The photographic operations being concluded, he next proceeded, with remarkable skill and rapidity, to lay out on the sketch-block a ground-plan of the room, showing the exact position of the various objects, on a scale of a quarter of an inch to the foot—a process that the inspector was inclined to view with some impatience.
“You don’t spare trouble, Doctor,” he remarked; “nor time either,” he added, with a significant glance at his watch.
“No,” answered Thorndyke, as he detached the finished sketch from the block; “I try to collect all the facts that may bear on a case. They may prove worthless, or they may turn out of vital importance; one never knows beforehand, so I collect them all. But here, I think, is Dr. Egerton.”
The police-surgeon greeted Thorndyke with respectful cordiality, and we proceeded at once to the examination of the body. Drawing out the thermometer, my colleague noted the reading, and passed the instrument to Dr. Egerton.
“Dead about ten hours,” remarked the latter, after a glance at it. “This was a very determined and mysterious murder.”
“Very,” said Thorndyke. “Feel that dagger, Jervis.”
I touched the hilt, and felt the characteristic grating of bone.
“It is through the edge of a rib!” I exclaimed.
“Yes; it must have been used with extraordinary force. And you notice that the clothing is screwed up slightly, as if the blade had been rotated as it was driven in. That is a very peculiar feature, especially when taken together with the violence of the blow.”
“It is singular, certainly,” said Dr. Egerton, “though I don’t know that it helps us much. Shall we withdraw the dagger before moving the body?”
“Certainly,” replied Thorndyke, “or the movement may produce fresh injuries. But wait.” He took a piece of string from his pocket, and, having drawn the dagger out a couple of inches, stretched the string in a line parallel to the flat of the blade. Then, giving me the ends to hold, he drew the weapon out completely. As the blade emerged, the twist in the clothing disappeared. “Observe,” said he, “that the string gives the direction of the wound, and that the cut in the clothing no longer coincides with it. There is quite a considerable angle, which is the measure of the rotation of the blade.”
“Yes, it is odd,” said Dr. Egerton, “though, as I said, I doubt that it helps us.”
“At present,” Thorndyke rejoined dryly, “we are noting the facts.”
“Quite so,” agreed the other, reddening slightly; “and perhaps we had better move the body to the bedroom, and make a preliminary inspection of the wound.”
We carried the corpse into the bedroom, and, having examined the wound without eliciting anything new, covered the remains with a sheet, and returned to the sitting-room.
“Well, gentlemen,” said the inspector, “you have examined the body and the wound, and you have measured the floor and the furniture, and taken photographs, and made a plan, but we don’t seem much more forward. Here’s a man murdered in his rooms. There is only one entrance to the flat, and that was bolted on the inside at the time of the murder. The windows are some forty feet from the ground; there is no rain-pipe near any of them; they are set flush in the wall, and there isn’t a foothold for a fly on any part of that wall. The grates are modern, and there isn’t room for a good-sized cat to crawl up any of the chimneys. Now, the question is, How did the murderer get in, and how did he get out again?”
“Still,” said Mr. Marchmont, “the fact is that he did get in, and that he is not here now; and therefore he must have got out; and therefore it must have been possible for him to get out. And, further, it must be possible to discover how he got out.”
The inspector smiled sourly, but made no reply.
“The circumstances,” said Thorndyke, “appear to have been these: The deceased seems to have been alone; there is no trace of a second occupant of the room, and only one half-emptied tumbler on the table. He was sitting reading when apparently he noticed that the clock had stopped—at ten minutes to twelve; he laid his book, face downwards, on the table, and rose to wind the clock, and as he was winding it he met his death.”
“By a stab dealt by a left-handed man, who crept up behind him on tiptoe,” added the inspector.
Thorndyke nodded. “That would seem to be so,” he said. “But now let us call in the porter, and hear what he has to tell us.”
The custodian was not difficult to find, being, in fact, engaged at that moment in a survey of the premises through the slit of the letter-box.
