The Whitechapel Road, though redeemed by scattered relics of a more
picturesque past from the utter desolation of its neighbour the
Commercial Road, is hardly a gay thoroughfare. Especially at its eastern
end, where its sordid modernity seems to reflect the colourless lives of
its inhabitants, does its grey and dreary length depress the spirits of
the wayfarer. But the longest and dullest road can be made delightful by
sprightly discourse seasoned with wit and wisdom, and so it was that, as
I walked westward by the side of my friend John Thorndyke, the long,
monotonous road seemed all too short.
We had been to the London Hospital to see a remarkable case of
acromegaly, and, as we returned, we discussed this curious affection,
and the allied condition of gigantism, in all their bearings, from the
origin of the "Gibson chin" to the physique of Og, King of Bashan.
"It would have been interesting," Thorndyke remarked as we passed up
Aldgate High Street, "to have put one's finger into His Majesty's
pituitary fossa--after his decease, of course. By the way, here is
Harrow Alley; you remember Defoe's description of the dead-cart waiting
out here, and the ghastly procession coming down the alley." He took my
arm and led me up the narrow thoroughfare as far as the sharp turn by
the "Star and Still" public-house, where we turned to look back.
"I never pass this place," he said musingly, "but I seem to hear the
clang of the bell and the dismal cry of the carter--"
He broke off abruptly. Two figures had suddenly appeared framed in the
archway, and now advanced at headlong speed. One, who led, was a stout,
middle-aged Jewess, very breathless and dishevelled; the other was a
well-dressed young man, hardly less agitated than his companion. As they
approached, the young man suddenly recognized my colleague, and accosted
him in agitated tones.
"I've just been sent for to a case of murder or suicide. Would you mind
looking at it for me, sir? It's my first case, and I feel rather
nervous."
Here the woman darted back, and plucked the young doctor by the arm.
"Hurry! hurry!" she exclaimed, "don't stop to talk." Her face was as
white as lard, and shiny with sweat; her lips twitched, her hands shook,
and she stared with the eyes of a frightened child.
"Of course I will come, Hart," said Thorndyke; and, turning back, we
followed the woman as she elbowed her way frantically among the
foot-passengers.
"Have you started in practice here?" Thorndyke asked as we hurried
along.
"No, sir," replied Dr. Hart; "I am an assistant. My principal is the
police-surgeon, but he is out just now. It's very good of you to come
with me, sir."
"Tut, tut," rejoined Thorndyke. "I am just coming to see that you do
credit to my teaching. That looks like the house."
We had followed our guide into a side street, halfway down which we
could see a knot of people clustered round a doorway. They watched us as
we approached, and drew aside to let us enter. The woman whom we were
following rushed into the passage with the same headlong haste with
which she had traversed the streets, and so up the stairs. But as she
neared the top of the flight she slowed down suddenly, and began to
creep up on tiptoe with noiseless and hesitating steps. On the landing
she turned to face us, and pointing a shaking forefinger at the door of
the back room, whispered almost inaudibly, "She's in there," and then
sank half-fainting on the bottom stair of the next flight.
I laid my hand on the knob of the door, and looked back at Thorndyke. He
was coming slowly up the stairs, closely scrutinizing floor, walls, and
handrail as he came. When he reached the landing, I turned the handle,
and we entered the room together, closing the door after us. The blind
was still down, and in the dim, uncertain light nothing out of the
common was, at first, to be seen. The shabby little room looked trim and
orderly enough, save for a heap of cast-off feminine clothing piled upon
a chair. The bed appeared undisturbed except by the half-seen shape of
its occupant, and the quiet face, dimly visible in its shadowy corner,
might have been that of a sleeper but for its utter stillness and for a
dark stain on the pillow by its side.
Dr. Hart stole on tiptoe to the bedside, while Thorndyke drew up the
blind; and as the garish daylight poured into the room, the young
surgeon fell back with a gasp of horror.
"Good God!" he exclaimed; "poor creature! But this is a frightful thing,
sir!"
The light streamed down upon the white face of a handsome girl of
twenty-five, a face peaceful, placid, and beautiful with the austere and
almost unearthly beauty of the youthful dead. The lips were slightly
parted, the eyes half closed and drowsy, shaded with sweeping lashes;
and a wealth of dark hair in massive plaits served as a foil to the
translucent skin.
Our friend had drawn back the bedclothes a few inches, and now there was
revealed, beneath the comely face, so serene and inscrutable, and yet so
dreadful in its fixity and waxen pallor, a horrible, yawning wound that
almost divided the shapely neck.
Thorndyke looked down with stern pity at the plump white face.
"It was savagely done," said he, "and yet mercifully, by reason of its
very savagery. She must have died without waking."
"The brute!" exclaimed Hart, clenching his fists and turning crimson
with wrath. "The infernal cowardly beast! He shall hang! By God, he
shall hang!" In his fury the young fellow shook his fists in the air,
even as the moisture welled up into his eyes.
Thorndyke touched him on the shoulder. "That is what we are here for,
Hart," said he. "Get out your notebook;" and with this he bent down over
the dead girl.
At the friendly reproof the young surgeon pulled himself together, and,
with open notebook, commenced his investigation, while I, at Thorndyke's
request, occupied myself in making a plan of the room, with a
description of its contents and their arrangements. But this occupation
did not prevent me from keeping an eye on Thorndyke's movements, and
presently I suspended my labours to watch him as, with his
pocket-knife, he scraped together some objects that he had found on the
pillow.
"What do you make of this?" he asked, as I stepped over to his side. He
pointed with the blade to a tiny heap of what looked like silver sand,
and, as I looked more closely, I saw that similar particles were
sprinkled on other parts of the pillow.
"Silver sand!" I exclaimed. "I don't understand at all how it can have
got there. Do you?"
Thorndyke shook his head. "We will consider the explanation later," was
his reply. He had produced from his pocket a small metal box which he
always carried, and which contained such requisites as cover-slips,
capillary tubes, moulding wax, and other "diagnostic materials." He now
took from it a seed-envelope, into which he neatly shovelled the little
pinch of sand with his knife. He had closed the envelope, and was
writing a pencilled description on the outside, when we were startled by
a cry from Hart.
"Good God, sir! Look at this! It was done by a woman!"
He had drawn back the bedclothes, and was staring aghast at the dead
girl's left hand. It held a thin tress of long, red hair.
