The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  He bowed to the assembly and to Mr. Kempster and bustled away, and I noticed that with his retirement all interest in the alleged masterpieces seemed to lapse. The visitors strayed away to other parts of the gallery and the majority soon strayed towards the door.

  Meanwhile, Mr. Kempster took possession of the jar and carried it reverently back to its case. I followed him with my eyes and then with the rest of my person. For, like Mr. Tite Barnacle (or, rather, his visitor), I “wanted to know, you know.” I had noticed a red wafer stuck to the jar, and this served as an introduction.

  “So the masterpiece is sold,” said I. “Fifteen guineas, according to the catalogue. It seems a long price for a small jar.”

  “It does,” he admitted. “But it is a museum piece; hand-built and by an acknowledged master.”

  “It looks rather different from most of Gannet’s work. I suppose there is no doubt that it is really from his hand?”

  Mr. Kempster was shocked. “Good gracious, no!” he replied. “He drew up the catalogue himself. Besides—”

  He picked up the jar quickly (no Holy Grail touch this time) and turned it up to exhibit the bottom.

  “You see,” said he, “the piece is signed and numbered. There is no question as to its being Gannet’s work.”

  If the inference was erroneous, the fact was correct. On the bottom of the jar was Gannet’s distinctive mark; a sketchy gannet, the letters “P. G.” with the number, Op. 961. That disposed of the possibility which had occurred to me that the jar might have been put among Gannet’s own works by mistake, possibly by Mrs. Gannet. The fraud had evidently been deliberate.

  As he replaced the jar on its shelf, I ventured to indulge my curiosity on another point.

  “I heard Mr. Bunderby mention your name. Do you happen to be related to Mr. Kempster of Newingstead?”

  “My brother,” he replied. “You noticed the likeness, I suppose. Do you know him?”

  “Very slightly. But I was down there at the time of the robbery; in fact, I had to give evidence at the inquest on the unfortunate policeman. It was I who found him by the wood.”

  “Ah, then you will be Dr. Oldfield. I read the report of the inquest, and, of course, heard all about it from my brother. It was a disastrous affair. It appears that the diamonds were not covered by insurance and I am afraid that it looks like a total loss. The diamonds are hardly likely to be recovered now. They are probably dispersed, and it would be difficult to identify them singly.”

  “I was sorry,” said I, “to miss Mr. Bunderby’s observations on Mr. Boles’s jewelry. It seems to me to need some explaining.”

  “Yes,” he admitted, “it isn’t to everybody’s taste. My brother, for instance, won’t have it at any price, though he knows Mr. Boles and rather likes him. And speaking of Newingstead, it happens that Mr. Boles is a native of that place.”

  “Indeed. Then I suppose that is how your brother came to know him?”

  “I can’t say, but I rather think not. Probably he made the acquaintance through business channels. I know that he has had some dealings—quite small transactions—with Mr. Boles.”

  “But surely,” I exclaimed, “Mr. Boles doesn’t ever use diamonds in his neolithic jewelry?”

  “Neo-primitive,” he corrected with a smile. “No, I should think he was a vendor rather than a buyer or he may have made exchanges. Like most jewelers, Mr. Boles picks up oddments of old or damaged jewelry, when he can get it cheap, to use as scrap. Any diamonds or faceted stones would be useless to him as he uses only simple stones, cabochon cut, and not many of those. But that is only a surmise based on remarks that Mr. Boles has let fall; I don’t really know much about his affairs.”

  At this moment I happened to glance at a clock at the end of the gallery, and to my dismay saw that it stood at ten minutes to six. With a few words of apology and farewell, I rushed out of the gallery, clattered down the stairs and darted out into the street. Fortunately, an unoccupied taxi was drifting towards me and slowed down as I hailed it. In a moment I had given my address, scrambled in and slammed the door and was moving on at a pace that bid fair to get me home within a minute or two of six.

