For a while we all stood looking in at the contents of the casket without speaking; and I found myself contrasting them with what would have been revealed by the lifting of a coffin-lid. Truly corruption had put on incorruption. The mass of snow-white, coral-like fragments, delicate, fragile, and lace-like in texture, so far from being repulsive in aspect, were almost attractive. I ran my eye, with an anatomist’s curiosity, over these dazzling remnants of what had lately been a man, half-unconsciously seeking to identify and give a name to particular fragments, and a little surprised at the difficulty of determining that this or that irregularly-shaped white object was a part of any one of the bones with which I had thought myself so familiar.
Presently Hemming looked up at Thorndyke and asked: “Do you observe anything abnormal in the appearance of these ashes? I don’t.”
“Perhaps,” replied Thorndyke, “we had better turn them out on to the table, so that we can see the whole of them.”
This was done very gently, and then Thorndyke proceeded to spread out the heap, touching the fragments with the utmost delicacy—for they were extremely fragile and brittle—until the whole collection was visible.
“Well,” said Hemming, when we had once more looked them over critically, “what do you say? I can see no trace of any foreign substance. Can you?”
“No,” replied Thorndyke. “And there are some other things that I can’t see. For instance, the medical referee reported that the proposer had a good set of sound teeth. Where are they? I have not seen a single fragment of a tooth. Yet teeth are far more resistant to fire than bones, especially the enamel caps.”
Hemming ran a searching glance over the mass of fragments and looked up with a perplexed frown.
“I certainly can’t see any sign of teeth,” he admitted; and it is rather curious, as you say. Does the fact suggest any particular significance to you?”
By way of reply, Thorndyke delicately picked up a flat fragment and silently held it out towards us. I looked at it and said nothing; for a very strange suspicion was beginning to creep into my mind.
“A piece of a rib,” said Hemming. “Very odd that it should have broken across so cleanly. It might have been cut with a saw.”
Thorndyke laid it down and picked up another, larger fragment, which I had already noticed.
“Here is another example,” said he, handing it to our colleague.
“Yes,” agreed Hemming. “It is really rather extraordinary. It looks exactly as if it had been sawn across.”
“It does,” agreed Thorndyke. “What bone should you say it is?”
“That is what I was just asking myself,” replied Hemming, looking at the fragment with a sort of half-vexed smile. “It seems ridiculous that a competent anatomist should be in any doubt with as large a portion as this, but really I can’t confidently give it a name. The shape seems to me to suggest a tibia, but of course it is much too small. Is it the upper end of the ulna?”
“I should say no,” answered Thorndyke. Then he picked out another of the larger fragments, and handing it to Hemming, asked him to name it.
Our friend began to look somewhat worried.
“It is an extraordinary thing, you know,” said he, “but I can’t tell you what bone it is part of. It is clearly the shaft of a long bone, but I’m hanged if I can say which. It is too big for a metatarsal and too small for any of the main limb bones. It reminds one of a diminutive thigh bone.”
“It does,” agreed Thorndyke “very strongly.” While Hemming had been speaking he had picked out four more large fragments, and these he now laid in a row with the one that had seemed to resemble a tibia in shape. Placed thus together, the five fragments bore an obvious resemblance.
“Now,” said he, “look at these. There are five of them. They are parts of limb bones, and the bones of which they are parts were evidently exactly alike, excepting that three were apparently from the left side and two from the right. Now, you know, Hemming, a man has only four limbs and of those only two contain similar bones. Then two of them show distinct traces of what looks like a saw-cut.”
Hemming gazed at the row of fragments with a frown of deep cogitation.
“It is very mysterious,” he said. “And looking at them in a row they strike me as curiously like tibia in shape; not in size.”
“The size,” said Thorndyke, “is about that of a sheep’s tibia.”
“A sheep’s?” exclaimed Hemming, staring in amazement, first at the calcined bones and then at my colleague.
“Yes; the upper half, sawn across in the middle of the shank.”
Hemming was thunderstruck. “It is an astounding affair!” he exclaimed. “You mean to suggest—”
“I suggest,” said Thorndyke, “that there is not a sign of a human bone in the whole collection. But there are very evident traces of at least five legs of mutton.”
For a few moments there was a profound silence, broken only by a murmur of astonishment from the cemetery official and a low chuckle from Superintendent Miller, who had been listening with absorbed interest. At length Hemming spoke.
“Then, apparently, there was no corpse in the coffin at all?”
“No,” answered Thorndyke. “The weight was made up, and the ashes furnished, by joints of butcher’s meat. I dare say, if we go over the ashes carefully, we shall be able to judge what they were. But it is hardly necessary. The presence of five legs of mutton and the absence of a single recognisable fragment of a human skeleton, together with the forged certificates, gives us a pretty I conclusive case. The rest, I think we can leave to Superintendent Miller.”
* * * *
“I take it, Thorndyke,” said I, as the train moved out of the station, “that you came here expecting to find what you did find?”
