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

by R. Austin Freeman

  It was useless to argue. Evidently the police did not want me to be introduced into the case, and after all the superintendent was within his rights, if he chose to regard me, as a private individual and to demand the surrender of the film.

  Nevertheless I was loth to give up the photographs, at least until I had carefully studied them. The, case was within my own speciality of practice, and was a strange and interesting one. Moreover, it appeared to be in unskilful hands, judging from the fingerprint episode, and then experience had taught me to treasure up small scraps of chance evidence, since one never knew when one might be drawn into a case in a professional capacity. In effect, I decided not to give up the photographs, though that decision committed me to a ruse that I was not very willing to adopt. I would rather have acted quite straightforwardly.

  “Well if you insist, Foxton,” I said, “I will hand over the film or, if you like, I will destroy it in your presence.”

  “I think Platt would rather have the film uninjured,” said Foxton. “Then he’ll know, you know,” he added, with a sly grin.

  In my heart, I thanked Foxton for that grin. It made my own guileful proceedings so much easier; for a suspicious man invites you to get the better of him if you can.

  After lunch I went up to my room, locked the door and took the little camera from my pocket. Having fully wound up the film, I extracted it, wrapped it up carefully and bestowed it in my inside breast-pocket. Then I inserted a fresh film, and going to the open window, took four successive snapshots of the sky. This done, I closed the camera, slipped it into my pocket and went downstairs. Foxton was in the hall, brushing his hat, as I descended, and at once renewed his demand.

  “About those photographs, Jervis,” said he; “I shall be looking in at the police-station presently, so if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “To be sure,” said I. “I will give you the film now if you like.”

  Taking the camera from my pocket, I solemnly wound up the remainder of the film, extracted it, stuck down the loose end with ostentatious care, and handed it to him.

  “Better not expose it to the light,” I said, going the whole hog of deception, “or you may fog the exposures.”

  Foxton took the spool from me as if it were hot—he was not a photographer—and thrust it into his handbag. He was still thanking me the front-door rang quite profusely when the visitor who stood revealed when Foxton opened door was a small, spare gentleman with a complexion of peculiar brown-papery quality that suggests long residence the tropics. He stepped in briskly and introduced him and his business without preamble.

  “My name is Wardale—boarder at Beddingfield’s. I called with reference to the tragic event which—”

  Here Foxton interposed in his frostiest official tone. “I am afraid, Mr. Wardale, I can’t give you any information about the case at present.”

  “I saw you two gentlemen at the house this morning—” Mr. Wardale continued, but Foxton again cut him short.

  “You did. We were there—or at least, I was—as representative of the Law, and while the case is sub judice—”

  “It isn’t yet,” interrupted Wardale.

  “Well, I can’t enter into any discussion of it—”

  “I am not asking you to,” said Wardale a little impatiently “But I understand that one of you is Dr. Jervis.”

  “I am,” said I.

  “I must really warn you—” Foxton began again; but Mr. Wardale interrupted testily:

  “My dear sir, I am a lawyer and a magistrate and understand perfectly well what is and what is not permissible. I have come simply to make a professional engagement with Dr. Jervis.”

  “In what way can I be of service to you,” I asked.

  “I will tell you,” said Mr. Wardale. “This poor lady, whose death has occurred in so mysterious a manner, was the wife of a man who was, like myself a servant of the Government of Sierra Leone. I was the friend of both of them, and in the absence of the husband I should like to have the inquiry into the circumstances of this lady’s death watched by a competent lawyer with the necessary special knowledge of medical evidence. Will you or your colleague, Dr. Thorndyke, undertake to watch the case for me?”

  Of course I was willing to undertake the case and said so.

  “Then,” said Mr. Wardale, “I will instruct my solicitor to write to you and formally retain you in the case. Here is my card. You will find my name in the Colonial Office List, and you know my address here.”

  He handed me his card, wished us both good afternoon, and then, with a stiff little bow, turned and took his departure.

