“Of course it won’t,” the Inspector agreed. “If duty calls you must away; and after all, a live patient is better than a dead potter. What time shall we say?”
“I think I shall be clear by four o’clock. Will that do?”
“It will do for me,” replied the Inspector, glancing inquiringly at his brother officer; and as the latter agreed, it was arranged that they should call at my house at four o’clock and that we should proceed together to the studio.
As I rose to depart, my precious mirror tube—despised by Blandy but dear to me—caught my eye, and I proceeded unostentatiously to resume possession of it, remarking that I would take care of it in case it should ever be wanted. As neither officer made any objection, I returned it to its case; and the packet of bone ash having served its purpose, I closed it and slipped it into my pocket with the tube.
On leaving the police station, I glanced rapidly through the entries in my visiting list, and having planned out a convenient route, started on my round, endeavouring—none too successfully—to banish from my mind all thoughts of the Gannet mystery that I might better concentrate my attention on the clinical problems that my patients presented. But if I suffered some distraction from my proper business, there was compensation in the matter of speed, for I dispatched my round of visits in record time, and even after a leisurely lunch, found myself with half an hour to spare before my visitors were due to arrive. This half hour I spent with my hat on, pacing my consulting room in an agony of apprehension lest an inopportune professional call should hinder me from keeping my appointment. But fortunately no message came, and punctually at four o’clock Inspector Blandy was announced and conducted me to a large roomy car which was drawn up outside the house.
“The Superintendent couldn’t come,” Blandy explained, as he ushered me into the car. “But it doesn’t matter. This is not a case for the local police. If there is anything in it, the C.I.D. will have to carry out the investigation.”
“And what are you proposing to do now?” I asked.
“Just to check your report,” he replied. “Personally, having seen you and noted your careful and exact methods, I accept it without any hesitation. But our people take nothing on hearsay if they can get observed facts, so I must be in a position to state those facts on my own knowledge and the evidence of my own eyesight; though as you and I know, my eyesight would have been of no use without yours.”
I was beginning a modest disclaimer, suggesting that I was but an amateur investigator, but he would have none of it, exclaiming:
“My dear Doctor, you undervalue yourself. The whole discovery is your own. Consider now what would have happened if I had looked into the studio as you did. What should I have seen? Nothing, my dear sir, nothing. My mere bodily senses would have perceived the visible objects but their significance would never have dawned on me. Whereas you, bringing an expert eye to bear on them, instantly detected the signs of some abnormal happenings. By the way, I am assuming that I am going to have the benefit of your co-operation and advice on this occasion.”
I replied that I should be very pleased to stay for a time and help him (being, in fact, on the very tiptoe of curiosity as to his proceedings), on which he thanked me warmly, and was still thanking me when the car drew up opposite the Gannets’ front door. We both alighted, Blandy lifting out a large, canvas covered suitcase, which he set down on the pavement while he stood taking a general view of the premises.
“Does that gate belong to Gannet’s house?” he asked, indicating the wide, double-leaved studio door.
“Yes,” I replied. “It opens directly into the studio. Would you like to go in that way? I have the key of the wicket.”
“Not this time,” said he. “We had better go in through the house so that I may see the lie of the premises.”
Accordingly, I let him in by the front door and conducted him through the hall, where he looked about him inquisitively, giving special attention to the hat-rack and stand. Then I opened the side door and escorted him out into the yard, where again he inspected the premises and especially the walls and houses which enclosed the space. Presently he espied the rubbish-bin, and walking over to it, lifted its lid and looked thoughtfully into its interior.
“Is this domestic refuse?” he inquired, “or does it belong to the studio?”
“I think it is a general dump,” I replied, “but I know that Gannet used it for ashes and anything that the dustmen would take away.”
“Then,” said he, “we had better take it in with us and look over the contents before the dustman has his innings.”
As I had by this time got the studio door unlocked, we took the bin by its two handles and carried it in. Then, at the Inspector’s suggestion, I shut the door and locked it on the inside.
