Murder Jigsaw

by E.

  “What was the coincidence?” The challenge came from the superintendent.

  “When I had examined the body of the colonel after it had been taken from the water, Frank Baker, your Sergeant and myself walked up the river bank to the spot where I was told the colonel had fallen in. Now, I know the water. So do you, Superintendent. And I dare say that you, too, Sir William, know it?”

  The Chief Constable assented.

  “I noted without any reason, except a developed habit of observation, as we walked, that it was pretty well impossible to get any clear, unobstructed, view of the water from the top of the bank. From the scene of the fall I walked upstream, and there the same peculiarity struck me. Bushes covered the waterfront. I do not mean that there was a continuous line of bushes; but where there were gaps between them along the top of the bank, these gaps would be filled in at intervals down the slope. By that chance arrangement, there was no part of the slope, from the shallows up to the Meeting Pool, where there was any clear drop to the water’s edge. It was covered completely by a breastwork of bush. All except one spot, a couple of yards in width.”

  The scientist paused.

  “Now, do you see what I am getting at?” he asked.

  “Had Colonel Donoughmore fallen, or fainted, at any point along the two-mile stretch of water on which he was supposed to be fishing . . .”

  “He was fishing there, Doctor,” the superintendent interrupted.

  “I’ll come to that, later, Superintendent,” retorted Manson. “As I was saying, had the colonel fallen anywhere along that bank he could not possibly have crashed into the water except at one spot—and that was the spot at which he DID go into the water according to all the signs. It is the only couple of yards where the descent straight to the water edge is not obstructed by bushes, or trees, which would have stopped a falling body, and held it. That occurred to me as an exceedingly unfortunate coincidence for the colonel.

  “As I have said I do not believe in these kind of coincidences in the case of violent death. I suspect them. The effect of this observation on my part was to set me looking for signs that would take the ‘co’ out of coincidence. Yes, Superintendent?”

  Superintendent Burns had started to interrupt, but had stopped. Invited, he now made his point. “At the water’s edge, upstream from there, Doctor, a large blackberry bush juts out into the river over quite a deep hole. Most fishermen come out of the stream there, climb the bank, and go back to the water on the other side of the bush—at the spot where the colonel fell in.”

  “I saw the bush,” Manson acknowledged, dryly. “Which brings me to my second point. Colonel Donoughmore was a dry-fly man, and a purist at that. Why should he come out of the water to round a bush which took him a few yards DOWNSTREAM? Does a dry-fly man fish downstream, putting every fish ‘down’ as he goes? You are a fisherman, Superintendent. Would you do that? Ask yourself the question. That is what I did.” He eyed the superintendent’s start of surprise with a smile. “And if the colonel was fishing upstream,” he continued, “why should he go to the water there at all, when he couldn’t go any further upstream because of the blackberry bush?”

  Manson paused, invitingly, but there was no response from his audience.

  “Thirdly”—he marked the point off on his fingers—“Why was the colonel going down to the water at all? His fishing-bag was on the bank. So were his creel and his rod. Oh, by the way, you are a fisherman, superintendent, and as good a one as the colonel. Tell me, how do you rest your rod when you are not, for some reason, using it?”

  The superintendent looked puzzled. “Why, Doctor . . . er . . . put it up against a tree or a bush, I suppose.”

  “Of course. So do I. So would Sir William. And so, I imagine, would Colonel Donoughmore. He was a good angler, whatever else he might have been. But where was the colonel’s rod when his body was found, Superintendent? Tell me that?”

  “Lying in the gra. . .” The superintendent stopped suddenly.

  “Quite,” said Manson. “Lying in the grass, and alongside a path where anybody might have come along and trodden on it. Now, Superintendent, I will repeat my question: Why should he have been going down to the water at all? He wouldn’t be going down to fish, would he? He hadn’t got his rod with him.

