THORNDYKE TAKES UP THE SCENT
At my lodgings, which I reached at an unconscionably late hour for
lunch, I found a little surprise awaiting me; a short note from Dr.
Thorndyke asking me if I should be at liberty early on the following
afternoon to show him the spot on which I had found the mysterious
body. Of course, I answered by return, begging him to come straight on
from the hospital to an early lunch, over which we could discuss the
facts of the case before setting out. Having dispatched my letter, I
called at the offices of the house agent who had the letting of the
cottage on the Heath, to see if he had duplicate keys. Fortunately he
had, and was willing to entrust them to me on the understanding that
they should be returned some time during the next day. I did not,
however, go on to the cottage, for it occurred to me that Thorndyke
would probably wish to visit the wood, and I could make my visit and
purloin the canvases then.
A telegram on the following morning informed me that Thorndyke would
be with me at twelve o’clock, and, punctually to the minute, he
arrived.
“I hope you don’t mind me swooping down on you in this fashion,” he
said, as the servant showed him into the room.
I assured him, very truthfully, that I was delighted to be honoured by
a visit from him, and he then proceeded to explain.
“You may wonder, Jardine, why I am busying myself about this case,
which is really no business of mine, or, at least, appears to be none;
but the fact is, that as a teacher and a practitioner of Medical
Jurisprudence, I find it advisable to look into any unusual cases. Of
course, there is always a considerable probability that I may be
consulted concerning any out of the way case; but, apart from that, I
have the ordinary specialist’s interest in anything remarkable in my
own speciality.”
“I should think,” said I, “that it would be well for me to give you
all the facts before we start.”
“Exactly, Jardine,” he replied, “that is what I want. Tell me all you
know about the affair and then we shall be able to test our
conclusions on the spot.”
He produced a large scale ordnance map, and, folding it under my
direction, so that it showed only the region in which we were
interested, he stood it up on the table against the water bottle,
where we could both see it, and marked on it with a pencil each spot
as I described it.
It is not necessary for me to record our conversation. I told him the
whole story as I have already told it to the reader, pointing out on
the map the exact locality where each event occurred.
“It’s a most remarkable case, Jardine,” was his thoughtful comment
when I had finished, “most remarkable; curiously puzzling and
inconsistent too. For you see that on the one hand, it looks like a
casual or accidental crime, and yet, on the other, strongly suggests
premeditation. No man, one would think, could have planned to commit a
murder in what is, after all, a public thoroughfare; and yet, the long
distance which the body seems to have been carried, and the apparently
selected hiding-place, seem to suggest a previously considered plan.”
“You think that there is no doubt that the man was really dead?” I
asked.
“Had you any doubt at the time yourself?”
“None at all,” I replied, “it was only the disappearance of the body,
and, perhaps, the sergeant’s suggestion, that made me think it
possible that I might have been mistaken.”
Thorndyke shook his head. “No, Jardine,” said he, “the man was dead.
We are safe in assuming that; and on that assumption our
investigations must be based. The next question is, how was the body
taken away? Did you measure the fence?”
“No, but I should say it is about seven feet high.”
“And what kind of fence is it? Are there any footholds?”
“I can show you exactly what the fence is like,” I answered. “That
sketch, which I have pinned up on the wall, was apparently painted
from the exact spot on which the body lay. That fence on the
right-hand side is the one under which I sheltered and is exactly like
the one over which the body seems to have been lifted.”
Thorndyke rose and walked over to the sketch, which I had fixed to the
wall with drawing-pins.
“Not a bad sketch, this, Jardine,” he remarked; “very smartly put in,
apparently mostly with the knife. Where did you get it?”
I had to confess that the canvas was unlawfully come by, and told him
how I had obtained it.
“You don’t know the artist’s name?” said Thorndyke, looking closely at
the sketch.
“No. In fact, I know nothing about him, excepting that he worked
mostly with a small painting-knife, and usually wore kid gloves.”
“You don’t mean that he worked in gloves?” said Thorndyke.
“So I am told,” said I. “I never saw him.”
“It’s very odd,” said Thorndyke. “I have heard of men wearing a glove
on the palette-hand to keep off the midges, and many men paint in
gloves in exceptionally cold weather. But this sketch seems to have
been painted in the summer.”
“I suppose,” said I, “the midges don’t confine their attentions to the
palette-hand. And after all, to a man who worked entirely with the
knife, a glove wouldn’t be really in the way.”
“No,” Thorndyke agreed, “that is true.” He looked closely at the
sketch, and even took out his pocket lens to help his vision, which
seemed almost unnecessary. It appeared that he was as much interested
in the unknown artist’s peculiar technique as was my friend, Miss
Sylvia Vyne.
