by E.
Cobley shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Well, zur,” he said, “it be true enough I never seed into’m faces. But a ses to meself, that be old Trepol and his darter. And when Policeman Lewis says as how anybody who so be saw a woman on river must come aloan’ an tell ’ee, ah came.”
“That is so, Mr. Cobley. You did right. Only, you see, we have to be quite sure that it was Mr. Trepol and Ann you saw. Shall we say that you saw two people there, who were a long way off, but who you took to be Mr. Trepol and his daughter? Will that do?”
“Sure sartin, zur.”
“All right. Then Sergeant Barrett will write down what you have said and read it over to you. Then you can sign it. You had better give Mr. Cobley a sovereign for his expenses and a drink, Sergeant.”
“Very good, sir.”
“And ask Inspector Penryn to come in, will you?”
Mr. Cobley, taking his sovereign, hurried round to the Tremarden Arms to spend it. Unfortunately, in his eyes, the drinking had one drawback—he could not tell his story of the river bank. The sergeant had made that very clear. “Only the Super, and you and I know of it, Cobley,” he said. “If I hear it from anywhere else we’ll know you have been talking, and then—well, we’ve got some pretty bad cells here,” he added darkly, and quite illegally! So Cobley drank with lips as sealed as those of Prime Minister Baldwin! And the liquor did not taste so good as he had hoped it would have done!
In the room at the police station which Cobley had vacated, the superintendent looked inquiringly at Inspector Penryn. “What do you make of it, Penryn?” he asked.
“Hanged if I know, sir. Funnily enough, I asked Ann Trepol when I saw her, if she had been down at the river bank that day. She denied it.” The inspector broke off suddenly. “Damn it,” he said. “What’s that, Penryn?”
“Come to think of it, she seemed remarkably keen on denying it. I remember how I noted, curiously, her vehemence. Just struck me at the time as being curious; as though she thought we might tell the story to her father. But now . . .”
“I think we had better have her here, Penryn. Send somebody for her. And we’d better have Trepol as well. Only, don’t let them see each other.”
Ann Trepol came into the room scowling, and swinging her hat in one hand. “What do you want me here for?” she demanded.
Burns ignored the scowl, returning a pleasant smile. “We shall not keep you very long, Ann, if you are a good girl,” he said. “But there is something I want you to tell me. You remember that the inspector here saw you at your home and you showed him some shares?”
A nod from the girl.
“You told the inspector, Ann, that you had not been to the river bank that day. Now, was that true?”
“Of course it was true.”
“Now, think, Ann. There is no reason whatever why you should not have gone to the river if you wanted. You’ve been there often enough before. And nobody suggests that you were catching Franky Baker’s fish. But somebody has said they thought they saw you there round about one o’clock. Now, tell me, Anne—and it won’t go any further, if that is what you are afraid of—were you there at all, at any time that morning or afternoon?”
“No, I wasn’t. I’ve said so, and I’ll say it again. I tell you I wasn’t there.” The girl flew into a passion. “And I’m not staying here any longer.”
“All right. We don’t want to keep you. Show Ann out, Inspector—through my private door.”
“Well, that’s that,” he commented as Penryn returned. “Is Trepol here? Good. We’ll see what HE has to say.”
He said little!
“Good morning, Willie,” the superintendent greeted him.
“Mornin’, Super.” The voice came in glum and melancholy tones. Long years as an undertaker had given Willie Trepol a countenance and voice remarkably appropriate to his solemn calling. “The sergeant said you wanted to see me. What service can I do ye?”
“We don’t quite know, Willie. But we are hoping that you may be able to help us—over the colonel’s death, you know. Now, we are trying to find the time he died. That means we want to find the latest time he was seen. We understand that you were down by the river that morning, about one o’clock. Did you see the colonel anywhere around?”
“Me?” the voice came up as from the bottomless pit. “I didn’t see the colonel at all. I was never down by the river to see him. Who says I was there?”
