Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 4

by R. Austin Freeman

  "Was the heart affection sufficient to account for the death of deceased?"

  "No. It was quite a serviceable heart. There was good compensation—that is to say, there was extra growth of muscle to make up for the leaky valve. So far as his heart was concerned, deceased might have lived for another twenty years."

  "Were you able to ascertain what actually was the cause of death?"

  "Yes. The cause of death was aconitine poisoning."

  At this reply a murmur of astonishment arose from the jury, and I heard Miss D'Arblay suddenly draw in her breath. The spectators sat up on their benches, and even the veiled lady was so far interested as to look up from her paper.

  "How had the poison been administered?" the coroner asked.

  "It had been injected under the skin by means of a hypodermic syringe."

  "Can you give an opinion as to whether the poison was administered to deceased by himself or by some other person?"

  "It could not have been injected by deceased himself," the witness replied. "The needle-puncture was in the back, just below the left shoulder-blade. It is, in my opinion, physically impossible for anyone to inject with a hypodermic syringe into his own body in that spot. And, of course, a person who was administering an injection to himself would select the most convenient spot—such as the front of the thigh. But apart from the question of convenience, the place in which the needle-puncture was found was actually out of reach." Here the witness produced a hypodermic syringe, the action of which he demonstrated with the aid of a glass of water; and having shown the impossibility of applying it to the spot that he had described, passed the syringe round for the jury's inspection.

  "Have you formed any opinion as to the purpose for which this drug was administered in this manner?"

  "I have no doubt that it was administered for the purpose of can the death of deceased."

  "Might it not have been administered for medicinal purposes?"

  "That is quite inconceivable. Leaving out of consideration the circumstances—the time and place where the administration occurred—the dose excludes the possibility of medicinal purposes. It was a lethal dose. From the tissues round the needle-puncture we recovered the twelfth of a grain of aconitine. That alone was more than enough to cause death. But a quantity of the poison had been absorbed, as was shown by the fact that we recovered a recognizable trace from the liver."

  "What is the medicinal dose of aconitine?"

  "The maximum medicinal dose is about the four-hundredth of a grain, and even that is not very safe. As a matter of fact, aconitine is very seldom used in medical practice. It is a dangerous drug and of no particular value."

  "How much aconitine do you suppose was injected?"

  "Not less than the tenth of a grain—that is, about forty times the maximum medicinal dose. Probably more."

  "There can, I suppose, be no doubt as to the accuracy of the facts that you have stated as to the nature and quantity of the poison?"

  "There can be no doubt whatever. The analysis was made in my presence by Professor Woodford of St. Margaret's Hospital after I had removed the tissues from the body in his presence. He has not been called because, in accordance with the procedure under Coroners Law, I am responsible for the analysis and the conclusions drawn from it."

  "Taking the medical facts as known to you, are you able to form an opinion as to what took place when the poison was administered?"

  "That," the witness replied, "is a matter of inference or conjecture. I infer that the person who administered the poison thrust the needle violently into the back of the deceased, intending to inject the poison into the chest. Actually, the needle struck a rib and bent up sharply, so that the contents of the syringe were delivered just under the skin. Then I take it that the assailant ran away—probably towards the pond—and deceased pursued him. Very soon the poison would take effect, and then deceased would have fallen. He may have fallen into the pond, or more probably was thrown in. He was alive when he fell into the pond, as is proved by the presence of water in the lungs; but he must then have been insensible and in a dying condition, for there was no water in the stomach, which proves that the swallowing reflex had already ceased."

  "Your considered opinion, then, based on the medical facts ascertained by you, is, I understand, that deceased died from the effects of a poison injected into his body by some other person with homicidal intent?"

  "Yes; that is my considered opinion, and I affirm that the facts do not admit of any other interpretation."

  The coroner looked towards the jury. "Do any of you gentlemen wish to ask the witness any questions?" he inquired; and when the foreman had replied that the jury were entirely satisfied with the doctor's explanations, he thanked the witness, who thereupon retired. The medical witness was succeeded by the inspector, who made a short statement respecting the effect found on the person of deceased. They comprised a small sum of money—under two pounds—a watch, keys and other articles, none of them of any appreciable value, but such as they were, furnishing evidence that at least petty robbery had not been the object of the attack.

  When the last witness had been heard, the coroner glanced at his notes and then proceeded to address the jury.

  "There is little, gentlemen," he began, "that I need say to you. The facts are before you and they seem to admit of only one interpretation. I remind you that, by the terms of your oath, your finding must be 'according to the evidence.' Now, the medical evidence is quite dear and definite. It is to the effect that deceased met his death by poison administered violently by some other person; that is, by homicide. Homicide is the killing of a human being, and it may or may not be criminal. But if the homicidal act is done with the intent to kill, if that intention has been deliberately formed—that is to say, if the homicidal act has been premeditated—then that homicide is wilful murder.

  "Now, the person who killed the deceased came to the place where the act was done provided with a solution of a very powerful and uncommon vegetable poison. He was also provided with a very special appliance—to wit, a hypodermic syringe—for injecting it into the body. The fact that he was furnished with the poison and the appliance creates a strong presumption that he came to this place with the deliberate intention of killing the deceased. That is to say, this fact constitutes strong evidence of premeditation.

