THE END OF THE TRAIL
Shortly after breakfast on the following morning Sergeant Cobbledick
made his appearance at my house. I found him in the consulting-room,
walking about on tip-toe with his hat balanced in his hands, and
evidently in a state of extreme nervous tension.
“I have got everything in train, Doctor,” said he, declining a seat.
“I dug up the foreman yesterday evening and he dug up one of his mates
to give him a hand, if necessary; and I have the authority to open the
wall. So we are all ready to begin. The two men have gone down to the
place with their tools, and Mr. Bundy has gone with them to let them
in. He didn’t much want to go, but I thought it best that either he or
Mr. Japp should be present. It is their wall, so to speak. I suppose
you are coming to see the job done.”
“Is there any need for me to be there?” I asked.
Cobbledick looked at me in surprise. He had evidently assumed that I
should be eager to see what happened. “Well,” he replied, “you are the
principal witness to the identity of the remains. You saw her last,
you know. What is your objection, Doctor?”
I was not in a position to answer this question. I could not tell him
what this last and most horrible search meant to me; and apart from my
personal feelings in regard to poor Angelina, there was no objection
at all, but, on the contrary, every reason why I should be present.
“It isn’t a very pleasant affair,” I replied, “seeing that I knew the
lady rather well. However, if you think I had better be there, I will
come down with you.”
“I certainly think your presence would be a help,” said he. “We don’t
know what may turn up, and you know more about her than anybody else.”
Accordingly, I walked down with him, and when he had admitted me with
his key--Bundy had presumably used the duplicate--he closed the gate
and locked it from within. The actual operations had not yet
commenced, but the foreman and his mate were standing by the wall,
conversing affably with Bundy, who looked nervous and uncomfortable,
evidently relishing his position no more than I did mine.
“This is a gruesome affair, John, isn’t it?” he said in a low voice.
“I don’t see why old Cobbledick wanted to drag us into it. It will be
an awful moment when they uncover her, if she is really there. I’m
frightfully sorry for you, old chap.”
“I should have had to see the body in any case,” said I; “and this is
less horrible than the river.”
Here my attention was attracted by the foreman, who had just drawn a
long, horizontal chalk line across the patch of new rubble, a little
below the middle.
“That’s about the place where we left off that Saturday, so far as I
remember,” he said. “We had built up the outer case, and we filled in
the hollow with loose bricks and stones, but we didn’t put any mortar
to them until Monday morning. Then we mixed up a lot of mortar, quite
thin, so that it would run, and poured it on top of the loose stuff.”
“Rum way of building a wall, isn’t it?” observed Cobbledick.
The foreman grinned. “It ain’t what you’d call the highest class of
masonry,” he admitted. “But what can you expect to do with a gang of
corner-boys who’ve never done a job of real work in their lives?”
“No, that’s true,” said the Sergeant. “But you made a soft job for the
grave-diggers, didn’t you? Why they’d only got to pick out the loose
stuff and then dump it back on top when they’d put the body in. Then
you came along on Monday morning and finished the job for them with
one or two bucketsful of liquid mortar. How long would it have taken
to pick out that loose stuff?”
“Lord bless yer,” was the answer, “one man who meant business could
have picked the whole lot out by hand in an hour; and he could have
chucked it back in less. As you say, Sergeant, it was a soft job.”
While they had been talking, the foreman’s familiar demon had been
making a tentative attack on the outer casing with a great,
chisel-ended steel bar and a mason’s hammer. The foreman now came to
his aid with a sledge hammer, the first stroke of which caused the
shoddy masonry to crack in all directions like pie-crust. Then the
fractured pieces of the outer shell were prised off, revealing the
“loose stuff” within. And uncommonly loose it was; so loose that the
unjoined bricks and stones, with their adherent gouts of mortar, came
away at the lightest touch of the great crow-bar.
