Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 4

by R. Austin Freeman

  VIII. Simon Bendelow, Deceased

  It was near the close of my incumbency of Dr. Cornish's practice—indeed, Cornish had returned on the previous evening—that my unsatisfactory attendance on Mr. Simon Bendelow came to an end. It had been a wearisome affair. In medical practice, perhaps even more than in most human activities, continuous effort calls for the sustenance of achievement. A patient who cannot be cured or even substantially relieved is of all patients the most depressing. Week after week I had made my fruitless visits, had watched the silent, torpid sufferer grow yet more shrivelled and wasted, speculating even a little impatiently on the possible duration of his long-drawn-out passage to the grave. But at last the end came.

  "Good morning, Mrs. Morris," I said as that grim female opened the door and surveyed me impassively, "and how is our patient to-day?"

  "He isn't our patient any longer," she replied. "He's dead."

  "Ha!" I exclaimed. "Well, it had to be, sooner or later. Poor Mr. Bendelow! When did he die?"

  "Yesterday afternoon, about five," she answered.

  "H'm! If you had sent me a note, I could have brought the certificate. However, I can post it to you. Shall I go up and have a look at him?"

  "You can if you like," she replied. "But the ordinary certificate won't be enough in his case. He is going to be cremated."

  "Oh, indeed," said I, once more unpleasantly conscious of my inexperience. "What sort of certificate is required for cremation?"

  "Oh, all sorts of formalities have to be gone through," she answered. "Just come into the drawing-room and I will tell you what has to be done."

  She preceded me along the passage and I followed meekly, anathematizing myself for my ignorance, and my instructors for having sent me forth crammed with academic knowledge but with the practical business of my profession all to learn.

  "Why are you having him cremated?" I asked, as we entered the room and shut the door.

  "Because it is one of the provisions of his will," she answered. "I may as well let you see it."

  She opened a bureau and took from it a foolscap envelope from which she drew out a folded document. This she first unfolded and then re-folded so that its concluding clauses were visible, and laid it on the flap of the bureau. Placing her finger on it, she said: "That is the cremation clause. You had better read it."

  I ran my eye over the clause, which read: "I desire that my body shall be cremated and I appoint Sarah Elizabeth Morris the wife of the aforesaid James Morris to be the residuary legatee and sole executrix of this my will." Then followed the attestation clause, underneath which was the shaky but characteristic signature of Simon Bendelow, and opposite this the signatures of the witnesses, Anne Dewsnep and Martha Bonnington, both described as spinsters and both of a joint address which was hidden by the folding of the document.

  "So much for that," said Mrs. Morris, returning the will to its envelope; "and now as to the certificate. There is a special form for cremation which has to be signed by two doctors, and one of them must be a hospital doctor or a consultant. So I wrote off at once to Dr. Cropper, as he knew the patient, and I have had a telegram from him this morning saying that he will be here this evening at eight o'clock to examine the body and sign the certificate. Can you manage to meet him at that time?"

  "Yes," I replied, "fortunately I can, as Dr. Cornish is back."

  "Very well," said she; "then in that case you needn't go up now. You will be able to make the examination together. Eight o'clock, sharp, remember."

  With this she re-conducted me along the passage and—I had almost said ejected me; but she sped the parting guest with a business-like directness that was perhaps accounted for by the presence opposite the door of one of those grim parcels-delivery vans in which undertakers distribute their wares, and from which a rough—looking coffin was at the moment being hoisted out by two men.

  The extraordinary promptitude of this proceeding so impressed me that I remarked: "They haven't been long making the coffin."

  "They didn't have to make it," she replied. "I ordered it a month ago. It's no use leaving things to the last moment."

  I turned away with somewhat mixed feelings. There was certainly a horrible efficiency about this woman. Executrix indeed! Her promptness in carrying out the provisions of the will was positively appalling. She must have written to Cropper before the breath was fairly out of poor Bendelow's body, but her forethought in the matter of the coffin fairly made my flesh creep.

