Invisible Weapons

by John Rhode

  ‘On the other hand, as I hinted just now, Betty’s mother is bound to score by Robert Fransham’s death at this particular juncture. I haven’t a doubt that she’ll prevail upon Betty to hand her over a good fat sum in compensation for the allowance, which she always maintained that Robert Fransham should have given her. If this murder was a conspiracy, and not the work of one hand alone, you won’t have very far to look for the accomplice. But you asked me to tell you what I knew about her.

  ‘Quite candidly, I don’t know very much. Thomas met her when he was a subaltern and they were married in 1906. I believe she was the daughter of a retired naval captain, but I can’t be sure of that. Betty was born in 1908, so that she was nine when her father was killed. Thomas Fransham inherited on his father’s death a small sum bringing in about a couple of hundred a year.

  ‘When the war broke out, Thomas Fransham was stationed at York and had taken a small house there. Mrs Fransham kept it on while he was in France and continued to do so after his death. To the best of my belief she still lives there; I don’t suppose that either Betty or her husband have encouraged the idea of her living with them permanently.’

  ‘Do you happen to know how and when Dr Thornborough met his wife?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Thornborough’s father was a doctor with a prosperous practice in the country somewhere. He always intended his son to succeed him, but he died before Thornborough had qualified, and the practice had to be sold. Thornborough eventually qualified in 1927 and went for three years as house surgeon to a hospital in York. That was how he met Betty. They were married in 1930, when Thornborough went into practice here as partner to Dr Dorrington. Dorrington, I believe, was an old friend of his father’s.’

  ‘What was Mr Robert Fransham’s opinion of Dr Thornborough?’

  ‘He liked him well enough. He made a point of seeing him when he and Betty became engaged, and quite approved of her choice. He has told me several times that he had every confidence in Thornborough’s professional ability. But, as I said just now, he viewed his extravagant habits with growing disapproval. He thought it quite unnecessary for him to build that new house of his, and he disliked the ridiculous name he gave it. Again, Thornborough buys himself a new car every year, which Robert Fransham regarded as a foolish extravagance.’

  ‘Mr Fransham ran to a pretty luxurious car himself,’ Jimmy suggested.

  ‘That’s quite different. He had the money to pay for his own luxuries and the doctor hadn’t. In my opinion Thornborough has been living ever since his marriage on his wife’s expectations.’

  ‘What is your own opinion of the doctor, Mr Redbourne?’

  ‘I think my present attitude is a sufficient answer to that question, inspector,’ Mr Redbourne replied severely. ‘Apart altogether from my natural horror at this brutal murder, I am surprised and deeply shocked. You must not forget that Mr Fransham had always been a devoted uncle to Mrs Thornborough, and I believe that she was genuinely devoted to him. Her feelings have been ruthlessly disregarded.’

  ‘You have been extremely frank with me, Mr Redbourne, and I am deeply grateful to you. Will you tell me now, in the strictest confidence, why you are so firmly convinced that Dr Thornborough is the murderer?’

  Mr Redbourne nearly leapt out of his chair. ‘Why I am so firmly convinced!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, good heavens, young man, I’m a solicitor of some considerable experience, and as such may claim to be a man of the world. Thornborough’s guilt must surely be obvious to anyone who has even the sketchiest knowledge of the circumstances. Don’t you understand that if Robert Fransham had lived only a few days longer, Thornborough’s prospects would have been undermined? His wife’s capital would have been placed in trust, out of his reach. I may tell you that it was Robert Fransham’s intention that my partner and I should have been the trustees. And we should have been adamant in the face of any suggestion of financing Thornborough out of the trust fund. You’re surely not going to suggest that it is a pure coincidence that Robert Fransham should have been murdered only two or three days before his intentions were accomplished?’

  ‘No, I shouldn’t suggest that without having obtained further evidence on the point,’ Jimmy replied quietly.

  ‘Well, I’m only a respectable family lawyer,’ said Mr Redbourne, once more emphasising his words by waving his glasses in the air. ‘I have very little experience of criminal practice, but I have always understood that in the investigation of crime the two principles to be established were those of motive and of opportunity.