“Do you know what persons visited these rooms last night?” Thorndyke asked him, when he entered looking somewhat sheepish.
“A good many were in and out of the building,” was the answer, “but I can’t say if any of them came to this flat. I saw Miss Curtis pass in about nine.”
“My daughter!” exclaimed Mr. Curtis, with a start. “I didn’t know that.”
“She left about nine-thirty,” the porter added.
“Do you know what she came about?” asked the inspector.
“I can guess,” replied Mr. Curtis.
“Then don’t say,” interrupted Mr. Marchmont. “Answer no questions.”
“You’re very close, Mr. Marchmont,” said the inspector; “we are not suspecting the young lady. We don’t ask, for instance, if she is left-handed.”
He glanced craftily at Mr. Curtis as he made this remark, and I noticed that our client suddenly turned deathly pale, whereupon the inspector looked away again quickly, as though he had not observed the change.
“Tell us about those Italians again,” he said, addressing the porter. “When did the first of them come here?”
“About a week ago,” was the reply. “He was a common-looking man—looked like an organ-grinder—and he brought a note to my lodge. It was in a dirty envelope, and was addressed ‘Mr. Hartridge, Esq., Brackenhurst Mansions,’ in a very bad handwriting. The man gave me the note and asked me to give it to Mr. Hartridge; then he went away, and I took the note up and dropped it into the letter-box.”
“What happened next?”
“Why, the very next day an old hag of an Italian woman—one of them fortune-telling swines with a cage of birds on a stand—came and set up just by the main doorway. I soon sent her packing, but, bless you, she was back again in ten minutes, birds and all. I sent her off again—I kept on sending her off, and she kept on coming back, until I was reg’lar wore to a thread.”
“You seem to have picked up a bit since then,” remarked the inspector with a grin and a glance at the sufferer’s very pronounced bow-window.
“Perhaps I have,” the custodian replied haughtily. “Well, the next day there was a ice-cream man—a reg’lar waster, he was. Stuck outside as if he was froze to the pavement. Kept giving the errand-boys tasters, and when I tried to move him on, he told me not to obstruct his business. Business, indeed! Well, there them boys stuck, one after the other, wiping their tongues round the bottoms of them glasses, until I was fit to bust with aggravation. And he kept me going all day.
“Then, the day after that there was a barrel-organ, with a mangy-looking monkey on it. He was the worst of all. Profane, too, he was. Kept mixing up sacred tunes and comic songs: ‘Rock of Ages,’ ‘Bill Bailey,’ ‘Cujus Animal,’ and ‘Over the Garden Wall.’ And when I tried to move him on, that little blighter of a monkey made a run at my leg; and then the man grinned and started playing, ‘Wait till the Clouds roll by.’ I tell you, it was fair sickening.”
He wiped his brow at the recollection, and the inspector smiled appreciatively.
“And that was the last of them?” said the latter; and as the porter nodded sulkily, he asked: “Should you recognize the note that the Italian gave you?”
“I should,” answered the porter with frosty dignity.
The inspector bustled out of the room, and returned a minute later with a letter-case in his hand.
“This was in his breast-pocket,” said he, laying the bulging case on the table, and d
rawing up a chair. “Now, here are three letters tied together. Ah! This will be the one.” He untied the tape, and held out a dirty envelope addressed in a sprawling, illiterate hand to “Mr. Hartridge, Esq.” “Is that the note the Italian gave you?”
The porter examined it critically. “Yes,” said he; “that is the one.”
The inspector drew the letter out of the envelope, and, as he opened it, his eyebrows went up.
“What do you make of that, Doctor?” he said, handing the sheet to Thorndyke.
Thorndyke regarded it for a while in silence, with deep attention. Then he carried it to the window, and, taking his lens from his pocket, examined the paper closely, first with the low power, and then with the highly magnifying Coddington attachment.
“I should have thought you could see that with the naked eye,” said the inspector, with a sly grin at me. “It’s a pretty bold design.”
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke; “a very interesting production. What do you say, Mr. Marchmont?”