  Dr. Cornish made no difficulty about taking over the evening consultations, in fact he had intended to do so in any case. Accordingly, after a rather early dinner, I made my way in leisurely fashion back to Hoxton, where, after all, I arrived fully ten minutes too soon. I realized my prematureness when I halted at the corner of Market Street to look at my watch; and as ten additional minutes of Mrs. Morris's society offered no allurement, I was about to turn back and fill up the time with short walk when my attention was arrested by a mast which had just appeared above the wall at the end of the street. With its black-painted truck and halyard blocks and its long tricolour pennant, it looked like the mast of a Dutch schuyt or galliot, but I could hardly believe it possible that such a craft could make its appearance in the heart of London. All agog with curiosity, I hurried up the street and looked over the wall at the canal below; and there, sure enough, she was—a big Dutch sloop, broad-bosomed, massive and mediaeval, just such a craft as one may see in the pictures of old Vandervelde, painted when Charles the Second was king.

  I leaned on the low wall and watched her with delighted interest as she crawled forward slowly to her berth, bringing with her, as it seemed, a breath of the distant sea and the echo of the surf murmuring on sandy beaches. I noted appreciatively her old-world air, her antique build, her gay and spotless paint and the muslin curtains in the little windows of her deck-house, and was, in fact, so absorbed in watching her that the late Simon Bendelow had passed completely out of my mind. Suddenly, however, the chiming of a clock recalled me to my present business. With a hasty glance at my watch, I tore myself away reluctantly, darted across the street and gave a vigorous pull at the bell.

  Dr. Cropper had not yet arrived, but the deceased had not been entirely neglected, for when I had spent some five minutes staring inquisitively about the drawing-room into which Mrs. Morris had shown me, that lady returned, accompanied by two other ladies whom she introduced to me somewhat informally by the names of Miss Dewsnep and Miss Bonnington respectively. I recognized the names as those of the two witnesses to the will and inspected them with furtive curiosity, though, indeed, they were quite unremarkable excepting as typical specimens of the genus elderly spinster.

  "Poor Mr. Bendelow!" murmured Miss Dewsnep, shaking her head and causing an artificial cherry on her bonnet to waggle idiotically. "How beautiful he looks in his coffin!"

  She looked at me as if for confirmation, so that I was fain to admit that his beauty in this new setting had not yet been revealed to me.

  "So peaceful," she added, with another shake of her head, and Miss Bonnington chimed in with the comment, "Peaceful and restful." Then they both looked at me and I mumbled indistinctly that I had no doubt he did; the fact being that the inmates of coffins are not in general much addicted to boisterous activity.

  "Ah!" Miss Dewsnep resumed, "how little did I think when I first saw him, sitting up in bed so cheerful in that nice, sunny room in the house at—"

  "Why not?" interrupted Mrs. Morris. "Did you think he was going to live for ever?"

  "No, Mrs. Morris, ma'am," was the dignified reply, "I did not. No such idea ever entered my head. I know too well that we mortals are all born to be gathered in at last as the—er—as the—"

  "Sparks fly upwards," murmured Miss Bonnington. "As the corn is gathered in at harvest-time," Miss Dewsnep continued with slight emphasis. "But not to be cast into a burning fiery furnace. When I first saw him in the other house at—"

  "I don't see what objection you need have to cremation,
" interrupted Mrs. Morris. "It was his own choice, and a good one, too. Look at those great cemeteries. What sense is there in letting the dead occupy the space that is wanted for the living?"

  "Well," said Miss Dewsnep, "I may be old-fashioned, but it does seem to me that a nice quiet funeral with plenty of flowers and a proper, decent grave in a churchyard is the natural end to a human life. That is what I look forward to, myself."

  "Then you are not likely to be disappointed," said Mrs. Morris; "though I don't quite see what satisfaction you expect to get out of your own funeral."