  “I think I had better run up to town and confer with Thorndyke,” said I. “How do the trains run?”

  “There is a good train in about three-quarters of an hour,” replied Foxton.

  “Then I will go by it, but I shall come down again tomorrow or the next day, and probably Thorndyke will come down with me.”

  “Very well,” said Foxton. “Bring him in to lunch or dinner, but I can’t put him up, I am afraid.”

  “It would be better not,” said I. “Your friend Platt wouldn’t like it. He won’t want Thorndyke—or me either for that matter. And what about those photographs, Thorndyke will want them, you know.”

  “He can’t have them,” said Foxton. doggedly, “unless Platt is willing to hand them back; which I don’t suppose he will be.”

  I had private reasons for thinking otherwise, but I kept them to myself; and as Foxton went forth on his afternoon round, I returned upstairs to pack my suitcase and write the telegram to Thorndyke informing him of my movements.

  It was only a quarter past five when I let myself into our chambers in King’s Bench Walk. To my relief I found my colleague at home and our laboratory assistant, Polton, in the act of laying tea, for two.

  “I gather,” said Thorndyke, as we shook hands, “that my learned brother brings grist to the mill?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Nominally a watching brief, but I think you will agree with me that it is a case for independent investigation.”

  “Will there be anything in my line, sir?” inquired Polton, who was always agog at the word “investigation.”

  “There is a film to be developed. Four exposures of white footprints on a dark ground.”

  “Ah!” said Polton, “you’ll want good strong negatives, and they ought to be enlarged if they are, from the little camera. Can you give me the dimensions?”

  I wrote out the measurements from my notebook and handed him the paper together with the spool of film, with which he retired gleefully to the laboratory.

  “And now, Jervis,” said Thorndyke, “while Polton is operating on the film and we are discussing our tea, let us have a sketch of the case.”

  I gave him more than a sketch, for the events were recent and I had carefully sorted out the facts during my journey to town, making rough notes, which I now consulted. To my rather lengthy recital he listened in his usual attentive manner, without any comment, excepting in regard to my manœuvre to retain possession of the exposed film.

  “It’s almost a pity you didn’t refuse?” said he. “They could hardly have enforced their demand, and my feeling is that it is more convenient as well as more dignified to avoid direct deception unless one is driven to it. But perhaps you considered that you were.”

  As a matter of fact I had at the time, but I had since come to Thorndyke’s opinion. My little manœuvre was going to be a source of inconvenience presently.

  “Well,” said Thorndyke, when I had finished my recital, “I think we may take it that the police theory is, in the main, your own theory derived from Foxton.”

  “I think so, excepting that I learned from Foxton that Superintendent Platt has obtained the complete fingerprints of a right hand.”

  Thorndyke raised his eyebrows. “Fingerprints!” he exclaimed. “Why, the fellow must be a mere simpleton. But there,” he added, “everybody—police, lawyers, judges, even Galton himself—seems to lose every vestige of
common sense as soon as the subject of fingerprints is raised. But it would be interesting to know how he got them and what they are like. We must try to find that out. However, to return to your case, since your theory and the police theory are probably the same, we may as well consider the value of your inferences.

  “At present we are dealing with the case in the abstract. Our data are largely assumptions, and our inferences are largely derived from an application of the mathematical laws of probability. Thus we assume that a murder has been committed, whereas it may turn out to have been suicide. We assume the murder to have been committed by the person, who made the footprints, and we assume that that person has no little toes, whereas he may have retracted little toes which do not touch the ground and so leave no impression. Assuming the little toes to be absent, we account for their absence by considering known causes in the order of their probability. Excluding—quite properly, I think—Raynaud’s disease, we arrive at frost-bite and ergotism.

