The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “There is no lack of suggestions,” he replied. “To a person of ordinary powers of imagination, a number of hypotheses must present themselves. But, of course, the first thing to consider is not what might have happened, but what did happen, and what we can safely infer from those happenings. We can apparently take it as proved that the body was carried through the lane; and everything goes to show that it was carried from the river towards the town. The first clear inference is that we can completely exclude accident, pure and simple. The body—living or dead—may be assumed to have been carried by some person or persons. We can dismiss the idea that the woman walked up the lane. But if someone carried the body, someone is definitely implicated. The affair comes unquestionably into the category of crime.”

  “That doesn’t carry us very far,” I said, with a sense of disappointment.

  “It carries us a stage farther than our previous data did, for it excludes accident, which they did not. Then it suggests not only premeditation, but arrangement. If the body was brought up from the river, there must have been some place known to, and probably prepared by, those who brought it, in which it could be deposited; and that place must have been more secure than the river from which it was brought. But the river, itself, was a very secure hiding-place, especially if the body had been sunk with weights. Now, this is all very remarkable. If you consider the extraordinary procedure; the seizure of the victim at Chatham; the conveyance of the body from thence to this considerable distance; the landing of it at the wharf; the conveyance of it by an apparently selected route—at enormous risk of discovery, in spite of the fog to an appointed destination: I say, Strangeways, that if you consider this astounding procedure, you cannot fail to be convinced that there was some definite purpose behind it.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “that seems to be so. But what could the purpose be? It appears perfectly incomprehensible. It only makes the mystery more unsolvable than ever.”

  “Not at all,” he rejoined. “There is nothing so hopeless to investigate as the perfectly obvious and commonplace. As soon as an apparently incomprehensible motive appears, we are within sight of a solution. There may be innumerable explanations of a common-place action; but an outrageously unreasonable action; pursued with definite and considered purpose, can admit of but one or two. The action, with its underlying purpose, must be adjusted to some unusual conditions. We have only to consider to what conditions it could be adjusted, and which, if any, of those conditions actually exist, and the explanation of the apparently incomprehensible action comes into view. But here we are at our destination, and there is our friend, Bundy, standing on the doorstep. By the way, I have brought one or two photographs of Mrs. Frood for you to look at.”

  We arrived in time to intervene and put an end to a preliminary skirmish between the irrepressible Bundy and Mrs. Dunk, and when greetings had been exchanged, Thorndyke went up to his room to wash and deposit his luggage.

  “Well, John,” said Bundy, when he had hung up his hat, “it is very pleasant to see my old friend after this long separation. Very good of him, too, to invite an insignificant outsider like me to meet his distinguished colleague. You are a benefactor to me, John.”

  “Don’t talk nonsense, Peterkin,” said I. “You know we are always glad to see you. I invite you for my own pleasure and Thorndyke’s, not for yours.”

  Bundy gave my arm a grateful squeeze. “Good old John,” said he. “Nothing like doing it handsomely. But here is the great man himself,” he added, as Thorndyke entered the dining-room, carrying a cardboard box, “with instruments of magic. He’s going to do a conjuring trick.”

  Thorndyke opened the box and delicately picked out four photographs, all mounted and all of cabinet size, which he stood up in a row on the mantelpiece. Two of them were from the same negative, one being printed in red carbon, the other in sepia. The remaining two were ordinary silver prints of the conventional trade type.

  Bundy looked at the collection with not unnatural surprise.

  “Where did these, things come from?” he asked.

  “They came from London,” replied Thorndyke, “where things of this kind grow. Strangeways asked me to get him some samples. How do you like them? My own preference is for the carbons, and of the two I think I like the red chalk print the better.”

  I ran my eye along the row and found myself in strong agreement with Thorndyke. It was not only that the carbon prints had the advantage of the finer medium. The treatment was altogether more artistic, and the likeness seemed better, in spite of a rather over-strong top-lighting.

  “Yes,” I said, “the carbons are infinitely superior to the silver prints, and of the two I think the red is the better because it emphasises the shadows less.”

