Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 7

by R. Austin Freeman

  But Lotta had disappeared; and notwithstanding the most intense and energetic search, the police failed to discover the slightest trace of her. Now, as Jervis remarked recently, it is not very easy, in these days of telephones, wireless, and a very perfect police organization, for a known person to disappear without leaving a trace; especially a rather conspicuous person like Lotta Schiller. Yet no sign of her was discovered until the finding of the handbag in Epping Forest.

  "I am inclined to regard the planting of those relics in the forest as a tactical mistake. It never deceived the police, though Blandy very wisely made a search so exhaustive as to settle the question for good. Of course, the absence of a body damned the scheme. If there had been a murder, there must have been a body in the camp, and there would not have been those admirably selected clues; and the appearances could have been so easily produced by one person with two pairs of shoes. The only effect on the police was to confirm their conviction of Lotta’s guilt and to spur them on to further efforts to lay hands on her.

  "But, as you know, their efforts failed utterly, though the search never entirely ceased during the two years that followed; for Scotland Yard has a long memory and does not readily accept defeat. Nevertheless, in all that long pursuit, not the faintest trace of Lotta Schiller ever came to light.

  "So much for the crime itself. Now let us see how these developments appeared to an experienced and deeply interested onlooker. To me, the most striking fact was the one which I have just mentioned; the virtual acceptance by the criminal of the authorship of the crime. Apart from the perfunctory suicide tableau, which the murderer obviously did not rely on, there was not the slightest effort to dissociate Lotta Schiller from the murder; indeed, it almost seemed as if the onus of the crime were being deliberately cast on her.

  "This curiously defiant attitude interested me profoundly. What could it mean? This was no crime of impulse with an unpremeditated flight. It was a carefully prepared murder, the procedure of which had been arranged and considered in advance. The only explanation that suggested itself to me was that Lotta Schiller had never been in any danger at all; that before the crime was committed, a means of escape had been provided, so secure as to render any other precautions unnecessary. And here, I think, we have the principal motive for the suicide deception; to disguise the criminal’s confidence in her immunity from the danger of discovery.

  "But what could be the nature of this infallible means of escape? I could think of only one; and the facts fitted it so perfectly that I adopted it as a working hypothesis. I decided that here, for the first time in my experience, I had met with a criminal who had put in practice my method of the fictitious person; that Lotta Schiller was a disguised person with a fictitious personality who, having committed the murder, had simply dropped the disguise and forthwith had virtually ceased to exist.

  "You will see how completely this hypothesis agreed with and accounted for all the circumstances. It was just a reproduction of the case of John Doe. Here, in the assumed character of Lotta Schiller, he lures his victim into his premises, in which everything has been prepared, commits his murder at his ease without danger of disturbance or interruption, removes all incriminating traces, and, in this case, arranges the sham suicide tableau, goes away, removes his disguise, if he has not removed it already, and, having now changed back into the personality of John Doe, watches unconcernedly the pursuit of the non-existent Lotta Schiller. If he had been perfectly wise, he would have left it at that; but he was not perfectly wise, and he elected to play the fool in Epping Forest and thereby offer to the police an unnecessary suggestion of deception.

  "Having accepted this hypothesis, I asked myself the further question: assuming Lotta Schiller to be a disguised person, who and what was the real person and what was the nature of the disguise? Was she really a woman, or was she a man disguised as a woman? I decided, for several reasons, that she was more probably a man. In the first place, as I explained just now, change of sex is, as a long-term disguise, much easier and far more effective than any other kind. Then the crime looked like a man’s crime. Poisoning is characteristically the woman’s method; but not forcible poisoning. That requires such an amount of strength as to make it certain that the crime can be carried out. Then there was a curious little point that cropped up in the evidence at the inquest and that seemed to me very revealing. In proof of the essentially proper character of his relations with Lotta, Vanderpuye swore that he had never kissed her; that she had absolutely forbidden any intimacies of that kind.

  "Now, if we assumed that Lotta was a woman, this was rather extraordinary, considering that their relations were almost those of lovers. But if we assumed that Lotta was a man, the anomaly was quite easily explained. By careful shaving, a blond beard can be rendered quite invisible. But it cannot be rendered impalpable. By the sense of touch—especially the touch of the sensitive lips—the invisible stubble would be instantly detected. Hence, in such a case, physical endearments would have to be avoided most strictly.

  "The position, then, at this stage, was that I believed the murderer of Emma Robey to be some unknown man at whose identity I could not even make a guess. For he had vanished without leaving a trace; or rather, I should say, leaving only deceptive traces in the form of a well-known but non-existent woman.

  "But there remained the problem of Emma Robey herself. As the time ran on and the police failed to discover any missing woman of that name, it began to dawn on me that here, probably, was another fictitious person; that the marked underclothing had been a ‘plant’ and that there was no such person as Emma Robey. But if there was not, then who was the murdered woman? Again, it was impossible to make even a guess; though, at this time, when I used to look occasionally at the picture in Polton’s room, I would ask myself whether it might not be that the two unknown figures in that picture were Emma Robey and her murderer.

