THE DISCOVERY IN BLACK BOY-LANE
On a fine, sunny afternoon, about ten days after our raid on
Angelina’s rooms (it was Tuesday, the 14th of July, to be exact), I
was sitting in my dining-room, from which the traces of lunch had just
been removed, idly glancing over the paper, and considering the
advisability of taking a walk, when I heard the door-bell ring. There
was a short interval; then the door was opened, and the sounds of
strife and wrangling that followed this phenomenon informed me that
the visitor was Mr. Bundy, between whom and Mrs. Dunk there existed a
state of chronic warfare. Presently the dining-room door opened--in
time for me to catch a concluding growl of defiance from Mrs.
Dunk--and that lady announced gruffly: “Mr. Bundy.”
My visitor tripped in smilingly, “all teeth and eyeglass,” as his
inveterate enemy had once expressed it, holding a Panama hat, which
had temporarily superseded the velour.
“Well, John,” said he, “coming out to play?” He had lately taken to
calling me John; in fact, a very close and pleasant intimacy had
sprung up between us. It dated from the occasion when I had confided
to him my unfortunate passion for poor Angelina. That confidence he
had evidently taken as a great compliment, and the matter of it had
struck a sympathetic chord in his kindly nature. From that moment
there had been a sensible change in his manner towards me. Beneath his
habitual flippancy there was an undertone of gentleness and sympathy,
and even of affection. Nor had I been unresponsive. Like Thorndyke, I
found in his sunny temperament, his invariable cheerfulness and high
spirits, a communicable quality that took effect on my own state of
mind. And then I had early recognized that, in spite of his apparent
giddiness, Bundy was a man of excellent intelligence and considerable
strength of character. So the friendship had ripened naturally enough.
I rose from my chair and, dropping the paper, stretched myself.
“You are an idle young dog,” said I. “Why aren’t you at work?”
“Nothing doing at the office except some specifications. Japp is doing
them. Come out and have a roll round.”
“Well, Jimmy,” said I. “Your name is Jimmy, isn’t it?”
“No, it is not,” he replied with dignity. “I am called Peter--like the
Bishop of Rumtifoo, and, by a curious coincidence, for the very same
reason.”
“Let me see,” said I, falling instantly into the trap, “what was that
reason?”
“Why, you see,” he replied impressively, “the Bishop was called Peter
because that was his name.”
“Look here, young fellow my lad,” said I, “you’ll get yourself into
trouble if you come up here pulling your elder’s legs.”
“It was only a gentle tweak, old chap,” said he. “Besides, you aren’t
so blooming senile, after all. You are only cutting your first crop of
whiskers. Are you coming out? I saw old Cobbledick just now, turning
down Blue Boar Lane and looking as miserable as a wet cat.”
“What was he looking miserable about?”
“The slump in relics, I expect. He is making no headway with his
investigation. I fancy he had reckoned on getting an inspectorship out
of this case, whereas, if he doesn’t reach some sort of conclusion, he
is likely to get his rapples knucked, as old Miss Barman would say. I
suspect he was on his way to the Ark to confer with Mr. Noah. What do
you say to a stroll in the direction of Mount Ararat?”
It was a cunning suggestion on the part of Bundy, for it drew me
instantly. Repulsive as old Israel’s activities were to me, the
presence of those finger-prints, securely locked up in my bureau, had
created in me a fresh anxiety to see the first state of the
investigation completed so that the search for the murderer could be
commenced in earnest. Not that my presence would help the sergeant,
but that I was eager to hear the tidings of any new discovery.
Bundy’s inference had been quite correct. We arrived at the head of
the Blue Boar pier just in time to see the sergeant slowly descending
the ladder, watched gloomily by Israel Bangs. As the former reached
terra firma he turned round and then observed us.
“Any news, Sergeant?” I asked, as he approached across the grass.
He shook his head discontentedly. “No,” he replied, “not a sign; not a
vestige. It’s a most mysterious affair. The things seemed to be coming
up quite regularly until that hatpin was found. Then everything came
to an end. Not a trace of anything for nigh upon a month. And what, in
the name of Fortune, can have become of the body? That’s what I can’t
make out. If this goes on much longer, there won’t be any body: and
then we shall be done. The case will have to be dropped.”
He took off his hat (he was in plain clothes as usual) and wiped his
forehead, looking blankly first at me and then at Bundy. The latter
also took off his hat and whisked out his handkerchief, bringing with
it a little telescope which fell to the ground and was immediately
picked up by the sergeant. “Neat little glass, this,” he remarked,
dusting it with his handkerchief. “It’s lucky it fell on the turf.” He
took off the cap, and pulling out the tubes, peered vaguely through it
up and down the river. Presently he handed it to me. “Look at those
craft down below the dockyard,” said he.