  “Is the likeness as good as in the silver prints?” Thorndyke asked.

  “Better, I think. The expression is more natural and spontaneous. What do you say, Peter?”

  As I spoke I looked at him, not for the first time, for I had already been struck by the intense concentration with which he had been examining the two carbons. And it was not only concentration. There was a curious expression of surprise, as if something in the appearance of the portraits puzzled him.

  He looked up with a perplexed frown. “As to the likeness,” said he, “I don’t know that I am a particularly good judge. I only saw her once or twice. But, as far as I remember, it seems to be quite a good likeness, and there can be no question as to the superiority, in an artistic sense, of the carbons. And I agree with you that the shadows are less harsh in the red than in the sepia. Who is the photographer?”

  He picked up the red print and, turning it over, looked at the back. Then, finding that the back of the card was blank, he picked up the sepia print and inspected it in the same way, but with the same result. There was no photographer’s name either on the back or front.

  “I have an impression,” said Thorndyke, “that the carbons were done by a City photographer. But my man will know. He got them for me.”

  Bundy set the two photographs back in their places, still, as it seemed to me, with the air of a man who is trying vainly to remember something. But, at this moment, Mrs. Dunk entered with the soup tureen, and we forthwith took our places at the table.

  We had finished our soup, and I was proceeding to effect the dismemberment of an enormous sole, when Bundy, having fortified himself with a sip of Chablis, cast a malignant glance at Thorndyke.

  “I have got some bad news for you, Doctor,” said he.

  “Which doctor are you addressing?” Thorndyke asked. “There’s only one now,” replied Bundy. “T’other one has been degraded to the rank of John.”

  “That happens to be my rank, too,” observed Thorndyke.

  “Oh, but I couldn’t think of taking such a liberty,” Bundy protested, “though it is very gracious and condescending of you to suggest it. No, your rank and tine will continue to be that of doctor.”

  “And what is your bad news?”

  “It is a case of a lost opportunity,” said Bundy. “‘Of all the sad words of tongue or pen,’ and so on. It might have been ten shillings. But it never will now. Cobbledick has got your ten bob.”

  “Do you mean that Cobbledick has found the missing key?”

  “Even so, alackaday! The chance is gone for ever.”

  “Where did he find it?” Thorndyke asked.

  “Ah!” exclaimed Bundy. “There it is again. The tragedy of it! He wasn’t looking for it at all. He just fell over it in a field where he was searching for relics of Mrs. Frood.”

  “Your description,” said Thorndyke “is deficient in geographical exactitude. Could you bring your ideas of locality to a somewhat sharper focus? There are probably several fields in the neighbourhood of Rochester.”

  “So there are,” said Bundy. “Quite a lot. But this particular field lies on the right, or starboard, side of a small thoroughfare called Black Boy-lane.”

  “Let me see,” said Thorndyke. “Isn’t that the lane
that we went down after leaving our friends on the day of the Great Perambulation?”

  “Yes,” replied Bundy, looking at him in astonishment, “but how did you know its name?” (He was, of course, not aware of my report to Thorndyke describing the discoveries and the place.)

  “That,” said Thorndyke “is an irrelevant question. Now when you say ‘the right-hand side’—”

  “I mean the right-hand side looking towards the town, of course. As a matter of fact, Cobbledick found the key among the thistles near to the fence, and quite close to the outside of the city wall.”

  “How do you suppose it got there?” Thorndyke asked.

  “I’ve no idea. Someone must have taken it out of the gate and thrown it over the fence. That is obvious. But who could have done it I can’t imagine. Of course, you suspect Cobbledick, but that is only jealousy.”

