The Black Lizard Big Book of Locked-Room Mysteries

by Otto Penzler

  Inspector Fledge was breathing deeply, and he started to mop the sweat off his brow. “Now only one more point. Tell me the motive and I’ll put the handcuffs on Dr. Martin.”

  “The motive,” Paul Dawn said, “was staring us in the face all the time. Miss Kingsley confirmed the fact that Seabrook’s business had once gone bankrupt owing to Seabrook’s shady dealings. A lot of stockholders lost money in that collapse, and it’s conceivable that one of them would hold a grudge for a long, long time. Look up Martin’s past, why don’t you?”

  “I’d better hurry off now,” said Inspector Fledge heartily, “and do my duty. Oh, by the way, this has been somewhat of a strain. You don’t happen to have a bit of liquid refreshment, do you?”

  Paul did. And that was when the Inspector emptied half the bottle.

  THE ALUMINIUM DAGGER

  THE CREATOR of Dr. John Thorndyke, the greatest of all scientific detectives, Richard Austin Freeman (1862–1943), denied that his character was a detective at all, claiming that he “is an investigator of crime but he is not a detective.… The technique of Scotland Yard would be neither suitable nor possible to [Thorndyke].” It is exactly this type of hair-splitting for which the character is known, too. The stories about him are precise, filled with descriptions of slow, painstaking technique, which is largely responsible for Freeman being less read today than he was in the first half of the twentieth century, when readers were more patient with his somewhat prolix prose style.

  Born in London’s Soho district, Freeman studied medicine and worked in Accra on Africa’s Gold Coast as assistant colonial surgeon, returning to England in 1891 after seven years—in poor health, impoverished, and too ill to practice medicine. He took to writing fiction and became both prolific and successful with more than two dozen novels and stories about Dr. Thorndyke and nearly as many featuring other detectives and rogues. Thorndyke was introduced in The Red Thumb Mark (1907), followed by John Thorndyke’s Cases (1909) and The Singing Bone (1912), where Freeman perfected the inverted detective story in which the culprit is known from the outset, the suspense arising from following the train of deductive reasoning that will catch him—the difficult subgenre executed so brilliantly on the television series Columbo.

  “The Aluminium Dagger” was first published in the March 1909 issue of Pearson’s Magazine; it was first collected in John Thorndyke’s Cases (London, Chatto & Windus, 1909), which was first published in the United States as Dr. Thorndyke’s Cases (New York, Dodd, Mead, 1931).

  R. AUSTIN FREEMAN

  THE “URGENT CALL”—the instant, per-emptory summons to professional duty—is an experience that appertains to the medical rather than the legal practitioner, and I had supposed, when I abandoned the clinical side of my profession in favour of the forensic, that henceforth I should know it no more; that the interrupted meal, the broken leisure, and the jangle of the nightbell, were things of the past; but in practice it was otherwise. The medical jurist is, so to speak, on the borderland of the two professions, and exposed to the vicissitudes of each calling, and so it happened from time to time that the professional services of my colleague or myself were demanded at a moment’s notice. And thus it was in the case that I am about to relate.

  The sacred rite of the “tub” had been duly performed, and the freshly-dried person of the present narrator was about to be insinuated into the first instalment of clothing, when a hurried step was heard upon the stair, and the voice of our laboratory assistant, Polton, arose at my colleague’s door.

  “There’s a gentleman downstairs, sir, who says he must see you instantly on most urgent business. He seems to be in a rare twitter, sir——”

  Polton was proceeding to descriptive particulars, when a second and more hurried step became audible, and a strange voice addressed Thorndyke.

  “I have come to beg your immediate assistance, sir; a most dreadful thing has happened. A horrible murder has been committed. Can you come with me now?”

  “I will be with you almost immediately,” said Thorndyke. “Is the victim quite dead?”

  “Quite. Cold and stiff. The police think——”

  “Do the police know that you have come for me?” interrupted Thorndyke.

  “Yes. Nothing is to be done until you arrive.”

  “Very well. I will be ready in a few minutes.”