As soon as a breach had been made at the top of the patch, the
labourer climbed up and began flinging out the separated bricks and
stones. Then he attacked a fresh course of the outer shell with a
pick, and so exposed a fresh layer of the loose filling.
“There’ll be a fresh job for the unemployed to build this up again,”
the sergeant observed with a sardonic smile.
“Ah,” replied the foreman, “there generally is a fresh job when you
take on a crowd of casuals. Wonderful provident men are casuals. Don’t
they take no thought for the morrow? What O!”
At this moment the labourer stood upright on his perch and laid down
his pick. “Well, I’m blowed!” he exclaimed. “This is a rum go, this
is.”
“What’s a rum go?” demanded the foreman.
“Why, here’s a whole bed of dry quick-lime,” was the reply.
“Ha!” exclaimed the sergeant, knitting his brows anxiously.
The foreman scrambled up, and after a brief inspection confirmed the
man’s statement. “Quick-lime it is, sure enough. Just hand me up that
shovel, Sergeant.”
“Be careful,” Cobbledick admonished, as he passed the shovel up.
“Don’t forget what there probably is underneath.”
The foreman took the shovel and began very cautiously to scrape away
the surface, flinging the scrapings of lime out on to the ground,
where they were eagerly scrutinized by the sergeant, while the
labourer picked out the larger lumps and cast them down. Thus the work
went on for about a quarter of an hour, without any result beyond the
accumulation on the ground below of a small heap of lime. At length I
noticed the foreman pause and look attentively at the lime that he had
just scraped up in his shovel.
“Here’s something that I don’t fancy any of our men put in,” he said,
picking the object out and handing it down to the Sergeant. The latter
took it from him and held it out for me to see. It was another of
Angelina’s coat buttons.
In the course of the next few minutes two more buttons came to light,
and almost immediately afterwards I saw the labourer stoop suddenly
and stare down at the lime with an expression that made my flesh
creep, as he pointed something out to the foreman.
“Ah!” the latter exclaimed. “Here she is! But, my word! There ain’t
much left of her. Look at this, Sergeant.”
Very gingerly, and with an air of shuddering distaste, he picked
something out of the lime and held it up; and even at that distance I
could see that it was a human ulna. Cobbledick took it from him with
the same distasteful and almost fearful manner, and held it towards me
for inspection. I glanced at it and looked away. “Yes,” I said. “It is
a human arm bone.”
On this, Cobbledick beckoned for the labourer to come down, and,
taking out his official note-book, wrote something in pencil and tore
out the leaf.
“Take this down to the station and give it to Sergeant Brown. He will
tell you what else to do.” He gave the paper to the man, and having
let him out of the gate, came back and climbed up to the exposed
surface of the excavation, where I saw him draw on a pair of gloves
and then stoop and begin to pick over the lime.
“This is a horrid business, isn’t it?” said Bundy. “Why the deuce
couldn’t Cobbledick carry on by himself? I don’t see that it is our
affair. Do you think we need stay?”
“I don’t see why you need. You have finished your part of the
business. You have seen the wall opened. I am afraid I must stay a
little longer, as Cobbledick may want me to identify some of the other
objects that may be found. But I shan’t stay very long. There is
really no question of the identity of the body, and there is no doubt
now that the body is there. Detailed identification is a matter for
the coroner.”
As we were speaking, we walked slowly away from the wall among the
mounds of rubbish, now beginning to be hidden under a dense growth of
nettles, rag-wort and thistles. It was a desolate, neglected place,
sordid of aspect and contrasting unpleasantly in its modern squalor
with the dignified decay of the ancient wall. We had reached the
further fence and were just turning about, when the sergeant hailed me
with a note of excitement in his voice. I hurried across and found him
standing up with his eyes fixed on something that lay in the palm of
his gloved hand.
“This seems to be the ring that you described to me, Doctor,” said he.
“Will you just take a look at it?”