  The short journey gave me little time for reflection. Yet in those few minutes I was able to consider the significance of my recent experiences sufficiently to be conscious of deep regret and disillusionment. Of the dead, one would wish not only to speak but to think nothing but good; and though Peter Gannet had been more an acquaintance than a friend, and one for whom I had entertained no special regard, I was troubled that I could no longer even pretend to think of him with respect. For the doubts that I had felt and tried to banish were doubts no longer. The bubble was pricked. Now I knew that his high pretensions were mere clap-trap, his “works of art” a rank imposture.

  But even worse than this was the affair of “the decorated jar.” To pass off as his own work a piece that had been made by another—though that other were but an incompetent beginner—was unspeakably shabby; to offer it for sale was sheer dishonesty. Not that I grudged the fifteen guineas, since they would benefit poor Mrs. Gannet, nor did I commiserate the “mug” who had paid that preposterous price. Probably, he deserved all he got—or lost. But it irked me to think that Gannet, whom I had assumed to be a gentleman, was no more than a common rogue.

  As to Bunderby, obviously, he was an arrant quack. An ignoramus, too, if he really believed my jar to have been hand-built, for a glance at its interior would have shown the most blatant traces of the wheel. But at this point my meditations were interrupted by the stopping of the taxi opposite my house. I hopped out, paid the driver, fished out my latch-key and had it in the keyhole at the very moment when the first—and, as it turned out, also the last—of the evening’s patients arrived on the door-step.

  CHAPTER 12

  A Symposium

  To the ordinary housewife, the casual invitation to dinner of two large, able-bodied men would seem an incredible proceeding. But such is the way of bachelors; and perhaps it is not, after all, a bad way. Still, as I immured the newly-arrived patient in the waiting room, it did dawn on me that my housekeeper, Mrs. Gilbert, ought to be notified of the expected guests. Not that I had any anxiety, for Mrs. Gilbert appeared to credit me with the appetite of a Gargantua (and, in fact, I had a pretty good “twist”), and she seemed to live in a state of chronic anxiety lest I should develop symptoms of impending starvation.

  Having discharged my bombshell down the kitchen stairs, I proceeded to deal with the patient—fortunately, a “chronic” who required little more than a “repeat”—and having safely launched him, bottle in hand, from the door step, repaired to the little glory-hole, known as “the study,” to make provision for my visitors. Of their habits I knew nothing; but it seemed to me that a decanter of whiskey, another of sherry, a siphon and a box of cigars would meet all probable exigencies; and I had just finished these preparations when my guests arrived.

  As they entered the study, Jervis looked at the table on which the decanters were displayed and grinned.

  “It’s all right, Thorndyke,” said he. “Oldfield has got the restoratives ready. You won’t want your smelling salts. But he is evidently going to make our flesh creep properly.”

  “Don’t take any notice of him, Oldfield,” said Thorndyke. “Jervis is a perennial juvenile. But he takes quite an intelligent interest in this case, and we are both all agog to hear your story. Where shall I put my notebook? I want to take rather full notes.”

  As he spoke, he produced a rather large block of ruled paper and fixed a wistful eye on the table; whereupon, having, after a brief discussion, agreed to take the restoratives as read, we transferred the whole collection—decanters, siphon and cigar box—to the top of a cupboard and Thorndyke laid his block on the vacant table and drew up a chair.

  “Now, Oldfield,” said Jervis, when we had all taken our seats and filled our pipes, “fire away. Art is long but life is short. Thorndyke is beginning to show signs of senile decay already
, and I’m not as young as I was.”

  “The question is,” said I, “where shall I begin?”

  “The optimum place to begin,” replied Jervis, “is at the beginning.”

  “Yes, I know. But the beginning of the case was the incident of the arsenic poisoning, and you know all about that.”

  “Jervis doesn’t,” said Thorndyke, “and I only came in at the end. Tell us the whole story. Don’t be afraid of repetition and don’t try to condense.”

  Thus directed, I began with my first introduction to the Gannet household and traced the history of my attendance up to the point at which Thorndyke came into the case, breaking off at the cessation of my visits to the hospital.