Thorndyke hastily pocketed his specimen, and, stepping round the little
bedside table, bent over the hand with knitted brows. It was closed,
though not tightly clenched, and when an attempt was made gently to
separate the fingers, they were found to be as rigid as the fingers of a
wooden hand. Thorndyke stooped yet more closely, and, taking out his
lens, scrutinized the wisp of hair throughout its entire length.
"There is more here than meets the eye at the first glance," he
remarked. "What say you, Hart?" He held out his lens to his quondam
pupil, who was about to take it from him when the door opened, and three
men entered. One was a police-inspector, the second appeared to be a
plain-clothes officer, while the third was evidently the divisional
surgeon.
"Friends of yours, Hart?" inquired the latter, regarding us with some
disfavour.
Thorndyke gave a brief explanation of our presence to which the newcomer
rejoined:
"Well, sir, your _locus standi_ here is a matter for the inspector. My
assistant was not authorized to call in outsiders. You needn't wait,
Hart."
With this he proceeded to his inspection, while Thorndyke withdrew the
pocket-thermometer that he had slipped under the body, and took the
reading.
The inspector, however, was not disposed to exercise the prerogative at
which the surgeon had hinted; for an expert has his uses.
"How long should you say she'd been dead, sir?" he asked affably.
"About ten hours," replied Thorndyke.
The inspector and the detective simultaneously looked at their watches.
"That fixes it at two o'clock this morning," said the former. "What's
that, sir?"
The surgeon was pointing to the wisp of hair in the dead girl's hand.
"My word!" exclaimed the inspector. "A woman, eh? She must be a tough
customer. This looks like a soft job for you, sergeant."
"Yes," said the detective. "That accounts for that box with the hassock
on it at the head of the bed. She had to stand on them to reach over.
But she couldn't have been very tall."
"She must have been mighty strong, though," said the inspector; "why,
she has nearly cut the poor wench's head off." He moved round to the
head of the bed, and, stooping over, peered down at the gaping wound.
Suddenly he began to draw his hand over the pillow, and then rub his
fingers together. "Why," he exclaimed, "there's sand on the
pillow--silver sand! Now, how can that have come there?"
The surgeon and the detective both came round to verify this discovery,
and an earnest consultation took place as to its meaning.
"Did you notice it, sir?" the inspector asked Thorndyke.
"Yes," replied the latter; "it's an unaccountable thing, isn't it?"
"I don't know that it is, either," said the detective, he ran over to
the washstand, and then uttered a grunt of satisfaction. "It's quite a
simple matter, after all, you see," he said, glancing complacently at my
colleague. "There's a ball of sand-soap on the washstand, and the basin
is full of blood-stained water. You see, she must have washed the blood
off her hands, and off the knife, too--a pretty cool customer she must
be--and she used the sand-soap. Then, while she was drying her hands,
she must have stood over the head of the bed, and let the sand fall on
to the pillow. I think that's clear enough."
"Admirably clear," said Thorndyke; "and what do you suppose was the
sequence of events?"
The gratified detective glanced round the room. "I take it," said he,
"that the deceased read herself to sleep. There is a book on the table
by the bed, and a candlestick with nothing in it but a bit of burnt wick
at the bottom of the socket. I imagine that the woman came in quietly,
lit the gas, put the box and the hassock at the bedhead, stood on them,
and cut her victim's throat. Deceased must have waked up and clutched
the murderess's hair--though there doesn't seem to have been much of a
struggle; but no doubt she died almost at once. Then the murderess
washed her hands, cleaned the knife, tidied up the bed a bit, and went
away. That's about how things happened, I think, but how she got in
without anyone hearing, and how she got out, and where she went to, are
the things that we've got to find out."
"Perhaps," said the surgeon, drawing the bedclothes over the corpse, "we
had better have the landlady in and make a few inquiries." He glanced
significantly at Thorndyke, and the inspector coughed behind his hand.
My colleague, however, chose to be obtuse to these hints: opening the
door, he turned the key backwards and forwards several times, drew it
out, examined it narrowly, and replaced it.
"The landlady is outside on the landing," he remarked, holding the door
open.
Thereupon the inspector went out, and we all followed to hear the result
of his inquiries.
"Now, Mrs. Goldstein," said the officer, opening his notebook, "I want
you to tell us all that you know about this affair, and about the girl
herself. What was her name?"
The landlady, who had been joined by a white-faced, tremulous man, wiped
her eyes, and replied in a shaky voice: "Her name, poor child, was Minna
Adler. She was a German. She came from Bremen about two years ago. She
had no friends in England--no relatives, I mean. She was a waitress at a
restaurant in Fenchurch Street, and a good, quiet, hard-working girl."
"When did you discover what had happened?"
"About eleven o'clock. I thought she had gone to work as usual, but my
husband noticed from the back yard that her blind was still down. So I
went up and knocked, and when I got no answer, I opened the door and
went in, and then I saw--" Here the poor soul, overcome by the dreadful
recollection, burst into hysterical sobs.
"Her door was unlocked, then; did she usually lock it?"
"I think so," sobbed Mrs. Goldstein. "The key was always inside."
"And the street door; was that secure when you came down this morning?"
"It was shut. We don't bolt it because some of the lodgers come home
rather late."
"And now tell us, had she any enemies? Was there anyone who had a grudge
against her?"
"No, no, poor child! Why should anyone have a grudge against her? No,
she had no quarrel--no real quarrel--with anyone; not even with Miriam."
"Miriam!" inquired the inspector. "Who is she?"
"That was nothing," interposed the man hastily. "That was not a
quarrel."
"Just a little unpleasantness, I suppose, Mr. Goldstein?" suggested the
inspector.
"Just a little foolishness about a young man," said Mr. Goldstein. "That
was all. Miriam was a little jealous. But it was nothing."
"No, no. Of course. We all know that young women are apt to--"
A soft footstep had been for some time audible, slowly descending the
stair above, and at this moment a turn of the staircase brought the
newcomer into view. And at that vision the inspector stopped short as if
petrified, and a tense, startled silence fell upon us all. Down the
remaining stairs there advanced towards us a young woman, powerful
though short, wild-eyed, dishevelled, horror-stricken, and of a ghastly
pallor: and her hair was a fiery red.
Stock still and speechless we all stood as this apparition came slowly
towards us; but suddenly the detective slipped back into the room,
closing the door after him, to reappear a few moments later holding a
small paper packet, which, after a quick glance at the inspector, he
placed in his breast pocket.