  ‘Now, we have already dealt at some length with the question of motive. That of opportunity remains. And in that regard I will only say that when I hear of a man being killed in a private house, my common sense prompts me to seek for the murderer among the occupants of that house.’

  ‘And yet there is some difficulty in explaining the mechanism of the murder,’ said Jimmy.

  Mr Redbourne’s retort was prompt. ‘I have always conceived that the function of the Criminal Investigation Department was precisely to remove such difficulties. I do not propose to detain you any longer from the pursuit of your duties, inspector. For your information, I may state that I shall stay at the Red Lion in this town until after the inquest tomorrow.’

  At the inquest, which took place on the following day, Monday, no fresh facts were revealed. Superintendent Yateley had agreed with Jimmy that the police would gain nothing by laying their cards on the table until their case was complete. The story was, therefore, deprived of its implications and restricted to the bare facts. With these before them, the jury had no option as to their verdict. It was quite obvious that Mr Fransham had not taken his own life, and the possibility that he had been killed accidentally was too remote to be taken seriously. The jury therefore returned a verdict of ‘Murder by some person or persons unknown,’ a conclusion which was endorsed by the coroner.

  Superintendent Yateley’s inclination had been to arrest Dr Thornborough immediately after the inquest. But Jimmy had managed to dissuade him, his argument being that there was not yet sufficient evidence to secure a conviction.

  ‘Motive goes a long way, I know, sir, but it isn’t everything,’ he had said. ‘And it isn’t enough to prove that the doctor could have committed the crime. No jury would be satisfied unless we were able to explain exactly how he did it.’

  Yateley had shrugged his shoulders. ‘The doctor’s guilt is perfectly obvious to any sane person,’ he had replied. ‘It seems to me that how he managed the job is a mere detail. But perhaps you’re right. I know what extraordinary verdicts an English jury is capable of. What are you going to do next?’

  ‘I propose to pay a visit to the Yard, sir, to discuss the technical matters with the experts.’

  So it happened that on Monday afternoon Jimmy found himself once more at Scotland Yard. He had brought with him the letter found in Mr Fransham’s pocket, and a specimen of Dr Thornborough’s signature on a medical certificate. His first action was to call in the aid of a handwriting expert to compare these.

  The expert studied them carefully before he ventured upon an opinion. ‘You’ve got two signatures here,’ he said at last. ‘The one on the certificate is “Cyril J. Thornborough” which is presumably the doctor’s official style. The other is merely “Cyril” which is a style one might expect him to use when writing to his wife’s uncle. I have therefore only one name, “Cyril,” for purposes of comparison.

  ‘I see you’ve got plenty of blank forms lying on your desk. They are printed upon the inferior type of paper usually used for that purpose. Take one of those and a pen you don’t often use, not a fountain-pen. Now write your official signature on one of those blank forms.’

  Jimmy dipped his pen in the ink and wrote his signature, which was by now familiar at Scotland Yard, ‘James L. Waghorn.’

  The expert picked this up and looked at it. ‘Excellent,’ he remarked. ‘I don’t profess to tell character from handwriting, but I should judge from this signature that you were
a man of some education and fair intelligence. Now we’ll suppose that last week you met a charming lady in the cocktail bar of the Pig and Whistle. You wish to make an appointment for another meeting. So you take a piece of notepaper, indite a suitable letter, and sign it just simply “James,” with your own founten-pen to which you are thoroughly accustomed. You needn’t trouble to write the letter. It’s only the signature I want.’

  The expert compared Jimmy’s two efforts and smiled. ‘I thought so,’ he said. ‘Like very many people, including Dr Thornborough, you don’t remove your pen from the paper when writing your full signature. You let the “S” of the James run on to the “L” of the Lucifer or whatever your second Christian name may be. Consequently when you write James alone, the last letter has a slightly different formation.

