“It has certainly been fired,” said the latter. “One chamber is empty and the barrel is foul.”
“That may be,” replied Thorndyke; “but there is no bullet wound. This man died from a knife wound in the chest.” He threw the light of his lamp on the corpse and as I turned it partly over to verify his statement, he added: “This is poor Mr. Merrill. We found the revolver lying by his side.”
“The cause of death is clear enough,” said I, “and it certainly wasn’t suicide. The question is—” At this moment Thorndyke stooped and threw a beam of light down the tunnel, and Brodribb and I simultaneously uttered an exclamation. At the extreme end, about forty feet away, the body of another man lay. Instantly Brodribb started forward, and stooping to clear the low roof—it was about four feet six inches high—hurried along the tunnel. Thorndyke and I followed close behind. As we reached the body, which was lying supine with a small electric torch by its side, and the light of Thorndyke’s lamp fell on the upturned face, Brodribb gasped: “God save us! it’s Crick! And here is the knife.” He was about to pick up the weapon when Thorndyke put out his hand.
“That knife,” said he, “must be touched by no hand but the one that dealt the blow. It may be crucial evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” demanded Brodribb. “There is Merrill with a knife wound in his chest and a pistol by his side. Here is Crick with a bullet wound in his breast, a knife by his side and the empty sheath secured round his waist. What more evidence do you want?”
“That depends on what you seek to prove,” said Thorndyke. “What is your interpretation of the facts that you have stated?
“Why, it is as plain as daylight,” answered Brodribb, “incredible as the affair seems, having regard to the characters of the two men. Crick stabbed Merrill and Merrill shot him dead. Then Merrill tried to escape, but the rope broke, he was trapped and he bled to death at the foot of the shaft.”
“And who do you say died first?” Thorndyke asked.
It was a curious question and it caused me to look inquisitively at my colleague. But Brodribb answered promptly: “Why, Crick, of course. Here he lies where he fell. There is a track of blood along the floor of the tunnel, as you can see, and there is Merrill at the entrance, dead in the act of trying to escape.”
Thorndyke nodded in a rather mysterious way and there was a brief silence. Then I ventured to remark: “You seem to be losing sight of the man with the green jacket.”
Brodribb started and looked at me with a frown of surprise.
Bless my soul!” he exclaimed, “so I am. I had clean forgotten him in these horrors. But what is your point? Is there any evidence that he has been here?”
“I don’t know,” said I. “He bought the rope and he was seen with Merrill apparently going towards London Bridge Station. And I gather that it was the green jacket that piloted Thorndyke to this place.”
In a sense,” Thorndyke admitted, “that is so. But we will talk about that later. Meanwhile there are one or two facts that I will draw your attention to. First as to the wounds; they are almost identical in position. Each is on the left side, just below the nipple; a vital spot, which would be fully exposed by a man who was climbing down holding on to a rope. Then, if you look along the floor where I am throwing the light, you can see a distinct trace of something having been dragged along, although there seems to have been an effort to obliterate it; and the blood marks are more in the nature of smears than drops.” He gently turned the body over and pointed to the back, which was thickly covered with chalk. “This corpse has obviously been dragged along the floor,” he continued. “It wouldn’t have been marked in that way by merely falling. Further, the rope, when last seen, was being stuffed into a handbag. The rope is here, but where is the handbag? Finally, the rope was cut by some one outside, and evidently after the murders had been committed.”
As he concluded, he spread his handkerchief over the knife, and wrapping it up carefully without touching it with his fingers, placed it in his outside breast-pocket. Then we went back towards the shaft, where Thorndyke knelt down by the body of Merrill and systematically emptied the pockets.
“What are you searching for?” asked Brodribb.
“Keys,” was the reply; “and there aren’t any. It is a vital point, seeing that the man with the green jacket evidently let himself into Merrill’s chambers that same day.”
“Yes,” Brodribb agreed with a reflective frown; “it is. But tell us, Thorndyke, how you reconstruct this horrible crime.”
