The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  “I thought that he seemed rather preoccupied, as if he had some business on hand that he was giving a good deal of thought to.”

  “He did not strike you as unusually depressed or anxious?”

  “No; only that he gave me the impression that he was thinking out something that he did not quite understand.”

  “Was that the last time that you saw him alive?”

  “Yes. I stood at the main door and watched him walk away down the drive, followed by one of the gardeners carrying his suitcase. I never saw him again until this morning, when I saw him in the mortuary.”

  Mr. Weeks delivered these statements in quiet, even tones, but it was easy to see that he was controlling his emotion with some difficulty. Observing this, the coroner turned from the witness to the jury.

  “I think,” he said, “Mr. Weeks has given us all the material facts known to him, so, if there are no questions, we need not prolong what is, no doubt, a very painful ordeal for him.” He paused, and then, as no question was asked, he thanked the witness and dismissed him. A brief pause followed during which the coroner glanced quickly through his notes. Then Mr. Brodribb’s name was called; and, bearing Thorndyke’s prediction in mind, I gave his evidence my very special attention.

  “What was the exact nature of your relations with deceased?” the coroner asked, when the introductory matter had been disposed of.

  “I was his solicitor. But in addition to my purely legal functions, I acted as his adviser in respect of the general business connected with the management of his property. I am also the executor of his will.”

  “Then you can tell us if there were any embarrassments or difficulties connected with his property that were causing him anxiety.”

  “I can. There were no embarrassments or difficulties whatever. His financial affairs were not only completely in order but in a highly favourable state. I may say that his estate was flourishing and his income considerably in excess of his expenditure. He certainly had no financial anxieties.”

  “Had he any anxieties of any kind, so far as you know?”

  “So far as I know, he had none.”

  “You heard Mr. Weeks’s description of the change in his manner and habits caused by his bereavement. Do you confirm that?”

  “Yes; the loss of his wife and son left him a broken man.”

  “You attribute the change in him to the grief due to his bereavement?

  “Principally. The loss of those so dear to him left an abiding grief. But there was a further effect. Sir Edward’s lively interest in his estate and his ambition to improve it and increase its value were based on the consideration that it would in due course pass to his son, and probably to his son’s son. Like most English landowners, he had a strong sense of continuity. But the continuity of succession was destroyed by his son’s death. The present heir-presumptive is a distant relative who was almost a stranger to Sir Edward. Thus deceased had come to feel that he was no more than a life-tenant of the estate; that, at his death, it would pass out of the possession of his own family into the hands of strangers and there was no knowing what might happen to it. As a result he, not unnaturally, lost all interest in the future of the estate. But since, hitherto, this had been the predominant purpose of his life, its failure left him without any strong interest or aim in life.”

  The coroner nodded, as one who appreciates a material point of evidence.

  “Yes,” he said, “this loss of interest in life seems to have an important bearing on our inquiry. But beyond this general state of mind, did you ever notice any more particular manifestation. In short, did you ever observe anything that caused you to entertain the possibility that deceased might make away with himself?”

  Mr. Brodribb hesitated. “I can’t say,” he replied, after a pause, “that the possibility of suicide ever entered my mind.”

  “That, Mr. Brodribb, seems a rather qualified answer, as if you had something further in your mind. Am I right?”

  Apparently the coroner was right, for Mr. Brodribb, after a few moments’ rather uneasy reflection, replied with obvious unwillingness: “I certainly never considered the possibility of suicide; but, looking back, I am not sure that there were not some suggestions that were at least susceptible of such an interpretation. I now recall, for instance, a remark which deceased made to me some months ago. We were, I think, discussing the almost universal repugnance to the idea of death when deceased said (as nearly as I can remember), ‘I often feel, Brodribb, that there is something rather restful in the thought of death. That it would be quite pleasant and peaceful to feel oneself sinking into sleep with the certain knowledge that one was never going to wake up.’ I attached no weight to that remark at the time, but now, looking at it in the light of what has happened, it seems rather significant.”

  “I agree with you,” the coroner said, emphatically. “It seems very significant indeed. And that suggests another question. I presume that you are pretty well acquainted with the affairs of deceased’s family?”

  “Very well indeed. I have been connected with the Hardcastle estate during the whole of my professional life, and so was my father before me.”

  “Then you can tell us whether any instances of suicide have occurred among any of deceased’s relatives.”

  Once more Mr. Brodribb hesitated with a slightly puzzled and reluctant air. At length, he replied, cautiously: “I can only say that no instance of suicide in the family is known to me, or even suspected by me. But it seems proper that I should acquaint you with the rather mysterious and highly eccentric conduct of deceased’s brother, Gervase. This gentleman became, unfortunately, rather intemperate in his habits, with the regrettable result—among others—that he was deprived of a fellowship that he held at Oxford. Thereafter, he disappeared and ceased to communicate with his family, and all that is known of him is that he was, for a time, living in poverty, and apparently in something like squalor, in Paris and other foreign towns.”

  “Had his family cast him off?”

