Resorting to Murder: Holiday Mysteries

by Martin Edwards

  ‘What is the excitement?’ he asked, looking at the heap of clothes and then glancing along the deserted beach; ‘and where is the owner of the togs? I don’t see him anywhere.’

  ‘That is the problem,’ said I. ‘He seems to have disappeared.’

  ‘Gad!’ exclaimed Hallett, ‘if he has gone home without his clothes, he’ll create a sensation in the town! What?’

  Here the other man, who carried a set of golf clubs, stooped over the clothes with a look of keen interest.

  ‘I believe I recognize these things, Hallett; in fact, I am sure I do. That waistcoat, for instance. You must have noticed that waistcoat. I saw you playing with the chap a couple of days ago. Tall, clean-shaven, dark fellow. Temporary member, you know. What was his name? Popoff, or something like that?’

  ‘Roscoff,’ said Hallett. ‘Yes, by Jove, I believe you are right. And now I come to think of it, he mentioned to me that he sometimes came up here for a swim. He said he particularly liked a paddle by moonlight, and I told him he was a fool to run the risk of bathing in a lonely place like this, especially at night.’

  ‘Well, that is what he seems to have done,’ said Thorndyke, ‘for these clothes have certainly been here all night, as you can see by that spider’s web.’

  ‘Then he has come to grief, poor beggar!’ said Hallett; ‘probably got carried away by the current. There is a devil of a tide here on the flood.’

  He started to walk towards the beach, and the other man, dropping his clubs, followed.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hallett, ‘that is what has happened. You can see his footprints plainly enough going down to the sea; but there are no tracks coming back.’

  ‘There are some tracks of bare feet coming out of the sea farther up the beach,’ said I, ‘which seem to be his.’

  Hallett shook his head. ‘They can’t be his,’ he said, ‘for it is obvious that he never did come back. Probably they are the tracks of some shrimper. The question is, what are we to do? Better take his things to the dormy-house and then let the police know what has happened.’

  We went back and began to gather up the clothes, each of us taking one or two articles.

  ‘You were right, Morris,’ said Hallett, as he picked up the shirt. ‘Here’s his name, “P. Roscoff,” and I see it is on the vest and the shorts, too. And I recognize the stick now—not that that matters, as the clothes are marked.’

  On our way across the links to the dormy-house mutual introductions took place. Morris was a London solicitor, and both he and Hallett knew Thorndyke by name.

  ‘The coroner will have an expert witness,’ Hallett remarked as we entered the house. ‘Rather a waste in a simple case like this. We had better put the things in here.’

  He opened the door of a small room furnished with a good-sized table and a set of lockers, into one of which he inserted a key.

  ‘Before we lock them up,’ said Thorndyke, ‘I suggest that we make and sign a list of them and of the contents of the pockets to put with them.’

  ‘Very well,’ agreed Hallett. ‘You know the ropes in these cases. I’ll write down the descriptions, if you will call them out.’

  Thorndyke looked over the collection and first enumerated the articles: a tweed jacket and trousers, light, knitted wool waistcoat, black and yellow stripes, blue cotton shirt, net vest and shorts, marked in ink ‘P. Roscoff,’ brown merino socks, brown shoes, tweed cap, and a walking-stick—a mottled Malacca cane with a horn crooked handle. When Hallett had written down this list, Thorndyke laid the clothes on the table and began to empty the pockets, one at a time, dictating the descriptions of the articles to Hallett while Morris took them from him and laid them on a sheet of newspaper. In the jacket pockets were a handkerchief, marked ‘P. R.’; a lettercase containing a few stamps, one or two hotel bills and local tradesmen’s receipts, and some visiting-cards inscribed ‘Mr Peter Roscoff, Bell Hotel, Sandwich’; a leather cigarette-case, a 3B pencil fitted with a point-protector, and a fragment of what Thorndyke decided to be vine charcoal.