I took the little instrument from him and pointed it at the group of
small, cutter-rigged vessels that he had indicated, of which the
telescope, small as it was, gave a brilliantly sharp picture.
“What are they?” I asked. “Oyster dredgers?”
“No,” he replied. “They are bawleys with their shrimp-trawls down. But
there are plenty of oyster-dredgers in the lower river and out in the
estuary, and what beats me is why none of them ever brings up anything
in the trawls or dredges--anything in our line, I mean.”
“What did you expect them to bring up?” Bundy asked.
“Well, there are the things that have washed ashore, and there are the
other things that haven’t washed ashore yet. And then there is the
body.”
“Mr. Noah would have something to say if they brought that up,” said
Bundy. “By the way, what had he got to say when you called on him?”
“Old Bangs? Why he is getting a bit shirty. Wants me to pay him for
all the time he has lost on creeping and searching. Of course, I can’t
do that, I didn’t employ him.”
“Did he find the hat-pin that you spoke of?” Bundy asked.
“Yes; and he has been grubbing round the place where he found it ever
since, as if he thought hat-pins grew there.”
“Still,” said Bundy, “it is not so unreasonable. A hat-pin couldn’t
have floated ashore. If the hat came off, the two hat-pins must have
fallen out at pretty much the same time and place.”
“Yes,” the sergeant agreed, reflectively, “that seems to be common
sense; and, if it is, the other hat-pin ought to be lying somewhere
close by. I must go and have a look there myself.” He again reflected
for a few moments and then asked: “Would you like to see the place
where Israel found the pin?”
As I had seen the place already and had shown it to Thorndyke, I left
Bundy to answer.
“Why not?” he assented, rather, I suspected, to humour the sergeant
than because he felt any particular interest in the place. Thereupon
Cobbledick, whose enthusiasm appeared to have been revived by Bundy’s
remark, led the way briskly towards the wilderness by the
coal-wharves, through that desolate region and along a cart-track that
skirted the marshes until we came out into a sort of lesser wilderness
to the west of Gas-House Road. Here the sergeant slipped through a
large hole in a corrugated iron fence which gave access to a wharf
littered with the unpresentable debris resulting from the activities
of a firm of ship-knackers. Advancing to the edge of the wharf,
Cobbledick stood for a while looking down wistfully at the expanse of
unspeakable mud that the receding tide had uncovered.
“I suppose it is too dirty to go down,” he said in a regretful tone.
Bundy’s assent to this proposition was most emphatic and unqualified,
and the sergeant had to content himself with a bird’s-eye view. But he
made a very thorough inspection, walking along the edge of the wharf,
scrutinizing its base, pile by pile, and giving separate attention to
each pot, tin, or scrap of driftwood on the slimy surface. He even
borrowed Bundy’s telescope to enable him to examine the more distant
parts of the mud, until the owner of the instrument was reduced to the
necessity of standing behind him, for politeness’ sake, to get a
comfortable yawn.
“Well,” said Cobbledick, at long last, handing back the telescope, “I
suppose we must give it up. But it’s disappointing.”
“I don’t quite see why,” said Bundy. “You have found enough to prove
that the body is in the river, and no number of further relics would
prove any more.”
“No, there’s some truth in that,” Cobbledick agreed. “But I don’t like
the way that everything seems to have come to a stop.” He crawled
dejectedly through the hole in the fence and walked on for a minute or
two without speaking. Presently he halted and looked about him. “I
suppose Black Boy-lane will be our best way,” he remarked.
“Which is Black Boy-lane?” I asked.
“It is the lane we came down after we left Japp and Willard that day,”
Bundy explained.
“I remember,” said I, “but I didn’t know it had a name.”
“It was named after a little inn that used to stand somewhere near the
top; but it was pulled down years ago. Here’s the lane.”
We entered the little, tortuous alley that wound between the high,
tarred fences, and as it was too narrow for us to walk abreast, Bundy
dropped behind. A little way up the lane I noticed an old hat lying on
the high grass at the foot of the fence. Bundy apparently noticed it,
too, for just after we had passed it I heard the sound of a kick, and
the hat flew over my shoulder. At the same moment, and impelled by the
same kick, a small object, which I at first thought to be a pebble,
hopped swiftly along the ground in front of us, then rolled a little
way, and finally came to rest, when I saw that it was a button. I
should probably have passed it without further notice, having no use
for stray buttons. But the more thrifty sergeant stooped and picked it
up; and the instant that he looked at it he stopped dead.
