THORNDYKE REVIEWS THE CASE
When Professor Woodfield, having deliberately packed his bag and--to
my great relief and Jervis’s--declined Thorndyke’s invitation to stay
and take tea with us, presently took his departure, we descended to
the sitting-room, whither Polton followed us almost immediately with a
tea-tray, having, apparently, boiled the kettle in the adjacent
workshop while the final act of the analysis was in progress. He
placed the tray on a small table by Thorndyke’s chair, and, evidently,
anticipating the inevitable discussion on the results of the analysis,
made up the fire on a liberal scale and retired with unconcealed
reluctance.
As soon as we were alone, Jervis opened the subject by voicing his and
my joint desire for “more light.”
“This has been a great surprise to me, Thorndyke,” said he.
“A complete surprise?” Thorndyke asked.
“No, I can’t say that. The solution of the problem was one that I had
proposed to myself, but I had rejected it as impossible; and it looks
impossible still, though I now know it to be the true solution.”
“I quite appreciate your difficulty,” said Thorndyke, “and I see that
if you did not happen to light on the answer to it, the difficulty was
insuperable. That was the really brilliant feature in Maddock’s plan.
But for a single fact which was almost certain to be overlooked, the
real explanation of the circumstances would appear utterly incredible.
Even if suspicion had been aroused later and the true explanation
suggested, there seemed to be one fact with which it was absolutely
irreconcilable.”
“Yes,” agreed Jervis; “that is what I have felt.”
“The truth is,” said Thorndyke, “that this crime was planned with the
most diabolical cleverness and subtlety. We realize that when we
consider by what an infinitely narrow margin it failed. Indeed, we can
hardly say that it did fail. As far as we can see, it succeeded
completely, and if the criminal could only have accepted its success,
there seems to be no reason why any discovery should ever have taken
place. Looking back on the case, we see that our experience has been
the same as O’Donnell’s; we had no clue whatever excepting the one
that was furnished by the criminal himself in his unnecessary efforts
to obtain even greater security. Suppose Maddock, having carried out
his plan successfully, had been content to leave it at that, who would
have known, or even suspected, that a crime had been committed? Not a
soul, I believe. But instead of that he must needs do what the
criminal almost invariably does; he must tinker at the crime when all
is going well and surround himself by a number of needless safeguards
by which, in the end, attention is attracted to his doings. He knows,
or believes he knows, that Jardine has in his possession certain
knowledge of a highly dangerous character; he does not ask himself
whether Jardine is aware that he possesses such knowledge, but,
appraising that knowledge at what he, himself, knows to be its value,
he decides to get rid of Jardine as the one element of danger. And
that was where he failed. If he had left Jardine alone, the whole
affair would have passed off as perfectly normal and its details would
soon have been lost sight of and forgotten. Even as it was, he missed
complete success only by a hair’s breadth. But for the most trivial
coincidence, Jardine’s body might be lying undiscovered in that cellar
at this very moment.”
“That’s a comfortable thought for you, Jardine,” my younger colleague
remarked.
“Very,” I agreed, with a slight shudder at the recollection of that
horrible death-trap. “But what was the coincidence? I never understood
how you came to be in that most unlikely place at that very opportune
moment.”
“It was the merest chance,” replied Thorndyke. “I happened to have
called in at the hospital that evening, and, having an hour to spare,
it occurred to me to look in at Batson’s and see if you were getting
on quite happily in your new command. As I had induced you to take
charge, I felt some sort of responsibility in the matter.”
“It was exceedingly kind of you, sir,” said I.
“Not in the least,” said Thorndyke. “It was just the ordinary
solicitude of the teacher for a promising pupil. Well, when I arrived
at the house, I found that excellent girl, Maggie, standing on the
doorstep, looking anxiously up and down the street. It seemed that, on
reflection, she was still convinced that the works were untenanted,
and the oddity of the whole set of circumstances had made her somewhat
uneasy. I waited a few minutes and disposed of one or two patients,
and then, as you did not return, after what seemed an unaccountably
long absence, I very easily induced her to show me where the place
was; and when we arrived there, the deserted aspect of the building
and the notice board over the gate seemed rather to justify her
anxiety.
“I rang the bell loudly, as I daresay you know, but I did not wait
very long. When I failed to get any response, I too, became
suspicious, and proceeded without delay to pick the lock of the
wicket--and it is most fortunate that the wicket was unprovided with a
bolt, which would have delayed me very considerably. You know the
rest. When I shouted your name you must have tried to answer, for I
caught a kind of muffled groan and the sound of tapping, which guided
me and Maggie to your prison. But it was a near thing; for, when I
opened the cellar door, you fell out quite unconscious and accompanied
by a gush of carbon dioxide that was absolutely stifling.”
