“By the other bridge. I don’t know when I got in, certainly long after midnight.”
“Did you see any light in the room with the French window as you came back?”
“No, not that I remember. I didn’t look particularly. I’d left my uncle making up his accounts.”
“You didn’t see the dog Caesar?”
“I saw him on my way out. He went part of the way down to the gate with me, and then I ordered him home. I didn’t see him on my way back, but I thought nothing of that. By the way, I remember that the fellow with the Austin car glanced at his watch once while I was with him. He may remember what time it was, then, if you’re really interested.”
“Can you suggest any explanation of the uncompleted document your uncle was writing that night?” inquired Dronfield.
Jack shook his head.
“I haven’t the faintest idea.”
The inspector, quite satisfied, withdrew along with his subordinate. As they walked together down the drive, the sergeant broke silence.
“That’s the lot of them cleared, if you take the evidence as sound.”
“Corfe’s story’s unsupported except by that girl of his; and her evidence doesn’t tell us what he really did,” objected Dronfield. “It’s on the cards that the two of them were in it, and just cooked up a yarn between them.”
“Might be that,” the sergeant agreed, thoughtfully.
“I’ve got to hurry off now,” Dronfield said, with a glance at his watch. “I’ll just save that appointment and no more.”
“Merely a slight attack of conjunctivitis,” the specialist assured Inspector Dronfield. “Nothing to worry about, though it’s been a nuisance to you, I expect. I’ll write you a prescription for some eye-drops.”
He went over to his writing-table and jotted down something on a sheet of paper.
Meanwhile the inspector, left to himself, let his eyes wander over the various appliances of the oculist’s armoury: the box of lenses, the ophthalmoscope, the perimeter, the astigmometer, and the case of test types with its concealed lamp. Finally his glance fell upon something which puzzled him by its very simplicity: a little disc, concentrically ringed like a target, with a hole where the bull’s-eye should have been, and furnished with a handle like a lorgnette.
The inspector was the last patient on that day’s list; and the oculist was a man who liked to relax after his work was done. As he came back with his completed prescription, he noticed Dronfield’s interest in the little instrument.
“Looking at the Placido’s disc?” he inquired with a smile. “I’ll give you three guesses and see if you can spot what we use it for.”
“I was just wondering, but I didn’t get to the length of guessing,” the inspector confessed. “It’s beyond me. What is its use?”
“It’s for diagnosing conical cornea,” the specialist explained, picking it up as he spoke.
The inspector became alert. Conical cornea! Of course, that was what the sergeant had misheard and turned into “comical cornea.” The trouble with Timothy Sparkford’s eyesight. The inspector decided that there would be no harm in hearing more about that subject.
“Could you explain it, sir?” he asked, with obvious interest. “What is conical cornea?”
“It’s a malformation of the eye. You know what the cornea is? The transparent covering at the front of the eyeball. In the normal eye, it’s roughly spherical, and it acts as part of the mechanism of sight. If it’s misshapen—conical in form instead of spherical—it distorts vision. Unfortunately you can’t correct the distortion with spectacles.”
“Not even with special spectacles? I see. And where does the little target-thing come in, sir?”
“It shows up the defect at once. I bring it up to the patient’s eye, target side towards him. The rings are reflected in his cornea, as if it were a convex mirror; and by looking through his hole where the bull’s-eye should be, I can examine the reflection. If he’s got conical cornea, the reflection’s distorted in a peculiar way that’s recognisable at a glance. Very neat, isn’t it?”
“Very neat indeed,” the inspector acquiesced. “And you can’t cure it with spectacles?”
“No, spectacles are of no use. In fact, until lately, it’s been hopeless.”
“Until lately?” demanded the inspector sharply. “You mean it can be cured now?”
The oculist leaned over and opened a box which lay on his table.
“Curiously enough, I had a patient here today to be tested for these things. They’re what are called ‘contact glasses’.”
He showed Dronfield a series of tiny objects, almost hemispherical in form and made from glass so thin that they seemed the most fragile things Dronfield had seen.
