The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack

by R. Austin Freeman

  It was a small room, simply and rather barely furnished, but clean and orderly with the tidiness of a ship’s cabin, a fact which attracted Thorndyke’s attention as well as mine, for he remarked: “The late Gillum seems to have been a tidy, methodical man. You noticed evidences of that in the living-room, and it is still more striking here. The bed, you observe, has been carefully made; and he made it himself; though he must have known that he was never going to sleep in it. And no cast-off clothes lying about or even hanging on the pegs. I suppose, when he undressed, he put them into the wardrobe.”

  He verified the surmise by opening the doors of the wardrobe; which showed, in the one division, the clothes that Gillum must have taken off hanging on the side pegs, while, in the other division, which was fitted with shelves, were stored clean shirts, collars, handkerchiefs, several pairs of shoes and three hats. These things he considered attentively, and especially the cast-off clothes, which he took down from the pegs and, having looked them over, turned out the pockets, returning the contents of each after having examined them. But Gillum seemed to have carried few things in his pockets, and of those which we found none appeared to be of any interest. A bank-note case—empty—a handful of silver and bronze coins, a pocket-knife and a set of well-worn dice formed the principal items.

  “Not much to be learned from those,” Thorndyke remarked as he closed the wardrobe, “excepting that he respected his clothes and avoided bulging pockets.”

  He walked across the room to the large chest of drawers that stood in the corner near the bed, lifting the valance of the latter and revealing a sponge bath underneath. As we reached the chest, I observed in the dark corner between it and the wall a good sized cylindrical basket which had apparently served as a rubbish dump, and drew Thorndyke’s attention to it as a possible mine of evidential wealth. He ignored the irony of my tone and, promptly adopting my suggestion, picked up the basket and turned out its contents on to the bed. It was certainly a very miscellaneous collection and as I regarded it with a faint grin I wondered what Mr. Penfield would have thought if he could have seen my colleague systematically sorting it out and placing each article after inspection at the foot of the bed. Over some of these, such as three obviously superannuated socks and a couple of slightly frayed collars, he passed lightly with a single glance; but most of the things he inspected attentively, little as they seemed to merit his attention, evidently considering what inferences they suggested. I watched him curiously, my tendency to be amused by the apparent triviality of the proceedings restrained by the recollection of the surprising results of similar examinations in the past; and, as I looked on, I made a mental inventory of the collection with a view to possible results in the future.

  Besides the socks and collars, a pair of worn fabric gloves and a broken shoe-lace, the “find” included an empty tin which had once contained an antiseptic tooth powder, which Thorndyke opened, and sniffed at the pinch of powder which still clung to the box; two empty “Milk of Magnesia” bottles, a worn-out toothbrush (which Thorndyke examined closely and also smelt), an empty bottle labelled “Bromidia,” which seemed to suggest that Gilum had suffered from insomnia, another empty bottle labelled “Cawley’s Cleansing Fluid,” from which Thorndyke drew out the cork in order to smell at what remained of the contents, several crumpled-up tradesmen’s bills, and a small, heavy object wrapped up in a sheet of writing-paper. This Thorndyke took up and carefully opening out the paper displayed a small bolt with a fly nut attached.

  “Now,” said he, “I wonder what that might have belonged to. A one-inch, square-headed eighth-inch bolt with what looks like a Whitworth thread and a fly nut. Apparently part of some mechanism; but we have not come across any mechanism to which it corresponds.”

  He smoothed out the paper and examined it on both sides, but there was no writing on it to give any clue to the use of the bolt. Finally he wrapped the latter up again in its paper and dropped it into his pocket, presumably for further consideration at his leisure. And having thus exhausted the material from the basket, he gathered the derelicts together and returned them to their receptacle.

