THE WATERCRESS-BED
Barnard's practice, like most others, was subject to those fluctuations
that fill the struggling practitioner alternately with hope and despair.
The work came in paroxysms with intervals of almost complete stagnation.
One of these intermissions occurred on the day after my visit to
Nevill's Court, with the result that by half-past eleven I found myself
wondering what I should do with the remainder of the day. The better to
consider this weighty problem, I strolled down to the Embankment, and,
leaning on the parapet, contemplated the view across the river; the grey
stone bridge with its perspective of arches, the picturesque pile of the
shot-towers, and beyond, the shadowy shapes of the Abbey and St.
Stephen's.
It was a pleasant scene, restful and quiet, with a touch of life and a
hint of sober romance, when a barge swept down through the middle arch
of the bridge with a lugsail hoisted to a jury mast and a white-aproned
woman at the tiller. Dreamily I watched the craft creep by upon the
moving tide, noted the low freeboard, almost awash, the careful
helmswoman, and the dog on the forecastle yapping at the distant
shore--and thought of Ruth Bellingham.
What was there about this strange girl that had made so deep an
impression on me? That was the question that I propounded to myself, and
not for the first time. Of the fact itself there was no doubt. But what
was the explanation? Was it her unusual surroundings? Her occupation and
rather recondite learning? Her striking personality and exceptional good
looks? Or her connection with the dramatic mystery of her lost uncle?
I concluded that it was all of these. Everything connected with her was
unusual and arresting; but over and above these circumstances there was
a certain sympathy and personal affinity of which I was strongly
conscious and of which I dimly hoped that she, perhaps, was a little
conscious, too. At any rate, I was deeply interested in her; of that
there was no doubt whatever. Short as our acquaintance had been, she
held a place in my thoughts that had never been held by any other woman.
From Ruth Bellingham my reflections passed by a natural transition to
the curious story that her father had told me. It was a queer affair,
that ill-drawn will, with the baffled lawyer protesting in the
background. It almost seemed as if there must be something behind it
all, especially when I remembered Mr. Hurst's very singular proposal.
But it was out of _my_ depth; it was a case for a lawyer, and to a
lawyer it should go. This very night, I resolved, I would go to
Thorndyke and give him the whole story as it had been told to me.
And then there happened one of those coincidences at which we all wonder
when they occur, but which are so frequent as to have become enshrined
in a proverb. For, even as I formed the resolution, I observed two men
approaching from the direction of Blackfriars, and recognised in them my
quondam teacher and his junior.
"I was just thinking about you," I said as they came up.
"Very flattering," replied Jervis; "but I thought you had to talk of the
devil."
"Perhaps," suggested Thorndyke, "he was talking to himself. But why were
you thinking of us, and what was the nature of your thoughts?"
"My thoughts had reference to the Bellingham case. I spent the whole of
last evening at Nevill's Court."
"Ha! And are there any fresh developments?"
"Yes, by Jove! there are. Bellingham gave me a full and detailed
description of the will; and a pretty document it seems to be."
"Did he give you permission to repeat the details to me?"
"Yes. I asked specifically if I might and he had no objection whatever."
"Good. We are lunching at Soho to-day as Polton has his hands full. Come
with us and share our table and tell us your story as we go. Will that
suit you?"
It suited me admirably in the present state of the practice, and I
accepted the invitation with undissembled glee.
"Very well," said Thorndyke; "then let us walk slowly and finish with
matters confidential before we plunge into the madding crowd."
We set forth at a leisurely pace along the broad pavement and I
commenced my narration. As well as I could remember, I related the
circumstances that had led up to the present disposition of the property
and then proceeded to the actual provisions of the will; to all of which
my two friends listened with rapt interest, Thorndyke occasionally
stopping me to jot down a memorandum in his pocket-book.
"Why, the fellow must have been a stark lunatic!" Jervis exclaimed, when
I had finished. "He seems to have laid himself out with the most
devilish ingenuity to defeat his own ends."
"That is not an uncommon peculiarity with testators," Thorndyke
remarked. "A direct and perfectly intelligible will is rather the
exception. But we can hardly judge until we have seen the actual
document. I suppose Bellingham hasn't a copy?"
"I don't know," said I; "but I will ask him."
"If he has one, I should like to look through it," said Thorndyke. "The
provisions are very peculiar, and, as Jervis says, admirably calculated
to defeat the testator's wishes if they have been correctly reported.
And, apart from that, they have a remarkable bearing on the
circumstances of the disappearance. I daresay you noticed that."
"I noticed that it is very much to Hurst's advantage that the body has
not been found."
"Yes, of course. But there are some other points that are very
significant. However, it would be premature to discuss the terms of the
will until we have seen the actual document or a certified copy."
