The Dead Witness: A Connoisseur's Collection of Victorian Detective Stories

by Michael Sims

  “How do you know that?”

  “I found a few hairs of his tail among the brambles which bordered the sides of the ditch.”

  “Go on.”

  “As for the other horse, there can be no trouble in describing him, since he was left dead on the field of battle.”

  “What was the cause of his death?”

  “A ball which had passed through his brain.”

  “Was the ball that of a pistol or a gun?”

  “It was a pistol-bullet, sire. Besides, the manner in which the horse was wounded explained to me the tactics of the man who had killed it. He had followed the circumference of the wood in order to take his adversary in flank. Moreover, I followed his foot-tracks on the grass.”

  “The tracks of the black horse, do you mean?”

  “Yes, sire.”

  “Go on, Monsieur d’Artagnan.”

  “As your majesty now perceives the position of the two adversaries, I will, for a moment, leave the cavalier who had remained stationary for the one who started off at a gallop.”

  “Do so.”

  “The horse of the cavalier who rode at full speed was killed on the spot.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “The cavalier had not time even to throw himself off his horse, and so fell with it. I observed the impression of his leg, which, with a great effort, he was enabled to extricate from under the horse. The spur, pressed down by the weight of the animal, had plowed up the ground.”

  “Very good; and what did he do as soon as he rose up again?”

  “He walked straight up to his adversary.”

  “Who still remained upon the verge of the forest?”

  “Yes, sire. Then, having reached a favorable distance, he stopped firmly, for the impression of both his heels are left in the ground quite close to each other, fired, and missed his adversary.”

  “How do you know he did not hit him?”

  “I found a hat with a ball through it.”

  “Ah, a proof, then!” exclaimed the king.

  “Insufficient, sire,” replied D’Artagnan, coldly; “it is a hat without any letters indicating its ownership, without arms; a red feather, as all hats have; the lace, even, had nothing particular in it.”

  “Did the man with the hat through which the bullet had passed fire a second time?”

  “Oh, sire, he had already fired twice.”

  “How did you ascertain that?”

  “I found the waddings of the pistol.”

  “And what became of the bullet which did not kill the horse?”

  “It cut in two the feather of the hat belonging to him against whom it was directed, and broke a small birch at the other end of the open glade.”

  “In that case, then, the man on the black horse was disarmed, whilst his adversary had still one more shot to fire?”

  “Sire, while the dismounted rider was extricating himself from his horse, the other was reloading his pistol. Only, he was much agitated while he was loading it, and his hand trembled greatly.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Half the charge fell to the ground, and he threw the ramrod aside, not having time to replace it in the pistol.”

  “Monsieur d’Artagnan, this is marvellous you tell me.”

  “It is only close observation, sire, and the commonest highwayman could tell as much.”

  “The whole scene is before me from the manner in which you relate it.”

  “I have, in fact, reconstructed it in my own mind, with merely a few alterations.”

  “And now,” said the king, “let us return to the dismounted cavalier. You were saying that he walked towards his adversary while the latter was loading his pistol.”

  “Yes; but at the very moment he himself was taking aim, the other fired.”

  “Oh!” said the king; “and the shot?”

  “The shot told terribly, sire; the dismounted cavalier fell upon his face, after having staggered forward three or four paces.”

  “Where was he hit?”

  “In two places; in the first place, in his right hand, and then, by the same bullet, in his chest.”

  “But how could you ascertain that?” inquired the king, full of admiration.

  “By a very simple means; the butt end of the pistol was covered with blood, and the trace of the bullet could be observed, with fragments of a broken ring. The wounded man, in all probability, had the ring-finger and the little finger carried off.”

  “As far as the hand goes, I have nothing to say; but the chest?”

  “Sire, there were two small pools of blood, at a distance of about two feet and a half from each other. At one of these pools of blood the grass was torn up by the clenched hand; at the other, the grass was simply pressed down by the weight of the body.”

  “Poor De Guiche!” exclaimed the king.

