My relations with Thorndyke were rather peculiar
and a little inconsistent. I had commissioned
him, somewhat against his inclination, to investigate the
circumstances connected with the death of Harold
Monkhouse. I was, in fact, his employer. And yet,
in a certain subtle sense, I was his antagonist. For I
held certain beliefs which I, half-unconsciously, looked
to him to confirm. But apparently he did not share
those beliefs. As his employer, it was clearly my duty
to communicate to him any information which he might
think helpful or significant, even if I considered it
irrelevant. He had, in fact, explicitly pointed this out
to me; and he had specially warned me to refrain
from sifting or selecting facts which might become
known to me according to my view of their possible
bearing on the case.
But yet this was precisely what I felt myself
constantly tempted to do; and as we sat at lunch in his
chambers on the day after my visit to Barbara, I found
myself consciously suppressing certain facts which had
then come to my knowledge. And it was not that those
facts appeared to me insignificant. On the contrary, I
found them rather surprising. Only I had the feeling
that they would probably convey to Thorndyke a
significance that would be erroneous and misleading.
There was, for instance, the appearance of Wallingford
in Kensington Gardens. Could it have been sheer
chance? If so, it was a most remarkable coincidence;
and one naturally tends to look askance at remarkable
coincidences. In fact, I did not believe it to be a
coincidence at all. I felt little doubt that
Wallingford had been lurking about the neighbourhood of
Barbara’s flat and had followed us, losing sight of us
temporarily, when we turned into the by-path. But,
knowing Wallingford as I did, I attached no
importance to the incident. It was merely a freak of an
unstable, emotional man impelled by jealousy to make
a fool of himself. Again, there was Wallingford’s
terror of Thorndyke and his ridiculous delusions on
the subject of the “shadowings.” How easy it would
be for a person unacquainted with Wallingford’s
personality to read into them a totally misleading
significance! Those were the thoughts that drifted
half-consciously through my mind as I sat opposite my
friend at the table. So, not without some twinges of
conscience, I held my peace.
But I had not allowed for Thorndyke’s uncanny
capacity for inferring what was passing in another
person’s mind. Very soon it became evident to me
that he was fully alive to the possibility of some
reservations on my part; and when one or two discreet
questions had elicited some fact which I ought to have
volunteered, he proceeded to something like definite
cross-examination.
“So the household has broken up and the inmates
scattered?” he began, when I had told him that I had
obtained possession of the keys. “And Mabel Withers
seems to have vanished, unless the police have kept her
in view. Did you hear anything about Miss Norris?”
“Not very much. Barbara and she have exchanged
visits once or twice, but they don’t seem to see much of
each other.”
“And what about Wallingford? Does he seem to
have been much disturbed by Miller’s descent on him?”
I had to admit that he was in a state bordering on
panic.
“And what did Mrs. Monkhouse think of the forged
orders on Dimsdale’s headed paper?”
“He hadn’t disclosed that. She thinks that he bought
the cocaine at a druggist’s in the ordinary way, and I
didn’t think it necessary to undeceive her.”
“No. The least said the soonest mended. Did you
gather that she sees much of Wallingford?”
“Yes, rather too much. He was haunting her flat
almost daily until she gave him a hint not to make
his visits too noticeable.”
“Why do you suppose he was haunting her flat?
So far as you can judge, Mayfield—that is in the
strictest confidence, you understand—does there seem
to be anything between them beyond ordinary
friendliness?”
“Not on her side, certainly, but on his—yes,
undoubtedly. His devotion to her amounts almost to
infatuation, and has for a long time past. Of course,
she realizes his condition, and though he is rather a
nuisance to her, she takes a very kindly and indulgent
view of his vagaries.”
“Naturally, as any well-disposed woman would. I
suppose you didn’t see anything of him yesterday?”
Of course I had to relate the meeting in Kensington
Gardens, and I could see by the way Thorndyke looked
at me that he was wondering why I had not mentioned
the matter before.
“It almost looks,” said he, “as if he had followed
you there. Was there anything in his manner of
approach that seemed to support that idea?”
“I think there was, for I saw him at some distance,”
and here I felt bound to describe Wallingford’s peculiar
tactics.
“But,” said Thorndyke, “why was he looking about
behind him? He must have known that you were in
front.”
“It seems,” I explained, feebly, “that he has some
ridiculous idea that he is being watched and followed.”
“Ha!” said Thorndyke. “Now I wonder who he
supposes is watching and following him.”