"This is my daughter Miriam that we spoke about, gentlemen," said Mr.
Goldstein. "Miriam, those are the doctors and the police."
The girl looked at us from one to the other. "You have seen her, then,"
she said in a strange, muffled voice, and added: "She isn't dead, is
she? Not really dead?" The question was asked in a tone at once coaxing
and despairing, such as a distracted mother might use over the corpse of
her child. It filled me with vague discomfort, and, unconsciously, I
looked round towards Thorndyke.
To my surprise he had vanished.
Noiselessly backing towards the head of the stairs, where I could
command a view of the hall, or passage, I looked down, and saw him in
the act of reaching up to a shelf behind the street door. He caught my
eye, and beckoned, whereupon I crept away unnoticed by the party on the
landing. When I reached the hall, he was wrapping up three small
objects, each in a separate cigarette-paper; and I noticed that he
handled them with more than ordinary tenderness.
"We didn't want to see that poor devil of a girl arrested," said he, as
he deposited the three little packets gingerly in his pocket-box. "Let
us be off." He opened the door noiselessly, and stood for a moment,
turning the latch backwards and forwards, and closely examining its
bolt.
I glanced up at the shelf behind the door. On it were two flat china
candlesticks, in one of which I had happened to notice, as we came in, a
short end of candle lying in the tray, and I now looked to see if that
was what Thorndyke had annexed; but it was still there.
I followed my colleague out into the street, and for some time we walked
on without speaking. "You guessed what the sergeant had in that paper,
of course," said Thorndyke at length.
"Yes. It was the hair from the dead woman's hand; and I thought that he
had much better have left it there."
"Undoubtedly. But that is the way in which well-meaning policemen
destroy valuable evidence. Not that it matters much in this particular
instance; but it might have been a fatal mistake."
"Do you intend to take any active part in this case?" I asked.
"That depends on circumstances. I have collected some evidence, but what
it is worth I don't yet know. Neither do I know whether the police have
observed the same set of facts; but I need not say that I shall do
anything that seems necessary to assist the authorities. That is a
matter of common citizenship."
The inroads made upon our time by the morning's adventures made it
necessary that we should go each about his respective business without
delay; so, after a perfunctory lunch at a tea-shop, we separated, and I
did not see my colleague again until the day's work was finished, and I
turned into our chambers just before dinner-time.
Here I found Thorndyke seated at the table, and evidently full of
business. A microscope stood close by, with a condenser throwing a spot
of light on to a pinch of powder that had been sprinkled on to the
slide; his collecting-box lay open before him, and he was engaged,
rather mysteriously, in squeezing a thick white cement from a tube on to
three little pieces of moulding-wax.
"Useful stuff, this Fortafix," he remarked; "it makes excellent casts,
and saves the trouble and mess of mixing plaster, which is a
consideration for small work like this. By the way, if you want to know
what was on that poor girl's pillow, just take a peep through the
microscope. It is rather a pretty specimen."
I stepped across, and applied my eye to the instrument. The specimen
was, indeed, pretty in more than a technical sense. Mingled with
crystalline grains of quartz, glassy spicules, and water-worn fragments
of coral, were a number of lovely little shells, some of the texture of
fine porcelain, others like blown Venetian glass.
[Illustration: THE SAND FROM THE MURDERED WOMAN'S PILLOW, MAGNIFIED 25
DIAMETERS.]
"These are Foraminifera!" I exclaimed.
"Yes."
"Then it is not silver sand, after all?"
"Certainly not."
"But what is it, then?"
Thorndyke smiled. "It is a message to us from the deep sea, Jervis;
from the floor of the Eastern Mediterranean."
"And can you read the message?"
"I think I can," he replied, "but I shall know soon, I hope."
I looked down the microscope again, and wondered what message these tiny
shells had conveyed to my friend. Deep-sea sand on a dead woman's
pillow! What could be more incongruous? What possible connection could
there be between this sordid crime in the east of London and the deep
bed of the "tideless sea"?
Meanwhile Thorndyke squeezed out more cement on to the three little
pieces of moulding-wax (which I suspected to be the objects that I had
seen him wrapping up with such care in the hall of the Goldsteins'
house); then, laying one of them down on a glass slide, with its
cemented side uppermost, he stood the other two upright on either side
of it. Finally he squeezed out a fresh load of the thick cement,
apparently to bind the three objects together, and carried the slide
very carefully to a cupboard, where he deposited it, together with the
envelope containing the sand and the slide from the stage of the
microscope.
He was just locking the cupboard when a sharp rat-tat on our knocker
sent him hurriedly to the door. A messenger-boy, standing on the
threshold, held out a dirty envelope.
"Mr. Goldstein kept me a awful long time, sir," said he; "I haven't been
a-loitering."
Thorndyke took the envelope over to the gas-light, and, opening it, drew
forth a sheet of paper, which he scanned quickly and almost eagerly;
and, though his face remained as inscrutable as a mask of stone, I felt
a conviction that the paper had told him something that he wished to
know.
The boy having been sent on his way rejoicing, Thorndyke turned to the
bookshelves, along which he ran his eye thoughtfully until it alighted
on a shabbily-bound volume near one end. This he reached down, and as he
laid it open on the table, I glanced at it, and was surprised to observe
that it was a bi-lingual work, the opposite pages being apparently in
Russian and Hebrew.
"The Old Testament in Russian and Yiddish," he remarked, noting my
surprise. "I am going to get Polton to photograph a couple of specimen
pages--is that the postman or a visitor?"
It turned out to be the postman, and as Thorndyke extracted from the
letter-box a blue official envelope, he glanced significantly at me.
"This answers your question, I think, Jervis," said he. "Yes; coroner's
subpoena and a very civil letter: 'sorry to trouble you, but I had no
choice under the circumstances'--of course he hadn't--'Dr. Davidson has
arranged to make the autopsy to-morrow at 4 p.m., and I should be glad
if you could be present. The mortuary is in Barker Street, next to the
school.' Well, we must go, I suppose, though Davidson will probably
resent it." He took up the Testament, and went off with it to the
laboratory.
We lunched at our chambers on the following day, and, after the meal,
drew up our chairs to the fire and lit our pipes. Thorndyke was
evidently preoccupied, for he laid his open notebook on his knee, and,
gazing meditatively into the fire, made occasional entries with his
pencil as though he were arranging the points of an argument. Assuming
that the Aldgate murder was the subject of his cogitations, I ventured
to ask:
"Have you any material evidence to offer the coroner?"