“Nobody says so, definitely, Willie. But a farm worker down there says he thought he saw you somewhere by the Pylons at one o’clock, lunch-time, that day. No reason why you shouldn’t be there, of course. You’ve done a bit of fishing there in your time. We thought you might have seen the colonel. If you had that would have helped us to fix a time when we knew the colonel to be alive.”
“Gentlemen, I had no wish at all to see the colonel. And I saw nothing of him, except in the morning, about ten o’clock, or somewheres about that, when I saw him outside the Tremarden Arms. He’d got his fishing stuff with him.”
“And you didn’t see him again?”
“I didn’t.”
“Then that’s all there is to it, Willie.”
“They be saying in the town that he were killed, Super. Would that be right?”
Trepol, the two men thought, waited the answer in an attitude almost of strain. It communicated to the feeling that it was anxiety altogether out of keeping with the fact that he had never been associated with the colonel, not even on speaking terms.
“Quite true, I’m afraid, Willie,” the superintendent replied. He eyed the undertaker with a glint in his eyes. “Are you carrying out your promise?” he asked.
“Promise?” Trepol looked puzzled. “What promise would that be?”
“Come, Willie! Didn’t you say, in the Tremarden Arms, that if the gentlemen made it a funeral for the colonel you’d give him a coffin free?” The superintendent chuckled. “It’s certain sure a funeral.”
Trepol’s face grew even more elongated and mournful. “It don’t always do, Super, to take what a man says in a bar as what he means like. The colonel was an outlander and I didn’t like’n anyhows.”
He paused, and an expression that might have been mistaken for a smile flickered over his face. “I’m fitting him with a coffin, anyways,” he went on. “Twenty pounds it’ll be. An’ it’s a good strong coffin,” he added, half under his breath.
“Well, Willie, so far as I know, you’ve always given satisfaction that way,” the superintendent said. “I’ve never heard of a customer complaining.”
There was no answering smile from the undertaker at the joke. He turned round with a “good morning” and left the room.
“That settles it, Penryn. Cobley has got a sovereign out of us, the rascal.”
“Looks that way, sir.”
“I hope he drinks himself sick.”
“He won’t, sir. Not on a sovereign, he won’t! Not old Tom Cobley!”
CHAPTER XVI
ILL FITTINGS
While the superintendent and Inspector Penryn had been engaged on the problem of elucidating the story of Cobley, Doctor Manson and Sergeant Merry were turning their attention to a more material investigation, though, perhaps, not less hypothetical. The sergeant, after a preliminary discussion with the scientist, had returned by police car to the main road turning at which he and Manson had left the bus. From there he had walked, carrying a bag containing Plaster of Paris, a bowl, and a table spoon. His task was to obtain a plaster cast of the bootprint beneath the bramble bushes.
Meanwhile, Doctor Manson, had visited a stationer’s shop. There he had purchased a large double sheet of blotting paper, a small tube of colourless cement, of the type used for repairing glass and china, and a box of drawing pins. Back in his room in the Tremarden Arms he fastened the blotting paper down to his table with the drawing pins, and placed the tube of cement alongside.
Then, on to the virgin-white surface of the blotting paper he carefully shook out from an envelope the pieces
of spectacle glass which he and the sergeant had salvaged from the trodden grass by the river side. Sitting at the table, the scientist began the task that was to take him nearly two hours to complete. With infinite patience he commenced to sort out the pieces into their place in the murder jigsaw. The task, at the outset, seemed an impossible one. A number of the pieces of glass were hardly more than an eighth of an inch across. But Dr. Manson was not the man to shirk the seemingly impossible, so long as there was any chance, even the slimmest, of success.
Piece by piece, he sorted out the fragments, fitting them together. Often he had to call into use an optician’s eyepiece in order to ensure that the breaks in the two slivvers he had placed together really made one. Twice he was placed in a quandary by pieces which seemed to fit perfectly on to two, or more, other fragments. Since it was hardly likely from the concavity of the lenses that both eyes would have exactly the same sight correction, it was, the scientist knew, of the utmost importance that there should be no mistake in fitting the pieces if the final result was to prove, or disprove, any theory to which they might lead him.