“Yes,” said I, “it was touch and go. A few minutes more and it would
have been all up with me. I realized that as soon as I recovered
consciousness. But I couldn’t, for the life of me understand why
anybody should want to murder me, and I am not so very clear on the
subject now. I really knew nothing about Maddock.”
“You knew more than anyone else knew, and he thought you knew more
than you did. But perhaps it would be instructive to review the case
in detail.”
“It would be very instructive to me,” said Jervis, “for I don’t, even
now, see how you managed to bridge over those gaps that stopped me in
my attempts to make a hypothesis that covered all the circumstances.”
“Very well,” said Thorndyke, “then we will begin at the beginning; and
the beginning, for me, was the finding of Jardine, as I have described
it. Here was a pretty plain case of attempted murder, evidently
premeditated and apparently committed by some person who had access to
these works; evidently, also, conceived and planned with considerable
knowledge, skill and foresight, though with how much foresight I did
not realize until I had heard Jardine’s story. When I had Jardine’s
account of the affair, I saw that the crime had been planned with
quite remarkable ingenuity and judgment; in fact, the circumstances
had been so carefully considered, and contingencies so well provided
for that, but for a single tactical error the plan would have
succeeded. That error was in making the pretended emergency a surgical
injury. If the letter to Jardine had stated that a man was in a fit,
instead of suffering from a wound, our friend would have had no need
to call at the surgery for appliances but would have gone straight to
the works. And there, in all probability, his body would still be
lying, for no one would have known whither he had gone; and even if
his body had been accidentally discovered, all traces of the means by
which he had been killed would probably have been removed. There would
have been nothing to show that he had not strayed into the deserted
factory and turned on the gas himself; indeed, it is pretty certain
that matters would have been so arranged as to convey that impression
to the persons who made the discovery.”
“There was the letter,” said I. “That would have given things away to
some extent.”
“But you would have had it in your pocket, from which he would, of
course, have removed it. We may be sure that he had not overlooked the
letter. It was the need for surgical appliances that he had
overlooked; but, in spite of this error, the plan was ingenious,
subtle, and clearly not the work of an ignorant man.
“And here I would point out to you that this latter fact was one of
great importance in searching for the solution of the mystery. We knew
something of our man. He was subtle, resourceful, and absolutely
ruthless. Noting this, I was prepared, in pursuing the case, to find
his other actions characterized by subtlety, resourcefulness and
ruthlessness. His further actions were not going to be those of a
dullard or an ignoramus.
“But this was not all the information that I had concerning the
personality of this unknown villain. Jervis and I looked over the
cellars that same night within an hour and a half of the rescue and
before anything had been moved. We were then in a position to infer
that the unknown was probably a somewhat tall man and above the
average of strength, as shown by the weight, position and arrangement
of the iron bottles. Moreover, since there was no faintest trace of a
finger-print on any of them, it followed that some precaution against
them--such as gloves--had been adopted; which again suggested either a
professional criminal or a person well acquainted with criminal
methods.
“So much for the man. As to the rest of the information that I
obtained by looking into the cellar, it seemed at the time meagre
enough; and yet, when considered by the light of Jardine’s statement,
it turned out to be of vital importance. You remember what it was,
Jardine? That cellar contained certain objects. They seemed very
unilluminating and commonplace, but, according to my invariable
custom, I considered them attentively and made a written list of them.
Do you remember what they were?”
“Yes, quite well. There were ten empty cylinders, a spanner, a
packing-case--”
“What were the dimensions of the case?” Thorndyke interrupted.
“Seven feet long by two and a half wide and deep. Then there were a
couple of waterproof sheets and a quantity of straw. That is the lot,
I think, and I’ll be hanged if I can see what any of them--excepting
the three cylinders that were used for my benefit--have to do with the
case. Can you, Jervis?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” he replied. “They are all such very ordinary
objects.”
“Ordinary or not,” said Thorndyke, “there they were; and I made a note
of them on the principle--which I am continually impressing on my
students--that you can never judge in advance what the evidential
value of any fact will be, and on the further principle that, in
estimating evidence, there is no such thing as a commonplace fact or
object.
“Until I had heard Jardine’s account of the affair there was not much
to be gained by thinking about the possibilities that it presented.
There was, however, one point to be settled, and I dealt with it at
once. My slight inspection of the works had shown that no business was
being carried on in them; and the question was whether they were
completely untenanted or whether there was some person who had regular
access to them. My enquiries resulted, as you know, in the unearthing
of the mysterious Mr. Gill, but what his relation to the affair might
be I was not, at the moment, in a position to judge.
“Then came our talk with Jardine, from which emerged the fact that the
ordinary motives of murder apparently did not exist in this case, and
that the crime appeared to have its origin in circumstances that had
arisen locally and recently. And, on our proceeding to search for such
conditions as might conceivably generate an adequate motive, we
lighted on a case of cremation.