  “Not at all. Sir Edward’s feelings towards him were quite friendly and brotherly. He would willingly have provided the means for his brother to live comfortably and in a manner suitable to his station. The self-imposed ostracism on Gervase’s part was sheer perversity.”

  “And what became of this brother? Is he still living?”

  “His death was announced in the obituary column of The Times about sixteen years ago without any address other than Brighton. Of the circumstances of his death, nothing whatever is known.”

  “Have you any reason to suppose that he made away with himself?”

  “I have not. I mentioned his case merely as an instance of voluntary disappearance and generally eccentric behaviour.”

  “Exactly; as furnishing a parallel to the voluntary disappearance of deceased. That is quite an important point. And now, as a final question, I should like to ask you to confirm what the Superintendent told us as to deceased having emptied his pockets of things of value before leaving the club.”

  “The Superintendent’s statement is, in the main, correct. When examining his bedroom at the club, I found in a locked suitcase—which I was able to unlock—a gold watch and chain, a valuable pearl tie pin, a bunch of keys and a few private letters, which I glanced through and which threw no light on his disappearance.”

  “Ah,” said the coroner, “a very significant proceeding. No doubt it struck you so?”

  “It did, coupled with the fact that the owner was missing; and I communicated the facts at once to the police.”

  “Yes. Very proper. And that, I think, is all that we wish to ask you, unless there is anything else that occurs to you or unless the jury desire to put any questions.”

  Mr. Brodribb intimated that he had nothing further to communicate, and, as the jury made no sign, the witness was allowed to retire to his seat.

  The next name called was that of Mr. Northbrook, the secretary of the club; but as his evidence for the most part, merely confirmed and
amplified that of the preceding witnesses, I need not record it in detail. One new fact, however, emerged, though it did not seem to me, at the time, to have any particular significance.

  “You say,” said the coroner, “that you saw deceased leave the club?”

  “Yes. I was in the porter’s office at the time, and, as deceased passed the open door, I wished him ‘good morning.’ But apparently he did not hear me, for he passed out without taking any notice.”

  “And that, I take it, was actually the last time he is known to have been seen alive?

  “Not absolutely the last time. He was seen a few minutes later by one of the club waiters, getting into a hansom cab. I have brought the waiter with me in case you wished to hear his account first hand.”

  “That was very thoughtful of you,” said the coroner, “and I am glad you did. We should certainly wish to have the evidence of the last person who saw deceased alive.”

  The waiter was accordingly called and sworn, when it transpired that his name was Joseph Wood and that he had mighty little to tell. That little may as well, however, be given in his own words.

  “I was coming along Piccadilly from the west when I caught sight of Sir Edward Hardcastle, coming towards me. He was a good distance off, but I recognised him at once. I wait at the table that he always used, so I knew him very well by sight. While I was looking at him, a hansom drew up by the pavement and he got in, and then the hansom drove away. I didn’t see him hail it, but he may have done. I couldn’t see if there was anyone else in the cab, because its back was towards me, and as soon as he got in it drove away. I didn’t see him say anything to the cabman, but he may have spoken up through the trap. The cab drove off in an easterly direction—towards the Circus. I did not notice the number of the cab. There was no reason why I should.”

  This was the sum of his evidence, and it was not clear to me why he had been brought so far to tell so little, for the trivial circumstance that he deposed to appeared to have no bearing whatever on the case; and I was not a little surprised to observe that Thorndyke took down his statements, apparently verbatim, in short-hand; a proceeding that I could account for only by bearing in mind his invariable rule that nothing could be considered irrelevant until all the facts were known.

  The waiter, Joseph Wood, was the last of the witnesses, and, when he had concluded his evidence, the coroner, having announced that all the known facts were now in the jury’s possession, made a brief inspection of his notes with a view to his summing-up. At length he began: “It is not necessary, gentlemen, that I should address you at great length. We have given to this painful case an exhaustive consideration which was called for rather by reason of the deceased gentleman’s position and the interests involved than by any inherent difficulties. The case is, in fact, quite a simple one. All the material circumstances are known to us, and there is not the slightest conflict of evidence. On the contrary, all the witnesses are in complete agreement and the evidence of each confirms that of the others.

  “The time at which this sad affair occurred is fixed beyond any possible doubt by Mr. Holker’s evidence. Deceased must have entered the house, in which his body was subsequently found, during the evening or night of Sunday, the twenty-first of June; and this date is confirmed by the medical evidence. Thus, the questions, When and Where are answered conclusively. Mr. Holker and the Superintendent both saw the dead body suspended from a beam; and the medical witness found signs of death from asphyxia, as would be expected in the case of a man who had died by hanging.

  “The question of motive seems to be solved as completely as we could expect by the evidence of Mr. Weeks and especially by that of Mr. Brodribb. The terrible bereavement which deceased suffered, the shipwreck of all his hopes and ambitions and the desolate state in which he was left, if they could not be properly regarded as conditions predisposing to suicide, furnish a reasonable explanation of it after the event.