“Now, I suppose,” said I, “you would like me to show you round the studio and explain the various appliances.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” he replied, “but I think we will postpone that, if it should be necessary after your singularly lucid description, and get on at once with the essential part of the inquiry.”
“What is that?” I asked.
“Our present purpose,” he replied, beaming on me benevolently, “is to establish what the lawyers call the corpus delicti. To ascertain whether a crime has been committed, and if so, what sort of crime it is. We begin by finding out what those bone fragments really amount to. I have brought a small sieve with me, but probably there is a better one here; preferably a fairly fine one.”
“There is a set of sieves for sifting grog and other powders,” said I. “The coarser ones are of wire gauze and the finer of bolting cloth, so you can take your choice. The number of meshes to the linear inch is marked on the rims.”
I took him across to the place where the sieves were stacked, and, when he had looked through the collection, he selected the finest of the wire sieves, which had twenty meshes to the inch. Then I found him a scoop, and when he had tipped the contents of one grog bin into another and placed the empty bin by the side of that containing the bone-ash, he spread out on the bench a sheet of white paper from his case, laid the sieve on the empty bin and fell to work.
For a time, the proceedings were quite uneventful, as the upper part of the bin was occupied by the finely-ground ash, and when a scoopful of this was thrown on to the sieve, it sank through at once. But presently, as the deeper layers were reached, larger fragments, recognizable as pieces of burnt bone, began to appear on the wire-gauze surface, and these, when he had tapped the sieve and shaken all the fine dust through, the Inspector carefully tipped out on to the sheet of paper. Soon he had worked his way down completely past the deposit of fine powder, and now each scoopful consisted almost entirely of bone fragments; and as these lay on the gauze surface, Blandy bent over them, scrutinizing them with amiable intentness and shaking the sieve gently to spread them out more evenly.
“There can be no doubt,” said he, as he ran his eye over a fresh scoopful thus spread out, “that these are fragments of bone; but it may be difficult to prove that they are human bones. I wish our unknown friend hadn’t broken them up quite so small.”
“You have the finger bone,” I reminded him. “There’s no doubt that that is human.”
“Well,” he agreed, “if you are prepared to swear positively that it is a human bone, that will establish a strong probability that the rest of the fragments are human. But we want proof if we can get it. In a capital case, the court isn’t taking anything for granted.”
Here he stooped closer over the sieve with his eyes riveted on one spot. Then very delicately with finger and thumb, he picked out a small object, and laying it on the palm of his other hand, held it out to me with a smile of concentrated benevolence. I took it from his palm, and placing it on my own, examined it closely, first with the naked eye and then with my pocket lens.
“And what is the diagnosis?” he asked, as I returned it to him.
“It is a portion of a porcelain tooth,” I replied
. “A front tooth, I should say, but it is such a small piece that it is impossible to be sure. But it is certainly part of a porcelain tooth.”
“Ha!” said he, “there is the advantage of expert advice and cooperation. It is pronounced authoritatively to be certainly a porcelain tooth. But as the lower animals do not, to the best of my knowledge and belief, ever wear porcelain teeth, we have corroborative evidence that these remains are human. That is a great step forward. But how far does it carry us? Can you suggest any particular application of the fact?”
“I can,” said I. “It is known to me that Peter Gannet had a nearly complete upper dental plate. I saw it in a bowl when he was ill.”
“Excellent!” the Inspector exclaimed. “Peter Gannet wore porcelain teeth, and here is part of a porcelain tooth. The evidence grows. But if he wore a dental plate, he must have had a dentist. I suppose you cannot give that dentist a name?”
“It happens that I can. He is a Mr. Hawley of Wigmore Street!”
“Really, now,” exclaimed the Inspector, “you are positively spoiling me. You leave me nothing to do. I have only to ask for information and it is instantly supplied.”
He laid the fragment of tooth tenderly on the corner of the sheet of paper and made an entry in his notebook of the dentist’s address. Then, having tipped the contents of the sieve on to the paper, he brought up another scoopful of bone fragments and shook it out on the gauze surface.