“I fancy he suspects you,” I replied. And so the
murder was out, with the additional fact that I had not
been very ready with my information.
Thorndyke, however, made no comment on my reticence
beyond a steady and significant look at me.
“So,” said he, “he suspects me of suspecting him.
Well, he is giving us every chance. But I think,
Mayfield, you would do well to put Mrs. Monkhouse on her
guard. If Wallingford makes a public parade of his
feelings towards her, he may put dangerous ideas into
the head of Mr. Superintendent Miller. You must
realize that Miller is looking for a motive for the
assumed murder. And if it comes to his knowledge
that Harold Monkhouse’s secretary was in love with
Harold Monkhouse’s wife, he will think that he has
found a motive that is good enough.”
“Yes, that had occurred to me; and in fact, I did
give her a hint to that effect, but it was hardly
necessary. She had seen it for herself.”
As we now seemed to have exhausted this topic, I
ventured to make a few enquiries about the rather
farcical infernal machine.
“Did your further examination of it,” I asked, “yield
any new information?”
“Very little,” Thorndyke replied, “but that little
was rather curious. There were no finger-prints at all.
I examined both the pistol and the jar most thoroughly,
but there was not a trace of a finger-mark, to say
nothing of a print. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion
that the person who sent the machine wore gloves while
he was putting it together.”
“But isn’t that a rather natural precaution in these
days?” I asked.
“A perfectly natural precaution, in itself,” he
replied, “but not quite consistent with some other
features. For instance, the wadding with which the
pistol-barrel was plugged consisted of a little ball of
knitting-wool of a rather characteristic green. I will
show it to you, and you will see that it would be quite
easy to match and therefore possible to trace. But you
see that there are thus shown two contrary states of
mind. The gloves suggest that the sender entertained
the possibility that the machine might fail to explode,
whereas the wool seems to indicate that no such
possibility was considered.”
He rose from the table—lunch being now finished—and
brought from a locked cabinet a little ball of wool
of a rather peculiar greenish blue. I took it to the
window and examined it carefully, impressed by the
curious inconsistency which he had pointed out.
“Yes,” I agreed, “there could be no difficulty in
matching this. But as to tracing it, that is a different
matter. There must have been thousands of skeins of
this sold to, at least, hundreds of different persons.”
“Very true,” said he. “But I was thinking of it
rather as a corroborating item in a train of
circumstantial evidence.”
He put the “corroborating item” back in the cabinet
and as, at this moment a taxi was heard to draw up at
our entry, he picked up a large attaché case and
preceded me down the stairs.
During the comparatively short journey I made a few
not very successful efforts to discover what was
Thorndyke’s real purpose in making this visit of inspection
to the dismantled house. But his reticence and mine
were not quite similar. He answered all my questions
freely. He gave me a wealth of instances illustrating
the valuable evidence obtained by the inspection of
empty houses. But none of them seemed to throw any
light on his present proceedings. And when I pointed
this out, he smilingly replied that I was in precisely the
same position as himself.
“We are not looking for corroborative evidence,”
said he. “That belongs to a later stage of the inquiry.
We are looking for some suggestive fact which may
give us a hint where to begin. Naturally we cannot
form any guess as to what kind of fact that might
be.”
It was not a very illuminating answer, but I had to
accept it, although I had a strong suspicion that
Thorndyke’s purpose was not quite so vague as he represented
it to be, and determined unobtrusively to keep an eye
on his proceedings.
“Can I give you any assistance?” I enquired, craftily,
when I had let him into the hall and shut the outer
door.
“Yes,” he replied, “there is one thing that you can
do for me which will be very helpful. I have brought a
packet of cards with me”—here he produced from his
pocket a packet of stationer’s post-cards. “If you will
write on each of them the description and particulars
of one room with the name of the occupant in the case
of bedrooms, and lay the card on the mantelpiece of the
room which it describes, I shall be able to reconstitute
the house as it was when it was inhabited. Then we
can each go about our respective businesses without
hindering one another.”
I took the cards—and the fairly broad hint—and
together we made a preliminary tour of the house,
which, now that the furniture, carpets and pictures
were gone, looked very desolate and forlorn; and as it
had not been cleaned since the removal, it had a
depressingly dirty and squalid appearance. Moreover,
in each room, a collection of rubbish and discarded
odds and ends had been roughly swept up on the
hearth, converting each fireplace into a sort of
temporary dust-bin.
After a glance around the rooms on the ground floor,
I made my way up to the room in which Harold
Monkhouse had died, which was my principal concern as
well as Thorndyke’s.