  ‘Curiously enough, however, the two specimens of the doctor’s signature do not show the same variation. In his full signature, the “L” of the Cyril runs on into the “J” of Jeremiah. And in the case of the single name Cyril, the “L” is formed in exactly the same way. The beginning of the stroke which should connect it with the “J” is still there.’

  ‘What does that prove?’ Jimmy asked.

  ‘Nothing whatever,’ the expert replied cheerfully. ‘Like most things in this deceptive world of ours, the argument has equal force in either direction. It might be argued that the exact similarity in the formation of the two L’s show that they must have been written by the same person. The doctor was so accustomed to writing his full signature that when he wrote only “Cyril,” his instinct was to end the word as though he were merely cutting short his usual signature. On the other hand it might be argued that the name Cyril had been forged by someone who had only the doctor’s full signature to copy and was therefore ignorant as to how he would have formed the final L when he wrote that name alone.’

  ‘That’s what I call really helpful,’ said Jimmy. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘There is the undoubted fact that the full signature was written with an ordinary pen and the name Cyril with a fountain-pen and a different brand of ink. Does that help you at all?’

  ‘Not much. Dr Thornborough signed the certificate at Adderminster Police Station. If the signature Cyril is his, he probably wrote it at home with his own fountain-pen. I’m bound to confess that to my inexpert eyes the two Cyrils look very much alike.’

  ‘They are, but they aren’t exactly alike,’ replied the expert pleasantly.

  ‘Do you mean that the name Cyril on the letter is a forgery?’ Jimmy asked quickly.

  The expert shook his head. ‘Far from it,’ he replied. ‘Try this experiment for yourself some time when you have nothing better to do. Write your signature on a piece of transparent paper. Repeat it on a second piece of transparent paper and continue the process as long as you like. Take any two of these and lay them one over the other. Then see if you can get the pen strokes of the two signatures to coincide exactly. By exactly, I mean when examined under an ordinary reading glass.

  ‘You’ll find you can’t. Nobody’s habits of writing are so exact as to pass this test. In fact if two signatures are found which do coincide exactly, that in itself provides very good grounds for believing that one has been traced from the other and is therefore in all probability a forgery. In this case you can see for yourself with the naked eye that there are certain slight differences of formation in the two Cyrils. There are also slight differences in the character of the strokes. The tail of the “Y” shows this most distinctly. But that may be accounted for by the fact that different pens were used in each case.’

  Jimmy grinned. ‘It amounts to this, then,’ he said. ‘You can’t tell me whether the signature on the letter is a forgery or not?’

  ‘I can’t,’ the expert replied. ‘But don’t let that discourage you. You’re not the first budding detective to be confronted with a problem like that,’ And with that he took his leave.

  Jimmy’s next business was to consult the department to which he had confided the turn-cock on the previous day. Here again he met with slight satisfaction. ‘There are no traces of fingermarks on the key,’ the inspector in charge of the department told him. ‘As I daresay you’ve already noticed it has been wiped over quite recently with a greasy rag. Now if it had been used since then there would have certainly been fingermarks upon it. On the other hand, if it had been wiped over just after it had been used, there wouldn’t. Get me?’

  ‘Yes, I get you all right,’ replied Jimmy wearily. He returned to his own room to meditate upon the vanity of police work in general and of expert evidence in particular.

  Before he had been there many minutes the door burst open and Superintendent Hanslet strode in. ‘Hullo, Jimmy, my lad!’ he exclaimed. ‘I heard you were back, so I thought I would look in and see you. How have you got on?’

  ‘Not too brilliantly,’ Jimmy replied. ‘It all seems clear enough up to a point, though I’m not at all sure that some of the appearances aren’t deceptive. But the chief difficulty is that I can’t find the explanation of how the job was done. Like to hear the story?’

  ‘Not now,’ said the superintendent. ‘But Merefield rang up this morning with an invitation from the professor for both of us to dine with him this evening. I said I’d go in any case, and I knew you would if you were in London. What about it? The professor might be interested in this problem of yours.’