  "As to the motive for this act, we are completely in the dark; nor have we any evidence pointing to the identity of the person who committed that act. But a coroner's inquest is not necessarily concerned with motives, nor is it our business to fix the act on any particular person. We have to find how and by what means the deceased met his death; and for that purpose we have clear and sufficient evidence. I need say no more, but will leave you to agree upon your finding."

  There was a brief interval of silence when the coroner had finished speaking. The jury whispered together for a few seconds; then the foreman announced that they had agreed upon their verdict.

  "And what is your decision, gentlemen?" the coroner asked.

  "We find," was the reply, "that deceased met his death by wilful murder, committed by some person unknown."

  The coroner bowed. "I am in entire agreement with you, gentlemen," said he. "No other verdict was possible; and I am sure you will join with me in the hope that the wretch who committed this dastardly crime may be identified and in due course brought to justice."

  This brought the proceedings to an end. As the court rose, the spectators filed out of the building and the coroner approached Miss D'Arblay to express once more his deep sympathy with her in her tragic bereavement. I stood apart with Miss Boler, whose rugged face was wet with tears, but set in a grim and wrathful scowl.

  "Things have taken a terrible turn," I ventured to observe.

  She shook her head and uttered a sort of low growl. "It won't bear thinking of," she said gruffly. "There is no possible retribution that would meet the case. One has thought that some of the old punishments were cruel and barbarous; but if
I could lay my hands on the villain that did this—" She broke off, leaving the conclusion to my imagination, and in an extraordinarily different voice, said: "Come, Miss Marion; let us get out of this awful place."

  As we walked away slowly and in silence, I looked at Miss D'Arblay, not without anxiety. She was very pale, and the dazed expression that her face had borne on the fatal day of the discovery had, to some extent, reappeared. But now the signs of bewilderment and grief were mingled with something new. The rigid face, the compressed lips and lowered brows spoke of a deep and abiding wrath.

  Suddenly she turned to me and said, abruptly, almost harshly: "I was wrong in what I said to you before the inquiry. You remember that I said the circumstances of the loss could make no difference; but they make a whole world of difference. I had supposed that my dear father had died as he had thought he would die; that it was the course of Nature, which we cannot rebel against. Now I know, from what the doctor said, that he might have lived on happily for the full span of human life but for the malice of this unknown wretch. His life was not lost; it was stolen—from him and from me."

  "Yes," I said somewhat lamely. "It is a horrible affair."

  "It is beyond bearing!" she exclaimed. "If his death had been natural, I would have tried to resign myself to it. I would have tried to put my grief away. But to think that his happy, useful life has been snatched from him, that he has been torn from us who loved him, by the deliberate act of this murderer—it is unendurable. It will be with me every hour of my life until I die. And every hour I shall call on God for justice against this wretch."

  I looked at her with a sort of admiring surprise. A quiet, gentle girl as I believed her to be at ordinary times, now, with her flushed cheeks, her flashing eyes and ominous brows, she reminded me of one of the heroines of the French Revolution. Her grief seemed to be merged in a longing for vengeance.

  While she had been speaking. Miss Boler had kept up a running accompaniment in a deep, humming bass. I could not catch the words—if there were any—but was aware only of a low, continuous bourdon. She now said with grim decision: "God will not let him escape. He shall pay the debt to the uttermost farthing." Then, with sudden fierceness, she added: "If I should ever meet with him, I could kill him with my own hand."

  After this, both women relapsed into silence, which I was loath to interrupt. The circumstances were too tragic for conversation. When we reached their gate. Miss D'Arblay held out her hand and once again thanked me for my help and sympathy.

  "I have done nothing," said I, "that any stranger would not have done, and I deserve no thanks. But I should like to think that you will look on me as a friend, and if you should need any help will let me have the privilege of being of use to you."

  "I look on you as a friend already," she replied; "and I hope you will come and sec us sometimes—when we have settled down to our new conditions of life."

  As Miss Boler seemed to confirm this invitation, I thanked them both and took my leave, glad to think that I had now a recognized status as a friend and might pursue a project which had formed in no mind even before we had left the court-house.

  The evidence of the murder, which had fallen like a thunderbolt on us all, had a special significance for me; for I knew that Dr. Thorndyke was behind this discovery, though to what extent I could not judge. The medical witness was an obviously capable man, and it might be that he would have made the discovery without assistance. But a needle-puncture in the back is a very inconspicuous thing. Ninety-nine doctors in a hundred would almost certainly have overlooked it, especially in the case of a body apparently 'found drowned' and seeming to call for no special examination beyond the search for gross injuries. The revelation was very characteristic of Thorndyke's methods and principles. It illustrated in a most striking manner the truth which he was never tired of insisting on: that it is never safe to accept obvious appearances, and that every case, no matter how apparently simple and commonplace, should be approached with suspicion and scepticism and subjected to the most rigorous scrutiny. That was precisely what had been done in this case; and thereby an obvious suicide had been resolved into a cunningly-planned and skilfully-executed murder. It was quite possible that, but for my visit to Thorndyke, those cunning plans would have succeeded and the murderer have secured the cover of a verdict of 'death by misadventure' or 'suicide while temporarily insane.' At any rate, the results had justified me in invoking Dr. Thorndyke's aid; and the question now arose whether it would be possible to retain him for the further investigation of the case.

