Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 6

by R. Austin Freeman

  "Now, our information is to the effect that he had red or reddish hair and a noticeably red nose. But the man Smith has dark-red hair and a noticeably red nose. Then it is possible that the Strood man may have been Smith. But mere coincidence in these two characteristics does not afford positive evidence that he was. For two men resembling one another in these respects might be otherwise very different."

  "That is so," said I. "But you must admit that it is a rather remarkable coincidence. And you have often pointed out, with great justice, that coincidences call for very careful consideration."

  "Precisely," said he. "And that is what I am going to insist on now. We have to note the coincidence and ask ourselves what its significance may be. It is, as you say, a quite remarkable coincidence. Neither of these peculiarities is at all common. If you were to examine any considerable collection of men, such, for example, as a battalion of infantry, how many men with dark-red hair would you find in it? Not more than one or two. Perhaps not one. But, of the one or two, or say half a dozen, that you found, bow many would have noticeably red noses? Most probably none. Improbabilities become rapidly cumulative as you multiply the characteristics that are postulated us appearing coincidently.

  "The position, then, in regard to the Strood man is this: In two salient personal characteristics, he resembled the man Smith. That resemblance can be accounted for by three hypotheses, one of which must be true:

  "1. That the Strood man was Smith.

  "2. That he was another man who happened to resemble Smith.

  "3. That he was another man who had been purposely made up or disguised so as to resemble Smith.

  "Those are the only possibilities and, as I said, one of them must be true. Let us take them in order and consider their respective probabilities. We begin with the first hypothesis, that the Strood man was Smith. Now, in order to judge of the probability of this, we have to consider what we know of the personality of Smith and of the Strood man respectively and to decide whether what we know of the one is compatible with what we know of the other.

  "Now, what do we know of Smith? First, we have the fact that he described himself as a plumber and gas-fitter. As that description seems to have been accepted by the prison officials, we may assume that it fitted his appearance and manner; and we see that his face is of the type characteristic of the lower class of working-man. We know, further, that he had just escaped from prison, and that he was known and could have been recognized by several persons at the prison, including Chief Officer Cummings. It is probable that when he escaped, his pockets were empty and he may have been hatless.

  "Now as to the Strood man. It is almost certain that he had a first-class ticket; that he travelled from Maidstone in Badger’s train, and, if so, he must have been on the platform at Maidstone at the same time as Badger and Cummings. He carried in his pocket a cigar which had been treated with a poison which is practically unprocurable commercially and which he must almost certainly have prepared himself. Now, Jervis, does it seem to you possible that those two descriptions could apply to one and the same person?"

  "No," I replied, "it certainly does not, though I you omitted to mention that Smith is probably a burglar."

  "That is not known to us, though I admit that it is not improbable. But it really has no bearing. Even if we knew that he was a burglar, all the obvious discrepancies would remain. I submit that the hypothesis that the Strood man was the escaped prisoner, Smith, must be rejected as untenable.

  "We pass on, then, to the next possibility, that the Strood man was not Smith, but was a man who happened to resemble Smith these two physical characteristics. In order to state the probabilities, it is necessary to note that the Strood man was apparently in this train with the premeditated purpose of murdering a police officer, and that a few hours previously a man with dark-red hair and a noticeably red nose had escaped from a Maidstone prison and was still at large. Bearing in mind the rarity of this combination of physical characters, what do you think of the probability of the coincidence?"

  "Well," I replied, "obviously, the chances against are a good many thousands to one. But that is not quite the same thing as certainty."

  "Very true, Jervis," he agreed, "and very necessary to remember. It is by no means safe to apply the laws of chance to individual cases. A prize of £30,000 in a lottery or sweepstake necessarily implies sixty thousand ten-shilling tickets, of which all but one must be blanks; so that the chances against any ticket holder are fifty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine to one. Nevertheless, in spite of that enormous adverse chance, someone does win the prize. You are quite right. Long odds against do not exclude a possibility. But, still, we have to bear the odds in mind; and, if we do, we shall be very indisposed to accept this coincidence.

  "We are left with the third hypothesis: that the Strood man was an unknown man, deliberately disguised or made up to resemble the escaped prisoner, Smith. This suggestion, though it has certain positive elements of probability, has also certain weighty objections, as I have no doubt you have noticed."

  "I see one objection," said I, "that seems to exclude the suggestion altogether. If the Strood man had made up to resemble Smith, he must have had the means with him, provided in advance. He couldn’t have gone about, habitually, with a red wig and a bottle of rouge in his pocket. But the escape of Smith was a contingency that couldn’t have been foreseen. If we accept the idea of the make-up, we have to suppose that, after hearing of Smith’s escape, this man was able to provide himself with the wig and the rouge. That seems to be quite incredible."

  Thorndyke nodded, approvingly.

