The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  We fetched the trestles, and, having set them up, the four tallest of us proceeded to hoist out the coffin.

  “He’s a mighty weight,” Mr. Pippet remarked, as he lowered his end carefully to the trestles.

  “Probably there is a lead shell,” said Miller. “There usually was in the better class coffins. I’m surprised they didn’t put one in the dummy to make it a bit more convincing.”

  While the removal was being effected, Polton, armed with the skeleton key—the jemmy was not required—had got the door of the other vault open. Thither we now proceeded, and, lifting out the empty and comparatively light dummy, carried it across and laid it on the ground beside the trestles.

  “The first thing,” said Thorndyke, “will be to take off the name-plate and try it on the old coffin. An actual trial will be more convincing to a judge or jury than the most careful measurements.”

  “Is it of any great importance,” Mr. Pippet asked, “to prove that the dummy was faked by using the old coffin furniture?”

  “It is absolutely vital,” Thorndyke replied. “How else are we to prove that this is the coffin of Josiah Pippet? There is no mark on it by which it could be identified, and we find it in a vault which is not Josiah’s. Moreover, in the vault which is his, there is a coffin bearing his name-plate which is alleged to be his coffin, and which we are trying to prove is not his coffin.”

  “I thought you had done that pretty effectually already,” said Pippet.

  “We can’t have too much evidence,” Thorndyke rejoined; “and in any case, we have got to produce positive evidence of the identity of this coffin. At present we are only guessing, though I have no doubt that we are guessing right. But if we can prove that the nameplate on that coffin was removed from and belonged to this one, we shall have proved the identity of this one and the fraudulent character of the other.”

  While Thorndyke had been arguing this rather obvious point, Polton had been engaged in carefully and methodically extracting, with a clock-maker’s screw-driver, the six screws with which the name-plate was attached to the dummy coffin-lid. He now held one of them up for his employer’s inspection, remarking:

  “You see, sir, that they used the original brass screws—the old, flat-ended sort; which will be better for testing purposes, as they won’t go into a hole that wasn’t properly bored for them.”

  While the screw was being passed round and examined, he proceeded with the testing operations. First, he lifted the plate from its bed, whereupon there was disclosed an oblong patch of new, unstained wood, which he regarded with a contemptuous crinkle.

  “Well!” he exclaimed, “if I had been faking a coffin, I’d at least have finished the faking before I screwed on the plate and not have given the show away like this.”

  With this, he picked up the plate and laid it on the old coffin-lid in the vacant space, which it fitted exactly. Then, with a fine awl, he felt through one of the corner holes of the plate for the corresponding hole in the wood, and, having found it, dropped in one of the screws and ran it lightly home. Next, in the same manner, he probed the hole in the opposite corner of the plate, dropped in the screw and drove it home. Then, discarding the awl, he dropped in the other four screws, all of which ran in quite smoothly.

  “There, Mr. Pippet,” said Thorndyke, “that establishes the identity of the coffin. The six holes in the brass plate coincide exactly with the six holes in the wood; for, as Polton points out, the screws, being blunt-ended, would not enter the wood if the holes were not precisely in the right place. So you can now take it as an established fact that this is really the coffin of your grandfather, Josiah Pippet. Does that satisfy you? Or is there anything else that you wish to have done?”

  Pippet looked at him in surprise. “Why!” he exclaimed, “we’ve only just begun! I thought we came here to find out exactly what is in that coffin. That is what I came for. I had made up my mind before I came to England that the first thing that I would do would be to find out whether Josiah was or was not in that coffin. Then I should have known whether to haul off or go ahead.”

  “Exactly,” said Thorndyke; “but are you sure that you still want to know?”

  I looked quickly at Thorndyke, and so did Mr. Pippet. The question was asked in the quietest and most matter-of-fact tone; and yet I had the feeling that it carried a significance beyond either the tone or the words. And this, I think, was noticed also by our American friend, for he paused a few moments with his eyes fixed on Thorndyke before he replied:

  “It doesn’t matter so much now, as I’ve dropped the claim. But, still, if it doesn’t seem irreverent, I think I should like to have a look at Josiah. I hate to leave a job unfinished.”