“My God! Doctor,” he exclaimed, holding it out towards me. “Look at
this!”
I took it from him, though I had recognized it at a glance. It was a
small bronze button with a Tudor Rose embossed on it.
“This is a most amazing thing,” said Cobbledick. “There can’t be any
doubt as to what it is.”
“Not the slightest,” I agreed. “It is certainly one of the buttons
from Mrs. Frood’s coat. The question is, how on earth did it get
here?”
“Yes,” said the sergeant, “that is the question; and a very difficult
question, too.”
“Aren’t you taking rather a lot for granted?” suggested Bundy, to whom
I had passed the little object for inspection. “It doesn’t do to jump
at conclusions too much. Mrs. Frood isn’t likely to have had her
buttons made to order. She must have bought them somewhere. She might
even have bought them in Rochester. In any case, there must be
thousands of others like them.”
“I suppose there must be,” I admitted, “though I have never seen any
buttons like them.”
“Neither have I,” said Cobbledick, “and I am going to stick to the
obvious probabilities. The missing woman wore buttons like this, and I
shall assume that this is one of her buttons unless someone can prove
that it isn’t.”
“But how do you account for one of her buttons being here?” Bundy
objected.
“I don’t account for it,” retorted Cobbledick. “It’s a regular puzzle.
Of course, someone--a child, for instance--might have picked it up on
the shore and dropped it here. But that is a mere guess, and not a
very likely one. The obvious thing to do is to search this lane
thoroughly and see if there are any other traces; and that is what I
am going to do now. But don’t let me detain you two gentlemen if you
had rather not stay.”
“I shall certainly stay and help you, Sergeant,” said I; and Bundy,
assuming the virtue of enthusiasm, if he had it not, elected also to
stay and join in the search.
“We had better go back to the bottom of the lane,” said Cobbledick,
“and go through the grass at the foot of the fence from end to end. I
will take the right hand side and you take the left.”
We retraced our steps to the bottom of the lane and began a systematic
search, turning over the grass and weeds and exposing the earth inch
by inch. It was a slow process and would have appeared a singular
proceeding had any wayfarer passed through and observed us, but
fortunately it was an unfrequented place, and no one came to spy upon
us. We had traversed nearly half the lane when Bundy stood up and
stretched himself. “I don’t know what your back is made of, John,”
said he. “Mine feels as if it was made of broken bottles. How much
more have we got to do?”
“We haven’t done half yet,” I replied, also standing up and rubbing my
lumbar region; and at this moment the sergeant, who was a few yards
ahead, hailed us with a triumphant shout. We both turned quickly and
beheld him standing with one arm raised aloft and the hand grasping a
silver-topped hat-pin.
“What do you say to that, Mr. Bundy?” he demanded as we hurried
forward to examine the new “find.” “Shall we be jumping at conclusions
if we say that this hat-pin is Mrs. Frood’s?”
“No,” Bundy admitted after a glance at the silver poppy-head. “This
seems quite distinctive, and, of course, it confirms the button. But I
don’t understand it in the least. How can they have come here?”
“We won’t go into that,” said the sergeant, in a tone of suppressed
excitement that showed me pretty clearly that he had already gone into
it. “They are here. And now the question arises, what became of the
hat? It couldn’t have dropped off down at the wharf, or this hat-pin
wouldn’t be here; but it must have fallen off when both hat-pins were
gone. Now what can have become of it?”
“It might have been picked up and taken possession of by some woman,”
I suggested. “It was a good hat, and if the body was brought here soon
after the crime, as it must have been, it wouldn’t have been much
damaged. But why trouble about the hat? Appearances suggest that the
body was either brought up or taken down this lane. That is the new
and astonishing fact that needs explaining.”
“We don’t want to do any explaining now,” said Cobbledick. “We are
here to collect facts. If we can find out what became of the hat, that
may help us when we come to consider the explanations.”
“Well, it obviously isn’t here,” said I.
“No,” he agreed, “and it wouldn’t have been left here. A murderer
mightn’t have noticed the button, or even the hat-pin, on a dark,
foggy night. But he’d have noticed the hat; and he wouldn’t have left
it where it must have been seen, and probably led to inquiries. He
might have taken it with him, or he might have got rid of it. I should
say he would have got rid of it. What is on the other side of these
fences?”
