by Robin Paige
The doctor became suffused with astonishment. “Roger? I am utterly astounded. Why in the world—”
Thornton jumped to his feet. “I had nothing to do with it!” he shouted. “Not any of it!” He pointed at the screen. “That picture is a fake!”
“It is not,” Patsy replied with dignity. “I took the photograph with my Frena and developed it myself. And that is you, Squire Thornton. The camera caught you red-handed.” Her eyes narrowed and her voice became steely. “Telegrams may lie, sir, but not photographs.”
The squire turned and looked at Kate and Patsy. He was about to speak, but their words seemed to have robbed him of the power. He started to stumble over the doctor’s feet as if making to leave, but the coroner took one arm and the doctor the other and pushed him back into his chair.
“I think, Roger,” the coroner said sternly, “that you had better stay.”
“Indeed,” said the doctor. “I’m sure there is more to be revealed.”
“On a happier note,” Charles said, putting up the next slide, “here are the winners of the chase. The informal winners, of course.”
This slide, of Kate and Patsy posed in Rolls’s Peugeot, laughing and waving at the camera, was greeted by the three drivers with grunts and discontented shufflings.
“Congratulations, ladies,” said the vicar. “I must confess to a great admiration for anyone who could manhandle one of those machines through our terrible lanes.”
“Sheer luck that they got that far,” Dickson muttered.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Charles mildly, putting up another slide of the two ladies, this one posed with Rolls and Farmer Styles in front of the deflated balloon. “There was quite a bit of skill involved, not to mention strength and good judgment.”
“I’d say,” said Rolls. “Three and three-quarters horsepower, you know. Frankly, I’m amazed that a woman could manage it. Lady Kathryn, you have my greatest respect.”
Kate was about to respond to this, but Charles had gone on to the next slide. “And here is the car that came closest to finishing,” he said, and put up a picture of a dejected Bateman, his disabled electric, and the tow horse, its lips pulled back from its teeth in a malevolent horselaugh.
“Ha!” laughed Ponsonby. “Bateman, what a fool you look!”
“This picture demonstrates,” Dunstable said pompously, “precisely why electricity cannot be taken seriously as an automotive fuel. Petrol is the only viable propellant.”
“But Bateman’s electric did go farther than the steamer or the Benz,” Kate pointed out.
“That’s true,” Charles replied. “Unfortunately, we do not have pictures of the flock of geese that caused Mr. Ponsonby to come to grief, or the stump that did in the Serpollet Steamer. And I fear, Mr. Dunstable, that we have no photographs of you, either.”
“That’s right, Dunstable,” Dickson said, with a little laugh. “All this while you were wrapped up, shall we say, elsewhere.” These words were greeted by a general snigger, and a louder guffaw from Ponsonby.
Charles raised his voice over the laughter. “We have, however, managed to apprehend the two men who packaged you.” He turned and signaled to Mudd, who was standing beside the door.
“Constable Laken, sir,” Mudd announced, and opened the door.
“Ah, Laken,” Charles said, as the constable came in, accompanied by a very tall man in brown corduroy pants and rough jerkin and a boy barely out of his teens. Both had their hands manacled before them. “Good of you to come. And who are these gentlemen?”
“Dick Quilp,” said the constable, pointing to the tall man, “and Fred Codlin.”
Dunstable stared. “Yes! These are the very ones! They came on me in the alley and hit me on the head.”
“Please tell the company who paid you,” the constable ordered.
“ ’Twas them!” said the boy, raising his fettered hands to point at Bateman and Ponsonby.
“That’s ridiculous.” Ponsonby pulled himself up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“They paid us two shillin’s each if we’d jump ’im,” said Quilp darkly. “We didn’t want t’ do it, but they argued us over wi’ the money.”
“It’s our word against the word of these knaves,” Bateman growled. “They have no proof.”
“I’ve still got th’ florin ye give me,” the boy said helpfully, pulling a two-shilling piece out of his pocket and holding it up.
“I drank mine,” Quilp said, “but ye kin ask the barman at The Sun. ‘E knows ’ow much I spent.”
