“Ah, Mr. Grisley!” murmured Aunt Moll. “Pity he’s not to the fore, he’d set us right, I warrant, he’s that fond of Annet!”
“Mr. Grisley is from home. But I have the key. Now if I get out at his dormer, I’ll make my way easily round the parapet, and so get in at Mrs. Duncom’s casement and find ou what’s amiss.”
“Well thought on, Mistress Oliver,” approved the watch, “for the benchers of the Temple would take it ill, was we to go banging in doors.”
“And how if the casement be bolted and barred, as surely it will be?”
“Then, Mrs. Taffety, I must make shift. Wait here. I’ll not be long.”
Waiting on the landing, we fell silent, listening for we knew not what. When it came, it startled us—a crash, and the tinkle of falling glass.
“Alack, has she fallen?”
“Not so, ma’am, she has made shift. Now she’s within, soon she’ll shoot the great bolt and admit us.”
We waited at the door in suspense. After an interminable minute, the lock turned, and we heard someone wrenching at the bolt. It stuck; then with a shriek it grated grudgingly back, and the heavy door swung slowly in.
On the threshold stood Mrs. Oliver, rigid and staring. Her lips moved, but no sound came.
“In God’s name, what is it?” cried Mrs. Taffety in alarm.
Mrs. Oliver found a hoarse whisper:
“Murder!” she gasped. “Murder lock’d in!”
Her eyes rolled up in her head, her knees gave way, and she collapsed in a huddle in the doorway.
“Let me, sirs.” The motherly female stepped forward. “When Katty’s in her fits, I know how to deal.”
Leaving her to deal, the rest of us pressed in, Dr. Johnson, myself, the watch, and the fluttering women. The Irish girl was with us, but her swains, the sculls, I noted, had vanished.
Wha a sight met our eyes! The young maid’s pallet was made up in the passage, by the inner door as if to guard it, and there lay Annet in her blood. She had fought for her life, for blood was everywhere, but repeated blows of an axe or hammer had broke her head and quelled her forever.
In the inner room old Mrs. Duncom lay strangled. The noose was still around her neck. In the other bed old Betty had suffered the same fate. Of the silver tankard there was no trace.
“Murder and robbery! We must send for the Bow Street men!” I cried.
“Not in my bailiwick!” growled the Temple watchman. “I am the law in Bayfield Court!”
“So he is, Mr. Boswell,” assented Dr. Johnson. “Well, well, if we put our minds to it, we may make shift to unravel this dreadful riddle for ourselves—three women dead in an apartment locked and barred!”
Cold air touched me and a shudder shook me. The icy air was no ghostly miasma, I soon saw, but a chill spring breeze from the casement, where the small old-fashioned panes nearest the bolt had been shattered when entrance was effected.
“The window was bolted, I told you so!” cried Mrs. Taffety. “Every bolt set! The Devil is in it!”
“The Devil—the Devil!” the charwomen took up the chorus.
“Y’are foolish females!” said the watch stoutly. “Look you, Mr. Johnson, I’ll undertake to shew you how ’twas done.”
“I thank you, my man—”
“Jona Mudge, sir, at your service.”
“I thnk you, honest Mudge, pray instruct me, for I am ever happy to be instructed.”
“Then behold, sir! I take this string—” It came out of his capacious pocket with a conjurer’s flourish at which the females gaped. “Now pray step this way, sir (leading us to the outer door). Now mark me! I loop my string around the knob of the bolt—I step outside, pray follow—”
On the outside landing Mistress Katty Oliver was sitting propped against the wall with closed eyes, and her friend was assiduously fanning her. They paid us no mind. Lowering his tone, Mudge continued his lecture:
“I bring the two ends of the string with me—I close the door. Now I will pull on both ends of the string, which will shoot the bolt—and so I shall have only to pull away the string by one end, the door is bolted, and I stand outside. As thus—”
As he spoke, he pulled on the two ends of the string. Nothing happened. The unwieldly bolt stuck, and no force applied to the string could budge it.
“An old trick not always to be relied upon,” smiled Dr. Johnson. “I thank you, sir, for demonstrating how this strange fear was not accomplished!”