  “Very well,” said Thorndyke; “it’s your funeral in a literal as well as allegorical sense. You would like to have the coffin opened?”

  “I should, though I don’t quite see how you are going to manage it. There don’t seem to be any screws.”

  “The screws are plugged,” Thorndyke explained, “as they usually are in well-finished coffins. They are sunk in little pits and the pits are filled up with plugs of wood, which are planed off clean so as to show an uninterrupted surface. Possibly those plugs were the deciding factor in the question as to whether the old coffin should be opened and faked, or a new one made. You can see that it would be impossible to get those plugs out and replace them without leaving very visible traces.”

  This statement was illustrated by Polton’s proceedings. From the inexhaustible suitcase he produced a cabinet-maker’s scraper, with which he set to work at the edge of the lid, scraping off the old surface, thereby bringing into view the little circular inlays which marked the position of the screws, of which there were eight. When they were all visible, he attacked them with a nose bit set in a brace, and quickly exposed the heads of the screws. But then came the tug of war. For the rust of eighty years seemed to have fixed the screws immovably; and by the time that he had managed, with the aid of a driver bit in his brace, to get them out, his crinkly countenance was streaming with perspiration.

  “All right this time,” said Mr. Pippet, picking up one of the screws and inspecting its blunt end. “I guess I’ll take these screws to keep as a memento. Ah! You were right, Doctor,” he added, as Polton prised up the lid and lifted it clear. “It was the lead shell that made it so blamed ponderous.”

  Here Mr. Brodribb, casting a slightly apprehensive glance at the leaden inner coffin, announced, as he selected a cigar from his case,

  “If you are going to open the shell, Thorndyke, I think I will take a little stroll and survey the landscape. I haven’t got a medical jurist’s stomach.”

  Thorndyke smiled, unsympathetically, but, nevertheless, offered him a light; and as he moved away, exhaling fragrant clouds, Polton approached the coffin with a formidable hooked knife and a pair of tinman’s shears.

  “Do you want to see the whole of him, sir?” he asked, bestowing a crinkly smile on Mr. Pippet, “or do you think his head will be enough?”

  “Well, Mr. Polton,” was the guarded reply, “perhaps his head will be enough—to begin with, anyway.”

  Thereupon, Polton, with a few gentle taps of a hammer, drove the point of the knife through the soft lead and began to cut a line in a U shape round the head end of the shell. When he had extended it sufficiently, he prised up the end of the tongue-shaped piece enclosed by the incision and turned it back like a flap. We stood aside respectfully to allow Mr. Pippet to be the first to look upon the long-forgotten face of his ancestor; and he accordingly advanced and bent down over the dark opening. For an appreciable time he remained looking silently into the cavity, apparently overcome by the emotions natural to the occasion. But I must confess that I was somewhat startled when he gave expression to those emotions. For what he said—and he said it slowly and with the strongest emphasis—was:

  “Well—I’m—damned!”

  Now, when a gentleman so scrupulously correct in speech as was Mr. Pippet, makes use o
f such an expression, it is reasonable to assume that something unusual has occurred. As he withdrew his head from the opening, mine and Thorndyke’s met over it (and I am afraid mine was the harder). But in spite of the collision, I saw enough in a single glance to account for Mr. Pip pet’s exclamation. For what met that glance was no shrivelled, mummified human face, but the end of a slender roll of canvas embedded in time-discoloured sawdust.

  “Now,” commented Miller, when he had made his inspection, “isn’t that just like a blinking crook! They are all fools, no matter how artful they may be. And they can’t imagine the possibility of anyone else being honest. Of course, Gimbler thought that the coffin story was all bunkum, so he pitched the old coffin away without troubling to open it and see what was really in it. If he had only left it alone, Mr. Pippet’s claim would have been as good as established.”