I need not follow the proceedings in detail. Gradually we worked our way through the entire contents of the bone-ash-bin, finishing up by holding the bin itself upside down over the sieve and shaking out the last grains. The net result was a considerable heap of bone fragments on the sheet of paper and no less than four other pieces of porcelain. As to the former, they were for the most part, mere crumbs of incinerated bone with just a sprinkling of lumps large enough to have some recognizable character. But the fragments of porcelain were more informative, for close examination and a few tentative trials at fitting them together left little doubt that they were all parts of the same tooth.
“But we won’t leave it at that,” said Blandy, as he dropped them one by one into a glass tube that he produced from his case. “We’ve got a man at Headquarters who is an expert at mending up broken articles. He’ll be able to cement these pieces together so that the joins will hardly be visible. Then I’ll take the tooth along to Mr. Hawley and see what he has to say to it.”
He slipped the tube into his pocket and then, having produced from his case a large linen bag, shovelled the bone fragments into it, tied up its mouth and stowed it away in the case.
“This stuff,” he remarked, “will have to be produced at the inquest; if we can identify it definitely enough to make an inquest possible. But I shall go over it again, a teaspoonful at a time, to make sure that we haven’t missed anything; and then it will be passed to the Home Office experts. If they decide that the remains are certainly human remains, we shall notify the coroner.”
While he was speaking his eyes turned from one object to another, taking in all the various fittings of the studio, and finally his glance lighted on Boles’s cupboard and there remained fixed.
“Do you happen to know what is in that cupboard?” he asked.
“I know that it belongs to Mr. Boles,” I replied, “and I think he uses it to keep his materials in.”
“What are his materials?” the Inspector asked.
“Principally gold and silver, especially gold. But he keeps some of his enamel material there and the copper plates for his plaques.”
The Inspector walked over to the cupboard and examined the keyhole narrowly.
“It isn’t much of a lock,” he remarked, “for a repository of precious metals. Looks like a common ward lock that almost any key would open. I think you said that Mr. Boles is not available at the moment?”
“I understand from Mrs. Gannet that he has disappeared from his flat and that no one knows where he is.”
“Pity,” said Blandy. “I hate the idea of opening that cupboard in his absence, but we ought to know what is in it. And, as I have a search warrant, it is my duty to search. H’m! I happen to have one or two keys in my case. Perhaps one of them might fit this very simple lock.”
He opened his case and produced from it a bunch of keys, and very odd-looking keys they were; so much so that I ventured to inquire:
“Are those what are known as skeleton keys?”
He beamed on me with a slightly deprecating expression.
“The word ‘skeleton,’” said he, “as applied to keys, has disagreeable associations. I would rather call these simplified keys; just ordinary ward keys without wards. You will see how they act.”
He illustrated their function by trying them one after another on the keyhole. At the third trial the key entered the hole, whereupon he gave it a turn and the door came open.
“There, you see,” said he. “We break nothing, and when we go away we leave the cupboard locked as we found it.”
The opened door revealed one or two shelves on which were glass pots of the powdered enamels, an agate mortar and a few small tools. Below the shelves were several small but deep drawers. The Inspector pulled out one of these and looked inquisitively into it as he weighed it critically in his hand.
“Queer-looking stuff, this, Doctor,” said he, “and just feel the weight of it. All these lumps of gold in a practically unlocked cupboard. Are these the things that Mr. Boles makes?”
As he spoke he turned the drawer upside down on the paper that still covered the bench and pointed contemptuously to the heap of pendants, rings and brooches that dropped out of it.
“Did you ever see such stuff?” he exclaimed. “Jewelry, indeed! Why, it might have been made by a plumber’s apprentice. And look at the quantity of metal in it. Look at that ring. There’s enough gold in it to make a bracelet. This stuff reminds me of the jewelry that the savages produce, only it isn’t nearly so well made. I wonder who buys it. Do you happen to know?”