  “Ah! it was M. de Guiche, then?” said the musketeer, quietly. “I suspected it, but did not venture to mention it to your majesty.”

  “And what made you suspect it?”

  “I recognized the De Gramont arms upon the holsters of the dead horse.”

  “And you think he is seriously wounded?”

  “Very seriously, since he fell immediately, and remained a long time in the same place; however, he was able to walk, as he left the spot, supported by two friends.”

  “You met him returning, then?”

  “No; but I observed the footprints of three men; the one on the right and the one on the left walked freely and easily, but the one in the middle dragged his feet as he walked; besides, he left traces of blood at every step he took.”

  “Now, monsieur, since you saw the combat so distinctly that not a single detail seems to have escaped you, tell me something about De Guiche’s adversary.”

  “Oh, sire, I do not know him.”

  “And yet you see everything very clearly.”

  “Yes, sire, I see everything; but I do not tell all I see; and, since the poor devil has escaped, your majesty will permit me to say that I do not intend to denounce him.”

  “And yet he is guilty, since he has fought a duel, monsieur.”

  “Not guilty in my eyes, sire,” said D’Artagnan, coldly.

  “Monsieur!” exclaimed the king, “are you aware of what you are saying?”

  “Perfectly, sire; but, according to my notions, a man who fights a duel is a brave man; such, at least, is my own opinion; but your majesty may have another, it is but natural, for you are master here.”

  “Monsieur d’Artagnan, I ordered you, however—”

  D’Artagnan interrupted the king by a respectful gesture. “You ordered me, sire, to gather what particulars I could, respecting a hostile meeting that had taken place; those particulars you have. If you order me to arrest M. de Guiche’s adversary, I will do so; but do not order me to denounce him to you, for in that case I will not obey.”

  “Very well! Arrest him, then.”

  “Give me his name, sire.”

  The king stamped his foot angrily; but after a moment’s reflection, he said, “You are right—ten times, twenty times, a hundred times right.”

  “That is my opinion, sire: I am happy that, this time, it accords with your majesty’s.”

  “One word more. Who assisted Guiche?”

  “I do not know, sire.”

  “But you speak of two men. There was a person present, then, as second.”

  “There was no second, sire. Nay, more than that, when M. de Guiche fell, his adversary fled without giving him any assistance.”

  “The miserable coward!” exclaimed the king.

  “The consequence of your ordinances, sire. If a man has fought well, and fairly, and has already escaped one chance of death, he naturally wishes to escape a second. M. de Bouteville cannot be forgotten very easily.”

  “And so, men turn cowards.”

  “No, they become prudent.”

  “And he has fled, then, you say?”

  “Yes; and as
fast as his horse could possibly carry him.”

  “In what direction?”

  “In the direction of the château.”

  “Well, and after that?”

  “Afterwards, as I have had the honor of telling your majesty, two men on foot arrived, who carried M. de Guiche back with them.”

  “What proof have you that these men arrived after the combat?”

  “A very evident proof, sire; at the moment the encounter took place, the rain had just ceased, the ground had not had time to imbibe the moisture, and was, consequently, soaked; the footsteps sank in the ground; but while M. de Guiche was lying there in a fainting condition, the ground became firm again, and the footsteps made a less sensible impression.”

  Louis clapped his hands together in sign of admiration. “Monsieur d’Artagnan,” he said, “you are positively the cleverest man in my kingdom.”

  “The identical thing M. de Richelieu thought, and M. de Mazarin said, sire.”

  “And now, it remains for us to see if your sagacity is at fault.”

  “Oh! sire, a man may be mistaken; humanum est errare,” said the musketeer, philosophically.

  “In that case, you are not human, Monsieur d’Artagnan, for I believe you are never mistaken.”

  Andrew Forrester Jr.

