A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY
It was two or three mornings after my little supper party that, as I
stood in the consulting-room brushing my hat preparatory to starting on
my morning round, Adolphus appeared at the door to announce two
gentlemen waiting in the surgery. I told him to bring them in, and a
moment later Thorndyke entered, accompanied by Jervis. I noted that
they looked uncommonly large in that little apartment, especially
Thorndyke, but I had no time to consider this phenomenon, for the
latter, when he had shaken my hand, proceeded at once to explain the
object of their visit.
"We have come to ask a favor, Berkeley," he said; "to ask you to do us
a very great service in the interests of your friends the Bellinghams."
"You know I shall be delighted," I said warmly. "What is it?"
"I will explain. You know--or perhaps you don't--that the police have
collected all the bones that have been discovered and deposited them in
the mortuary at Woodford, where they are to be viewed by the coroner's
jury. Now, it has become imperative that I should have more definite
and reliable information than I can get from the newspapers. The
natural thing for me would be to go down and examine them myself, but
there are circumstances that make it very desirable that my connection
with the case should not leak out. Consequently, I can't go myself,
and, for the same reason, I can't send Jervis. On the other hand, as
it is now stated pretty openly that the police consider the bones to be
almost certainly those of John Bellingham, it would seem perfectly
natural that you, as Godfrey Bellingham's doctor, should go down to
view them on his behalf."
"I should like to," I said. "I would give anything to go; but how is
it to be managed? It would mean a whole day off and leaving the
practise to look after itself."
"I think it could be managed," said Thorndyke; "and the matter is
really important for two reasons. One is that the inquest opens
to-morrow, and some one certainly ought to be there to watch the
proceedings on Godfrey's behalf; and the other is that our client has
received notice from Hurst's solicitors that the application will be
heard in the Probate Court in a few days."
"Isn't that rather sudden?" I asked.
"It certainly suggests that there has been a good deal more activity
than we were given to understand. But you see the importance of the
affair. The inquest will be a sort of dress rehearsal for the Probate
Court, and it is quite essential that we should have a chance of
estimating the management."
"Yes, I see that. But how are we to manage about the practise?"
"We shall find you a substitute."
"Through a medical agent?"
"Yes," said Jervis, "Turcival will find us a man; in fact, he has done
it. I saw him this morning; he has a man who is waiting up in town to
negotiate for the purchase of a practise and who would do the job for a
couple of guineas. Quite a reliable man. Only say the word, and I
will run off to Adam Street and engage him definitely."
"Very well. You engage the locum tenens, and I will be prepared to
start for Woodford as soon as he turns up."
"Excellent!" said Thorndyke. "That is a great weight off my mind. And
if you could manage to drop in this evening and smoke a pipe with us we
could talk over the plan of campaign and let you know what items of
information we are particularly in want of."
I promised to turn up at King's Bench Walk as soon after half-past
eight as possible, and my two friends then took their departure,
leaving me to set out in high spirits on my scanty round of visits.
It is surprising what different aspects things present from different
points of view; how relative are our estimates of the conditions and
circumstances of life. To the urban workman--the journeyman baker or
tailor, for instance, laboring year in year out in a single building--a
holiday ramble on Hampstead Heath is a veritable voyage of discovery;
whereas to the sailor the shifting panorama of the whole wide world is
but the commonplace of the day's work.
So I reflected as I took my place in the train at Liverpool Street on
the following day. There had been a time when a trip by rail to the
borders of Epping Forest would have been far from a thrilling
experience; now, after vegetating in the little world of Fetter Lane,
it was quite an adventure.
The enforced inactivity of a railway journey is favorable to thought,
and I had much to think about. The last few weeks had witnessed
momentous changes in my outlook. New interests had arisen, new
friendships had grown up, and above all, there had stolen into my life
that supreme influence that, for good or for evil, according to my
fortune, was to color and pervade it even to its close. Those few days
of companionable labor in the reading-room, with the homely
hospitalities of the milk-shop and the pleasant walks homeward through
the friendly London streets, had called into existence a new world--a
world in which the gracious personality of Ruth Bellingham was the one
dominating reality. And thus, as I leaned back in the corner of the
railway carriage with an unlighted pipe in my hand, the events of the
immediate past, together with those more problematical ones of the
impending future, occupied me rather to the exclusion of the business
of the moment, which was to review the remains collected in the
Woodford mortuary, until, as the train approached Stratford, the odors
of the soap and bone-manure factories poured in at the open window and
(by a natural association of ideas) brought me back to the object of my
quest.
