Dr. Thorndyke Omnibus Vol 7

by R. Austin Freeman

  "But there was yet another agreement. From Mrs. Wharton, Snuper had learned that Lotta was practically a professional violinist. But the finger-prints of Louisa Saunders were obviously those of a regular violin player. The impressions of the corns were extremely well marked; and now I understood why they had been so ill-defined in Emma Robey’s prints. During the imprisonment the corns had atrophied from disuse, and become worn down.

  "The facts thus disclosed left no doubt in my mind that Louisa Saunders was really Lotta Schiller; and, since Louisa was certainly Emma Robey, it followed that Emma Robey was Lotta Schiller. From this it followed that Lotta the lodger was some other person; and the question was, who could that person be? And now it was possible to suggest an answer to that question. The telegram that Mrs. Wharton had received had certainly not been sent by Lotta; for it would have disclosed her address, which she had refused to give to the police. But since Carl Schiller had called at the lodgings later to settle the rent and remove Lotta’s possessions, it was evident that he knew where his wife was. Apparently, he had sent the telegram to prevent Mrs. Wharton from making inquiries about her missing lodger. Evidently, then, there were reasonable grounds for suspecting that Lotta the lodger was in fact Carl Schiller. But nothing more than suspicion. It had yet to be ascertained that his physical characteristics were such as to make the disguise possible; and this could not be decided until I had seen him or obtained a detailed description of him.

  "At this point it became necessary to take Miller into my confidence to some extent, as I needed his help for the next stage of the inquiry. He was perfectly willing, personally, to let me have copies of the prison portraits and the particulars, but he asked for a letter which he could show to the Assistant Commissioner, whose permission was necessary, and I accordingly sent him one, with the result that, as you remember, he called on me and brought the copies with him. Of these prison portraits I made copies with the name board masked out and put them, with a photograph of Pedley’s portrait and a few dummy portraits, in a portfolio to be produced in court.

  "And now I was ready for the opening of the case in the Probate Court, when I hoped to make the decisive move. But I was in a difficulty in regard to the procedure. For the correct course would have been for me to disclose the information that I possessed to Penfield, who would have passed it on to the other parties. But this was clearly impossible. Very unwillingly, I was compelled to adopt the quite irregular course of proceeding without the disclosure of material facts or discovery of documents, in the hope that I should be able to make my essential points before Lorimer objected.

  "But I must admit that I was far from confident that morning when we set out for the Probate Court. For I had to settle certain questions, and to settle them quickly, and the opportunity might be lacking. And the results might not be those which I expected, in which case I should have to start the whole inquiry afresh. I have seldom been more anxious about a case than I was on that morning.

  "The questions that I had to answer were: First, was Louisa Saunders actually Lotta Schiller? Second, did Carl Schiller’s physical characteristics agree with Tom Pedley’s description of Lotta the lodger? Third, had he ringed hair? The first question would probably be easy to dispose of, but the other two were subject to all sorts of contingencies. In the first place, Carl might not be there, although I suspected that he would; for his absence would be rather remarkable, considering his obvious interest in the case and the fact that his affidavit had to be read and that I had asked for his attendance. But even if he answered the description, there was the difficulty of obtaining a specimen of his hair. I had discussed this matter with Snuper and we had considered a number of plans, but, in the end, I had to leave it to his ingenuity and readiness to take advantage of any opportunity that should present itself.

  You know what the upshot was. When Schiller was introduced to us, I saw at a glance that he agreed perfectly with the description. He was about five feet seven inches in height, he had greenish hazel eyes, his ears exactly resembled Pedley’s drawing, and the right one had a small Darwinian tubercle while the left had none; his profile, where it was not concealed by the beard, corresponded perfectly with Pedley’s portrait, and, as he was talking with Jervis, I noted that his smooth, high-pitched voice would have passed quite well as a woman’s voice. The agreement was complete. There was not a single discrepancy; and, for my part, I had no doubt that here was Lotta the lodger, the murderer of Lotta Schiller.