  This was the project that had occurred to me as I listened to the evidence and realized how completely the unknown murderer had covered up his tracks. But there were difficulties. Thorndyke might consider such an investigation outside his province. Again, the costs involved might be on a scale entirely beyond my means. The only thing to be done was to call on Thorndyke and hear what he had to say on the subject, and this I determined to do on the first opportunity. And having formed this resolution, I made my way back by the shortest route to Mecklenburgh Square, where the evening consultations were now nearly due.

  IV. Mr. Bendelow

  There are certain districts in London the appearance of which conveys to the observer the impression that the houses, and indeed the entire streets, have been picked up second-hand. There is in their aspect a grey, colourless, mouldy quality, reminiscent, not of the antique shop, but rather of the marine-store dealers; a quality which even communicates itself to the inhabitants, so that one gathers the impression that the whole neighbourhood was taken as a going concern.

  It was on such a district that I found myself looking down from the top of an omnibus a few days after the inquest (Dr. Cornish's brougham being at the moment under repairs and his horse 'out to grass' during the slack season), being bound for a street in the neighbourhood of Hoxton—Market Street by name—which abutted, as I had noticed when making out my route, on the Regent's Canal. The said route I had written out, and now, in the intervals of my surveys of the unlovely prospect, I divided my attention between it and the note which had summoned me to these remote regions.

  Concerning the latter I was somewhat curious, for the envelope was addressed, not to Dr. Cornish but to 'Dr. Stephen Gray'. This was really quite an odd circumstance. Either the writer knew me personally or was aware that I was acting as locum tenens for Cornish. But the name—James Morris—was unknown to me, and a careful inspection of the index of the ledger had failed to bring to light anyone answering to the description. So Mr. Morris was presumably a stranger to my principal also. The note, which had been left by hand in the morning, requested me to call 'as early in the forenoon as possible,' which seemed to hint at some degree of urgency. Naturally, as a young practitioner, I speculated with interest, not entirely unmingled with anxiety, on the possible nature of the case, and also on the patient's reason for selecting a medical attendant whose residence was so inconveniently far away.

  In accordance with my written route, I got off the omnibus at the corner of Shepherdess Walk, and pursuing that pastoral thoroughfare for some distance, presently plunged into a labyrinth of streets adjoining it and succeeded most effectually in losing myself. However, inquiries addressed to an intelligent fish-vendor elicited a most lucid direction and I soon found myself in a little, drab street which justified its name by giving accommodation to a row of stationary barrows loaded with what looked like the 'throw-outs' from a colossal spring-clean. Passing along this kerb-side market and reflecting (like Diogenes, in similar circumstances) how many things there were in the world that I did not want, I walked slowly up the street looking for number 23:—my patient's number—and the canal which I had seen on the map. I located them both at the same instant, for number 23 turned out to be the last house on the opposite side, and a few yards beyond it the street was barred by a low wall, over which, as I looked, the mast of a sailing-barge came into view and slowly crept past. I stepped up to the wall and looked over. Immediately beneath me was th
e towing-path, alongside which the barge was now bringing up and beginning to lower her mast, apparently to pass under a bridge that spanned the canal a couple of hundred yards farther along.

  From these nautical manoeuvres I transferred my attention to my patient's house—or at least, so much of it as I could see, for number 23 appeared to consist of a shop with nothing over it. There was, however, in a wall which extended to the canal wall, a side door with a bell and knocker, so I inferred that the house was behind the shop and that the latter had been built on a formerly existing front garden. The shop itself was somewhat reminiscent of the stalls down the street, for though the fascia was newly painted (with the inscription J. Morris, Dealer in Antiques), the stock-in-trade exhibited in the window was in the last stage of senile decay. It included, I remember, a cracked Toby jug, a mariner's sextant of an obsolete type, a Dutch clock without hands, a snuff-box, one or two planter statuettes, an invalid punchbowl, a shiny, dark and inscrutable oil-painting and a plaster mask, presumably the death-mask of some celebrity whose face was unknown to me.

  My examination of this collection was brought to a sudden end by the apparition of a face above the half-blind of the glazed shop-door, the face of a middle-aged woman who seemed to be inspecting me with malevolent interest Assuming—rather too late—a brisk, professional manner, I opened the shop-door, thereby setting a bell jangling within, and confronted the owner of the face.

  "I am Dr. Gray," I began to explain.

  "Side-door," she interrupted brusquely. "Ring the bell and knock."

  I backed out hastily and proceeded to follow the directions, giving a tug at the bell and delivering a flourish on the knocker. The hollow reverberations of the latter almost suggested an empty house, but my vigorous pull at the bell-handle produced no audible result, from which I inferred—wrongly, as afterwards appeared—that it was out of repair.