  “There were other points at the spot which struck me as suspicious, but these I will pass by because I was able to give them only cursory examination. But I suggest, Superintendent, that you pay close attention to the marks on the colonel’s face and to the displaced tufts of grass on the banks, and, further, the marks of the fall. I suggested to your Sergeant that they should be left undisturbed. I suggest, also, that the head injury should have your very careful attention, in conjunction with the Police Surgeon. It may surprise you.

  “Lastly, although the colonel went out to fish in the morning with his landing-net and never returned, his landing-net was in the umbrella-stand of the lounge of the Tremarden Arms at six o’clock in the evening—and it was wet.”

  Manson paused to let the emphasis of this fact sink into his hearers’ minds. “Now, any one of these circumstances, taken separately, might be just a coincidence,” he went on; “but not all of them put together.”

  “It’s a perfect jigsaw of coincidence. And the pieces, to my mind, fall together in a pattern. It may be that the post-mortem will turn up other pieces. They may, of course, alter the pattern as a whole, but I feel that we must start putting together the pieces we have.”

  The three men smoked in a silence that lasted some minutes. It was broken by the Chief Constable. “Well, Superintendent, what do you think of it, now?” he asked.

  “Put like the Doctor has done, it does seem a bit queer-like, Sir William,” was the answer. “I suppose we’ll have to make some inquiries.” The addition came regretfully.

  “The point is, Burns, do you do the job, or do we call in Scotland Yard?”

  Manson thought that the superintendent seemed to grow a little more cheerful at the mention of the Yard. “That would be for you,” he reminded him. “But I would point out that we haven’t had a deal of experience of murder round here. It looks like we’ve got a ready-made case for Dr. Manson. I’ve always heard that corpses were the Doctor’s hobby, same like gardening is my hobby.”

  The Chief Constable guffawed. “What you mean, Burns, is that you don’t want to go raking among people you’ve known half your life, eh?” He looked across at Manson. “What do you say, Doctor?” he asked. “Would you take over?”

  “That, Sir William, is for the Assistant Commissioner to say. You’ll have to ask for the Yard’s help, and they’ll depute a senior officer to come down. You can, if you like, mention that I’m here, and can give any help that may be required.”

  * * * * *

  “Telephone call for you, Doctor.” It was an hour later. Manson walked to the box and took up the receiver.

  “That you, Harry?”

  Manson groaned.

  “What’s this corpse you’ve nosed out? Thought you’d gone for a few days’ fishing.” The Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard was inclined to facetiousness.

  “So I had.” Manson explained briefly the details of the colonel’s death, and the conclusions at which he had arrived.

  The A.C. chuckled. “Well, Harry, they particularly want you to go on with it. You started the hare—it looked a perfectly good accident. I should think, now you’d better catch it. You’ve asked for it. Any help you want you can have.”

  “All right, A.C. Send Sergeant Merry down.”

  “And the Box of Tricks?”

  “And the Box, A.C.,” Manson agreed.

  “They’ll be down there to-morrow—and, Harry—”

  “Yes.”

  “Good fishin’.”

  The phone went dead to the sound of a chuckle.

  CHAPTER V

  JIGSAW PATTERN

  Doctor Manson had told the Chief Constable that the post-mortem examinations on Colonel Donoughmore might alter t
he pattern of his hypothesis; it was accordingly to the post-mortem that he turned his attention as a first step in the investigation of the colonel’s death.

  From his brief examination of the body on the river bank, and his subsequent discoveries at the scene of the fall, he had been guided into a certain line of thought. The direction of his mind had produced the points which he had suggested to the Cornish police as being such as to call for investigation. He had not, however, mentioned his more tentative suspicions.

  Like all scientists of any standing, Manson was a cautious man. He evolved an idea from certain suspicions, which, to his analytical reasoning, seemed sub-normal; but he used that idea only as working datum until the suppositions were converted into hard fact. Until he had proved them hard facts, indeed, no hint of theory passed his lips.

