Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 5

by R. Austin Freeman

  "But," I objected, "why on earth should the poisoner—if there really is such a person—have been at the trouble of soaking out fly papers when apparently he was able to command an unlimited supply of Fowler's Solution?"

  "Quite a pertinent question, Mayfield," he rejoined. "But may I ask my learned friend whether he found the evidence relating to the Fowler's Solution perfectly satisfactory?"

  "But surely!" I exclaimed. "You had the evidence of two expert witnesses on the point. What more would you require? What is the difficulty?"

  "The difficulty is this. There were several witnesses who testified that when they saw the bottle of medicine, the Fowler's Solution had not yet been added; but there was none who saw the bottle after the addition had been made."

  "But it must have been added before Mabel gave the patient the last dose."

  "That is the inference. But Mabel said nothing to that effect. She was not asked what colour the medicine was when she gave the patient that dose."

  "But what of the analysts and the post-mortem?"

  "As to the post-mortem, the arsenic which was found in the stomach was not recognized as being in the form of Fowler's Solution, and as to the analysts, they made their examination three days after the man died."

  "Still, the medicine that they analysed was the medicine that deceased had taken. You don't deny that, do you?"

  "I neither deny it nor affirm it. I merely say that no evidence was given that proved the presence of Fowler's Solution in that bottle before the man died; and that the bottle which was handed to the analysts was one that had been exposed for three days in a room which had been visited by a number of persons, including Mrs. Monkhouse, Wallingford, Miss Norris, Mabel Withers, Amos Monkhouse, Dr. Dimsdale and yourself."

  "You mean to suggest that the bottle might have been tampered with or changed for another? But, my dear Thorndyke, why in the name of God should anyone want to change the bottle?"

  "I am not suggesting that the bottle actually was changed. I am merely pointing out that the evidence of the analysts is material only subject to the conditions that the bottle which they examined was the bottle from which the last dose of medicine was given, and that its contents were the same as on that occasion; and that no conclusive proof exists that it was the same bottle or that the contents were unchanged."

  "But what reason could there be for supposing that it might have been changed?"

  "There is no need to advance any reason. The burden of proof lies on those who affirm that it was the same bottle with the same contents. It is for them to prove that no change was possible. But obviously a change was possible."

  "But still," I persisted, "there seems to be no point in this suggestion. Who could have had any motive for making a change? And what could the motive have been? It looks to me like mere logic-chopping and hair-splitting."

  "You wouldn't say that if you were for the defence," chuckled Thorndyke. "You would not let a point of first-rate importance pass on a mere assumption, no matter how probable. And as to a possible motive, surely a most obvious one is staring us in the face. Supposing some person in this household had been administering arsenic in the food. If it could be arranged that a poisonous dose could be discovered in the medicine, you must see that the issue would be at once transferred from the food to the medicine, and from those who controlled the food to those who controlled the medicine. Which is, in fact, what happened. As soon as the jury heard about the medicine, their interest in the food became extinct."

  I listened to this exposition with a slightly sceptical smile. It was all very ingenious but I found it utterly unconvincing.

  "You ought to be pleading in court, Thorndyke," I said, "instead of grubbing about in empty houses and raking over rubbish-heaps. By the way, have you found anything that seems likely to yield any suggestions?"

  "It is a little difficult to say," he replied. "I have taken possession of a number of bottles and small jars for examination as to their contents, but I have no great expectation in respect of them. I also found some fragments of the glass mortar—an eight-ounce mortar it appears to have been."

  "Where did you find those?" I asked.

  "In Miss Norris' bedroom, in a little pile of rubbish under the grate. They are only tiny fragments, but the curvature enables one to reconstruct the vessel pretty accurately."

  It seemed to me a rather futile proceeding, but I made no comment. Nor did I give utterance to a suspicion which had just flashed into my mind, that it was the discovery of these ridiculous fragments of glass that had set my learned friend splitting straws on the subject of the medicine bottle. I had not much liked his suggestion as to the possible motive of that hypothetical substitution, and I liked it less now that he had discovered the remains of the mortar in Madeline's room. There was no doubt that Thorndyke had a remarkable constructive imagination; and, as I followed him down the stairs and out into the square, I found myself faintly uneasy lest that lively imagination should carry him into deeper waters than I was prepared to navigate in his company.

  13. RUPERT MAKES SOME DISCOVERIES

  By a sort of tacit understanding Thorndyke and I parted in the vicinity of South Kensington Station, to which he had made a bee line on leaving the square. As he had made no suggestion that I should go back with him, I inferred that he had planned a busy evening examining and testing the odds and ends that he had picked up in the empty house; while I had suddenly conceived the idea that I might as well take the opportunity of calling on Madeline, who might feel neglected if I failed to put in an appearance within a reasonable time after my return to town. Our researches had taken up most of the afternoon and it was getting on for the hour at which Madeline usually left the school; and as the latter was less than half-an-hour's walk from the station, I could reach it in good time without hurrying.