We all hitched ourselves up the respective fences far enough to look
over. On the one side was a space of bare, gravelly ground with thin
patches of grass and numerous heaps of cinder; on the other was an
area of old waste land thickly covered with thistles, ragwort, and
other weeds. The sergeant elected to begin with the latter, as the
less frequented and therefore more probably undisturbed. Setting his
foot on the buttress of a post, he went over the fence with surprising
agility, considering his figure, and was lost to view; but we could
hear him raking about among the herbage close to the fence, and from
time to time I stood on the buttress and was able to witness his
proceedings. First he went to the bottom of the lane and from that
point returned by the fence, searching eagerly among the high weeds. I
saw him thus proceed, apparently to the top of the lane in the
neighbourhood of the remains of the city wall. Thence he came back,
but now at a greater distance from the fence, and as he was still
eagerly peering and probing amongst the weeds, it was evident that he
had had no success. Suddenly, when he was but a few yards away, he
uttered an exclamation and ran forward. Then I saw him stoop, and the
next moment he fairly ran towards me holding the unmistakable brown
straw hat with the dull green ribbon.
“That tells us what we wanted to know,” he said breathlessly, handing
the hat to me as he climbed over the fence; “at least, I think it
does. I’ll tell you what I mean--but not now,” he added in a lower
tone, though not unheard by Bundy, as I inferred later.
“I suppose we need hardly go on with the search any further?” I
suggested, having had enough of groping amongst the grass.
“Well, no,” he replied. “I shall go over it again later on, but we’ve
got enough to think about for the present. By the way, Mr. Bundy, I’ve
found something belonging to you. Isn’t this your property?”
He produced from his pocket a largish key, to which was attached a
wooden label legibly inscribed “Japp and Bundy, High-street,
Rochester.”
“By Jove!” exclaimed Bundy, “it is Japp’s precious key! Where on earth
did you find it, Sergeant?”
“Right up at the top,” was the reply. “Close to the old wall.”
“Now, I wonder how the deuce it got there,” said Bundy. “Some fool
must have thrown it over the fence from pure mischief. However, here
it is. You know there was a reward of ten shillings for finding it,
Sergeant. I had better settle up at once. You needn’t make any
difficulties about it,” he added, as the sergeant seemed disposed to
decline the payment. “It won’t come out of my pocket. It is the firm’s
business.”
On this understanding Cobbledick pocketed the proffered note and we
walked on up the lane, the sergeant slightly embarrassed, as we
approached the town, by the palpably unconcealable hat. Very little
was said by any of us, for these new discoveries, with the amazing
inferences that they suggested, gave us all abundant material for
thought. The sergeant walked with eyes bent on the ground, evidently
cogitating profoundly; my mind surged with new speculations and
hypotheses, while Bundy, if not similarly preoccupied, refrained from
breaking in on our meditations.
When, at length, by devious ways, we reached the High-street in the
neighbourhood of the Corn Exchange, we halted, and the sergeant looked
at me as if framing a question. Bundy glanced up at the quaint old
clock, and remarked:
“It is about time I got back to the office. Mustn’t leave poor old
Japp to do all the work, though he never grumbles. So I will leave you
here.”
I realized that this was only a polite excuse to enable the sergeant
to have a few words with me alone, and I accepted it as such.
“Good-bye, then,” said I, “if you must be off, and in case I don’t see
you before, I shall expect you to dinner on Saturday if you’ve got the
evening free. Dr. Thorndyke is coming down for the week-end, and I
know you enjoy ragging him.”
“He is pretty difficult to get a rise out of, all the same,” said
Bundy, brightening up perceptibly at the invitation. “But I shall turn
up with very great pleasure.” He bestowed a mock ceremonious salute on
me and the sergeant, and, turning away, bustled off in the direction
of the office. As soon as he was out of earshot Cobbledick opened the
subject of the new discoveries.
“This is an extraordinary development of our case, Doctor,” said he.
“I didn’t want to discuss it before Mr. Bundy, though he is really
quite a discreet gentleman, and pretty much on the spot, too. But he
isn’t a party to the case, and it is better not to talk too freely.
You see the points that these fresh finds raise?”
“I see that they put a new complexion on the affair, but to me they
only make the mystery deeper and more incomprehensible.”
“In a way they do,” Cobbledick agreed, “but, on the other hand, they
put the case on a more satisfactory footing. For instance, we
understand now why the body has never come to light. It was never in
the river at all. Then as to the perpetrator; he was a local man--or,
at least, there was a local man in it; a man who knew the town and the
waterside neighbourhood thoroughly. No stranger would have found Black
Boy-lane. Very few Rochester people know it.”
“But,” I asked, “what does the finding of these things suggest to
you?”
“Well,” he replied, “it suggests several questions. Let me just put
these things away in my office, and then we can talk the matter over.”