The solicitor took the note, and I looked over his shoulder. It was certainly a curious production. Written in red ink, on the commonest notepaper, and in the same sprawling hand as the address, was the following message: “You are given six days to do what is just. By the sign above, know what to expect if you fail.” The sign referred to was a skull and crossbones, very neatly, but rather unskilfully, drawn at the top of the paper.
“This,” said Mr. Marchmont, handing the document to Mr. Curtis, “explains the singular letter that he wrote yesterday. You have it with you, I think?”
“Yes,” replied Mr. Curtis; “here it is.”
He produced a letter from his pocket, and read aloud:
“‘Yes: come if you like, though it is an ungodly hour. Your threatening letters have caused me great amusement. They are worthy of Sadler’s Wells in its prime.
“‘ALFRED HARTRIDGE.’”
“Was Mr. Hartridge ever in Italy?” asked Inspector Badger.
“Oh yes,” replied Mr. Curtis. “He stayed at Capri nearly the whole of last year.”
“Why, then, that gives us our clue. Look here. Here are these two other letters; E.C. postmark—Saffron Hill is E.C. And just look at that!”
He spread out the last of the mysterious letters, and we saw that, besides the memento mori, it contained only three words: “Beware! Remember Capri!”
“If you have finished, Doctor, I’ll be off and have a look round Little Italy. Those four Italians oughtn’t to be difficult to find, and we’ve got the porter here to identify them.”
“Before you go,” said Thorndyke, “there are two little matters that I should like to settle. One is the dagger: it is in your pocket, I think. May I have a look at it?”
The inspector rather reluctantly produced the dagger and handed it to my colleague.
“A very singular weapon, this,” said Thorndyke, regarding the dagger thoughtfully, and turning it about to view its different parts. “Singular both in shape and material. I have never seen an aluminium hilt before, and bookbinder’s morocco is a little unusual.”
“The aluminium was for lightness,” explained the inspector, “and it was made narrow to carry up the sleeve, I expect.”
“Perhaps so,” said Thorndyke.
He continued his examination, and presently, to the inspector’s delight, brought forth his pocket lens.
“I never saw such a man!” exclaimed the jocose detective. “His motto ought to be, ‘We magnify thee.’ I suppose he’ll measure it next.”
The inspector was not mistaken. Having made a rough sketch of the weapon on his block, Thorndyke produced from his bag a folding rule and a delicate calliper-gauge. With these instruments he proceeded, with extraordinary care and precision, to take the dimensions of the various parts of the dagger, entering each measurement in its place on the sketch, with a few brief, descriptive details.
“The other matter,” said he at length, handing the dagger back to the inspector, “refers to the houses opposite.”
He walked to the window, and looked out at the backs of a row of tall buildings similar to the one we were in. They were about thirty yards distant, and were separated from us by a piece of ground, planted with shrubs and intersected by gravel paths.
“If any of those rooms were occupied last night,” continued Thorndyke, “we might obtain an actual eyewitness of the crime. This room was brilliantly lighted, and all the blinds were up, so that an observer at any of those windows could see right into the room, and very distinctly, too. It might be worth inquiring into.”
“Yes, that’s true,” said the inspector; “though I expect, if any of them have seen anything, they will come forward quick enough when they read the report in the papers. But I must be off now, and I shall have to lock you out of the rooms.”
As we went down the stairs, Mr. Marchmont announced his intention of calling on us in the evening, “unless,” he added, “you want any information from me now.”
“I do,” said Thorndyke. “I want to know who is interested in this man’s death.”
“That,” replied Marchmont, “is rather a queer story. Let us take a turn in that garden that we saw from the window. We shall be quite private there.”
He beckoned to Mr. Curtis, and, when the inspector had departed with the police-surgeon, we induced the porter to let us into the garden.