  The chest of drawers had apparently served the purpose of a dressing-table in conjunction with a good-sized looking-glass which hung on the wall beside the window. Like the rest of the room, it was quite tidy though now covered with dust, and the objects set out on it represented the bare necessaries for the toilet, On a china tray were two toothbrushes and a small tin of “Odonto” dentifrice, and beside the tray were a pair of nail scissors, a button-hook, and a turned wooden box containing spare collar-studs—one gold and several ivory—and a pair of cheap rolled gold links. There was also an earthenware bowl and a pair of hairbrushes. The latter Thorndyke took up, and, separating them, looked them over in his queer, inquisitive way. They were good brushes, though old and much worn as to the bristles, with ebony backs in which the initials “J.G.” had been inlaid in silver, but they appeared not to have been cleaned very lately, for the bristles held a considerable quantity of hair.

  “I think,” said Thorndyke, “we will take these and sort out the hairs. Probably they are all Gillum’s but it is possible that the brushes may have been used by some of his visitors, if he ever had any, and we may learn something about them.”

  He put the brushes in his coat pocket and then took up the bowl, which was of red earthenware, fitted with a cover bearing a highly-coloured label with the inscription: “Dux Super-fatted Shaving Soap.”

  “Rather a nice bowl,” said Thorndyke, holding it out at arm’s length to view it; “a pleasant shape and very suitable to the plain earthen body. But I am surprised that Gillum didn’t soak off that label.”

  He lifted the lid of the bowl, and finding it empty save for a few drops of moisture at the bottom, sniffed at it and passed it to me.

  “It smells to me,” said I, “like chlorine, or perhaps chlorinated soda; some lotion of the Eusol type.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “something of that kind. Apparently it came from the bottle of antiseptic cleansing solution that we found in the tidy.”

  He put the bowl back in its place and then pulled out the drawers of the chest in succession. All of them seemed to be filled with articles of clothing, neatly folded and smelling slightly of camphor. These he glanced at but without disturbing them, and, when he had pushed in the last of the drawers, he turned away and stood a while, looking thoughtfully around the room, apparently memorising its contents and their arrangement. There was not very much to see. The mantelpiece was bare save for a couple of candlesticks carrying rather large stearine candles. There remained only the large porcelain sink in the corner; a deep, rectangular sink of the kind used in chemical laboratories, but which here seemed, by the bracket over it bearing a soap dish, a nailbrush, and a bath sponge, to have served the purpose of a lavatory basin as well as a means of emptying the bath.

  When we had inspected the sink, Thorndyke drew my attention to a mouse-hole in the corner beneath it which had been very neatly and effectively filled with Portland cement.

  “That,” said he, “suggests a man with a practical and efficient mind. Some people will go on for ever setting traps, regardless of the rate at which rodents increase. But in old buildings the only effective method is to stop the holes with Portland cement, preferably mixed with an “aggregate” of sand or powdered glass. That is Polton’s plan, and it keeps our chambers practically free from mice.”

  From the bedroom we passed through a narrow doorway into the kitchen, and here we noticed the same appearance of order and tidiness as in the other rooms. It was a small place, but very completely equipped. There was a little gas cooker mounted on a stand and bearing a large aluminium kettle, a range of shelves on which the china was neatly disposed, the plates on edge and the cups inverted and all spotlessly clean; another shelf bore a row of covered jars and tins, each labelled with the name of its contents; several dish covers of wire gauze or aluminium hung from nails on the wall with a frying-pan and a coupl
e of small saucepans, and a carpet-sweeper in the corner accounted for the conspicuous cleanness of the floor. And here, too, I noticed a couple of neatly stopped mouse-holes.

  The kitchen communicated with another room by a narrow doorway. The door was locked, but as the key was in the lock we were able to open it and pass through into the adjoining room, which I recognised as the larder that Mortimer had described.

  It was smaller even than the kitchen, being only about eight feet by six; and this small space was further reduced by the great coal-bin, which occupied the whole of the longer side of the room. But like the kitchen it was admirably arranged. There were two shelves on one of which lay three bottles of claret and one of sauterne, while the other was occupied by one or two dishes protected by wire covers through which could be seen—and smelt—some mouldy remains of food. In addition to the open shelves there was a tall, narrow, meat-safe through the wire gauze panels of which a mouldy, cadaverous odour exhaled. I opened the door and looked in, but as the odour then became more pronounced, I was about to shut it when Thorndyke stooped to examine the bottom shelf and then, reaching in, brought out from the back of the shelf a basin which was thickly encrusted with Portland cement and in which a rough bone spatula still stuck.

