The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  One item of the outfit did certainly puzzle me considerably—a box of keys from Polton’s rather doubtfully legal collection. The fact is that our worthy laboratory assistant held somewhat obscure views on certain aspects of the law; but on one subject he was perfectly clear. Whatever legal restrictions or obligations might apply to common persons, they had no application to “The Doctor.” In his view, his revered employer was above the law. Thus, in the assumed interests of that employer, Polton had amassed a collection of keys that would have been enough to bring a “common person” within hail of penal servitude, and a portion of his illegal hoard I now saw going into the research case. I examined them with profoundly speculative eyes. The collection included a number of common latch-keys, a graded set of blanks (how on earth had Polton managed to acquire those blanks, so strictly forbidden by the law?) and a bunch of skeleton keys of the pipe variety, simple in construction but undeniably felonious in aspect.

  I asked no questions concerning those keys, reserving to myself the prospective entertainment of seeing them produced and put to their mysterious use; as to which I could form no sort of surmise. They were certainly not to let us into the house, for we had already been promised free admittance. But it was useless to speculate. The explanation would come all in good time, and now the research case, having received its lading, was closed and fastened and we were due to start.

  At Stratford, we found the Superintendent ready to receive us and in the same helpful spirit as on the preceding day.

  “You are full early, gentlemen,” he remarked, “as matters stand. The inquest opens, as you know, at four P.M., and the doctor has fixed two P.M. for the post-mortem. So you’ll have plenty of time to survey the ‘scene of the tragedy,’ as the newspapers call it, though I don’t fancy that you’ll spend your time very profitably. However, that’s your affair. You are acting for the executor, as I understand, so I suppose you have got to make a show of doing something.”

  “Exactly,” Thorndyke agreed. “A specialist must make a demonstration of some kind. You gave my letter to the coroner?”

  “Yes, sir. And it is just as well that you had it. Otherwise I don’t fancy you’d have got many facilities. He’s rather a touchy man and he seemed disposed to resent your coming here to hold what he calls ‘an unofficial inquiry of your own.’ However, it is all right. I am to let you see anything that you want to see, and the medical witness—he is the police surgeon’s deputy—has got the same instructions. And now I expect you would like to start. I’ve got the key here, but I can’t give it to you in case the coroner wants to inspect the place himself. Besides, you’ll want someone to show you where it is.”

  He stepped to the door, and, looking into the adjoining office, called out: “Marshall, just take these two gentlemen down to number five Piper’s Row. You needn’t stay. Just let them into the house and bring the key back to me.”

  As he spoke, he produced from the nest of drawers a key with a wooden label attached to it which he handed to the constable; and I noticed that, as it passed from hand to hand, Thorndyke bestowed a quick glance on it, and I suspected that he was memorising its shape and size. It was, however, but a momentary glance, for the key disappeared immediately into the constabulary pocket and the officer, with a salute to his superior, turned and led the way out into the street.

  The town of Stratford is not strikingly prepossessing in any part. There is nothing of the residential suburb about it. But the district to which we were conducted by Constable Marshall seemed to reach the very limit of what is attainable in the way of repulsive squalor by the most advanced developments of modern industry. Turning out of the High Street by Abbey Lane, we presently emerged from the inhabited areas on to a dreary expanse of marsh, on which a few anaemic weeds struggled to grow in the interstices of the rubbish that littered every open space. Gas works, chemical works, pumping stations and various large buildings of the mill or factory type arose on all sides, each accompanied by its group of tall chimney-shafts, all belching forth smoke and each diffusing the particular stench appropriate to the industry that it represented. A few rough roads, like urbanised cart tracks, flanked by drainage ditches, meandered across this region, and along one of these we picked our way until it brought us to the place where, as the Superintendent bluntly but justly expressed it, “some fool had built” Piper’s Row.

  “Not much to look at, are they, sir?” Constable Marshall remarked in comment on our disparaging glances at the unspeakably sordid, ruinous little hovels. “Mr. Holker bought them for a song, but I fancy he’s going to lose his money all the same. This is the one.”

  He halted at a decaying door bearing the number 5, fished the key out of his pocket, inserted it, gave it a turn and pushed the door open. Then, as we entered, he withdrew the key, wished us “good morning,” closed the door and took his departure.

  For some moments Thorndyke stood looking about the tiny room—for there was no hall, the sitting-room opening directly on the street—letting his eye travel over its scanty details; the rusty grate, the little cupboard in the recess, the small, low window and especially the floor. He stepped across and tried the door of the cupboard, and, finding it locked, remarked that Holker had probably used it to stow away his tools.

  “You notice, Jervis,” he added, “that the appearance of the floor does not seem to support the theory that the house was entered by the window. There are foot-marks under the window, certainly, but they are quite faint, whereas there are well-marked prints of muddy feet, two pairs at least, leading from the street door to the next room, which I suppose is the kitchen.”