“This is all nonsense, of course, Harry,” Bateman said nervously, to a glowering, red-faced Dunstable. “I swear on my mother’s grave, I had nothing—”
Ponsonby was calmer. “Even if we did arrange a little joke,” he drawled, “you ought to be grateful. If you hadn’t been otherwise occupied, Harry, you would have been in the Daimler with Albrecht. You could be as dead as he is.”
Dunstable was about to reply, but Charles interrupted, changing the subject and redirecting their attention with (Kate thought) a very great adroitness.
“Ah, yes, the unfortunate Herr Albrecht,” Charles said soberly, and threw another slide onto the screen. “This, gentlemen, is the scene of the crash that killed him. A most appalling sight, you will agree.”
Kate winced when she saw the slide, which showed Bradford’s Daimler with its front end smashed against the trees, its rear end in the air, and wreckage strewn uphill behind it.
“Terrible, terrible,” Dunstable muttered.
“Poor Albrecht,” Batemen sighed. “To lose his life in such a way.”
“Oh, Lord,” whispered Dickson, white-faced.
“You see, Harry?” Ponsonby said triumphantly. “It’s just as I said. If you’d been in that car when it went into the ravine, you wouldn’t be sitting here right now.”
“What I want to know,” Rolls said in a wondering tone, “is why it didn’t bum. With those hot-tube igniters and a full tank of petrol, the thing should have gone off like a deuced bomb.”
“Unbelievable as it seems,” Charles remarked, “Herr Albrecht failed to top off the tank. At the time of the crash, the car was virtually empty of fuel. He could not have made it past the bridge.”
There was a moment’s pause, as the company studied the slide on the screen, and Kate reflected with some pride on her husband’s thoroughness as a detective, and with relief on the knowledge that Lawrence could be excused of any great wrongdoing.
“I understand that you have investigated the crash in some detail, Sheridan,” the doctor said. “What have you been able to learn about the cause?”
“Several very interesting facts,” Charles said, and signaled to Mudd again. The butler stepped out of the room, and when he returned, he was carrying three objects on a large and ornate silver tray. He put the tray on a table at the side of the room and turned up the gaslights.
Charles went to the table and picked up the leather-covered wooden brake. “I am sure you will recognize this brake block,” he said, holding it up. “It comes from the left rear wheel of the ill-fated Daimler. The car crashed because someone smeared this block with grease. Albrecht was coming down the hill at a speed probably close to twenty miles an hour. When he attempted to apply the brake, the car spun out of control and went into the ravine.”
“Someone smeared the brake with grease!” Dunstable exclaimed incredulously.
“Yes,” Charles said. “That is what Albrecht himself said, just before he died, in Dr. Bassett’s surgery.” He picked up the crockery pot from the tray. “And this is the grease that was used, although it did not come from this container.”
“You’re speaking very positively,” Dickson growled. “How do you know that?”
“I shall show you, Mr. Dickson,” Charles said, and went on. “But before I do, I wish to point out that the person who applied the grease to the brake also left a smear of it on the fender.” He picked up the third object, the dented fender, and displayed its
dusty underside. “He left a fingerprint, as well.”
“There you go again, Sheridan,” said Harry Hodson, in a tone of scornful amusement, “riding your favorite hobbyhorse. Fingerprints, fingerprints, always fingerprints! Are we to hear of nothing else?”
“Sir Charles is persuaded,” the doctor said, for the elucidation of the group, “that any individual in the world can be identified by his fingerprints.”
“I’ve heard that fingerprinting can be done,” Ponsonby said dubiously, “but I read in The Pall Mall Gazette just last week that the Yard has rejected it as a practical matter, primarily on the grounds that such evidence could not be comprehended by the average jury.”
“I doubt it can even be done,” said Bateman, inspecting his fingertips, “or yield any useful information.” There was a rustle, as the others made the same inspection.