  In the case of Colonel Donoughmore he realised that active investigation could not usefully be proceeded with until the cause of death had definitely been ascertained, and until the body had been exhaustively searched for any indications likely to help in explaining how the colonel came to be in the water. Nor did Manson think that the police surgeon, Dr. Tremayne, was likely to be a competent authority for such an examination without a hand to guide him; he had little or no criminal or pathological experience of what to look for, especially as he could not possibly read his (the Chief-Inspector’s) mind. But Manson had not been impressed with his examination on the river bank. He decided to attend the post-mortem personally, and satisfy himself first-hand on the points which he had mentally pigeon-holed.

  With that object in view, the Doctor, on the morning after the discovery of the body, left the Tremarden Arms for the mortuary. He turned through the great iron-studded door of the hotel, with its huge, wrought-iron knocker, and into the Market Place. The Tremarden Arms is almost as old as Tremarden itself, with, inside, narrow, winding corridors which go, oddly, up two worn steps here, and down three equally worn steps there. Finding one’s bedroom is a switchback adventure to the newcomer in the Arms. There is a story, still told, of new guests who were presented on their arrival with a packet of coloured cardboard chips, which they dropped one by one, as they walked from their room to the hotel lounge and dining-hall, in order that they might be able to find their winding way to bed later on!

  The oak-studded hotel door is the oldest part of the Arms. It had once been the door of the Friary, the ruins of which still stand.

  Those were the days when the hunted man, once he had raised the massive knocker and dropped it, had secured sanctuary; when the hungry wayfarer, achieving the same, could not be refused food and lodging. Times have changed, but even now the wayfarer still raises and drops the ages-old knocker to secure food and lodging; the Tremarden Arms disdains a bell at the front door.

  Traversing the Market Place, Manson turned right, at the end, and began walking down the steep, sloping street to the town’s gate. In whichever direction, north, south, east or west, one walked from the Market Place of Tremarden, one found oneself going downhill. The Normans, who built the town, knew how to build for security. They first laid the roads; and they built the towns on the road. But the towns straddled the highway at their highest peak. That is how Tremarden was built, on a plateau, cut out from the hillside. The plateau was the living square of the fortress. Two hundred yards down from it, the wall of the fortress encircled the hill-side; above it rising to a pinnacle, the castle poised, the eyes in the window slits commanding a view of twenty miles of the countryside around. The road path was broken twice—at the north gate which gave entrance to Tremarden; and at the south gate which gave exit.

  The south gate has vanished; but the north gate still stands, its centuries-old stone now crumbling here and there; its cells for malefactors now open to the public gaze. The Keeper of the Gate will show you his relics if you ask him—the cell in which lay imprisoned for a year Fox the Dissenter, who would rail against the established authority of the Bishops; the whipping cell, the dark cells where no light penetrated.

  It was through this gate that Manson proceeded on his way to the mortuary. It lay outside the town, on the long white road, so that the ugly side of life was by-passed for the people of Tremarden.

  Manson opened the door and stepped in the room, clammy with the touch of death.

  Doctor Tremayne, informed by telephone of the intention of Doctor Manson to assist him in the post-mortem, was inclined to resent this as an intrusion on his domain, and a reflection on his ability as a surgeon. When, on their meeting in the mortuary, he found that the Doctor was the man of the river bank, he showed himself even more resentful.

  “I thought, sir, you told me that you were not a medical man,” he said.

  “Neither am I, Doctor,” was the reply. “But I am a Professor of Medical Jurisprudence, an authority on pathological examinations, and I am in charge of the investigations into this man’s death.” He passed over his card.

  Dr. Tremayne’s eyebrows rose on reading the name. “So you are THE Manson, are you?” he replied. “That is quite a different matter. I shall be very glad to have you with me, and to watch you practice the methods of which I have read so often in print. I base my examination in these cases on your medical jurisprudence, you know. But we don’t get much opportunity for that kind of thing down here, Dr. Manson. We are a peaceable crowd really, you know.”