  “Yes, I see that,” I replied; “but as we don’t know whose footprints they are or when they were made, the observation doesn’t carry us very far.”

  “Still,” he rejoined, “we note their existence and observe that they proceed, getting rapidly fainter, direct to the kitchen.”

  He passed through the open doorway, still narrowly examining the floor, and halted in the kitchen to look round. But, beyond the faint marks on the floor, there was nothing to attract notice, and, after a brief inspection, we went on to the wash-house, which was what we had actually come to see.

  Apparently, the place had been left in the condition in which it had been found by Holker, for the decrepit Windsor chair still lay on its side, while almost directly above it a length of thinnish brown rope hung down from a short beam that connected the principal pair of rafters. At this Thorndyke, when he had finished his scrutiny of the floor, looked with an expression of interest that it hardly seemed to warrant.

  “The Superintendent,” he remarked, “spoke of a tie beam. It is only a matter of terminology, but this is rather what architects would call a collar beam. But the fact is of some interest. A tie beam, in a building of this size, would be within comfortable reach of a short man. But this beam is fully eight feet above the floor. Even with the aid of the chair, it is not so very accessible.”

  “No. But the rope could have been thrown over and pulled taut after the knot was tied. It is made fast with a fisherman’s bend, which would run up close when the rope was hauled on.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “that is so. And, by the way, the character of the knot is worth noting. There is something rather distinctive about a fisherman’s bend.”

  He stood looking up thoughtfully at the knot, from which a long end hung down beside the ‘standing part,’ which had been cut, as if the rope had been longer than was necessary for the purpose. Then he took the cut end in his hand and examined it minutely, first with the naked eye and then with the aid of a pocket lens. Finally, slipping on a glove, he picked up the chair, and, mounting on it, began deliberately to untie the knot.

  “Is that quite in order, Thorndyke?” I protested. “We had permission to inspect the premises, but I don’t think we were expected to disturb anything.”

  “We are not going to disturb anything in any essential sense,” he replied. “When we have finished, we shall re-tie the knot and p
ut the chair as we found it. That will be good enough for the coroner’s jury. You might give me the tape out of the case.”

  I opened the case and took out the long tape, which I handed to him and watched him as he carefully measured the rope and entered the length in his note book. It seemed an unaccountable proceeding, but I made no comment until he had re-fastened the rope and stepped down from the chair. Then I ventured to remark: “I should like to know why you measured that rope, Thorndyke. It seems to me that its length can have no possible bearing on anything connected with the case that we are investigating. Evidently I am wrong.”

  “When we are collecting facts,” he replied, “especially when we are absolutely in the dark, we are not bound to consider their relevancy in advance. The length of this rope is a fact and that fact might acquire later some relevancy which it does not appear to have now. There is no harm in noting irrelevant facts, but a great deal of harm in leaving any fact unnoted. That is a general rule. But in this case there is a reason for ascertaining and recording the length of this piece of rope. Look at it attentively and see what information it yields.”

  I glared at the rope with concentrated attention, but all the information that it yielded to me was that it was a piece of rope.

  “I am looking at it attentively,” I said, doggedly, “and what I see is a length—about a fathom and a half—of thinnish coir rope, the thinnest coir rope, I think, that I have ever seen. It is made fast at the end with a fisherman’s bend and the other part has been cut.”

  “Why ‘the other part’? I mean what is the distinction?

  “It is obvious,” I replied. “The end proper has got the whipping on it.”

  “Exactly,” said Thorndyke. “That is the point. Incidentally, it is not a coir rope. It is a hemp rope dyed, apparently with cutch. But that is a detail, though a significant one. The chief point is that the end is whipped. A rope with cut ends is a rope of no determinate length. It is simply a piece of rope. But a rope with whipped ends has a determinate length. It is a definite entity. It may be a boat’s painter, a sheet, a halyard, a waterman’s towing-rope; in any case it is a thing, not a part of a thing. Here we have a piece of rope with a whipping at one end. We haven’t seen the other part. But we know that when it was complete it was whipped at both ends. And we know that, somewhere, there is a counterpart to this fragment and that the two together make up a known length.”

  “Yes,” I agreed, “there is no denying the truth of what you have said, but it is a mere exposition of theory. Undoubtedly there does exist a piece of rope which is the complement to this piece. But as we have no idea where it is and there is not the remotest chance that we shall ever meet with it, or that we should recognise it if we did, your measurement is a mere demonstration of a principle without any utility what ever.”

  “Our chance of meeting with that complementary portion is small enough, I must admit,” said Thorndyke, “but it is not so infinitesimal as you think. There are some points which you have overlooked; and I think you have not fully taken in the immense importance of tracing the origin of this rope. But we must not waste time in discussion. This chair is the next subject for investigation. On the hypothesis that Sir Edward hanged himself, there should be prints of his fingers on some part of it; and if he did not, then there should be prints of the fingers of some other person.”