“Well, Mayfield,” the latter remarked, running a
disparaging eye round the faded, discoloured walls and
the blackened ceiling, “you will have to do something
here. It is a shocking spectacle. Would you mind
roughly sketching out the position of the furniture? I
see that the bedstead stood by this wall with the head,
I presume, towards the window, and the bedside table
about here, I suppose, at his right hand. By the way,
what was there on that table? Did he keep a supply
of food of any kind for use at night?”
“I think they usually put a little tin of sandwiches
on the table when the night preparations were made.”
“You say ‘they.’ Who put the box there?”
“I can’t say whose duty it was in particular. I
imagine Barbara would see to it when she was at
home. In her absence it would be done by Madeline
or Mabel.”
“Not Wallingford?”
“No. I don’t think Wallingford ever troubled
himself about any of the domestic arrangements excepting
those that concerned Barbara.”
“Do you know who made the sandwiches?”
“I think Madeline did, as a rule. I know she did
sometimes.”
“And as to drink? I suppose he had a water-bottle,
at any rate.”
“Yes, that was always there, and a little decanter of
whiskey. But he hardly ever touched that. Very
often a small flagon of lemonade was put on the table
with the sandwiches.”
“And who made the lemonade?”
“Madeline. I know that, because it was a very
special brand which no one else could make.”
“And supposing the sandwiches and the lemonade
were not consumed, do you happen to know what
became of the remainder?”
“I have no idea. Possibly the servants consumed
them, but more probably they were thrown away.
Well-fed servants are not partial to remainders from
a sick-room.”
“You never heard of any attacks of illness among
any of the servants?”
“Not to my knowledge. But I shouldn’t be very
likely to, you know.”
“No. You notice, Mayfield, that you have
mentioned one or two rather material facts that were not
disclosed at the inquest?”
“Yes. I was observing that. And it is just as well
that they were not disclosed. There were enough
misleading facts without them.”
Thorndyke smiled indulgently. “You seem to have
made up your mind pretty definitely, on the negative
side, at least,” he remarked; and then, looking round
once more at the walls with their faded, loosened paper,
he continued: “I take it that Mr. Monkhouse was not
a fresh-air enthusiast.”
“He was not,” I replied. “He didn’t much care for
open windows, especially at night. But how did you
arrive at that fact?”
“I was looking at the wall-paper. This is not a damp
house, but yet the paper on the walls of this room is
loosening and peeling off in all directions. And if
you notice the distribution of this tendency you get the
impression that the moisture which loosened the paper
proceeded from the neighbourhood of the bed. The
wall which is most affected is the one against which the
bed stood; and the part of that wall that has suffered
most is that which was nearest to the occupant of the
bed, and especially to his head. That large piece,
hanging down, is just where the main stream of his breath
would have impinged.”
“Yes, I see the connection now you mention it; and
yet I am surprised that his breath alone should have
made the air of the room so damp. All through the
winter season, when the window would be shut most
closely, the gas was burning; and at night, when the
gas was out, he commonly had his candle-lamp alight.
I should have thought that the gas and the candle
together would have kept the air fairly dry.”
“That,” said Thorndyke, “is a common delusion. As
a matter of fact they would have quite the opposite
effect. You have only to hold an inverted tumbler
over a burning candle to realize, from the moisture
which immediately condenses on the inside of the
tumbler, that the candle, as it burns, gives off quite a
considerable volume of steam. But of course, the bulk
of the moisture which has caused the paper to peel in
this room came from the man’s own breath. However,
we didn’t come here for debating purposes. Let us
complete our preliminary tour, and when we have
seen the whole house we can each make such more
detailed inspection as seems necessary for our particular
purposes.”
We accordingly resumed our perambulation (but I
noticed that Thorndyke deposited his attaché case in
Monkhouse’s room with the evident intention of
returning thither), both of us looking about narrowly:
Thorndyke, no doubt, in search of the mysterious
“traces” of which he had spoken, and I with an
inquisitive endeavour to ascertain what kind of objects
or appearances he regarded as “traces.”
We had not gone very far before we encountered an
object that even I was able to recognize as significant.
It was in a corner of the long corridor that we came
upon a little heap of rubbish that had been swept up
out of the way; and at the very moment when
Thorndyke stopped short with his eyes fixed on it, I saw the
object—a little wisp of knitting-wool of the
well-remembered green colour. Thorndyke picked it up, and,
having exhibited it to me, produced from his letter-case
a little envelope such as seedsmen use, in which
he put the treasure trove, and as he uncapped his
fountain pen, he looked up and down the corridor.