  “It would certainly have been important evidence,” said I. “But, for that matter, it is still. The story of the bogus funeral is now proved beyond any possible doubt to be true. And, though the claim has lapsed for the moment, it lapsed only on a technical point. What do you say, Brodribb?” I asked as that gentleman, in the course of his perambulations, passed the vault at a respectful distance.

  “What do I say to what?” he demanded, reasonably enough.

  “We have opened the shell and we find that it does not contain a body.”

  “What does it contain?” he asked.

  “Something wrapped in canvas and packed in sawdust,” I replied.

  “That is not a very complete account,” he objected, approaching cautiously to take a peep into the interior of the shell. “It certainly does not look like a body,” he admitted after a very brief inspection, “but it might be. A very small one.”

  “It would be a very small one, indeed,” said Thorndyke. “But I agree with you Brodribb. We ought to ascertain exactly what the contents of the coffin are.”

  On this, Polton re-inserted the hooked knife and prolonged the incision on one side to the foot of the shell and carried it across. Then he raised the long flap and turned it back, exposing the whole of the mass of sawdust and the long roll of canvas which was embedded in it. The latter, being lifted out and laid on the coffin-lid, was seen to be secured with three strands of twine or spun-yarn. These Polton carefully untied—they were fastened with reef-knots—and, having thus released the canvas, unrolled it and displayed its contents; which consisted of a small roll of sheet lead, a portion of a battered rain head and a flattened section of leaden stack-pipe.

  “This is interesting,” said Brodribb. “It corresponds with the description more closely than I should have expected.”

  “And you notice, sir,” Polton pointed out, “that the sheet lead is proper cast sheet, as the Doctor said it would be.”

  “I take your word for it, Polton,” said Brodribb. “And that is a further agreement; which, I may add—since we are all friends—is not without its evidential significance.”

  “That is the point that we were discussing,” said I. “The bearing of this discovery on Mr. Pippet’s claim.”

  “I beg your pardon, Dr. Jervis,” Mr. Pippet interposed, “but there isn’t any claim. My sister and I agreed some time ago to drop the claim if we got a chance. And Dr. Thorndyke gave us a very fair chance, and we are very much obliged to him.”

  “I am glad to hear that,” said Brodribb, “because this discovery does really confuse the issues rather badly. On this new evidence it would be possible to start a long and complicated law-suit.”

  “That,” said Mr. Pippet, “is, I guess, what the Doctor meant when he asked me if I still wanted to know what was in the coffin. But a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse; and I was that blind horse. I rather wish I had left that durned coffin alone and taken it for granted that Josiah was inside. Still, we have got the monopoly of the information. Is there any reason why we should not keep it to ourselves? What do you say, Superintendent?”

  “The fact,” replied Miller, “that there was no body in the coffin is of no importance to the prosecution, but I don’t see how it can be burked. We shall have to produce the original coffin—or prove its existence. We needn’t say that we have opened it; but the question might be asked in cross-examination, and we should have to answer it. But what is the objection to the fact being known? You have dropped the claim, and you don’t intend to re-open it. Nobody will be any the worse.”

  “But I am afraid somebody may be,” Mr. Pippet rejoined. He reflected a few moments and then continued: “We are all friends, as Mr. Brodribb has remarked, so I needn’t mind letting you see how the land lies—from my point of view. You see, I embarked on this claim under the impression that the estates were going begging. I knew nothing of any other claimant. But when my sister and I saw Mr. Giles and his mother, we were a little sorry that we had started the ball. However, we had started it, and, after all, there was my girl to consider. So we went on. But very soon it became evident that our two young people were uncommonly taken with each other; and then my sister and I were still more sorry, and we began to hope that our case might fall through. While matters were in suspense, however, Giles made no formal advances though there was no concealment of his feelings towards my girl. But in the evening of the day when the Doctor obligingly knocked the bottom right out of my case, and showed us who the genuine heir-presumptive was, Giles asked my daughter to marry him, and, naturally she said ‘yes.’

