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The Big Bow Mystery
By I. Zangwill
Chicago and New York
Rand, McNally & Company
Copyright, 1895, by Rand, McNally & Co.
[Illustration: "My God!" he cried.]
INTRODUCTION.
OF MURDERS AND MYSTERIES.
As this little book was written some four years ago, I feel able to
review it without prejudice. A new book just hot from the brain is
naturally apt to appear faulty to its begetter, but an old book has got
into the proper perspective and may be praised by him without fear or
favor. "The Big Bow Mystery" seems to me an excellent murder story, as
murder stories go, for, while as sensational as the most of them, it
contains more humor and character creation than the best. Indeed, the
humor is too abundant. Mysteries should be sedate and sober. There
should be a pervasive atmosphere of horror and awe such as Poe manages
to create. Humor is out of tone; it would be more artistic to preserve a
somber note throughout. But I was a realist in those days, and in real
life mysteries occur to real persons with their individual humors, and
mysterious circumstances are apt to be complicated by comic. The
indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and
unable to be solved by the reader, and that the writer's solution should
satisfy. Many a mystery runs on breathlessly enough till the dénouement
is reached, only to leave the reader with the sense of having been
robbed of his breath under false pretenses. And not only must the
solution be adequate, but all its data must be given in the body of the
story. The author must not suddenly spring a new person or a new
circumstance upon his reader at the end. Thus, if a friend were to ask
me to guess who dined with him yesterday, it would be fatuous if he had
in mind somebody of whom he knew I had never heard. The only person who
has ever solved "The Big Bow Mystery" is myself. This is not paradox but
plain fact. For long before the book was written, I said to myself one
night that no mystery-monger had ever murdered a man in a room to which
there was no possible access. The puzzle was scarcely propounded ere the
solution flew up and the idea lay stored in my mind till, years later,
during the silly season, the editor of a popular London evening paper,
anxious to let the sea-serpent have a year off, asked me to provide him
with a more original piece of fiction. I might have refused, but there
was murder in my soul, and here was the opportunity. I went to work
seriously, though the _Morning Post_ subsequently said the skit was too
labored, and I succeeded at least in exciting my readers, so many of
whom sent in unsolicited testimonials in the shape of solutions during
the run of the story that, when it ended, the editor asked me to say
something by way of acknowledgement. Thereupon I wrote a letter to the
paper, thanking the would-be solvers for their kindly attempts to help
me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to
wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one
and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried
to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, as thus:
_To the Editor of "The Star."_
SIR: Now that "The Big Bow Mystery" is solved to the satisfaction
of at least one person, will you allow that person the use of your
invaluable columns to enable him to thank the hundreds of your
readers who have favored him with their kind suggestions and
solutions while his tale was running and they were reading? I ask
this more especially because great credit is due to them for
enabling me to end the story in a manner so satisfactory to myself.
When I started it, I had, of course, no idea who had done the
murder, but I was determined no one should guess it. Accordingly,
as each correspondent sent in the name of a suspect, I determined
he or she should not be the guilty party. By degrees every one of
the characters got ticked off as innocent--all except one, and I
had no option but to make that character the murderer. I was very
sorry to do this, as I rather liked that particular person, but
when one has such ingenious readers, what can one do? You can't let
anybody boast that he guessed aright, and, in spite of the trouble
of altering the plot five or six times, I feel that I have chosen
the course most consistent with the dignity of my profession. Had I
not been impelled by this consideration I should certainly have
brought in a verdict against Mrs. Drabdump, as recommended by the
reader who said that, judging by the illustration in the "Star,"
she must be at least seven feet high, and, therefore, could easily
have got on the roof and put her (proportionately) long arm down
the chimney to effect the cut. I am not responsible for the
artist's conception of the character. When I last saw the good lady
she was under six feet, but your artist may have had later
information. The "Star" is always so frightfully up to date. I
ought not to omit the humorous remark of a correspondent, who said:
"Mortlake might have swung in some wild way from one window to
another, _at any rate in a story_." I hope my fellow-writers thus
satirically prodded will not demand his name, as I object to
murders, "at any rate in real life." Finally, a word with the
legions who have taken me to task for allowing Mr. Gladstone to
write over 170 words on a postcard. It is all owing to you, sir,
who announced my story as containing humorous elements. I tried to
put in some, and this gentle dig at the grand old correspondent's
habits was intended to be one of them. However, if I _am_ to be
taken "at the foot of the letter" (or rather of the postcard), I
must say that only to-day I received a postcard containing about
250 words. But this was not from Mr. Gladstone. At any rate, till
Mr. Gladstone himself repudiates this postcard, I shall consider
myself justified in allowing it to stand in the book.
