But why three boxes? I opened one. The slides—carefully mounted blood-films—were labelled “Joseph Riggs.” Those in the second box were labelled,” Blood from hall floor.” But when I opened the third box, I beheld a collection of empty slides labelled “Robert Fletcher”!
I chuckled aloud. Prodigious! Thorndyke was going even one better than his promise. He was not only going to examine—probably had examined—the two samples produced; he was actually going to collect a third sample for himself!
I picked out one of Mr. Riggs’s slides and laid it on the stage of the microscope. Thorndyke seemed to have been using a low-power objective—the inch-and-a-half. After a glance through this, I swung round the nose-piece to the high power. And then I got a further surprise. The brightly-coloured “white” corpuscles showed that Thorndyke had actually been to the trouble of staining the films with eosin! Again I murmured, “Prodigious!” and put the slide back in its box. For, of course, it showed just what one expected: blood—or rather, broken-up blood-clot. From its appearance I could not even have sworn that it was human blood.
I had just closed the box when Thorndyke entered the room. His quick eye at once noted the changed objective and he remarked: “I see you have been having a look at the specimens.”
“A specimen.” I corrected. “Enough is as good as a feast.”
“Blessed are they who are easily satisfied,” be retorted; and then he added: “I have altered my arrangements, though I needn’t interfere with yours. I shall go down to Southaven tonight; in fact, I am starting in a few minutes.”
“Why?” I asked.
“For several reasons. I want to make sure of the post-mortem tomorrow morning, I want to pick up any further facts that are available, and finally, I want to prepare a set of blood-films from Robert Fletcher. We may as well make the series complete,” he added with a smile, to which I replied by a broad grin.
“Really, Thorndyke,” I protested. “I’m surprised at you, at your age, too. She is a nice girl, but she isn’t so beautiful as to justify a hundred and eight blood-films.”
I accompanied him to the taxi, followed by Polton, who carried his modest luggage, and then returned to speculate on his probable plan of campaign. For, of course, he had one. His purposive, resolute manner told me that he had seen farther into this case than I had. I accepted that as natural and inevitable. Indeed, I may admit that my disrespectful badinage covered a belief in his powers hardly second even to old Brodribb’s. I was, in fact, almost prepared to discover that those preposterous blood-films had, after all, yielded some “illuminating fact” which had sent him hurrying down to Southaven in search of corroboration.
When I alighted from the train on the following day at a little past noon, I found him waiting on the platform, ready to conduct me to his hotel for an early lunch.
“All goes well, so far,” he reported. “I attended the post-mortem, and examined the wound thoroughly. The pistol was held in the right hand not more than two inches from the head; probably quite close, for the skin is scorched and heavily tattooed with black powder grains. I find that Riggs was right-handed. So the prima facie probabilities are in favour of suicide; and the recent loss of money suggests a reasonable motive.”
“But what about that blood in the hall?”
“Oh, we have disposed of that. I completed the blood-film series last night.”
I looked at him quickly to see if he was serious or only playing a facetious return-shot. But his face was as a face of wood.
“You are an exasperating old devil, Thorndyke!” I exclaimed with conviction. Then, knowing that cross-examination would be futile, I asked: “What are we going to do after lunch?”
“The inspector is going to show us over ‘the scene of the tragedy,’ as the newspapers would express it.”
I noted gratefully that he had reserved this item for me, and dismissed professional topics for the time being, concentrating my attention on the old-world, amphibious streets through which we were walking. There is always something interesting in the aspect of a sea-port town, even if it is only a small one like Southaven.
The inspector arrived with such punctuality that he found us still at the table and was easily induced to join us with a cup of coffee and to accept a cigar—administered by Thorndyke, as I suspected, with the object of hindering conversation. I could see that his interest in my colleague was intense and not unmingled with awe, a fact which, in conjunction with the cigar, restrained him from any undue manifestations of curiosity, but not from continuous, though furtive, observation of my friend. Indeed, when we arrived at the late Mr. Riggs’s house, I was secretly amused by the close watch that he kept on Thorndyke’s movements, unsensational as the inspection turned out to be.
The house, itself, presented very little of interest excepting its picturesque old-world exterior, which fronted on a quiet by-street and was furnished with a deep bay which, as Thorndyke ascertained, commanded a clear view of the street from end to end. It was a rather shabby, neglected little house, as might have been expected, and our examination of it yielded, so far as I could see, only a single fact of any significance: which was that there appeared to be no connection what ever between the blood-stain on the study floor and the train of large spots from the middle of the hall to the street door. And on this piece of evidence—definitely unfavourable from our point of view—Thorndyke concentrated his attention when he had made a preliminary survey.
Closely followed by the watchful inspector, he browsed round the little room, studying every inch of the floor between the blood-stain and the door. The latter he examined minutely from top to bottom, especially as to the handle, the jambs, and the lintel. Then he went out into the hall, scrutinising the floor inch by inch, poring over the walls, and even looking behind the framed prints that hung on them. A reflector lamp suspended by a nail on the wall received minute and prolonged attention, as did also a massive lamp-hook screwed into one of the beams of the low ceiling, of which Thorndyke remarked as he stooped to pass under it, that it must have been fixed there by a dwarf.