“My theory,” said Thorndyke “is that the three men came here together. They made the rope fast to the post. The stranger in the green jacket came down first and waited at the foot of the shaft. Merrill came down next, and the stranger stabbed him just as he reached the bottom, while his arms were still up hanging on to the rope. Crick followed and was shot in the same place and the same manner. Then the stranger dragged Crick’s body along the tunnel, swept away the marks as well as he could, put the knife and the lamp by the body, dropped the revolver by Merrill’s corpse, took the keys and went up, sawed through the rope—probably with a pocket saw—and threw the end down the shaft. Then he took the next train to London and went straight to Merrill’s chambers, where he opened the safe or other receptacles and took possession of what he wanted.”
Brodribb nodded. “It was a diabolically clever scheme,” said he.
“The scheme was ingenious enough,” Thorndyke agreed, “but the execution was contemptible. He has left traces at every turn. Otherwise we shouldn’t be here. He has acted on the assumption that the world contains no one but fools. But that is a fool’s assumption.”
When we had ascended, in the reverse order of our descent, Thorndyke detached our rope and also the frayed end, which we took with us, and we then took our way back towards the town; and I noted that as we stood by the dene hole, there was not a human creature in sight; nor did we meet a single person until we were close to the village. It was an ideal spot for a murder.
“I suppose you will notify the police?” said Brodribb.
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke. “I shall call on the Chief Constable and give him the facts and advise him to keep some of them to himself for the present, and also to arrange for an adjournment of the inquest. Our friend with the green jacket must be made to think that he has played a trump card.”
Apparently the Chief Constable was a man who knew all the moves of criminal investigation, for at the inquest the discovery was attributed to the local police acting on information received from somebody who had “noticed the broken rope.”
None of us was summoned to give evidence nor were our names mentioned, but the inquest was adjourned for three weeks, for further inquiries.
But in those three weeks there were some singular developments, of which the scene was the clerks’ office at Mr. Brodribb’s premises in Lincoln’s Inn. There late on a certain forenoon, Thorndyke and I arrived, each provided with a bag and a sheaf of documents, and were duly admitted by Mr. Page.
“Now,” said Thorndyke, “are you quite confident, Mr. Page, that you would recognise this man, even if he had shaved off his beard and moustache?”
“Quite confident,” replied Page. “I should know him by his eyes. Very queer eyes they were; light, greenish grey. And I should know his voice, too.”
“Good,” said Thorndyke; and as Page disappeared into the private office, we sat down and examined our documents, eyed furtively by the junior clerk. Some ten minutes later the door opened and a man entered; and the first glance at him brought my nerves to concert pitch. He was a thick-set, muscular man, clean-shaved and rather dark. But my attention was instantly arrested by his eyes—singularly pale eyes which gave an almost unhuman character to his face. He reminded me of a certain species of lemur that I once saw.
“I have got an appointment with Mr. Brodribb,” he said, addressing the clerk. “My name is Horder.”
The clerk slipped off his stool and moved towards the door of the private
office, but at that moment Page came out. As his eyes met Horder’s, he stopped dead; and instantly the two men seemed to stiffen like a couple of dogs that have suddenly met at a street corner. I watched Horder narrowly. He had been rather pale when he came in. Now he was ghastly, and his whole aspect indicated extreme nervous tension.
“Did you wish to see Mr. Brodribb?” asked Page, still gazing intently at the other.
“Yes,” was the irritable reply; “I have given my name once—Horder.”
Mr. Page turned and re-entered the private office, leaving the door ajar.
Mr. Horder to see you, sir,” I heard him say. He came out and shut the door. “If you will sit down, Mr. Brodribb will see you in a minute or two,” he said, offering a chair; he then took his hat from a peg, glanced at his watch and went out.
A couple of minutes passed. Once, I thought I heard stealthy footsteps out in the entry; but no one came in or knocked. Presently the door of the private office opened and a tall gentleman came out. And then, once more, my nerves sprang to attention. The tall gentleman was Detective-Superintendent Miller.