  ‘That lot is not very illuminating,’ remarked Morris, peering into the pockets of the letter-case. ‘No letter or anything indicating his permanent address. However, that isn’t our concern.’ He laid aside the letter-case, and picking up a pocket-knife that Thorndyke had just taken from the trousers pocket, examined it curiously. ‘Queer knife, that,’ he remarked. ‘Steel blade—mighty sharp, too—nail file and an ivory blade. Silly arrangement, it seems. A paper-knife is more convenient carried loose, and you don’t want a handle to it.’

  ‘Perhaps it was meant for a fruit-knife,’ suggested Hallett, adding it to the list and glancing at a little heap of silver coins that Thorndyke had just laid down. ‘I wonder,’ he added, ‘what has made that money turn so black. Looks as if he had been taking some medicine containing sulphur. What do you think, doctor?’

  ‘It is quite a probable explanation,’ replied Thorndyke, ‘though we haven’t the means of testing it. But you notice that this vesta-box from the other pocket is quite bright, which is rather against your theory.’

  He held out a little silver box bearing the engraved monogram ‘P.R.,’ the burnished surface of which contrasted strongly with the dull brownish-black of the coins. Hallett looked at it with an affirmative grunt, and having entered it in his list and added a bunch of keys and a watch from the waistcoat pocket, laid down his pen.

  ‘That’s the lot, is it?’ said he, rising and beginning to gather up the clothes. ‘My word! Look at the sand on the table! Isn’t it astonishing how saturated with sand one’s clothes become after a day on the links here? When I undress at night, the bath-room floor is like the bottom of a bird-cage. Shall I put the things in the locker now?’

  ‘I think,’ said Thorndyke, ‘that, as I may have to give evidence, I should like to look them over before you put them away.’

  Hallett grinned. ‘There’s going to be some expert evidence after all,’ he said. ‘Well, fire away, and let me know when you have finished. I am going to smoke a cigarette outside.’

  With this, he and Morris sauntered out, and I thought it best to go with them, though I was a little curious as to my colleague’s object in examining these derelicts. However, my curiosity was not entirely balked, for my friends went no farther than the little garden that surrounded the house, and from the place where we stood I was able to look in through the window and observe Thorndyke’s proceedings.

  Very methodical they were. First he laid on the table a sheet of newspaper and on this deposited the jacket, which he examined carefully all over, picking some small object off the inside near the front, and giving special attention to a thick smear of paint which I had noticed on the left cuff. Then, with his spring tape he measured the sleeves and other principal dimensions. Finally, holding the jacket upside down, he beat it gently with his stick, causing a shower of sand to fall on the paper. He then laid the jacket aside, and, taking from his pocket one or two seed-envelopes (which I believe he always carried), very carefully shot the sand from the paper into one of them and wrote a few words on it—presumably the source of the sand—and similarly disposing of the small object that he had picked off the surface.

  This rather odd procedure was repeated with the other garments—a fresh sheet of newspaper being used for each—and with the socks, shoes, and cap. The latter he examined minutely, especially as to the inside, from which he picked out two or three small objects, which I could not see, but assumed to be hairs. Even the walking-stick was inspected and measured, and the articles from the pockets scrutinized afresh, particularly the curious pocket-knife, the ivory blade of which he examined on both sides through his lens.

  Hallett and Morris glanced in at him from time to time with indulgent smiles, and the former remarked:

  ‘I like the hopeful enthusiasm of the real pukka expert, and the way he refuses to admit the existence of the ordinary and commonplace. I wonder
what he has found out from those things. But here he is. Well, doctor, what’s the verdict? Was it temporary insanity or misadventure?’

  Thorndyke shook his head. ‘The inquiry is adjourned pending the production of fresh evidence,’ he replied, adding: ‘I have folded the clothes up and put all the effects together in a paper parcel, excepting the stick.’

  When Hallett had deposited the derelicts in the locker, he came out and looked across the links with an air of indecision.

  ‘I suppose,’ said he, ‘we ought to notify the police. I’ll do that. When do you think the body is likely to wash up, and where?’