“Oh, but it can be done,” Charles protested, “and with excellent practical effect.” He dropped a slide into the lantern’s upper optical tube, and the top half of the screen was filled with the enlarged image of a fingerprint. “This, gentlemen, is a photograph of the fingerprint on the fender.”
“What a nuisance,” sighed the coroner, shifting his heavy bulk in the chair. “Wake me when the lecture is over.”
“I hope to keep you awake this time, Harry,” Charles said. Taking a wooden pointer, he strode to the screen. “You can see, of course, that this fingerprint, like all fingerprints, is made up of lines and whorls. This particular print, however”—he pointed—“displays a rare double loop, the upper loop rotating to the left, the lower one to the right.”
“Rare, is it?” asked the constable, with some interest.
“Yes, quite rare,” Charles said, going back to the projector. “Let me show you several others, and you shall see that there is not a double loop among them.” And leaving the image of the fingerprint at the top of the screen, he projected four prints, one after another, onto the bottom half.
“Indeed,” said the coroner, sitting up straight, his eyes wide open. “Not a double loop among them.”
“But what have we here?” Charles asked, as the fifth print came onto the screen. “Why, bless my soul! I believe it is a match!”
“A match?” the doctor asked. “You mean, you have found another man with the very same fingerprint?”
“No, for that would be impossible,” Charles said. “Each man’s fingerprints are unique. What we see here is another print made by the same man.” He went to the screen with his pointer. “Here is the same double loop, the upper rotating to the left, the lower to the right. And here is that odd ridge, and here—” He paused. “If I am correct, I believe that there are eight principal points of comparison between the two prints. A closer study, of course, may reveal others.”
“I charge you, Sir Charles,” the coroner said sternly, “to reveal exactly where you obtained that second fingerprint.”
“Indeed,” exclaimed the constable. “It could reveal the identity of the man who killed Wilhelm Albrecht!”
There was a gasp, followed by much nervous shifting and muttering. Charles nodded at Mudd, who disappeared and reappeared with another tray, which he placed beside the first. This one bore nine clear crystal wine goblets.
“The print was taken from one of these goblets,” Charles said, “each of which, as you can see, is labeled with a name.”
“And the goblets?” the constable asked. “Where did you get them?”
“They are the goblets from which wine was drunk at last night’s dinner,” Charles said. “They were taken from the dining table and locked in the butler’s pantry until this afternoon, when I took them to my laboratory and photographed them.”
“And the print?” the coroner asked severely. “Whose is it?”
“It belongs,” Charles said, “to Arthur Dickson.”
“No!” Dickson cried, rising. “It isn’t mine!”
“I grant you that there is a remote possibility of some mischance with the goblets,” Charles agreed. He took a leather case from his pocket. “I have here a fingerprint kit, however, and it will take only a moment to obtain your prints and confirm that you are not the man.”
“This is absurd!” Dickson exclaimed. “Fingerprints! I won’t stand for it, d’you hear!”
“Then sit down,” Dunstable growled crossly, “and don’t be an ass.”
“Yes,” Bateman said, “do sit down and be reasonable, old chap. We all want to get to the bottom of this wretched affair so we can go about our business.”
“Did you do it, Arthur?” asked Ponsonby. “If you did, best ’fess up, or they’ll be hounding the rest of us until kingdom come.”
“I didn’t do it,” Dickson said desperately.
“Then perhaps you can explain how the same red grease that appears on the brake was also found on your trousers,” Charles said.
Dickson attempted a laugh. “You are a preposterous fellow, Sheridan! Even if you had found grease on my trousers, you can’t possibly know that it was the same grease.”
But Charles had inserted two more slides into his lantern projector. “The one on the top,” he said, “is a scraping of grease taken from the Daimler’s fender. On the bottom is a scraping from Mr. Dickson’s tweed trousers. As you can see, this particular grease happens to contain the distinctive corpuscles of swine’s blood, which are clearly evident in both samples. Here, at this point, you observe their round shapes, and here again, and here. There is no mistaking the fact that both samples come from the same source. I submit to you, gentlemen, that Mr. Dickson—”
“No!” Dickson shouted again. “And you aren’t going to frighten me into a confession with this scientific hocus-pocus, Sheridan. Fingerprints and corpuscles! It’s all utter nonsense. Nonsense, do you hear me?”