“Which is the nearest room to this spot?” he asked.
“Madeline’s,” I replied. “That is the door of her
bedroom, on the right. But all the principal bedrooms
are on this floor and Barbara’s boudoir as well. This
heap of rubbish is probably the sweepings from all the
rooms.”
“That is what it looks like,” he agreed as he wrote
the particulars on the envelope and slipped the latter
in his letter-case. “You notice that there are some
other trifles in this heap—some broken glass, for
instance. But I will go through it when we have finished
our tour, though I may as well take this now.”
As he spoke, he stooped and picked up a short piece
of rather irregularly shaped glass rod with a swollen,
rounded end.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It is a portion of a small glass pestle and it
belongs to one of those little glass mortars such as
chemists use in rubbing up powders into solutions or
suspensions. You had better not touch it, though it
has probably been handled pretty freely. But I shall
test it on the chance of discovering what it was last
used for.”
He put it away carefully in another seed-envelope
and then looked down thoughtfully at the miniature
dust-heap; but he made no further investigations at
the moment and we resumed the perambulation, I
placing the identification card on the mantelpiece of
each room while he looked sharply about him, opening
all cupboards and receptacles and peering into their,
usually empty, interiors.
When we had inspected the servants’ bedrooms and
the attics—leaving the indispensable cards—we went
down to the basement and visited the kitchen, the
scullery, the servants’ parlour and the cellars; and this
brought our tour to an end.
“Now,” said Thorndyke, “we proceed from the
general to the particular. While you are drawing up your
schedule of dilapidations I will just browse about and
see if I can pick up any stray crumbs in which
inference can find nourishment. It isn’t a very hopeful
quest, but you observe that we have already lighted
on two objects which may have a meaning for us.”
“Yes, we have ascertained that some one in this
house used a particular kind of wool and that some one
possessed a glass mortar. Those do not seem to me
very weighty facts.”
“They are not,” he agreed; “indeed, they are hardly
facts at all. The actual fact is that we have found
the things here. But trifles light as air sometimes serve
to fill up the spaces in a train of circumstantial
evidence. I think I will go and have another look at
that rubbish-heap.”
I was strongly tempted to follow him, but could
hardly do so in face of his plainly expressed wish to
make his inspection alone. Moreover, I had already
seen that there was more to be done than I had
supposed. The house was certainly not in bad repair,
but neither did it look very fresh nor attractive.
Furniture and especially pictures have a way of marking
indelibly the walls of a room, and the paintwork in
several places showed disfiguring traces of wear.
But I was anxious to let this house, even at a nominal
rent, so that, by a few years’ normal occupation its
sinister reputation might be forgotten and its value
restored.
As a result, I was committed to a detailed inspection
of the whole house and the making of voluminous notes
on the repairs and re-decorations which would be
necessary to tempt even an impecunious tenant to forget that
this was a house in which a murder had been
committed. For that was the current view, erroneous as I
believed it to be. Note-book in hand, I proceeded
systematically from room to room and from floor to
floor, and became so engrossed with my own business
that I almost forgot Thorndyke; though I could hear
him moving about the house, and once I met him—on
the first floor, with a couple of empty medicine bottles
and a small glass jar in his hands, apparently making
his way to Harold’s room, where, as I have said, he
had left his attaché case.
That room I left to the last, as it was already entered
in my list and I did not wish to appear to spy upon
Thorndyke’s proceedings. When, at length, I entered
the room I found that he, like myself, had come to
the end of his task. On the floor his attaché case lay
open, crammed with various objects, several of which
appeared to be bottles, wrapped in oddments of waste
paper (including some pieces of wall paper which he
had apparently stripped off ad hoc when the other
supplies failed) and among which I observed a crumpled
fly-paper. Respecting this I remarked: “I don’t see
why you are burdening yourself with this. A fly-paper
is in no sense an incriminating object, even though
such things have, at times, been put to unlawful use.”
“Very true,” he replied as he peeled off the rubber
gloves which he had been wearing during the search.
“A fly-paper is a perfectly normal domestic object.
But, as you say, it can on occasion be used as a source
of arsenic for criminal purposes; and a paper that has
been so used will be found to have had practically the
whole of the arsenic soaked out of it. As I happened to
find this in the servants’ parlour, it seemed worth while
to take it to see whether its charge of arsenic had or
had not been extracted.”