As to the exact purpose of this expedition, I was not very clear; but I
knew that I was acting as Thorndyke's proxy and thrilled with pride at
the thought. But what particular light my investigations were to throw
upon the intricate Bellingham case I had no very definite idea. With a
view to fixing the procedure in my mind, I took Thorndyke's written
instructions from my pocket and read them over carefully. They were
very full and explicit, making ample allowance for my lack of
experience in medico-legal matters:--
"1. Do not appear to make minute investigations or in any way excite
remark.
"2. Ascertain if all the bones belonging to each region are present,
and if not, which are missing.
"3. Measure the extreme length of the principal bones and compare those
of opposite sides.
"4. Examine the bones with reference to age, sex, and muscular
development of the deceased.
"5. Note the presence or absence of signs of constitutional disease,
local disease of bone or adjacent structures, old or recent injuries,
and any other departures from the normal or usual.
"6. Observe the presence or absence of adipocere and its position, if
present.
"7. Note any remains of tendons, ligaments or other soft structures.
"8. Examine the Sidcup hand with reference to the question as to
whether the finger was separated before or after death.
"9. Estimate the probable period of submersion and note any changes (as
e.g., mineral or organic staining) due to the character of the water or
mud.
"10. Ascertain the circumstances (immediate and remote) that led to the
discovery of the bones and the names of the persons concerned in those
circumstances.
"11. Commit all information to writing as soon as possible, and make
plans and diagrams on the spot, if circumstances permit.
"12. Preserve an impassive exterior: listen attentively but without
eagerness; ask as few questions as possible; pursue any inquiry that
your observations on the spot may suggest."
These were my instructions, and, considering that I was going merely to
inspect a few dry bones, they appeared rather formidable; in fact, the
more I read them over the greater became my misgivings as to my
qualifications for the task.
As I approached the mortuary it became evident that some, at least, of
Thorndyke's admonitions were by no means unnecessary. The place was in
charge of a police sergeant, who watched my approach suspiciously; and
some half-dozen men, obviously newspaper reporters, hovered about the
entrance like a pack of jackals. I presented the coroner's order which
Mr. Marchmont had obtained, and which the sergeant read with his back
against the wall, to prevent the newspaper men from looking over his
shoulder.
My credentials being found satisfactory, the door was unlocked and I
entered, accompanied by three enterprising reporters, whom, however,
the sergeant summarily ejected and locked out, returning to usher me
into the presence and to observe my proceedings with intelligent but
highly embarrassing interest.
The bones were laid out on a large table and covered with a sheet,
which the sergeant slowly turned back, watching my face intently as he
did so to note the impression that the spectacle made upon me. I
imagine that he must have been somewhat disappointed by my impassive
demeanor, for the remains suggested to me nothing more than a rather
shabby set of "student's osteology." The whole collection had been set
out by the police surgeon (as the sergeant informed me) in their proper
anatomical order; notwithstanding which I counted them over carefully
to make sure that none were missing, checking them by the list with
which Thorndyke had furnished me.
"I see you have found the left thigh-bone," I remarked, observing that
this did not appear in the list.
"Yes," said the sergeant; "that turned up yesterday evening in a big
pond called Baldwin's Pond in the Sandpit plain, near Little Monk Wood."
"Is that near here?" I asked.
"In the forest up Loughton way," was the reply.
