In Which Margaret Confers with Dr. Thorndyke
The sun was shining pleasantly on the trees of King’s Bench Walk,
Inner Temple, when Margaret approached the handsome brick portico of
number 5A and read upon the jamb of the doorway the name of Dr. John
Thorndyke under the explanatory heading “First pair.” She was a little
nervous of the coming interview, partly because she had met the famous
criminal lawyer only twice before, but more especially by reason of a
vague fear that her uneasy suspicions of her husband might presently
be turned into something more definite and disagreeable.
Her nervousness on the first score was soon dispelled, for her gentle
summons on the little brass knocker of the inner door—the “oak” was
open—was answered by Dr. Thorndyke himself, who greeted her as an old
friend and led her into the sitting-room, where tea-things were set
out on a small table between two armchairs. The homely informality of
the reception, so different from the official stiffness of Mr.
Penfield, instantly put her at her ease; and when the tea-pot arrived
in the custody of a small gentleman of archdiaconal aspect and
surprisingly crinklyness of feature, she felt as if she were merely
paying some rather unusual kind of afternoon call.
Dr. Thorndyke had what would, in his medical capacity, have been
called a fine bedside manner; pleasant, genial, sympathetic, but never
losing touch with the business on hand. Insensibly a conversation of
pleasing generality slipped into a consultation, and Margaret found
herself stating her case, apparently of her own initiative. Having
described her interview with Mr. Penfield and commented on the old
lawyer’s very unhelpful attitude, she continued:
“It was Mr. Rodney who advised me to consult you. As a civil lawyer
with no experience of criminal practice, he felt hardly competent to
deal with the case. That was what he said. It sounds rather ominous;
as if he thought there might be some criminal element in the affair.”
“Not necessarily,” said Thorndyke. “But your husband is missing; and a
missing man is certainly more in my province than in Rodney’s. What
did he suggest that you should ask me to do?”
“I should wish, of course,” replied Margaret, “to get into
communication with my husband. But if that is not possible, I should
at least like to know what has become of him. Matters can’t be left in
their present uncertain state. There is the future to think of.”
“Precisely,” agreed Thorndyke, “and as the future must be based upon
the present and the past, we had better begin by setting out what we
actually know and can prove. First, I understand that on the 23rd of
June, your husband left Sennen, and was seen by several persons to
leave, on a yacht in company with Mr. Varney and that there was no one
else on board. The yacht reached Penzance at about half-past two in
the afternoon and your husband went ashore at once. He was seen by Mr.
Varney to land on the pier and go towards the town. Did any one
besides Mr. Varney see him go ashore?”
“No—at least I have not heard of any one. Of course, he may have been
seen by some fisherman or strangers on the pier. But does it matter?
Mr. Varney saw him land and he certainly was not on the yacht when Mr.
Rodney arrived half an hour later. There can’t be any possible doubt
that he did land at Penzance.”
“No,” Thorndyke agreed; “but as that is the last time that he was
certainly seen alive and as the fact that he landed may have to be
proved in a court of law, additional evidence would be worth
securing.”
“But that was not the last time that he was seen alive,” said
Margaret; and here she gave him an account of Varney’s expedition to
Falmouth, explaining why he went and giving full particulars
respecting the steamer; all of which Thorndyke noted down on the
note-book which lay by his side on the table.
“This is very important,” said he, when she had finished. “But you see
that it is on a different plane of certainty. It is hearsay at the
best and there is no real identification. What luck did Mr. Varney
have at Ipswich?”
“He went down there on the evening of the 27th—the day after his visit
to Falmouth. He went straight to the quay-side and made inquiries
about the steamer _Hedwig_, which he learned had left about noon,
having come in about nine o’clock on the previous night. He talked to
various quay loafers and from one of them ascertained that a single
passenger had landed; a big man, carrying a large bag or portmanteau
in his hand and a coat of some kind on his arm. The passenger landed
alone. Nothing was seen of any woman.”
“Did Mr. Varney take the name and address of his informant at Ipswich
or the one at Falmouth?”
“I am afraid not. He said nothing about it.”
“That is unfortunate,” said Thorndyke, “because these witnesses may be
wanted as they might be able to identify a photograph of your husband.
We must find out from Mr. Varney what he did in the matter.”
Margaret looked at Dr. Thorndyke with a slightly puzzled expression.
“You speak of witnesses and evidence,” said she, “as if you had
something definite in your mind. Some legal proceedings, I mean.”
“I have,” he replied. “If your husband makes no sign and if he does
not presently appear, certain legal proceedings will become
inevitable.” He paused for a few moments and then continued: “You must
understand, Mrs. Purcell, that when a man of any position—and
especially a married man—disappears from ‘his usual places of resort,’
as the phrase goes, he upsets all the social adjustments that connect
him with his surroundings, and, sooner or later, those adjustments
have to be made good. If he disappears completely, it becomes
uncertain whether he is alive or dead; and this uncertainty
communicates itself to his property and to his dependents and
relatives. If he is alive, his property is vested in himself; if he is
dead it is vested in his executors or in his heirs or next of kin.
