Mrs. Gillow was the wife of a mariner who was the second mate of a sailing ship that plied to Australia, who had now been away about four months and was expected home shortly. She was a native of the locality and had known Mr. Japp for several years. She occupied the part of the house above the ground floor and kept no servant or dependent, living quite alone when her husband was at sea. She had no children. Her acquaintance with Angelina began when the latter became the tenant of the ground floor and basement; it was but a slight acquaintance, and she knew nothing of Angelina’s antecedents or affairs excepting that she had left her husband.
Mr. Japp was a native of Rochester and had lived in the town all his life, having taken over his business establishment from his late partner, a Mr. Borden. He was a bachelor and was related to Angelina by marriage, his brother—now deceased—having married Angelina’s aunt.
As to Bundy, he was hardly connected with the case at all, since he had seen Angelina only once or twice and had scarcely exchanged a dozen words with her. Moreover, he had but recently come to Rochester—about six weeks ago, I gathered—having answered an advertisement of Japp’s for an assistant with a view to partnership; and the actual deed had not yet been executed, though the two partners were evidently quite well satisfied with one another.
That was all the information that I had to give Thorndyke; and with the exception of the London incident it amounted to nothing. Nevertheless, it was as well to have established the fact that if anyone were concerned in Angelina’s disappearance, that person would have to be sought elsewhere than in Rochester.
Having sent off my summary and read over again and again the copy which I had kept, I began to realize the justice of Thorndyke’s observation that the inquiry was essentially a matter for the police, who had both the experience and the necessary facilities; for whenever I tried to think of some plan for tracing my lost friend, I was brought up against the facts that I had, nothing whatever to go on and no idea how to make a start. As to Thorndyke, he had no data but those that I had given him, and I realized clearly that these were utterly insufficient to form the basis of any investigation; and I found myself looking expectantly to the police to produce some new facts that might throw at least a glimmer of light on this dreadful and baffling mystery.
I had not very long to wait. On the Friday after our call on the sergeant, I was sitting after lunch in my dining-room with a book in my hand, while my thoughts strayed back to those memorable evenings of pleasant converse with the sweet friend who, I felt, had gone from me for ever, when the door bell rang, and Mrs. Dunk presently announced:
“Sergeant Cobbledick.”
“Show him in here, Mrs. Dunk,” said I, laying aside my book, and rising to receive my visitor; who proved to be, as I had expected, the officer who had taken our statements. He entered with his helmet in his hand, and greeted me with a smile of concentrated benevolence.
“Sit down, Sergeant,” said I, offering him an easy chair. “I hope you have some news for us.”
“Yes,” he replied, beaming on me. “I am glad to say we are getting on as well as we can expect. We have made quite a nice little start.”
He spoke as if he had something particularly gratifying to communicate, and, having carefully placed his helmet on the table, he drew from his pocket a small paper packet, which he opened with great deliberation, extracting from it a small object, which he held out in the palm of his hand.
“There, Doctor,” said he, complacently; “what do you say to that?”
I looked at the object, and my heart seemed to stand still. It was Angelina’s brooch! I stared at it in speechless dismay for some moments. At length I asked, huskily:
“Where did you get it?”
“I found it,” said the sergeant, gazing fondly at the little trinket, “where I hardly hoped to find it—in a pawnbroker’s shop in Chatham.”
“Did you discover who pawned it?” I asked.
“In a sense, yes,” the sergeant replied with a bland smile.
“How do you mean—in a sense?” I inquired.
“I mean that his name was John Smith—only, of course, it wasn’t; and that his address was 26, Swoffer’s-alley, Chatham—only he didn’t live there, because there is no such number. You see, Doctor, John Smith is the name of nearly every man who gives a false description of himself; and I went straight off to Swoffer’s-alley—it was close by—and found that there wasn’t any number 26.”
“Then you really don’t know who pawned it?”