  But my belief was not to the point; nor did it amount to certainty. There remained the question of the ringed hair. That was the final test; and you will notice that it acted both ways. Lotta the lodger certainly had ringed hair. If this man had ringed hair, he was certainly the lodger. If he had not ringed hair, he was certainly not the lodger, no matter how complete was the agreement in all other respects. So that the identity of this man still remained to be proved; and I considered very anxiously whether it would be possible to get the sample of hair that was necessary for the proof or disproof. It looked an almost impossible task.

  "I glanced towards Snuper, who had followed us into the court, and made the agreed signal to indicate his quarry; whereupon he got to work with his ridiculous little camera and managed to take two excellent profile portraits. Then he subsided into his seat and lay in wait for his victim; who presently seated himself close by, and then, as Lorimer made his opening speech, leaned his head against the back of the bench and closed his eyes.

  "I watched Snuper anxiously and could see that he was keeping in close proximity to Schiller’s head. But that was all that I could see; for Snuper has all the conjuror’s skill in concealing his movements and diverting the attention of the onlookers. What he actually did was to wait until Schiller raised his head for a moment, and, in that moment to deposit a thick smear of a quick-drying adhesive on the back of the bench just where the head had been resting. It was a most audacious proceeding but apparently no one noticed it—not even Schiller himself. And it was perfectly successful, as I realized in the sequel; for, the next time that Schiller tried to move his head, it was stuck fast to the back of the bench and had to be released by Snuper’s scissors. Then I saw what had happened and was on tenterhooks while Snuper scraped away the adhesive—ostensibly to clean the back of the bench—for fear the judge should intervene and impound the scrapings for examination. However, all went well, and Snuper took an early opportunity to escape; and then I knew that the sample was safe, whatever it might turn out to be.

  "You know, in effect, what the result was. When we arrived at the Temple in the lunch interval, I found Snuper waiting for me, modestly triumphant at his success, and received from him his little camera and a folded envelope which enclosed some sticky material and a small tuft of hairs. I need not say that I lose no time in taking the latter up to the laboratory for examination. There I picked out a few hairs, and, laying them on a slide with a drop of bergamot oil and a cover-glass, and, placing the slide on the stage of the microscope, put my eye to the eye-piece.

  "It was a dramatic moment, for the life of Carl Schiller hung on the answer to my question. And the answer was given at the first glance. The hairs were ringed hair, plain and unmistakable; and it was now certain that Lotta the lodger and Carl Schiller were one and the same person. But that person was the murderer of Emma Robey; and the final question that remained was whether Emma Robey was the same person as Lotta Schiller.

  "I went back to the court confident of being able to dispose of this question before the inevitable objection. And so it turned out. When Linda Dalton identified the prison portraits, my case was complete. For her identification was so confident and positive that it left no doubt in my mind, and I now knew that abundant confirmation could be obtained. Lorimer’s objection came too late to hinder me, for I could, if I had chosen, have had Carl Schiller charged then and there."

  "Why didn’t you?" I asked. "Why did you go on with the case in the Probate Court?"

  "The rest of my proceedings," he
replied, "were for the benefit of the police. They would want to be able to make out a prima facie case before they committed themselves to an arrest, and, in fact, I had promised Miller to provide him with enough evidence for the purpose. But it was as important to me as to him; for we had to make sure of a committal. It would have been a disaster if the case had failed in the magistrate’s court. Besides, the latter proceedings were a sort of rehearsal; they enabled us to see exactly what evidence we could produce at the trial.

  "Well, I have now retraced the course of the investigation and you can see how the mass of circumstantial evidence grew up as each successive fact came into view. There is no need to go into details of the preparation of the case, such as the composite photographs and the other exhibits which were produced in court, nor to speculate on those questions of which we shall never know the answers."