  ‘It is impossible to say,’ replied Thorndyke. ‘The set of the current is towards the Thames, but the body might wash up anywhere along the coast. A case is recorded of a bather drowned off Brighton whose body came up six weeks later at Walton-on-the-Naze. But that was quite exceptional. I shall send the coroner and the Chief Constable a note with my address, and I should think you had better do the same. And that is all that we can do, until we get the summons for the inquest, if there ever is one.’

  To this we all agreed; and as the morning was now spent, we walked back together across the links to the town, where we encountered my wife returning homeward with her sketching kit. This Thorndyke and I took possession of, and having parted from Hallett and Morris opposite the Barbican, we made our way to our lodgings in quest of lunch. Naturally, the events of the morning were related to my wife and discussed by us all, but I noted that Thorndyke made no reference to his inspection of the clothes, and accordingly I said nothing about the matter before my wife; and no opportunity of opening the subject occurred until the evening, when I accompanied him to the station. Then, as we paced the platform while waiting for his train, I put my question:

  ‘By the way, did you extract any information from those garments? I saw you going through them very thoroughly.’

  ‘I got a suggestion from them,’ he replied; ‘but it is such an odd one that I hardly like to mention it. Taking the appearances at their face value, the suggestion was that the clothes were not all those of the same man. There seemed to be traces of two men, one of whom appeared to belong to this district, while the other would seem to have been associated with the eastern coast of Thanet between Ramsgate and Margate, and by preference, on the scale of probabilities, to Dumpton or Broadstairs.’

  ‘How on earth did you arrive at the localities?’ I asked.

  ‘Principally,’ he replied, ‘by the peculiarities of the sand which fell from the garments and which was not the same in all of them. You see, Anstey,’ he continued, ‘sand is analogous to dust. Both consist of minute fragments detached from larger masses; and just as, by examining microscopically the dust of a room, you can ascertain the colour and material of the carpets, curtains, furniture coverings, and other textiles, detached particles of which form the dust of that room, so, by examining sand, you can judge of the character of the cliffs, rocks, and other large masses that occur in the locality, fragments of which become ground off by the surf and incorporated in the sand of the beach. Some of the sand from these clothes is very characteristic and will probably be still more so when I examine it under the microscope.’

  ‘But,’ I objected, ‘isn’t there a fallacy in that line of reasoning? Might not one man have worn the different garments at different times and in different places?’

  ‘That is certainly a possibility that has to be borne in mind,’ he replied. ‘But here comes my train. We shall have to adjourn this discussion until you come back to the mill.’

  As a matter of fact, the discussion was never resumed, for, by the time that I came back to ‘the mill,’ the affair had faded from my mind, and the accumulations of grist monopolized my attention; and it is probable that it would have passed into complete oblivion but for the circumstance of its being revived in a very singular manner, which was as follows.

  One afternoon about the middle of October my old friend, Mr Brodribb, a well-known solicitor, called to give me some verbal instructions. When we had finished our business, he said:

  ‘I’ve got a client waiting outside, whom I am taking up to introduce to Thorndyke. You’d better come along with us.’

  ‘What is the nature of your client’s case?’ I asked.

  ‘Hanged if I know,’ chuckled Brodribb. ‘He won’t say. That’s why I am taking him to our friend. I’ve never seen Thorndyke stumped yet, but I think this case will put the lid on him. Are you coming?’

  ‘I am, most emphatically,’ said I, ‘if your client doesn’t object.’

  ‘He’s not going to be asked,’ said Brodribb. ‘He’ll think you are part of the show. Here he is.’

  In my outer office we found a gentlemanly, middle-aged man to whom Brodribb introduced me, and whom he hustled down the stairs and up King’s Bench Walk to Thorndyke’s chambers. There we found my colleague earnestly studying a will with the aid of a watchmaker’s eye-glass, and Brodribb opened the proceedings without ceremony.

  ‘I’ve brought a client of mine, Mr Capes, to see you, Thorndyke. He has a little problem that he wants you to solve.’

  Thorndyke bowed to the client and then asked:

  ‘What is the nature of the problem?’