  Miss Dewsnep made no reply, and an interval of dismal silence followed. Mrs. Morris was evidently impatient of Dr. Cropper's unpunctuality. I could see that she was listening intently for the sound of the bell, as she had been even while the conversation was in progress; indeed I had been dimly conscious all the while of a sense of tension and anxiety on her part. She had seemed to me to watch her two friends with a sort of uneasiness and to give a quite uncalled-for attention to their rather trivial utterances.

  At length her suspense was relieved by a loud ringing of the bell. She started up and opened the door, but she had barely crossed the threshold when she suddenly turned back and addressed me.

  "That will be Dr. Cropper. Perhaps you had better come out with me and meet him."

  It struck me as an odd suggestion, but I rose without comment and followed her along the passage to the street door, which we reached just as another loud peal of the bell sounded in the house behind us. She flung the door wide open and a small, spectacled man charged in and seized my hand, which he shook with violent cordiality.

  "How do you do, Mr. Morris?" he exclaimed. "So sorry to keep you waiting, but I was unfortunately detained at a consultation."

  Here Mrs. Morris sourly intervened to explain who I was; upon which he shook my hand again and expressed his joy at making my acquaintance. He also made polite inquiries as to our hostess's health, which she acknowledged gruffly over her shoulder as she preceded us along the passage; which was now pitch-dark and where Cropper dropped his hat and trod on it, finally bumping his head against the unseen wall in a frantic effort to recover it.

  When we emerged into the dimly-lighted hall, I observed the two ladies peering inquisitively out of the drawing-room door. But Mrs. Morris took no notice of them, leading the way directly up the stairs to the room with which I was already familiar. It was poorly illuminated by a single gasbracket over the fireplace, but the light was enough to show us a coffin resting on three chairs and beyond it the shadowy figure of a man whom I recognized as Mr. Morris.

  We crossed the room to the coffin, which was plainly finished with zinc fastenings, in accordance with the regulations of the crematorium authorities, and had let into the top what I first took to be a pane of glass, but which turned out to be a plate of clear celluloid. When we had made our salutations to Mr. Morris, Cropper and I looked in through the celluloid window. The yellow, shrunken face of the dead man, surmounted by the skull-cap which he had always worn, looked so little changed that he might still have been in the drowsy, torpid state in which I had been accustomed to see him. He had always looked so like a dead man that the final transition was hardly noticeable.

  "I suppose," said Morris, "you would like to have the coffin-lid taken off?"

  "God bless my soul, yes!" exclaimed Cropper. "What are we here for? We shall want him out of the coffin, too."

  "Are you proposing to make a post-mortem?" I asked, observing that Dr. Cropper had brought a good-sized handbag. "It seems hardly necessary, as we both know what he died of."

  Cropper shook his head. "That won't do," said he. "You mustn't treat a cremation certificate as a mere formality. We have got to certify that we have verified the cause of death. Looking at a body through a window is not verifying the cause of death. We should cut a pretty figure in a court of law if any question arose and we had to admit that we had certified without any examination at all. But we needn't do much, you know. Just get the body out on the bed and a single small incision will settle the nature of the growth. Then everything will be regular and in order. I hope you don't mind, Mrs. Morris," he added suavely, turning to that lady.

  "You must do what you think necessary," she replied indifferently. "It is no affair of mine;" and with this she went out of the room and shut the door.

  While we had been speaking, Mr. Morris, who apparently had kept a screw-driver in readiness for the possible contingency, had been neatly extracting the screws and now lifted off the coffin-lid. Then the three of us raised the shrivelled body—it was as light as a child's—and laid it on the bed. I left Cropper to do what he thought necessary, and while he was unpacking his instruments I took the opportunity to have a good look at Mr. Morris, for it is a singular fact that in all the weeks of my attendance at this house I had never come into contact with him since that first morning when I had caught a momentary glimpse of him as he looked out over the blind through the glazed shop-door. In the interval his appearance had changed considerably for the better. He was no longer a merely unshaved man; his beard had grown to respectable length, and, so far as I could judge in the uncertain light, the hare-lip scar was completely concealed by his moustache.