“The idea is this,” the oculist went on. “The essence of the trouble is that the outer surface of the patient’s cornea is conical instead of spherical. Fill one of these little glass cups with saline solution and slip it under the eyelids, above and below. It sticks to the eyeball by surface tension, and the salt water fills up the gap between eye and glass.
“The net result is that you’ve now got a glass outer surface to your eyeball, and that new surface is shaped just like a normal cornea. You’ve merged the defective conical surface into a system with the same refractive index… but perhaps that’s getting a bit too technical for you.”
“And a man wearing one of these gadgets sees as well as a normal person?”
“So far as his conical cornea goes, yes. And what’s more, no one would ever imagine that the patient was wearing anything. It’s not like spectacles. These contact glasses, once they’re in place, are almost unnoticeable, unless you’ve been told to look for them.”
“I suppose they take some getting in, though?”
The oculist shook his head.
“Not a bit of it! The patient can do that for himself; insert them in the morning and take them out again when he goes to bed, if he wishes. They hardly cause the wearer any discomfort.”
“I see, sir. That’s wonderful. Very interesting indeed, sir. I’d no notion things of that sort were possible. And now I mustn’t detain you any longer. This the prescription? Thank you, sir.”
And with as much haste as courtesy allowed, the inspector bowed himself out of the consulting-room. His first call was at a druggist’s, where he asked one or two questions. Then he returned to his headquarters and summoned Sergeant Longridge.
“We’ve got the Leadburn murderer at last,” he said, as his subordinate entered the room.
“Can you prove it?” the sergeant asked sceptically. “Who is it?”
“I think so, if we’ve any luck in a search of the premises after we arrest him. It’s Timothy Sparkford.”
“But the thing’s flat impossible,” Longridge protested. “I’ve checked all the evidence to the last dot, in his case, because at the start I was dead sure he was the man we wanted. Even if you leave out his sight—and that makes the affair impossible in itself—the times won’t fit. Nohow. See here. The dog was poisoned at 12.20 a.m.
“After that, he had to do the murder, get away, climb a fence, cross the siding, climb the other fence, and get to his cottage, all by 12.30 a.m., for he telephoned to Dr. Ackworth about that time. I’ve timed myself over that course, going as hard as I could, and it took me nine minutes from door to door. Where’s the time required for murdering old Leadburn?
“Besides, Timothy had eaten some bad tinned stuff that evening and was deathly sick. We’ve Ackworth’s evidence for that. A man as sick as all that simply couldn’t commit a murder neatly and then do all the gymnastics required to get home in double-quick time, let alone he’s as blind as a bat.”
“You can wash out the ‘blind as a bat’ part,” Dronfield declared. “He’s only blind when he chooses to be.”
And he explained the matter of the contact glasses
to his subordinate, who opened his eyes at the information.
“Amazing what they can do,” he admitted. “Still, you can’t get over the rest of the facts.”
“Let’s take it step by step,” suggested Dronfield, who prided himself on having a systematic mind.
“Here’s how I figure it out. Timothy’s been thinking of this for a good while. He goes up to London and gets himself fitted with contact glasses. That leaves no clue among the eye-specialists hereabouts. Of course he says nothing about the glasses to anyone. That equips him with fair normal sight, unknown to anyone in these parts. Now come to the day of the murder. He buys some liver. We know that. He’s got cyanide to hand…”
“How?” demanded Longridge.
“From his electro-plating hobby. Cyanide’s used in silver-plating. That fits him out for the dog-poisoning. He goes up to the house that evening to give his brother Jack a helping hand, and to make sure that all’s favourable to his plans up to the last possible minute. Then he clears out at 10 p.m.”
“That seems straight enough,” Longridge admitted. “It’s the next stage that’s sticky.”
“Well, he clears out at ten o’clock, and Jack has to see the poor blind bat half-way home. That’s bound to come out in evidence, and it impresses his bad sight on simple fellows like you and me.
