Thorndyke having agreed to this suggestion, Mr. Penfield took a pinch of snuff and began his narration.
“About five years ago—I can’t give you exact dates or figures as I am speaking from memory—but a little over five years ago, Mrs. Schiller came to my office to ask me to draw up her will and to take custody of it and of certain monies in her possession. She was a stranger to me, but she brought a letter of introduction from one of my clients—now deceased—and I agreed to undertake the business, though I was not very favourably impressed by the lady herself; a flashy, golden-haired baggage, painted like a clown and powdered like a miller, and very free and easy in her manners. However, it was a small affair and perfectly simple; a matter of about three hundred pounds, left by the will to one sole beneficiary; so I drafted a short will in her presence, read it over to her, and, at her request, appointed myself sole executor. Having made an appointment for the following morning, I got the will engrossed and made the necessary arrangements with the bank.
“When she arrived on the following morning, bringing with her the money in notes, some further arrangements had to be made. As she was in the habit of moving about a good deal and had no permanent address, she wished me to act as her man of business and manage her financial affairs, such as they were. I need not go into details. The arrangement constituted me her agent with power to receive and pay monies on her account; and when the will and the other document had been signed and witnessed in my office, the transaction was complete. She left my office immediately and I never saw her again or received any communication from her.”
“She left you her address, I suppose?” said Thorndyke.
“Yes. She was then living in lodgings at a place called Linton Green—Corby Street, I think, was the exact address—and I remember that the landlady’s name was Wharton. But that is of no consequence as she had left those lodgings when I made my inquiries and the landlady did not know where she had gone. She had promised to keep me informed of her whereabouts when she changed her address, but she never did; which, for a time, was no concern of mine, as I had no occasion to communicate with her.
But then there came a new development. A certain rather wealthy man—a Mr. Charles Montagu—died (I regret to say that he, also, was murdered. It is a distinctly unsavoury case altogether). Well, this man had bequeathed to a certain Miss Dalton a sum of about twenty thousand pounds. There was some delay in regard to the probate of his will owing to the fact that some large payments—over a thousand pounds—had been made in cash and not accounted for in the books. Another unsavoury detail; for there could hardly be a doubt that those payments represented blackmail, especially as the man was murdered. However, the will was eventually proved; but the probate was barely completed when Miss Dalton died.
“It then appeared that she had made a will leaving the bulk of her property to Mrs. Schiller; who, as the residuary legatee, became entitled, also, to the twenty thousand pounds. But now there was a fresh difficulty. Not only was the whereabouts of Mrs. Schiller unknown; it was not certain that she was alive, or even that she had been alive at the time of Miss Dalton’s death. On this question I could, of course, give no information. I tried to get into touch with her through the usual channels but had no success; and so this matter remained in abeyance for a time.
“Then the position was clarified in a very startling manner. There was yet another murder (I must really apologize for these sordid details) and it appeared that Mrs. Schiller was under some suspicion of being at least an accessory. That, however, does not concern us. The material fact is that she was proved to be alive, and, consequently, the bequest took effect; and I duly notified the claim on her behalf, disregarding the criminal details. But the astonishing thing that now transpired was that she had been living all this time at a place called Jacob Street within a short bus ride of my office.
“But the uncertainty which had just been cleared up was almost immediately succeeded by another; which is the one that concerns us. First, Mrs. Schiller disappeared. Then traces of her were discovered which led the police to believe that she had been murdered. But no body was found and no actual proof of death was obtained. On the other hand, the woman has never been seen or heard of since the disappearance. It appears that the police have made all possible inquiries, but have not been able to discover any traces of her. Their attitude, I understand, is entirely noncommittal; she may be dead or she may be alive, but there is no positive evidence either way.
“So that is the position; and our function—or perhaps I should say yours—will be to examine the known facts and assess the probabilities. If there are clearly good grounds for presuming death, it might not be worth while to do more than watch the case in my absent client’s interest. We shall be better able to judge when we know exactly what facts the applicant relies on.”
“Then,” said Thorndyke, “I take it that you have not yet received copies of the affidavits?”
“No. I have had no formal notice of motion; only an informal, and quite friendly, notice of the proposed application. And, for my part, I am not going to be unnecessarily contentious. I don’t particularly care whether the woman is alive or dead. I am only doing what I conceive to be my duty to an absent client, and I shall certainly not oppose the application if, when you have examined the facts, you think it ought to succeed. As soon as I receive the copies of the affidavits, I will let you have them, and you can then advise me as to our further proceedings.”
This concluded the business, and, shortly afterwards, Mr. Penfield rose, and having pocketed his snuff-box and waved away the proffered decanter, shook our hands and departed.
“Quite a promising case,” I remarked when he had gone, “though Penfield does not seem enthusiastic. But he never is if there is any criminal element. It will be interesting to see what sort of case the applicant’s lawyers have made out.”