“Now, it is my habit, whenever I have to deal with death which has
been followed by cremation, to approach the case with the utmost
caution and scrutinize the circumstances most narrowly. For, admirable
as is this method of disposing of the dead regarded from a hygienic
standpoint, it has the fatal defect of lending itself most perfectly
to the more subtle forms of murder, and especially to the
administration of poison. By cremation all traces of the alkaloids,
the toxines and the other organic poisons are utterly destroyed, while
of the metals, the three whose compounds are most commonly employed
for criminal purposes, arsenic, antimony and mercury--are volatilized
by heat and would be more or less completely dissipated during the
incineration of the body. It is true that the most elaborate
precautions in the form of examination and certification are
prescribed--and usually taken, I presume--before cremation is
performed; but, as every medical jurist knows, precautions taken
before the event are useless, for, to be effective, they have to cover
every possible cause of death, which would be impracticable. Hence, as
suspicion, in case of poisoning, commonly does not arise until some
time after death, I always give the closest consideration to the
antecedent circumstances in cases where cremation has been performed.
“But in this case of Jardine’s it was at once obvious that the
circumstances called for the minutest inquiry and that no inquiry had
been made. On the face of it the case was a suspicious one; and the
curious incident that Jardine described made it look more suspicious
still and, moreover, suggested a possible motive for the attempt on
his life. Apparently he had seen, or was believed to have seen,
something that he was not desired to see; something that it was not
intended that anyone should see.
“Now what might that something have been? Apparently it was connected
with the hand or with the part of the arm adjacent to the hand. I
considered the possibilities; and at once they fell into two
categories. That something might have been a wound, an injury, a
hypodermic needle-mark; something, that is to say, related to the
cause of death; or it might have been a mutilation, a deformity, a
finger-ring, a tattoo-mark; something, that is to say, related to the
identity of the deceased. And it followed that the cremation might
have been made use of to conceal either the cause of death or the
identity of the body. But all this was purely speculative. The case
looked suspicious; but there was not a particle of positive evidence
that anything abnormal had occurred.
“At this point Jardine exploded on us his second mystery; that of the
dead cleric at Hampstead. This gave us, at once, an adequate motive
for getting rid of him; for it had every appearance of a case of
murder with successful concealment of the body, and Jardine was the
only witness who could testify to its having occurred. On hearing of
this I was for a moment disposed to dismiss the cremation case; to
consider that the suspicious elements in it had been magnified by our
imaginations in our endeavours to find an explanation of the assault
on Jardine. Moreover, since we now had a sufficient motive for that
assault the cremation case appeared to be outside the scope of the
inquiry.
“But there was a difficulty. It was now six weeks since Jardine had
encountered the body in the lane, and during that time he had been
entirely unmolested. The assault had occurred on his moving into a new
neighbourhood, to which he had come unexpectedly and unannounced.
Moreover, the assault had been committed by some person who either had
access to the factory or was, at least, well acquainted with it and
who, therefore, seemed to be connected with the new neighbourhood; and
it was committed within a few days of the cremation incident.
Furthermore, the assault was manifestly premeditated and prepared; but
yet the circumstances--namely, Jardine’s recent and unexpected
appearance in the neighbourhood--were such as to make it certain that
the crime could have been planned only a day or two before its
execution. Which again seemed to connect it with the cremation case
rather than with the Hampstead case.
“There were two more points. We have seen that Jardine’s would-be
murderer was a subtle, ingenious, resourceful and cautious villain.
But a crime adjusted, to the conditions of cremation is exactly such a
crime as we should expect of such a man; whereas the Hampstead
crime--assuming it to be a crime--appeared to have been a somewhat
clumsy affair, though the successful concealment of the body pointed
to a person of some capacity. So that the former crime was more
congruous with the known personality of the would-be murderer than the
latter.
“The second point was made on further investigation. The day after our
consultation I looked round the neighbourhood with the aid of a
large-scale map; when I discovered that the yard of the factory in
Norton Street backed on the garden of the Samways’ house in Gayton
Street. This, again, suggested a connection between the cremation case
and the assault on Jardine; and the suggestion was so strong that once
more the cremation incident assumed the uppermost place in my mind.
“I considered that case at length. Assuming a crime to have been
committed, what was the probable nature of that crime? Now, cremation,
as I have said, tends to destroy two kinds of evidence, namely: that
relating to the cause of death and that relating to the identity of
the body; whence it follows that the two crimes which it may be used
to conceal are murder and substitution.