Should he be named as a beneficiary in a will and should the person
who has made that will die after his disappearance, the question
immediately arises whether he was dead or alive at the time of the
testator’s death; a vitally important question, since it affects not
only himself and his heirs but also the other persons who benefit
under the will. And then there is the status of the wife, if the
missing man is married; the question whether she is a married woman or
a widow has, in justice to her, to be settled if and when possible.
“So you see that the disappearance of a man like your husband sets
going a process that generates all sorts of legal problems. You cannot
simply write him off and treat him as non-existent. His life must be
properly wound up so that his estate may be disposed of, and this will
involve the necessity of presuming his death; and presumption of death
may raise difficult questions of survivorship, although these may
arise at any moment.”
“What is meant by a question of survivorship?” Margaret asked.
“It is a question which arises in respect of two persons, both of whom
are dead and concerning one or both of whom the exact date of death is
unknown. One of them must have died before the other—unless they both
died at the same instant. The question is, which survived the other?
Which of them died first? It is a question on which may turn the
succession to an estate, a title, or even a kingdom.”
“Well,” said Margaret, “it is not likely to arise in respect of Dan.”
“On the contrary,” Thorndyke dissented, “it may arise to-morrow. If
some person who has left him a legacy should die to-day, that person’s
will could not be administered until it had been decided whether your
husband was or was not alive at the time the testator died; that is,
whether or not he survived the testator. But, as matters stand, we can
give no answer to that question. We can prove that he was alive at
half-past two on the 23rd of June. Thenceforward we have no knowledge
of him.”
“Excepting what Mr. Varney has told us.”
“Mr. Varney’s information is legally worthless unless he can produce
the witnesses and unless they can identify a photograph or otherwise
prove that the man whom they saw was actually Mr. Purcell. You must
ask Mr. Varney about it. However, at the moment you are more concerned
to find out what has become of your husband. I suppose I may ask a few
necessary questions?”
“Oh, certainly,” she replied. “Pray don’t have any scruples of
delicacy. Ask anything you want to know.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Purcell,” said Thorndyke; “and to begin with the
inevitable question: Do you know of, or suspect, any kind of
entanglement with any woman?”
The direct, straightforward question came rather as a relief to
Margaret, and she answered without embarrassment: “Naturally, I
suspect, because I can think of no other reason for his leaving me in
this way. But to be honest, I have never had the slightest grounds of
complaint in regard to his behaviour with other women. He married me
because he fell in love with me, and he has never seemed to change.
Whatever he has been to other people, to me he has always appeared, in
his rough, taciturn way, as devoted as his nature allowed him to be.
This affair is an utter surprise to me.”
Thorndyke made no comment on this, but following the hint that
Margaret had dropped, asked: “As to his character in general, what
sort of man is he? Is he popular, for instance?”
“No,” replied Margaret, “he is not very much liked; in fact, with the
exception of Mr. Varney, he has no really intimate friends, and I have
often wondered how poor Mr. Varney put up with the way he treated him.
The truth is that Dan is rather a bully; he is strong, big and
pugnacious and used to having his own way and somewhat brutal, at
times, in his manner of getting it. He is a very self-contained,
taciturn, rather secretive man and—well, perhaps he is not very
scrupulous. I am not painting a very flattering picture, I am afraid.”
“It sounds like a good portrait, though,” said Thorndyke. “When you
say that he is not very scrupulous, are you referring to his business
transactions?”
“Well, yes; and to his dealings with people generally.”
“By the way,” asked Thorndyke, “what is his occupation?”
Margaret uttered a little apologetic laugh. “It sounds absurd, but I
really don’t quite know what his business is. He is so very
uncommunicative. I have always understood that he is a financier,
whatever that may be. I believe he negotiates loans and buys and sells
stocks and shares but he is not on the Stock Exchange. He has an
office in Coleman Street in the premises of a firm of outside brokers
and he keeps a clerk, a man named Levy. It seems to be quite a small
establishment, though it appears to yield a fair income. That is all I
can tell you, but I daresay Mr. Levy could give you other particulars
if you wanted them.”
“I will make a note of the address, at any rate,” said Thorndyke, and,
having done so, he asked: “As to your husband’s banking account; do
you happen to know if any considerable sum has been drawn out quite
lately, or if any cheques have been presented since he disappeared?”
“His current account is intact,” she replied. “I have an account at
the same bank and I saw the manager a couple of days ago. Of course,
he was not very expansive, but he did tell me that no unusual amounts
had been withdrawn and that no cheque has been presented since the
21st of June, when Dan drew a cheque for me. It is really rather odd,
especially as the balance is somewhat above the average. Don’t you
think so?”