“Later on, he puts on his contact glasses and comes back. I don’t know when, exactly. Just before midnight, probably, so as to catch old Leadburn before he finishes up his accounts. He passes the dog without its barking. One of the family. He tries to force old Leadburn into signing some document, probably something that would put an end to the avuncular tyranny.
“Method of persuasion: a cord round the neck. No chance of Leadburn yelling for help in these circs. Unfortunately, the cord gets drawn a bit too tight. Leadburn chokes. Timothy tries to cover up the cord marks by cutting the old man’s throat. He holds the knife in a bit of newspaper and burns the paper afterwards. No finger-prints, in that way. But in the flurry he forgets all about left-handedness and leaves that clue for us. Then he goes off, calls up the dog, poisons it with cyanided liver…”
“Why?” demanded Longridge. “I don’t see the point, there.”
“I see two,” retorted the inspector. “First, the dog-poisoning makes it look like an outsider’s job. Second, beasts poisoned with cyanide give a loud cry; and Timothy takes care to lead the beast under his brother’s window to kill it. The youngster’s got toothache and isn’t sleeping sound. The howl wakes him. That dates the poisoning at twelve-twenty all right, for Timothy would bear the express in mind. And we dropped into his trap and assumed the dog had been poisoned by an intruder on his way in to the house. Makes all the difference in the supposed timing of the affair. Gained Timothy all the time he took in the actual murder, see?”
“I see,” said Longridge. “Go on.”
“With his contact glasses on, he’d get to the cottage as quick as you could. Nine minutes, you said. He’d be home by 12.30 a.m. Then at once he rings up Ackworth and says he’s been sick. He’s no more sick than you are. But as soon as he’s done phoning, he swallows an emetic.”
“Ipecacuanha?” queried the sergeant, conquering the polysyllable by careful enunciation.
“No, it’s too slow in acting. Copper sulphate would do the trick. It acts immediately. And he’d have it for his electro-plating stunt. By the time Ackworth arrives, Timothy’s sick enough; and he tells that lie about some tinned stuff having given him the gripes. Naturally Ackworth suspects nothing. So there’s a sound alibi established. See?”
“It sounds neat,” Longridge admitted. “And it clears Corfe of the dog-poisoning, which was the sticker from my point of view. You’re going to get a warrant?”
“Yes. You’ll execute it. Take a man or two with you and comb his cottage thoroughly after he’s in custody. What we want is cyanide, copper or zinc sulphate—they’re both emetics—his contact glasses, any bills or papers you can find that bear on his purchase of the glasses. If you get these things, we have him by the short hairs, I think.”
“You’ll have to suggest some motive that’ll pass with a jury,” objected the sergeant.
“No difficulty about that,” declared the inspector. “We know our Timothy. Great lad for wine and women. What about the discreditable conduct clause in the will? Besides, his lungs are gone, aren’t they? He’s thirty, now. I don’t know how far gone he is, but most likely he thought he wouldn’t be in any condition to enjoy his fortune if he had to wait six years more for it. ‘A short life and a gay one’ was his idea. But you can’t be gay on £100 a year—not in that line of gaiety, anyhow. So it was a race between his consumption and the date of his inheritance. All he wanted was to shift that date a bit forward, so that he could enjoy his money while he was still fit for it. That’s how I see it, anyhow.”
“Lucky you had to see that eye-doctor,” was Sergeant Longridge’s reflection, which he kept to himself.
The Broken Toad
H. C. Bailey
When asked to list the leading lights of Golden Age fiction, few modern readers are likely to mention the name of H. C. Bailey, although some connoisseurs of the genre hold him in high esteem. His star may have faded, but between the wars, Henry Christopher Bailey (1878–1961) was one of the most renowned exponents of the form. In her essay “Detective Writers of England,” Agatha Christie heaped praise on Bailey’s principal detective, the surgeon and Home Office consultant Reggie Fortune: “Mr. Fortune is, undeniably, a great man. Now to label a man a great man and then write about him and show him to be a great man is a supreme literary feat!… Some of the best of the Fortune stories show the deduction of a whole malignant growth from one small isolated incident… underneath Fortune’s smiling exterior there is cold steel. Reggie Fortune is for Justice—merciless and inexorable justice. His pity and indignation are aroused by the victims—in execution he is as ruthless as his own knife.”