I made a note of the fact (on which the sergeant looked as if he was
sorry he had mentioned it), and then turned my attention to a general
consideration of the bones before examining them in detail. Their
appearance would have been improved and examination facilitated by a
thorough scrubbing, for they were just as they had been taken from
their respective resting-places, and it was difficult to decide whether
their reddish-yellow color was an actual stain or due to a deposit on
the surface. In any case, as it affected them all alike, I thought it
an interesting feature and made a note of it. They bore numerous
traces of their sojourn in the various ponds from which they had been
recovered, but these gave me little help in determining the length of
time during which they had been submerged. They were, of course,
encrusted with mud, and little wisps of pond-weed stuck to them in
places; but these facts furnished only the vaguest measure of time.
Some of the traces were, indeed, more informing. To several of the
bones, for instance, there adhered the dried egg-clusters of the common
pond-snail, and in one of the hollows of the right shoulder-blade (the
"infraspinous fossa") was a group of the mud-built tubes of the red
river-worm. These remains gave proof of a considerable period of
submersion, and since they could not have been deposited on the bones
until all the flesh had disappeared they furnished evidence that some
time--a month or two at any rate--had elapsed since this had happened.
Incidentally, too, their distribution showed the position in which the
bones had lain, and though this appeared to be of no importance in the
existing circumstances, I made careful notes of the situation of each
adherent body, illustrating their position by rough sketches.
The sergeant watched my proceedings with an indulgent smile.
"You're making a regular inventory, sir," he remarked, "as if you were
going to put 'em up for auction. I shouldn't think those snails' eggs
would be much help in identification. And all that has been done
already," he added as I produced my measuring-tape.
"No doubt," I replied; "but my business is to make independent
observations, to check the others, if necessary." And I proceeded to
measure each of the principal bones separately and to compare those of
the opposite sides. The agreement in dimensions and general
characteristics of the pairs of bones left little doubt that all were
parts of one skeleton, a conclusion that was confirmed by the eburnated
patch on the head of the right thigh-bone and the corresponding patch
in the socket of the right hip-bone. When I had finished my
measurements I went over the entire series of bones in detail,
examining each with the closest attention for any of those signs which
Thorndyke had indicated, and eliciting nothing but a monotonously
reiterated negative. They were distressingly and disappointingly
normal.
"Well, sir, what do you make of 'em?" the sergeant asked cheerfully as
I shut up my notebook and straightened my back. "Whose bones are they?
Are they Mr. Bellingham's, think ye?"
"I should be very sorry to say whose bones they are," I replied. "One
bone is very much like another, you know."
"I suppose it is," he agreed; "but I thought that, with all that
measuring and all those notes, you might have arrived at something
definite." Evidently he was disappointed in me; and I was somewhat
disappointed in myself when I contrasted Thorndyke's elaborate
instructions with the meager result of my investigations. For what did
my discoveries amount to? And how much was the inquiry advanced by the
few entries in my notebook?
The bones were apparently those of a man of fair though not remarkable
muscular development; over thirty years of age, but how much older I
was unable to say. His height I judged roughly to be five feet eight
inches, but my measurements would furnish data for a more exact
estimate by Thorndyke. Beyond this the bones were quite
uncharacteristic. There were no signs of disease either local or
general, no indications of injuries either old or recent, no departures
of any kind from the normal or usual; and the dismemberment had been
effected with such care that there was not a single scratch on any of
the separate surfaces. Of adipocere (the peculiar waxy or soapy
substance that is commonly found in bodies that have slowly decayed in
damp situations) there was not a trace; and the only remnant of the
soft structures was a faint indication, like a spot of dried glue, of
the tendon on the tip of the right elbow.
The sergeant was in the act of replacing the sheet, with the air of a
showman who has just given an exhibition, when there came a sharp
rapping on the mortuary door. The officer finished spreading the sheet
with official precision, and having ushered me out into the lobby
turned the key and admitted three persons, holding the door open after
they had entered for me to go out. But the appearance of the newcomers
inclined me to linger. One of them was a local constable, evidently in
official charge; a second was a laboring man, very wet and muddy, who
carried a small sack; while in the third I thought I scented a
professional brother.
The sergeant continued to hold the door open.
"Nothing more I can do for you, sir?" he asked genially.
"Is that the divisional surgeon?" I inquired.