  “I see,” said Thorndyke, “that he used the same “aggregate” that Polton favours—powdered glass. It is more effective than sand.”

  “Yes,” said I, “and I notice that he has infringed another of Polton’s copyrights—the utilisation of worn out toothbrushes by shaving off the bristles.”

  I broke the spatula off the cement and scraped it clean with my pocket-knife, when it revealed itself as a bone handled dental-plate brush from which he bristles had been cleanly shaved off leaving a broad, blunt blade perfectly suited for the purpose for which it had been used.

  “It is really remarkable,” I commented, “that a man of so much common sense and capacity in small things should have been such a fool in the things that seriously matter.”

  “It is,” he agreed, “but Gillum’s case is by no means unique in that respect.”

  He turned away from the safe and transferred his attention to the coal-bin.

  “I think,” he remarked, “that this is the largest bin that I have ever seen in a set of chambers. Coal storage is not usually their strong point.”

  He measured the principal dimensions roughly with his graduated stick and then continued: “Eight feet long by thirty inches wide and twenty-nine inches deep—roughly fifty cubic feet. I don’t know what that represents in coal, but it would seem to be a fairly liberal allowance for a man living alone and cooking by gas.”

  “Yes,” I agreed. “Nearly a year’s supply, I should think. And it seems,” I added, as I lifted the lid and found the bin nearly full, “as if he had replenished his stock shortly before his death. Which appears an odd proceeding when we remember what the weather was like at that time. But perhaps he took advantage of the low summer prices to lay in his year’s supply.”

  “Possibly,” Thorndyke agreed, “that is to say, if it is really all coal. The quantity seems rather incredible.”

  He thrust his stick down into the loose coal, and at a few inches of depth found it stopped by an obviously solid obstruction.

  “There seems to be a false bottom,” I remarked. “Convenient enough for keeping the coal within easy reach, but rather a waste of space.”

  “Perhaps he didn’t waste the space,” said Thorndyke. “Let us see.”

  With the scoop that lay on top of the coal, he began to shovel the latter away from the right-hand end, piling it in a heap at the left end. This soon brought the false bottom into view, and with it an iron ring sunk into the board near the right-hand end. Further shovelling disclosed a crack across the bottom near the middle, that divided it into two halves. Taking down a brush that hung from a nail on the wall, and that had manifest traces of coal dust on its hair, Thorndyke proceeded to brush away the small coal and dust until the surface of the false bottom was comparatively clean. Then he slipped his finger through the ring and lifted the right half of the bottom out bodily.

  “The space wasn’t wasted, you see,” he said. “It seems to have been used as a store for things that were only occasionally wanted.”

  As he spoke, he threw the light of his pocket-lamp into the dark cavity, revealing a number of tins of various sizes, apparently containing tongue and other preserved foods, and seven or eight bottles of port and sherry.

  There was a good deal of space wasted nevertheless,” said I. “The cavity looks about eighteen inches deep, and only four or five have been used.”

  Thorndyke dipped his stick into the cavity and read off the measurement. “Nineteen inches from the top of the supporting blocks to the floor. It would have held a good deal more than he put into it, but it was not a very handy container as the coal had to be moved every time it was opened. But it looks as if the contrivance had been put in by Gillum, himself. The bin is obviously old, perhaps as old as the house, but the false bottom and the blocks that support it look quite fresh and new. Evidently, they were a recent addition.”

  He put the false bottom back in its place and then, taking a last look round, stepped up to the window. Apparently, a sash cord had broken and not been repaired, for the lower half of the sash was held up as far as it would go by a piece of wood on either side, which had been jammed into the groove and fixed with screws. It looked a makeshift arrangement, but as Thorndyke pointed out, it had been adopted deliberately, for the little wooden props had been neatly planed and fitted their place exactly, and the holes for the screws had been properly countersunk.