Again thanking your readers for their valuable assistance, Yours,
etc.
One would have imagined that nobody could take this seriously, for it is
obvious that the mystery-story is just the one species of story that can
not be told impromptu or altered at the last moment, seeing that it
demands the most careful piecing together and the most elaborate
dove-tailing. Nevertheless, if you cast your joke upon the waters, you
shall find it no joke after many days. This is what I read in the
_Lyttelton Times_, New Zealand: "The chain of circumstantial evidence
seems fairly irrefragable. From all accounts, Mr. Zangwill himself was
puzzled, after carefully forging every link, how to break it. The method
ultimately adopted I consider more ingenious than convincing." After
that I made up my mind never to joke again, but this good intention now
helps to pave the beaten path.
I. ZANGWILL.
LONDON, September, 1895.
NOTE.
The Mystery which the author will always associate with this story is
how he got through the task of writing it. It was written in a
fortnight--day by day--to meet a sudden demand from the "Star," which
made "a new departure" with it.
The said fortnight was further disturbed by an extraordinary combined
attack of other troubles and tasks. This is no excuse for the
shortcomings of the book, as it was always open to the writer to revise
or suppress it. The latter function may safely be left to the public,
while if the work stands--almost to a letter--as it appeared in the
"Star," it is because the author cannot tell a story more than once.
The introduction of Mr. Gladstone into a fictitious scene is defended on
the ground that he is largely mythical.
I. Z.
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY.
CHAPTER I.
On a memorable morning of early December London opened its eyes on a
frigid gray mist. There are mornings when King Fog masses his molecules
of carbon in serried squadrons in the city, while he scatters them
tenuously in the suburbs; so that your morning train may bear you from
twilight to darkness. But to-day the enemy's maneuvering was more
monotonous. From Bow even unto Hammersmith there draggled a dull,
wretched vapor, like the wraith of an impecunious suicide come into a
fortune immediately after the fatal deed. The barometers and
thermometers had sympathetically shared its depression, and their
spirits (when they had any) were low. The cold cut like a many-bladed
knife.
Mrs. Drabdump, of 11 Glover Street, Bow, was one of the few persons in
London whom fog did not depress. She went about her work quite as
cheerlessly as usual. She had been among the earliest to be aware of the
enemy's advent, picking out the strands of fog from the coils of
darkness the moment she rolled up her bedroom blind and unveiled the
somber picture of the winter morning. She knew that the fog had come to
stay for the day at least, and that the gas bill for the quarter was
going to beat the record in high-jumping. She also knew that this was
because she had allowed her new gentleman lodger, Mr. Arthur Constant,
to pay a fixed sum of a shilling a week for gas, instead of charging him
a proportion of the actual account for the whole house. The
meteorologists might have saved the credit of their science if they had
reckoned with Mrs. Drabdump's next gas bill when they predicted the
weather and made "Snow" the favorite, and said that "Fog" would be
nowhere. Fog was everywhere, yet Mrs. Drabdump took no credit to herself
for her prescience. Mrs. Drabdump indeed took no credit for anything,
paying her way along doggedly, and struggling through life like a
wearied swimmer trying to touch the horizon. That things always went as
badly as she had foreseen did not exhilarate her in the least.
Mrs. Drabdump was a widow. Widows are not born, but made, else you might
have fancied Mrs. Drabdump had always been a widow. Nature had given her
that tall, spare form, and that pale, thin-lipped, elongated, hard-eyed
visage, and that painfully precise hair, which are always associated
with widowhood in low life. It is only in higher circles that women can
lose their husbands and yet remain bewitching. The late Mr. Drabdump had
scratched the base of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs. Drabdump's
foreboding that he would die of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling
day and night with the shadow of Death, as she had wrestled with it
vainly twice before, when Katie died of diphtheria and little Johnny of
scarlet fever. Perhaps it is from overwork among the poor that Death has
been reduced to a shadow.
Mrs. Drabdump was lighting the kitchen fire. She did it very
scientifically, as knowing the contrariety of coal and the anxiety of
flaming sticks to end in smoke unless rigidly kept up to the mark.