  As I walked at an easy pace through the busily populated streets, I turned over the events of the afternoon with rather mixed feelings. In spite of my great confidence in Thorndyke, I was sensible of a chill of disappointment in respect alike of his words and his deeds. In this rather farcical grubbing about in the dismantled house there was a faint suggestion of charlatanism; of the vulgar, melodramatic sleuth, nosing out a trail; while, as to his hair-splitting objections to a piece of straightforward evidence, they seemed to me to be of the kind at which the usual hard-headed judge would shake his hard head while grudgingly allowing them as technically admissible.

  But whither was Thorndyke drifting? Evidently he had turned a dubious eye on Wallingford; and that egregious ass seemed to be doing all that he could to attract further notice. But today I had seemed to detect a note of suspicion in regard to Madeline; and even making allowance for the fact that he had not my knowledge of her gentle, gracious personality, I could not but feel a little resentful. Once more, Wallingford's remarks concerning a possible mare's nest and a public scandal recurred to me, and, not for the first time, I was aware of faint misgivings as to my wisdom in having set Thorndyke to stir up these troubled waters. He had, indeed, given me fair warning, and I was half-inclined to regret that I had not allowed myself to be warned off. Of course, Thorndyke was much too old a hand to launch a half-prepared prosecution into the air. But still, I could not but ask myself uneasily whither his overacute inferences were leading him.

  These reflections brought me to the gate of the school, where I learned from the porter that Madeline had not yet left and accordingly sent up my card. In less than a minute she appeared, dressed in her out-of-door clothes and wreathed in smiles, looking, I thought, very charming.

  "How nice of you, Rupert!" she exclaimed, "to come and take me home. I was wondering how soon you would come to see my little spinster lair. It is only a few minutes' walk from here. But I am sorry I didn't know you were coming, for I have arranged to make a call—a business call—and I am due in about ten minutes. Isn't it a nuisance?"

  "How long will you have to stay?"

  "Oh, a quarter of an hour, at least. Perhaps a li
ttle more."

  "Very well. I will wait outside for you and do sentry-go."

  "No, you won't. I shall let you into my flat—I should have to pass it—and you can have a wash and brush-up, and then you can prowl about and see how you like my little mansion—I haven't quite settled down in it yet, but you must overlook that. By the time you have inspected everything, I shall be back and then we can consider whether we will have a late tea or an early supper. This is the way."

  She led me into a quiet by-street, one side of which was occupied by a range of tall, rather forbidding buildings whose barrack-like aspect was to some extent mitigated by signs of civilized humanity in the tastefully curtained windows. Madeline's residence was on the second floor, and when she had let me in by the diminutive outer door and switched on the light, she turned back to the staircase with a wave of her hand.

  "I will be back as soon as I can," she said. "Meanwhile go in and make yourself at home."

  I stood at the door and watched her trip lightly down the stairs until she disappeared round the angle, when I shut the door and proceeded to follow her injunctions to the letter by taking possession of the bathroom, in which I was gratified to find a constant supply of hot water. When I had refreshed myself by a wash, I went forth and made a leisurely survey of the little flat. It was all very characteristic of Madeline, the professional exponent of Domestic Economy, in its orderly arrangement and its evidences of considered convenience. The tiny kitchen reminded one of a chemical laboratory or a doctor's dispensary with its labelled jars of the cook's materials set out in ordered rows on their shelves, and the two little mortars, one of Wedgewood ware and the other of glass. I grinned as my eye lighted on this latter and I thought of the fragments carefully collected by Thorndyke and solemnly transported to the Temple for examination. Here, if he could have seen it, was evidence that proved the ownership of that other mortar and at the same time demolished the significance of that discovery.

  I ventured to inspect the bedroom, and a very trim, pleasant little room it was; but the feature which principally attracted my attention was an arrangement for switching the electric light off and on from the bed—an arrangement suspiciously correlated to a small set of bookshelves also within easy reach of the bed. What interested me in it was what Thorndyke would have called its "unmechanical ingenuity"; for it consisted of no more than a couple of lengths of stout string, of each of which one end was tied to the light-switch and the other end led by a pair of screw-eyes to the head of the bed. No doubt the simple device worked well enough in spite of the friction at each screw-eye, but a man of less intelligence than Madeline would probably have used levers or bell-cranks, or at least pulleys to diminish the friction in changing the direction of the pull.

  There was a second bedroom, at present unoccupied and only partially furnished and serving, apparently, as a receptacle for such of Madeline's possessions as had not yet had a permanent place assigned to them. Here were one or two chairs, some piles of books, a number of pictures and several polished wood boxes and cases of various sizes; evidently the residue of the goods and chattels that Madeline had brought from her home and stored somewhere while she was living at Hilborough Square. I ran my eye along the range of boxes, which were set out on the top of a chest of drawers. One was an old-fashioned tea-caddy, another an obvious folding desk of the same period, while a third, which I opened, turned out to be a work-box of mid-Victorian age. Beside it was a little flat rosewood case which looked like a small case of mathematical instruments. Observing that the key was in the lock, I turned it and lifted the lid, not with any conscious curiosity as to what was inside it, but in the mere idleness of a man who has nothing in particular to do. But the instant that the lid was up my attention awoke with a bound and I stood with dropped jaw staring at the interior in utter consternation.