  “I take it,” said Jervis, “that full notes and particulars of the material facts are available if they should be wanted.”

  “Yes,” Thorndyke replied, “I have my own notes and a copy of Woodfield’s, and I think Oldfield has kept a record.”

  “I have,” said I, “and I had intended to send you a copy. I must write one out and send it to you.”

  “Don’t do that,” said Jervis. “Lend it to me and I will have a typewritten copy made. But get on with the story. What was the next phase?”

  “The next phase was the return home of Peter Gannet. He called on me to report and informed me that, substantially, he was quite fit.”

  “Was he, by Jove?” exclaimed Jervis. “He had made a pretty rapid recovery, considering the symptoms. And how did he seem to like the idea of coming home? Seem at all nervous?”

  “Not at all. His view was that, as the attempt had been spotted and we should be on our guard, they wouldn’t risk another. And apparently he was right—up to a certain point. I don’t know what precautions he took—if he took any. But nothing further happened until—but we shall come to that presently. I will carry the narrative straight on.”

  This I did, making a brief and sketchy reference to my visits to the studio and the activities of Gannet and Boles. But at this point Jervis pulled me up.

  “A little vague and general, this, Oldfield. Better follow the events more closely and in full detail.”

  “But,” I protested, “all this has really nothing to do with the case.”

  “Don’t you let Thorndyke hear you say that, my child. He doesn’t admit that there is such a thing as an irrelevant fact, ascertainable in advance as such. Detail, my friend, detail; and again I say detail.”

  I did not take him quite literally, but I acted as if I did. Going back to the beginning of the studio episode, I recounted it with the minutest and most tedious circumstantiality, straining my memory in sheer malice to recall any trivial and unmeaning incident that I could recover, and winding up with a prolix and exact description of my prentice efforts with the potter’s wheel and the creation of the immortal jar. I thought I had exhausted their powers of attention, but to my surprise Thorndyke asked:

  “And what did your masterpiece look like when you had finished it?”

  “It was very thick and clumsy, but it was quite a pleasant shape. The wheel tends to produce pleasant shapes if you let it.”

  “Do you know what became of it?”

  “Yes. Gannet fired it and passed it off as his own work. But I will tell you about that later. I only discovered the fraud this afternoon.”

  He nodded and made a note on a separate slip of paper and I then resumed my narrative; and as this was concerned with the discovery of the crime, I was genuinely careful not to omit any detail, no matter how unimportant it might appear to me. They both listened with concentrated attention, and Thorndyke apparently took my statement down verbatim in shorthand.

  When I had finished with the gruesome discoveries in the studio, I paused and prepared to play my trump card, confident that, unlike Inspector Blandy, they would appreciate the brilliancy of my inspiration and its important bearing on the identity of the criminal. And I was not disappointed, at least as to the impression produced, for as I described how the “brain wave” had come to me, Thorndyke looked up from his notebook with an appearance of surprise and Jervis stared at me, open-mouthed.

  “But, my dear Oldfield!” he exclaimed, “what in the name of Fortune gave you the idea of testing the ashes for arsenic?”

  “Well, there had been one attempt,” I replied, “and it was quite possible that there might have been another. That was what occurred to me.”

  “Yes, I understand,” said he. “But surely you did not expect to get an arsenic reaction from incinerated bone?”

  “I didn’t, very much. It was just a chance shot; and I must admit that the result came quite as a surprise.”

  “The result!” he exclaimed. “What result?”

  “I will show you,” said I; and forthwith I produced from a locked drawer the precious glass tube with its unmistakable arsenic mirror.

  Jervis took it from me and stared at it with a ludicrous expression of amazement, while Thorndyke regarded him with a quiet twinkle.

  “But,” the former exclaimed, when he had partially recovered from his astonishment, “the thing is impossible. I don’t believe it!” Whereupon Thorndyke chuckled aloud.

  “My learned friend,” said he, “reminds me of that German professor who, meeting a man wheeling a tall cycle—a thing that he had never before seen the like of—demonstrated conclusively to the cyclist that it was impossible to ride the machine for the excellent reason that, if you didn’t fall off to the right, you must inevitably fall off to the left.”