  "That is all very well, sir," said Pedley, "for the learned lawyer and scientist, but simple folk like myself would like to have some sort of answers to those questions. For instance, I should very much like to know why the deuce Schiller elected to take up his abode next door to me and adopt me as his dearest friend. It could hardly have been a mere coincidence."

  "No," Thorndyke agreed, "that seems incredible. But if it would comfort you to guess at his motives, I think you have something to go upon. He would have been looking about for a suitable neighbourhood where he was not known and for a likely stranger to adopt as a friend. He would have seen your name and address mentioned in the papers as that of the ‘mysterious artist,’ and he might have noted that, as you never came forward to give information and appeared to have been unaware of the murder, you were certainly not a busy or inquisitive person. Your neighbourhood was perfectly suitable to him, and your profession ideal for the purpose of striking up an acquaintance, provided that he could pose as a fellow artist; and that the present fashion for childish and barbaric painting made quite possible, with a judicious use of the current jargon. I think he made a very good choice."

  "I should have thought," Pedley objected, "that the fact of my having seen him in the wood that day would have put him off."

  "But, my dear Pedley, he didn’t know that you had seen him. You are forgetting. The police kept your information to themselves. It never appeared in the papers. And, after all, though you had seen him, you never recognized him. No, my friend, I don’t think that there is much mystery about his having selected you; but there are some other questions that are a good deal more difficult to answer."

  "You mean," I suggested, "how it happened that Lotta allowed herself to be convicted of an offence that she had not committed, for I have assumed that Schiller planted those notes on her, deliberately, and that she knew it, though, of course, she couldn’t guess at his object. But why didn’t she say where she had got them?"

  "Probably," Thorndyke replied, "she was so terrified of him, knowing him to be a murderer, that she did not dare to put the blame on him; and it is even possible that she accepted the prison willingly as a sanctuary from him. But we shall never know the actual facts, and it is not very profitable to speculate on them."

  "You speak, Jervis," said Vanderpuye, "of his object in planting those notes on her. What was his object?"

  "I take it," said I, "that his object was to get her safely out of the way while he was making his preparations to personate her and be ready to make away with her when she came out, before she had time to get into touch with her friends; and I assume that he knew that she would rather go to prison under a fictitious name than make a scandal and exasperate him. What do you say, Thorndyke?"

  "I think you are probably right," he replied, "but we don’t know, and we never shall. Nor does it really concern us. We knew enough to defeat a really talented criminal, and that should satisfy us."

  "Even though," I suggested, "it knocks the bottom out of the infallible scheme of Mr. John Doe?"

  "But does it?" he retorted. "I think, Jervis, you are overlooking some very material facts. In the first place, Schiller did not carry out John Doe’s programme completely; and it was his departure from it that was his undoing. John Doe, having committed his crime, simply shed his disguise and disappeared, leaving no trace, and, thereafter, making no sign. If Schiller had done this, no question would ever have arisen. But he elected to stage the bogus murder in the Forest, and thereby left a loose end.

  "Then you are overlooking the enormous effects of unforeseeable chance. The ringed hair was a chance in a million, and that of Polton’s taking the dead woman’s finger-prints and Pedley’s preserving them was almost as great. Yet, if you subtract those two infinitely improbable circumstances, there is no case left. Schiller would have been perfectly safe, for I could never have got beyond the stage of suspicion.

  "Further, you overlook the fact that, in spite of all these adverse effects of chance, Schiller’s scheme did succeed. For two whole years he was at large and totally unsuspected. It is an actual fact that when Penfield came to me, not a single individual in the world, except myself, had any doubt that the person who disappeared in the Forest was really Lotta Schiller. Even the police, who rejected the bogus murder, did not question the identity."

  "Still," I persisted, "the undeniable fact is that his scheme did fail, and that he is going to be hanged."