  CHAPTER VI

  As it happened, Hanslet and Jimmy found Dr Priestley in a particularly receptive mood that evening. Perhaps it was because that irritable scientist had lately been starved of human problems. At all events, when Hanslet remarked that Jimmy had a case on hand, Dr Priestley’s interest was visibly aroused.

  ‘If the case contains any features of interest, I should be glad to hear the inspector’s account of it,’ he said.

  ‘I think it contains at least one feature of interest, sir,’ replied Jimmy, upon whom Dr Priestley had fixed his gaze. ‘There’s no question whatever as to the cause of death, which was a fractured skull. But I can’t solve the problem of how that fracture was caused. I’d very much like to tell you the facts as they appear to me, if it wouldn’t bore you to listen to them, sir.’

  ‘Boredom is a complaint from which I very rarely suffer,’ Dr Priestley replied with a somewhat austere smile. ‘I should be very glad to listen to anything that you may care to tell me. But I need hardly remind you that I like my facts plain, unseasoned by any sauce of conjecture.’

  Thus encouraged, Jimmy recounted the circumstances surrounding the death of Mr Fransham. He was careful, however, not to give any hint of his own conclusions.

  Dr Priestley, seated on the chair in front of his desk, listened in silence. His attitude was characteristic, with his hands held together in front of him, the tips of their slender fingers touching. His head was thrown back, so that his slightly-puckered eyes frowned through his glasses at the ceiling.

  He remained silent for a full minute after Jimmy had finished speaking. Then he turned abruptly to Hanslet. ‘Have you anything to add to what the inspector has told us, superintendent?’ he asked.

  Hanslet shook his head. ‘I haven’t, professor,’ he replied. ‘This is the first I’ve heard about the case. Jimmy has been down at this place Adderminster, working on his own, you know.’

  ‘Indeed. And now that you have heard the facts what is your opinion?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think anyone can find fault with the verdict,’ Hanslet replied cautiously. ‘It sounds to me like a case of murder, right enough. And I’m bound to say that things look pretty black for Dr Thornborough.’

  Dr Priestley turned to Jimmy. ‘Do you agree, inspector?’ he asked.

  ‘Absolutely, sir,’ Jimmy replied. ‘I’ve never had the slightest doubt that Mr Fransham was murdered. And as for things looking black for Dr Thornborough, I had the greatest difficulty in dissuading the local superintendent from arresting him this morning.’

  ‘And why did you dissuade him?’ Dr Priestley asked.r />
  ‘For two reasons, sir. First because we haven’t sufficient proof of how he did it. And second, because I’m not altogether satisfied in my own mind that he is guilty.’

  ‘Failing Dr Thornborough, can you suggest any other person as the criminal?’

  ‘No, sir, I can’t, and that’s just my difficulty. This is how the affair appears to me. The only people in Adderminster who can benefit in any conceivable way by Mr Fransham’s death are Dr and Mrs Thornborough, and Mrs Thornborough’s mother, Mrs Fransham. I except Coates the chauffeur, who benefits to the extent of his legacy, for if Linton’s evidence is to be relied upon, Coates cannot possibly have committed the crime.

  ‘Linton’s presence in the house at the time the crime was committed enables us to fix the situation of the inmates. He could not see them, of course, but he could hear their movements. We can assume, I think, that the curious noise heard by Linton was the sound of Mr Fransham’s body falling in the cloakroom. At this moment Mrs Thornborough and her mother were upstairs, in a room with windows looking out at the back of the house. The two servants were in the kitchen, with windows looking out the same way. I cannot imagine how anyone of these four people could have participated in the crime.’

  Hanslet nodded. ‘Exactly,’ he remarked. ‘So far as I can see every detail points to the doctor as the criminal. Where was he when Linton heard this crash, or thud, or whatever it was?’

  Jimmy smiled. ‘That’s just it,’ he replied. ‘At that moment Dr Thornborough, according to his own account, was on his way home after paying his last call, which was at Mark Farm. His route lay along Gunthorpe Road, past the grass field which is to be sold for building land.’