He went into his office, and shortly returned relieved--very much
relieved--of the conspicuous hat. We turned towards the bridge, and he
resumed: “The first question and the most important one is, which way
was the body travelling? It is obvious that it was carried through
Black Boy-lane. But in which direction? Towards the town or towards
the river? When you think of the circumstances; when you recall that
it was a foggy night when she disappeared; it seems at first more
probable that the crime might have been committed in, or near, the
lane, and the body carried down to the river. But when you consider
all the facts, that doesn’t seem possible. There is that box of
tablets, picked up dry and clean on Chatham Hard. That seems to fix
the locality where the crime occurred.”
“And there is the brooch,” said I.
“I don’t attach much importance to that,” he replied. “It might have
been picked up anywhere. But the box of tablets couldn’t have got from
Black Boy-lane to Chatham except by the river, and it hadn’t been in
the river. But the hat seems to me to settle the question. You see,
one hat-pin was found on the shore and the other in the lane near the
hat. Now, one hat-pin might have dropped out and left the hat still
fixed on the head. But when the hat came off, the pins must have come
off with it. The hat came off near the top of the lane. If both the
pins had been in it they would both have come out there. But one pin
was found on the shore; therefore when the body was at the shore the
hat must have been still on the head, though it had probably got
loosened by all the dragging about in the boat and in landing the
body. You agree to that, Doctor?”
“Yes, it seems undeniable,” I answered.
“Very well,” said he. “Then the body was being carried up the lane.
The next question is: was it being carried by one person or by more
than one? Well, I think you will agree with me, Doctor, that it could
hardly have been done by one man. It is quite a considerable distance
from the shore to the top of the lane. She was a good-sized woman, and
a dead body is a mighty awkward thing to carry at the best of times. I
should say there must have been at least two men.”
“It certainly does seem probable,” I admitted.
“I think so,” said he. “Then we come to another question. Was it
really a dead body? Or might the woman have been merely insensible?”
“Good God, Sergeant!” I exclaimed. “You don’t think it possible that
it could have been a case of forcible abduction, and that Mrs. Frood
is still alive?”
“I wouldn’t say it was impossible,” he replied, “but I certainly don’t
think it is the case. You see, nearly three months have passed and
there is no sign of her. But in modern England you can’t hide a
full-grown, able-bodied woman who has got all her wits about her. No,
Doctor, I am afraid we must take the view that the woman who was
carried up Black Boy-lane was a dead woman. All I want to point out is
that the other view is a bare possibility, and that we mustn’t forget
it.”
“But,” I urged, “don’t you think that the fact that she was being
carried towards the town strongly suggests that she was alive? Why on
earth should a murderer bring a body, at great risk of discovery, from
the river, where it could easily have been disposed of, up into the
town? It seems incredible.”
“It does,” he agreed. “It’s a regular facer. But, on the other hand,
suppose she was alive. What could they have done with her? How could
they have kept her out of sight all this time? And why should they
have done it?”
“As to the motive,” said I, “that is incomprehensible in any case. But
what do you suppose actually happened?”
“My theory of it is,” he replied, “that two men, at least, did the
job. Both may have been local waterside men, or there may have been a
stranger with a water-rat in his pay. I imagine the crime was
committed at Chatham, somewhere near the Sun Pier, and that the body
was put in a boat and brought up here. It was a densely foggy night,
you remember, so there would have been no great difficulty; and there
wouldn’t be many people about. The part of it that beats me is what
they meant to do with the body. They seem to have brought it
deliberately from Chatham right up into Rochester Town; and they have
got rid of it somehow. They must have had some place ready to stow it
in, but what that place can have been I can’t form the ghost of a
guess. It’s a fair knock-out.”
“You don’t suppose old Israel Bangs knows anything about it?” I
suggested.
The sergeant shook his head. “I’ve no reason to suppose he does,” he
replied. “And it is a bad plan to make guesses and name names.”
We walked up and down the Esplanade for nearly an hour, discussing
various possibilities; but we could make nothing of the incredible
thing that seemed to have happened in spite of its incredibility. At
last we gave it up and returned to the Guildhall, where, as we parted,
he said a little hesitatingly: “I heard you tell Mr. Bundy that Dr.
Thorndyke was coming down for the week-end. It wouldn’t be amiss if
you were to put the facts of the case before him. It’s quite in his
line, and I think he would be interested to hear about it; and he
might see something that I have missed. But, of course, it must be in
strict confidence.”
I promised to try to find an opportunity to get Thorndyke’s opinion on
the case, and with this we separated, the sergeant retiring to his
office and I making my way homeward to prepare a report for dispatch
by the last post.