“To which of these crimes did the evidence point in the present
instance? Well, we had the undoubted fact that cremation had been
performed pursuant to the expressed wishes of Septimus Maddock, the
man who was alleged to have been cremated. But if it was a case of
murder, the crime must have been hurriedly planned a few days before
the man’s death--that is, after the execution of the will; for we
could assume that Maddock would not have connived at his own murder;
whereas, if it was a case of substitution Maddock, himself, was
probably the actual agent. Considering the circumstances--the
inexplicable, symptomless illness and the unexpected death--the latter
crime was obviously more probable than the former. The illness, in
that case, would be a sham illness deliberately planned to prepare the
way for the introduction of the substituted body.
“Moreover, the attendant circumstances were more in favour of
substitution than of murder. Of the three doctors who saw the body,
only one had seen the living man; and that one, Batson, was more than
half blind and wholly inattentive and neglectful. For the purpose of
substitution, no more perfectly suitable practitioner could have been
selected. The identity of the body was taken for granted--naturally
enough, I admit--and no verification was even thought of. Then, as to
Jardine’s experience. The hand or wrist is not at all a likely region
on which to find either a fatal injury or the trace of a hypodermic
injection; whereas it is a most important region for purposes of
identification. The hand is highly characteristic in itself even when
normal; and there is no part of the body that is so subject to
mutilation or in which mutilations and deformities are so striking, so
conspicuous, and so characteristic. Lost fingers, stiff fingers,
webbed fingers, supernumerary fingers, contracted palm, deformed
nails, brachydactylia and numerous other abnormal conditions are not
only easily recognized, but--since the hand is usually unclothed and
visible--their existence will be known to a large number of persons.
“The evidence, in short, was strongly in favour of substitution as
against murder.
“If, however, the body which was cremated was not that of Maddock,
then it was the body of some other person; that is to say that the
theory of substitution left us with a dead body that was unaccounted
for. And since a dead body implies the death of some person, the
theory of substitution left us with a death unaccounted for and
obviously concealed; that is to say, it raised a strong presumption of
the murder of some unknown person. And here it seemed that our data
came to an end; that we had no material whatever for forming any
hypothesis as to the identity of the person whose dead body we were
assuming to have been substituted for that of Septimus Maddock.
“But while I was thus turning over the possibilities of this cremation
case, the other--the Hampstead case--continued to lurk in the
background of my mind. It was much less hypothetical. There was
positive evidence of some weight that a crime had been committed. And
the circumstances offered a fully adequate motive for getting rid of
Jardine. Thus it was natural that I should raise the question. Was it
possible that the two cases could be in any way connected?
“At the first glance, the suggestion looked absolutely wild. But still
I considered it at length; and then it looked somewhat less wild. The
two cases had this in common, that if a crime had been committed,
Jardine was the sole witness. Moreover, the supposition that the two
cases were connected and incriminated the same parties, greatly
intensified the motive for making away with Jardine. But there was
another and much stronger point in favour of this view. If we adopted
the theory of substitution, it was impossible, on looking at the two
cases, to avoid being struck by the very curious converseness of their
conditions. In the Hampstead case we were dealing with a body which
had suddenly vanished, no one could say whither; in the Maddock case
we were dealing with a body which had suddenly appeared, no one could
say whence.
“When I reflected on this very striking appearance of relation it was
inevitable that I should ask myself the question, Is it conceivable
that these two bodies could have been one and the same? That the body
which was cremated could have been the body which Jardine saw in the
lane?
“Again, at the first glance, the question looked absurd. The first
body was seen by Jardine more than six weeks before the alleged death
of Maddock; and the body which he saw at the Samways’ house was that
of a man newly dead, with _rigor mortis_ just beginning. It was,
indeed barely conceivable that the Hampstead body was not actually
dead and that the man might have lingered on alive for six weeks. But
this suggestion failed to fit the known facts in two respects. In the
first place, the body which Jardine saw in the lane was, from his
description, pretty unmistakably a dead body, and, in the second, the
sham illness of Maddock and the elaborate, leisurely preparations
suggest a complete control of the time factor, which would be absent
if those preparations were adjusted to a dying man who might expire at
any moment.
“Rejecting this suggestion, then, the further question arose, Is it
possible that the body that was seen in the lane could, after an
interval of six weeks, have been produced in Gayton Street, perfectly
fresh and in a state of incipient _rigor mortis_? And when the
question was thus fairly stated, the answer was obviously in the
affirmative. For, is it not a matter of common knowledge that the
bodies of sheep are habitually brought from New Zealand to London,
traversing the whole width of the Tropics in the voyage, and are
delivered, after an interval of more than six weeks, perfectly fresh
and in a state of incipient _rigor mortis_? The physical possibility
was beyond question.
“But if physically possible, was such preservation practicable? Well,
how are the bodies of the sheep preserved? By exposing them
continuously to intense cold. And how is that intense cold produced?
