A silent witness
overlooked; but, in spite of this error, the plan was ingenious,
subtle, and clearly not the work of an ignorant man.
“And here I would point out to you that this latter fact was one of
great importance in searching for the solution of the mystery. We knew
something of our man. He was subtle, resourceful, and absolutely
ruthless. Noting this, I was prepared, in pursuing the case, to find
his other actions characterized by subtlety, resourcefulness and
ruthlessness. His further actions were not going to be those of a
dullard or an ignoramus.
“But this was not all the information that I had concerning the
personality of this unknown villain. Jervis and I looked over the
cellars that same night within an hour and a half of the rescue and
before anything had been moved. We were then in a position to infer
that the unknown was probably a somewhat tall man and above the
average of strength, as shown by the weight, position and arrangement
of the iron bottles. Moreover, since there was no faintest trace of a
finger-print on any of them, it followed that some precaution against
them--such as gloves--had been adopted; which again suggested either a
professional criminal or a person well acquainted with criminal
methods.
“So much for the man. As to the rest of the information that I
obtained by looking into the cellar, it seemed at the time meagre
enough; and yet, when considered by the light of Jardine’s statement,
it turned out to be of vital importance. You remember what it was,
Jardine? That cellar contained certain objects. They seemed very
unilluminating and commonplace, but, according to my invariable
custom, I considered them attentively and made a written list of them.
Do you remember what they were?”
“Yes, quite well. There were ten empty cylinders, a spanner, a
packing-case--”
“What were the dimensions of the case?” Thorndyke interrupted.
“Seven feet long by two and a half wide and deep. Then there were a
couple of waterproof sheets and a quantity of straw. That is the lot,
I think, and I’ll be hanged if I can see what any of them--excepting
the three cylinders that were used for my benefit--have to do with the
case. Can you, Jervis?”
“I’m afraid I can’t,” he replied. “They are all such very ordinary
objects.”
“Ordinary or not,” said Thorndyke, “there they were; and I made a note
of them on the principle--which I am continually impressing on my
students--that you can never judge in advance what the evidential
value of any fact will be, and on the further principle that, in
estimating evidence, there is no such thing as a commonplace fact or
object.
“Until I had heard Jardine’s account of the affair there was not much
to be gained by thinking about the possibilities that it presented.
There was, however, one point to be settled, and I dealt with it at
once. My slight inspection of the works had shown that no business was
being carried on in them; and the question was whether they were
completely untenanted or whether there was some person who had regular
access to them. My enquiries resulted, as you know, in the unearthing
of the mysterious Mr. Gill, but what his relation to the affair might
be I was not, at the moment, in a position to judge.
“Then came our talk with Jardine, from which emerged the fact that the
ordinary motives of murder apparently did not exist in this case, and
that the crime appeared to have its origin in circumstances that had
arisen locally and recently. And, on our proceeding to search for such
conditions as might conceivably generate an adequate motive, we
lighted on a case of cremation.
“Now, it is my habit, whenever I have to deal with death which has
been followed by cremation, to approach the case with the utmost
caution and scrutinize the circumstances most narrowly. For, admirable
as is this method of disposing of the dead regarded from a hygienic
standpoint, it has the fatal defect of lending itself most perfectly
to the more subtle forms of murder, and especially to the
administration of poison. By cremation all traces of the alkaloids,
the toxines and the other organic poisons are utterly destroyed, while
of the metals, the three whose compounds are most commonly employed
for criminal purposes, arsenic, antimony and mercury--are volatilized
by heat and would be more or less completely dissipated during the
incineration of the body. It is true that the most elaborate
precautions in the form of examination and certification are
prescribed--and usually taken, I presume--before cremation is
performed; but, as every medical jurist knows, precautions taken
before the event are useless, for, to be effective, they have to cover
every possible cause of death, which would be impracticable. Hence, as
suspicion, in case of poisoning, commonly does not arise until some
time after death, I always give the closest consideration to the
antecedent circumstances in cases where cremation has been performed.
“But in this case of Jardine’s it was at once obvious that the
circumstances called for the minutest inquiry and that no inquiry had
been made. On the face of it the case was a suspicious one; and the
curious incident that Jardine described made it look more suspicious
still and, moreover, suggested a possible motive for the attempt on
his life. Apparently he had seen, or was believed to have seen,
something that he was not desired to see; something that it was not
intended that anyone should see.
“Now what might that something have been? Apparently it was connected
with the hand or with the part of the arm adjacent to the hand. I
considered the possibilities; and at once they fell into two
categories. That something might have been a wound, an injury, a
hypodermic needle-mark; something, that is to say, related to the
cause of death; or it might have been a mutilation, a deformity, a
finger-ring, a tattoo-mark; something, that is to say, related to the
identity of the deceased. And it followed that the cremation might
have been made use of to conceal either the cause of death or the
identity of the body. But all this was purely speculative. The case
looked suspicious; but there was not a particle of positive evidence
that anything abnormal had occurred.