As Mudge stood there looking foolish, there was a clatter on the stair, and three gentlemen arrived on the run. The benchers had come back from Commons. Dr. Johnson knew them all, the red-faced one, the exquisite one, the melancholy one, and greeted each in turn.
“What, Mr. Kerry, Mr. Geegan, Mr. Grisley, you come in an unhappy time.”
“Your servant, Mr. Johnson, what’s amiss?”
Mistress Oliver was on her feet, her hand on his arm.
“Don’t go in, Mr. Grisley, for God’s sake don’t go in. Come away, I’ll fetch you a tot, come away.”
“Alack, sirs, murder’s amiss!” I blurted.
The two young benchers were through the door in an instant, and the melancholy Grisley shook off his maid’s hand and followed. When his eye lit on Annet’s bloody brow, he cried aloud.
“Cover her face! For God’s sake cover her face!”
Quick hands drew up the crimsoned bed-cloathes, and so we found the hammer. Dr. Johnson’s shapely strong fingers handled it gingerly, bringing it close to his near-sighted eyes.
“An ordinary hammer. What can it tell us?”
“Perhaps much, for I perceive there’s an initial burned in the wood of the handle,” said I, feeling pleased with myself. “A G, sir, if I mistake not.”
“A G. Yours, Mr. Geegan?”
The exquisite youth jibbed in alarm.
“Not mine, Divil a whit, no, sir, not mine!”
“Mr. Grisley?”
“I cannot look on it, do not ask me. Kat will know.”
The little dark woman took his hand and spoke soothingly to him.
“I think sir, ’tis the one you lent to Mr. Kerry some days since.”
“To me!” cried the ruddy-faced bencher. “You lie, you trull!”
“I don’t lie,” said the woman angrily. “Don’t you remember, you sent your charwoman for it, I gave it to Biddy to knock in some nails?” In a sudden silence, all eyes turned to the red-haired girl.
“No, sir, I never!” she cried in alarm.
“Go off, you trull!” bawled the alarmed Kerry. “I dismiss you! So you may e’en fetch your bundle and be off with you!”
“Nay, sir, not so fast, she must remain!” remonstrated the watch.
“Not in my chambers, the d—d trull! She may take up her bundle outside my door, and be d—d to her!”
I perceived that Mr. Kerry had come from Commons not a little pot-valiant, and thought it good riddance when he stamped off.
Biddy gave us one scared look, and followed him. Young Geegan seemed minded to go along, but was prevented by the arrival of Mudge’s mate of the watch. Leather-belted, truncheon in hand, flat and expressionless of face, there he stood, filling the doorway and saying nothing. It gave us a sinister feeling of being under guard in that chamber of death. Mrs. Taffety fell to sobbing, and the women to comforting her. Dr. Johnson was probing the chimneys, neither deterred nor assisted by the blank-faced watchman, when suddenly Mr. Kerry was back again, redder than ever, hauling a reluctant Biddy by the wrist, and in his free hand brandishing a silver tankard.
“’Tis Mrs. Duncom’s!” cried Mrs. Taffety.
“Hid in Biddy’s bundle! I knew it, the trull!”
The wretched Biddy began to snivel.
“I had it for a gift,” she wept. “I did not know murder was in it!”
Dr. Johnson took her in hand: “Who gave it you?”
“My f-friends.”
“What friends?”
Biddy was loath to say, but the philosopher prev
ailed by sheer moral force, and Biddy confessed:
“The Sander brothers. Scouts to the benchers. Them that’s gone off.”
“They shall be found. And what did you do for them?”
“I—” The girl’s resistance was broken. “I kept watch on the stair.”
Then it came with a rush: “When Annet went in the evening for some wine to make the old lady’s nightly posset, she left the door on the jar as was her wont, that she might come in again without disturbing old Betty; and knowing it would be so, Matt Sander, that’s the puny one, he slips in and hides under the bed. When all is still, he lets in his brother, and I keep watch on the stair, and they come out with the tankard of broad pieces—” The wretched girl began to bawl. “They swore to me they had done no murder, only bound and gagged the folk for safety’s sake.”
“And when they came out,” pursued Dr. Johnson, “they shot the bolt from outside. How did they do that?”
“I know not what you mean, sir. They pulled the door to, ’tis a spring lock, I heard it snick shut, and so we came away and shared out in the archway below.”
“Which of them carried the hammer?”