Roughly speaking, by the volatilization of a liquefied gas--ammonia,
in the case of the sheep. But behold! The very man whom we are
suspecting of being the agent in this crime is a man who has command
of large quantities of a liquefied gas, and who has hired a mineral
water factory for no apparent reason and put the premises to no
apparent use.”
At this point Jervis brought his fist down with a bang on the arm of
his chair.
“Idiot!” he exclaimed. “Ass, fool, dolt, imbecile that I am! With
those cylinders staring me in the face, too! Of course, it was that
interval of six weeks that brought me up short. And yet I had actually
heard Jardine describe the cloud of carbon dioxide snow that fell on
his face! Don’t you consider me an absolute donkey, Thorndyke?”
“Certainly not,” replied Thorndyke. “You happened to miss a link and,
of course, the chain would not hold. It occurs to us all now and
again. But, do you see, Jardine, how ‘the stone which the builders
rejected has become the head of the corner’? Don’t you understand how,
when I reached this point, there rose before me the picture of that
cellar with the commonplace objects that it contained? The case, seven
feet by two and a-half--so convenient for preserving a body in a bulky
packing; the two waterproof sheets--so well adapted to holding a mass
of carbon dioxide snow in contact with the body; the mass of
straw--one of the most perfect non-conductors--so admirably fitted for
its use as a protective packing for the frozen body! and lastly, those
ten empty cylinders, of which seven had been used for some purpose
unknown to us? Let this case be a lesson to you, Jardine; not only in
legal medicine but in clinical medicine, too, to take the facts as you
find them--relevant or irrelevant, striking or commonplace--note them
carefully and trust them to find their own places in the inductive
scheme.”
“It has been a most instructive lesson to me,” said I; “especially
your analysis of the reasoning by which you identified the criminal.”
“Hum,” said Thorndyke. “I didn’t know I’d got as far as that.”
“But if the body was preserved in a frozen state, there could not be
much doubt as to who had preserved it.”
“Possibly not,” Thorndyke agreed. “But I had not proved that it _had_
been so preserved, but only that it was possible for it to have been;
and that the supposition of its having been so preserved was in
agreement with the known circumstances of the case. But I must impress
on you that up to this point I was dealing in pure hypothesis. My
hypothesis was perfectly sound, perfectly consistent in all its parts,
and perfectly congruous with all the known facts, but it did not
follow therefore that it was true. It was entirely unverified; for
hitherto I had not one single item of positive evidence to support it.
“Nevertheless, the striking agreement between the hypothesis and the
known facts encouraged me greatly; and, as it was evident that I had
now exhausted the material yielded by the cremation incident, I
decided to take up the clue at the other end; to investigate the
details of the Hampstead affair. To this end I called on Jardine, who
very kindly went over the case with me afresh. And here it was that I
first came within hail of positive evidence. On his wall was pinned an
oil sketch, and on that sketch was a distinct print of a right thumb.
It was beautifully clear; for the paint having been dry on the surface
but soft underneath, had taken the impression as sharply as a surface
of warm wax.
“Now, you will remember that I took possession of the letter which
summoned Jardine to the mineral water works and I may now say that I
tested it most carefully for finger-prints. But paper is a poor
material on which to develop invisible prints owing to its absorbent
nature and I had very indifferent success. Still, I did not fail
entirely. By the combined use of lycopodium powder and photography I
obtained impressions of parts of two finger-tips and a portion of the
end of a right thumb. They were wretched prints but yet available for
corroboration, since one could see part of the pattern on each and
could make out that the ridge-pattern of the thumb was of the kind
known as a ‘twinned loop.’
“Bearing this fact in mind, you will understand that I was quite
interested to find that the print on the sketch--also that of a right
thumb--had a twinned loop pattern. I noted the fact as a coincidence,
but, of course, attached no importance to it until Jardine told me
that the artist who painted the sketch habitually worked in gloves;
and even then I merely made a mental note that I would ascertain who
and what the artist was.
“I need not go over our examination of the scene of the crime. I need
only say that I was deeply interested in following the track along
which the body had been carried because I was on the look-out for
something; and that something was a house or other building in which
the body might have been temporarily deposited.
“My hypothesis seemed to demand such a building. For, since the body
was quite fresh and _rigor mortis_ was only beginning when Jardine saw
it at Gayton Street, it must have been frozen very shortly after
death. Now, it obviously could not have been carried from Hampstead to
Gayton Street on a man’s back; the alternative is either a vehicle
waiting at an appointed place--and necessarily not far away--or a
house or other building to which the body could be taken. But the
vehicle would, under the circumstances be almost impracticable. It
would hardly be possible to make an appointment with any exactness as
to time; and the presence of a waiting or loitering vehicle would, at
such an hour--it was about midnight, you will remember--be almost
certain to arouse suspicion and inquiry.