“I do,” he answered. “It suggests that your husband’s disappearance
was unpremeditated and that extreme precautions are being taken to
conceal his present whereabouts. But the mystery is what he is living
on if he took no considerable sum with him and has drawn no cheques
since. However, we had better finish with the general questions. You
don’t appear to know much about your husband’s present affairs; what
do you know of his past?”
“Not a great deal; and I can think of nothing that throws any light on
his extraordinary conduct in taking himself off as he has done. I met
him at Maidstone about six years ago. He was then employed in the
office of a large paper mill—Whichboy’s mill, I think it was—as a
clerk or accountant. He had then recently come down from Cambridge and
seemed in rather low water. After a time, he left Whichboy’s and went
to London, and very shortly his circumstances began to improve in a
remarkable way. It was then that he began his present business, which
I know included the making of loans because he lent my father money;
in fact it was through these transactions and his visits on business
to my father that the intimacy grew which resulted finally in our
marriage. He then seemed, as he always has, to be a keen business man,
very attentive to the main chance, not at all sentimental in his
dealings, and, as I have said, not overscrupulous as to his methods.”
Thorndyke nodded gravely but made no comment. The association of loans
to the father with marriage with an evidently not infatuated daughter
seemed to throw a sufficiently suggestive light on Daniel Purcell’s
methods.
“And as to his personal habits and tastes?” he asked.
“He has always been reasonably temperate, though he likes good living
and has a robust appetite; and he really has no vices beyond a rather
unpleasant temper and excessive keenness on money. His principal
interest is in boating, yachting and fishing; he does not bet or
gamble, and his relations with women have always seemed to be
perfectly correct.”
“You spoke of his exceptional intimacy with Mr. Varney. Is the
friendship of long standing?”
“Yes, quite. They were school-fellows, they were at Cambridge together
and they both came down about the same time and for a similar reason.
Both their fathers got suddenly into financial difficulties. Dan’s
father was a stockbroker, and he failed suddenly, either through some
unlucky speculations or through the default of a client. Mr. Varney’s
father was a clergyman, and he, too, lost all his money, and at about
the same time. I have always suspected that there was some connexion
between the two failures, but I have never heard that there actually
was. Dan is as close as an oyster, and, of course, Mr. Varney has
never referred to the affair.”
“Mr. Varney is not associated with your husband in business?”
“No. He is an artist—principally an etcher, and a very clever one too.
I think he is doing quite well now, but he had a hard struggle when he
first came down from Cambridge. For a couple of years he worked for an
engraver, doing ordinary copperplate work for the trade, and I
understand that he is remarkably skilful at engraving. But now he does
nothing but etchings and mezzotints.”
“Then his activities are entirely concerned with art?”
“I believe so, now, at any rate. After he left the engraver he went to
a merchant in the City as a clerk. But he was only there quite a short
time, and I fancy he left on account of some sort of unpleasantness,
but I know nothing about it. After that he went abroad and travelled
about for a time making sketches and drawings of the towns to do his
etchings from; in fact he only came back from Belgium a couple of
months ago. But I am afraid I am wasting your time with a lot of
irrelevant gossip.”
“It is my fault if you are,” said Thorndyke, “since I put the
questions. But the fact is that nothing is irrelevant. Your husband
has vanished into space in a perfectly unaccountable manner, and we
have to find, if we can, something in his known circumstances which
may give us a clue to the motive and the manner of his disappearance
and his probable whereabouts at present. Has he any favourite haunts
abroad or at home?”
“He is very partial to the Eastern counties, especially the broads and
rivers of Norfolk. You remember he was on his way to Oulton Broad when
he disappeared.”
“Yes; and one must admit that the waterways of Norfolk and Suffolk,
with all their endless communications, would form an admirable
hiding-place. In a small yacht or covered boat a man might lose
himself in that network of rivers and lakes and lie hidden for months;
creeping from end to end of the county without leaving a trace. We
must bear that possibility in mind. By the way, have you brought me a
copy of that very cautious letter of Mr. Penfield’s?”
“I have brought the letter itself,” she replied, producing it and
laying it on the table.
“Thank you,” said Thorndyke. “I will make a copy of it and let you
have the original back. And there is another question: has the letter
which Mr. Penfield ought to have received been returned to you?”
“No,” replied Margaret.