At last all the particles had been placed in two arrangements, one on each side of the scientist; and he then began the delicate task of fixing them into two concerted wholes, or as near two concerted wholes as they would go. With a sharpened matchstick, he applied to the edges of each segment a thin coating of cement, fitting, one at a time, the pieces corresponding to the breaking-line. It was a task of the utmost delicacy and patience, requiring that the cement joining one piece should be hardened and set before any attempt was made to add a further piece. The task completed at last, Dr. Manson sat back and looked at the result with no little satisfaction. It showed the two elliptical lenses, plainly identifiable as left and right eyeglasses.
When he was satisfied that the cement had hardened sufficiently to allow the lenses to be carefully lifted, he turned them over, so that the concave surface faced upwards. Before he had time to continue his inspection, the door opened and Merry entered the room. He caught the Doctor’s look of inquiry, and answered it. “Just like we left it, Harry. It makes a good cast. Not perfect, mind you; but good enough for identification, I think.” He produced the cast from his bag and handed it across. Manson, turning it over in his hands glanced with lively interest at the plainly marked patch and the embossed, projecting, hobnails. “I agree, Jim,” he commented, and placed the cast in a cupboard.
“Anything from the glass, Harry?” the sergeant asked.
Manson nodded towards the table, and Merry crossed over and looked down at the reconstructed lenses. “And what do they tell?” he asked. “Any link with Emmett?”
Manson gave a non-committal “Possibly. The age is all right,” he said. “As to the rest I do not know as yet.”
“The age all right? How come?”
“Well, Jim, the answer is easy. There are four general conditions of eyesight which require spectacles. There is myopia, or near sight, which requires the weakest concave lenses. Then, there is hypermetropia, or long distance, and for this the strongest convex is needed. Thirdly, there is presbyopia, or old sight, which usually becomes manifest after the age of forty-five or fifty. Now these lenses are certainly in the latter class. And Emmett is getting towards the fifties, isn’t he?”
“He is. And what do we now do with them?” pointing to the lenses.
For reply the scientist picked up the telephone receiver and asked the hotel switchboard for Baker. “Is there a good occulist in the place, Franky?” he asked. “Or an eye surgeon?”
“Sure there is, Doctor. Merryweather, in the Market Square, is a good man; and then there is Mr. Welles, in the corner house on the Okehampton Road. He was an eye-surgeon in Harley Street until he retired.”
“Good. He’ll do. Can we get him on the phone? Right, I’ll hang on.”
“This is a piece of luck, Jim. We’ll ha . . . Hallo, is that Mr. Welles? . . . This is Chief Detective Inspector Manson, of Scotland Yard, Mr. Welles . . . What’s that? . . . Yes . . . Well, that’s extraordinary. Of course I remember you, now. Drop in at the Tremarden Arms to-night, and renew the acquaintance. Meanwhile, can you help me out of a difficulty? I have a pair of spectacle lenses here, reconstructed from smashed pieces. If I send them round, can you give me the prescription to which they are ground? You can? That is excellent. I’ll send them at once. And I’ll expect to see you here to-night. Until then . . .”
“Here you are, Merry. Pack them into this box and drop round with them. Ask him if he would be kind enough to telephone me the prescription as soon as possible.”
The two men left the room—Merry on his errand, and Dr. Manson for a cocktail in the lounge of the Tremarden Arms. Fred Emmett was already imbibing one, and Manson joined him at the table.
“Been fishing, Emmett?” he asked.
“Only for an hour or two, Doctor. There wasn’t much doing.”
“No. Sport seems to have dropped a bit. No hatch of fly lately, I’m told. Who’s that coming in now? Haven’t seen him before.”
Emmett looked up towards the hotel entrance, felt in his pocket and produced a spectacle case. Manson eyed it. “Found your glasses, then? Didn’t Merry tell me that you had lost them?”
“Yes. I wired home for my spare pair. Can’t see a rise quickly enough without them, you know.”