  “And if you would wait downstairs, sir,” Polton added persuasively, “I could help the doctor to get ready.”

  With this crafty appeal, he lured the intruder back to the sitting-room, and shortly after stole softly up the stairs with a small breakfast-tray, the contents of which he deposited firmly in our respective rooms, with a few timely words on the folly of “undertaking murders on an empty stomach.” Thorndyke and I had meanwhile clothed ourselves with a celerity known only to medical practitioners and quick-change artists, and in a few minutes descended the stairs together, calling in at the laboratory for a few appliances that Thorndyke usually took with him on a visit of investigation.

  As we entered the sitting-room, our visitor, who was feverishly pacing up and down, seized his hat with a gasp of relief. “You are ready to come?” he asked. “My carriage is at the door,” and without waiting for an answer, he hurried out, and rapidly preceded us down the stairs.

  The carriage was a roomy brougham, which fortunately accommodated the three of us, and as soon as we had entered and shut the door, the coachman whipped up his horse and drove off at a smart trot.

  “I had better give you some account of the circumstances, as we go,” said our agitated friend. “In the first place, my name is Curtis, Henry Curtis; here is my card. Ah! and here is another card, which I should have given you before. My solicitor, Mr. Marchmont, was with me when I made this dreadful discovery, and he sent me to you. He remained in the rooms to see that nothing is disturbed until you arrive.”

  “That was wise of him,” said Thorndyke. “But now tell us exactly what has occurred.”

  “I will,” said Mr. Curtis. “The murdered man was my brother-in-law, Alfred Hartridge, and I am sorry to say he was—well, he was a bad man. It grieves me to speak of him thus—de mortuis, you know—but, still, we must deal with the facts, even though they be painful.”

  “Undoubtedly,” agreed Thorndyke.

  “I have had a great deal of very unpleasant correspondence with him—Marchmont will tell you about that—and yesterday I left a note for him, asking for an interview, to settle the business, naming eight o’clock this morning as the hour, because I had to leave town before noon. He replied, in a very singular letter, that he would see me at that hour, and Mr. Marchmont very kindly consented to accompany me. Accordingly, we went to his chambers together this morning, arriving punctually at eight o’clock. We rang the bell several times, and knocked loudly at the door, but as there was no response, we went down and spoke to the hall-porter. This man, it seems, had already noticed, from the courtyard, that the electric lights were full on in Mr. Hartridge’s sitting-room, as they had been all night, according to the statement of the night-porter; so now, suspecting that something was wrong, he came up with us, and rang the bell and battered at the door. Then, as there was still no sign of life within, he inserted his duplicate key and tried to open the door—unsuccessfully, however, as it proved to be bolted on the inside. Thereupon the porter fetched a constable, and, after a consultation, we decided that we were justified in breaking open the door; the porter produced a crowbar, and by our united efforts the door was eventually burst open. We entered, and—my God! Dr. Thorndyke, what a terrible sight it was that met our eyes! My brother-in-law was lying dead on the floor of the sitting-room. He had been stabbed—stabbed to death; and the dagger had not even been withdrawn. It was still sticking out of his back.”

  He mopped his face with his handkerchief, and was about to continue his account of the catastrophe when the carriage entered a quiet side-street between Westminster and Victoria, and drew up before a block of tall, new, red-brick buildings. A flurried hal
l-porter ran out to open the door, and we alighted opposite the main entrance.

  “My brother-in-law’s chambers are on the second-floor,” said Mr. Curtis. “We can go up in the lift.”

  The porter had hurried before us, and already stood with his hand upon the rope. We entered the lift, and in a few seconds were discharged on to the second-floor, the porter, with furtive curiosity, following us down the corridor. At the end of the passage was a half-open door, considerably battered and bruised. Above the door, painted in white lettering, was the inscription, “Mr. Hartridge”; and through the doorway protruded the rather foxy countenance of Inspector Badger.

  “I am glad you have come, sir,” said he, as he recognized my colleague. “Mr. Marchmont is sitting inside like a watch-dog, and he growls if any of us even walks across the room.”