The superintendent walked across the office, opened the door, looked out, and then, leaving it ajar, came back to where Horder was sitting.
“You are Mr. Samuel Horder, I think,” said he.
“Yes, I am,” was the reply. “What about it?”
“I am a police officer, and I arrest you on a charge of having unlawfully entered the premises of the late Reginald Merrill; and it is my duty to caution you—”
Here Horder, who had risen to his feet, and slipped his right hand under the skirt of his coat, made a sudden spring at the officer. But in that instant Thorndyke had gripped his right arm at the elbow and wrist and swung him round; the superintendent seized his left arm while I pounced upon the revolver in his right hand and kept its muzzle pointed to the floor. But it was an uncomfortable affair. Our prisoner was a strong man and he fought like a wild beast; and he had his finger hooked round the trigger of the revolver. The four of us, locked together, gyrated round the office, knocking over chairs and bumping against the walls, the junior clerk skipped round the room with his eyes glued on the pistol and old Brodribb charged out of his sanctum, flourishing a long ruler. However, it did not last long. In the midst of the uproar, two massive constables stole in and joined the fray. There was a yell from the prisoner, the revolver rattled to the floor and then I heard two successive metallic clicks.
“He’ll be all right now,” murmured the constable who had fixed on the handcuffs, with the manner of one who has administered a soothing remedy.
“I notice,” said Thorndyke, when the prisoner had been removed, “that you charged him only with unlawful entry.”
“Yes,” replied Miller, “until we have taken his fingerprints. Mr. Singleton has developed up three fingers and a thumb, beautifully clear, on that knife that you gave us. If they prove to be Horder’s finger prints, of course, it is a true bill for the murder.”
The fingerprints on the knife proved undoubtedly to be Horder’s. But the case did not rest on them alone. When his rooms were searched, there were found not only Mr. Merrill’s keys but also Mr. Merrill’s second will, which had been missed from the safe when it was opened by the maker’s locksmith; thus illustrating afresh the perverse stupidity of the criminal mind.
“A satisfactory case,” remarked Thorndyke, “in respect of the result; but there was too much luck for us to take much credit from it. On Brodribb’s opening statement, it was pretty clear that a crime had been committed. Merrill was missing and some one had possession of his keys and had entered his premises. It also appeared nearly certain that the thing stolen must be the second will, since there was nothing else of value to steal; and the will was of very great value to two persons, Crick and Horder, to each of whom its destruction was worth many thousands of pounds. To both of them its value was conditional on the immediate death of Merrill, before another will could be made; and to Horder it was further conditional on the death of Crick and that he should die before Merrill—for otherwise the estate would go to Crick’s heirs or next of kin. The prima facie suspicion therefore fell on these two men. But Crick was missing; and the question was, had he absconded or was he dead?
“And now as to the investigation. The green jacket showed earthy dust and chalk on the front and chalk-marks on the buttons. The indication was that the wearer had either crawled on chalky ground or climbed up a chalky face. But the marks on the buttons suggested climbing; for a horizontal surface is usually covered by soil, whereas on a vertical surface the chalk is exposed. But the time factor showed us that this man could not have travelled far from London. He was seen going towards London Bridge Station about the time when a train was due to go down to Kent. That train went to Maidstone and Gillingham, calling at Gravesend, Strood, Snodland, Rochester, Chatham and other places abounding in chalk and connected with the cement industry. In that district there were no true cliffs, but there were numerous chalk-pits, railway embankments and other excavations. The evidence pointed to one of these excavations. Then Crick was known to have gone to Rochester—earlier in the day—which further suggested the district, though Rochester is the least chalky part of it.