Science was a success as usual; and Mrs. Drabdump rose from her knees
content, like a Parsee priestess who had duly paid her morning devotions
to her deity. Then she started violently, and nearly lost her balance.
Her eye had caught the hands of the clock on the mantel. They pointed to
fifteen minutes to seven. Mrs. Drabdump's devotion to the kitchen fire
invariably terminated at fifteen minutes past six. What was the matter
with the clock?
Mrs. Drabdump had an immediate vision of Snoppet, the neighboring
horologist, keeping the clock in hand for weeks and then returning it
only superficially repaired and secretly injured more vitally "for the
good of the trade." The evil vision vanished as quickly as it came,
exorcised by the deep boom of St. Dunstan's bells chiming the
three-quarters. In its place a great horror surged. Instinct had failed;
Mrs. Drabdump had risen at half-past six instead of six. Now she
understood why she had been feeling so dazed and strange and sleepy. She
had overslept herself.
Chagrined and puzzled, she hastily set the kettle over the crackling
coal, discovering a second later that she had overslept herself because
Mr. Constant wished to be woke three-quarters of an hour earlier than
usual, and to have his breakfast at seven, having to speak at an early
meeting of discontented tram-men. She ran at once, candle in hand, to
his bedroom. It was upstairs. All "upstairs" was Arthur Constant's
domain, for it consisted of but two mutually independent rooms. Mrs.
Drabdump knocked viciously at the door of the one he used for a bedroom,
crying, "Seven o'clock, sir. You'll be late, sir. You must get up at
once." The usual slumbrous "All right" was not forthcoming; but, as she
herself had varied her morning salute, her ear was less expectant of the
echo. She went downstairs, with no foreboding save that the kettle would
come off second best in the race between its boiling and her lodger's
dressing.
For she knew there was no fear of Arthur Constant's lying deaf to the
call of duty--temporarily represented by Mrs. Drabdump. He was a light
sleeper, and the tram conductors' bells were probably ringing in his
ears, summoning him to the meeting. Why Arthur Constant, B.
A.--white-handed and white-shirted, and gentleman to the very purse of
him--should concern himself with tram-men, when fortune had confined his
necessary relations with drivers to cabmen at the least, Mrs. Drabdump
could not quite make out. He probably aspired to represent Bow in
Parliament; but then it would surely have been wiser to lodge with a
landlady who possessed a vote by having a husband alive. Nor was there
much practical wisdom in his wish to black his own boots (an occupation
in which he shone but little), and to live in every way like a Bow
working man. Bow working men were not so lavish in their patronage of
water, whether existing in drinking glasses, morning tubs, or laundress'
establishments. Nor did they eat the delicacies with which Mrs. Drabdump
supplied him, with the assurance that they were the artisan's appanage.
She could not bear to see him eat things unbefitting his station. Arthur
Constant opened his mouth and ate what his landlady gave him, not first
deliberately shutting his eyes according to the formula, the rather
pluming himself on keeping them very wide open. But it is difficult for
saints to see through their own halos; and in practice an aureola about
the head is often indistinguishable from a mist. The tea to be scalded
in Mr. Constant's pot, when that cantankerous kettle should boil, was
not the coarse mixture of black and green sacred to herself and Mr.
Mortlake, of whom the thoughts of breakfast now reminded her. Poor Mr.
Mortlake, gone off without any to Devonport, somewhere about four in the
fog-thickened darkness of a winter night! Well, she hoped his journey
would be duly rewarded, that his perks would be heavy, and that he would
make as good a thing out of the "traveling expenses" as rival labor
leaders roundly accused him of to other people's faces. She did not
grudge him his gains, nor was it her business if, as they alleged, in
introducing Mr. Constant to her vacant rooms, his idea was not merely to
benefit his landlady. He had done her an uncommon good turn, queer as
was the lodger thus introduced. His own apostleship to the sons of toil
gave Mrs. Drabdump no twinges of perplexity. Tom Mortlake had been a
compositor; and apostleship was obviously a profession better paid and
of a higher social status. Tom Mortlake--the hero of a hundred
strikes--set up in print on a poster, was unmistakably superior to Tom
Mortlake setting up other men's names at a case. Still, the work was not
all beer and skittles, and Mrs. Drabdump felt that Tom's latest job was
not enviable. She shook his door as she passed it on her way to the
kitchen, but there was no response. The street door was only a few feet
off down the passage, and a glance at it dispelled the last hope that
Tom had abandoned the journey. The door was unbolted and unchained, and
the only security was the latch-key lock. Mrs. Drabdump felt a whit
uneasy, though, to give her her due, she never suffered as much as most
housewives do from criminals who never come. Not quite opposite, but
still only a few doors off, on the other side of the street, lived the
celebrated ex-detective, Grodman, and, illogically enough, his presence
in the street gave Mrs. Drabdump a curious sense of security, as of a
believer living under the shadow of the fane. That any human being of
ill-odor should consciously come within a mile of the scent of so famous
a sleuth-hound seemed to her highly improbable. Grodman had retired
(with a competence) and was only a sleeping dog now; still, even
criminals would have sense enough to let him lie.