  “But two persons, both of whom are of a stature corresponding to the size of the footprints, may have had a motive though a very inadequate one—for committing the crime, and both have been exposed to the conditions which tend to produce frost-bite, while one of them has probably, been exposed to the conditions which tend to produce ergotism. The laws of probability point to both of these two men; and the chances in favour of the Swede being the murderer rather than the Canadian would be represented by the common factor—frost-bite—multiplied by the additional factor, ergotism. But this is purely speculative at present. There is no evidence that either man has ever been frost-bitten or has ever eaten spurred rye. Nevertheless, it is a perfectly sound method at this stage. It indicates a line of investigation. If it should transpire that either man has suffered from frost-bite or ergotism, a definite advance would have been made. But here is Polton with a couple of finished prints. How on earth did you manage it in the time, Polton?”

  “Why, you see, sir, I just dried the film with spirit,” replied Polton. “It saved a lot of time. I will let you have a pair of enlargements in about a quarter of an hour.”

  Handing us the two wet prints, each stuck on a glass plate, he retired to the laboratory, and Thorndyke and I proceeded to scrutinize the photographs with the aid of our pocket lenses. The promised enlargements were really hardly necessary excepting for the purpose of comparative measurements, for the image of the white footprint, fully two inches long, was so microscopically sharp that, with the assistance of the lens, the minutest detail could be clearly seen.

  “There is certainly not a vestige of little toe,” remarked Thorndyke, “and the plump appearance of the other toes supports your rejection of Raynaud’s disease. Does the character of the footprint convey any other suggestion to you, Jervis?”

  “It gives me the impression that the man had been accustomed to go bare-footed in early life and had only taken to boots comparatively recently. The position of the great toe suggests this, and the presence of a number of small scars on the toes and ball of the foot seems to confirm it. A person walking bare-foot would sustain innumerable small wounds from treading on small, sharp objects.”

  Thorndyke looked dissatisfied. “I agree with you” he said, “as to the suggestion offered by the undeformed state of the great toes; but those little pits do not convey to me the impression of scars produced as you suggest. Still, you may be right.”

  Here our conversation was interrupted by a knock on the outer oak. Thorndyke stepped out through the lobby and I heard him open the door. A moment or two later he re-entered, accompanied by a short, brown-faced gentleman whom I instantly recognized as Mr. Wardale.

  “I must have come up by the same train as you,” he remarked, as we shook hands, “and to a certain extent, I suspect, on the same errand. I thought I would like to put our arrangement on a business footing, as I am a stranger to both of you.”

  “What do you want us to do?” asked Thorndyke.

  “I want you to watch the case, and, if necessary, to look into the facts independently.”

  “Can you give us any information that may help us?”

  Mr. Wardale reflected. “I don’t think I can,” he said at length. “I have no facts that you have not, and any surmises of mine might be misleading. I had rather you kept an open mind. But perhaps we might go into the question of costs.”

  This, of course, was somewhat difficult, but Thorndyke contrived to indicate the probable liabilities involved, to Mr. Wardale’s satisfaction.

  “There is one other little matter,” said Wardale, as he rose to depart. “I have got a suitcase here which Mrs. Beddingfield lent me to bring some things up to town. It is one that Mr. Macauley left behind when he went away from the boarding-house. Mrs. Beddingfield suggested that I might leave it at his chambers when I had finished with it; but I don’t know his address, excepting that it is somewhere in the Temple, and I don’t want to meet the fellow if he should happen to have come up to town.”

  “Is it empty?” asked Thorndyke.

  “Excepting for a suit of pyjamas and a pair of shocking old slippers.” He opened the suitcase as he spoke and exhibited its contents with a grin.

  “Characteristic of a negro, isn’t it? Pink silk pyjamas and slippers about three sizes too small.”

  “Very well,” said Thorndyke. “I will get my man to find out the address and leave it there.”

  As Mr. Wardale went out, Polton entered with the enlarged photographs, which showed the footprints the natural size. Thorndyke handed them to me, and as I sat down to examine them he followed his assistant to the laboratory. He returned in a few minutes, and after a brief inspection of the photographs, remarked:

  “They show us nothing more than we have seen, though they may be useful later. So your stock of facts is all we have to go on at present. Are you going home tonight?”