“I have heard,” I replied, “that Mr. Boles exhibits it at some of the private galleries, and I suppose some of it gets sold. It must, you know, or he wouldn’t go on making it.”
Inspector Blandy regarded me with a rather curious, cryptic smile, but he made no rejoinder. He simply shot “the stuff” back into the drawer, replaced the latter, and drew out the next.
The contents of this seemed to interest him profoundly for he looked into the drawer with an expression of amiable satisfaction and seemed to meditate on what he saw as if it conveyed some new idea to him. At length he tipped the contents out on to the paper and smilingly invited me to make any observations that occurred to me. I looked at the miscellaneous heap of rings, brooches, lockets and other trinkets and noted that they seemed to resemble the ordinary jewelry that one sees in shop windows excepting that the stones were missing.
“I don’t think Mr. Boles made any of these,” said I.
“I am quite sure he didn’t,” said Blandy, “but I think he took the stones out. But what do you make of this collection?”
“I should guess,” I replied, “that it is old jewelry that he bought cheap to melt down for his own work.”
“Yes,” agreed Blandy, “he bought it to melt down and work up again. But he didn’t buy it cheap if he bought from the trade. You can’t buy gold cheap in the open market. Gold is gold, whether old or new. It has its standard price per ounce and you can’t get it any cheaper; and you can always sell it at that price. I am speaking of the open market.”
Once more he regarded me with that curious, inscrutable smile, and then, sweeping the jewelry back into its drawer, he passed on to the next.
This drawer contained raw material proper: little ingots of gold, buttons from cupels or crucibles, and a few pieces of thin gold plate. It did not appear to me to present any features of interest, but evidently Blandy thought otherwise, for he peered into the drawer with a queer, benevolent smile for quite a considerable time. And he did not t
ip out its contents on to the bench. Instead, he took a pair of narrow-nosed pliers from one of the shelves and with these he delicately picked out the pieces of gold plate, and having examined them on both sides, laid them carefully on the paper.
“You seem to be greatly interested in those bits of plate,” I remarked.
“I am,” he replied. “There are two points of interest in them. First there is the fact that they are pieces of gold plate such as are supplied to the trade by bullion dealers. That goes to show that he bought some of his gold from the dealers in the regular way. He didn’t get it all second hand. The other point is this.”
He picked up one of the pieces of plate with the pliers and exhibited it to me, and I then observed that its polished surface was marked with the impression of a slightly greasy finger.
“You mean that fingerprint?” I suggested.
“Thumb-print,” he corrected, “apparently a left thumb; and on the other side, the print of a forefinger. Both beautifully clear and distinct, as they usually are on polished metal.”
“Yes,” said I, “they are clear enough. But what about it? They are Mr. Boles’s fingerprints. But this is Mr. Boles’s cupboard. We knew that he had used it and that he had frequented this studio. I don’t see that the fingerprints tell you anything that you didn’t know.”
The Inspector smiled at me, indulgently. “It is remarkable,” said he, “how the scientific mind instantly seizes the essentials. But there is a little point that I think you have missed. We find that Mr. Boles is a purchaser of second-hand jewelry. Now, in the Fingerprint Department we have records of quite a number of gentlemen who are purchasers of second-hand jewelry. Of course, it is quite incredible that Mr. Boles’s fingerprints should be among them. But the scientific mind will realize that proof is better than belief. The fingerprint experts will be able to supply the proof.”
The hint thus delicately expressed conveyed a new idea to me and caused me to look with rather different eyes on the contents of the next, and last drawer. These consisted of three small cardboard boxes, which, being opened, were found to contain unmounted stones. One was nearly half-filled with the less precious kinds; moonstones, turquoises, garnets, agates, carnelians and the like. The second held a smaller number of definitely precious stones such as rubies, sapphires and emeralds, while the third contained only diamonds, mostly quite small. The Inspector’s comments expressed only the thought which had instantly occurred to me.
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 225