  There could be not an instant's doubt as to what this case was, for its green-baize-lined interior showed a shaped recess of the exact form of a pocket pistol; and, if that were not enough, there, in its own compartment was a little copper powder-flask, and in another compartment about a dozen globular bullets.

  I snapped down the lid and turned the key and walked guiltily out of the room. My interest in Madeline's flat was dead. I could think of nothing but this amazing discovery. And the more I thought, the more overpowering did it become. The pistol that fitted that case was the exact counterpart of the pistol that I had seen in Thorndyke's laboratory; and the case, itself, corresponded, exactly to his description of the case from which that pistol had probably been taken. It was astounding; and it was profoundly disturbing. For it admitted of no explanation that I could bring myself to accept other than that of a coincidence. And coincidences are unsatisfactory things; and you can't do with too many of them at once.

  Yet, on reflection, this was the view that I adopted. Indeed, there was no thinkable alternative. And really, when I came to turn the matter over, it was not quite so extraordinary as it had seemed at the first glance. For what, after all, was this pistol with its case? It was not a unique thing. It was not even a rare thing. Thorndyke had spoken of these pistols and cases as comparatively common things with which he expected me to be familiar. Thousands of them must have been made in their time, and since they were far from perishable, thousands of them must still exist. The singularity of the coincidence was not in the facts; it was the product of my own state of mind.

  Thus I sought—none too successfully—to rid myself of the effects of the shock that I had received on raising the lid of the case; and I was still moodily gazing out of the sitting room window and arguing away my perturbation when I heard the outer door shut and a moment later Madeline looked into the room.

  "I haven't been so very long, have I?" she said, cheerily. "Now I will slip off my cloak and hat and we will consider what sort of meal we will have: or perhaps you will consider the question while I am gone."

  With this she flitted away; and my thoughts, passing by the problem submitted, involuntarily reverted to the little rosewood case in the spare room. But her absence was of a brevity suggesting the performance of the professional quick-change artist. In a minute or two I heard her approach and open the door; and I turned—to receive a real knock-out blow.

  I was so astonished and dismayed that I suppose I must have stood staring like a fool, for she asked in a rather disconcerted tone: "What is the matter, Rupert? Why are you looking at my jumper like that? Don't you like it?"

  "Yes," I stammered, "of course I do. Most certainly. Very charming. Very—er—becoming. I like it—er—exceedingly."

  "I don't believe you do," she said, doubtfully, "you looked so surprised when I first came in. You don't think the colour too startling, do you? Women wear brighter colours than they used to, you know, and I do think this particular shade of green is rather nice. And it is rather unusual, too."

  "It is," I agreed, recovering myself by an effort. "Quite distinctive." And then, noting that I had unconsciously adopted Thorndyke's own expression, I added, hastily, "And I shouldn't describe it as startling, at all. It is in perfectly good taste."

  "I am glad you think that," she said, "for you certainly did look rather startled at first, and I had some slight misgivings about it myself when I had finished it. It looked more brilliant in colour as a garment than it did in the form of mere skeins."

  "You made it yourself, then?"

  "Yes. But I don't think I would ever knit another. It took me months to do, and I could have bought one for very little more than the cost of the wool, though, of course, I shouldn't have been able to select the exact tint that I wanted. But what about our meal? Shall we call it tea or supper?"

  She could have called it breakfast for all I cared, so completely had this final shock extinguished my interest in food. But I had to make some response to her eager hospitality.

  "Let us split the difference or strike an average," I replied. "We will call it a 'swarry'-tea and unusual trimmings."

  "Very well," said she
, "then you shall come to the kitchen and help. I will show you the raw material of the feast and you shall dictate the bill of fare."

  We accordingly adjourned to the kitchen where she fell to work on the preparations with the unhurried quickness that is characteristic of genuine efficiency, babbling pleasantly and pausing now and then to ask my advice (which was usually foolish and had to be blandly rejected) and treating the whole business with a sort of playful seriousness that was very delightful. And all the time I looked on in a state of mental chaos and bewilderment for which I can find no words. There she was, my friend, Madeline, sweet, gentle, feminine—the very type of gracious womanhood, and the more sweet and gracious by reason of these homely surroundings. For it is an appalling reflection, in these days of lady professors and women legislators, that to masculine eyes a woman never looks so dignified, so worshipful, so entirely desirable, as when she is occupied in the traditional activities that millenniums of human experience have associated with her sex. To me, Madeline, flitting about the immaculate little kitchen, neat-handed, perfect in the knowledge of her homely craft; smiling, dainty, fragile, with her gracefully flowing hair and the little apron that she had slipped on as a sort of ceremonial garment, was a veritable epitome of feminine charm. And yet, but a few feet away was a rosewood case that had once held a pistol; and even now, in Thorndyke's locked cabinet—but my mind staggered under the effort of thought and refused the attempt to combine and collate a set of images so discordant.

  "You are very quiet, Rupert," she said, presently, pausing to look at me. "What is it? I hope you haven't any special worries."