  “And now you will see my point. Giles, with proper, manly pride, waited until he had something to offer besides his own very desirable person. He didn’t want to come as a suitor with empty hands. When the prize was practically his, he asked Jenifer to share it with him. And I should have liked to leave it at that. And that was why I wanted that coffin opened. I had taken it as a cinch that Josiah was inside; and if he had been, that would have settled the question for good. Instead of which I have only confused the issues, as Mr. Brodribb says.

  “Now, see here. I want this affair kept dark if it possibly can be. I want Giles to feel that the title and estates that he asked Jenny to share with him are his own by right, and not by anyone’s favour. But that would be all spoiled if he got to know about this damned lead. For then he might reasonably suspect that I had voluntarily surrendered this claim for his benefit when I could, if I had pleased, have carried it to a successful issue. Of course, I couldn’t have done anything of the kind. But that is what he might think. And he mustn’t. There must be no fly in his ointment; and I look to you all to keep it out.”

  It is needless to say that we all listened with the greatest sympathy to Mr. Pippet’s explanation, and we promised, so far as was possible, to suppress the fact that the coffin had been opened; which we were able to do with a clear conscience, since that fact was neither material nor even relevant to the charge of fraud against Gimbler.

  “Naturally,” said Mr. Pippet, when he had thanked us, “you will say that I ought to have thought of all this before I asked to have the coffin opened, but I am not so long-sighted as the Doctor. If you would like to call me a fool I shan’t contradict you.”

  “Thank you,” laughed Thorndyke; “but I don’t think I will avail myself of the permission. Still, I will remark that you allowed yourself to entertain a complete fallacy. You have spoken of my having knocked the bottom out of your case by my exposure of Gimbler’s fraud. But that was not the position at all. The coffin which Gimbler produced as Josiah’s coffin was not Josiah’s coffin. Therefore it had no relevance to the issue. It proved nothing, one way or the other, as to the condition of the real coffin. The effect of my evidence was purely negative. It simply rebutted Gimbler’s evidence and thus restored the status quo ante. The judge, if you remember, drew your attention to this fact when he reminded you that Josiah’s coffin had not been examined, and that the bogus funeral had been neither proved nor disproved.”

  “Well,” said Mr. Pippet, “it has been proved now; and what I should like to know, just as a matter of curiosity, is w
hat it really and truly means. Is it possible that the whole story was true, or was this just one of Josiah’s little jokes?”

  “I am afraid you will never know now,” said Thorndyke.

  “No,” Pippet agreed. “Josiah has got us guessing. Of course, it doesn’t matter now whether he was an earl or an inn-keeper, but if you have any opinion on the subject, I should like to hear it.”

  “Mere speculative opinions,” said Thorndyke, “formed in the absence of real evidence, are not of much value. I really have nothing that one could call an opinion. All I can say is that, though the balance of probabilities for and against the truth of the story is nearly even, there seems to be a slight preponderance against, since, added to the general improbability of the story, is the very striking coincidence of Nathaniel Pippet of The Castle at Winsborough. But I am afraid we shall have to return an open verdict.”

  “And keep it to ourselves,” added Pippet. “And now the practical question arises, what are we to do with this coffin?”

  “I suggest,” said Thorndyke, “that Polton closes it up as neatly as possible and that we then put it, with Gimbler’s masterpiece, in the vault to which it properly belongs. We may hope that it may not be necessary to disturb that vault again; in which case no one need ever know that the coffin has been opened.”

  This suggestion being generally approved, was duly carried out. The two coffins were placed, side by side, on the shelf, and then Miller locked the door and dropped the key into his pocket. This done, the procession moved out of the burial ground; and the incident was formally closed when Miller slammed the outer gate and turned the key in the rusty lock.

  We went back in the same order as that in which we had come. Mr. Pippet and Brodribb travelled in the former’s car, and the rest of us occupied the roomy police car, Polton, at his own request, occupying the seat next to the driver where he could observe the mechanical arrangements and the operator’s methods.