  "Very true," said he. "My learned friend has made a palpable hit. It is a very serious objection, and, as you say, it appears, at the first glance, to be insuperable—to render the hypothesis quite untenable. But if you consider the circumstances more thoroughly, you will see that it does not. The probability is that we are dealing with one of those combinations of chance and design that are always so puzzling and so misleading. Let us exercise our imaginations a little further and make one or two more hypotheses. Let us suppose that this man had already decided to avail himself of Smith’s conspicuous peculiarities and to personate him to that extent—presumably for some unlawful purpose. He would then have had the wig and the rouge in readiness. Suppose that he is staying in Maidstone, perhaps keeping a watch on Smith. Smith, however, is in custody, with the certain result that his personal peculiarities will be noticed in detail and recorded.

  "This will make him much better worth personating. If the stranger is keeping a watch on Smith, he will know about the prosecution, and he will know that there is a good chance of an acquittal. Suppose, now, at this point, two unforeseen events happen: Smith makes his escape, and then Badger turns up in Maidstone. The stranger has, as the murder pretty clearly proves, some strong reason for getting rid of Badger. But here is a set of unforeseen circumstances that creates a first-class opportunity. The apparent impossibility of the disguise is an additional favourable factor."

  I was impressed by my colleague’s ingenuity and said so, perhaps with some faint suggestion of irony in my tone.

  "Of course," I hastened to add, "all that you suggest is quite possible. The trouble is, that it is quite imaginary. There is not a particle of direct evidence to suggest that it is true—that what you postulate as having possibly happened, really did happen."

  "No," Thorndyke admitted, "there is not. It is hypothesis, pure and simple. So far, I do not contest your objection. But I remind you of our position. We have three hypotheses which represent all the imaginable possibilities. One of the three must be the true one. But we have already excluded two as being quite untenable on the grounds of extreme improbability. The third is admittedly difficult to accept; but it is far less improbable than either of the other two. And you notice that, if we make the assumptions that I suggest, what follows presents a high degree of probability. I mean that a man, setting out to commit a murder, under circumstances in which he m
ust be seen in the company of his prospective victim, would be taking a very ordinary precaution if he should so alter his appearance that a description of the murderer would not be a description of himself. And if he had the opportunity to make up so as to resemble some other person, and that other person an escaped prisoner, it would be very much to his advantage to take it. How great the advantage would be, we can see for ourselves by the attitude of our old friend, the Superintendent."

  "Yes, by Jove!" said I. "The deception, if it is one, has operated most effectively on Miller. And, if your suggestion is correct, it will explain another rather incomprehensible thing—I mean the taking from the body of the prison record. That naturally suggested that the murderer was the man whose description was on the stolen document. In fact, my impression is that it is the document as much as the personal resemblance that is sticking in Miller’s gullet."

  "I think you are right," said Thorndyke. "At any rate, the combined effect of the two facts—the theft of the document and the personal characteristics—is undoubtedly responsible for his state of mind. But, to return to our discussion, I think that, out of the three hypotheses from which we have to choose, we are forced to adopt the third, at least provisionally: that the man who murdered Badger is not Smith, but is some unknown man who had deliberately made up to the end that he might be mistaken for Smith."

  "Yes," I agreed. "I suppose we are, since the other two suppositions cannot be reasonably entertained. But I could wish that it were a little more easy to accept. It involves an uncomfortable amount of unproved assumptions."

  "So it does," he admitted. "But there it is. All three hypotheses seem to be full of improbabilities. But, as one of them must be the true one, since there are no others, we have no choice but to adopt the one that presents the smallest number of improbabilities and the greatest number of probabilities. Still, as I have said, our acceptance is only provisional. We may have to revise our opinions when we have the evidence of the witnesses at the inquest before us."

  In the event, however, we did not. On the contrary, when, late in the evening, our very expert stenographer delivered the copy of his notes—typed in duplicate—the report of the witnesses’ evidence tended rather to confirm Thorndyke’s conclusions. There was nothing very definite, it is true; but the few additional facts all pointed in the same direction.

  There was, for instance, the station-master’s evidence. It seemed that, in the interval, he had thought matters over, and his statements were now more decided. He was able, moreover, to amplify his description of the suspected stranger. The latter he described as a well-dressed man of about middle age, carrying a good-sized hand-bag of brown leather, but no stick or umbrella, and wearing a soft felt hat. The man had a rather conspicuously red nose. He had noticed that particularly—"thought the gentleman looked as if he were in the habit of taking a drop." And he was quite clear about the colour of the man’s hair. He noticed it as the stranger was getting into the carriage and the sun shone on the back of his head. It was distinctly red; dark red or auburn—not bright red, and certainly not sandy. Probably, in the sunlight, it may have looked rather redder than it really was. But it was definitely red hair.

  "Do you think that you would recognise the man if you were to see him?" the coroner asked.

  "I don’t much think I should," was the cautious reply. "At any rate, I shouldn’t be able to swear to him."

  Here the coroner apparently produced the prison form with the two photographs and handed it to the witness.

  "I want you to look at those two portraits," said he, "and tell us whether you recognize them."

