by Graeme Davis
Speaking with all due respect to the inhabitants, Waterbank (to other people) is a dull place. I went up one street and down another—and stopped to look at a shop which struck me; not from anything in itself, but because it was the only shop in the street with the shutters closed.
A bill was posted on the shutters, announcing that the place was to let. The outgoing tradesman’s name and business, announced in the customary painted letters, ran thus: James Wycomb, Cutler, etc.
For the first time, it occurred to me that we had forgotten an obstacle in our way, when we distributed our photographs of the knife. We had none of us remembered that a certain proportion of cutlers might be placed, by circumstances, out of our reach—either by retiring from business or by becoming bankrupt. I always carried a copy of the photograph about me; and I thought to myself, “Here is the ghost of a chance of tracing the knife to Mr. Deluc!”
The shop door was opened, after I had twice rung the bell, by an old man, very dirty and very deaf. He said “You had better go upstairs, and speak to Mr. Scorrier—top of the house.”
I put my lips to the old fellow’s ear-trumpet, and asked who Mr. Scorrier was.
“Brother-in-law to Mr. Wycomb. Mr. Wycomb’s dead. If you want to buy the business apply to Mr. Scorrier.”
Receiving that reply, I went upstairs, and found Mr. Scorrier engaged in engraving a brass door-plate. He was a middle-aged man, with a cadaverous face and dim eyes. After the necessary apologies, I produced my photograph.
“May I ask, sir, if you know anything of the inscription on that knife?” I said.
He took his magnifying glass to look at it.
“This is curious,” he remarked quietly. “I remember the queer name—Zebedee. Yes, sir; I did the engraving, as far as it goes. I wonder what prevented me from finishing it?”
The name of Zebedee, and the unfinished inscription on the knife, had appeared in every English newspaper. He took the matter so coolly that I was doubtful how to interpret his answer. Was it possible that he had not seen the account of the murder? Or was he an accomplice with prodigious powers of self-control?
“Excuse me,” I said, “do you read the newspapers?”
“Never! My eyesight is failing me. I abstain from reading, in the interests of my occupation.”
“Have you not heard the name of Zebedee mentioned—particularly by people who do read the newspapers?”
“Very likely; but I didn’t attend to it. When the day’s work is done, I take my walk. Then I have my supper, my drop of grog, and my pipe. Then I go to bed. A dull existence you think, I daresay! I had a miserable life, sir, when I was young. A bare subsistence, and a little rest, before the last perfect rest in the grave—that is all I want. The world has gone by me long ago. So much the better.”
The poor man spoke honestly. I was ashamed of having doubted him. I returned to the subject of the knife.
“Do you know where it was purchased, and by whom?” I asked.
“My memory is not so good as it was,” he said; “but I have got something by me that helps it.”
He took from a cupboard a dirty old scrapbook. Strips of paper, with writing on them, were pasted on the pages, as well as I could see. He turned to an index, or table of contents, and opened a page. Something like a flash of life showed itself on his dismal face.
“Ha! now I remember,” he said. “The knife was bought of my late brother-in-law, in the shop downstairs. It all comes back to me, sir. A person in a state of frenzy burst into this very room, and snatched the knife away from me, when I was only half way through the inscription!”
I felt that I was now close on discovery. “May I see what it is that has assisted your memory?” I asked.
“Oh yes. You must know, sir, I live by engraving inscriptions and addresses, and I paste in this book the manuscript instructions which I receive, with marks of my own on the margin. For one thing, they serve as a reference to new customers. And for another thing, they do certainly help my memory.”
He turned the book toward me, and pointed to a slip of paper which occupied the lower half of a page.
I read the complete inscription, intended for the knife that killed Zebedee, and written as follows:
“To John Zebedee. From Priscilla Thurlby.”
VII.
I declare that it is impossible for me to describe what I felt when Priscilla’s name confronted me like a written confession of guilt. How long it was before I recovered myself in some degree, I cannot say. The only thing I can clearly call to mind is, that I frightened the poor engraver.
My first desire was to get possession of the manuscript inscription. I told him I was a policeman, and summoned him to assist me in the discovery of a crime. I even offered him money. He drew back from my hand. “You shall have it for nothing,” he said, “if you will only go away and never come here again.” He tried to cut it out of the page—but his trembling hands were helpless. I cut it out myself, and attempted to thank him. He wouldn’t hear me. “Go away!” he said, “I don’t like the look of you.”
It may be here objected that I ought not to have felt so sure as I did of the woman’s guilt, until I had got more evidence against her. The knife might have been stolen from her, supposing she was the person who had snatched it out of the engraver’s hands, and might have been afterward used by the thief to commit the murder. All very true. But I never had a moment’s doubt in my own mind, from the time when I read the damnable line in the engraver’s book.
I went back to the railway without any plan in my head. The train by which I had proposed to follow her had left Waterbank. The next train that arrived was for London. I took my place in it—still without any plan in my head.
At Charing Cross a friend met me. He said, “You’re looking miserably ill. Come and have a drink.”