  "Let me see," said Cropper, as he polished a scalpel on the palm of his hand, "when did you say Mr. Bendelow died?"

  "Yesterday afternoon at about five o'clock," replied Mr. Morris.

  "Did he really?" said Cropper, lifting one of the limp arms and letting it drop on the bed. "Yesterday afternoon! Now, Gray, doesn't that show how careful one should be in giving opinions as to the time that has elapsed since death? If I had been shown this body and asked how long the man had been dead, I should have said three or four days. There isn't the least trace of rigor mortis left; and the other appearances—but there it is. You are never safe in giving dogmatic opinions."

  "No," I agreed. "I should have said he had been dead more than twenty-four hours. But I suppose there is a good deal of variation."

  "There is," he replied. "You can't apply averages to particular cases."

  I did not consider it necessary to take any active part in the proceedings. It was his diagnosis and it was for him to verify it. At his request Mr. Morris fetched a candle and held it as he was directed; and while these preparations were in progress I looked out of the window, which commanded a partial view of the canal. The moon had now risen and its light fell on the white-painted hull of the Dutch sloop, which had come to rest and made fast alongside a small wharf. It was quite a pleasant picture, strangely at variance with the squalid neighbourhood around. As I looked down on the little vessel, with the ruddy light glowing from the deck-house windows and casting shimmering reflections in the quiet water, the sight seemed to carry me far away from the sordid streets around into the fellowship of the breezy ocean and the far-away shores whence the little craft had sailed, and I determined, as soon as our business was finished, to seek some access to the canal and indulge myself with a quiet stroll in the moonlight along the deserted towing-path.

  "Well, Gray," said Cropper, standing up with the scalpel and forceps in his hands, "there it is, if you want to see it. Typical carcinoma. Now we can sign the certificates with a clear conscience. I'll just put in a stitch or two and then we can put him back in his coffin. I suppose you have got the forms?"

  "They are downstairs," said Mr. Morris. "When we have got him back, I will show you the way down."

  This, however, was unnecessary, as there was only one staircase and I was not a stranger. Accordingly, when we had replaced the body, we took our leave of Mr. Morris and departed, and glancing back as I passed out of the door, I saw him driving in the screws with the ready skill of a cabinet-maker…

  The filling up of the forms was a portentous business which was carried out in the drawing-room under the superintendence of Mrs. Morris and was watched with respectful interest by the two spinsters. When it was finished and I had handed the registration certificate to Mrs. Morris, Cropper g
athered up the forms B and C and slipped them into a long envelope on which the Medical Referee's address was printed.

  "I will post this off to-night," said he; "and you will send in Form A, Mrs. Morris, when you have filled it in."

  "I have sent it off already," she replied.

  "Good," said Dr. Cropper. "Then that is all; and now I must run away. Can I put you down anywhere. Gray?"

  "Thank you, no," I replied. "I thought of taking a walk along the tow-path, if you can tell me how to get down to it, Mrs. Morris."

  "I can't," she replied. "But when Dr. Cropper has gone, I will run up and ask my husband. I daresay he knows."

  We escorted Cropper along the passage to the door, which he reached without mishap, and having seen him into his brougham, turned back to the hall, where Mrs. Morris ascended the stairs and I went into the drawing-room; where the two spinsters appeared to be preparing for departure. In a couple of minutes Mrs. Morris returned, and seeing both the ladies standing, said: "You are not going yet. Miss Dewsnep. You must have some refreshment before you go. Besides, I thought you wanted to see Mr. Bendelow again."

  "So we should," said Miss Dewsnep. "Just a little peep, to see how he looks after—"

  "I will take you up in a minute," interrupted Mrs. Morris. "When Dr. Gray has gone." Then addressing me, she said: "My husband says that you can get down to the tow-path through that alley nearly opposite. There is a flight of steps at the end which come right out on the path."

  I thanked her for the direction, and, having bidden farewell to the spinsters, was once more escorted along the passage and finally launched into the outer world.