So Mrs. Drabdump did not really feel that there had been any danger,
especially as a second glance at the street door showed that Mortlake
had been thoughtful enough to slip the loop that held back the bolt of
the big lock. She allowed herself another throb of sympathy for the
labor leader whirling on his dreary way toward Devonport Dockyard. Not
that he had told her anything of his journey beyond the town; but she
knew Devonport had a Dockyard because Jessie Dymond--Tom's
sweetheart--once mentioned that her aunt lived near there, and it lay on
the surface that Tom had gone to help the dockers, who were imitating
their London brethren. Mrs. Drabdump did not need to be told things to
be aware of them. She went back to prepare Mr. Constant's superfine tea,
vaguely wondering why people were so discontented nowadays. But when she
brought up the tea and the toast and the eggs to Mr. Constant's
sitting-room (which adjoined his bedroom, though without communicating
with it), Mr. Constant was not sitting in it. She lit the gas, and laid
the cloth; then she returned to the landing and beat at the bedroom door
with an imperative palm. Silence alone answered her. She called him by
name and told him the hour, but hers was the only voice she heard, and
it sounded strangely to her in the shadows of the staircase. Then,
muttering, "Poor gentleman, he had the toothache last night; and p'r'aps
he's only just got a wink o' sleep. Pity to disturb him for the sake of
them grizzling conductors. I'll let him sleep his usual time," she bore
the tea-pot downstairs with a mournful, almost poetic, consciousness,
that soft-boiled eggs (like love) must grow cold.
Half-past seven came--and she knocked again. But Constant slept on.
His letters, always a strange assortment, arrived at eight, and a
telegram came soon after. Mrs. Drabdump rattled his door, shouted, and
at last put the wire under it. Her heart was beating fast enough now,
though there seemed to be a cold, clammy snake curling round it. She
went downstairs again and turned the handle of Mortlake's room, and went
in without knowing why. The coverlet of the bed showed that the occupant
had only lain down in his clothes, as if fearing to miss the early
train. She had not for a moment expected to find him in the room; yet
somehow the consciousness that she was alone in the house with the
sleeping Constant seemed to flash for the first time upon her, and the
clammy snake tightened its folds round her heart.
She opened the street door, and her eye wandered nervously up and down.
It was half-past eight. The little street stretched cold and still in
the gray mist, blinking bleary eyes at either end, where the street
lamps smoldered on. No one was visible for the moment, though smoke was
rising from many of the chimneys to greet its sister mist. At the house
of the detective across the way the blinds were still down and the
shutters up. Yet the familiar, prosaic aspect of the street calmed her.
The bleak air set her coughing; she slammed the door to, and returned to
the kitchen to make fresh tea for Constant, who could only be in a deep
sleep. But the canister trembled in her grasp. She did not know whether
she dropped it or threw it down, but there was nothing in the hand that
battered again a moment later at the bedroom door. No sound within
answered the clamor without. She rained blow upon blow in a sort of
spasm of frenzy, scarce remembering that her object was merely to wake
her lodger, and almost staving in the lower panels with her kicks. Then
she turned the handle and tried to open the door, but it was locked. The
resistance recalled her to herself--she had a moment of shocked decency
at the thought that she had been about to enter Constant's bedroom. Then
the terror came over her afresh. She felt that she was alone in the
house with a corpse. She sank to the floor, cowering; with difficulty
stifling a desire to scream. Then she rose with a jerk and raced down
the stairs without looking behind her, and threw open the door and ran
out into the street, only pulling up with her hand violently agitating
Grodman's door-knocker. In a moment the first floor window was
raised--the little house was of the same pattern as her own--and
Grodman's full, fleshy face loomed through the fog in sleepy irritation
from under a nightcap. Despite its scowl the ex-detective's face dawned
upon her like the sun upon an occupant of the haunted chamber.