“Ha!” said Thorndyke. “That is important because it is undoubtedly a
remarkable circumstance and rather significant. A letter in the wrong
envelope practically always implies another letter in another wrong
envelope. Now a letter was almost certainly written to Mr. Penfield
and almost certainly sent. It was presumably a business letter and of
some importance. It ought certainly to have been returned to the
sender, and under ordinary circumstances would have been. Why has it
not been returned? The person to whom it was sent was the person to
whom the mysterious communication that Mr. Penfield received was
addressed. That communication, we judge from Mr. Penfield’s letter,
contained some highly confidential matter. But that implies some
person who was in highly confidential relations with your husband. The
suggestion seems to be that your husband discovered his mistake after
he had posted the letter or letters and that he went at once to this
other person and informed him of what had happened.”
“Informed her,” Margaret corrected.
“I must admit,” said Thorndyke, “that the circumstances give colour to
your inference; but we must remember that they would apply equally to
a man. They certainly point to an associate of some kind. The
character of that associate and the nature of the association are
questions that turn on the contents of that letter that Mr. Penfield
received.”
“Do you think,” asked Margaret, “that Mr. Penfield would be more
confidential with you than he was with me?”
“I doubt it,” was the reply. “If the contents of that letter were of a
secret nature, he will keep them to himself; and quite right, too. But
I shall give him a trial all the same, and you had better let him know
that you have consulted me.”
This brought the conference to an end, and shortly afterwards Margaret
went on her way, now more than ever convinced that the inevitable
woman was at the bottom of the mystery. For some time after she had
gone Thorndyke sat with his notes before him, wrapped in profound
thought and deeply interested in the problem that he was called upon
to solve. He did not share Margaret’s suspicions, though he had not
strongly contested them. To his experienced eye, the whole group of
circumstances, with certain points which he had not thought fit to
enlarge on, suggested something more sinister than a mere elopement.
There was Purcell’s behaviour, for instance. It had all the
appearances of an unpremeditated flight. No preparations seemed to
have been made; no attempt to wind up his affairs. His banking account
was left intact, though no one but he could touch it during his
lifetime. He had left or sent no letter of farewell, explanation or
apology to his wife; and now that he was gone, he was maintaining a
secrecy as to his whereabouts so profound that apparently he did not
even dare to draw a cheque.
But even more significant was the conduct of Mr. Penfield. Taking from
its envelope the mysterious letter that had come to Sennen and
exploded the mine, Thorndyke spread it out and slowly read it through;
and his interpretation of it now was the same as on the occasion when
he heard Margaret’s epitome of it at Sennen. It was a message to
Purcell through his wife, telling him that something which had been
discovered was not going to be divulged. What could that something be?
The answer, in general terms, seemed to be given by Penfield’s
subsequent conduct. He had been absolutely uncommunicative to
Margaret. Yet Margaret, as the missing man’s wife, was a proper person
to receive any information that could be given. Apparently, then, the
information that Penfield possessed was of a kind that could not be
imparted to any one. Even its very nature could not be hinted at.
Now what kind of information could that be? The obvious inference was
that the letter which had come to Penfield contained incriminating
matter. That would explain everything. For if Penfield had thus
stumbled on evidence of a crime, either committed or contemplated, he
would have to choose between denouncing the criminal or keeping the
matter to himself. But he was not entitled to keep it to himself; for,
other considerations apart, this was not properly a client’s secret.
It had not been communicated to him; he had discovered it by accident.
He was therefore not bound to secrecy and he could not, consequently,
claim a lawyer’s privilege. In short, if he had discovered a crime and
chose to suppress his discovery, he was, in effect, an accessory,
before or after the fact, as the case might be; and he would
necessarily keep the secret because he would not dare to divulge it.
This view was strongly supported by Purcell’s conduct. The
disappearance of the latter coincided exactly with the delivery of the
mysterious letter to Penfield. The inference was that Purcell, having
discovered his fatal mistake, and assuming that Penfield would
immediately denounce him to the police, had fled instantly and was now
in hiding. Purcell’s and Penfield’s conduct were both in complete
agreement with this theory.
But there was a further consideration. If the contents of that letter
were incriminating, they incriminated some one besides Purcell. The
person for whom the letter was intended must have been a party to any
unlawful proceedings referred to in it. He—or she—must, in fact, have
been a confederate. Now, who could that confederate be? Some one,
apparently who was unknown to Margaret, unless it might be the
somewhat shadowy Mr. Levy. And that raised yet a further question:
What was Purcell? How did he get his living? His wife evidently did
not know, which was a striking and rather suspicious fact. He had been
described as a financier. But that meant nothing. The word financier
covered a multitude of sins; the question was, what sins did it cover
in the present instance? And the answer to that question seemed to
involve a visit of exploration to Coleman Street.
As Thorndyke collected his notes to form the nucleus of a dossier of
the Purcell Case he foresaw that his investigations might well unearth
some very unlovely skeletons. But that was no fault of his, nor need
the disclosures be unnecessarily paraded. But Margaret Purcell’s
position must be secured and made regular. Her missing husband must
either be found and brought back or he must be written off and
disposed of in a proper and legal fashion.