Bailey’s mannered literary style is deeply out of fashion, but it is a pity that his merits are nowadays often overlooked. “The Broken Toad” first appeared in the October 1934 issue of The Windsor Magazine, and was collected in Mr. Fortune Objects the following year. Vivid and distinctive, this story about a “chain of murder” showcases Reggie’s diagnostic flair and Bailey’s storytelling at its best.
* * *
MR. FORTUNE’S eyes, drowsy and benign, contemplated Mrs. Fortune. The shape of her face, the poise of her head, and her amber hair were shown him against a background of sunlit, misty blue, the August sky of his garden in the Cotswolds. The shape of the rest of her, which was covered in amber silk, had behind it the dark, shining green and the creamy flowers of a fence of Mermaid roses. She was receiving the admiration of the Chief of the Criminal Investigation Department and was graciously amused.
A maid arrived with tea. Mr. Fortune’s eyes turned to consideration of the cake-stand. He sighed content. He wriggled in his long chair to a position more adapted for eating. He gazed at his wife, and said plaintively, “Joan!”
Mrs. Fortune and Lomas turned towards him. “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed,” said Lomas.
“He has so few pleasures,” Mrs. Fortune apologised. “The perpetual small boy.”
“Oh, no. No. Very mature mind. Speakin’ roughly, the only mature mind I ever knew,” Reggie murmured. “In a man.” He took a yellow cake of a bun formation. “Try this pleasure, Lomas. My design, executed by Elise. Sort o’ saffron cake, with interior clotted cream and wild strawberry jam.”
“Good Gad!” Lomas exclaimed. “Saffron!”
“Why not?” Reggie opened round eyes at him. “Oh, that!”
“Yes, exactly,” said Lomas, with a grimace. “No accounting for taste,” he shrugged. “You’re a wonderful animal, Reginald.” He turned to Mrs. Fortune and apologised. “I beg your pardon.”
She smiled. “I do like to think h
e’s rational—as often as I can.” With affection she surveyed Reggie’s delicate management of gushing jam and cream.
“Instincts very highly developed,” Lomas admitted. “But we are making the man self-conscious.” He steered the conversation away from the question of saffron in cake to life at large.
Reggie finished a second gâteau Elise, and returned to society to hear them talking morals… Lomas was talking… Lomas was being clever…something about goodness consisting of good taste.
“Just existing beautifully,” said Mrs. Fortune. “Then you must be very good, Mr. Lomas.”
“No. No. Certain activity required,” Reggie protested.
“Hush.” Lomas waved him out of it. “What’s Mrs. Fortune’s definition of goodness?”
“Being kind,” she said.
“Yes. Both have glimpses of the truth,” Reggie murmured. “Bein’ kind isn’t adequate. You’ve got to be kind within reason. Lots of nasty sin comes out of the other kind of kindness. That’s where sound taste is useful. Love’s done about as much harm in the world as hate. Devotion—self-sacrifice—dangerous, delusive virtues. Made some of the worst horrors.”
“You do sometimes believe in something, don’t you?” said Mrs. Fortune gently.
“Oh, yes. Yes. All the time, Joan. I believe in justice.”
“And mercy,” she said.
“Not by itself, no. Bein’ always merciful produces fools and devils.”
She looked at him severely. “Do you make my flesh creep? No, not when you’re trying.”
“He’s doing worse,” said Lomas. “He’s talking shop,” and turned the conversation to the new painter’s picture of Mrs. Fortune…
The emotions of Lomas over saffron in cake and Mr. Fortune’s criticism of unselfish love were alike inspired by the case of the broken toad. It is to be admitted that this has become a favourite subject with Mr. Fortune. He considers it—and has been thought too fond of saying so—the supreme example of crimes of affection; he maintains that study of it is necessary to a liberal education.
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