  "But this was mere speculation. It could not be tested or verified and it led nowhere. As the months slipped by and no new facts came to light, it began to look as if the Jacob Street murder would have to be added to the long list of unsolved mysteries. And so the matter rested for a couple of years. And then came Mr. Penfield; and with his arrival on the scene my role of the detached onlooker was exchanged for that of an authorized investigator.

  "Now, before Penfield had spoken a dozen sentences, I saw that we were going to get some important new light on the problem; for we were now in a world of realities in which systematic inquiries were possible. But from Penfield himself, as he sketched out his case, I gathered several illuminating facts. Let us see what they were.

  "First, we learned that Lotta Schiller was a real person. But Penfield’s case dealt with two Lottas; one, the testatrix, who was certainly the real Lotta, and another, the lodger at 39 Jacob Street, who was assumed to be the same person.

  "Then we learned that there was some sort of connection between Lotta and Charles Montagu. The nature of it was not clear, but there had certainly been a contact of some kind.

  "We learned, further, that Montagu had apparently been blackmailed, and that the blackmail had been assumed to be connected with the murder.

  "Then Penfield could give us the address where Lotta was lodging when she was last heard of; and we gathered the significant fact that those lodgings were near Gravel-pit Wood.

  "Finally, Penfield gave us a description of Lotta. It was very sketchy, but, such as it was, it seemed roughly to agree with what we knew of the appearance of Lotta the lodger (as we may for convenience call her, to distinguish her from the testatrix, whom we may call, simply, Lotta). But it agreed equally well with the woman in the picture and with Oldfield’s description of Emma Robey.

  "Here, then, was some valuable new material; and, as soon as I had settled definitely with Penfield, I proceeded to sort out the facts and to seek to add to them. I began by inspecting Lotta’s will at Somerset House and trying to memorize her signature, and, as a matter of routine, I secured copies of the wills of Monta
gu and of Barbara Dalton. From the former of these I learned nothing fresh, and from Barbara’s only one trivial and apparently insignificant fact; which was that she had bequeathed all her chattels to her sister Linda, with the exception of her violin, which she gave to Lotta; from which it was reasonable to infer that Lotta was able to play the violin. But that fact, though I noted it, seemed to have no possible bearing on our inquiry.

  "And now I addressed myself to the really important question: Was the lodger at Jacob Street the same person as Lotta the testatrix? The most likely source of the relevant facts was Mr. Thomas Pedley, with whom I accordingly communicated without delay; and, having received from him a most gracious invitation, I descended on him, supported by Jervis, at the appointed time.

  "I must admit that, whatever my expectations may have been, the results of that interview were beyond my wildest hopes. Tom Pedley was a mine of information. He was a first-class observer, with an indelible memory and the valuable gift of imparting his knowledge by means of drawings. I need not go into details as most of them are known to you, but I will take the results in order.

  "First, we learned that Lotta the lodger was a sham artist; an absolute sham, a complete impostor. Pedley assumed that she was posing deliberately for some reason unknown to him. This was an important fact, for, to this extent at least, she was masquerading in a false character.

  "Next, we learned that, although Pedley had been on terms of fairly intimate friendship with her for many months, he knew absolutely nothing about her as to her past history or her friends or relations, excepting the rather shadowy husband. In respect of everything concerning herself, she was uncommunicative to the point of secretiveness.

  "Then there were two very significant facts. One was that Tom had never seen her handwriting, and apparently no one else had; for she never wrote either to Tom or to Vanderpuye, and avoided the use of cheques by paying her rent in cash. She did not even sign her pictures. The other was her perverse refusal to have either a drawing or a photograph of her made for the locket, coupled with the fact that her own self-portrait bore no resemblance to her whatever. The great significance of these two facts was that, when the woman disappeared, all traces of her personality disappeared, too (as she believed). No portrait remained to be shown, studied, or compared with any known person, and no scrap of writing, or even the recollection of any, to be compared with letters or documents. The two facts, taken together, offered a distinct suggestion of preparation for a disappearance.

  "The forced friendship with the remarkable manifestations of affection—entirely verbal and unaccompanied by any kisses or other physical endearments—was significant, especially as the woman seemed to have no other friends until Vanderpuye arrived and became the object of similar platonic affection. But I have already referred to the value of a flirtation as support for a ‘change of sex’ disguise.

  "And now we come to the description and the incomparable note-book. That description was quite masterly, and to me an unexpected windfall. For, if I was right in my suspicion that Lotta the lodger was a man disguised as a woman, this description, with its wealth of exact detail, was substantially a description of the man himself. Thus, we learned that the woman’s height was about five feet seven without her high heels, that she had ears of a certain distinctive shape (of which Tom gave us a drawing), and that her eyes were of a greenish hazel. Now, these were characteristics that no disguise could appreciably alter. It followed, therefore, that the man, if he existed, must be about five feet seven inches in height, must have ears of that particular shape, and greenish hazel eyes. But Tom was able to supplement this description by an excellent memory drawing, the existence of which had been unknown to Lotta.