“We won’t exactly say that,” he replied. “I got a fair description of the man from the pawnbroker’s wife, who made out the ticket and says she could swear to the man if she saw him. He was a seafaring man, dressed in sailor’s clothes—a peaked cap and pea-jacket—a shortish fellow, rather sunburnt, with a small, stubby, dark moustache and dark hair, and a mole or wart on the left side of his nose, near the tip. She asked him where he had got the brooch, and he said it had belonged to his old woman. I should say he probably picked it up.”
“Why do you think so?” I asked.
“Well, if he had—er—got it in any other way, he would hardly have popped it in Chatham forty-eight hours after the—after it was lost, with the chance that the pawnbrokers had already been notified—he pawned it on Monday night.”
“Then,” said I, “if he picked it up, he isn’t of much importance; and in any case you don’t know who he is.”
“Oh, but he is of a good deal of importance,” said the sergeant. “I’ve no doubt he picked it up, but that is only a guess. He may have got it the other way. But at any rate, he had it in his possession and he will have to give an account of how he obtained it. The importance of it is this: taken with the disappearance, the finding of this brooch raises a strong suspicion that a crime has been committed, and if we could find out where it was picked up, we should have a clue to the place where the affair took place. I want that man very badly, and I’m going to have a good try to get him.”
“I don’t quite see how,” said I. “You haven’t much to go on.”
“I’ve got his nose to go on,” replied the sergeant.
“But there must be plenty of other men with moles on their noses.”
“That’s their lookout,” he retorted. “If I come across a man who answers the description, I shall hang on to him until Mrs. Pawnbroker has had a look at him. Of course, if she says he’s not the man, he’ll be released.”
“But she won’t,” said I. “If he has a mole on his nose, she will be perfectly certain that he is the man.”
The sergeant smiled benignly. “There’s something in that,” he admitted. “Ladies are a bit cock-sure when it comes to identification. But you can generally check ’em by other evidence. And if this chap picked the brooch up, he would be pretty certain to tell us all about it when he heard where it came from. Still, we haven’t got him yet.”
For a while we sat, without speaking, each pursuing his own thoughts. To me, this dreadful discovery, though it did but materialize the vague fears that had been surging through my mind, had fallen like a thunderbolt. For, behind those fears, I now realized that there had lurked a hope that the mystery might presently be resolved by the return of the lost one. Now that hope had suddenly become extinct. I knew that she had gone out of my life for ever. She was dead. This poor little waif that had drifted back into our hands brought the unmistakable message of her death, with horrible suggestions of hideous and sordid tragedy. I shuddered at the thought; and in that moment, from the grief and horror that possessed my soul, there was born a passion of hatred for the wretch who had done this thing and a craving for revenge.
“There’s another queer thing that has come to light,” the sergeant resumed at length. “There may be nothing in it, but it’s a little queer. About the husband, Nicholas Frood.”
“What about him?” I asked, eagerly.
“Why, he seems to have disappeared, too. Of course, you understand, Doctor, that what I’m telling you is confiden
tial. We are not talking about this affair outside, and we aren’t telling the Press much, at present.”
“Naturally,” said I. “You can trust me to keep my own counsel, and yours, too.”
“I’m sure I can. Well, about this man, Frood. It seems that last Friday he went away from his lodgings for a couple of days; but he hasn’t come back, and nobody knows what has become of him. He was supposed to be going to Brighton, where he has some relatives from whom he gets a little assistance occasionally, but they have seen or heard nothing of him. Quaint, isn’t it? You said you saw him here on the Monday.”
“Yes, and I haven’t seen him since, though I have kept a lookout for him. But he may have been here, all the same. It looks decidedly suspicious.”
“It is queer,” the sergeant agreed, “but we’ve no evidence that he has been in this neighbourhood.”
“Have you made any other inquiries?” I asked.