“On the other hand, a house to which the body could be conveyed would
meet the conditions perfectly. When once the body was deposited there,
the danger of pursuit would be practically at an end; and it would be
quite possible to have a supply of the liquid gas ready for use on its
arrival. This is assuming long premeditation and very deliberate
preparation; an assumption supported by Gill’s peculiar tenancy of the
factory.
“I, therefore, kept a sharp look-out for a likely house or building;
and, as Jardine and I came out of Ken Wood by the turnstile, behold! a
house which answered the requirements to perfection. It was a solitary
house; there was no other house near; and it lay right on the track
along which the body had apparently been carried. Instantly, I decided
to investigate the recent history of that house and its tenants; but
Jardine saved me the trouble. From him I learned that, at the time of
the assumed murder, it had been inhabited by the artist whom he had
mentioned, but that it had now been empty for a week or two.
“Here were news indeed! This artist, who habitually wore gloves and
whose right thumb-print was a twinned loop, had been living in this
house at the time of the assumed murder, but had been living elsewhere
at the time of the cremation! It was a striking group of facts, and I
eagerly availed myself of the opportunity of looking over the house.
“At first, the examination was quite barren and disappointing. The
man’s habits, as shown by the few discarded articles of use or other
traces, were of no interest to me--and still less to Jardine; and of
traces of his personality there were none. I searched all the rejected
canvases and every available scrap of paper in the hope of collecting
some fresh finger-prints, but without the smallest result. In fact,
the examination looked like being an utter failure up to the very
last, when we entered the stable-loft; but here I came upon one or two
really significant traces of occupation.
“The first of these was a smooth, indented line on the floor, as if
some heavy, metallic object had been dragged along it, with other,
rougher lines, apparently made by a heavy wooden case. Then there was
a quantity of straw, not new straw such as you might expect to find in
a stable-loft, but straw that had evidently been used for packing.
And, finally, there was a pair of canvas pliers which appeared to have
been strained by a violent effort to rotate from right to left some
hard, metallic body, three quarters of an inch wide, with sharp
corners and apparently square in section; some body, in fact, that in
shape, in size and apparently in material, was identical with the
square of the cock on one of the liquid gas bottles; which appeared to
have been connected with a screw thread and had clearly required great
force to turn it with this inadequate appliance.
“The evidence collected from the loft, suggesting that a large case
had been moved in and out and that a gas cylinder had been opened, you
will say was of the flimsiest. And so it was. But the effects of
evidence are cumulative. To estimate the value of these observations
made in the loft, you must add them to the facts just obtained
concerning the artist himself, the position of his house and the date
on which he vacated it; and these coincidences and agreements must be
added to--or, more strictly, multiplied into--the body of coincidences
and agreements which I have already described.
“But the evidence collected at the house was the least important part
of the day’s ‘catch.’ On returning to Jardine’s rooms I ventured to
borrow the sketch and took it home with me; and when I compared the
thumb-print on it with the photograph of the thumb-print on the
letter--employing the excellent method of comparison that is in use at
Scotland Yard--there could be no possible doubt (disregarding for the
moment, the chances of forgery) that they were the prints of one and
the same thumb.
“Here, then, at last I had stepped out of the region of mere
hypothesis. Here was an item of positive evidence, and one, moreover,
of high probative value. It proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, the
existence of some connection between the house on the Heath and the
factory in Norton Street; and it established a strong presumption that
the artist and the man at the factory were the same person; the weak
point in this being the absence of proof that the thumb-print on the
painting was made by the artist.
“And here, Jardine, I would draw your attention to the interesting way
in which, when a long train of hypothetical reasoning has at length
elicited an actual, demonstrable truth, that truth instantly reacts on
the hypothesis, lifting it as a whole on to an entirely different
plane of probability. I may compare the effect to that of a crystal,
dropped into a super-saturated solution of a salt, such as sodium
sulphate. So long as it is at rest, the solution remains a clear
liquid; but drop into it the minutest crystal of its own salt, and, in
a few moments the entire liquid has solidified into a mass of
crystals.
“So it was in the present case. In the instant when it became an
established fact that the house at Hampstead and the factory in Norton
Street had been occupied by the same person, the entire sequence of
events which I had hypothetically constructed, sprang from the plane
of mere conceivability to that of actual probability. It was now more
likely than unlikely that the unknown cleric had been murdered, that
his body had been conveyed to the artist’s house, that it had there
been frozen, transferred to the factory, preserved there for some
weeks, passed over the wall to the Samways’ house, and finally
cremated under the name of Septimus Maddock.