  (dates unknown)

  Between 1849 and 1853, about the time that Dickens published “On Duty with Inspector Field,” the British periodical Chambers Magazine launched a series of allegedly true criminal cases under the title “Recollections of a Police Officer.” Attributed simply to Waters, the surname of the narrator, the “Recollections” were actually written by William Russell, a busy London journalist. A Waters collection appeared under the same title in 1856, a volume that crime fiction historian Howard Haycraft described as the first detective book to appear among the English “yellowbacks.” These were cheap, magazine-like paperbacks, printed in eye-catching colors although not always yellow, targeted at rail travelers and the increasing numbers of literate, if not necessarily cultivated, masses. These were akin to the infamous penny dreadfuls, which were flashy, penny-apiece installments of serials, aimed primarily at working-class teenagers. London bookseller George Routledge launched his publishing empire with a “Railway Library” series of yellowbacks in 1849.

  The contemporary attitude toward detectives was that they were troublemaking spies who invaded privacy and endangered liberty, so Russell made a point of demonstrating the civilized behavior of his detective. They still had little support behind them and tended to employ disguises and subterfuge in pursuit of evidence rather than interrogation and overt investigation. Waters is considered the founder of the “casebook” school of crime fiction—straightforward stories about police investigation of a crime, the ancestor of today’s police procedurals. Not all of his descendants maintained the same level of realism. “Arrested on Suspicion,” a suspenseful nonseries story about the narrator’s fight to save his sister from being punished for a crime she didn’t commit, concentrates upon the ratiocinative process in unraveling a crime and deciphering a code.

  Andrew Forrester was a pseudonym employed by an important early writer whose real name is lost. In 1864, his story “The Unknown Weapon” introduced Mrs. G., narrator of a series of excellent stories in The Female Detective—one of the first female detectives in the genre, possibly the very first. “Arrested on Suspicion” appeared a year earlier, in Forrester’s collection The Revelations of a Private Detective. The narrator explicitly cites his debt to Edgar Allan Poe in being able to solve the crime, and Forrester also cites him in “The Unknown Weapon.” This sort of homage to predecessors remained common in nineteenth-century crime fiction, culminating perhaps in Sherlock Holmes’s mocking dismissal of Auguste Dupin.

  Arrested on Suspicion

  I may as well say, at once, that this statement never could have been made had I not been, as I remain, an admirer of Edgar Allan Poe; and if ever I have time, I hope to show that his acts were the result, not so much of a bad, as a diseased mind. For one thing, I believe his eyes were affected with an inequality of sight, which, in itself, was enough to overbalance a very exciteable brain.

  But Poe has nothing to do with my statement, except as its prompter. My name is John Pendrath (Cornish man, as I dare say you see in a moment), my age is twenty-eight, and I live with my sister Annie. We are all that are left of our family, which you must see by the name was equally good and old. I need not say what I am; because, though I feel no shame for my work, I do not care about it, and hope, some day, when the Lord Chancellor wakes up, to be able to go back to Cornwall.

  However, it seems I am writing about myself, and that is not my intention; which, indeed, is to show how much individual good such a writer as even the condemned Edgar Poe can do, and even on this side of the Atlantic.

  As I and my sister cannot afford a house of our own, we live in apartments—two bedrooms and a sitting-room, generally second floor; Annie having the room behind our parlour, and I camping in a garret. I do not say we are very happy, because of our chancery affair; but we are generally cheerful—always so, except when we hear about costs, which is all we do hear of our famous suit.

  When we had been in Aylesbury Terrace, Bayswater, about six weeks—on the second floor—I was coming home as usual, when, in the ordinary way, I found Annie at the usual meeting-place.

  “Annie,” said I, “what’s the matter? Have you heard any good news?”

  “No, Jack; but when I don’t come to meet you, and I run down to open the door, you look twice before you give me my Cornwall kiss.”

  “Why, Annie,” said I, “what do you mean?” for I hate a mystery without a statement. This arises, I suppose, through my liking for mathematics.

  “Jack, dear,” said she, “I have a double.”

  “No, Annie,” I replied, “that can’t be, or I shall go courting.”