  The witness examined them and replied that he did not recognize them.

  "Does the face that is shown in those photographs seem to you to resemble the face of the red-haired stranger?"

  "I don’t see any resemblance," the witness replied.

  "Do you mean," the coroner pursued, "that you simply don’t recognize the face, or that it seems to you to be a different face?"

  "I should say that it is a different face. The man I saw looked more like a gentleman."

  "You are definitely of opinion that these photographs are not portraits of the man that you saw. Is that so?"

  "Well, sir, I shouldn’t like to be positive, but these photos don’t look to me like the man I saw on the platform."

  That was all that was to be got out of the station-master; and, so far, it tended to support Thorndyke’s view; as also did the evidence of the ticket collector at Dartford, who was the next witness. He, like the station-master, seemed to have turned the matter over in his mind, though he was not able to give much more information. He did, however, remember collecting a first-class ticket, and recalled noticing that it was from Maidstone to London.

  "That," said the coroner, "is a point of some significance. This passenger started from Maidstone with the intention of going to London, but at Dartford—the next station after Greenhithe—he suddenly changed his mind. It is a fact to be noted. Do you remember what this man was like?"

  "I can’t say that I remember him very clearly," the witness answered. "You see, sir, I was looking at the tickets. But I do remember that he was carrying a largish brown hand-bag."

  "Do you remember anything peculiar in his appearance? You have heard the last witness’s description of him. Can you say whether this passenger agreed with that description?"

  "I wouldn’t like to say positively whether he did or whether he didn’t. I can only say that I didn’t notice that he had a particularly red nose, and I didn’t notice the colour of his hair. As far as I remember him, he seemed an ordinary, gentlemanly sort of man; the sort of man that you would expect to hand in a first-class ticket."

  So much for the ticket collector. His evidence did not carry us very far. Nevertheless, such as it was, its tendency was to support Thorndyke’s suggestion. There could be little doubt that the man who had given up the first-class ticket was the Strood man; and the fact—though it was only a negative fact and of little weight at that—that the special peculiarities of nose and hair had not been observed, seemed to lend a faint support to Thorndyke’s further suggestion that, as soon as the murder had been committed, those special peculiarities would be eliminated.

  There was little else in the evidence that was of interest to us. The engine-driver’s evidence had practically no bearing; for poor Badger’s body was unquestionably on the line, and the details as to how long it could have been there did not affect our enquiry. As to the body itself, the fact that no injuries could be discovered other than those inflicted by the train now caused us no surprise, though, to the coroner, it was naturally rather puzzling. Indeed, the problem that had so exercised the mind of Superintendent Miller was the problem that the coroner discussed at the greatest length and with complete failure to find any plausible solution. I read his very just and reasonable comments with considerable sympathy, not without a twinge of compunction as I reflected on the way in which we had withheld from him the one conclusive and material fact.

  "The greatest mystery in this strange case," he observed, "is the absence of any traces of injury. Here was a powerful, highly trained police-officer, flung out on the line by a man whom he had apparently intended to arrest. He had not been shot, or stabbed, or stunned by a blow on the head, or in any way disabled. He had been simply thrown out. It seemed incredible; but there were the facts. But for the known presence in that carriage of another person, and that person a suspected criminal, the condition of the body would have pointed to an accident of a quite ordinary kind. But the presence of that other man, and especially the fact—which has been quite conclusively proved by the evidence of Chief Officer Cummings—that a certain document was taken from the pocket of the deceased, puts accident entirely out of the question.

  "But it adds enormously to the difficulty of understanding how this crime could have been committed. For, obviously, deceased would not have allowed this document to be taken from him without very energetic resistance. The
great mystery is how any ordinary man could have taken this document forcibly from this powerful, capable officer and then opened the door and thrown him out on to the line. I must confess that I cannot understand it at all.

  "However, our failure to unravel the mystery of the actual method employed by the murderer does not leave us in any doubt as to how deceased met his death; which is the subject of our inquiry. The presence of that unknown man, his immediate disappearance at the very first opportunity, and the theft of that document, are facts that are too significant to allow of any but one interpretation.

  "The next question presents much more difficulty—the question as to the identity of that man. If we think that we can give him a name, it is our duty to do so. But it is not the concern of a coroner’s inquest to prove the guilt of any particular person. That is the office of a court of criminal jurisdiction. Unlike such a court, we have the choice of returning an open verdict—open, that is to say, as regards the identity of the criminal. And, if we have any doubt as to his identity, that is our proper course. Now, you have heard the evidence relating to the identity of the man who shared the compartment with deceased. You cannot have failed to notice the conflicting nature of that evidence, nor can you have failed to be impressed by the unlikeliness of an escaped prisoner showing himself openly on the platform of Maidstone Station. Still, if you are satisfied with such proof of his identity as has been given, your finding must be to that effect; but, if you have any doubts, you will be wiser to leave the investigation of that point to the police."