Murder Jigsaw

by E.

As he spoke, the scientist produced the sets of casts and placed them on the table, laying a magnifying glass beside them. “I want you, Superintendent, to examine these casts and tell me from what manner of heels you think they came.”

  Superintendent Burns, taking the glass, scanned the first of the casts. The scores which had been cut in the ground were now of course, projecting, embossed on the casts. The result was that they obviously lent themselves to more accurate observation than when the marks were indentures in the ground, half hidden by the grass of the bank. They were, in fact, far more distinct than had been the original marks on the bankside.

  The superintendent, after some moments, put down the glass and scratched his head. “That’s a queer thing,” he said, and turned to the second cast. Spending only a few minutes on that, he finally passed the glass over the third set. Then he sat back and looked at Manson.

  “Well?” asked the scientist.

  “I should have said that each of the marks was made by the same foot, though that, of course, is impossible.”

  “Why is it impossible, Superintendent?” Manson’s voice was sharp.

  “Well . . . er . . . isn’t it? The man had two feet.”

  Manson eyed him ironically. “You know, Burns, I cannot understand you. Why go out of your way to find an alibi, merely to disprove your first, and perfectly correct, impression. Of course the parallel marks were made by the same heel.”

  “What! The two side by side?” asked the Chief Constable.

  “Even those two, Sir William,” Manson corroborated. “If you will come to the table I will show you why.” He took the first of the casts. “Now, if you look carefully, Sir William, at the impression on the left, you will see, about one-sixteenth-of-an-inch from the centre, a small additional ridge—just a suspicion, as it were.”

  The Chief Constable peered through the glass, then felt gently with his finger. “Yes, I can get that quite distinctly, Doctor,” he said.

  “Now, if you will look at the impression on the right, you will see, again, that same ridge—in exactly the same place—to an hundredth part of an inch. And if, again, you will look at the impressions on the remaining casts you will find it repeated.”

  The Chief Constable confirmed that curious fact.

  “Now,” continued Manson, “it MIGHT happen that the two shoes of a man’s feet MIGHT have two projecting nails at exactly the same spot; but the chances are several millions to one against. I was, therefore, forced to accept the view that all the scratches were made by one boot-heel. The inevitable conclusion to be drawn from that was that it was certainly not the colonel’s heel that made the marks, for I don’t suppose that he, having fallen and scratched one impression, would climb back and fall a second time in exactly the same way to duplicate the scratches in parallel. I had a look at the fishing brogues which we took from the colonel’s body; they are in the cupboard there. There is not a projecting nail in either of the heels.

  “That was sufficient, even for me! Someone had made those marks by drawing the heel of their right foot down the bank, and then repeating the action alongside the first scratches; and so on twice more down the bank. I asked myself why.”

  The scientist looked at his audience.

  “To make it appear that the colonel had fallen there,” hazarded the superintendent.

  “Of course!” retorted Manson. “And that brings us to another link in the chain of logical reasoning. A great thing is logic and logical reasoning. It should be the very first item in the curriculum of all schools except the infant classes; only it is not. The result is that one of the most important things in education is withheld from the student—training in how to think. I asked myself why should anyone want to make us think that the colonel had fallen into the river at that particular spot? There is only one answer to that—because he did NOT fall at that spot.”

  “Upon my soul, Doctor, it seems obvious, put like that.” The Chief Constable stared in surprise at the idea that he had, himself, failed to see so unmistakable a fact!

  Merry chuckled. “Just the scientifically trained mind, you see, Sir William,” he said. “It’s also due to a very suspicious mind. That’s the worst of the Doctor; he possesses a strongly suspicious mind, don’t you, Doctor?”

  Superintendent Burns chuckled at that. It was one of Manson’s idiosyncrasies, invariably used by him to press home a point to his superiors and inferiors, to use the phrase: “I’ve a very suspicious mind, you know.”

  “Well, it’s a damned good job, he has,” the Chief Constable commented. “Go on, Doctor.”

  Manson continued his hypothesis. “Having, then, arrived at the logical deduction that the colonel had not fallen into the river at that spot, I searched round for actual proof—the sort of proof that I could put before a jury, with certainty of it being accepted.” He paused and looked round at the company.