  ‘Ah!’ said Brodribb, with a mischievous twinkle, ‘that’s what you’ve got to find out. Mr Capes is a somewhat reticent gentleman.’

  Thorndyke cast a quick look at the client and from him to the solicitor. It was not the first time that old Brodribb’s high spirits had overflowed in the form of a ‘leg-pull,’ though Thorndyke had no more whole-hearted admirer than the shrewd, facetious old lawyer.

  Mr Capes smiled a deprecating smile. ‘It isn’t quite so bad as that,’ he said. ‘But I really can’t give you much information. It isn’t mine to give. I am afraid of telling some one else’s secrets, if I say very much.’

  ‘Of course you mustn’t do that,’ said Thorndyke. ‘But I suppose you can indicate in general terms the nature of your difficulty and the kind of help you want from us.’

  ‘I think I can,’ Mr Capes replied. ‘At any rate, I will try. My difficulty is that a certain person with whom I wish to communicate has disappeared in what appears to me to be a rather remarkable manner. When I last heard from him, he was staying at a certain seaside resort and he stated in his letter that he was returning on the following day to his rooms in London. A few days later, I called at his rooms and found that he had not yet returned. But his luggage, which he had sent on independently, had arrived on the day which he had mentioned. So it is evident that he must have left his seaside lodgings. But from that day to this I have had no communication from him, and he has never returned to his rooms nor written to his landlady.’

  ‘About how long ago was this?’ Thorndyke asked.

  ‘It is just about two months since I heard from him.’

  ‘You don’t wish to give the name of the seaside resort where he was staying?’

  ‘I think I had better not,’ answered Mr Capes. ‘There are circumstances—they don’t concern me, but they do concern him very much—which seem to make it necessary for me to say as little as possible.’

  ‘And there is nothing further that you can tell us?’

  ‘I am afraid not, excepting that, if I could get into communication with him, I could tell him of something very much to his advantage and which might prevent him from doing something which it would be much better that he should not do.’

  Thorndyke cogitated profoundly while Brodribb watched him with undisguised enjoyment. Presently my colleague looked up and addressed our secretive client.

  ‘Did you ever play the game of ‘Clumps,’ Mr Capes? It is a somewhat legal form of game in which one player asks questions of the others, who are required to answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in the proper witness-box style.’

  ‘I know the game,’ said Capes, looking a little puzzled, ‘but—’


  ‘Shall we try a round or two?’ asked Thorndyke, with an unmoved countenance. ‘You don’t wish to make any statements, but if I ask you certain specific questions, will you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’?’

  Mr Capes reflected awhile. At length he said:

  ‘I am afraid I can’t commit myself to a promise. Still, if you like to ask a question or two, I will answer them if I can.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Thorndyke, ‘then, as a start, supposing I suggest that the date of the letter that you received was the thirteenth of August? What do you say? Yes or no?’

  Mr Capes sat bolt upright and stared at Thorndyke open-mouthed.

  ‘How on earth did you guess that?’ he exclaimed in an astonished tone. ‘It’s most extraordinary! But you are right. It was dated the thirteenth.’

  ‘Then,’ said Thorndyke, ‘as we have fixed the time we will have a try at the place. What do you say if I suggest that the seaside resort was in the neighbourhood of Broadstairs?’

  Mr Capes was positively thunderstruck. As he sat gazing at Thorndyke he looked like amazement personified.

  ‘But,’ he exclaimed, ‘you can’t be guessing! You know! You know that he was at Broadstairs. And yet, how could you? I haven’t even hinted at who he is.’

  ‘I have a certain man in my mind,’ said Thorndyke, ‘who may have disappeared from Broadstairs. Shall I suggest a few personal characteristics?’

  Mr Capes nodded eagerly and Thorndyke continued:

  ‘If I suggest, for instance, that he was an artist—a painter in oil’—Capes nodded again—‘that he was somewhat fastidious as to his pigments?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Capes. ‘Unnecessarily so in my opinion, and I am an artist myself. What else?’

  ‘That he worked with his palette in his right hand and held his brush with his left?’