I went with him. The liquor was what I really wanted; it strung me up, and cleared my head. He went his way, and I went mine. In a little while more, I determined what I would do.
In the first place, I decided to resign my situation in the police, from a motive which will presently appear. In the second place, I took a bed at a public-house. She would no doubt return to London, and she would go to my lodgings to find out why I had broken my appointment. To bring to justice the one woman whom I had dearly loved was too cruel a duty for a poor creature like me. I preferred leaving the police force. On the other hand, if she and I met before time had helped me to control myself, I had a horrid fear that I might turn murderer next, and kill her then and there. The wretch had not only all but misled me into marrying her, but also into charging the innocent housemaid with being concerned in the murder.
The same night I hit on a way of clearing up such doubts as still harassed my mind. I wrote to the rector of Roth, informing him that I was engaged to marry her, and asking if he would tell me (in consideration of my position) what her former relations might have been with the person named John Zebedee.
By return of post I got this reply:
“SIR—Under the circumstances, I think I am bound to tell you confidentially what the friends and well-wishers of Priscilla have kept secret, for her sake.
“Zebedee was in service in this neighborhood. I am sorry to say it, of a man who has come to such a miserable end—but his behavior to Priscilla proves him to have been a vicious and heartless wretch. They were engaged—and, I add with indignation, he tried to seduce her under a promise of marriage. Her virtue resisted him, and he pretended to be ashamed of himself. The banns were published in my church. On the next day Zebedee disappeared, and cruelly deserted her. He was a capable servant; and I believe he got another place. I leave you to imagine what the poor girl suffered under the outrage inflicted on her. Going to London, with my recommendation, she answered the first advertisement that she saw, and was unfortunate enough to begin her career in domestic service in the very lodging-house to which (as I gather from the newspaper report of the murder) the man Zebedee took the person whom he married, after de
serting Priscilla. Be assured that you are about to unite yourself to an excellent girl, and accept my best wishes for your happiness.”
It was plain from this that neither the rector nor the parents and friends knew anything of the purchase of the knife. The one miserable man who knew the truth was the man who had asked her to be his wife.
I owed it to myself—at least so it seemed to me—not to let it be supposed that I, too, had meanly deserted her. Dreadful as the prospect was, I felt that I must see her once more, and for the last time.
She was at work when I went into her room. As I opened the door she started to her feet. Her cheeks reddened, and her eyes flashed with anger. I stepped forward—and she saw my face. My face silenced her.
I spoke in the fewest words I could find.
“I have been to the cutler’s shop at Waterbank,” I said. “There is the unfinished inscription on the knife, complete in your handwriting. I could hang you by a word. God forgive me—I can’t say the word.”
Her bright complexion turned to a dreadful clay-color. Her eyes were fixed and staring, like the eyes of a person in a fit. She stood before me, still and silent. Without saying more, I dropped the inscription into the fire. Without saying more, I left her.
I never saw her again.
VIII.
But I heard from her a few days later. The letter has long since been burned. I wish I could have forgotten it as well. It sticks to my memory. If I die with my senses about me, Priscilla’s letter will be my last recollection on earth.
In substance it repeated what the rector had already told me. Further, it informed me that she had bought the knife as a keepsake for Zebedee, in place of a similar knife which he had lost. On the Saturday, she made the purchase, and left it to be engraved. On the Sunday, the banns were put up. On the Monday, she was deserted; and she snatched the knife from the table while the engraver was at work.
She only knew that Zebedee had added a new sting to the insult inflicted on her when he arrived at the lodgings with his wife. Her duties as cook kept her in the kitchen—and Zebedee never discovered that she was in the house. I still remember the last lines of her confession:
“The devil entered into me when I tried their door, on my way up to bed, and found it unlocked, and listened a while, and peeped in. I saw them by the dying light of the candle—one asleep on the bed, the other asleep by the fireside. I had the knife in my hand, and the thought came to me to do it, so that they might hang her for the murder. I couldn’t take the knife out again, when I had done it. Mind this! I did really like you—I didn’t say Yes, because you could hardly hang your own wife, if you found out who killed Zebedee.”
Since the past time I have never heard again of Priscilla Thurlby; I don’t know whether she is living or dead. Many people may think I deserve to be hanged myself for not having given her up to the gallows. They may, perhaps, be disappointed when they see this confession, and hear that I have died decently in my bed. I don’t blame them. I am a penitent sinner. I wish all merciful Christians good-by forever.
THE LENTON CROFT ROBBERIES
by Arthur Morrison
1894
Arthur Morrison was born in Poplar in London’s East End, the son of an engine fitter at the London docks who died when he was barely eight years old. He worked as an office boy, haunting used bookstores in his free time, and published his first work, a humorous poem, at seventeen. As he matured, he published novels and stories with titles like Tales of Mean Streets (1895) and A Child of the Jago (1897), which depicted East End life with unflinching realism.