  “There is one feature in the case which did, at first, appear very strange and difficult to explain, and which, I may admit, occasioned this very rigorous inquiry. That feature is the extraordinary surroundings in which the body was discovered. How, one asked oneself, is it possible to account for the appearance of a man in deceased’s position in an empty house in the purlieus of Stratford? It seemed an insoluble mystery. Then came the evidence of the Superintendent and Mr. Brodribb. The one finds traces that, to the expert eye, tell of ramblings in sordid neighbourhoods and waste places, of nights spent in doss-houses or in the open. The other tells us of a relative—actually a brother of deceased—who, in a strangely similar manner, had disappeared from his usual places of resort, cut himself off from family and friends and, by deliberate choice, had lived—and perhaps died—in surroundings of sordid poverty. I will not say that this evidence explains the proceedings of deceased. Probably they will never be completely explained. But I do say that our knowledge of the brother’s conduct makes that of deceased perfectly credible.

  “I will add only one further observation. If you find that deceased made away with himself, as the evidence seems to prove, I think you will agree with me that, at the time and for some days previously, he was not in his right mind. If that is your view, I will ask you to embody it in your verdict.”

  At the conclusion of the coroner’s address, the jury consulted together. But their consultation occupied only a minute or two. Apparently they had already made up their minds, as they might well have done, taking the evidence at its face value. When the whispered conference came to an end, the foreman announced that they had agreed on their verdict and the coroner then put the formal question: “And what is your decision, gentlemen?

  “We find,” was the reply, “that deceased committed suicide by hanging himself while temporarily insane.”

  “Yes,” said the coroner, “I am in entire agreement with you, and I must thank you for the care and attention with which you have considered the evidence.”

  As the proceedings came to an end, Thorndyke and I rose and made our way out, leaving Brodribb in conversation with the coroner and the Superintendent.

  “Well,” I said as we halted outside to wait for our friend, “it has been quite entertaining, but I don’t see that we have got much for our attendance.”

  “We have got one fact, at least,” replied Thorndyke, “that was worth coming for. We now know that Holker was in the house until after the rain had begun to fall. That clears away any uncertainties on a point of vital importance. But we had better not discuss the case now. And I think—though it seems rather scurvy treatment of our old friend—but I think we had better keep our own counsel. Brodribb accepts the suicide as an established fact, and perhaps it is as well that he should. If we are going to work at this case, it will be all to the good that we hold the monopoly of the real facts. It will be a difficult and obscure case, but the difficulty will be materially reduced if we can watch the development of events quietly, without anyone suspecting that we are watching. This was no crime of sudden impulse. It was premeditated and arranged. Obviously there was, behind it, some perfectly definite motive. We have, among other things, to discover what that motive was. The criminals at present believe themselves to be entirely unsuspected. If they maintain that belief, they will feel at liberty to pursue their purpose without any special precautions; and we—also unsuspected—may get our chance. But here comes Brodribb.”

  I must confess that Thorndyke’s observations appeared to me so cryptic as to convey no meaning whatever. That, I recognised, was owing to my own ‘slowness in the uptake.’ However, there was no opportunity to seek elucidation, for Brodribb had seen us and was now bearing down on us. He replied to our greeting with something less than his usual vivacity, and we set forth on our way to the station in almost uninterrupted silence.

  CHAPTER X

  A Summary of the Evidence

  (Dr. Jervis’s Narrative)

  Mr. Brodribb’s taciturn mood persisted even after we had taken possession of an empty first-class sm
oking compartment and lit our pipes. Evidently his recent experiences had depressed him profoundly; which, after all, was no matter for surprise. An inquest is not a jovial function under the most favourable conditions, and the conditions in the recent inquiry had been far from favourable for the friends of the deceased.

  “It was a ghoulish business,” he remarked in semi-apologetic explanation of his low spirits, “but, of course, it had to be; and the coroner managed it as decently as possible. Still, I had rather that he had managed without me.”

  “If he had,” said I, “he would have missed what he regarded as most important evidence.”

  “Yes, I know,” replied Brodribb. “That was what I felt, though I hated giving that evidence. The affair had to be cleared up, and I have no doubt that the jury were right in their verdict. I know you don’t agree with me, Thorndyke, but I think your special experience has misled you for once.”

  “There is always the possibility,” Thorndyke admitted, “that professional bias may influence one. In any case, our divergence of views does not affect the position in practice. The death of Sir Edward is an established fact and the ambiguity of your legal status is at an end.”

  “Yes,” Brodribb agreed, “there is that very unsatisfactory compensation. I am now the executor and can act as I think best. I could only wish that the best course of action were a little more easy to decide on.”

  With this, he relapsed into silent reflection, possibly connected with the difficulties suggested by his last sentence; and as Thorndyke and I were unable to discuss before him the matters that were occupying our thoughts, we followed his example and devoted ourselves to the consideration of our own affairs.

  Suddenly Brodribb sat up with a start and began to rummage in his inside breast-pocket. “Bless my soul!” he exclaimed. “What a fool I am! Clean forgot this. Ought to have mentioned it in my evidence.”

  Here he brought out a letter wallet, and, taking from it an envelope, opened the latter and tipped some small object out on to his palm.