“The question was, what kind of excavation had been climbed into? And for what purpose had the climbing been performed? But here the personality of the missing man gave us a hint. Merrill had written a book to prove that dene holes were simply prehistoric flint-mines. He had explored a number of dene holes and described them in his book. Now the district through which this train had passed was peculiarly rich in dene holes; and then there was the suggestive fact that Merrill had been last seen coming out of a rope-seller’s shop. This latter fact was so important that I followed it up at once by calling at Edginton’s. There I ascertained that Merrill or his companion had bought a fifteen-fathom length of deep-sea lead-line. Now this was profoundly significant. The maximum depth of a dene hole is about seventy feet. Fifteen fathoms—ninety feet—is therefore the exact length required, allowing for loops and fastenings. This new fact converted the dene-hole hypothesis into what was virtually a certainty, especially when one considered how readily these dangerous pits lent themselves either to fatal accidents or to murder. I accordingly adopted the dene-hole suggestion as a working hypothesis.
“The next question was, ‘Where was this dene-hole?’ And an uncommonly difficult question it was. I began to fear that the inquiry would fail from the impossibility of solving it. But at this point I got some help from a new quarter. I had given the coat to Polton to extract the dust and I had told him to wash the little lumps of chalk for foraminifera.”
“What are foraminifera?” asked Brodribb.
“They are minute sea shells. Chalk js largely composed of them; and although chalk is in no sense a local rock, there is nevertheless a good deal of variation in the species of foraminifera found in different localities. So I had the chalk washed out as a matter of routine. Well, the dust was confirmatory but not illuminating. There was railway dust, of the South Eastern type—I expect you know it—chalk, loam dust, pollen-grains of the mallow and valerian (which grows in chalk-pits and railway cuttings) and some wing scales of the common blue butterfly, which haunts the chalk—I expect he had touched a dead butterfly. But all this would have answered for a good part of Kent. Then I examined the foraminifera and identified the species by the plates in Warnford’s Monograph. The result was most encouraging. There were nine species in all, and of these five were marked as ‘found in the Gravesend chalk,’ two more ‘from the Kentish chalk’ and the other two ‘from the English chalk.’ This was a very striking result. More than half the contained foraminifera were from the Gravesend chalk.
“The problem now was to determine the geologic meaning of the term Gravesend. I ruled out Rochester, as I had heard of no dene holes in that neighbourhood, and I consulted Merrill’s book and the large-scale Ordnance map. Merrill had worked in the Gravesend district and the adjacent part o
f Essex and he gave a list of the dene holes that he had explored, including the Clapper Napper Hole in Swanscombe Wood. But, checking his list by the Ordnance map, I found that there was one dene hole marked on the map which was not in his list. As it was evidently necessary to search all the dene holes in the district, I determined to begin with the one that he seemed to have missed. And there luck favoured us. It turned out to be the right one.”
“I don’t see that there was much luck in it,” said Brodribb. “You calculated the probabilities and adopted the greatest.”
“At any rate,” said Thorndyke, “there was Merrill and there was Crick; and as soon as I saw them I knew that Horder was the murderer. For the whole tableau had obviously been arranged to demonstrate that Crick died before Merrill and establish Horder as Merrill’s heir.”
“A diabolical plot,” commented Brodribb. “Horribly ingenious, too. By the way—which of them did die first in your opinion?”
“Merrill, I should say, undoubtedly,” replied Thorndyke.
“That will be good hearing for Crick’s next of kin,” said Brodribb. “And you haven’t done with this case yet, Thorndyke. I shall retain you on the question of survivorship.”
THE SEAL OF NEBUCHADNEZZAR (1925)
“I suppose, Thorndyke,” said I, “footprints yield quite a lot of information if you think about them enough?”
The question was called forth by the circumstance of my friend halting and stooping to examine the little pit made in the loamy soil of the path by the walking stick of some unknown wayfarer. Ever since we had entered this path—to which we had been directed by the station-master of Pinwell Junction as a short cut to our destination—I had noticed my friend scanning its surface, marked with numerous footprints, as if he were mentally reconstructing the personalities of the various travellers who had trodden it before us. This I knew to be a habit of his, almost unconsciously pursued; and the present conditions certainly favoured it, for here, as the path traversed a small wood, the slightly moist, plastic surface took impressions with the sharpness of moulding wax.
The Second R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 102