He closed his notebook and put it away. "The evidence that I have," he
said, "is material and important; but it is disjointed and rather
inconclusive. If I can join it up into a coherent whole, as I hope to do
before I reach the court, it will be very important indeed--but here is
my invaluable familiar, with the instruments of research." He turned
with a smile towards Polton, who had just entered the room, and master
and man exchanged a friendly glance of mutual appreciation. The
relations of Thorndyke and his assistant were a constant delight to me:
on the one side, service, loyal and whole-hearted; on the other, frank
and full recognition.
"I should think those will do, sir," said Polton, handing his principal
a small cardboard box such as playing-cards are carried in. Thorndyke
pulled off the lid, and I then saw that the box was fitted internally
with grooves for plates, and contained two mounted photographs. The
latter were very singular productions indeed; they were copies each of a
page of the Testament, one Russian and the other Yiddish; but the
lettering appeared white on a black ground, of which it occupied only
quite a small space in the middle, leaving a broad black margin. Each
photograph was mounted on a stiff card, and each card had a duplicate
photograph pasted on the back.
Thorndyke exhibited them to me with a provoking smile, holding them
daintily by their edges, before he slid them back into the grooves of
their box.
"We are making a little digression into philology, you see," he
remarked, as he pocketed the box. "But we must be off now, or we shall
keep Davidson waiting. Thank you, Polton."
The District Railway carried us swiftly eastward, and we emerged from
Aldgate Station a full half-hour before we were due. Nevertheless,
Thorndyke stepped out briskly, but instead of making directly for the
mortuary, he strayed off unaccountably into Mansell Street, scanning the
numbers of the houses as he went. A row of old houses, picturesque but
grimy, on our right seemed specially to attract him, and he slowed down
as we approached them.
"There is a quaint survival, Jervis," he remarked, pointing to a crudely
painted, wooden effigy of an Indian standing on a bracket at the door of
a small old-fashioned tobacconist's shop. We halted to look at the
little image, and at that moment the side door opened, and a woman came
out on to the doorstop, where she stood gazing up and down the street.
Thorndyke immediately crossed the pavement, and addressed her,
apparently with some question, for I heard her answer presently: "A
quarter-past six is his time, sir, and he is generally punctual to the
minute."
"Thank you," said Thorndyke; "I'll bear that in mind;" and, lifting his
hat, he walked on briskly, turning presently up a side-street which
brought us out into Aldgate. It was now but five minutes to four, so we
strode off quickly to keep our tryst at the mortuary; but although we
arrived at the gate as the hour was striking, when we entered the
building we found Dr. Davidson hanging up his apron and preparing to
depart.
"Sorry I couldn't wait for you," he said, with no great show of
sincerity, "but a _post-mortem_ is a mere farce in a case like this; you
have seen all that there was to see. However, there is the body; Hart
hasn't closed it up yet."
With this and a curt "good-afternoon" he departed.
"I must apologize for Dr. Davidson, sir," said Hart, looking up with a
vexed face from the desk at which he was writing out his notes.
"You needn't," said Thorndyke; "you didn't supply him with manners; and
don't let me disturb you. I only want to verify one or two points."
Accepting the hint, Hart and I remained at the desk, while Thorndyke,
removing his hat, advanced to the long slate table, and bent over its
burden of pitiful tragedy. For some time he remained motionless, running
his eye gravely over the corpse, in search, no doubt, of bruises and
indications of a struggle. Then he stooped and narrowly examined the
wound, especially at its commencement and end. Suddenly he drew nearer,
peering intently as if something had attracted his attention, and having
taken out his lens, fetched a small sponge, with which he dried an
exposed process of the spine. Holding his lens before the dried spot, he
again scrutinized it closely, and then, with a scalpel and forceps,
detached some object, which he carefully washed, and then once more
examined through his lens as it lay in the palm of his hand. Finally, as
I expected, he brought forth his "collecting-box," took from it a
seed-envelope, into which he dropped the object--evidently something
quite small--closed up the envelope, wrote on the outside of it, and
replaced it in the box.
"I think I have seen all that I wanted to see," he said, as he pocketed
the box and took up his hat. "We shall meet to-morrow morning at the
inquest." He shook hands with Hart, and we went out into the relatively
pure air.
On one pretext or another, Thorndyke lingered about the neighbourhood of
Aldgate until a church bell struck six, when he bent his steps towards
Harrow Alley. Through the narrow, winding passage he walked, slowly and
with a thoughtful mien, along Little Somerset Street and out into
Mansell Street, until just on the stroke of a quarter-past we found
ourselves opposite the little tobacconist's shop.
Thorndyke glanced at his watch and halted, looking keenly up the street.
A moment later he hastily took from his pocket the cardboard box, from
which he extracted the two mounted photographs which had puzzled me so
much. They now seemed to puzzle Thorndyke equally, to judge by his
expression, for he held them close to his eyes, scrutinizing them with
an anxious frown, and backing by degrees into the doorway at the side of
the tobacconist's. At this moment I became aware of a man who, as he
approached, seemed to eye my friend with some curiosity and more
disfavour; a very short, burly young man, apparently a foreign Jew,
whose face, naturally sinister and unprepossessing, was further
disfigured by the marks of smallpox.
"Excuse me," he said brusquely, pushing past Thorndyke; "I live here."
"I am sorry," responded Thorndyke. He moved aside, and then suddenly
asked: "By the way, I suppose you do not by any chance understand
Yiddish?"
"Why do you ask?" the newcomer demanded gruffly.
"Because I have just had these two photographs of lettering given to
me. One is in Greek, I think, and one in Yiddish, but I have forgotten
which is which." He held out the two cards to the stranger, who took
them from him, and looked at them with scowling curiosity.
"This one is Yiddish," said he, raising his right hand, "and this other
is Russian, not Greek." He held out the two cards to Thorndyke, who took
them from him, holding them carefully by the edges as before.
"I am greatly obliged to you for your kind assistance," said Thorndyke;
but before he had time to finish his thanks, the man had entered, by
means of his latchkey, and slammed the door.
Thorndyke carefully slid the photographs back into their grooves,
replaced the box in his pocket, and made an entry in his notebook.
"That," said he, "finishes my labours, with the exception of a small
experiment which I can perform at home. By the way, I picked up a morsel
of evidence that Davidson had overlooked. He will be annoyed, and I am
not very fond of scoring off a colleague; but he is too uncivil for me
to communicate with."