“All that now remained to be done was the verification and
identification of the body. As to the first, I examined the will at
Somerset House and found it, as the American detectives suspected, a
mere notification to the New York authorities that Septimus Maddock
was dead. I wrote to the detective agency and in due course came
O’Donnell with the answers to my questions; from which we learned for
certain that the artist was Septimus Maddock and that the assumed
peculiarity of the hands consisted of brachydactylia. And then came
the good Father Humperdinck to enable us to give a name to the body
and to furnish us with that unlooked for means of identification.
Henceforward, all was plain sailing with only one possible source of
failure; the possibility that the bullet might have been subsequently
extracted. But this was highly improbable. We knew that the wound had
healed completely, and it was pretty certain that the bullet was lying
quietly encysted or embedded in the bone. Still, I will confess that I
have never in my life been more relieved than I was when my eyes
lighted on that dent in the ilium with the stain of lead oxide round
it.”
“So I can imagine,” said Jervis. “It was a triumph; and you deserved
it. I have never known even my revered senior to work out the theory
of a crime more neatly or with less positive matter to work from. And
I suppose you have a pretty clear and connected idea of the actual
sequence of events.”
“I think so,” replied Thorndyke, “although much of it is necessarily
conjectural. I take it that Maddock, while hiding in Bruges under the
name of Burton, made the acquaintance of Reinhardt, and saw in the
rich, friendless, eccentric bachelor a suitable subject for a crime
which he had probably already considered in general terms. I should
think that they were probably somewhat alike in appearance and that
the idea of personation was first suggested by the circumstance that
they both wore gloves habitually. Maddock will have learned of
Reinhardt’s intended visit to England and immediately begun his
preparations. His scheme--and a most ingenious one it was, I must
confess--was clearly to cause Reinhardt to disappear in one locality
and produce his body after a considerable interval in another at some
distance; and the house on the Heath was apparently taken with this
object and to be near Reinhardt’s haunts. I take it, that on the night
of the murder, Reinhardt had an appointment to visit him at that
house, but that, having learned at Miss Vyne’s of the sudden illness
of Brother Bartholomew, he suddenly altered his plans and refused to
go. Then Maddock--who had probably waited for him on the road--seeing
his scheme on the point of being wrecked, walked with him as he was
going home and took the risk of killing him in Millfield Lane. The
risk was not great, considering the time of night and the solitary
character of the place, and the distance from the house was not too
great for a strong man, as Maddock seems to have been, to carry the
body.
“Death was almost certainly produced by a stab in the back; and
Maddock was probably just about to carry the body away when destiny,
in the form of Jardine, appeared. Then Maddock must have lurked,
probably behind the fence which had the large hole in it, until
Jardine went away, when he must instantly have picked up the body,
carried it down the lane, pushed it over the fence--detaching the
reliquary as he did so--carried it away to the house, stripped it and
proceeded at once to freeze it, having provided a bottle of the gas in
readiness.
“The next morning he will have gone to Marchmont’s office--probably
dressed in Reinhardt’s clothes, from thence to Charing Cross, and,
with Reinhardt’s luggage, gone straight on to Paris, leaving the body
packed in an abundance of the carbonic acid snow. At Paris he will
have made his arrangements with Desiré and then disappeared,
returning in disguise to England to carry out the rest of the plan.
And a wonderfully clever plan it was, and most ingeniously and
resolutely executed. If it had succeeded--and it was within a hair’s
breath of succeeding--the hunted criminal, Maddock, would have been
beyond the reach of Justice for ever, and the fictitious Reinhardt
might have lived out his life in luxury and absolute security.”
As Thorndyke concluded, he rose from his chair, and, stepping over to
a cabinet, drew from some inner recess a cigar of melanotic complexion
and repulsive aspect.
Jervis looked at it and chuckled.
“Thorndyke’s one dissipation,” said he. “At the close of every
successful case he proceeds, as a sort of thanksgiving ceremony, to
funk us out of these chambers with the smoke of a Trichinopoly
cheroot. But listen! Don’t light it yet, Thorndyke. Here comes some
harmless and inoffensive stranger.”
Thorndyke paused with the cigar in his fingers. A quick step ascended
the stairs and then came a sharp, official rat-tat from the little
brass knocker. Thorndyke laid the cigar on the mantelpiece and strode
over to the door. I saw him take in a telegram, open it, glance at the
paper and dismiss the messenger. Then, closing the door, he came back
to the fireside with the “flimsy” in his hand.
“There, Jardine,” said he, laying it on my knee; “there is your order
of release.”
I picked up the paper and read aloud its curt message.
“Maddock arrested Folkestone now in custody Bow Street.
“Miller.”
“That means to say,” said Thorndyke, “that the halter is already
around his neck. I think I may light my Trichinopoly now.”
And he did so.