He reached down and I received in my hand the little trinket of
deep-toned, yellow gold that I remembered so well. I turned it over in
my palm, and as I looked on its mystical signs, its crude, barbaric
workmanship and the initials “A. C.” scratched inside, the scene in
that dimly-lighted room--years ago, it seemed to me now--rose before
me like a vision. I saw the gracious figure in the red glow of the
lamp and heard the voice that was never again to sound in my ears,
telling the story of the little bauble, and for a few moments, the
dreadful present faded into the irredeemable past.
“There isn’t any doubt about it, is there, Doctor?” the sergeant asked
anxiously.
“None, whatever,” I replied. “It is unquestionably Mrs. Frood’s ring.”
“That’s a mercy,” said Cobbledick; “because we shall want every atom
of identification that we can get. The body isn’t going to help us
much. This lime has done its work to a finish. There’s nothing left,
so far as I can see, but the skeleton and the bits of metal belonging
to the clothing. Would you like to come up and have a look, Doctor?
There isn’t much to see yet, but I have uncovered some of the bones.”
“I don’t think I will come up, Sergeant, thank you,” said I. “When you
have finished, I shall have to look over what has been found, as I
shall have to give evidence at the inquest. And I think I need hardly
stay any longer. There is no doubt now about the identity, so far as
we are concerned, at any rate.”
“No,” he agreed. “There is no doubt in my mind, so I need not keep you
any longer if you want to be off. But, before you go, there is one
little matter that I should like to speak to you about.” He climbed
down to the ground, and, walking away with me a little distance,
continued: “You see, Doctor, some medical man will have to examine the
remains, so as to give evidence before the coroner. If it is
impossible to identify them as the remains of Mrs. Frood, it will have
to be given in evidence that they are the remains of a person who
might have been Mrs. Frood; that they are the remains of a woman of
about her size and age, I mean. Of course, the choice of the medical
witness doesn’t rest with the police, but if you would care to take on
the job, our recommendation would have weight with the coroner. You
see, you are the most suitable person to make the examination, as you
actually knew her.”
I shook my head emphatically. “For that very reason, Sergeant, I
couldn’t possibly undertake the duty. Even doctors have feelings, you
know. Just imagine how you would feel, yourself, pawing over the bones
of a woman who had once been your friend.”
Cobbledick looked disappointed. “Yes,” he admitted, “I suppose there
is something in what you say. But I didn’t think doctors troubled
about such things very much; and you have got such an eye for
detail--and such a memory. However, if you’d rather not, there is an
end of the matter.”
He climbed back regretfully to the opening in the wall, and I rejoined
Bundy. “I have finished here now,” said I. “That was a ring of hers
that Cobbledick had found. Are you staying any longer?”
“Not if you are going away,” he replied. “I am not wanted now, and I
can’t stick this charnel-house atmosphere; it is getting on my nerves.
Let us clear out.”
We walked towards the entrance with a feeling of relief at escaping
from the gruesome place, and had arrived within a few yards of it when
there came a loud knocking at the gate, at which Bundy started
visibly.
“Good Lord!” he exclaimed, “it’s like Macbeth. Here, take my key and
let the beggars in, whoever they are.”
I unlocked the gate and threw it open, when I saw, standing in the
lane, two men, bearing on their shoulders a rough, unpainted coffin,
and accompanied by the labourer, who carried a large sieve. I stood
aside to let them pass in, and when they had entered, Bundy and I
walked out, shutting and locking the gate after us. We made our way up
the lane in silence, for there was little to say but much to think
about; indeed, I would sooner have been alone, but the gruesome
atmosphere of the place we had come from seemed to have affected
Bundy’s spirits so much that I thought it only kind to ask him to come
back to lunch with me; an invitation that he accepted with avidity.
During lunch we discussed the tragic discovery, and Bundy, now that he
had escaped from physical contact with the relics of mortality, showed
his usual shrewd common sense.