* * * * *
The coroner's subpoena had named ten o'clock as the hour at which
Thorndyke was to attend to give evidence, but a consultation with a
well-known solicitor so far interfered with his plans that we were a
quarter of an hour late in starting from the Temple. My friend was
evidently in excellent spirits, though silent and preoccupied, from
which I inferred that he was satisfied with the results of his labours;
but, as I sat by his side in the hansom, I forbore to question him, not
from mere unselfishness, but rather from the desire to hear his
evidence for the first time in conjunction with that of the other
witnesses.
The room in which the inquest was held formed part of a school adjoining
the mortuary. Its vacant bareness was on this occasion enlivened by a
long, baize-covered table, at the head of which sat the coroner, while
one side was occupied by the jury; and I was glad to observe that the
latter consisted, for the most part, of genuine working men, instead of
the stolid-faced, truculent "professional jurymen" who so often grace
these tribunals.
A row of chairs accommodated the witnesses, a corner of the table was
allotted to the accused woman's solicitor, a smart dapper gentleman in
gold pince-nez, a portion of one side to the reporters, and several
ranks of benches were occupied by a miscellaneous assembly representing
the public.
There were one or two persons present whom I was somewhat surprised to
see. There was, for instance, our pock-marked acquaintance of Mansell
Street, who greeted us with a stare of hostile surprise; and there was
Superintendent Miller of Scotland Yard, in whose manner I seemed to
detect some kind of private understanding with Thorndyke. But I had
little time to look about me, for when we arrived, the proceedings had
already commenced. Mrs. Goldstein, the first witness, was finishing her
recital of the circumstances under which the crime was discovered, and,
as she retired, weeping hysterically, she was followed by looks of
commiseration from the sympathetic jurymen.
The next witness was a young woman named Kate Silver. As she stepped
forward to be sworn she flung a glance of hatred and defiance at Miriam
Goldstein, who, white-faced and wild of aspect, with her red hair
streaming in dishevelled masses on to her shoulders, stood apart in
custody of two policemen, staring about her as if in a dream.
"You were intimately acquainted with the deceased, I believe?" said the
coroner.
"I was. We worked at the same place for a long time--the Empire
Restaurant in Fenchurch Street--and we lived in the same house. She was
my most intimate friend."
"Had she, as far as you know, any friends or relations in England?"
"No. She came to England from Bremen about three years ago. It was then
that I made her acquaintance. All her relations were in Germany, but she
had many friends here, because she was a very lively, amiable girl."
"Had she, as far as you know, any enemies--any persons, I mean, who bore
any grudge against her and were likely to do her an injury?"
"Yes. Miriam Goldstein was her enemy. She hated her."
"You say Miriam Goldstein hated the deceased. How do you know that?"
"She made no secret of it. They had had a violent quarrel about a young
man named Moses Cohen. He was formerly Miriam's sweetheart, and I think
they were very fond of one another until Minna Adler came to lodge at
the Goldsteins' house about three months ago. Then Moses took a fancy to
Minna, and she encouraged him, although she had a sweetheart of her own,
a young man named Paul Petrofsky, who also lodged in the Goldsteins'
house. At last Moses broke off with Miriam, and engaged himself to
Minna. Then Miriam was furious, and complained to Minna about what she
called her perfidious conduct; but Minna only laughed, and told her she
could have Petrofsky instead."
"And what did Minna say to that?" asked the coroner.
"She was still more angry, because Moses Cohen is a smart, good-looking
young man, while Petrofsky is not much to look at. Besides, Miriam did
not like Petrofsky; he had been rude to her, and she had made her father
send him away from the house. So they were not friends, and it was just
after that that the trouble came."
"The trouble?"
"I mean about Moses Cohen. Miriam is a very passionate girl, and she was
furiously jealous of Minna, so when Petrofsky annoyed her by taunting
her about Moses Cohen and Minna, she lost her temper, and said dreadful
things about both of them."
"As, for instance--?"
"She said that she would kill them both, and that she would like to cut
Minna's throat."
"When was this?"
"It was the day before the murder."
"Who heard her say these things besides you?"
"Another lodger named Edith Bryant and Petrofsky. We were all standing
in the hall at the time."
"But I thought you said Petrofsky had been turned away from the house."
"So he had, a week before; but he had left a box in his room, and on
this day he had come to fetch it. That was what started the trouble.
Miriam had taken his room for her bedroom, and turned her old one into a
workroom. She said he should not go to her room to fetch his box."
"And did he?"
"I think so. Miriam and Edith and I went out, leaving him in the hall.
When we came back the box was gone, and, as Mrs. Goldstein was in the
kitchen and there was nobody else in the house, he must have taken it."
"You spoke of Miriam's workroom. What work did she do?"
"She cut stencils for a firm of decorators."
Here the coroner took a peculiarly shaped knife from the table before
him, and handed it to the witness.
"Have you ever seen that knife before?" he asked.
"Yes. It belongs to Miriam Goldstein. It is a stencil-knife that she
used in her work."
This concluded the evidence of Kate Silver, and when the name of the
next witness, Paul Petrofsky, was called, our Mansell Street friend came
forward to be sworn. His evidence was quite brief, and merely
corroborative of that of Kate Silver, as was that of the next witness,
Edith Bryant. When these had been disposed of, the coroner announced:
"Before taking the medical evidence, gentlemen, I propose to hear that
of the police-officers, and first we will call Detective-sergeant Alfred
Bates."
The sergeant stepped forward briskly, and proceeded to give his evidence
with official readiness and precision.
"I was called by Constable Simmonds at eleven-forty-nine, and reached
the house at two minutes to twelve in company with Inspector Harris and
Divisional Surgeon Davidson. When I arrived Dr. Hart, Dr. Thorndyke, and
Dr. Jervis were already in the room. I found the deceased woman, Minna
Adler, lying in bed with her throat cut. She was dead and cold. There
were no signs of a struggle, and the bed did not appear to have been
disturbed. There was a table by the bedside on which was a book and an
empty candlestick. The candle had apparently burnt out, for there was
only a piece of charred wick at the bottom of the socket. A box had been
placed on the floor at the head of the bed and a hassock stood on it.
Apparently the murderer had stood on the hassock and leaned over the
head of the bed to commit the murder. This was rendered necessary by the
position of the table, which could not have been moved without making
some noise and perhaps disturbing the deceased. I infer from the
presence of the box and hassock that the murderer is a short person."