There is little more to tell. This has been a history of coincidences
and one more coincidence brings it to a close. The very day on which
my formal engagement to Sylvia was made public, chanced to be the day
on which the execution of Septimus Maddock was described in the
papers. On that day, too, the portrait of poor Letitia, painted by
that skilful and murderous hand, was placed in the handsome ebony
frame that I had caused to be made for it. As I write these closing
words, it hangs before me, flanked on either side by the little jar of
violets that are renewed religiously from day to day by my wife or me.
The pale, inscrutable eyes look out on me, her friend whom she loved
so faithfully and who so little merited her love; but as I look into
them, the picture fades and shows me the same face glorified, waxen,
pallid, drowsy-eyed, peaceful and sweet--the dead face of the woman
who gave her heart’s blood as the price of my ransom, and who was
fated then to pass--out of my life indeed, but out of my heart’s
shrine and my most loving remembrance, never.
THE END
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
The edition hosted on Project Gutenberg Australia (publisher and date
not given) was consulted for some of the changes given below.
Minor spelling inconsistencies (e.g. footstep/foot-step, hair’s
breadth/hairs-breadth, inadmissable/inadmissible, runaway/run-away,
etc.) have been preserved.
Alterations to the text:
Punctuation: fix some quotation mark pairings/nestings, some missing
periods and commas, etc.
Change five instances of “the Samway’s house” to “the Samways’ house.”
[Chapter I]
(“Which way were you going when you came on the body.”) change the
period to a question mark.
[Chapter III]
Change “Quite the orthodox _get up_.” to _get-up_.
[Chapter IV]
(“No facial signs? Nothing unusual in his _color_ or expression?”) to
_colour_.
(“By _jove_!” exclaimed Batson, “this business has upset) to _Jove_.
[Chapter V]
“Camden Town is not a very attractive _neighborhood_” to
_neighbourhood_.
“her appearance suggested was strength--sheer, muscular, strength”
delete the last comma.
[Chapter VI]
(“I suppose I can do the surgery work?” said I.) change the question
mark to a comma.
“and a man named _O’Conner_ confirmed his certificate after examining”
to _O’Connor_.
“and bring in a crowd of beastly _reports_ humming about the place” to
_reporters_.
[Chapter VII]
(“The worthy Gill,” said _Jarvis_, “seems to have been) to _Jervis_.
[Chapter VIII]
“letting one’s fancy furnish them with one’s own household _gods_” to
_goods_.
“shut in by these high fences. I heard quick footsteps behind me”
change the period to a comma.
“I can tell you much about this man excepting _the_ he was” to _that_.
[Chapter IX]
“The next question is, how was the body taken away.” change the period
to a question mark.
[Chapter X]
“scope of the acquaintance; on which, Miss Vyne remarked that” delete
the comma.
[Chapter XIII]
“as if to inspect the end of the shop window, and Sylvia exclaimed.”
change the period to a colon.
[Chapter XIV]
“I want to know how you came to be in _Folkstone_ and in that” to
_Folkestone_.
(“I didn’t think you had noticed my negligé _get up_.”) to _get-up_.
“front of the window while a discreet, reticence is maintained” delete
the comma.
(“By the way, where did you see us? I didn’t see you?”) change the
second question mark to a period.
[Chapter XV]
“but don’t you think it would be simpler… and shadow him!” change
the exclamation mark to a question mark.
“But wouldn’t it be simpler to run the Johnnie in, in any case.”
change the period to a question mark.
“and highly corrugated smile, he opened his mouth and _spake_” to
_spoke_.
“the Doctor tells me, to take _Sanctuary_ for a time with us” to
_sanctuary_.
“saw my watch hanging from a nail, with a rating _tabled_ pinned above
it” to _table_.
(And,” he continued, as Polton retired with a gratified smile “I am)
add comma after _smile_.
[Chapter XVI]
“But our career in the field, was not a long one.” delete the comma.
“The habit began when he had some _affection_ of the skin” to
_affliction_.
“bestowed on Jervis and me a _ceremoniout_ bow and moved towards” to
_ceremonious_.
[Chapter XVII]
“And what answers do you _sugest_ to the questions that Marchmont” to
_suggest_.
“what took place in the sacred _precints_ of my principal’s chambers”
to _precincts_.
[Chapter XVIII]
(“Reasoning, you know; Mr. O’Donnell,” he continued, “is somewhat)
change the semicolon to a comma.
[Chapter XX]
“and, after a few _moment’s_ cogitation, turned once more to” to
_moments’_.
[Chapter XXI]
(“zis _villian_ has a double grime gommitted; he has murdered a goot”)
to _villain_.
[Chapter XXII]
“evidently, anticipating the inevitable discussion, on the results of”
delete the second comma.
“The case, seven feet by two and _a-Half_--so convenient for” to
_a-half_.
[End of text]