  "But the real windfall was the hair. As soon as I had heard Tom’s description I realized that we had got a means of definite and certain identification, since Vanderpuye’s locket contained an authentic specimen which could be examined. For the condition was obviously abnormal. I suspected it to be ringed hair, since there seemed to be no other possibility; but, whatever it was, the microscope would make its nature clear. So we had got one totally unexpected item of evidence.

  "It was, however, not the only one. Another point of unexpected importance emerged when Tom, in handing us his note-book, showed us the finger-prints of poor Emma Robey. They did not appear to be of any interest as the unfortunate woman was dead and buried, but I looked at them to see how Polton’s improvised method had answered; and then I made a curious discovery. The finger-prints showed that Emma Robey had been a violin player."

  "How did they show that?" Vanderpuye interrupted, eagerly.

  "By the signs of pressure and friction on the finger tips," Thorndyke replied. "You must remember that finger-prints show other things besides the distinctive pattern; thickenings, for instance, of the epidermis due to particular ways of using the hands. Thus a professional violinist or a regular player develops thickenings of the skin—little corns, in fact—on the tips of the four fingers of the left hand which are used in stopping the strings. They do not appear on the fingers of merely occasional players, and so are indicative of the professional or serious player. The traces that they leave on the finger-prints are quite characteristic since they are raised above the general surface, and, owing to their hardness, the pattern tends to be worn flat. These, by the way, were not at all well marked; just little areas of indistinctness in the centre of each print. Still, they were quite unmistakable, and they established beyond doubt that Emma Robey had been a regular violin player.

  "The significance of the discovery remained to be proved. I had inferred that Lotta Schiller had been a violin player; but the inference might have been wrong. Meanwhile, the evidence, such as it was, supported the suggestion that Lotta Schiller and Emma Robey were one and the same person.

  "These were the chief facts that we learned from Tom Pedley, and you will see that it was a rich haul; for these facts were the foundation of my case. When we came away from the studio I had the skeleton of the case sketched out pretty completely in my mind. Of course, that case was purely hypothetical and it might be entirely fallacious. Its truth or its fallacy could be tested only by further investigation, and I applied myself forthwith to the task of verification.

  "The first step was to examine the locket, which Vanderpuye very kindly placed at our disposal. I took it up to the laboratory at once and examined it under the microscope with a strong top light. A single glance showed that the hair was ringed hair, though, owing to its light colour, the rings were quite indiscernible to the naked eye or even through a weak lens. But with strong magnification it was perfectly clear; so we now had an infallible touchstone which could be applied confidently to any individual suspected of being Lotta the lodger.

  "But we had to find that individual; and we had to seek further evidence as to whether Lotta the lodger was or was not a fictitious person. But this question was closely bound up with that of the identity of Emma Robey. For if Emma was, as I suspected, Lotta Schiller, then Lotta the lodger must be someone else. Accordingly I turned my attention to this question, and I began by ascertaining the latest date on which the real Lotta had been seen alive. Now, we knew from the affidavits that she had never been seen by any of her friends after she had left her lodgings at Linton Green. From that time she was never heard of by them until her reported disappearance in the Forest.

  "The first thing, then, to be done was to find out the exact date on which Lotta disappeared from her lodgings; to which end I dispatched the invaluable Snuper to Linton Green to make inquiries of Mrs. Wharton, Lotta’s landlady. He began by asking if she could give him Mrs. Schiller’s present address, which, of course, she could not; but instead gave him those particulars which you have heard in evidence.

  "This information did not appear to help us at all; for, as Lotta left her lodgings in the morning of the 13th of June 1930 and the lodger did not appear in Jacob Street until about a month later, there was nothing to show that they might not be one a
nd the same person. So I had to look for evidence elsewhere, and I did not quite see where I was to look for it. The position was very tantalizing. I had the finger-prints of Emma Robey, and, if I could only have compared them with those of Lotta Schiller, the question would have been settled. But where was I to look for them? There is only one place in which the finger-prints of unknown persons may be found; Scotland Yard. But it seemed practically useless to look for the finger-prints of Emma Robey in that place. For whether she were or were not Lotta Schiller, she was presumably a respectable woman. Still, it was not absolutely impossible that they could be there; and, since there was no alternative, and that I might feel that I had left no possibility untested, I made a good photograph of the finger-prints in the note-book, and, armed with this, went to the Yard and sought out our old friend, Miller. He made no difficulty about taking me round to the Finger-print Department and presenting my photograph of the prints to the search officer. And then, behold the miracle! The finger-prints of Emma Robey were actually in the files; and, of course, there were also the prison photographs and a summary of the particulars.

  "At first it seemed as if the discovery did not help us much, for the name attached to the prison portraits was Louisa Saunders. We seemed merely to have got another unknown person. But the particulars were much more enlightening. It was noted that the prisoner’s underclothing was marked with the initials L. S., which agreed with the name that she had given, Louisa Saunders, but it agreed equally well with the name of Lotta Schiller. The most striking fact, however, was that Louisa had been arrested in the afternoon of the 13th of June 1930—the very day on which Lotta had left her lodgings, and after her departure from them. The agreement was so complete as to be almost conclusive.