“Neither, sir, for what would they need a hammer?”
Then realization flooded her, and she bawled louder, looking wildly about for a refuge. Suddenly, defiantly, Mr. Geegan stepped forward and took her in his arms.
“So, Mr. Johnson,” said watchman Mudge smugly, “our problem is solved, we had no need of Bow Street! You come along of me, Mistress Biddy. Nay, let go, sir.” Mr. Geegan reluctantly obeyed. “Pray, Mr. Johnson, do you remain here, I’ll fetch the crowner to sit on the bodies.”
“Do so, good friend. I’ll desire all those present—” his eye took in the three benchers and the huddling women “—to bear me company till he comes. Bucket will stand by to keep order. Come friends, we shall sit more at our ease in the dining room. After you, ma’am. After you, sir.”
They went without demur, all save Grisley. In the passage, by Annet’s still form on her pallet, he balked. “Shall she lie alone?” he cried piteously. “I’ll stay by her while I may.”
“And I by you,” said Kat Oliver.
Her master sank to the hallway bench, wringing his hands and crying: “O Annet, Annet, why did you not admit me? I might have saved you!”
“Come, sir,” soothed his maid, “be easy, you could do nothing.”
We left them fallen silent on the bench. Instead of following the others into the dining room, Dr. Johnson led me back into the inner chamber, where two bodies lay coldly blown upon from the broken window panes.
JOHNSON: There’s more in this, Mr. Boswell, than meets the eye.
BOSWELL: Did not the Sanders do it?
JOHNSON: And got out through a door locked and barred, and left it so? Biddy saw no hocussing of the lock, and I question whether they knew how to do it.
BOSWELL: Mudge knew how. Were they in it together? I ask myself, sir, what is this guardian of the Temple peace, that carries a picklock in his pocket, and knows how to shoot a bolt from without? I smell Newgate on him.
JOHNSON: You may be right, sir. They are a queer lot, the Temple watch. But this one is no wizard, he could neither, in the event, pick the lock nor shoot the bolt.
BOSWELL: Then how was it done? This seems an impossible crime.
JOHNSON: ’Twas all too possible, sir, for it happened.
BOSWELL: The women are right, the Devil did it.
JOHNSON: A devil did it indeed, but in human form.
BOSWELL: One who got in through bolts and bars, and got out again leaving all locked and barred behind him?
JOHNSON: There was a way in, for someone got in, and a way out too, that’s plain to a demonstration. We must find it
BOSWELL: I am at a loss, sir. Where must we look?
JOHNSON: We must look where all answers are found, sir, in our own heads. Perpend, sir. Murder in a locked dwelling, and no murderer there to take—’tis a pretty mystery, and this one the more complex because it is triple. Let us consider the problem at large. Many answers are possible.
BOSWELL (ruefully): In my head, sir, I don’t find even one.
JOHNSON: Well, sir, here’s one: Perhaps there is no murderer there to take, because there is no murder, only accident that looks like murder.
BOSWELL: Two old women simultaneously strangle themselves by accident, while the young one accidentally falls afoul of a hammer? Come, sir, this is to stretch coincidence and multiply impossibilities!
JOHNSON: Granted, Mr. Boswell. Then is it perhaps double murder and suicide behind bolted doors?
BOSWELL: Suicide by the hammer? Unheard of!
JOHNSON: And nigh on impossible. Well, then, sir, was the tragedy engineered from without, and no murderer ever entered at all?
BOSWELL: The nooses were tightened and the hammer wielded, by someone on the wrong side of the door? This is witchcraft and sorcery, nothing less.
JOHNSON: Then suppose there is no murder, the victim is only stunned or stupefied, until the person who breaks in commits it?
BOSWELL: Three murders, sir, and the third a noisy one, all in the one minute while we listened at the door? Come, sir, these conjectures are ingenious, but none fits this case.
JOHNSON: Then there must be a way in, and a way out. Think, Mr. Boswell: all is not so locked and sealed, but holes exist.
BOSWELL: I have it! The keyhole!
JOHNSON: A keyhole that not even a picklock could penetrate? Think again, sir. What else?
BOSWELL: Nay, I know not, sir. There is no scuttle to the roof.
JOHNSON: There is not, sir.