“Yes,” he replied. “It seemed to me the only possibility, having regard to all the known facts.”
“When did it first occur to you?”
“It occurred to me as a possibility as soon as we discovered that the cremation certificates had been forged; but it was the undertaker’s statement that seemed to clench the matter.”
“But he distinctly stated that he measured the body.”
“True. But there was nothing to show that it was a dead body. What was perfectly clear was that there was something that must on no account be seen; and when Stalker told us of the embezzlement we had a body of evidence that could point to only one conclusion. Just consider that evidence.
“Here we had a death, preceded by an obviously sham illness and followed by cremation with forged certificates. Now, what was it that had happened? There were four possible hypotheses. Normal death, suicide, murder, and fictitious death. Which of these hypotheses fitted the facts?
“Normal death was apparently excluded by the forged certificates.
“The theory of suicide did not account for the facts. It did not agree with the careful, elaborate preparation. And why the forged certificates? If Ingle had really died, Meeking would have certified the death. And why the cremation? There was no purpose in taking those enormous risks.
“The theory of murder was unthinkable. These certificates were almost certainly forged by Ingle himself, who we know was a practised forger. But the idea of the victim arranging for his own cremation is an absurdity.
“There remained only the theory of fictitious death; and that theory fitted all the facts perfectly. First, as to the motive. Ingle had committed a felony. He had to disappear. But what kind of disappearance could be so effectual as death and cremation? Both the prosecutors and the police would forthwith write him off and forget him. Then there was the bigamy—a criminal offence in itself. But death would not only wipe that off; after ‘death’ he could marry Huggard regularly under another name, and he would have shaken off his deserted wife for ever. And he stood to gain fifteen hundred pounds from the Insurance Company. Then see how this theory explained the other facts. A fictitious death made necessary a fictitious illness. It necessitated the forged certificate
s, since there was no corpse. It made cremation highly desirable; for suspicion might easily have arisen, and then the exhumation of a coffin containing a dummy would have exploded the fraud. But successful cremation would cover up the fraud for ever. It explained the concealment of the corpse from the undertaker, and it even explained the smell of formalin which he noticed.”
“How did it?” I asked.
“Consider, Jervis,” he replied. “The dummy in this coffin had to be a dummy of flesh and bone which would yield the correct kind of ash. Joints of butcher’s meat would fulfil the conditions. But the quantity required would be from a hundred and fifty to two hundred pounds. Now Ingle could not go to the butcher and order a whole sheep to be sent the day before the funeral. The joints would have to be bought gradually and stored. But the storage of meat in warm weather calls for some kind of preservative; and formalin is highly effective, as it leaves no trace after burning.
“So you see that the theory of fictitious death agreed with all the known circumstances, whereas the alternative theories presented inexplicable discrepancies and contradictions. Logically, it was the only possible theory, and, as you have seen, experiment proved it to be the true one.”
As he concluded, Dr. Hemming took his pipe from his mouth and laughed softly.
“When I came down today,” said he, “I had all the facts which you had communicated to the Home Office, and I was absolutely convinced that we were coming to examine a mare’s nest. And yet, now I have heard your exposition, the whole thing looks perfectly obvious.”
“That is usually the case with Thorndyke’s conclusions,” said I. “They are perfectly obvious—when you have heard the explanation.”
Within a week of our expedition, Ingle was in the hands of the police. The apparent success of the cremation adventure had misled him to a sense of such complete security that he had neglected to cover his tracks, and he had accordingly fallen an easy prey to our friend Superintendent Miller. The police were highly gratified, and so were the directors of the Griffin Life Assurance Company.
THE STALKING HORSE (1927)
As Thorndyke and I descended the stairs of the foot bridge at Densford Junction we became aware that something unusual had happened. The platform was nearly deserted save at one point, where a small but dense crowd had collected around the open door of a first-class compartment of the down train; heads were thrust out of the windows of the other coaches, and at intervals doors opened and inquisitive passengers ran along to join the crowd, from which an excited porter detached himself just as we reached the platform.
“You’d better go for Dr. Pooke first,” the station-master called after him.
On this, Thorndyke stepped forward.
“My friend and I,” said he, “are medical men. Can we be of any service until the local doctor arrives?”
“I’m very much afraid not, sir,” was the reply, “but you’ll see.” He cleared a way for us and we approached the open door.
At the first glance there appeared to be nothing to account for the awe-stricken expression with which the bystanders peered into the carriage and gazed at its solitary occupant. For the motionless figure that sat huddled in the corner seat, chin on breast, might have been a sleeping man. But it was not. The waxen pallor of the face and the strange, image-like immobility forbade the hope of any awakening.
“It looks almost as if he had passed away in his sleep,” said the station when we had concluded our brief examination and ascertained certainly that the man was dead. “Do you think it was a heart attack, sir?”
Thorndyke shook his head and touched with his finger a depressed spot on the dead man’s waistcoat. When he withdrew his finger it was smeared with blood.