  “I think we can take it that there will be plenty of fingerprints on it,” said I, “if they are not too old to develop. The latest must be at least three weeks old.”

  “Yes, it is rather a poor chance, but we will try our luck.”

  He opened the research case and brought out the insufflator with one of the powder containers which was filled with a pure white powder. Having fitted the container to the spray-producer, he placed the chair where the light fell on the front aspect of it and began to work the bellows, keeping at some distance from the chair, so that the cloud of white powder met the surface quite gently. Very soon the whole of the front of the chair became covered with a thin, uniform coating of the impalpably fine white dust. Then the chair was turned about by pushing and pulling the lower parts of the legs and the other aspect coated with powder. When this process was completed Thorndyke proceeded to tap each of the legs very lightly and quickly with the handle of a large pocket-knife. At once, in response to the faint jarring strokes, the white dust began to creep down the perpendicular surfaces, and in a few seconds there came into view a number of rounded, smeary shapes on the broad, flat top rail of the chair-back. Still, as the light, quick tapping went on, the powder continued to creep down, leaving the shapes more and more conspicuous and distinct. Finally, Thorndyke transferred his operations to the top of the chair-back, gradually increasing the force of his blows until practically the whole of the powder had been jarred off, leaving the shapes—now unmistakable fingerprints—standing out strongly against the dingy, varnished surface.

  “Not a very promising lot,” Thorndyke commented, after a preliminary inspection. “Several hopeless smears and several more super-imposed. Those won’t be much use even to the experts.”

  With the aid of his pocket lens, he made a more critical survey of the one side while I examined the other, reinforcing the feeble light with the electric lamp.

  “They are a very confused lot,” I remarked. “The trouble is that there are too many of them on top of one another. Still, there are several that show a distinguishable pattern. I should think the finger print experts will be able to make something of them.”

  “Yes,” Thorndyke agreed, “I think so. It is surprising to see what shockingly bad prints they manage to decipher. At any rate, we will give them a chance.”

  Between us, we got out the little camera, mounted it on its tripod and placed it in position by means of its wire sighting frame. Having measured the distance with the tape and set the focusing-scale, Thorndyke stopped the lens down to F. 16, and, taking out his watch, gave the long exposure that was demanded by the weak light and the small stop. Then, when, as a measure of safety, he had made a second exposure, we turned the chair round and repeated the operation on the opposite side.

  “Are you going to leave the powder on the chair?” I asked as we re-packed the camera.

  “No,” he replied. “The police have had their opportunity. Perhaps they have taken it. At any rate it will be best for us to keep our own counsel as to our private investigations. And the photographs will be available if they are wanted.”

  With this he carefully dusted away all traces of the powder and when he had laid the chair in the place and position in which we had found it, he picked up the research case and we went back to the front room.

  “Well,” I said, moving towards the door, “I think we have seen everything here and we have picked up one or two crumbs—pretty small ones as far as I am concerned. But perhaps there is something else that you want to see?”

  “Yes,” he replied, “there are two more points that we ought to consider before we go. First there are those wheel-ruts. You noticed them, I suppose?

  “I observed some ruts in the road as we came along. Deuced uncomfortable they were to a man with thin shoes. But what about them?”

  “Apparently you did not notice them,” said he, “excepting as a source of physical discomfort. Come out now and take a careful look at them.”

  He opened the street door and we stepped out on to the strip of rough ground that served as the footpath or ‘side-walk.’ The unmade road that passed the houses was bumpy with obscure impressions of feet that had trodden it when the surface was moist and there were faint suggestions of old ruts. But in addition to these was a pair of deep, sharply-defined ruts with clear hoof-marks between, which I now remembered having seen as we came out of Abbey Lane.

  “I can’t quite make up my mind as to the class of vehicle,” he said. “What do you make of it?”

  “A two-wheeled cart of some kind,” I suggested. “A largish one, to judge by the space between the ruts.”

  �
�Yes, it is rather wide for a light cart. My provisional diagnosis was a good-sized gig or dog-cart—more probably a gig. It was evidently a light, high vehicle, as we can tell by the narrowness of the rims and the large diameter of the wheels.”

  “I can see that the rims were narrow, but I don’t see how you arrive at the diameter of the wheels.”

  “It happens,” he explained, “to be quite easy in this case. There is a notch in the edge of the near tyre; rather a surprising feature if you consider the strength of an iron tyre. It must have been caused by striking a sharp angle of granite or iron at some corner.”

  “I should have thought,” said I, “that a blow that would notch the tyre would have broken the wheel.”

  “So should I,” he agreed. “However, there it is, and it leaves a small, triangular projection at the side of the rut; and of course, the distance between two such projections is the circumference of the wheel. We may as well measure that distance, and the width between the two tracks and the width of the rims. Fortunately, there is no one here to spy on us.”