  “Yes, I shall go back to Margate tomorrow.”

  “Then, as I have to call at Scotland Yard, we may as well walk to Charing Cross together.”

  As we walked down the Strand we gossiped on general topics, but before we separated at Charing Cross, Thorndyke reverted to the case.

  “Let me know the date of the inquest,” said he, “and try to find out what the poison was—if it was really a poison.”

  “The liquid that was left in the bottle seemed to be a watery solution of some kind,” said I, “as I think I mentioned.”

  “Yes,” said Thorndyke. “Possibly a watery infusion of strophanthus.”

  “Why strophanthus?” I asked.

  “Why not?” demanded Thorndyke. And with this and an inscrutable smile, he turned and walked down Whitehall.

  Three days later I found myself at Margate—sitting beside Thorndyke in a room adjoining the Town Hall, in which the inquest on the death of Mrs. Toussaint was to be held. Already the coroner was in his chair, the jury were in their seats and the witnesses assembled in a group of chairs apart. These included Foxton, a stranger who sat by him—presumably the other medical witness—Mrs. Beddingfield, Mr. Wardale, the police superintendent and a well-dressed coloured man, whom I correctly assumed to be Mr. Macauley.

  As I sat by my rather sphinx-like colleague my mind recurred for the hundredth time to his extraordinary powers of mental synthesis. That parting remark of his as to the possible nature of the poison had brought home to me in a flash the fact that he already had a definite theory of this crime, and that his theory was not mine nor that of the police. True, the poison might not be strophanthus, after all, but that would not alter the position. He had a theory of the crime, but yet he was in possession of no facts excepting those with which I had supplied him. Therefore those facts contained the material for a theory, whereas I had deduced from them nothing but the bald, ambiguous mathematical probabilities.

  The first witness called was naturally Dr. Foxton, who described the circumstances already known to me. He further stated that he had been present at the autopsy, that he had found on the throat and limbs of the deceased br
uises that suggested a struggle and violent restraint. The immediate cause of death was heart failure, but whether that failure was due to shock, terror, or the action of a poison he could not positively say.

  The next witness was a Dr. Prescott, an expert pathologist and toxicologist. He had made the autopsy and agreed with Dr. Foxton as to the cause of death. He had examined the liquid contained in the bottle taken from the hand of the deceased and found it to be a watery infusion or decoction of strophanthus seeds. He had analysed the fluid contained in the stomach and found it to consist largely of the same infusion.

  “Is infusion of strophanthus seeds used in medicine?” the coroner asked.

  “No,” was the reply. “The tincture is the form in which strophanthus is administered unless it is given in the form of strophanthine.”

  “Do you consider that the strophanthus caused or contributed to death?”

  “It is difficult to say,” replied Dr. Prescott. “Strophanthus is a heart poison, and there was a very large poisonous dose. But very little had been absorbed, and the appearances were not inconsistent with death from shock.”

  “Could death have been self-produced by the voluntary taking of the poison?” asked the coroner.

  “I should say, decidedly not. Dr. Foxton’s evidence shows that the bottle was almost certainly placed in the hands of the deceased after death, and this is in complete agreement with the enormous dose and small absorption.”

  “Would you say that appearances point to suicidal or homicidal poisoning?”

  “I should say that they point to homicidal poisoning, but that death was probably due mainly to shock.”

  This concluded the expert’s evidence. It was followed by that of Mrs. Beddingfield, which brought out nothing new to me but the fact that a trunk had been broken open and a small attaché-case belonging to the deceased abstracted and taken away.

  “Do you know what the deceased kept in that case?” the coroner asked.

  “I have seen her put her husband’s letters into it. She had quite a number of them. I don’t know what else she kept in it except, of course, her cheque-book.”