“By the way,” said he, when he had resumed his seat at the table, “you
were telling me about some kind of gold trinket that you had picked up
at the foot of the fence. Shall we have a look at it?”
I fetched the little gold object from the dispatch box in which I had
locked it up, and handed it to him. He turned it over in his fingers,
read the letters that were engraved on it, and examined the little
piece of silk cord that was attached to one ring.
“There is no doubt,” said he, “as to the nature of this object, nor of
its connection with the dead man. This is evidently a reliquary, and
these initials engraved upon it bear out exactly your description of
the body. S.V.D.P. evidently means St. Vincent de Paul, who, as you
probably know, was a saint who was distinguished for his works of
charity. You have mentioned that the dead man wore a Roman collar,
with a narrow, dark stripe up the front. That means that he was the
lay-brother of some religious order, probably some philanthropic
order, to whom St. Vincent de Paul would be an object of special
devotion. The other letters, A.M.D.G., are the initials of the words
_Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam_--the motto of the Society of Jesus. But as
St. Vincent de Paul was not a Jesuit saint, the motto probably refers
to the owner of the reliquary, who may have been a Jesuit or a friend
of the Society. It was apparently attached--perhaps to the neck--by
this silk cord, which seems to have been frayed nearly through, and
probably broke when the body was drawn over the top of the fence.”
“I suppose I ought to have shown it to the police,” I said.
“I suppose you ought,” he replied, “but, as you haven’t, I think we
had better say nothing about it now.”
He handed it back to me, and I dropped it into my pocket, intending to
return it presently to the dispatch box. A few minutes later, we
sallied forth on our journey of exploration.
It is not necessary to describe this journey in detail since I have
already taken the reader over the ground more than once. We went, of
course, to the place where I had found the body and walked right
through to Hampstead Lane. Then we returned, and reconstituted the
circumstances of that eventful night, after which, I conducted
Thorndyke to the place where I assumed that the body had been lifted
over the fence.
“I suppose,” I said, “we must go round and pick up the track from the
other side.”
He looked up and down the lane and smiled. “Would your quondam
professor lose your respect for ever, Jardine, if you saw him climb
over a fence in a frock coat and a topper?”
“No,” I answered, “but it might look a little quaint if anyone else
saw you.”
“I think we will risk that,” he said. “There is no one about, and I
should rather like to try a little experiment. Would you mind if I
hoisted you over the fence? You are something of an out-size, but
then, so am I, too, which balances the conditions.”
Of course I had no objection, and, when we had looked up and down the
lane and listened to make sure that we had no observers, Thorndyke
picked me up, with an ease that rather surprised me, and hoisted me
above the level of the fence.
“Is it all clear on the other side?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered, “there’s no one in sight.”
“Then I want you to be quite passive,” he said, and with this, he
hoisted me up further until I hung with my own weight across the top
of the fence. Leaving me hanging thus, he sprang up lightly, and,
having got astride at the top, dropped down on the other side, when he
once more took hold of me and drew me over.
“It wasn’t so very difficult,” he said. “Of course, it would have been
more so to a shorter man, but, on the other hand, it is extremely
unlikely that the body was anything like your size and weight.”
We now followed the track up to the wood, which we entered by an
opening in the fence, through which I assumed that the murderer had
probably passed. I conducted Thorndyke by the nearest route to the
boat-house, and, when he had thoroughly examined the place and made
notes of the points that appeared to interest him, I showed him the
way out by the turnstile.
It was here when we came in sight of the cottage that I bethought me
of my promise to Miss Vyne, and somewhat sheepishly explained the
matter to Thorndyke.
“It won’t take me a minute to go in and sneak the things,” I said
apologetically, and was proposing that he should walk on slowly, when
he interrupted me.
“I’ll come in with you,” said he. “There may be something else to
filch. Besides, I am rather partial to empty houses. There is
something quite interesting, I think, in looking over the traces of
recent occupation, and speculating on the personality and habits of
the late occupiers. Don’t you find it so?”
I said “Yes,” truthfully enough, for it was a feeling of this kind
that had first led me to look over the cottage. But my interest was
nothing to Thorndyke’s; for no sooner had I let him in at the front
door, than he began to browse about through the empty rooms and
passages, for all the world like a cat that has just been taken to a
new house.
“This was evidently the studio,” he remarked, as we entered the room
from which I had taken the canvas. “He doesn’t seem to have had much
of an outfit, as he appears to have worked on his sketching-easel; you
can see the indentations made by the toe-points, and there are no
marks of the castors of a studio easel. You notice, too, that he sat
on a camp-stool to work.”
It did not appear to me to matter very much what he had sat on, but I
kept this opinion to myself and watched Thorndyke curiously as he
picked up the empty paint tubes and scrutinized them one after the
other. His inquisitiveness filled me with amused astonishment. He
turned out the rubbish box completely, and having looked over every
inch of the discarded canvases, he began systematically to examine,
one by one, the pieces of paper on which the late resident had wiped
his palette-knife.