"What in the devil's the matter?" he growled. Grodman was not an early
bird, now that he had no worms to catch. He could afford to despise
proverbs now, for the house in which he lived was his, and he lived in
it because several other houses in the street were also his, and it is
well for the landlord to be about his own estate in Bow, where poachers
often shoot the moon. Perhaps the desire to enjoy his greatness among
his early cronies counted for something, too, for he had been born and
bred at Bow, receiving when a youth his first engagement from the local
police quarters, whence he drew a few shillings a week as an amateur
detective in his leisure hours.
Grodman was still a bachelor. In the celestial matrimonial bureau a
partner might have been selected for him, but he had never been able to
discover her. It was his one failure as a detective. He was a
self-sufficing person, who preferred a gas stove to a domestic; but in
deference to Glover Street opinion he admitted a female factotum between
ten a. m. and ten p. m., and, equally in deference to Glover Street
opinion, excluded her between ten p. m. and ten a. m.
"I want you to come across at once," Mrs. Drabdump gasped. "Something
has happened to Mr. Constant."
"What! Not bludgeoned by the police at the meeting this morning, I
hope?"
"No, no! He didn't go. He is dead."
"Dead?" Grodman's face grew very serious now.
"Yes. Murdered!"
"What?" almost shouted the ex-detective. "How? When? Where? Who?"
"I don't know. I can't get to him. I have beaten at his door. He does
not answer."
Grodman's face lit up with relief.
"You silly woman! Is that all? I shall have a cold in my head. Bitter
weather. He's dog-tired after yesterday--processions, three speeches,
kindergarten, lecture on 'the moon,' article on co-operation. That's his
style." It was also Grodman's style. He never wasted words.
"No," Mrs. Drabdump breathed up at him solemnly, "he's dead."
"All right; go back. Don't alarm the neighborhood unnecessarily. Wait
for me. Down in five minutes." Grodman did not take this Cassandra of
the kitchen too seriously. Probably he knew his woman. His small,
bead-like eyes glittered with an almost amused smile as he withdrew them
from Mrs. Drabdump's ken, and shut down the sash with a bang. The poor
woman ran back across the road and through her door, which she would not
close behind her. It seemed to shut her in with the dead. She waited in
the passage. After an age--seven minutes by any honest clock--Grodman
made his appearance, looking as dressed as usual, but with unkempt hair
and with disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that
side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of
cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all
members of the profession--for surely your detective is the most
versatile of actors. Mrs. Drabdump closed the street door quietly, and
pointed to the stairs, fear operating like a polite desire to give him
precedence. Grodman ascended, amusement still glimmering in his eyes.
Arrived on the landing he knocked peremptorily at the door, crying,
"Nine o'clock, Mr. Constant; nine o'clock!" When he ceased there was no
other sound or movement. His face grew more serious. He waited, then
knocked, and cried louder. He turned the handle, but the door was fast.
He tried to peer through the keyhole, but it was blocked. He shook the
upper panels, but the door seemed bolted as well as locked. He stood
still, his face set and rigid, for he liked and esteemed the man.
"Ay, knock your loudest," whispered the pale-faced woman. "You'll not
wake him now."
The gray mist had followed them through the street door, and hovered
about the staircase, charging the air with a moist, sepulchral odor.
"Locked and bolted," muttered Grodman, shaking the door afresh.
"Burst it open," breathed the woman, trembling violently all over, and
holding her hands before her as if to ward off the dreadful vision.
Without another word, Grodman applied his shoulder to the door, and made
a violent muscular effort. He had been an athlete in his time, and the
sap was yet in him. The door creaked, little by little it began to give,
the woodwork enclosing the bolt of the lock splintered, the panels bent
upward, the large upper bolt tore off its iron staple; the door flew
back with a crash. Grodman rushed in.
"My God!" he cried. The woman shrieked. The sight was too terrible.
* * * * *
Within a few hours the jubilant news-boys were shrieking "Horrible
Suicide in Bow," and "The Star" poster added, for the satisfaction of
those too poor to purchase: "A Philanthropist Cuts His Throat."