  "Yes," Thorndyke admitted, "his scheme was defeated by the unforeseen and unforeseeable. His failure illustrates the truth of Herbert Spencer’s dictum that social phenomena are too complex for prevision to be possible. But without prevision, no plan can be devised that will certainly produce the effects intended. That is where social reformers and all sorts of other planners fail. They take no account of the unknown factors. But it commonly happens that the unknown factors turn out to be the operative factors, as they did in the case of Carl Schiller."

  "That is very true, sir," said Vanderpuye; "and the operative unknown factor in his case was the existence of a gentleman named John Thorndyke."

  THE END

  MEET DR THORNDYKE

  A FASCINATING INSIGHT INTO THE CHARACTER WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR

  My subject is Dr. John Thorndyke, the hero or central character of most of my detective stories. So I'll give you a short account of his real origin; of the way in which he did in fact come into existence.

  To discover the origin of John Thorndyke I have to reach back into the past for at least fifty years, to the time when I was a medical student preparing for my final examination. For reasons which I need not go into I gave rather special attention to the legal aspects of medicine and the medical aspects of law. And as I read my text-books, and especially the illustrative cases, I was profoundly impressed by their dramatic quality. Medical jurisprudence deals with the human body in its relation to all kinds of legal problems. Thus its subject matter includes all sorts of crime against the person and all sorts of violent death and bodily injury: hanging, drowning, poisons and their effects, problems of suicide and homicide, of personal identity and survivorship, and a host of other problems of the highest dramatic possibilities, though not always quite presentable for the purposes of fiction. And the reported cases which were given in illustration were often crime stories of the most thrilling interest. Cases of disputed identity such as the Tichbourne Case, famous poisoning cases such as the Rugeley Case and that of Madeline Smith, cases of mysterious disappearance or the detection of long-forgotten crimes such as that of Eugene Aram; all these, described and analysed with strict scientific accuracy, formed the matter of Medical Jurisprudence which thrilled me as I read and made an indelible impression.

  But it produced no immediate results. I had to pass my examinations and get my diploma, and then look out for the means of earning my living. So all this curious lore was put away for the time being in the pigeon-holes of my mind—which Dr. Freud would call the Unconscious—not forgotten, but ready to come to the surface when the need for it should arise. And there it reposed for some twenty years, until failing health compelled me to abandon medical practice and take
to literature as a profession.

  It was then that my old studies recurred to my mind. A fellow doctor, Conan Doyle, had made a brilliant and well-deserved success by the creation of the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Considering that achievement, I asked myself whether it might not be possible to devise a detective story of a slightly different kind; one based on the science of Medical Jurisprudence, in which, by the sacrifice of a certain amount of dramatic effect, one could keep entirely within the facts of real life, with nothing fictitious excepting the persons and the events. I came to the conclusion that it was, and began to turn the idea over in my mind.

  But I think that the influence which finally determined the character of my detective stories, and incidentally the character of John Thorndyke, operated when I was working at the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. There I used to take the patients into the dark room, examine their eyes with the ophthalmoscope, estimate the errors of refraction, and construct an experimental pair of spectacles to correct those errors. When a perfect correction had been arrived at, the formula for it was embodied in a prescription which was sent to the optician who made the permanent spectacles.

  Now when I was writing those prescriptions it was borne in on me that in many cases, especially the more complex, the formula for the spectacles, and consequently the spectacles themselves, furnished an infallible record of personal identity. If, for instance, such a pair of spectacles should have been found in a railway carriage, and the maker of those spectacles could be found, there would be practically conclusive evidence that a particular person had travelled by that train. About that time I drafted out a story based on a pair of spectacles, which was published some years later under the title of The Mystery of 31 New Inn, and the construction of that story determined, as I have said, not only the general character of my future work but of the hero around whom the plots were to be woven. But that story remained for some years in cold storage. My first published detective novel was The Red Thumb-mark, and in that book we may consider that John Thorndyke was born. And in passing on to describe him I may as well explain how and why he came to be the kind of person that he is.