  Superintendent Burns leaned forward and stared hard. “That, Doctor, is the line of country we want. I can understand that. Did you find any?”

  “I found three pieces of concrete evidence, Superintendent, to prove without doubt that the colonel did not fall into the river at the spot where we are invited to believe that he fell in. What is more, the evidence proves conclusively, to my mind, that he was not drowned in the river at all.”

  Manson’s statement came like a bombshell to the other three men in the room. For a moment there was complete silence. Then, the superintendent broke in. He leaned forward, looking, perhaps a little uncomfortable, for he felt that he must have missed something in the investigations. “What—” he hesitated for a second, and then continued: “what were they, Doctor?” he asked.

  The scientist eyed him. “Come, come, Superintendent,” he said, “you should know. You saw them. We even discussed two of them during our river walk this morning.”

  “Discussed them?”

  “Certainly. Did we not, Merry?”

  The sergeant answered with a vigorous nod. These little evasions of the Doctor tickled him immensely and he never failed to enjoy sharing in them. Manson, he knew, delighted to reduce the non-scientific mind to confess complete inability to see what to him was perfectly obvious; and then to point out the simplicity of the explanation.

  “Well, I’m hanged if I can see any proof, Doctor,” the superintendent confessed at length.

  Manson continued his tantalisation. “Now, Superintendent, come. Just think back for a few moments while I pour out some more beer. We were walking along the river bank and talking. We continued the talk in this very room. Goodness, now, I’ve nearly told you!” The scientist tilted a bottle over the superintendent’s glass.

  A deep drink, however, did not help that officer. “No, Doctor, I give it up,” he said. “I don’t see any proof.”

  “Ah well, I’ll have to tell you, then.”

  He spoke rapidly for a couple of minutes, and the superintendent gasped. “Of course . . . of course, Doctor! Damn it! . . . of course,” he said.

  “There you go,” was Manson’s comment. “Elementary, isn’t it? That’s how my reputation goes! Nothing at all out of the way.”

  * * * * *

  The reader is invited to decide for himself what are the pieces of concrete evidence, outlined by Doctor Manson, which prove that Colonel Donoughmore did not fall in the river at the spot stated; and did not, in fact, fall in the river at all. Nothing has been withheld in the way of evidence.

  They are really quite simple if the principles of organised and logical thinking, so emphasised by Doctor Manson, are combined with close attention to detail.

  * * * * *

  “You’ve given us two pieces, Doctor,” the Chief Constable pointed out after the explanation had been digested, “but not the third?”

  “That,” was the answer. “Oh! That was the second mistake that the person we want made. You will remember that on the day we found the body, the sergeant, Franky, and I walked to the scene of the alleged fall. The colonel’s rod was lying at the top of the bank
. We were coming away when Franky drew my attention to it. I let the line run through my fingers. It was a fully-tapered dry-fly line. The colonel, you will remember, was a purist in fishing. He fished always dry-fly. Well, attached to the cast was a fly—a WET FLY, even worse, a nymph, definitely an underwater fly. No purist would use such a fly, and particularly on a dry-fly line. A wet-fly line, as you all know, has no tapering.

  “There was, however, a chance that the colonel talked one kind of fishing and fished another—secretly. I went through his fly box and his fishing bag. Not another sign of a wet-fly could I find. I told Franky and the sergeant to search the ground in the vicinity for a box of wet-flies or any loose wet-fly, even to search the river-bed at the spot of the alleged fall. I went carefully through the pockets of the colonel’s waders. There was no trace of a wet-fly. The colonel hadn’t one.

  “Someone had tied that fly on the colonel’s cast to mislead us. And what is more, he had tied it to a cast unlike any other that the colonel had in his cast tin.”

  “That settles it.” The Chief Constable held out a hand to the scientist. “A day or two ago, Doctor, we had a little disagreement over this case. I said that we had to accept Dr. Tremayne’s post-mortem. I would like to withdraw. I apologise. It’s a darned good thing you refused to listen to me. Otherwise, we would have left the swine who has done this in security. Every help you want in tracking him down I’ll see you have.”

  Manson took the hand in a warm grasp. “That is very nice of you, Sir William,” he said. “But quite unnecessary, believe me. My job is to find loopholes. If you people didn’t leave loopholes I wouldn’t have any job; and the police, you know, cannot be experts in every branch of investigation.”