“I expect,” said Thorndyke, “that they will take the same line as Penfield has taken.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “and, after all, it seems a perfectly logical view, though I suspect that you won’t concur. But really all that the court has to decide is whether the probability that the woman is dead is so great as to justify the presumption that she is dead. The various collateral circumstances do seem, as Penfield maintains, to be irrelevant.”
“The question is,” Thorndyke replied, “what is meant by collateral circumstances? Penfield is assuming that facts and circumstances which appear to have no bearing on the main issue are irrelevant and may be disregarded. But until those facts are examined, it is impossible to say whether they are or are not relevant. It is a capital mistake to classify facts in advance as relevant and irrelevant, and to limit consideration of them to those which appear relevant.”
“Still,” I persisted, “there are the plain physical facts; and if they are such as to establish an overwhelming probability that the woman was murdered, the various other facts, such as her personal character and way of life, for instance, do really seem to have no bearing. The simple issue is whether she is dead or alive. If she is dead, that issue is settled. How she came to die or what were the factors that brought about her death are interesting questions, but not material to the issue. However, the known facts may not be conclusive enough to justify a decision. We shall be better able to judge when we have seen the affidavits.”
“I don’t expect that they will tell us anything new,” said Thorndyke. “We have heard the whole story of the search from Polton and Elmhurst, and we read the account of what happened at the time. We probably know all the facts on which the applicant will rely, judging from what Penfield said.”
“You may, but my recollection of them is rather dim. I am afraid I did not quite share Polton’s enthusiasm. After all, it was no special concern of ours.”
“Then,” said Thorndyke, “let me refresh your memory. Put in a nutshell, the case amounts to this: A woman was murdered in Lotta Schiller’s rooms at Thirty-nine Jacob Street. The person who committed the murder let h
imself in with Lotta Schiller’s keys.”
“Or perhaps with some similar, or skeleton keys,” I suggested.
“No. One key was found in the lock and conclusively identified as Lotta’s own key. At the time of the discovery of the murder, Lotta had already disappeared and could not be found or heard of by the police. Some time later—I have forgotten the dates—her handbag was found on the bank enclosing the British Camp in Epping Forest. It contained a key-pouch from which two keys were missing, one being the latch-key and the other the key of the room in which the murder seemed to have taken place. Inside the camp the police found a locket belonging to Lotta, and, incidentally, made by Polton, and containing a portrait of our friend, Vanderpuye.”
“Yes, I remember that. Poor Vanderpuye! He will wish he had gone back to Africa when he hears that the scandal is going to be revived.”
“Probably,” Thorndyke agreed, “though his evidence will refer only to the date on which he last saw Lotta. But to continue: as the finding of these things indicated the probability that the woman had been murdered and her body disposed of in the neighbourhood, the police arranged an exhaustive search of the camp for further traces of her, dead or alive. The result of that search was the discovery of a series of footprints, apparently of a man and a woman, which proceeded side by side to a point near the place where the locket was found. Here the ground was trampled in a way that suggested a struggle, and there was a rather obscure impression of a woman’s body lying in a supine position. From this point the footprints continued, but they were those of the man only. There were no further footprints of the woman; and it is suggested that the impressions of the man’s feet were somewhat deeper than they had been before.
“The single track of footprints crossed the camp to the north-west side until they reached the enclosing bank, and here some further discoveries were made. It was seen that the man had climbed up the bank twice—the first time apparently to reconnoitre. Near the foot of the bank was another, very obscure, impression of a woman’s body lying on the ground. Near it a button was picked up. It was a very distinctive button, painted by hand, and was conclusively identified by a Mr. Pedley as a button from Lotta’s jacket. On a broken twig, half-way up the bank, a wisp of a green material was clinging, and this shred Mr. Pedley identified as exactly similar to the material of her jacket and dress. Finally, at the top of the bank, the earth showed marks as if some heavy object had been dragged across the summit.
“That, as Inspector Blandy put it at the time, was ‘the end of the trail.’ On the outer side of the bank was the turf of the green ride, which would not have shown impressions in any case; but the fact is that no tracks or traces of any kind were found outside the camp, while inside the enclosure, there was no sign anywhere of the ground having been disturbed. It can be taken as certain that the body—if there was a body—was not buried in the camp; and no traces of either the man or the woman could be discovered anywhere else.
“Those are the facts that I think we shall find embodied in the affidavits, together with evidence that the woman has not been seen or heard of since her visit to the forest with Vanderpuye. On them will be based the application for the court’s permission to presume that Lotta Schiller is dead; and I ask you, Jervis, as an experienced medico-legal practitioner, whether you still think that collateral facts, such as the woman’s personal character and way of life, are not material to the issue.”
“I still don’t see that they are,” said I, “though, as you apparently do, I suppose I am wrong. But it seems to me that the facts that you have stated point very strongly to the conclusion that the woman was murdered and her body concealed somewhere in the forest. There appears to have been an adequate motive for the murder; to get possession of the keys and to eliminate a person who might have been dangerous. For it is practically certain that Lotta Schiller would either have known or guessed who committed the murder in her rooms.