“Well,” he said, “the mystery of poor Angelina Frood is solved at
last--at least, so far as it is ever likely to be.”
“I hope not,” I replied, “for the essential point of the mystery is
not solved at all. It has only just been completely propounded. We now
know beyond a doubt that she was murdered, and that the murder was a
deliberate crime, planned in advance. What we want to know--at least,
what I want to know, and shall never rest until I do know--is, who
committed this diabolical crime?”
“I am afraid you never will know, John,” said he. “There doesn’t seem
to be the faintest clue.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded. “You seem to have forgotten Nicholas
Frood.”
Bundy shook his head. “You are deluding yourself, John. Nicholas
seems, from your account of him, to be quite capable of having
murdered his wife. But is there anything to connect him with the
crime? If there is, you have never told me of it. And the law demands
positive evidence. You can’t charge a man with murder because he seems
a likely person and you don’t know of anybody else. What have you got
against him in connexion with this present affair?”
“Well, for instance, I know that he was prowling about this town, and
that he was trying to find out where she lived.”
“But why not?” demanded Bundy. “She was a runaway wife, and he was her
husband.”
“Then I happen to have noticed that he carried a sheath-knife.”
“But do you know that she was killed with a sheath-knife?”
“No, I don’t,” I answered savagely. “But I say again that I shall
never rest until the price of her death has been paid. There must be
some clue. The murder could not have been committed without a motive,
and it must be possible to discover what that motive was. Somebody
must have stood to benefit in some way by her death; and I am going to
find that person, or those persons, if I give up the rest of my life
to the search.”
“I am sorry to hear you say that, John,” he said as he rose to depart.
“It sounds as if you were prepared to spend the rest of your life
chasing a will-o’-the-wisp. But we are premature. The inquest may
bring to light some new evidence that will put the police on the
murderer’s track. You must remember that they have been engaged in
tracing the body up to now. When the inquest has been held and the
facts are known they will be able to begin the search for the
murderers. And I wish them and you good luck.”
I was rather glad when he was gone, for his dispassionate estimate of
the difficulties of the case only served to confirm my own secret
hopelessness. For I could not deny that these wretches seemed to have
covered up their tracks completely. In the three months that had
passed no whisper of any suspicious circumstance had been heard. From
the moment when poor Angelina had faded from my sight into the fog to
that of her dreadful reappearance in the old wall, no human eye seemed
to have seen her. And now that she had come back, what had she to tell
us of the events of that awful night? The very body, on which
Thorndyke had relied for evidence, at least, of the manner of the
crime, had dwindled to a mere skeleton such as might have been exhumed
from some ancient tomb. The cunning of the murderers had outwitted
even Thorndyke.
The thought of my friend reminded me that I had to report to him the
results of the opening of the wall; results very different from what
he had anticipated when he had given the sergeant the too-fruitful
hint. I accordingly wrote out a detailed report, so far as my
information went; but I held it back until the last post in case
anything further should come to my knowledge. And it was just as well
that I did; for about eight o’clock, Cobbledick called to give me the
latest tidings.
“Well, Doctor,” he said, with a smile of concentrated benevolence, “I
have got everything in going order. I have seen the coroner and made
out a list of witnesses. You are one of them, of course; in fact, you
are the star-witness. You were the last person to see her alive, and
you were present at the exhumation. Dr. Baines--he’s rather a
scientific gentleman--is to make the post-mortem examination, and tell
us the cause of death, if he can. He won’t have much to go on. The
lime has eaten up everything--it would, naturally, after three
months--but the bones look quite uninjured, so far as I could judge.”
“When does the inquest open?” I asked.
“The day after to-morrow. I’ve got your summons with me, and I may as
well give it to you now.”
I looked at the little blue paper and put it in my pocket-book. “Do
you think the coroner will get through the case in one day?” I asked.