Having rolled up and pocketed the waste canvases, I expressed myself
as ready to depart.
“If you’re not in a hurry,” said Thorndyke, “I should like to look
over the rest of the premises.”
He spoke as though we were inspecting some museum or exhibition, and,
indeed, his interest and attention, as he wandered from room to room,
were greater than that of the majority of visitors to a public
gallery. He even insisted on visiting the little stable and
coach-house, and when he had explored them both, ascended the rickety
steps to the loft over the latter.
“I suppose,” said I, “this was the lumber room or store. Judging by
the quantity of straw it would seem as if some cases had been unpacked
here.”
“Probably,” agreed Thorndyke. “In fact, you can see where the cases
have been dragged along, and also, by that smooth indented line, where
some heavy metallic object has been slid along the floor. Perhaps if
we look over the straw, we may be able to judge what those cases
contained.”
It didn’t seem to me to matter a brass farthing what they contained,
but again I made no remark; and together we moved the great mass of
straw, almost handful by handful, from one end of the loft to the
other, while Thorndyke, not only examined the straw but even closely
scrutinized the floor on which it lay.
As far as I could see, all this minute and apparently purposeless
searching was entirely without result, until we were in the act of
removing the last armful of straw from the corner; and even then the
object that came to light did not appear a very remarkable one under
the circumstances, though Thorndyke seemed to find what appeared to me
a most unreasonable interest in it. The object was a pair of
canvas-pliers, which Thorndyke picked up almost eagerly and examined
with profound attention.
“What do you make of that, Jardine?” he asked, at length, handing the
implement to me.
“It’s a pair of canvas-pliers,” I replied.
“Obviously,” he rejoined, “but what do you suppose they have been used
for?”
I opined that they had been used for straining canvases, that being
their manifest function.
“But,” objected Thorndyke, “he would hardly have strained his canvases
up here. Besides, you will notice that they have, in fact, been used
for something else. You observe that the handles are slightly bent, as
if something had been held with great force, and if you look at the
jaws, you will see that that something was a metallic object about
three-quarters of an inch wide with sharp corners. Now, what do you
make of that?”
I looked at the pliers, inwardly reflecting that I didn’t care
twopence what the object was, and finally said that I would give it
up.
“The problem does not interest you keenly,” Thorndyke remarked with a
smile; “and yet it ought to, you know. However, we may consider the
matter on some future occasion. Meanwhile, I shall follow your
pernicious example and purloin the pliers.”
His interest in this complete stranger appeared to me very singular,
and it seemed for the moment to have displaced that in the mysterious
case which was the object of his visit to me.
“A strange, vagabond sort of man that artist must have been,” he
remarked, as we walked home across the Heath, “but I suppose one picks
up vagabond habits in travelling about the world.”
“Do you gather that he had travelled much, then?” I asked.
“He appears to have visited New York, Brussels and Florence, which is
a selection suggesting other travels.”
I was wondering vaguely how Thorndyke had arrived at these facts, and
was indeed about to ask him, when he suddenly changed the subject by
saying:
“I suppose, Jardine, you don’t wander about this place alone at
night?”
“I do sometimes,” I replied.
“Then I shouldn’t,” he said; “you must remember that a very determined
attempt has been made on your life, and it would be unreasonable to
suppose that it was made without some purpose. But that purpose is
still unaccomplished. You don’t know who your enemy is, and,
consequently, can take no precautions against him excepting by keeping
away from solitary places. It is an uncomfortable thought, but at
present, you have to remember that any chance stranger may be an
intending murderer. So be on your guard.”
I promised to bear his warning in mind, though I must confess his
language seemed to me rather exaggerated; and so we walked on,
chatting about various matters until we arrived at my lodgings.
Thorndyke was easily persuaded to come in and have tea with me, and
while we were waiting for its arrival, he renewed his examination of
the sketch upon the wall.
“Aren’t you going to have this strained on a stretcher?” he asked.
I replied “yes,” and that I intended to take it with me the next time
I went into town.
“Let me take it for you,” said Thorndyke. “I should like to show it to
Jervis to illustrate the route that we have marked on the map. Then I
can have it left at any place that you like.”
I mentioned the name of an artist’s-colourman in the Hampstead Road,
and, unpinning the canvas, rolled it up and handed it to him.
He took it from me and, rolling it up methodically and carefully,
bestowed it in his breast pocket. Then he brought forth the map, and,
as we drank our tea and talked over our investigations, we checked our
route on it and marked the position of the cottage. Shortly after tea
he took his leave, and I then occupied an agreeable half-hour in
composing a letter to Miss Vyne to accompany the loot from the
deserted house.