“We looked up that lady, Miss Cumbers, but we got nothing out of her. She had had a letter from Mrs. Frood on the 24th—yesterday week—quite an ordinary letter, giving no hint of any intention to go away from Rochester. So there you are. The mystery seems to be concerned entirely with this neighbourhood, and I expect we shall have to solve it on the spot.”
This last observation impressed me strongly. The sergeant’s view of the case was the same as Thorndyke’s, and expressed in almost the same words.
“Have you any theory as to what has actually happened?” I asked.
The sergeant smiled in his benignant fashion. “It isn’t much use inventing theories,” said he. “We’ve got to get the facts before we can do anything. Still, looking at the case as we find it, there are two or three things that hit us in the face. There is a strong suspicion of murder, there is no trace of the body, and there is a big tidal river close at hand. On Saturday night it was high water at half-past eleven, so there wouldn’t have been much of the shore uncovered at, say, half-past nine, and there would have been plenty of water at any of the piers or causeways.”
“Then you think it probable that she was murdered and her body flung into the river?”
“It is the likeliest thing, so far as we can judge. There is the river, and there is no sign of the body on shore. But, as I say, it is no use guessing. We’ve got people watching the river from Allington Lock to Sheerness, and that’s all we can do in that line. The body is pretty certain to turn up, sooner or later. Of course, until it does, there is no real criminal case; and even when we’ve got the body, we may not be much nearer getting the murderer. Excepting the man Frood, there is no one who seems to have had any motive for making away with her; and if it was just a casual robbery with murder it is unlikely that we shall ever spot the man at all.”
Having given expression to this rather pessimistic view, the sergeant rose, and, picking up his helmet, took his departure, after promising to let me know of any further developments.
As soon as he was gone, I wrote down the substance of what he had said, and then embodied it in a report for Thorndyke. While I was thus occupied, the afternoon post was delivered, and included a packet from the London photographer, to whom I had written, enclosing two copies of the photograph of Angelina that Mr. Japp had handed to the sergeant. Of these, I enclosed one copy in my communication to Thorndyke, on the bare chance that it might be of some assistance to him, and, having closed up the large envelope and stamped it, I went forth to drop it into the post-box.
CHAPTER IX
Jetsam
That portion of Chatham High-street which lies adjacent to the River Medway presents a feature that is characteristic of old riverside towns in the multitude of communications between the street and the shore. Some of these are undisguised entrances to wharves, some are courts or small thoroughfares lined with houses and leading to landing-stages, while others are mere passages or flights of steps, opening obscurely and inconspicuously on the street by narrow apertures, unnoticed by the ordinary wayfarer and suggesting the burrows of some kind of human water-rat.
In the days that followed the sergeant’s visit to me I made the acquaintance of all of them. Now I would wander down the cobbled cartway that led to a wharf, there to cast a searching eye over the muddy fore-shore or scan the turbid water at high tide as it eddied between the barges and around the piles. Or I would dive into the mouths of the burrows, creeping down slimy steps and pursuing the tortuous passages through a world of uncleanness until I came out upon the shore, where the fresh smell of seaweed mingled with odours indescribable. I began to be an object of curiosity—and perhaps of some suspicion—to the denizens of the little, ruinous, timber houses that lined these alleys, and of frank interest to the children who played around the rubbish heaps or dabbled in the grey mud. But never did my roving eye light upon that which it sought with such dreadful expectation.
One afternoon, about a week after the sergeant’s visit, when I was returning home from one of these explorations, I observed a man on my doorstep as I approached the house. His appearance instantly aroused my attention, for he was dressed in the amphibious style adopted by waterside dwellers, and he held something in his hand at which he looked from time to time. Before I reached the door it had opened and admitted him, and when I arrived I found him in the hall nervously explaining his business to Mrs. Dunk.
“Here is the doctor,” said the latter; “you’d better tell him about it.”
The man turned to me and held out an amazingly dirty fist. “I’ve got something here, sir,” said he, “what belongs to you, I think.” Here he unclosed his hand and exhibited a little cardboard box bearing one of Dr. Partridge’s labels. It was smeared with mud and grime, but I recognized it instantly; indeed, when I took it with trembling fingers from his palm and looked at it closely, the name, “Mrs. Frood,” was still decipherable under the smears of dirt.