"Yes. I am the divisional surgeon," the newcomer answered. "Did you
want anything of me?"
"This," said the sergeant, "is a medical gentleman who has got
permission from the coroner to inspect the remains. He is acting for
the family of the deceased--I mean, for the family of Mr. Bellingham,"
he added in answer to an inquiring glance from the surgeon.
"I see," said the latter. "Well, they have found the rest of the
trunk, including, I understand, the ribs that were missing from the
other part. Isn't that so, Davis?"
"Yes, sir," replied the constable. "Inspector Badger says all the ribs
is here, and all the bones of the neck as well."
"The inspector seems to be an anatomist," I remarked.
The sergeant grinned. "He is a very knowing gentleman, is Mr. Badger.
He came down here this morning quite early and spent a long time
looking over the bones and checking them by some notes in his
pocket-book. I fancy he's got something on, but he was precious close
about it."
Here the sergeant shut up rather suddenly--perhaps contrasting his own
conduct with that of his superior.
"Let us have these new bones out on the table," said the police
surgeon. "Take the sheet off, and don't shoot them out as if they were
coals. Hand them out carefully."
The laborer fished out the wet and muddy bones one by one from the
sack, and as he laid them on the table the surgeon arranged them in
their proper relative positions.
"This has been a neatly executed job," he remarked; "none of your
clumsy hacking with a chopper or a saw. The bones have been cleanly
separated at the joints. The fellow who did this must have had some
anatomical knowledge, unless he was a butcher, which by the way, is not
impossible. He has used his knife uncommonly skilfully, and you notice
that each arm was taken off with the scapula attached, just as a
butcher takes off a shoulder of mutton. Are there any more bones in
that bag?"
"No, sir," replied the laborer, wiping his hands with an air of
finality on the posterior aspect of his trousers; "that's the lot."
The surgeon looked thoughtfully at the bones as he gave a final touch
to their arrangement, and remarked:
"The inspector is right. All the bones of the neck are there. Very
odd. Don't you think so?"
"You mean----"
"I mean that this very eccentric murderer seems to have given himself
such an extraordinary amount of trouble for no reason that one can see.
There are these neck vertebrae, for instance. He must have carefully
separated the skull from the atlas instead of just cutting through the
neck. Then there is the way he divided the trunk; the twelfth ribs
have just come in with this lot, but the twelfth dorsal vertebra to
which they belong was attached to the lower half. Imagine the trouble
he must have taken to do that, and without cutting or hacking the bones
about, either. It is extraordinary. This is rather interesting, by
the way. Handle it carefully."
He picked up the breast-bone daintily--for it was covered with wet
mud--and handed it to me with the remark:
"That is the most definite piece of evidence we have."
"You mean," I said, "that the union of the two parts into a single mass
fixes this as the skeleton of an elderly man?"
"Yes, that is the obvious suggestion, which is confirmed by the deposit
of bone in the rib-cartilages. You can tell the inspector, Davis, that
I have checked this lot of bones and that they are all here."
"Would you mind writing it down, sir?" said the constable. "Inspector
Badger said I was to have everything in writing."
The surgeon took out his pocket-book, and, while he was selecting a
suitable piece of paper, he asked: "Did you form any opinion as to the
height of the deceased?"
"Yes, I thought he would be about five feet eight" (here I caught the
sergeant's eyes, fixed on me with a knowing leer).
"I made it five eight and a half," said the police surgeon; "but we
shall know better when we have seen the lower leg-bones. Where was
this lot found, Davis?"
"In the pond just off the road in Lord's Bushes, sir, and the inspector
has gone off now to----"
"Never mind where he's gone," interrupted the sergeant. "You just
answer questions and attend to your business."
The sergeant's reproof conveyed a hint to me on which I was not slow to
act. Friendly as my professional colleague was, it was clear that the
police were disposed to treat me as an interloper who was to be kept
out of the "know" as far as possible. Accordingly I thanked my
colleague and the sergeant for their courtesy, and bidding them adieu
until we should meet at the inquest, took my departure and walked away
quickly until I found an inconspicuous position from which I could keep
the door of the mortuary in view. A few moments later I saw Constable
Davis emerge and stride away up the road.