"If there is a copy extant," I said, "I will try to get hold of it.
Bellingham is terribly afraid of being suspected of a desire to get
professional advice gratis."
"That," said Thorndyke, "is natural enough, and not discreditable. But
you must overcome his scruples somehow. I expect you will be able to.
You are a plausible young gentleman, as I remember of old, and you seem
to have established yourself as quite the friend of the family."
"They are rather interesting people," I explained; "very cultivated and
with a strong leaning towards archaeology. It seems to be in the blood."
"Yes," said Thorndyke; "a family tendency, probably due to contact and
common surroundings rather than heredity. So you like Godfrey
Bellingham?"
"Yes. He is a trifle peppery and impulsive, but quite an agreeable,
genial old buffer."
"And the daughter," said Jervis, "what is she like?"
"Oh, she is a learned lady; works up bibliographies and references at
the Museum."
"Ah!" Jervis exclaimed, with deep disfavour, "I know the breed. Inky
fingers; no chest to speak of; all side and spectacles."
I rose artlessly at the gross and palpable bait.
"You're quite wrong," I exclaimed indignantly, contrasting Jervis's
hideous presentment with the comely original. "She is an exceedingly
good-looking girl, and her manners all that a lady's should be. A little
stiff, perhaps, but then I am only an acquaintance--almost a stranger."
"But," Jervis persisted, "what is she like, in appearance I mean. Short?
fat? sandy? Give us intelligible details."
I made a rapid mental inventory, assisted by my recent cogitations.
"She is about five feet seven, slim but rather plump, very erect in
carriage and graceful in movements; black hair, loosely parted in the
middle and falling very prettily away from the forehead; pale, clear
complexion, dark grey eyes, straight eyebrows, straight, well-shaped
nose, short mouth, rather full; round chin--what the deuce are you
grinning at, Jervis?" For my friend had suddenly unmasked his batteries
and now threatened, like the Cheshire Cat, to dissolve into a mere
abstraction of amusement.
"If there is a copy of that will, Thorndyke," he said, "we shall get it.
I think you agree with me, reverend senior?"
"I have already said," was the reply, "that I put my trust in Berkeley.
And now let us dismiss professional topics. This is our hostelry."
He pushed open an unpretentious glazed door and we followed him into the
restaurant, whereof the atmosphere was pervaded by an appetising
meatiness mingled with less agreeable suggestions of the destructive
distillation of fat.
It was some two hours later when I wished my friends adieu under the
golden-leaved plane trees of King's Bench Walk.
"I won't ask you to come in now," said Thorndyke, "as we have some
consultations this afternoon. But come in and see us soon; don't wait
for that copy of the will."
"No," said Jervis. "Drop in in the evening when your work is done;
unless, of course, there is more attractive society elsewhere--Oh, you
needn't turn that colour, my dear child; we have all been young once;
there is even a tradition that Thorndyke was young some time back in the
pre-dynastic period."
"Don't take any notice of him, Berkeley," said Thorndyke. "The egg-shell
is sticking to his head still. He'll know better when he is my age."
"Methuselah!" exclaimed Jervis; "I hope I shan't have to wait as long
as that!"
Thorndyke smiled benevolently at his irrepressible junior, and, shaking
my hand cordially, turned into the entry.
From the Temple I wended northward to the adjacent College of Surgeons,
where I spent a couple of profitable hours examining the "pickles," and
refreshing my memory on the subjects of pathology and anatomy;
marvelling afresh (as every practical anatomist must marvel) at the
incredibly perfect technique of the dissections, and inwardly paying a
respectful tribute to the founder of the collection. At length, the
warning of the clock, combined with an increasing craving for tea, drove
me forth and bore me towards the scene of my, not very strenuous,
labours. My mind was still occupied with the contents of the cases and
the great glass jars, so that I found myself at the corner of Fetter
Lane without a very clear idea of how I had got there. But at that point
I was aroused from my reflections rather abruptly by a raucous voice in
my ear.
"'Orrible discovery at Sidcup!"
I turned wrathfully--for a London street-boy's yell, let off at
point-blank range, is, in effect, like the smack of an open hand--but
the inscription on the staring yellow poster that was held up for my
inspection changed my anger into curiosity.
"Horrible discovery in a watercress-bed!"
Now, let, prigs deny it if they will, but there is something very
attractive in a "horrible discovery." It hints at tragedy, at mystery,
at romance. It promises to bring into our grey and commonplace life that
element of the dramatic which is the salt that our existence is
savoured withal. "In a watercress-bed," too! The rusticity of the
background seemed to emphasise the horror of the discovery, whatever it
might be.