“Let’s have a look at them, old chap. Perhaps I can tell you what is wrong with your eyes.”
Emmett passed the glasses over, and Manson gave them a passing glance. It was enough. They are practically flat, but showing a slight magnification. There was hardly a sign of concaveness. “Just a little strain in the sight, that’s all, Emmett,” Manson said, and handed them back.
Merry, returning, joined his chief as Emmett went upstairs to wash before the meal.
“Well?” asked Manson.
“He’ll let you know in about half an hour, Harry.”
“He won’t lead us to Emmett, Jim, anyhow. Emmett is wearing a spare pair of glasses, and they certainly do not compare in any degree with the ones we have.”
It was half-way through the meal when the eye specialist’s reply was brought to the Doctor. He opened the envelope, brought by a waiter, and the prescription, on the sheet of notepaper, fluttered out. It read:
RIGHT EYE
+1.00LEFT EYE
+1.25 +0.75/100.
Prescribed for a patient with old sight but whose long sight would seem to be normal. Close sight rather bad.
“As I thought,” commented Manson, passing the note over to Merry.
The result of his hours of labour over the broken glasses afforded Doctor Manson no little satisfaction. He realised that it should now be a matter of no difficulty to track down the owner of the smashed spectacles, and in that way to turn the evidence and the signs of struggle in the copse to good effect. The experiment was an example of the value of the scientist and his assistant, to crime detection. Manson had, at the beginning of his studies at the university years ago, taken up science as a hobby. He had been blessed with a sufficiency of income to make him independent of the necessity to earn a living. Consequently he had become a dilettante in science; that is to say, he had not been confined to the specialisation in any particular branch which, in science particularly, the need for making a livelihood demands. So Manson had ranged throughout the whole field, gathering knowledge here and there, strange knowledge sometimes, which seemed hardly likely to be of any material use at the time it was assimilated. Nevertheless, he forgot nothing he had read; it was pigeonholed in his brain for recall when, if ever, it was wanted.
The diverseness of his knowledge was remarkable. He could tell a painter exactly what colours he had mixed to obtain an effect in a picture and he proportioned the order in which he had mixed them. He could tell whether a piece of handwriting had come from a right or left handed person. Give him a spectroscope and he would tell at once the names of the minerals which chanced to be in the particular part of the moon, or sun, at which
the apparatus was pointing; or a parcel of bones, and he would sort them, unhesitatingly into their positions in the body, whether it be human or animal. Given a speck of blood, he could identify its late owner, be he man or a bird or an animal, and in the case of human blood he could “group” it. His geology was equally expert; a crystal—he could identify whether it be sand, silicate, sugar, salt or anything else; and his knowledge of microscopical investigation was unique.
The result of all this perambulatory knowledge was that small things turning up during investigation, which the ordinary man-hunter would cast aside as of no importance, assumed in Doctor Manson’s mind an instinctive query, sometimes because it was so out of place as to be outré, such as, for instance, a few grains of silicates in the pockets of a man who worked in the West End of London. Or an ear of oats lying on a path, when Manson, whose eyes took everything in as he journeyed, knew that no oats were growing in the neighbourhood. It was this scholarship in science that had at once forced upon Doctor Manson the realisation that the glass was spectacle glass, and that, could it be recovered in sufficient quantity, it could be identified with the wearer. He was now anxious to test the latter theory.
Tremarden woke to life again at two o’clock after its luncheon siesta. Shop blinds went up, doors opened, and shopkeepers stood outside exchanging confidences with the man at the shop next door. Seeing the resurrection, Doctor Manson sallied forth, a small parcel in one hand. Skirting the hotel corner, he made a beeline for a shop on the other side of the Market Place and asked to see the manager. To that executive he disclosed his official position, at the same time producing from his parcel the boot-cast from the riverside. “I want to know,” he said, “if you can identify the boot of which this is an impression. It has lately been repaired, as you will see, and the patch on the left side should be easy to remember. It might be, and probably is, a fishing brogue.”