I watched his rapidly diminishing figure until he had gone as far as I
considered desirable, and then I set forth in his wake. The road led
straight away from the village, and in less than half a mile entered
the outskirts of the forest. Here I quickened my pace to close up
somewhat, and it was well that I did so, for suddenly he diverged from
the road into a green lane, where for a while I lost sight of him.
Still hurrying forward, I again caught sight of him just as he turned
off into a narrow path that entered a beech wood with a thickish
undergrowth of holly, along which I followed him for several minutes,
gradually decreasing the distance between us, until suddenly there fell
on my ear a rhythmical sound like the clank of a pump. Soon after I
caught the sound of men's voices, and then the constable struck off the
path into the wood.
I now advanced more cautiously, endeavoring to locate the search party
by the sound of the pump, and when I had done this I made a little
detour so that I might approach from the opposite direction to that
from which the constable had appeared.
Still guided by the noise of the pump, I at length came out into a
small opening among the trees and halted to survey the scene. The
center of the opening was occupied by a small pond, not more than a
dozen yards across, by the side of which stood a builder's handcart.
The little two-wheeled vehicle had evidently been used to convey the
appliances which were deposited on the ground near it, and which
consisted of a large tub--now filled with water--a shovel, a rake, a
sieve, and a portable pump, the latter being fitted with a long
delivery hose. There were three men besides the constable, one of whom
was working the handle of the pump, while another was glancing at a
paper that the constable had just delivered to him. He looked up
sharply as I appeared, and viewed me with unconcealed disfavor.
"Hallo, sir!" said he. "You can't come here."
Now, seeing that I was actually here, this was clearly a mistake, and I
ventured to point out the fallacy.
"Well, I can't allow you to stay here. Our business is of a private
nature."
"I know exactly what your business is, Inspector Badger."
"Oh, do you?" said he, surveying me with a foxy smile. "And I expect I
know what yours is, too. But we can't have any of you newspaper gentry
spying on us just at present, so you just be off."
I thought it best to undeceive him at once, and accordingly, having
explained who I was, I showed him the coroner's permit, which he read
with manifest annoyance.
"This is all very well, sir," said he as he handed me back the paper,
"but it doesn't authorize you to come spying on the proceedings of the
police. Any remains that we discover will be deposited in the
mortuary, where you can inspect them to your heart's content; but you
can't stay here and watch us."
I had no defined object in keeping a watch on the inspector's
proceedings; but the sergeant's indiscreet hint had aroused my
curiosity, which was further excited by Mr. Badger's evident desire to
get rid of me. Moreover, while we had been talking, the pump had
stopped (the muddy floor of the pond being now pretty fully exposed),
and the inspector's assistant was handling the shovel impatiently.
"Now I put it to you, Inspector," said I, persuasively, "is it politic
of you to allow it to be said that you refused an authorized
representative of the family facilities for verifying any statements
that you may make hereafter?"
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean that if you should happen to find some bone which could be
identified as part of the body of Mr. Bellingham, that fact would be of
more importance to his family than to anyone else. You know that there
is a very valuable estate and a rather difficult will."
"I didn't know it, and I don't see the bearing of it now" (neither did
I for that matter); "but if you make such a point of being present at
the search, I can't very well refuse. Only you mustn't get in our way,
that's all."
On hearing this conclusion, his assistant, who looked like a
plain-clothes officer, took up his shovel and stepped into the mud that
formed the bottom of the pond, stooping as he went and peering among
the masses of weed that had been left stranded by the withdrawal of the
water. The inspector watched him anxiously, cautioning him from time
to time to "look out where he was treading"; the laborer left the pump
and craned forward from the margin of the mud, and the constable and I
looked on from our respective points of vantage. For some time the
search was fruitless. Once the searcher stooped and picked up what
turned out to be a fragment of decayed wood; then the remains of a
long-deceased jay were discovered, examined, and rejected. Suddenly
the man bent down by the side of a small pool that had been left in one
of the deeper hollows, stared intently into the mud, and stood up.