“The prima facie evidence that she was murdered seems to me extremely strong; and when we add to it the fact that she has never since been seen or heard of, the probability becomes overwhelming, and certainly enough, in my opinion, to warrant the presumption that she is dead.”
“Q.E.D.,” Thorndyke commented with an appreciative chuckle. “You have put the case for the applicant with admirable lucidity. Unfortunately, it is that case that we have to demolish if we can do so by fair means and consistently with what we believe to be the truth. Wherefore I now call upon my learned friend to bring his mighty intellect to bear on the opposite proposition. Come, now, Jervis, here is an opportunity to exercise your wits and utilize your experience. You have just given a masterly exposition of the reasons for presuming that Lotta Schiller is dead. Now cross over to the other side and see what reasons you can find for presuming that she is alive.”
With a strong and growing suspicion that I had, as usual, overlooked some material fact, I promised to reconsider the case, and, as a first indispensable step, to refresh my memory as to the whole set of circumstances; to which end I repaired to Polton’s lair, and, having conveyed to him the tidings of the proposed application, had no difficulty in obtaining the loan of his voluminous collection of newspaper cuttings, which I bore off to study at my leisure.
CHAPTER XII
Tom Pedley Receives Visitors
The question with which Thorndyke had closed his narration had rather taken me aback; but what had really surprised me was his clear and complete recollection of the case in all its details. Yet it ought not to have surprised me, for the thing had often happened before, but I always failed to allow for a fundamental difference between us; Thorndyke was a genuine criminologist and I was not. By me, the report of a criminal case was read with mild interest, and then, if it did not concern us, was straightway dismissed and forgotten.
Not so Thorndyke. To him, every case was a problem; and if there was any element of mystery or obscurity, he would study it, evolve one or more possible solutions, and retain the case in his memory until it was cleared up—if ever it was—and the actual solution was disclosed. It was a useful habit, for, apart from the mental exercise amounting in effect to experience, there was the practical advantage that if an obscure case was ultimately referred to us—as often happened—it found Thorndyke fully informed as to the facts and perhaps with a solution already arrived at.
This, I suspected, was the present position. Reading attentively through Polton’s collection of reports, I realized that the whole case, including the murder of Emma Robey, was profoundly mysterious. But I also realized the significance of Thorndyke’s question. Lotta Schiller was definitely implicated in the murder.
This, Penfield would have said, was not material to the question whether she was dead or alive. But it was material. The disappearance of a person who is under suspicion in regard to a murder, calls for a much more critical consideration than that of a person who has no known motive for disappearing.
In due course the notice of motion was served on Mr. Penfield, and copies of the affidavits were sent on to us; and as I read them through, I saw that Thorndyke had been right. The facts sworn to were concerned exclusively with evidence of Lotta Schiller’s death. The murder of Emma Robey was referred to only incidentally (in an affidavit by a Mrs. Bigham) in connection with the man who, accompanied by a woman, had let himself into the premises of 39 Jacob Street with a latch-key. Evidently, the inference advanced by the applicant would be that this man had already murdered Lotta Schiller and possessed himself of her keys.
Thus the case for the application was fairly clear. We could see what “the other side” proposed to prove; and, taking the facts at their face value, it was a reasonably good case. But the next question was, What did Thorndyke propose to prove, and what was he going to do about it? Assuming—as I did—that he had already considered the case and probably arrived at some provisional conclusions, my expectation was that he would follow his usual practice and begin by seeking to enlarge his knowledge; by searching for some new f
acts to supplement those already known; and mighty curious I was as to what line his investigations would take, and not a little surprised when his intentions were disclosed.
“So,” he remarked on the following day, “my learned friend has studied the affidavits and the Poltonian dossier and now knows all the available facts? Probably he has found them a little sketchy?”
“On the contrary,” I replied, “I thought that we had a pretty full account of the case. What more do you want to know?”
“I want to know all that I can learn. For instance, there is Lotta Schiller, the central figure in the case. What do we know about her? She is little more than a name; a sort of algebraical symbol. I want to turn her into a real person; to know what she was like, physically, mentally, and morally.”
I was about to object that such knowledge was not likely to help us much in opposing the application, but fortunately I saw the red light in time.
“And how do you propose to get that knowledge?” I asked.
“The most likely source is Mr. Thomas Pedley. He, apparently, knew her quite intimately and should be able to tell us quite a lot about her. So I wrote to him a day or two ago, and he has kindly given me an appointment for tomorrow afternoon. May I take it that I shall have your support at the interview?”
As it happened, fortunately, that I had the afternoon free, I accepted gladly—indeed, I may say eagerly. For my curiosity about this visit was intense. That its object was simply to get a description of Lotta Schiller’s appearance and personality seemed incredible; and I hoped that by listening attentively to Thorndyke’s questions I might get some inkling of what was really in his mind.
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