BOSWELL: And the chimneys are narrow, and stuffed with soot undisturbed.
JOHNSON: So we saw. Not the chimneys. Good. We progress.
BOSWELL: How, progress?
JOHNSON: When one has eliminated all impossibilities, then what remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
BOSWELL: What truth?
JOHNSON: Nay, sir, I have yet to test it. Come with me.
In the passage-way Annet lay still under the reddened blankets. Grisley and his maid sat as still on the settle, he with his face in his hands, she at his shoulder regarding him with a countenance full of concern. A blackened old chair with high back stood opposite. Dr. Johnson ensconced himself therein like some judge on the bench, and I took my stand by him like a bailiff.
“Mistress Oliver,” he began, “pray assist our deliberations.”
“As best I can, sir,” she answered readily.
Grisley did not stir.
“Then tell us, in your airy peregrination, in what condition did you find Mrs. Duncom’s casement window?”
“Bolted fast, sir, I was forced to break the glass that I might reach in and turn the catch.”
“I know, we heard it shatter. You broke the glass and reached in. With both hands?”
“Certainly not, sir, I held on with the other hand.”
“Then why did you break two panes?”
“I don’t know. For greater assurance—”
“Nonsense! I put it to you, my girl, you found the window broken.”
“Then why would I break it again?”
“Because you knew at once who had been there before you, and thought only to shield him. So you broke the second pane, that we might hear the crash of glass, and think you had been forced to break in. The broken window would else tell us that the murderer came from Mr. Grisley’s casement.”
“He never!” cried the woman, on her feet before her master as if to shield him. “Would he kill Annet, that he lusted after?”
“Would he not, if she resisted him? These violent passions have violent ends. No, no. I pity him, but justice must be done. Think, Mistress Oliver, this is the man that slunk around the parapet at dead of night, a hammer in his pocket. With it he breaks a pane, turns the bolt, and enters. The two helpless old women fall victim to his string, lest they hinder his intent. When Annet resists him, in his fury he batters her
to death, and so flees as he came. May such a creature live?”
This harangue slowly penetrated the mind of the unhappy Grisley, and he rose to his feet.
“Bucket!” called Dr. Johnson sharply. The watchman appeared. “Take him in!”
“No! No!” cried the woman. “He is innocent!”
“Who will believe it?” countered Johnson. “No, ma’am, he’ll hang for it, and justly too. Did you ever see a man hanged, Mr. Boswell? It is a shocking sight to see a man struggling as he strangles in a string, his face suffused, his limbs convulsed, for long horrible minutes. Well, he has earned it. Take him, Bucket.”
As Bucket collared the unresisting Grisley, we found we had a fury on our hands. With nails and teeth Kat Oliver fell upon Dr. Johnson. I had her off in a trice; but I could not have held her had not Bucket come to my aid.
“I thank you, Mr. Boswell,” said Dr. Johnson, settling his neckcloth and staunching his cheek, “your address has saved me a mauling. A woman’s a lioness in defence of what she loves.”
“In my belief she’s mad,” said I angrily, as the wiry little woman wrenched against our pinioning arms.
“That may also be true. A thin line divides great love and madness. Give over, ma’am, let justice take its course. So, that’s better—let her go, Mr. Boswell. As to Mr. Grisley, Bucket, to Newgate with him, and lock him in the condemned cell.”
“You shan’t! You shan’t!” sobbed Kat Oliver wildly. “It was I that killed them, it was I, it was I!”
“You, ma’am? A likely story! Why would you do such a thing?”
“Why would I destroy that prim little bitch, that was destroying him? For his sake, gladly. Yet I never meant to use the hammer, that I carried only to break the glass—”
“But,” I objected, “Biddy had the hammer!”
“You are deceived, Mr. Boswell. To disclaim the hammer, this woman did not scruple to lie. Well, then, Mrs. Oliver, if not to use the hammer, what was your intent?”
The little woman’s eyes looked inward, and she spoke with a kind of horrid relish:
“When I knew the people lay bound and gagged—”
“How did you know?”
“I heard the talk on the landing. I could not sleep for thinking of—I could not sleep, and the boys were drunk and loud. I opened the door and listened. I saw my opportunity. How I entered you know. The old women I finished neatly, with their own curtain cords. The young one—”
The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson Page 20