  “I think,” he said, “that there is no need to assume a broken sash line. It looks like an arrangement to fix the window open permanently so as to make sure of constant ventilation. You notice the row of holes at the foot of the door, evidently bored for the same purpose, and apparently by Gillum, himself to judge by the fresh, unstained wood inside them.”

  We let ourselves out by the door which opened on to the landing and which, presumably for that reason, had been fitted with a Yale night-latch and a spring. When we had come out and closed the door, Thorndyke stood for a few moments hesitating.

  “I suppose,” he said, “that is all, excepting the key of the cupboard.” He unlocked the living-room door and re-entered, and when he had locked the cupboard and pocketed the key, looked about the room to see if there was anything that we had omitted to examine.

  “What about the writing-table?” said I. “Oughtn’t we to see what is in the drawers?”

  “I expect Bateman took away all the papers,” he replied. “Still, we may as well take a glance at them.”

  We went over to the table and tried the drawers, but they were all locked, excepting the top one, and we had no key; and the top drawer contained nothing but Gillum’s stock of note-paper and envelopes, of each of which Thorndyke took a sample before closing the drawer.

  “And that,” said he as he folded the paper neatly and slipped it into the envelope, “I think completes the inspection, for the time being, at any rate; unless you can suggest anything further.”

  “I can suggest lots of things,” I replied with a grin. “For instance, you might take the legs off the tables and chairs as the police did in Poe’s story of ‘The Purloined Letter’; and you might go over the walls and furniture for fingerprints. And then there is the floor. You might set Polton to work on it with a vacuum cleaner and examine with the microscope the dust that he collected. This has been quite a superficial inspection.”

  He smiled indulgently at my rather feeble joke, but the result of it was not quite what I had expected.

  “I think,” he replied, “that we will leave the furniture intact and reserve the fingerprint hunt for some future occasion. But, really, your suggestion of the vacuum cleaner is an excellent one, though Gillum’s sweeper may have left us a rather meagre gleaning. I will get Polton to go over the floors, and hope that Gillum was not too thorough in
his use of the sweeper.”

  This reply to my facetious suggestion took me aback completely. For my knowledge of Thorndyke told me that he was, according to a playful habit of his, crediting me with an idea which was already in his own mind. He had certainly intended to collect the dust from those floors for examination. But I could not imagine why. Considering the nature of our problem, the proceeding seemed to be completely futile and purposeless. Yet I knew that it could not be. And so the old familiar feeling came over me; the feeling that he had seen farther into this case than I had; that he had already some theory and was not groping in the dark as I was, but was even now seeking an answer to some definite question.

  CHAPTER X

  Mr. Weech Disapproves

  As we came out of the entry into the courtyard, we became aware of our old acquaintance, Mr. Weech, the porter of the Inn, hovering in the back ground, whence he had probably observed us at the landing window. Mr. Weech had always interested me. He was a complete and unabridged survival from the Victorian age, alike in his dress, his habits and in a certain subtle combination of dignity and deference in this bearing towards his social superiors. His costume invariably included a tall silk hat and a formal frock coat. Formerly, perchance, but not in my time, the hat may have borne a gold-laced band, and the coat have been embellished with gilt buttons. But nowadays the hat and coat were distinctive enough in themselves; and even the umbrella which was his constant companion, his sceptre and staff of office, seemed not quite like modern umbrellas.

  In speech he was singularly precise and careful in his choice of words, though, unfortunately, his judgement was not always equal to his care. For he loved to interlard his sentences with Latin tags; and, as he obviously had no acquaintance with that language, the results were sometimes a little startling.

  As we came into view, then, Mr. Weech quickened his pace and advanced towards us with the peculiar splay-footed gait characteristic of men who stand much and walk little, and peering at us inquisitively through his spectacles, essayed cautiously to ascertain what our business was.