“I should think more seriously of this accusation, Mr. Dickson, if I were you,” said the constable.
“Poppycock,” Dickson muttered. “Lunacy, done up in scientific jargon. I am going back to the inn, and first thing tomorrow, to London.”
The coroner looked pained. “I am sorry to tell you that I have heard enough evidence to remand you into the constable’s custody, Mr. Dickson.” He sighed heavily as he heaved himself to his feet. “I am even more sorry to say that the matter of Herr Albrecht’s death shall have to be brought before a coroner’s jury.”
“A jury?” Dickson repeated scornfully. “And what makes you think that a jury of villagers would consider such ludicrous evidence as fingerprints and corpuscles? It’s all academic nonsense!”
“Perhaps.” The coroner sighed again. “But the Crown must have a go, anyway. Shall we say, tomorrow fortnight?”
28
“Come, Josephine, in my flying machine. Up, we go!”
—American Music Hall Ballad, 1920’s
Charles slumped in his leather chair in the library and held up his glass. As Kate poured his sherry, she touched his shoulder.
“You’ll feel better in a few days,” she said sympathetically, “when the disappointment has passed.”
“I am sorry to say I told you so,” Harry Hodson said in a gloomy tone, “but I did warn you that no jury—no village jury, at any rate—would be able to understand such a complicated hocus-pocus. And I was right. Your presentation might have persuaded the Royal Academy, Charles, but the jurors were simply not able to hear it. They brought in the only verdict they knew how to bring: death by automotive mischance.”
“It was the fingerprints that frightened them off,” Dr. Bassett said, from the window where he stood looking out. “Perhaps if you had ended your presentation with the corpuscles and the red grease on Dickson’s trousers—”
“But that was only half the evidence,” Charles protested. “And by far the less interesting half.”
“The more comprehensible half,” Bassett rejoined. “It will be decades before a jury is capable of understanding fingerprint evidence. And it may never happen”
“The problem really was,” Kate said,
resuming her seat on the sofa beside Constable Laken, “that Bess Gurton’s testimony couldn’t be introduced. For fear of harming her reputation in the village, that is.”
“But if Bess Gurton had mentioned her flying ointment,” Ned replied, “the jury would have dismissed it just as they did the fingerprints and the corpuscles—as so much magical nonsense.”
“However, seen from another point of view,” Hodson went on, as if no one else had spoken, “the Crown didn’t lose much.”
“That’s right,” Laken said. “Practically speaking, even had Dickson been bound over, the prosecution could not have proved that he intended to murder Albrecht. All that could have been argued was that he meant to cause mischief in the operation of the motorcar in which he thought Dunstable would be riding, as a way of getting even for the injuries he had suffered at the man’s hands. Dickson could not have anticipated that Dunstable would spend the day in the dung heap, or that Albrecht would impale himself upon the broken tiller.”
Charles roused himself. “I suppose you are right, but it is frustrating to know that science cannot assure that justice is done.”
Kate entirely concurred with Charles. If this had been one of Beryl Bardwell’s crime stories, the plot would have been tied up much more neatly: the culprit apprehended, summoned to the bar, and punished. If his conviction could have been managed by no other means, the novelist would have arranged a confession, appropriately dramatic, of course, or even a suicide. Right and justice would have triumphed in the end, and the world been restored to order and normalcy under the law. To have events turn out otherwise was deeply frustrating.
The doctor came away from the window and sat down. “It is a mistake to assume that justice will not be done,” he said. “There is more than one way to skin a cat, you know.”
“Oh?” Kate asked.
“I heard from Marsden today. Ponsonby and Dunstable have apparently forged a temporary alliance for the purpose of ruining poor Dickson. They have been busy in Threadneedle Street, buying up Dickson’s notes so that they can call them in. Coming on top of the expenses of the patent litigation against which the man must defend himself, this will utterly ruin him.”