  “That’s all very well,” Jervis retorted, “but you don’t mean to tell me that you accept this mirror at its face value?”

  “It is certainly a little unexpected,” Thorndyke replied, “but you will remember that Soderman and O’Connell state definitely that it has been possible to show the presence of arsenic in the ashes of cremated bodies.”

  “Yes. I remember noting their statement and finding myself unable to accept it. They cited no instances and they gave no particulars. A mere ipse dixit has no evidential weight. I am convinced that there is some fallacy in this case. What about your reagents, Oldfield? Is there a possibility that any of them might have been contaminated with arsenic?”

  “No,” I replied, “it is quite impossible. I tested them exhaustively. There was no sign of arsenic until I introduced the bone ash.”

  “By the way,” Thorndyke asked, “did you use up all your material, or have you some left?”

  “I used only half of it, so if you think it worth while to check the analysis, I can let you have the remainder.”

  “Excellent!” said Thorndyke. “A control experiment will settle the question whether the ashes do, or do not, contain arsenic. Meanwhile, since the mirror is an undeniable fact, we must provisionally adopt the affirmative view. I suppose you told the police about this?”

  “Yes, I showed them the tube. Inspector Blandy spotted the arsenic mirror at a glance, but he took a most extraordinary attitude. He seemed to regard the arsenic as of no importance whatever; quite irrelevant, in fact. He would, apparently, like to suppress it altogether; which appears to me a monstrous absurdity.”

  “I think you are doing Blandy an injustice,” said Thorndyke. “From a legal point of view, he is quite right. What the prosecution has to prove is, first, the fact that a murder has been committed; second, the identity of the person who has been murdered; and third, the identity of the person who committed the murder. Now the fact of murder is established by the condition of the remains and the circumstances in which they were found. The exact cause of death is, therefore, irrelevant. The arsenic has no bearing as proof of murder, because the murder is already proved. And it has no bearing on the other two questions.”

  “Surely,” said I, “it indicates the identity of the murderer, in view of the previous attempt to poison Gannet.”

  “Not at all,” he rejoined. “There was never any inquiry as to who administered that poison and there is no evidence. The court would not listen to mere surmises or suspicions. The
poisoner is an unknown person, and at present the murderer is an unknown person. But you cannot establish the identity of an unknown quantity by proving that it is identical with another unknown quantity. No, Oldfield, Blandy is perfectly right. The arsenic would only be a nuisance and a complication to the prosecution. But it would be an absolute godsend to the defense.”

  “Why?” I demanded.

  “Well,” he replied, “you saw what Jervis’s attitude was. That would be the attitude of the defense. The defending counsel would pass lightly over all the facts that had been proved and that he could not contest, and fasten on the one thing that could not be proved and that he could make a fair show of disproving. The element of doubt introduced by the arsenic might wreck the case for the prosecution and be the salvation of the accused. But we are wandering away from your story. Tell us what happened next.”

  I resumed my narrative, describing my visit to the police station and Blandy’s investigations at the studio, dwelling expecially on the interest shown by the Inspector in Boles’s works and materials. They appeared to arouse a similar interest on the part of my listeners, for Jervis commented:

  “The plot seems to thicken. There is a distinct suggestion that the studio was the scene of activities other than pottery and the making of modernist jewelry. I wonder if those fingerprints will throw any light on the subject?”

  “I rather suspect that they have,” said I, “judging by the questions that Blandy put to Mrs. Gannet. He had got some information from somewhere.”

  “I don’t want to interrupt the narrative,” said Thorndyke, “but when we have finished with the studio, we might have Blandy’s questions. They probably represent his views on the case, and as you say, they may enable us to judge whether he knows more about it than we do.”

  “There is only one more point about the studio,” said I, “but it is a rather important one, as it seems to bear on the motive for the murder.” And with this I gave a detailed account of the quarrel between Gannet and Boles, an incident that, in effect, brought my connection with the place and the men to an end.