Unlike Holmes, Morrison’s detective Martin Hewitt is unassuming, middle-class, and of unremarkable appearance. He relies more on logic than on science, and in place of Holmes’s almost godlike fund of skills and knowledge, Hewitt has a sharp eye, a logical mind, and an abundance of common sense. He is less prone to lecture on points of science, promising instead to “explain all my tricks when the job’s done,” and his solutions, the reader feels, are never guilty of scientific or intellectual deus ex machina tricks; when all is revealed, anyone can see that it all makes perfect sense.
“The Lenton Croft Robberies” was the first of the Hewitt stories, appearing in the Strand magazine in March 1894—three months after Holmes and Moriarty’s struggle by the Reichenbach Falls. No fresh Holmes stories appeared in the Strand until the first installment of The Hound of the Baskervilles was published in August 1901, and during that hiatus Morrison published seventeen Hewitt stories in the Strand and elsewhere, collecting them in three volumes: Martin Hewitt, Investigator (1894), The Chronicles of Martin Hewitt (1895), and The Adventures of Martin Hewitt (1896). Eight more were published in The Harmsworthy Magazine in 1902–3; six of which were collected in The Red Triangle (1904).
The first Hewitt story provides a perfect introduction to the character, involving him in a country house mystery with a solution that is at once unexpected and logical.
Those who retain any memory of the great law cases of fifteen or twenty years back will remember, at least, the title of that extraordinary will case, “Bartley v. Bartley and others,” which occupied the Probate Court for some weeks on end, and caused an amount of public interest rarely accorded to any but the cases considered in the other division of the same court. The case itself was noted for the large quantity of remarkable and unusual evidence presented by the plaintiff’s side—evidence that took the other party completely by surprise, and overthrew their case like a house of cards. The affair will, perhaps, be more readily recalled as the occasion of the sudden rise to eminence in their profession of Messrs. Crellan, Hunt & Crellan, solicitors for the plaintiff—a result due entirely to the wonderful ability shown in this case of building up, apparently out of nothing, a smashing weight of irresistible evidence. That the firm has since maintained—indeed enhanced—the position it then won for itself need scarcely be said here; its name is familiar to everybody. But there are not many of the outside public who know that the credit of the whole performance was primarily due to a young clerk in the employ of Messrs. Crellan, who had been given charge of the seemingly desperate task of collecting evidence in the case.
This Mr. Martin Hewitt had, however, full credit and reward for his exploit from his firm and from their client, and more than one other firm of lawyers engaged in contentious work made good offers to entice Hewitt to change his employers. Instead of this, however, he determined to work independently for the future, having conceived the idea of making a regular business of doing, on behalf of such clients as might retain him, similar work to that he had just done with such conspicuous success for Messrs. Crellan, Hunt & Crellan. This was the beginning of the private detective business of Martin Hewitt, and his action at that time has been completely justified by the brilliant professional successes he has since achieved.
His business has always been conducted in the most private manner, and he has always declined the help of professional assistants, preferring to carry out himself such of the many investigations offered him as he could manage. He has always maintained that he has never lost by this policy, since the chance of his refusing a case begets competition for his services, and his fees rise by a natural process. At the same time, no man could know better how to employ casual assistance at the right time.
Some curiosity has been expressed as to Mr. Martin Hewitt’s system, and, as he himself always consistently maintains that he has no system beyond a judicious use of ordinary faculties, I intend setting forth in detail a few of the more interesting of his cases in order that the public may judge for itself if I am right in estimating Mr. Hewitt’s “ordinary faculties” as faculties very extraordinary indeed. He is not a man who has made many friendships (this, probably, for professional reasons), notwithstanding his genial and companionable manners. I myself first made his acquaintance as a result of an accident resulting in a fire at the old house in which Hewitt’s office was situated, and in an upper floor of which I occupied bachelor chambers. I was able to hel
p in saving a quantity of extremely important papers relating to his business, and, while repairs were being made, allowed him to lock them in an old wall-safe in one of my rooms which the fire had scarcely damaged.
The acquaintance thus begun has lasted many years, and has become a rather close friendship. I have even accompanied Hewitt on some of his expeditions, and, in a humble way, helped him. Such of the cases, however, as I personally saw nothing of I have put into narrative form from the particulars given me.
“I consider you, Brett,” he said, addressing me, “the most remarkable journalist alive. Not because you’re particularly clever, you know, because, between ourselves, I hope you’ll admit you’re not; but because you have known something of me and my doings for some years, and have never yet been guilty of giving away any of my little business secrets you may have become acquainted with. I’m afraid you’re not so enterprising a journalist as some, Brett. But now, since you ask, you shall write something—if you think it worth while.”
This he said, as he said most things, with a cheery, chaffing good-nature that would have been, perhaps, surprising to a stranger who thought of him only as a grim and mysterious discoverer of secrets and crimes. Indeed, the man had always as little of the aspect of the conventional detective as may be imagined. Nobody could appear more cordial or less observant in manner, although there was to be seen a certain sharpness of the eye—which might, after all, only be the twinkle of good humor.
I did think it worth while to write something of Martin Hewitt’s investigations, and a description of one of his adventures follows.