"Was there anything else that seemed to fix the identity of the
murderer?"
"Yes. A tress of a woman's red hair was grasped in the left hand of the
deceased."
As the detective uttered this statement, a simultaneous shriek of horror
burst from the accused woman and her mother. Mrs. Goldstein sank
half-fainting on to a bench, while Miriam, pale as death, stood as one
petrified, fixing the detective with a stare of terror, as he drew from
his pocket two small paper packets, which he opened and handed to the
coroner.
"The hair in the packet marked _A_," said he, "is that which was found
in the hand of the deceased; that in the packet marked _B_ is the hair
of Miriam Goldstein."
Here the accused woman's solicitor rose. "Where did you obtain the hair
in the packet marked _B_?" he demanded.
"I took it from a bag of combings that hung on the wall of Miriam
Goldstein's bedroom," answered the detective.
"I object to this," said the solicitor. "There is no evidence that the
hair from that bag was the hair of Miriam Goldstein at all."
Thorndyke chuckled softly. "The lawyer is as dense as the policeman," he
remarked to me in an undertone. "Neither of them seems to see the
significance of that bag in the least."
"Did you know about the bag, then?" I asked in surprise.
"No. I thought it was the hair-brush."
I gazed at my colleague in amazement, and was about to ask for some
elucidation of this cryptic reply, when he held up his finger and turned
again to listen.
"Very well, Mr. Horwitz," the coroner was saying, "I will make a note of
your objection, but I shall allow the sergeant to continue his
evidence."
The solicitor sat down, and the detective resumed his statement.
"I have examined and compared the two samples of hair, and it is my
opinion that they are from the head of the same person. The only other
observation that I made in the room was that there was a small quantity
of silver sand sprinkled on the pillow around the deceased woman's
head."
"Silver sand!" exclaimed the coroner. "Surely that is a very singular
material to find on a woman's pillow?"
"I think it is easily explained," replied the sergeant. "The wash-hand
basin was full of bloodstained water, showing that the murderer had
washed his--or her--hands, and probably the knife, too, after the crime.
On the washstand was a ball of sand-soap, and I imagine that the
murderer used this to cleanse his--or her--hands, and, while drying
them, must have stood over the head of the bed and let the sand
sprinkle down on to the pillow."
"A simple but highly ingenious explanation," commented the coroner
approvingly, and the jurymen exchanged admiring nods and nudges.
"I searched the rooms occupied by the accused woman, Miriam Goldstein,
and found there a knife of the kind used by stencil cutters, but larger
than usual. There were stains of blood on it which the accused explained
by saying that she cut her finger some days ago. She admitted that the
knife was hers."
This concluded the sergeant's evidence, and he was about to sit down
when the solicitor rose.
"I should like to ask this witness one or two questions," said he, and
the coroner having nodded assent, he proceeded: "Has the finger of the
accused been examined since her arrest?"
"I believe not," replied the sergeant. "Not to my knowledge, at any
rate."
The solicitor noted the reply, and then asked: "With reference to the
silver sand, did you find any at the bottom of the wash-hand basin?"
The sergeant's face reddened. "I did not examine the wash-hand basin,"
he answered.
"Did anybody examine it?"
"I think not."
"Thank you." Mr. Horwitz sat down, and the triumphant squeak of his
quill pen was heard above the muttered disapproval of the jury.
"We shall now take the evidence of the doctors, gentlemen," said the
coroner, "and we will begin with that of the divisional surgeon. You saw
the deceased, I believe, Doctor," he continued, when Dr. Davidson had
been sworn, "soon after the discovery of the murder, and you have since
then made an examination of the body?"
"Yes. I found the body of the deceased lying in her bed, which had
apparently not been disturbed. She had been dead about ten hours, and
rigidity was complete in the limbs but not in the trunk. The cause of
death was a deep wound extending right across the throat and dividing
all the structures down to the spine. It had been inflicted with a
single sweep of a knife while deceased was lying down, and was evidently
homicidal. It was not possible for the deceased to have inflicted the
wound herself. It was made with a single-edged knife, drawn from left to
right; the assailant stood on a hassock placed on a box at the head of
the bed and leaned over to strike the blow. The murderer is probably
quite a short person, very muscular, and right-handed. There was no sign
of a struggle, and, judging by the nature of the injuries, I should say
that death was almost instantaneous. In the left hand of the deceased
was a small tress of a woman's red hair. I have compared that hair with
that of the accused, and am of opinion that it is her hair."
"You were shown a knife belonging to the accused?"
"Yes; a stencil-knife. There were stains of dried blood on it which I
have examined and find to be mammalian blood. It is probably human
blood, but I cannot say with certainty that it is."
"Could the wound have been inflicted with this knife?"
"Yes, though it is a small knife to produce so deep a wound. Still, it
is quite possible."
The coroner glanced at Mr. Horwitz. "Do you wish to ask this witness any
questions?" he inquired.
"If you please, sir," was the reply. The solicitor rose, and, having
glanced through his notes, commenced: "You have described certain
blood-stains on this knife. But we have heard that there was
blood-stained water in the wash-hand basin, and it is suggested, most
reasonably, that the murderer washed his hands and the knife. But if the
knife was washed, how do you account for the bloodstains on it?"
"Apparently the knife was not washed, only the hands."
"But is not that highly improbable?"
"No, I think not."
"You say that there was no struggle, and that death was practically
instantaneous, but yet the deceased had torn out a lock of the
murderess's hair. Are not those two statements inconsistent with one
another?"
"No. The hair was probably grasped convulsively at the moment of death.
At any rate, the hair was undoubtedly in the dead woman's hand."
"Is it possible to identify positively the hair of any individual?"
"No. Not with certainty. But this is very peculiar hair."
The solicitor sat down, and, Dr. Hart having been called, and having
briefly confirmed the evidence of his principal, the coroner announced:
"The next witness, gentleman, is Dr. Thorndyke, who was present almost
accidentally, but was actually the first on the scene of the murder. He
has since made an examination of the body, and will, no doubt, be able
to throw some further light on this horrible crime."
Thorndyke stood up, and, having been sworn, laid on the table a small
box with a leather handle. Then, in answer to the coroner's questions,
he described himself as the lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence at St.
Margaret's Hospital, and briefly explained his connection with the
case. At this point the foreman of the jury interrupted to ask that his
opinion might be taken on the hair and the knife, as these were matters
of contention, and the objects in question were accordingly handed to
him.