"There's something here that looks like a bone, sir," he sang out.
"Don't grub about then," said the inspector. "Drive your shovel right
into the mud where you saw it and bring it to the sieve."
The man followed out these instructions, and as he came shoreward with
a great pile of the slimy mud on his shovel we all converged on the
sieve, which the inspector took up and held over the tub, directing the
constable and laborer to "lend a hand," meaning thereby that they were
to crowd round the tub and exclude me as completely as possible. This,
in fact, they did very effectively with his assistance, for, when the
shovelful of mud had been deposited on the sieve, the four men leaned
over it and so nearly hid it from view that it was only by craning
over, first on one side and then on the other, that I was able to catch
an occasional glimpse of it and to observe it gradually melting away as
the sieve, immersed in the water, was shaken to and fro.
Presently the inspector raised the sieve from the water and stooped
over it more closely to examine its contents. Apparently the
examination yielded no very conclusive results, for it was accompanied
by a series of rather dubious grunts.
At length the officer stood up, and turning to me with a genial but
foxy smile, held out the sieve for my inspection.
"Like to see what we have found, doctor?" said he.
I thanked him and stood over the sieve. It contained the sort of
litter of twigs, skeleton leaves, weed, pond-snails, dead shells, and
fresh-water mussels that one would expect to strain out from the mud of
an ancient pond; but in addition to these there were three small bones
which at first glance gave me quite a start until I saw what they were.
The inspector looked at me inquiringly. "H'm?" said he.
"Yes," I replied. "Very interesting."
"Those will be human bones, I fancy; h'm?"
"I should say so undoubtedly," I answered.
"Now," said the inspector, "could you say, offhand, which finger those
bones belong to?"
I smothered a grin (for I had been expecting this question), and
answered:
"I can say offhand that they don't belong to any finger. They are the
bones of the left great toe."
The inspector's jaw dropped.
"The deuce they are!" he muttered. "H'm. I thought they looked a bit
stout."
"I expect," said I, "that if you go through the mud close to where this
came from you'll find the rest of the foot."
The plain-clothes man proceeded at once to act on my suggestion, taking
the sieve with him to save time. And sure enough, after filling it
twice with the mud from the bottom of the pool, the entire skeleton of
the foot was brought to light.
"Now you're happy, I suppose," said the inspector when I had checked
the bones and found them all present.
"I should be more happy," I replied, "if I knew what you were searching
for in this pond. You weren't looking for the foot, were you?"
"I was looking for anything that I might find," he answered. "I shall
go on searching until we have the whole body. I shall go through all
the streams and ponds around here, excepting Connaught Water. That I
shall leave to the last, as it will be a case of dredging from a boat
and isn't so likely as the smaller ponds. Perhaps the head will be
there; it's deeper than any of the others."
It now occurred to me that as I had learned all that I was likely to
learn, which was little enough, I might as well leave the inspector to
pursue his researches unembarrassed by my presence. Accordingly I
thanked him for his assistance and departed by the way I had come.
But as I retraced my steps along the shady path I speculated profoundly
on the officer's proceedings. My examinations of the mutilated hand
had yielded the conclusion that the finger had been removed after death
or shortly before, but more probably after. Some one else had
evidently arrived at the same conclusion, and had communicated his
opinion to Inspector Badger; for it was clear that that gentleman was
in full cry after the missing finger. But why was he searching for it
here when the hand had been found at Sidcup? And what did he expect to
learn from it when he found it? There is nothing particularly
characteristic about a finger, or, at least, the bones of one; and the
object of the present researches was to determine the identity of the
person of whom these bones were the remains. There was something
mysterious about the affair, something suggesting that Inspector Badger
was in possession of private information of some kind. But what
information could he have? And whence could he have obtained it?
These were questions to which I could find no answer, and I was still
fruitlessly revolving them when I arrived at the modest inn where the
inquest was to be held, and where I proposed to fortify myself with a
correspondingly modest lunch as a preparation for my attendance at the
inquiry.