“No, I am sure he won’t,” replied Cobbledick. “It is an important
case, and there will be a lot of witnesses. There will be the evidence
as to the building of the wall; then the opening of it and the
description of what we found in it; then the identification of the
remains--that is you, principally; and then there will be all the
other evidence, the pawnbroker, Israel Bangs, Hooper, and the others.
And then, of course, there will be the question as to the guilty
parties. That is the most important of all.”
“I didn’t know you had any evidence on that subject,” said I.
“I haven’t much,” he replied. “From the time when she disappeared
nobody saw her alive or dead, and, of course, nothing has ever been
heard of any occurrence that might indicate a crime. All we have to go
on--and it is mighty little--is the fact that she was hiding from her
husband, and that he was trying to find her. Also that he had made one
attempt on her life. That is where your evidence will come in, and
that of the matron at the ‘Poor Travellers.’ I’ve had a talk with
her.”
“Do you know anything of Frood’s movements about the time of the
disappearance?”
“Practically nothing, excepting that he went away from his lodgings
the day before. You see, we were not in a position to start tracing
possible criminals. We had no real evidence of any crime. We knew that
the woman had disappeared, and she appeared to have got into the
river. But there was nothing to show how. It looked suspicious, but it
wasn’t a case. So long as no body was forthcoming there was no
evidence of death, and nobody could have been charged. Even if we had
found the body in the river, unless there had been distinct traces of
violence, it would have been merely a case of ‘found dead,’ or ‘found
drowned.’ But now the affair is on a different footing entirely. The
body has been discovered under conditions which furnish prima facie
evidence of murder, whatever the cause of death may turn out to have
been. There is sure to be a verdict of wilful murder--not that the
police are dependent on the coroner’s verdict. So now we can get a
move on and look for the murderer.”
“What chance do you think there is of finding him?” I asked.
“Well,” said Cobbledick with a benevolent smile, “we mustn’t be too
cock-sure. But, leaving the husband out of the question and taking the
broad facts, it doesn’t look so unpromising. This wasn’t a casual
crime--fortunately. There’s nothing so hopeless as a casual crime,
done for mere petty robbery. But this crime was thought out. The place
of burial was selected in advance. The key of the place was obtained,
so that the murderer could not only get in but could lock himself--or
more probably themselves--in and work secure from chance disturbance.
And the time seems to have been selected; a week-end, with two whole
nights to do the job in. All this points to very definite
premeditation; and that points to a very definite motive. The person
who planned this crime had something considerable to gain by Mrs.
Frood’s death; it may have been profit or it may have been the
satisfaction of revenge.
“Well, that is a pretty good start. When we know what property she
had, who comes into it at her death, if any of it is missing, and if
so, what has become of it; we can judge concerning the first case. And
if we find that she had any enemies besides her husband; anyone whom
she had injured or who owed her a grudge; then we can judge of the
second case.
“Then there is another set of facts. This murderer couldn’t have been
a complete stranger to the place. He knew about the wall and what was
going on there. He knew the river and he possessed, or had command of,
a boat. He knew the waterside premises and he knew his way--or had
someone to show him the way--across the marshes and up Black Boy-lane.
One, at least, of the persons concerned in this affair was a local man
who knew the place well. So you see, Doctor, we have got something to
go on, after all.”
I listened to the sergeant’s exposition with deep interest and no
little revival of my drooping hopes. It was a most able summary of the
case, and I felt that I should have liked Thorndyke to hear it; in
fact, I determined to embody it in the amplification of my report.
With the facts thus fully and lucidly collated, it did really seem as
though the perpetrator of this foul crime must inevitably fall into
our hands. Having refreshed the sergeant with a couple of glasses of
port, I shook his hand warmly and wished him the best of success in
the investigation that he was conducting with so much ability.
When he had gone I wrote a full account of our interview to add to my
previous report, and expressed the hope that Thorndyke would be able
to be present at the inquest, when I myself should “be and appear” at
the appointed place to give evidence on the day after the morrow.