got on board. I didn’t see no harm, so I turns out the whole lot in the cabin for him to look at. While he was lookin’ at ’em he asks me to fetch a pair of mine from the fo’c’sle, so I fetches ’em. When I come back he was pitchin’ the boots and shoes back into the locker. Then, presently, he nips off, and when he was gone I looked over the shoes, and then I found there was a pair missing. They was an old pair of Mr. Jezzard’s, and what made him nick ’em is more than I can understand.”

  “Would you know those shoes if you saw them!”

  “Yes, I should,” replied the lad.

  “Are these the pair?” Anstey handed the boy a pair of dilapidated canvas shoes, which he seized eagerly.

  “Yes, these is the ones what he stole!” he exclaimed.

  Anstey took them back from the boy’s reluctant hands, and passed them up to the magistrate’s desk. “I think,” said he, “that if your Worship will compare these shoes with the last pair of moulds, you will have no doubt that these are the shoes which made the footprints from the sea to Sundersley Gap and back again.”

  The magistrates together compared the shoes and the moulds amidst a breathless silence. At length the chairman laid them down on the desk.

  “It is impossible to doubt it,” said he. “The broken heel and the tear in the rubber sole, with the remains of the chequered pattern, make the identity practically certain.”

  As the chairman made this statement I involuntarily glanced round to the place where Jezzard was sitting. But he was not there; neither he, nor Pitford, nor Leach. Taking advantage of the preoccupation of the Court, they had quietly slipped out of the door. But I was not the only person who had noted their absence. The inspector and the sergeant were already in earnest consultation, and a minute later they, too, hurriedly departed.

  The proceedings now speedily came to an end. After a brief discussion with his brother-magistrates, the chairman addressed the Court.

  “The remarkable and I may say startling evidence, which has been heard in this court today, if it has not fixed the guilt of this crime on any individual, has, at any rate, made it clear to our satisfaction that the prisoner is not the guilty person, and he is accordingly discharged. Mr. Draper, I have great pleasure in informing you that you are at liberty to leave the court, and that you do so entirely clear of all suspicion; and I congratulate you very heartily on the skill and ingenuity of your legal advisers, but for which the decision of the Court would, I am afraid, have been very different.”

  That evening, lawyers, witnesses, and the jubilant and grateful client gathered round a truly festive board to dine, and fight over again the battle of the day. But we were scarcely halfway through our meal when, to the indignation of the servants, Sergeant Payne burst breathlessly into the room.

  “They’ve gone, sir!” he exclaimed, addressing Thorndyke. “They’ve given us the slip for good.”

  “Why, how can that be?” asked Thorndyke.

  “They’re dead, sir! All three of them!”

  “Dead!” we all exclaimed.

  “Yes. They made a burst for the yacht when they left the court, and they got on board and put out to sea at once, hoping, no doubt, to get clear as the light was just failing. But they were in such a hurry that they did not see a steam trawler that was entering, and was hidden by the pier. Then, just at the entrance, as the yacht was creeping out, the trawler hit her amidships, and fairly cut her in two. The three men were in the water in an instant, and were swept away in the eddy behind the north pier; and before any boat could put out to them they had all gone under. Jezzard’s body came up on the beach just as I was coming away.”

  We were all silent and a little awed, but if any of us felt regret at the catastrophe, it was at the thought that three such cold-blooded villains should have made so easy an exit; and to one of us, at least, the news came as a blessed relief.

  THE STRANGER’S LATCHKEY (1909)

  The contrariety of human nature is a subject that has given a surprising amount of occupatio
n to makers of proverbs and to those moral philosophers who make it their province to discover and expound the glaringly obvious; and especially have they been concerned to enlarge upon that form of perverseness which engenders dislike of things offered under compulsion, and arouses desire of them as soon as their attainment becomes difficult or impossible. They assure us that a man who has had a given thing within his reach and put it by, will, as soon as it is beyond his reach, find it the one thing necessary and desirable; even as the domestic cat which has turned disdainfully from the preferred saucer, may presently be seen with her head jammed hard in the milk-jug, or, secretly and with horrible relish, slaking her thirst at the scullery sink.

  To this peculiarity of the human mind was due, no doubt, the fact that no sooner had I abandoned the clinical side of my profession in favour of the legal, and taken up my abode in the chambers of my friend Thorndyke, the famous medico-legal expert, to act as his assistant or junior, than my former mode of life—that of a locum tenens, or minder of other men’s practices—which had, when I was following it, seemed intolerably irksome, now appeared to possess many desirable features; and I found myself occasionally hankering to sit once more by the bedside, to puzzle out the perplexing train of symptoms, and to wield that power—the greatest, after all, possessed by man—the power to banish suffering and ward off the approach of death itself.

  Hence it was that on a certain morning of the long vacation I found myself installed at The Larches, Burling, in full charge of the practice of my old friend Dr. Hanshaw, who was taking a fishing holiday in Norway. I was not left desolate, however, for Mrs. Hanshaw remained at her post, and the roomy, old-fashioned house accommodated three visitors in addition. One of these was Dr. Hanshaw’s sister, a Mrs. Haldean, the widow of a wealthy Manchester cotton factor; the second was her niece by marriage, Miss Lucy Haldean, a very handsome and charming girl of twenty-three; while the third was no less a person than Master Fred, the only child of Mrs. Haldean, and a strapping boy of six.