“Good God!” the official gasped, in a horrified whisper. “The man has been murdered!” He stared incredulously at the corpse for a few moments and then turned and sprang out of the compartment, shutting the door behind him, and we heard him giving orders for the coach to be separated and shunted into the siding.
“This is a gruesome affair, Jervis,” my colleague, said as he sat down on the seat opposite the dead man and cast a searching glance round the compartment. “I wonder who this poor fellow was and what was the object of the murder? It looks almost too determined, for a common robbery; and, in fact, the body does not appear to have been robbed.” Here he stooped suddenly to pick up one or two minute fragments of glass which seemed to have been trodden into the carpet, and which he examined closely in the palm of his hand. I leaned over and looked at the fragments, and we agreed that they were portions of the bulb of an electric torch or flash-lamp.
“The significance of these—if they have any,” said Thorndyke, “we can consider later. But if they are recent, it would appear that the metal part of the bulb has been picked up and taken away. That might be an important fact. But, on the other hand, the fragments may have been here some time and have no connection with the tragedy; though you notice that they were lying opposite the body and opposite the seat which the murderer must have occupied when the crime was committed.”
As he was speaking, the uncoupled coach began slowly to move towards the siding, and we both stooped to make a further search for the remainder of the lamp-bulb. And then, almost at the same moment, we perceived two objects lying under the opposite seat—the seat occupied by the dead man. One was a small pocket-handkerchief, the other a sheet of notepaper.
“This,” said I, as I picked up the former, “accounts for the strong smell of scent in the compartment.”
“Possibly,” Thorndyke agreed, “though you will notice that the odour does not come principally from the handkerchief, but from the back cushion of the corner seat. But here is something more distinctive—a most incriminating piece of evidence, unless it can be answered by an undeniable alibi.” He held out to me a sheet of letter paper, both pages of which were covered with writing in bright blue ink, done with a Hectograph or some similar duplicator. It was evidently a circular letter, for it bore the printed heading, “Women’s Emancipation League, 16 Barnabas Square, S.W.,” and the contents appeared to refer to a” militant demonstration” planned for the near future.
“It is dated the day before yesterday,” commented Thorndyke, “so that it might have been lying here for twenty-four hours, though that is obviously improbable; and as this is neither the first sheet nor the last, there are—or have been—at least two more sheets. The police will have something to start on, at any rate.”
He laid the letter on the seat and explored both of the hat-racks, taking down the dead man’s hat, gloves, and umbrella, and noting in the hat the initials “F. B.” He had just replaced them when voices became audible outside, and the station-master climbed up on the foot-board and opened the door to admit two men, one of whom I assumed to be a doctor, the other being a police inspector.
“The station-master tells me that this is a case of homicide,” said the former, addressing us jointly.
“That is what the appearances suggest,” replied Thorndyke. “There is a bullet wound, inflicted apparently at quite short range—the waistcoat is perceptibly singed—and we have found no weapon in the compartment.”
The doctor stepped past us and proceeded to make a rapid examination of the body.
“Yes,” he said, “I agree with you. The position of the wound and the posture of the body both suggest that death was practically instantaneous. If it had been suicide, the pistol would have been in the hand or on the floor. There is no clue to the identity of the murderer, I suppose?”
“We found these on the floor under the dead man’s seat,” replied Thorndyke, indicating the letter and the handkerchief; “and there is some glass trodden into the carpet—apparently the remains of an electric flash-lamp.”
The inspector pounced on the handkerchief and the letter, and having scrutinised the former vainly in search of name or initials, turned to the letter.
“Why, this is a suffragist’s letter!” he exclaimed. “But it can’t hav
e anything to do with this affair. They are mischievous beggars, but they don’t do this sort of thing.” Nevertheless, he carefully bestowed both articles in a massive wallet, and approaching the corpse, remarked: “We may as well see who he is while we are waiting for the stretcher.”
With a matter-of-fact air, which seemed somewhat to shock the station-master, he unbuttoned the coat of the passive figure in the corner and thrust his hand into the breast pocket, drawing out a letter-case which he opened, and from which he extracted a visiting card. As he glanced at it, his face suddenly took on an expression of amazement.
“God!” he exclaimed in a startled tone. “Who do you think he is, doctor? He is Mr. Francis Burnham!”
The doctor looked at him with an interrogative frown. “Burnham—Burnham,” he repeated. “Let me see, now—”
“Don’t you know? The anti-suffrage man. Surely—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the doctor. “Of course I remember him. The arch-enemy of the suffrage movement and—yes, of course.” The doctor’s brisk speech changed abruptly into a hesitating mumble. Like the inspector, he had suddenly “seen a great light,” and again, like the officer, his perception had begotten a sudden reticence.
Thorndyke glanced at his watch. “Our train is a minute overdue,” said he. “We ought to get back to the platform.” Taking a card from his case, he handed it to the inspector, who looked at it and slightly raised his eyebrows.
The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack Page 7