“Yes,” the inspector agreed, “and a fool. A swinging lamp hung on that hook would have blocked the whole fairway. There isn’t too much room as it is. What a pity we weren’t a bit more careful about footprints in this place. There are plenty of tracks of wet feet here on this oil-cloth; faint, but you could have made them out all right if they hadn’t been all on top of one another. There’s Mr. Foxley’s, the girl’s, mine, and the men who carried out the body, but I’m hanged if I can tell which is which. It’s a regular mix up.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “it is all very confused. But I notice one rather odd thing. There are several faint traces of a large right foot, but I can’t see any sign of the corresponding left foot. Can you?”
“Perhaps this is it,” said Thorndyke, pointing to a large, vague oval mark. “I have noticed that it seems to occur in some sort of connection with the big right foot; but I must admit that it is not a very obvious footprint.”
“I shouldn’t have taken it for a footprint at all, or at any rate, not a human footprint. It is more like the spoor of some big animal.”
“It is,” Thorndyke agreed; “but whatever it is, it seems to have been here before any of the others arrived. You notice that wherever it occurs, it seems to have been trodden on by some of the others.”
“Yes, I had noticed that, and the same is true of the big right foot, so it seems probable that they are connected, as you say. But I am hanged if I can make anything of it. Can you, inspector?”
The inspector shook his head. He could not recognise the mark as a footprint, but he could see very plainly that he had been a fool not to have taken more care to protect the floor.
When the examination of the hall was finished, Thorndyke opened the door and looked at the big, flat doorstep. “What was the weather like here on Wednesday evening?” he asked.
“Showery,” the inspector replied; “and there were one or two heavy showers d
uring the night. You were noticing that there are no blood-tracks on the doorstep. But there wouldn’t be in any case; for if a man had come out of this door dropping blood, the blood would have dropped on wet stone and got washed away at once.”
Thorndyke admitted the truth of this; and so another item of favourable evidence was extinguished. The probability that the blood in the hall was that of some person other than the deceased remained undisturbed; and I could not see that a single fact had been elicited by our inspection of the house that was in any way helpful to our client. Indeed, it appeared to me that there was absolutely no case for the defence, and I even asked myself whether we were not, in fact, merely trying to fudge up a defence for an obviously guilty man. It was not like Thorndyke to do that. But how did the case stand? There was a suggestion of suicide, but a clear possibility of homicide. There was strong evidence that a second person had been in the house, and that person appeared to have received a wound. But a wound suggested a struggle; and the servant’s evidence was to the effect that when she left the house a violent altercation was in progress. The deceased was never again seen alive; and the other party to the quarrel had been found with property of the dead man in his possession. Moreover, there was a clear motive for the crime, stupid as that crime was. For the dead man had threatened to revoke his will but as he had presumably not done so, his death left the will still operative. In short, everything pointed to the guilt of our client, Robert Fletcher.
I had just reached this not very gratifying conclusion when a statement of Thorndyke’s shattered my elaborate summing up into impalpable fragments.
“I suppose, sir,” said the inspector, “there isn’t anything that you would care to tell us, as you are for the defence. But we are not hostile to Fletcher. In fact, he hasn’t been charged. He is only being detained in custody until we have heard what turns up at the inquest. I know you have examined that blood that Mr. Foxley took, and Fletcher’s blood, too, and you’ve seen the premises. We have given all the facilities that we could, and if you could give us any sort of hint that might be useful, I should be very much obliged.”
Thorndyke reflected for a few moments. Then he replied: “There is no reason for secrecy in regard to you, inspector, who have been so helpful and friendly, so I will be quite frank. I have examined both samples of blood and Fletcher’s, and I have inspected the premises; and what I am able to say definitely is this: the blood in the hall is not the blood of the deceased—”
“Ah!” exclaimed the inspector, “I was afraid it wasn’t.”
“And it is not the blood of Robert Fletcher.”
“Isn’t it now! Well, I am glad to hear that.”
“Moreover,” continued Thorndyke, “it was shed well after nine o’clock at night, probably not earlier than midnight.”
“There, now!” the inspector exclaimed, with an admiring glance at Thorndyke, “just think of that. See what it is to be a man of science! I suppose, sir, you couldn’t give us any sort of description of the person who dropped that blood in the hall?”
Staggered as I had been by Thorndyke’s astonishing statements, I could not repress a grin at the inspector’s artless question. But the grin faded rather abruptly as Thorndyke replied in matter-of-fact tones: “A detailed description is, of course, impossible. I can only sketch out the probabilities. But if you should happen to meet with a negro—a tall negro with a bandaged head or a contused wound of the scalp and a swollen leg—you had better keep your eye on him. The leg which is swollen is probably the left.”
The inspector was thrilled; and so was I, for that matter. The thing was incredible; but yet I knew that Thorndyke’s amazing deductions were the products of perfectly orthodox scientific methods. Only I could form no sort of guess as to how they had been arrived at. A negro’s blood is no different from any other person’s, and certainly affords no clue to his height or the condition of his legs. I could make nothing of it: and as the dialogue and the inspector’s note-takings brought us to the little town hall in which the inquest was to be held, I dismissed the puzzle until such time as Thorndyke chose to solve it.