“But,” I objected, “why on earth should the poisoner—if
there really is such a person—have been at the
trouble of soaking out fly-papers when, apparently he
was able to command an unlimited supply of Fowler’s
Solution?”
“Quite a pertinent question, Mayfield,” he rejoined.
“But may I ask my learned friend whether he found
the evidence relating to the Fowler’s Solution
perfectly satisfactory?”
“But surely!” I exclaimed. “You had the evidence
of two expert witnesses on the point. What more would
you require? What is the difficulty?”
“The difficulty is this. There were several witnesses
who testified that when they saw the bottle of
medicine, the Fowler’s Solution had not yet been added;
but there was none who saw the bottle after the
addition had been made.”
“But it must have been added before Mabel gave
the patient the last dose.”
“That is the inference. But Mabel said nothing to
that effect. She was not asked what colour the
medicine was when she gave the patient that dose.”
“But what of the analysts and the post mortem?”
“As to the post mortem, the arsenic which was found
in the stomach was not recognized as being in the form
of Fowler’s Solution; and as to the analysts, they made
their examination three days after the man died.”
“Still, the medicine that they analysed was the
medicine that deceased had taken. You don’t deny that,
do you?”
“I neither deny it nor affirm it. I merely say that
no evidence was given that proved the presence of
Fowler’s Solution in that bottle before the man died;
and that the bottle which was handed to the analysts
was one that had been exposed for three days in a room
which had been visited by a number of persons,
including Mrs. Monkhouse, Wallingford, Miss Norris, Mabel
Withers, Amos Monkhouse, Dr. Dimsdale and
yourself.”
“You mean to suggest that the bottle might have been
tampered with or changed for another? But, my dear
Thorndyke, why in the name of God should any one
want to change the bottle?”
“I am not suggesting that the bottle actually was
changed. I am merely pointing out that the evidence
of the analysts is material only subject to the
conditions that the bottle which they examined was the
bottle from which the last dose of medicine was given
and that its contents were the same as on that occasion;
and that no conclusive proof exists that it was the same
bottle or that the contents were unchanged.”
“But what reason could there be for supposing that
it might have been changed?”
“There is no need to advance any reason. The
burden of proof lies on those who affirm that it was the
same bottle with the same contents. It is for them
to prove that no change was possible. But obviously a
change was possible.”
“But still,” I persisted, “there seems to be no point
in this suggestion. Who could have had any motive for
making a change? And what could the motive have
been? It looks to me like mere logic-chopping and
hair-splitting.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you were for the defence,”
chuckled Thorndyke. “You would not let a point of
first-rate importance pass on a mere assumption, no
matter how probable. And as to a possible motive,
surely a most obvious one is staring us in the face.
Supposing some person in this household had been
administering arsenic in the food. If it could be
arranged that a poisonous dose could be discovered in the
medicine, you must see that the issue would be at once
transferred from the food to the medicine, and from
those who controlled the food to those who controlled
the medicine. Which is, in fact, what happened. As
soon as the jury heard about the medicine, their interest
in the food became extinct.”
I listened to this exposition with a slightly sceptical
smile. It was all very ingenious but I found it utterly
unconvincing.
“You ought to be pleading in court, Thorndyke,” I
said, “instead of grubbing about in empty houses
and raking over rubbish-heaps. By the way, have you
found anything that seems likely to yield any
suggestions?”
“It is a little difficult to say,” he replied. “I have
taken possession of a number of bottles and small jars
for examination as to their contents, but I have no great
expectation in respect of them. I also found some
fragments of the glass mortar—an eight-ounce mortar
it appears to have been.”
“Where did you find those?” I asked.
“In Miss Norris’s bedroom, in a little pile of
rubbish under the grate. They are only tiny fragments,
but the curvature enables one to reconstruct the vessel
pretty accurately.”
It seemed to me a rather futile proceeding, but I
made no comment. Nor did I give utterance to a
suspicion which had just flashed into my mind, that it
was the discovery of these ridiculous fragments of glass
that had set my learned friend splitting straws on the
subject of the medicine bottle. I had not much liked
his suggestion as to the possible motive of that
hypothetical substitution, and I liked it less now that he
had discovered the remains of the mortar in Madeline’s
room. There was no doubt that Thorndyke had a
remarkable constructive imagination; and, as I followed
him down the stairs and out into the square, I found
myself faintly uneasy lest that lively imagination should
carry him into deeper waters than I was prepared
to navigate in his company.