I bought a copy of the paper, and, tucking it under my arm, hurried on
to the surgery, promising myself a mental feast of watercress; but as I
opened the door I found myself confronted by a corpulent woman of
piebald and pimply aspect who saluted me with a deep groan. It was the
lady from the coal shop in Fleur-de-Lys Court.
"Good evening, Mrs. Jablett," I said briskly; "not come about yourself,
I hope."
"Yes, I have," she answered, rising and following me gloomily into the
consulting-room; and then, when I had seated her in the patient's chair
and myself at the writing-table, she continued: "It's my inside, you
know, Doctor."
The statement lacked anatomical precision and merely excluded the domain
of the skin specialist. I accordingly waited for enlightenment and
speculated on the watercress-beds, while Mrs. Jablett regarded me
expectantly with a dim and watery eye.
"Ah!" I said, at length; "it's your--your inside, is it, Mrs. Jablett?"
"Yus. _And_ my 'ead," she added, with a voluminous sigh that filled the
apartment with odorous reminiscences of "unsweetened."
"Your head aches, does it?"
"Somethink chronic!" said Mrs. Jablett. "Feels as if it was a-opening
and a-shutting, a-opening and a-shutting, and when I sit down I feel as
if I should _bust_."
This picturesque description of her sensations--not wholly inconsistent
with her figure--gave the clue to Mrs. Jablett's sufferings. Resisting a
frivolous impulse to reassure her as to the elasticity of the human
integument, I considered her case in exhaustive detail, coasting
delicately round the subject of "unsweetened," and finally sent her
away, revived in spirits and grasping a bottle of Mist. Sodae cum
Bismutho from Barnard's big stock-jar. Then I went back to investigate
the Horrible Discovery; but before I could open the paper, another
patient arrived (_Impetigo contagiosa_, this time, affecting the "wide
and archèd-front sublime" of a juvenile Fetter Laner), and then yet
another, and so on through the evening until, at last, I forgot the
watercress-beds altogether. It was only when I had purified myself from
the evening consultations with hot water and a nail-brush and was about
to sit down to a frugal supper, that I remembered the newspaper and
fetched it from the drawer of the consulting-room table, where it had
been hastily thrust out of sight. I folded it into a convenient form,
and, standing it upright against the water-jug, read the report at my
ease as I supped.
There was plenty of it. Evidently the reporter had regarded it as a
"scoop," and the editor had backed him up with ample space and
hair-raising head-lines.
"HORRIBLE DISCOVERY IN A WATERCRESS-BED AT SIDCUP!
"A startling discovery was made yesterday afternoon in the course of
clearing out a watercress-bed near the erstwhile rural village of Sidcup
in Kent; a discovery that will occasion many a disagreeable qualm to
those persons who have been in the habit of regaling themselves with
this refreshing esculent. But before proceeding to a description of the
circumstances of the actual discovery or of the objects found--which,
however, it may be stated at once, are nothing more or less than the
fragments of a dismembered human body--it will be interesting to trace
the remarkable chain of coincidences by virtue of which the discovery
was made.
"The beds in question have been laid out in a small artificial lake fed
by a tiny streamlet which forms one of the numerous tributaries of the
River Cray. Its depth is greater than is usual in watercress-beds,
otherwise the gruesome relics could never have been concealed beneath
its surface, and the flow of water through it, though continuous, is
slow. The tributary streamlet meanders through a succession of pasture
meadows, in one of which the beds themselves are situated, and here
throughout most of the year the fleecy victims of the human carnivore
carry on the industry of converting grass into mutton. Now it happened
some years ago that the sheep frequenting these pastures became affected
with the disease known as 'liver-rot'; and here we must make a short
digression into the domain of pathology.
"'Liver-rot' is a disease of quite romantic antecedents. Its cause is a
small, flat worm--the liver-fluke--which infests the liver and
bile-ducts of the affected sheep.
"Now how does the worm get into the sheep's liver? That is where the
romance comes in. Let us see.
"The cycle of transformations begins with the deposit of the eggs of the
fluke in some shallow stream or ditch running through pasture lands. Now
each egg has a sort of lid, which presently opens and lets out a
minute, hairy creature who swims away in search of a particular kind of
water-snail--the kind called by naturalists _Limnaea truncatula_. If he
finds a snail, he bores his way into its flesh and soon begins to grow
and wax fat. Then he brings forth a family--of tiny worms quite unlike
himself, little creatures called _rediae_, which soon give birth to
families of young _rediae_. So they may go on for several generations,
but at last there comes a generation of _rediae_ which, instead of
giving birth to fresh _rediae_, produce families of totally different
offspring; big-headed, long-tailed creatures like miniature tadpoles,
called by the learned _cercariae_. The _cercariae_ soon wriggle their
way out of the body of the snail, and then complications arise: for it
is the habit of this particular snail to leave the water occasionally
and take a stroll in the fields. Thus the _cercariae_, escaping from the
snail, find themselves on the grass, whereupon they promptly drop their
tails and stick themselves to the grass-blades. Then comes the
unsuspecting sheep to take his frugal meal, and, cropping the grass,
swallows it, _cercariae_ and all. But the latter, when they find
themselves in the sheep's stomach, make their way straight to the
bile-ducts, up which they travel to the liver. Here, in a few weeks,
they grow up into full-blown flukes and begin the important business of
producing eggs.