“Where did you find this?” I asked.
“I picked it up on the strand,” he replied, “about halfway betwixt the Sun Pier and the end of Ship Alley, and just below spring tide high-water mark. Is it any good?”
“Yes,” I answered; “it is very important. I will get you to walk along with me to the police station.”
“What for?” he demanded suspiciously. “I don’t want no police stations. If it’s any good, give us what you think it’s worth, and have done with it.”
I gave him half-a-crown to allay his suspicions, and then said: “You had better come with me to the station. I expect the police will want you to show them exactly where you found this box and help them to search the place; and I will see that you are paid for your trouble.”
“But look ’ere, mister,” he objected; “what’s the police got to do with this ’ere box?”
I explained the position to him briefly, and then, suddenly, his face lit up. “I know,” he said excitedly. “I seen the bills stuck up on the dead-’ouse door. And d’you mean to say as this ’ere box was ’ers? Cos if it was it’s worth more ’n ’arf-a-crown.”
“Perhaps it is,” said I. “We will hear what the sergeant thinks,” and with this I opened the door and went out, and my new acquaintance now followed with the greatest alacrity, taking the opportunity, as we walked along, to remind me of my promise and to offer tentative suggestions as to the scale of remuneration for his services.
Our progress along the High-street was not unnoticed. Doubtless, we appeared a somewhat ill-assorted pair, for I observed a good many persons turn to look at us curiously, and when we passed the office, on the opposite side of the road, I saw Bundy’s face rise above the curtain with an expression of undissembled curiosity.
On arriving at the station, I inquired for Sergeant Cobbledick, and was fortunate enough to find him in his office. As I entered with my companion, he bestowed on the latter a quick glance of professional interest and then greeted me with a genial smile. It was hardly necessary for me to state my business, for the single quick glance of his experienced eye at my companion had furnished the diagnosis. I had only to produc
e the box and indicate the finder.
“This looks like a lead,” said he, reaching his helmet down from a peg. “What’s your name, sonny, and where do you live?”
Sonny affirmed, with apparent reluctance, that his name was Samuel Hooper and that his abode was situated in Foul Anchor Alley; and when these facts had been committed to writing by the sergeant, the latter put on his helmet and invited the said Hooper to “come along,” evidently assuming that I was to form one of the party.
As we approached the office this time I saw Bundy from afar off; and by the time we were abreast of the house he was joined by Japp, who must have stood upon tiptoe to bring his eyes above the curtain. Both men watched us with intense interest, and we had barely passed the house when Bundy’s head suddenly disappeared, and a few moments later its owner emerged from the doorway and hurriedly crossed the road.
“What is in the wind, Doctor?” he asked, as he came up with us. “Japp is in a rare twitter. Have they found the body?”
“No,” I answered; “only the little box that was in her handbag. We are going to have a look at the place where it was found.”
“To see if the bag is there, too?” said he. “It probably is, unless it has been picked up already. I think I’ll come along with you, if you don’t object. Then I can give Japp all the news.”
I did not object, nor did the sergeant—verbally; but his expression conveyed to me that he would willingly have dispensed with Mr. Bundy’s society. However, he was a suave and tactful man, and he made the best of the unwelcome addition to the party, even going so far as to offer the box for Bundy’s inspection.
“It is pretty dirty,” the latter observed, holding it delicately in his fingers. “Wasn’t it wrapped in paper when you gave it to her, Doctor?”
“It was wrapped up in paper when I found it,” said Hooper, “but I took off the paper to see what was inside, and, yer see, my ’ands wasn’t very clean, a-grubbin’ about in the mud.” In conclusive confirmation of this statement, he exhibited them to us, and then gave them a perfunctory wipe on his trousers.
The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 57