  “Now, we’ve got to find the man.” The Chief Constable, once convinced that the tragedy was not an accident, became the war-horse! “Any idea whom he may be?” His voice had the inflexion of one who believes in miracles!

  “No, Sir William, not even the germ of an idea. The only way we can start is, I think, by the process of elimination.”

  The superintendent started as though he had been stung. An idea had leapt into his mind. “It occurs to me, Doctor,” he began.

  “Yes?” queried Manson.

  “We’ve proved beyond doubt that the colonel did not fall or get pushed into the water at the spot we thought. Then where did he fall in?”

  “I wondered if you were going to ask that,” was the reply. “I do not know.”

  “Any idea?” The question came again from the Chief Constable.

  “No, not the least. There are, however, one or two useful clues to start with. For the moment, however, I want to discuss the elimination process, because, as I said before, that work can be done by your police here concurrently with anything to which I devote my attention. We can save time that way. Now, what strikes you as regards that, Superintendent?”

  “That’s more in my line, Doctor,” was the answer. He turned to his Chief Constable. “There’s one queer thing which I think wants explaining,” he announced.

  “What’s that?”

  “The fact that nobody saw the colonel on that day except Emmett. There is something there that doesn’t seem to me to square-up at all. Emmett says he saw him poaching in his (Emmett’s) beat at 11.15 o’clock. They had a row, and the colonel, according to Emmett, then walked back into his own beat. We questioned Emmett on how he fixed the time, and everything fitted together like a fishing-rod. Now, at 11.15, Sir Edward Maurice reached the colonel’s beat. He walked the full length of it, looking for his cigarette case. He saw no sign of the colonel. Where had the man got to?”

  The Chief Constable nodded. “You mean that if Emmett saw him walk to his beat, Sir Edward must be telling an untruth when he says that he did not see the colonel. Therefore, he may have had something to do with the colonel’s demise.”

  “Well, either that or Emmett was lying when he says the colonel walked back into his beat. There was a row, you know, and if Emmett lost his temper and struck him, knocking him into the river, the colonel might have been ‘out’ before Sir Edward reached the scene. In that case, Sir Edward would not have seen him. And Emmett would have had to have made an alibi. The spot of the ‘accident’ isn’t more than a minute or two’s walk from Emmett’s water.”

  “But the Doctor says that the colonel wasn’t drowned in the river, and we’ve decided he didn’t go in there, anyway,” protested Sir William.

  “The colonel might, of course, have seen Sir Edward coming, and have concealed himself behind a bush. Or he might have been in the water near the bank, fishing. Sir Edward would not be likely to see him if he was,” Manson suggested.

  “True,” admitted the superintendent. “But then, Sir Edward passed along there again in the afternoon, after four o’clock, and still did not see the colonel.”

  “Quite. But the colonel was dead, then,” pointed out Manson.

  “Well, anyhow, I think Emmett is a suspect,” insisted the superintendent. “He was fishing next to the colonel, and he was heard to say that he had threatened to throw him in the river. I would have felt inclined, Doctor, to concentrate on Mrs. Devereux, on the other side of the colonel. We know that there was feeling against the colonel on her part. But she wasn’t on the water, so that puts her out.”

  “Why?” Manson snapped. “Nobody is out, Superintendent, until they are proved out.”

  “If I may point out one thing,” Sergeant Merry interrupted, “I made a note during our interview with Major Smithers, which I think needs some elucidating.” He turned the pages of his note-book and read out the passage:

  “Then about two o’clock, I saw Mrs. Devereux. At least, I suppose it was Mrs. Devereux. She had a rod and was standing at the edge of the Avenue, the other side of the Pylons.”

  “If Mrs. Devereux was not on the water, who was it that Major Smithers saw?” the sergeant asked.

  “Or SAID he saw,” added the superintendent.

  “Or said he saw,” Merry agreed. “On the other hand, Sir Edward on his walk-up must have traversed parallel to part of Mrs. Devereux’s beat, and he says he saw nothing of her.”

  “What do you say to all this, Doctor?” the Chief Constable interposed.

