The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories

by Michael Sims

  “Derpend upon it, sir, she swallered it,” said the officer; and I think it was this persistency on his part which intensified my obstinacy in believing that the warning was in the room. I wanted to be by myself, to think without interruption, to follow the action of the woman; and with this end in view, I said to the officer—

  “Go to the station, and see if they have heard anything.”

  “Holl right!” said he; “but, derpend upon it, she swallered of it down.”

  The officer gone, and Mrs. Blazhamey almost forced out of the room, which by this time looked like a wreck, I sat down in the midst of the furniture, and asked what next was to be done. And then, with that repetitory process which, I am told, is common during intense thought, I began conceiving once more the idea of what the woman must have been about when she first supposed a police-officer in the house.

  How many seconds had she been in doubt before the officer and I entered the room? I had accepted Birkley’s theory that she had recognised the policeman’s tramp when he was at the bottom of the stairs; but was I justified in accepting that theory? How if she had no suspicion till the door handle was turning? If such were the case, the scrap of paper would be within a foot of the right side of the chair in which we found her seated. You see, being left to myself, I was adding to the repetition of my thought.

  Suppose I went through her actions from the opening of the linen basket to the entry of myself and the officer?

  You may declare this action childish, but you are wrong.

  I went to the basket, supposed that I opened a stocking, and then went to the chair, thinking to myself that she, a stout woman, and naturally agitated by the arrival of the warning, would take a seat; and what more natural, since she was going to read by the coming twilight, than to go to the window?

  I took the chair, exactly as we had found her, my right side to the window, and then supposed myself startled by the opening of the door. This fright would be followed by the involuntary attempt to hide the letter by the right hand. I flung my hand behind me, and it lodged in the folds of the cord-knotted curtain.

  The discovery was far easier than putting on a worn glove—which is sometimes a rather difficult operation. My fingers positively rested on the paper, a mere scrap, torn from a wide-margined newspaper, and which had been easily thrust into the folds where the damask was gathered.

  We had been at fault by crediting the woman with too much cleverness. We had supposed that she had anticipated and prepared for our coming when we were at the bottom of the stairs; and acting upon that belief, we had been wandering all round the room when our investigation should have been confined to a square yard.

  Nor was I blameless on another score. I had presupposed the woman to be not intellectual enough to avoid a distinct concealment; whereas, the rapidity of our coming had caused her to do by accident that which a clever and prepared criminal would do by premeditation—placing the letter where nobody would think it worth while to look, as being under one’s very eyes.

  Will you believe the statement that now I had found the scrap of paper I saw that it was visible as it lay in the folds of the curtain, which had positively been unhooked by the constable that he might examine the shutter-cases with facility?

  But do not suppose my labours were over. Not that I refer to the perusal of the cipher as a labour; I defy an ignorant cipher to puzzle me. Exactly as you would never dream of looking for a hidden letter in a blotting-case, so a merely confused Roman-letter cipher (if the word in such an instance as this is applicable) is infinitely more difficult to analyse than a system of actual, arbitrary signs. I had always been able to read an arbitrary cipher after a study of twenty minutes. I was only twelve, when I found a little packet in my cousin’s room containing a lock of hair and some words in arbitrary cipher, which I analysed in half a minute; for seeing two words flourished all about, I supposed they formed the lady’s name, found that the fourth and sixth letters of the first, and the second and fifth of the second, were similar, so successfully guessed, in far less time than it takes to write about, that the MS. and lock referred to our neighbour Pheobe Reade.

  Cunning, ignorant people, I am told, always use an arbitrary cipher, almost as easy to read as A B C. I may tell you that Mrs. Mountjoy’s letter gave me little trouble. I found it at nearly a quarter-past nine, and at half-past it was written out for the benefit of the police. It was in a simple character.

  And as I can have no secret in this matter, if you are willing to learn the process, which has few regular rules, here it is to study. You may acquire it in five minutes.

  Now, I dare say all this appears very mysterious to the general reader. There never was a more candid arbitrary alphabet put together. In the first place, the straight-line character of the writing told me it was simple. Alphabets curve as they rise in the thought which they embody. It will be seen that here there is no curved line.

  Now, when you are fairly sure you have a simple cipher, and written in the English language, you hold the key to it with this one piece of knowledge—that the most frequently used letter in our language is e. Very well, then, find that character which is most frequently repeated, and you may be pretty certain it is e. In this case, you will find the leading figure is X. It is repeated sixteen times.

  Now, we have a more than merely supposed e. The next question is the frequency, if any, with which a series of characters is repeated. You will find that the first word marked by a stop is repeated four times in twenty-seven words, or better than one in seven. This, then, must be a common expression. Take the next newspaper, and you will find the word “the” the most frequently repeated. But here comes an important contradiction. The first word agreeing with “the” has certainly three letters, but then it begins, instead of ending, with X. Now, you will find that the character representing e begins many words in this sentence, and ends none; whereas, the rule in English is, that e rather ends than commences words.