  Manson smiled an acknowledgement of the compliment. “And may not have much this time, Doctor,” he warned. “So far, it is only a case of unusual circumstances which, I think, ought to be straightened out.”

  “Well, I’ve had the body prepared. Shall we start?”

  Colonel Donoughmore, stripped of his clothes, was revealed as a well-preserved man of some sixty years of age, of good physique, and development associated with military drill and discipline. There was an inclination to obesity in the stomach, the obvious result of abandoned exercise in later life. The two men stared at the body with professional interest.

  “Shows all the obvious signs of drowning, don’t you think, Chief Inspector?” commented Dr. Tremayne. “Skin is pallid enough, cutis anserina (goose-flesh, if you like), a little froth in the mouth . . . let’s have a look at the eyes . . . yes, pupils considerably dilated. Very satisfactory, I should say. Is there anything you want to see before we open up?”

  “Nothing that I know of, except the head injury, Doctor. But I think I will run over it, nevertheless. Good rule in medical jurisprudence not to miss an opportunity of examination. Wish I could make every police officer realise that before it is too late.”

  Manson was examining closely the skin of the dead man as he spoke, spending some moments over small discoloured patches here and there.

  “Hypostasis, would you say, Doctor?” he asked.

  Doctor Tremayne bent over the markings. “Possibly,” he agreed. “One or two, perhaps, are bruises caused doubtless by knocking against the stones when he went through the Gulley.”

  “And these?” Manson was now peering at slight discolourations on the upper arms. Half a dozen in number, and spaced over the muscles, they were only just visible even against the pallidness of the skin.

  “Slight bruising, eh, Chief Inspector?” Dr. Tremayne stared closely at the faint markings. “Possibly occasioned on his attempts to swim. Bound to use his arms, you know, and in his wading outfit constriction of the flesh against the clothing would be pretty tight.”

  “Quite so, Doctor,” replied Manson; but he produced a powerful magnifying glass from a pocket, and made a further examination. Next, with a pair of micro-calipers he measured the sizes of the separate bruises, carefully entering the figures into his note-book. A rough drawing was added, showing the position of the marks.

  Catching the doctor’s smile at this meticulous care, Manson answered it. “Sorry to be keeping you, Doctor,” he said. “It may seem a waste of time, but you never know. I have a very suspicious mind, and I don’t like bruises on dead bodies. If I don’t note them now, against the future, I would never not
e them at all. Once we’ve put the body underground, it’s gone. Now what about that head wound?”

  In contrast to the other injuries on the body, the bruise stood out in ugly conspicuity. It was a reddish purple, deepening into blue along its three-quarters of an inch centre of violence. A livid ring encircled it. Dr. Tremayne probed the surroundings with his rubber-gloved fingers. “Depressed fracture of the frontal bone . . . I should say that there is a rupture of the meningeal artery.”

  Manson nodded. “I think so, too, Doctor. You will have noticed the blood in the tissues? I remarked it on the river bank. But we’ll be better able to read it, probably, from the inside. How long before death would you say it was inflicted?”

  The doctor considered the point. “Knocked his head on a boulder as he went down the bank, the sergeant tells me,” he said. “Possible, of course. I should say that that is the answer.”

  Manson looked up sharply. He seemed about to speak. But he changed his mind. When he did speak it was only to say: “I would rather like a section for microscopic examination later, if necessary.”

  It was in the actual post-mortem examination, however, that Manson evinced the keener interest. It was obvious that drowning had played a part in the death of the colonel. The lungs were voluminous, spongy, pale in colour and with air vesicles distended. On the trachea being slit, fine froth was revealed lining the tubes. There was a quantity of water in the stomach.

  “That seems to settle the question, Chief-Inspector,” said Dr. Tremayne. “There is nothing here not compatible with death by drowning, so far as I can see.”

  “No?” The scientist’s voice was more of a query than an agreement. “Do you not think, perhaps, that there is either too much or too little water in the body?”