When we entered the town hall we found everything in readiness for the opening of the proceedings. The jury were already in their places and the coroner was just about to take his seat at the head of the long table. We accordingly slipped on to the two chairs that were found for us by the inspector, and the latter took his place behind the jury and facing us. Near to him Mr. Foxley and Miss Markham were seated, and evidently hailed our arrival with profound relief, each of them smiling us a silent greeting. A professional-looking man sitting next to Thorndyke I assumed to be the medical witness, and a rather good young man who sat apart with a police constable I identified as Robert Fletcher.
The evidence of the “common” witnesses, who deposed to the general facts, told us nothing that we did not already know, excepting that it was made clear that Fletcher had left his uncle’s house not later than seven o’clock and that thereafter until the following morning his whereabouts were known. The medical witness was cautious, and kept an uneasy eye on Thorndyke. The wound which caused the death of deceased might have been inflicted by himself or by some other person. He had originally given the probable time of death as six or seven o’clock on Wednesday evening. He now admitted reply to a question from Thorndyke that he had not taken the temperature of the body, and that the rigidity and other conditions were not absolutely inconsistent with a considerable later time of death. Death might even have occurred after midnight.
In spite of this admission, however, the sum of the evidence tended strongly to implicate Fletcher, and one or two questions from jurymen suggested a growing belief in his guilt. I had no doubt whatever that if the case had been put to the jury at this stage, a unanimous verdict of “wilful murder” would have been the result. But, as the medical witness returned to his seat, the coroner fixed an inquisitive eye on Thorndyke.
“You have not been summoned as a witness, Dr. Thorndyke,” said he, “but I understand that you have made certain investigations in this case. Are you able to throw any fresh light on the circumstances of the death of the deceased, Joseph Riggs?
“Yes,” Thorndyke replied. “I am in a position to give important and material evidence.”
Thereupon he was sworn, and the coroner, still watching him curiously, said: “I am informed that you have examined samples of the blood of deceased and the blood which was found in the hall of deceased’s house. Did you examine them, and if so, what was the object of the examination?”
“I examined both samples and also samples of the blood of Robert Fletcher. The object was to ascertain whether the blood on the hall floor was the blood of the deceased or of Robert Fletcher.”
The coroner glanced at the medical witness, and a faint smile appeared on the face of each.
“And did you,” the former asked in a slightly ironical tone, “form any opinion on the subject?”
“I ascertained definitely that the blood in the hall was neither that of the deceased nor that of Robert Fletcher.”
The coroner’s eyebrows went up, and once more he glanced significantly at the doctor.
“But,” he demanded incredulously, “is it possible to distinguish the blood of one person from that of another?”
“Usually it is not, but in certain exceptional cases it is. This happened to be an exceptional case.”
“In what respect?”
“It happened,” Thorndyke replied, “that the person whose blood was found in the hall suffered from the parasitic disease known as filariasis. His blood was infested with swarms of a minute worm named Filaria nocturna. I have here,” he continued, taking out of his research-case the two bottles and the three boxes, “thirty-six mounted specimens of this blood, and in every one of them one or more of the parasites is to be seen. I have also thirty-six mounted specimens each of the blood of the deceased, and the blood of Robert Fletcher. In not one of these specimens is a single parasite to be found. Moreover,
I have examined Robert Fletcher and the body of the deceased, and can testify that no sign of filarial disease was to be discovered in either. Hence it is certain, that the blood found in the halt was not the blood of either of these two persons.”
The ironic smile had faded from the coroner’s face. He was evidently deeply impressed, and his manner was quite deferential as he asked: “Do these very remarkable observations of yours lead to any further inferences?”
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “They render it certain that this blood was shed no earlier than nine o’clock and probably nearer midnight.”
“Really!” the astonished coroner exclaimed. “Now, how is it possible to fix the time in that exact manner?”
“By inference from the habits of the parasite,” Thorndyke explained. “This particular filaria is distributed by the mosquito, and its habits are adapted to the habits of the mosquito. During the day, the worms are not found in the blood; they remain hidden in the tissues of the body. But about nine o’clock at night they begin to migrate from the tissues into the blood, and remain in the blood during the hours when the mosquitoes are active. Then about six o’clock in the morning, they leave the blood and migrate back into the tissues.
“There is another very similar species—Filaria diurna—which has exactly opposite habits, adapted to day-flying suctorial insects. It appears in the blood about eleven in the forenoon and goes back into the tissues at about six o’clock in the evening.”
“Astonishing!” exclaimed the coroner. “Wonderful! By the way, the parasites that you found could not, I suppose, have been Filaria diurna?”
“No,” Thorndyke replied. “The time excludes that possibility. The blood was certainly shed after six. They were undoubtedly nocturna, and the large numbers found suggest a late hour. The parasites come out of the tissues very gradually, and it is only about midnight that they appear in the blood in really large numbers.”
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 22