"Is the hair in the packet marked _A_ in your opinion from the same
person as that in the packet marked _B_?" the coroner asked.
"I have no doubt that they are from the same person," was the reply.
"Will you examine this knife and tell us if the wound on the deceased
might have been inflicted with it?"
Thorndyke examined the blade attentively, and then handed the knife back
to the coroner.
"The wound might have been inflicted with this knife," said he, "but I
am quite sure it was not."
"Can you give us your reasons for that very definite opinion?"
"I think," said Thorndyke, "that it will save time if I give you the
facts in a connected order." The coroner bowed assent, and he proceeded:
"I will not waste your time by reiterating facts already stated.
Sergeant Bates has fully described the state of the room, and I have
nothing to add on that subject. Dr. Davidson's description of the body
covers all the facts: the woman had been dead about ten hours, the wound
was unquestionably homicidal, and was inflicted in the manner that he
has described. Death was apparently instantaneous, and I should say that
the deceased never awakened from her sleep."
"But," objected the coroner, "the deceased held a lock of hair in her
hand."
"That hair," replied Thorndyke, "was not the hair of the murderer. It
was placed in the hand of the corpse for an obvious purpose; and the
fact that the murderer had brought it with him shows that the crime was
premeditated, and that it was committed by someone who had had access to
the house and was acquainted with its inmates."
As Thorndyke made this statement, coroner, jurymen, and spectators alike
gazed at him in open-mouthed amazement. There was an interval of intense
silence, broken by a wild, hysteric laugh from Mrs. Goldstein, and then
the coroner asked:
"How did you know that the hair in the hand of the corpse was not that
of the murderer?"
"The inference was very obvious. At the first glance the peculiar and
conspicuous colour of the hair struck me as suspicious. But there were
three facts, each of which was in itself sufficient to prove that the
hair was probably not that of the murderer.
"In the first place there was the condition of the hand. When a person,
at the moment of death, grasps any object firmly, there is set up a
condition known as cadaveric spasm. The muscular contraction passes
immediately into _rigor mortis_, or death-stiffening, and the object
remains grasped by the dead hand until the rigidity passes off. In this
case the hand was perfectly rigid, but it did not grasp the hair at all.
The little tress lay in the palm quite loosely and the hand was only
partially closed. Obviously the hair had been placed in it after death.
The other two facts had reference to the condition of the hair itself.
Now, when a lock of hair is torn from the head, it is evident that all
the roots will be found at the same end of the lock. But in the present
instance this was not the case; the lock of hair which lay in the dead
woman's hand had roots at both ends, and so could not have been torn
from the head of the murderer. But the third fact that I observed was
still more conclusive. The hairs of which that little tress was composed
had not been pulled out at all. They had fallen out spontaneously. They
were, in fact, shed hairs--probably combings. Let me explain the
difference. When a hair is shed naturally, it drops out of the little
tube in the skin called the root sheath, having been pushed out by the
young hair growing up underneath; the root end of such a shed hair shows
nothing but a small bulbous enlargement--the root bulb. But when a hair
is forcibly pulled out, its root drags out the root sheath with it, and
this can be plainly seen as a glistening mass on the end of the hair. If
Miriam Goldstein will pull out a hair and pass it to me, I will show you
the great difference between hair which is pulled out and hair which is
shed."
[Illustration: _A_, SHED HAIRS SHOWING THE NAKED BULB, MAGNIFIED 32
DIAMETERS.
_B_, HAIRS PLUCKED FROM SCALP, SHOWING THE ADHERENT ROOT-SHEATHS,
MAGNIFIED 20 DIAMETERS.]
The unfortunate Miriam needed no pressing. In a twinkling she had
tweaked out a dozen hairs, which a constable handed across to Thorndyke,
by whom they were at once fixed in a paper-clip. A second clip being
produced from the box, half a dozen hairs taken from the tress which had
been found in the dead woman's hand were fixed in it. Then Thorndyke
handed the two clips, together with a lens, to the coroner.
"Remarkable!" exclaimed the latter, "and most conclusive." He passed the
objects on to the foreman, and there was an interval of silence while
the jury examined them with breathless interest and much facial
contortion.
"The next question," resumed Thorndyke, "was, Whence did the murderer
obtain these hairs? I assumed that they had been taken from Miriam
Goldstein's hair-brush; but the sergeant's evidence makes it pretty
clear that they were obtained from the very bag of combings from which
he took a sample for comparison."
"I think, Doctor," remarked the coroner, "you have disposed of the hair
clue pretty completely. May I ask if you found anything that might throw
any light on the identity of the murderer?"
"Yes," replied Thorndyke, "I observed certain things which determine the
identity of the murderer quite conclusively." He turned a significant
glance on Superintendent Miller, who immediately rose, stepped quietly
to the door, and then returned, putting something into his pocket. "When
I entered the hall," Thorndyke continued, "I noted the following facts:
Behind the door was a shelf on which were two china candlesticks. Each
was fitted with a candle, and in one was a short candle-end, about an
inch long, lying in the tray. On the floor, close to the mat, was a spot
of candle-wax and some faint marks of muddy feet. The oil-cloth on the
stairs also bore faint footmarks, made by wet goloshes. They were
ascending the stairs, and grew fainter towards the top. There were two
more spots of candle-wax on the stairs, and one on the handrail; a burnt
end of a wax match halfway up the stairs, and another on the landing.
There were no descending footmarks, but one of the spots of wax close to
the balusters had been trodden on while warm and soft, and bore the mark
of the front of the heel of a golosh descending the stairs. The lock of
the street door had been recently oiled, as had also that of the bedroom
door, and the latter had been unlocked from outside with a bent wire,
which had made a mark on the key. Inside the room I made two further
observations. One was that the dead woman's pillow was lightly sprinkled
with sand, somewhat like silver sand, but greyer and less gritty. I
shall return to this presently.
"The other was that the candlestick on the bedside table was empty. It
was a peculiar candlestick, having a skeleton socket formed of eight
flat strips of metal. The charred wick of a burnt-out candle was at the
bottom of the socket, but a little fragment of wax on the top edge
showed that another candle had been stuck in it and had been taken out,
for otherwise that fragment would have been melted. I at once thought of
the candle-end in the hall, and when I went down again I took that end
from the tray and examined it. On it I found eight distinct marks
corresponding to the eight bars of the candlestick in the bedroom. It
had been carried in the right hand of some person, for the warm, soft
wax had taken beautifully clear impressions of a right thumb and
forefinger. I took three moulds of the candle-end in moulding wax, and
from these moulds have made this cement cast, which shows both the
fingerprints and the marks of the candlestick." He took from his box a
small white object, which he handed to the coroner.