  Take this fact into connection with the known truth that the thieves talk “back,” or reversed English, and the contradiction is cleared away—each word is begun to be written at the end. We have then three letters, t.h.e. Now, if you go on to the sixth word, you will find we have the characters representing t.h.e, and that they spell (in the right direction) he-e. Now, the only ordinary word with this combination is “here.” Therefore, we have now four letters, t h e r. If we now hunt out a word in which all these characters occur, we shall find it at 23, which runs there-. The sixth character must be an s, because it’s the only natural terminal to the word there’s—short for “there is.”

  We have now five letters, t h e r s.

  We will now take word 24, following “there’s.” It can’t be I—

  “There’s I” is an impossible phrase. But there is only one other ordinary English word of one letter besides “i”—it is “a.” “There’s a” is a natural mode of expression. We have now six letters, t h e r s a.

  Now, you must settle the short words before you can touch the long. We have got “the” and “a,” and the words in which t, h, and e are commonly combined with one another. Let us now pass to other short words. Take 21. One of the letters of this word we already know to be “a”; what is the second? The two commonest words with which a is combined, and at the same time not preceded by the only letter word “i,” thus as “I am,” which is not the case here—are “as,” and “at.” Now, this letter is already a direction, in the shape of a warning. Every known circumstance in the case proves this, and therefore the word “at” is more likely to be used than “as,” which is a word, when used grammatically, very seldom seen in common letter-writing. We will suppose 21 to represent “at,” and then we shall find the same word at 11, which confirms the belief that these characters represent “at.” And this conclusion supports the supposition referring to the “s” and “t” character. To continue. The word 22, which follows 21, we now find to stand e--ht; and this partial elucidation reciprocally acts with word 21,
to form the likely phrase in such a letter—“at eight.”

  Then we now have, as discovered letters—t h e r s a i g—eight letters. There are now enough upon which to build up the first skeleton of the revised letter, and thus it stands, the unknown letters being represented by small hyphens, and the words wholly wanting by the figures with which they have been already allied:—

  Now, 7 and 8 reciprocally suggest “meet me,” and so we add “m” to our list of letters—now nine; and the t - m - rr - - after “meet me” confirms that reading, and which makes this word “to-morrow.” This gives the letters “o” and “w,” making in all eleven letters. Taking 5, I find “o” and “m” are the second and third characters; therefore, I infer the first is “c.” Now we have twelve letters. I also find that the second letter of word 4 is “o,” which gives “- o - t,” which, taken in connection with the letter being a warning, and the two following words, “come here,” I take to be “don’t.” This rendering yields me two more letters, “d” and “n,” which make in all fourteen.

  The elucidation now stands:—

  Now, putting aside the first sentence, the first words we have to clear up are 13 and 14. Let us suppose it is “something place,” and we are right, for the “l” drops into the centre of word 13, and we have “old place.” This yields letter “p” and “l,” and now we can add a letter to word 3, which from “--own” becomes “-lown.”

  We now arrive at word 17, where there is one letter wanting, and this we must for the present pass, and come to (18) - nder. This must be “under,” and so we add “u” to the list; but it is useless, for it occurs only this once in the entire paragraph.

  We now reach word 20, to which we can only add “l,” which makes it cli --. And it will be remarked that the two most important words in the letter are still defective. However, the word 20 is soon elucidated, by going on to 25, to which we can now add the letter “l”—thus we get - lower, which, taken with words 26 and 27, gives “flower show on.” We therefore find that word 20 is “cliff.” The double “f” in word 2, makes it “gaff.” We have now only two characters to decipher; the composition standing thus:

  “The gaffs -lown. Don’t come here. Meet me tomorrow at the old place, the second ca-e under the cliff at eight. There’s a flower show on.”

  Now it is clear the missing letters are two, neither of which is used more than once. Then we have only to find the missing letters, and see which will fit in, to solve the problem. These letters are b, j, k, v, x, y, z.

  The only letter which will agree with -lown is b, by which we get the sentence “The gaffs blown”—pure thieves’ English, perhaps even something like good Anglo-Saxon. It means, the meeting-place is discovered and overthrown. “Gaff” is doubtless the talking-place, from gabian, to talk; while, probably, the word “blown” is based upon the idea of giving a blow—to blow, when the past participle in Saxon English would be blown—“beaten down.”

  Coming to the word ca - e, we find that v only will fit, and so we get “the second cave under the cliff at eight to-morrow” as the gist of the missive slipped among the folds of the curtain.

  One word before I proceed with my story. Give me little credit for reading that cipher. I did it in less than twenty minutes; though it strikes me I may as well give the alphabet of this cipher, and also the appearance of the missive when reduced to ordinary letters. Here, first, is the alphabet—very simple and elementary:

  The back reading stood thus:—eht sffag nwolb tnod emoc ereh teem em worromot dna ta eht dlo ecalp eht dnoces evac rednu eht ffilc ta thgie sereht a rewolf wohs no.