  “Upon my word, Jack,” said sister Annie, “I felt inclined to ask myself whether I had gone out and come home with a stout lady, aged forty, in black silk, when I saw them come to the door: and now I’ve left them behind, under our rooms, I ask myself—in fun, you know—whether I have come out to meet you.”

  Of course then, I understood. Annie had made a statement.

  “Oh,” said I, “a mother, with her daughter, apparently, has taken the first floor of No. 10, Aylesbury Terrace, and the supposed daughter is certainly something like you.”

  “That is the history itself, John,” said sister Annie, “if you take out apparently; for I heard the younger call the elder, ‘ma, dear’; and I am sure they have taken the first floor, because the door was open as I came down, and I could not help seeing that they were eating slices of bread and marmalade.”

  “Oh!” replied I; for I could say nothing else.

  And when I saw the young person come up the house steps next morning (Sunday), it seemed to me that she resembled Annie in some degree; but my sister—like most women I think, had exaggerated the likeness. She would have passed for Annie with a stranger, but not with me.

  Annie was also wrong in saying they had taken the first floor. The mother (apparent), alone lived in our house, and the daughter, said to be married, lived elsewhere.

  Well, I hope my sister Annie has no more curiosity than most women; but, as I am away all day, and she is lonely, I can’t blame her for looking out of the window, though I have, perhaps, sometimes told her it was a pity she could not find something better to do. So, she could not help noticing four daily facts:—

  1. That the younger woman came every morning.

  2. That the mother and daughter (apparent) went out together.

  3. That they seldom left the house two days running in the same clothes, and frequently exchanged their cloaks and shawls on the same day.

  4. That the occupant of the first floor always came home alone.

  I put these premises before myself—though, perhaps, it would be, as a rule, below a man to interfere in such matters as the
se—and I came to this conclusion:—That the husband of the daughter had quarrelled with the mother; that, therefore, the mother and daughter went about together, while the husband was away at his business; and that they were rather vulgar, well-off women, who liked to go about and show their finery.

  I had no need to tell Annie to avoid Mrs. Mountjoy and her daughter, Mrs. Lemmins. She felt neither was a companion for her. I mention this because Mrs. Mountjoy made advances to Annie, which, however, ended on her side; for in spite of the assurances of Mrs. Mountjoy’s respectability by our landlady, Mrs. Blazhamey, Annie and I kept our own opinions.

  I suppose Mrs. Mountjoy had been in the house about a month, when I noticed a little blue-stoned ring on Annie’s left hand. Of course I said nothing about it, since she did not, though I saw it was new. I am not one of those men who pry into women’s actions. You know we do not like them to pry into ours.

  Well, the thunderclap came as suddenly as I am about stating its particulars to you. I was at work, when a cab drove up to the door, and out came Mrs. Blazhamey. I shoved her into the waiting-room for the public, and then listened for her to speak. The poor woman seemed quite overwhelmed for some moments, and though I did not move or utter a word, I dare say I was white enough.

  “Oh, sir,” at last, she said, “Miss Annie’s took up for shopliftin’!”

  If you ask me how I felt, I cannot tell you. But I am sure of this—that within ten seconds I was thinking wholly of my sister. I know Mrs. Blazhamey believes me to this day a brute; but I hope I am not cynical when I say, that most of the people who give way to a deal of emotion generally seem to have a quantity of big I’s mixed up with their grief. I dare say, though, I am a cold sort of man.

  What was to be done? See Annie, if possible. It was then ten minutes to four, the hour at which we closed. I obtained an easy permit to leave, and jumped into Mrs. Blazhamey’s cab. I did not speak, after learning whither we had to go, till we met a hansom cab, into which I and the poor woman with me exchanged.

  Of course, I am not going to give the particulars of the meeting. I have only to state facts, so I will only say that Annie, after a little while, was almost as cool as myself. She had been arrested at three, and now it was half-past four. That she would not be taken before the magistrate till half-past eleven the next morning was the first news I gained. Then I asked the inspector on duty, and the policeman who had brought Annie to that place, for the particulars of the case.