  “It is precisely this that I mean when I say we shall have to work on the process of elimination, Sir William. We must get these suspects sorted out and reduced. That is what I want you people to do. You will, of course, Superintendent, pry into any motive. Emmett didn’t throw the colonel into the water because he was poaching his fish. Sir Edward, so far as I can see, didn’t do it because he didn’t like the look of the colonel’s face. If Mrs. Devereux was on the water—we must probe into that—she didn’t kill him because he pursued her, if he did pursue her. She’d be angry, but gratified at the compliment. Any woman would be. Is there some motive for violence of which we do not know? We’ll have to search into the lives of all of them. That is routine work for the detective force. Meanwhile, I will work along certain lines which I have in mind to find in what part of the water the colonel was pushed.”

  With that parting shot from the scientist the conference broke up.

  CHAPTER X

  MRS. DEVEREUX

  Mrs. Janice Devereux had a line in that fount of information, the London Telephone Directory, A—K. It announced to all and sundry that she lived in Palace Court, Buckingham Gate, London, S.W.1; that her telephone number was Tha. 0123.

  Palace Court was an imposing block of luxury flats at the rear of Buckingham Palace; and the rents of them were as imposing as their appearance. The flat occupied by Mrs. Devereux was on the first floor of one of the sections of the block—“houses”—the proprietors of the flats called them. Its rent was one of the highest.

  From its doorway, Mrs. Devereux sallied forth daily on her social round. She was a member of several Bridge Clubs, and had an extensive acquaintanceship of friends of considerable standing; but not THE standing. It was a source of irritation to her, and had been for a lon
g time that, though she hovered continually on the fringe of Society, spelt with a capital “S,” she had never managed to cross the border into that select circle. She hoped and believed, however, that her coming marriage to Sir John Shepstone, wealthy dilettante, would, at last, prove the Open Sesame.

  Meanwhile, Mrs. Devereux had made a point of visiting those functions where Society usually accorded its gracious patronage; and it may be said in passing, that she was generally among the best-dressed of the butterflies which fluttered in the sunshine of wealthy idleness.

  At the moment, however, Mrs. Devereux was sitting in the lounge of the Tremarden Arms partaking of a pre-lunch cocktail; and on the opposite side of the lounge, drinking a ginger-ale, Detective-Inspector Penryn meditated on her. It was his task, allotted to him by Superintendent Burns, to investigate the lady.

  It was quickly apparent to him that there was little to be learned of her here in Tremarden. This was her first visit; she had been there a few days only when the colonel met his death; and the days she seemed to have spent fishing by day and playing Bridge by night. She had seemed fairly popular, but was accounted by the men as something of an adventuress. So far as fishing was concerned, she fished with anything that a fish was likely to look at once too often. In fact, there was a rumour that she had hooked one trout on a worm!

  In this dilemma, Inspector Penryn sought London’s aid, by telephone. Scotland Yard passed him over to the “Society Index.” That Department had supplied the details which the inspector was turning over in his mind as he sat in the hotel lounge. To them had been added the fact that the lady had come to London from India, where her husband had been an officer in the Indian Army. No source of income, other than the pension due to her from her husband’s death, was known.

  Inspector Penryn had seen a copy of the notes of the interview which Doctor Manson and the superintendent had had with the woman, and had gone carefully through the examination. A keen investigator, with a quick, alert mind, one phrase in the report had struck him as unusual; it was Mrs. Devereux’s reply to Doctor Manson’s suggestion that her absence from the water on that particular day was due to the presence on the next beat of the colonel. “I did not like the colonel. I hated the sight of him. I never did like him; and I don’t know any woman who did,” she had said. The inspector thought the outburst decidedly peculiar in the choice of words, especially when taken in conjunction with her subsequent explanation that she meant that she had not liked the colonel from the first day she had met him in the Tremarden Arms. One does not use the phrase, “I never DID like him,” the inspector argued, of a man one has known only nine days. He wondered whether Mrs. Devereux was speaking the truth, or whether she had known the colonel before her visit to the hotel. Should the latter prove to be the fact, the inspector communed, then the vehemence of her feelings towards the colonel might put a different complexion on the case. He decided to visit the neighbourhood of Buckingham Gate, and see if there was anything to be gained there, leaving his sergeant to check up the lady’s alibi with the Devonshire Tea Rooms in Tavistock.