"Such is the pathological romance of 'liver-rot'; and now what is its
connection with this mysterious discovery? It is this. After the
outbreak of 'liver-rot,' above referred to, the ground landlord, a Mr.
John Bellingham, instructed his solicitor to insert a clause in the
lease of the beds directing that the latter should be periodically
cleared and examined by an expert to make sure that they were free from
the noxious water-snails. The last lease expired about two years ago,
and since then the beds have been out of cultivation; but, for the
safety of the adjacent pastures, it was considered necessary to make the
customary periodical inspection, and it was in the course of cleaning
the beds for this purpose that the present discovery was made.
"The operation began two days ago. A gang of three men proceeded
systematically to grub up the plants and collect the multitudes of
water-snails that they might be examined by the expert to see if any of
the obnoxious species were present. They had cleared nearly half the
beds when, yesterday afternoon, one of the men working in the deepest
part came upon some bones, the appearance of which excited his
suspicion. Thereupon he called his mates, and they carefully picked away
the plants piecemeal, a process that soon laid bare an unmistakable
human hand lying on the mud amongst the roots. Fortunately they had the
wisdom not to disturb the remains, but at once sent off a message to the
police. Very soon, an inspector and a sergeant, accompanied by the
divisional surgeon, arrived on the scene, and were able to view the
remains lying as they had been found. And now another very strange fact
came to light; for it was seen that the hand--a left one--lying on the
mud was minus its third finger. This is regarded by the police as a very
important fact as bearing on the question of identification, seeing that
the number of persons having the third finger of the left hand missing
must be quite small. After a thorough examination on the spot, the bones
were carefully collected and conveyed to the mortuary, where they now
lie awaiting further inquiries.
"The divisional surgeon, Dr. Brandon, in an interview with our
representative, made the following statements:
"'The bones found are those of the left arm of a middle-aged or elderly
man about five feet eight inches in height. All the bones of the arm are
present, including the scapula, or shoulder-blade, and the clavicle, or
collar-bone, but the three bones of the third finger are missing.'
"'Is this a deformity or has the finger been cut off?' our correspondent
asked.
"'The finger has been amputated,' was the reply. 'If it had been absent
from birth, the corresponding hand bone, or metacarpal, would have been
wanting or deformed, whereas it is present and quite normal.'
"'How long have the bones been in the water?' was the next question.
"'More than a year, I should say. They are quite clean; there is not a
vestige of the soft structures left.'
"'Have you any theory as to how the arm came to be deposited where it
was found?'
"'I should rather not answer that question,' was the guarded response.
"'One more question,' our correspondent urged. 'The ground landlord, Mr.
John Bellingham; is not he the gentleman who disappeared so mysteriously
some time ago?'
"'So I understand,' Dr. Brandon replied.
"'Can you tell me if Mr. Bellingham had lost the third finger of his
left hand?'
"'I cannot say,' said Dr. Brandon; and he added with a smile, 'you had
better ask the police.'
"That is how the matter stands at present. But we understand that the
police are making active inquiries for any missing man who has lost the
third finger of his left hand, and if any of our readers know of such a
person, they are earnestly requested to communicate at once, either with
us or with the authorities.
"Also we believe that a systematic search is to be made for further
remains."
I laid the newspaper down and fell into a train of reflection. It was
certainly a most mysterious affair. The thought that had evidently come
to the reporter's mind stole naturally into mine. Could these remains be
those of John Bellingham? It was obviously possible, though I could not
but see that the fact of the bones having been found on his land, while
it undoubtedly furnished the suggestion, did not in any way add to its
probability. The connection was accidental and in no wise relevant.
Then, too, there was the missing finger. No reference to any such injury
or deformity had been made in the original report of the disappearance,
though it could hardly have been overlooked. But it was useless to
speculate without facts. I should be seeing Thorndyke in the course of
the next few days, and, undoubtedly, if the discovery had any bearing
upon the disappearance of John Bellingham, I should hear of it. With
which reflection I rose from the table, and, adopting the advice
contained in the spurious Johnsonian quotation proceeded to "take a walk
in Fleet Street" before settling down for the evening.