  The words formed a complaint, but there was a certain geniality in the speaker’s manner which made me suspect that Inspector Badger was already navigating his craft on a lee shore.

  We entered a small lobby or hall, and from thence passed into the sitting-room, where we found Mr. Marchmont keeping his vigil, in company with a constable and a uniformed inspector. The three rose softly as we entered, and greeted us in a whisper; and then, with one accord, we all looked towards the other end of the room, and so remained for a time without speaking.

  There was, in the entire aspect of the room, something very grim and dreadful. An atmosphere of tragic mystery enveloped the most commonplace objects; and sinister suggestions lurked in the most familiar appearances. Especially impressive was the air of suspense—of ordinary, every-day life suddenly arrested—cut short in the twinkling of an eye. The electric lamps, still burning dim and red, though the summer sunshine streamed in through the windows; the half-emptied tumbler and open book by the empty chair had each its whispered message of swift and sudden disaster, as had the hushed voices and stealthy movements of the waiting men, and, above all, an awesome shape that was but a few hours since a living man, and that now sprawled, prone and motionless, on the floor.

  “This is a mysterious affair,” observed Inspector Badger, breaking the silence at length, “though it is clear enough up to a certain point. The body tells its own story.”

  We stepped across and looked down at the corpse. It was that of a somewhat elderly man, and lay, on an open space of floor before the fireplace, face downwards, with the arms extended. The slender hilt of a dagger projected from the back below the left shoulder, and, with the exception of a trace of blood upon the lips, this was the only indication of the mode of death. A little way from the body a clock-key lay on the carpet, and, glancing up at the clock on the mantelpiece, I perceived that the glass front was open.

  “You see,” pursued the inspector, noting my glance, “he was standing in front of the fireplace, winding the clock. Then the murderer stole up behind him—the noise of the turning key must have covered his movements—and stabbed him. And you see, from the position of the dagger on the left side of the back, that the murderer must have been left-handed. That is all clear enough. What is not clear is how he got in, and how he got out again.”

  “The body has not been moved, I suppose,” said Thorndyke.

  “No. We sent for Dr. Egerton, the police-surgeon, and he certified that the man was dead. He will be back presently to see you and arrange about the post-mortem.”

  “Then,” said Thorndyke, “we will not disturb the body till he comes, except to take the temperature and dust the dagger-hilt.”

  He took from his bag a long, registering chemical thermometer and an insufflator or powder-blower. The former he introduced under the dead man’s clothing against the abdomen, and with the latter blew a stream of fine yellow powder on to the black leather handle of the dagger. Inspector Badger stooped eagerly to examine the handle, as Thorndyke blew away the powder that had settled evenly on the surface.

  “No finger-prints,” said he, in a disappointed tone. “He must have worn gloves. But that inscription gives a pretty broad hint.”

  He pointed, as he spoke, to the metal guard of the dagger, on which was engraved, in clumsy lettering, the single word, “Traditore.”

  “That’s the Italian for ‘traitor,’ ” continued the inspector, “and I got some information from the porter that fits in with that suggestion. We’ll have him in presently, and you shall hear.”

  “Meanwhile,” said Thorndyke, “as the position of the body may be of importance in the inquiry, I will take one or two photographs and make a rough plan to scale. Nothing has been moved, you say? Who opened the windows?”

  “They were open when we came in,” said Mr. Marchmont. “Last night was very hot, you remember. Nothing whatever has been moved.”

  Thorndyke produced from his bag a small folding camera, a telescopic tripod, a surveyor’s measuring-tape, a boxwood scale, and a sketch-block. He set up the camera in a corner, and exposed a plate, taking a general view of the room, and including the corpse. Then he moved to the door and made a second exposure.

  “Will you stand in front of the clock, Jervis,” he said, “and raise your hand as if winding it? Thanks; keep like that while I expose a plate.”

  I remained thus, in the position that the dead man was assumed to have occupied at the moment of the murder, while the plate was exposed, and then, before I moved, Thorndyke marked the position of my feet with a blackboard chalk. He next set up the tripod over the chalk marks, and took two photographs from that position, and finally photographed the body itself.

  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 sl
ightly; “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.