"And what do you gather from these facts?" asked the coroner.
"I gather that at about a quarter to two on the morning of the crime, a
man (who had, on the previous day visited the house to obtain the tress
of hair and oil the locks) entered the house by means of a latchkey. We
can fix the time by the fact that it rained on that morning from
half-past one to a quarter to two, this being the only rain that has
fallen for a fortnight, and the murder was committed at about two
o'clock. The man lit a wax match in the hall and another halfway up the
stairs. He found the bedroom door locked, and turned the key from
outside with a bent wire. He entered, lit the candle, placed the box and
hassock, murdered his victim, washed his hands and knife, took the
candle-end from the socket and went downstairs, where he blew out the
candle and dropped it into the tray.
"The next clue is furnished by the sand on the pillow. I took a little
of it, and examined it under the microscope, when it turned out to be
deep-sea sand from the Eastern Mediterranean. It was full of the minute
shells called 'Foraminifera,' and as one of these happened to belong to
a species which is found only in the Levant, I was able to fix the
locality."
"But this is very remarkable," said the coroner. "How on earth could
deep-sea sand have got on to this woman's pillow?"
"The explanation," replied Thorndyke, "is really quite simple. Sand of
this kind is contained in considerable quantities in Turkey sponges. The
warehouses in which the sponges are unpacked are often strewn with it
ankle deep; the men who unpack the cases become dusted over with it,
their clothes saturated and their pockets filled with it. If such a
person, with his clothes and pockets full of sand, had committed this
murder, it is pretty certain that in leaning over the head of the bed in
a partly inverted position he would have let fall a certain quantity of
the sand from his pockets and the interstices of his clothing. Now, as
soon as I had examined this sand and ascertained its nature, I sent a
message to Mr. Goldstein asking him for a list of the persons who were
acquainted with the deceased, with their addresses and occupations. He
sent me the list by return, and among the persons mentioned was a man
who was engaged as a packer in a wholesale sponge warehouse in the
Minories. I further ascertained that the new season's crop of Turkey
sponges had arrived a few days before the murder.
"The question that now arose was, whether this sponge-packer was the
person whose fingerprints I had found on the candle-end. To settle this
point, I prepared two mounted photographs, and having contrived to meet
the man at his door on his return from work, I induced him to look at
them and compare them. He took them from me, holding each one between a
forefinger and thumb. When he returned them to me, I took them home and
carefully dusted each on both sides with a certain surgical
dusting-powder. The powder adhered to the places where his fingers and
thumbs had pressed against the photographs, showing the fingerprints
very distinctly. Those of the right hand were identical with the prints
on the candle, as you will see if you compare them with the cast." He
produced from the box the photograph of the Yiddish lettering, on the
black margin of which there now stood out with startling distinctness a
yellowish-white print of a thumb.
Thorndyke had just handed the card to the coroner when a very singular
disturbance arose. While my friend had been giving the latter part of
his evidence, I had observed the man Petrofsky rise from his seat and
walk stealthily across to the door. He turned the handle softly and
pulled, at first gently, and then with more force. But the door was
locked. As he realized this, Petrofsky seized the handle with both
hands and tore at it furiously, shaking it to and fro with the violence
of a madman, and his shaking limbs, his starting eyes, glaring insanely
at the astonished spectators, his ugly face, dead white, running with
sweat and hideous with terror, made a picture that was truly shocking.
Suddenly he let go the handle, and with a horrible cry thrust his hand
under the skirt of his coat and rushed at Thorndyke. But the
superintendent was ready for this. There was a shout and a scuffle, and
then Petrofsky was born down, kicking and biting like a maniac, while
Miller hung on to his right hand and the formidable knife that it
grasped.
[Illustration: SUPERINTENDENT MILLER RISES TO THE OCCASION.]
"I will ask you to hand that knife to the coroner," said Thorndyke, when
Petrofsky had been secured and handcuffed, and the superintendent had
readjusted his collar. "Will you kindly examine it, sir," he continued,
"and tell me if there is a notch in the edge, near to the point--a
triangular notch about an eighth of an inch long?"
The coroner looked at the knife, and then said in a tone of surprise:
"Yes, there is. You have seen this knife before, then?"
"No, I have not," replied Thorndyke. "But perhaps I had better continue
my statement. There is no need for me to tell you that the fingerprints
on the card and on the candle are those of Paul Petrofsky; I will
proceed to the evidence furnished by the body.
"In accordance with your order, I went to the mortuary and examined the
corpse of the deceased. The wound has been fully and accurately
described by Dr. Davidson, but I observed one fact which I presume he
had overlooked. Embedded in the bone of the spine--in the left
transverse process of the fourth vertebra--I discovered a small particle
of steel, which I carefully extracted."
He drew his collecting-box from his pocket, and taking from it a
seed-envelope, handed the latter to the coroner. "That fragment of steel
is in this envelope," he said, "and it is possible that it may
correspond to the notch in the knife-blade."
Amidst an intense silence the coroner opened the little envelope, and
let the fragment of steel drop on to a sheet of paper. Laying the knife
on the paper, he gently pushed the fragment towards the notch. Then he
looked up at Thorndyke.
"It fits exactly," said he.
There was a heavy thud at the other end of the room and we all looked
round.
Petrofsky had fallen on to the floor insensible.
* * * * *
"An instructive case, Jervis," remarked Thorndyke, as we walked
homewards--"a case that reiterates the lesson that the authorities still
refuse to learn."
"What is that?" I asked.
"It is this. When it is discovered that a murder has been committed, the
scene of that murder should instantly become as the Palace of the
Sleeping Beauty. Not a grain of dust should be moved, not a soul should
be allowed to approach it, until the scientific observer has seen
everything _in situ_ and absolutely undisturbed. No tramplings of
excited constables, no rummaging by detectives, no scrambling to and fro
of bloodhounds. Consider what would have happened in this case if we had
arrived a few hours later. The corpse would have been in the mortuary,
the hair in the sergeant's pocket, the bed rummaged and the sand
scattered abroad, the candle probably removed, and the stairs covered
with fresh tracks.
"There would not have been the vestige of a clue."
"And," I added, "the deep sea would have uttered its message in vain."