  You would hardly suppose this was merely reversed English—would you?

  As I have said, the reading of the letter was nothing, but its application was another matter—another business to continue the thread of the clue in the nip of my mind till it was wound off the reel by the re-introduction, under the auspices of the police, of Mrs. Mountjoy to young Mrs. Lemmins.

  What were the coming facts before me?

  These—that Lemmins expected (since the go-between false laundress had got clear from the house)—Mountjoy to meet her at eight, in the second cave under the cliff, and that a flower show would take place.

  Now, it was summer time, and, therefore, I might take the words “flower show” as literally meant; for, in connection with the correspondents, it meant theft at the fête in question. Now, where was this fête to be held? I was at a loss to tell whether it was next day or the following. If next day, the meeting for eight referred to the morning. If the following, it might mean eight in the evening.

  But first for the spot. It must be populous, because the flower show was talked of in London, and because thieves thought it worth while to canvass the place. Secondly, it must be at the sea-side, because only at the sea or water-side is the cliff called by that name—at all events by Londoners.

  Then I got at these suppositions, or rather facts. That a flower show was to take place either the next day or the following at a seaside place distinguished not only for cliffs, but with caverns, or caves, in them, and that Lemmins would be in the second either at eight in the morning of the following day, or at that hour in the evening.

  Was the place far away? It seemed to me not, because the context of the letter so plainly inferred that the recipient could easily reach the spot, since the exact hour was named. Now, if I could only find out, by an advertisement, where a flower show was to take place within a couple of days, the locality being a cliffy, sea-side locality, in all probability full of visitors—for I had heard of thieves going to the sea-side with honest men—why, the chances were that I should trap the woman.

  Where was the place, and how could I find it out?

  It was clear it could not be on the east coast, because it is flat from the mouth of the river to Hull, or nearly so; neither, if very near home, could it be below Brighton, for thence the shore is level, or if not level, more or less unprovided with cliffs over a wide range of country.

  Then the place in question, in all probability, stood either in Kent or Sussex. By this means I got my facts into a very narrow line, for I had but to examine the papers of both counties to ascertain whether or not a flower show was advertised. But here a new difficulty arose. It was now a quarter to ten, and all places of business, all reading-rooms were closed. Perhaps, however, the fête was advertised in the “Times,” my second-day’s copy of which was in our sitting-room. Ten minutes’ search resulted in disappointment; but my eyes had caught an advertisement, all letters to be addressed to some initials, care of Messrs. Mitchell and Co., town and country newsagents, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. The question I asked myself was, whether I should call at this office, in the faint chance of finding it still open, or go on at once to the London Bridge terminus, and take the night-mail to one of the several sea-side places, one of which I believed was the appointed place of meeting. My decision in favour of trying the office rested on the ground that, with a fast cab, to call on my road to the station, it would not delay me more than a quarter of an hour.

  The cab (I find I must continually refer to cabs) took me into Fleet Street in considerably under the half-hour, and, to contract this portion of my narrative, for the simple reason that it is commonplace, I found a woman cleaning out the office. She was much flurried, and, I think, somewhat confused, in consequence of being so late at her work. With that extraordinary and simple belief of the very ignorant in the sacred nature of papers, she would not let me lay a finger upon one of the files of papers hung about the office; but with that other belief in the absolute power of money, I applied the great “progressive how much” argument with her, and which, supported by the assurance that print was not writing, led to my triumph upon another step of my journey; for at about the sixth hook I found a pile of (I think) Kentish Observers, or Gazettes, and soon I discovered (the information being in a prominent position) that a flower show was to be displayed on the very next day at the Tivoli Gardens, the context intimating
that certain omnibuses would run at regular intervals from Ramsgate and Margate.

  The inference stood that “the second cave under the cliff” was either at Ramsgate or Margate, and as I was driven on to the station, I turned over in my mind the various ways in which I could arrive at a just conclusion before I started, or while going down the line.

  Absurd as was the question—“Are there any caves in the cliff at Ramsgate or at Margate?”—I put it to several railway porters; but they knew nothing about either place. And I have found generally that railway porters know nothing of their respective lines. In this strait, and after questioning the young woman in the refreshment department, and the policeman on duty, who, I think, felt somewhat inclined to arrest me on general grounds, I bethought me of buying a guide-book to the coast; but the railway book stall was blank with shutters, and the only acquisition I could make was the London and South Eastern Railway time-table; and this publication I was turning over, not so much disconsolately as with vexation, when an outline map fell open before me.

  It was but natural that I should look at the relative positions of Ramsgate and Margate; and the investigation of the map formed another link in my chain of—may I say?—circumstantial evidence. The map showed me that the coast about Margate was more exposed to the action of the sea than the other marine town. Knowing that the indentation of the shore by sea water is, in a measure, effected by the formation of channels, or caves, the inference stood, that Margate was more likely to be the goal of my journey than the other town.