“The question that you asked,” Mr. Marchmont began, looking up curiously at the tall houses opposite, “is very simply answered. The only person immediately interested in the death of Alfred Hartridge is his executor and sole legatee, a man named Leonard Wolfe. He is no relation of the deceased, merely a friend, but he inherits the entire estate—about twenty thousand pounds. The circumstances are these: Alfred Hartridge was the elder of two brothers, of whom the younger, Charles, died before his father, leaving a widow and three children. Fifteen years ago the father died, leaving the whole of his property to Alfred, with the understanding that he should support his brother’s family and make the children his heirs.”
“Was there no will?” asked Thorndyke.
“Under great pressure from the friends of his son’s widow, the old man made a will shortly before he died; but he was then very old and rather childish, so the will was contested by Alfred, on the grounds of undue influence, and was ultimately set aside. Since then Alfred Hartridge has not paid a penny towards the support of his brother’s family. If it had not been for my client, Mr. Curtis, they might have starved; the whole burden of the support of the widow and the education of the children has fallen upon him.
“Well, just lately the matter has assumed an acute form, for two reasons. The first is that Charles’s eldest son, Edmund, has come of age. Mr. Curtis had him articled to a solicitor, and, as he is now fully qualified, and a most advantageous proposal for a partnership has been made, we have been putting pressure on Alfred to supply the necessary capital in accordance with his father’s wishes. This he had refused to do, and it was with reference to this matter that we were calling on him this morning. The second reason involves a curious and disgraceful story. There is a certain Leonard Wolfe, who has been an intimate friend of the deceased. He is, I may say, a man of bad character, and their association has been of a kind creditable to neither. There is also a certain woman named Hester Greene, who had certain claims upon the deceased, which we need not go into at present. Now, Leonard Wolfe and the deceased, Alfred Hartridge, entered into an agreement, the terms of which were these: (1) Wolfe was to marry Hester Greene, and in consideration of this service (2) Alfred Hartridge was to assign to Wolfe the whole of his property, absolutely, the actual transfer to take place on the death of Hartridge.”
“And has this transaction been completed?” asked Thorndyke.
“Yes, it has, unfortunately. But we wished to see if anything could be done for the widow and the children during Hartridge’s lifetime. No doubt, my client’s daughter, Miss Curtis, called last night on a similar mission—very indiscreetly, since the matt
er was in our hands; but, you know, she is engaged to Edmund Hartridge—and I expect the interview was a pretty stormy one.”
Thorndyke remained silent for a while, pacing slowly along the gravel path, with his eyes bent on the ground: not abstractedly, however, but with a searching, attentive glance that roved amongst the shrubs and bushes, as though he were looking for something.
“What sort of man,” he asked presently, “is this Leonard Wolfe? Obviously he is a low scoundrel, but what is he like in other respects? Is he a fool, for instance?”
“Not at all, I should say,” said Mr. Curtis. “He was formerly an engineer, and, I believe, a very capable mechanician. Latterly he has lived on some property that came to him, and has spent both his time and his money in gambling and dissipation. Consequently, I expect he is pretty short of funds at present.”
“And in appearance?”
“I only saw him once,” replied Mr. Curtis, “and all I can remember of him is that he is rather short, fair, thin, and clean-shaven, and that he has lost the middle finger of his left hand.”
“And he lives at?”
“Eltham, in Kent. Morton Grange, Eltham,” said Mr. Marchmont. “And now, if you have all the information that you require, I must really be off, and so must Mr. Curtis.”
The two men shook our hands and hurried away, leaving Thorndyke gazing meditatively at the dingy flower-beds.
“A strange and interesting case, this, Jervis,” said he, stooping to peer under a laurel-bush. “The inspector is on a hot scent—a most palpable red herring on a most obvious string; but that is his business. Ah, here comes the porter, intent, no doubt, on pumping us, whereas—” He smiled genially at the approaching custodian, and asked: “Where did you say those houses fronted?”
“Cotman Street, sir,” answered the porter. “They are nearly all offices.”
The First R. Austin Freeman Megapack: 27 Mystery Tales of Dr. Thorndyke & Others Page 42