  The exchange of schoolboy repartee continued without a sensible pause on either side. But yet I seemed to detect in Thorndyke’s manner a certain reflectiveness underlying the levity of his verbal conflict with Bundy; a reflectiveness that seemed to have had its origin in the “news” that the latter had communicated. Of course, I had said nothing, in my report, about the finding of the key. Why should I? Those reports referred exclusively to matters connected with the disappearance of poor Angelina. The loss and the recovery of the key were items of mere local gossip with which Thorndyke could have no concern excepting in connexion with Bundy’s facetious fiction. And yet it had seemed to me that Thorndyke showed quite a serious interest in the announcement. However, he made no further reference to the matter, and the conversation drifted to other topics.

  It was almost inevitable that, sooner or later, some reference should be made to the discoveries in the lane. It was Bundy, of course, who introduced the subject; and I was amazed by the adroit way in which Thorndyke conveyed the impression of complete ignorance, without making any statement, and the patient manner in which he listened to the account of the adventure, and even elicited amplified details by judicious questions. But he eluded all Bundy’s efforts to extract an opinion on the significance of the discoveries.

  “But,” the latter protested, “you said that if I would give you the facts, you would give me the explanation.”

  “The explanation is obvious,” said Thorndyke. “If you found these objects in the lane, they must have been dropped there.”

  “Well, of course they must,” said Bundy. “That is quite obvious.”

  “Exactly,” agreed Thorndyke. “That is what I am pointing out.”

  “But why was the body being carried up the lane? And where was it being carried to?”

  “Ah,” protested Thorndyke, “but now you are going beyond your facts. You haven’t proved that there was any body there at all.”

  “But there must have been, or the things couldn’t have dropped off it.”

  “But you haven’t proved that they did drop off it. They may have, or they may not. That is a question of fact; and as I impressed on you on a previous occasion, evidence as to fact is the function of the common witness. The expert witness explains the significance of facts furnished by others. I have explained the facts that you have produced, and now you ask me to explain something that isn’t a fact at all. But that is not my function. I am an expert.”

  “I see,” said Bundy; “and now I understand why judges are so down on expert witnesses. It is my belief that they are a parcel of impostors. Wasn’t Captain Bunsby an expert witness? Or was he only an oracle?”

  “It is a distinction without a difference,” replied Thorndyke. “Captain Bunsby is the classical instance of oracular safety. It was impossible to dispute the correctness of his pronouncements.”

  “Principally,” said I, “because no one could make head or tail of them.”

  “But that was the subtlety of the method,” said Thorndyke. “A statement cannot be contested until it is understood. From which it follows that if you would deliver a judgment that cannot be disputed, you must take proper precautions against the risk of being understood.”

  Bundy adjusted his eyeglass and fixed on Thorndyke a glare of counterfeit defiance. “I am going to take an early opportunity of seeing you in the witness-box,” said he. “It will be the treat of my life.”

  “I must try to give you that treat,” replied Thorndyke. “I am sure you will be highly entertained, but I don’t think you will be able to dispute my evidence.”

  “I don’t suppose I shall,” Bundy retorted with a grin, “if it is of the same brand as the sample that I have heard.”

  Here the arrival of Mrs. Dunk with the coffee ushered in a truce between the disputants, and when I had filled the cups Thorndyke changed the subject by recalling the incidents of our perambulation with Japp and Mr. Willard; and Bundy, apparently considering that enough chaff had been cut for one evening, entered into a discussion on the conditions of life in mediaeval Rochester with a zest and earnestness that came as a refreshing change, after so much frivolity. So the evening passed pleasantly away until ten o’clock, when Bundy rose to depart.

  “Shall we see him home, Thorndyke?” said I. “We can do with a walk after our pow-wow.”

  “Somebody ought to see him home,” said Thorndyke. “He looks comparatively sober now, but wait till he gets out into the air.” (Bundy’s almost ascetic abstemiousness in respect of wine, I should explain, had become a mild joke between us.) “But I think I won’t join the bacchanalian procession. I have a letter to write, and I can get it done and posted by the time you come back.”

  As we walked towards the office arm-in-arm—Bundy keeping up the fiction of a slight unsteadiness of gait—my guest once more expressed enjoyment of our little festivals.

  “I suppose,” said he, “Dr. Thorndyke is really quite a big bug in his way.”