“At this point Jardine exploded on us his second mystery; that of the
dead cleric at Hampstead. This gave us, at once, an adequate motive
for getting rid of him; for it had every appearance of a case of
murder with successful concealment of the body, and Jardine was the
only witness who could testify to its having occurred. On hearing of
this I was for a moment disposed to dismiss the cremation case; to
consider that the suspicious elements in it had been magnified by our
imaginations in our endeavours to find an explanation of the assault
on Jardine. Moreover, since we now had a sufficient motive for that
assault the cremation case appeared to be outside the scope of the
inquiry.
“But there was a difficulty. It was now six weeks since Jardine had
encountered the body in the lane, and during that time he had been
entirely unmolested. The assault had occurred on his moving into a new
neighbourhood, to which he had come unexpectedly and unannounced.
Moreover, the assault had been committed by some person who either had
access to the factory or was, at least, well acquainted with it and
who, therefore, seemed to be connected with the new neighbourhood; and
it was committed within a few days of the cremation incident.
Furthermore, the assault was manifestly premeditated and prepared; but
yet the circumstances--namely, Jardine’s recent and unexpected
appearance in the neighbourhood--were such as to make it certain that
the crime could have been planned only a day or two before its
execution. Which again seemed to connect it with the cremation case
rather than with the Hampstead case.
“There were two more points. We have seen that Jardine’s would-be
murderer was a subtle, ingenious, resourceful and cautious villain.
But a crime adjusted, to the conditions of cremation is exactly such a
crime as we should expect of such a man; whereas the Hampstead
crime--assuming it to be a crime--appeared to have been a somewhat
clumsy affair, though the successful concealment of the body pointed
to a person of some capacity. So that the former crime was more
congruous with the known personality of the would-be murderer than the
latter.
“The second point was made on further investigation. The day after our
consultation I looked round the neighbourhood with the aid of a
large-scale map; when I discovered that the yard of the factory in
Norton Street backed on the garden of the Samways’ house in Gayton
Street. This, again, suggested a connection between the cremation case
and the assault on Jardine; and the suggestion was so strong that once
more the cremation incident assumed the uppermost place in my mind.
“I considered that case at length. Assuming a crime to have been
committed, what was the probable nature of that crime? Now, cremation,
as I have said, tends to destroy two kinds of evidence, namely: that
relating to the cause of death and that relating to the identity of
the body; whence it follows that the two crimes which it may be used
to conceal are murder and substitution.
“To which of these crimes did the evidence point in the present
instance? Well, we had the undoubted fact that cremation had been
performed pursuant to the expressed wishes of Septimus Maddock, the
man who was alleged to have been cremated. But if it was a case of
murder, the crime must have been hurriedly planned a few days before
the man’s death--that is, after the execution of the will; for we
could assume that Maddock would not have connived at his own murder;
whereas, if it was a case of substitution Maddock, himself, was
probably the actual agent. Considering the circumstances--the
inexplicable, symptomless illness and the unexpected death--the latter
crime was obviously more probable than the former. The illness, in
that case, would be a sham illness deliberately planned to prepare the
way for the introduction of the substituted body.
“Moreover, the attendant circumstances were more in favour of
substitution than of murder. Of the three doctors who saw the body,
only one had seen the living man; and that one, Batson, was more than
half blind and wholly inattentive and neglectful. For the purpose of
substitution, no more perfectly suitable practitioner could have been
selected. The identity of the body was taken for granted--naturally
enough, I admit--and no verification was even thought of. Then, as to
Jardine’s experience. The hand or wrist is not at all a likely region
on which to find either a fatal injury or the trace of a hypodermic
injection; whereas it is a most important region for purposes of
identification. The hand is highly characteristic in itself even when
normal; and there is no part of the body that is so subject to
mutilation or in which mutilations and deformities are so striking, so
conspicuous, and so characteristic. Lost fingers, stiff fingers,
webbed fingers, supernumerary fingers, contracted palm, deformed
nails, brachydactylia and numerous other abnormal conditions are not
only easily recognized, but--since the hand is usually unclothed and
visible--their existence will be known to a large number of persons.
“The evidence, in short, was strongly in favour of substitution as
against murder.
“If, however, the body which was cremated was not that of Maddock,
then it was the body of some other person; that is to say that the
theory of substitution left us with a dead body that was unaccounted
for. And since a dead body implies the death of some person, the
theory of substitution left us with a death unaccounted for and
obviously concealed; that is to say, it raised a strong presumption of