  “Yes,” I replied; “he is in the very front rank; in fact, I should say that he is the greatest living authority on his subject.”

  “Yes,” said Bundy, thoughtfully, “one feels that he is a great man, although he is so friendly and so perfectly free from side. I hope I don’t cheek him too much.”

  “He doesn’t seem to resent it,” I answered, “and he certainly doesn’t object to your society. He expressly said, when he wrote last, that he hoped to see something of you.”

  “That was awfully nice of him,” Bundy said with very evident gratification; and he added, after a pause: “Lord! John, what a windfall it was for me when you came down with that letter from old Turcival. It has made life a different thing for me.”

  “I am glad to hear it, Peter,” said I; “but you haven’t got all the benefit. It was a bit of luck for me to strike a live bishop in my new habitat, and a Rumtifoozlish one at that. But here we are at the episcopal palace. Shall I assist your lordship up the steps?”

  We carried out the farce to its foolish end, staggering together up the steps, at the top of which I propped him securely against the door and rang the bell, with the comfortable certainty that there was no one in the house to disturb.

  “Good night, John, old chap,” he said cordially, as I retired.

  “Good night, Peter, my child,” I responded; and so took my way homeward to my other guest.

  I arrived at my house in time to meet Thorndyke returning from the adjacent pillar-box, and we went in together.

  “Well,” said he, “I suppose we had better turn in, according to what is, I believe, the custom of this household, and turn out betimes in the morning, for a visit, perhaps, to Black Boy-lane.”

  “Yes,” I replied, “we may as well turn in now. You are not going to leave these photographs there, are you?”

  “They are your photographs,” he replied; “that is, if you care to have them. I brought them down for you.”

  I thanked him very warmly for the gift, and gathered up the portraits carefully, replacing them, for the present, in their box. Then we turned out the lights and made our way up to our respective bedrooms.

  At breakfast on th
e following morning Thorndyke opened the subject of our investigation by cross-examining me on the matter of my report, and the more detailed account that Bundy had given.

  “What does Sergeant Cobbledick think of the new developments?” he asked, when I had given him all the detail that I could.

  “In a way he is encouraged. He is glad to get something more definite to work on. But for the present he seems to be high and dry. He gave me quite a learned exposition of the possibilities of the case, but he had to admit when he had finished that he was still in the dark so far as any final conclusion was concerned. He even suggested that I should put the facts before you—he recognized you when we met him on the road near Blue Boar Pier—and ask if you could make any suggestion.”

  “Can you recall the sergeant’s exposition of the case?”

  “I think so. It made rather an impression on me at the time,” and here I repeated, as well as I could remember them, the various inferences that Cobbledick had drawn from the presence in the lane of the things that we had found. Thorndyke listened with deep attention, nodding his head approvingly as each point was made.

  “A very admirable analysis, Strangeways,” he said when I had finished. “It does the sergeant great credit. So far as it goes, it is an excellent interpretation of the facts that are in his possession. There are, perhaps, one or two points that he has overlooked.”

  “If there are,” said I, “it would be a great kindness to draw his attention to them. He is naturally anxious to get on with the case, and he has taken endless trouble over it.”

  “I shall be very glad to give him a hint or two,” said Thorndyke. “After breakfast I should like to go over the ground with you, and then we might go along to the station and see if he is in his office.”

  I agreed to this program, and as soon as we had finished our breakfast we went forth, making our way by Free School-lane and The Common to the marshes west of Gas House-road. From there we entered Black Boy-lane at the lower end, and slowly followed its windings, Thorndyke looking about him attentively, and occasionally peering over the fences, which his stature enabled him to do without climbing. At the top of the lane, where it opened into a paved thoroughfare, we observed no less a personage than Sergeant Cobbledick, standing on the pavement and looking at the few adjacent houses with an expression of profound speculation. His speculative attitude changed suddenly to one of eager interest when he saw us; and on my presenting him to Thorndyke, he stood stiffly at “attention” and raised his hat with an air that I can only describe as reverent.