A silent witness
the murder of some unknown person. And here it seemed that our data
came to an end; that we had no material whatever for forming any
hypothesis as to the identity of the person whose dead body we were
assuming to have been substituted for that of Septimus Maddock.
“But while I was thus turning over the possibilities of this cremation
case, the other--the Hampstead case--continued to lurk in the
background of my mind. It was much less hypothetical. There was
positive evidence of some weight that a crime had been committed. And
the circumstances offered a fully adequate motive for getting rid of
Jardine. Thus it was natural that I should raise the question. Was it
possible that the two cases could be in any way connected?
“At the first glance, the suggestion looked absolutely wild. But still
I considered it at length; and then it looked somewhat less wild. The
two cases had this in common, that if a crime had been committed,
Jardine was the sole witness. Moreover, the supposition that the two
cases were connected and incriminated the same parties, greatly
intensified the motive for making away with Jardine. But there was
another and much stronger point in favour of this view. If we adopted
the theory of substitution, it was impossible, on looking at the two
cases, to avoid being struck by the very curious converseness of their
conditions. In the Hampstead case we were dealing with a body which
had suddenly vanished, no one could say whither; in the Maddock case
we were dealing with a body which had suddenly appeared, no one could
say whence.
“When I reflected on this very striking appearance of relation it was
inevitable that I should ask myself the question, Is it conceivable
that these two bodies could have been one and the same? That the body
which was cremated could have been the body which Jardine saw in the
lane?
“Again, at the first glance, the question looked absurd. The first
body was seen by Jardine more than six weeks before the alleged death
of Maddock; and the body which he saw at the Samways’ house was that
of a man newly dead, with _rigor mortis_ just beginning. It was,
indeed barely conceivable that the Hampstead body was not actually
dead and that the man might have lingered on alive for six weeks. But
this suggestion failed to fit the known facts in two respects. In the
first place, the body which Jardine saw in the lane was, from his
description, pretty unmistakably a dead body, and, in the second, the
sham illness of Maddock and the elaborate, leisurely preparations
suggest a complete control of the time factor, which would be absent
if those preparations were adjusted to a dying man who might expire at
any moment.
“Rejecting this suggestion, then, the further question arose, Is it
possible that the body that was seen in the lane could, after an
interval of six weeks, have been produced in Gayton Street, perfectly
fresh and in a state of incipient _rigor mortis_? And when the
question was thus fairly stated, the answer was obviously in the
affirmative. For, is it not a matter of common knowledge that the
bodies of sheep are habitually brought from New Zealand to London,
traversing the whole width of the Tropics in the voyage, and are
delivered, after an interval of more than six weeks, perfectly fresh
and in a state of incipient _rigor mortis_? The physical possibility
was beyond question.
“But if physically possible, was such preservation practicable? Well,
how are the bodies of the sheep preserved? By exposing them
continuously to intense cold. And how is that intense cold produced?
Roughly speaking, by the volatilization of a liquefied gas--ammonia,
in the case of the sheep. But behold! The very man whom we are
suspecting of being the agent in this crime is a man who has command
of large quantities of a liquefied gas, and who has hired a mineral
water factory for no apparent reason and put the premises to no
apparent use.”
At this point Jervis brought his fist down with a bang on the arm of
his chair.
“Idiot!” he exclaimed. “Ass, fool, dolt, imbecile that I am! With
those cylinders staring me in the face, too! Of course, it was that
interval of six weeks that brought me up short. And yet I had actually
heard Jardine describe the cloud of carbon dioxide snow that fell on
his face! Don’t you consider me an absolute donkey, Thorndyke?”
“Certainly not,” replied Thorndyke. “You happened to miss a link and,
of course, the chain would not hold. It occurs to us all now and
again. But, do you see, Jardine, how ‘the stone which the builders
rejected has become the head of the corner’? Don’t you understand how,
when I reached this point, there rose before me the picture of that
cellar with the commonplace objects that it contained? The case, seven
feet by two and a-half--so convenient for preserving a body in a bulky
packing; the two waterproof sheets--so well adapted to holding a mass
of carbon dioxide snow in contact with the body; the mass of
straw--one of the most perfect non-conductors--so admirably fitted for
its use as a protective packing for the frozen body! and lastly, those
ten empty cylinders, of which seven had been used for some purpose
unknown to us? Let this case be a lesson to you, Jardine; not only in
legal medicine but in clinical medicine, too, to take the facts as you
find them--relevant or irrelevant, striking or commonplace--note them
carefully and trust them to find their own places in the inductive
scheme.”
“It has been a most instructive lesson to me,” said I; “especially
your analysis of the reasoning by which you identified the criminal.”
“Hum,” said Thorndyke. “I didn’t know I’d got as far as that.”
“But if the body was preserved in a frozen state, there could not be
much doubt as to who had preserved it.”
“Possibly not,” Thorndyke agreed. “But I had not proved that it _had_
been so preserved, but only that it was possible for it to have been;
and that the supposition of its having been so preserved was in
agreement with the known circumstances of the case. But I must impress
on you that up to this point I was dealing in pure hypothesis. My
hypothesis was perfectly sound, perfectly consistent in all its parts,
and perfectly congruous with all the known facts, but it did not
follow therefore that it was true. It was entirely unverified; for
hitherto I had not one single item of positive evidence to support it.
“Nevertheless, the striking agreement between the hypothesis and the
known facts encouraged me greatly; and, as it was evident that I had
now exhausted the material yielded by the cremation incident, I
decided to take up the clue at the other end; to investigate the
details of the Hampstead affair. To this end I called on Jardine, who
very kindly went over the case with me afresh. And here it was that I
first came within hail of positive evidence. On his wall was pinned an
oil sketch, and on that sketch was a distinct print of a right thumb.
It was beautifully clear; for the paint having been dry on the surface
but soft underneath, had taken the impression as sharply as a surface
of warm wax.
“Now, you will remember that I took possession of the letter which
summoned Jardine to the mineral water works and I may now say that I
tested it most carefully for finger-prints. But paper is a poor
material on which to develop invisible prints owing to its absorbent
nature and I had very indifferent success. Still, I did not fail
entirely. By the combined use of lycopodium powder and photography I
obtained impressions of parts of two finger-tips and a portion of the
end of a right thumb. They were wretched prints but yet available for
corroboration, since one could see part of the pattern on each and
could make out that the ridge-pattern of the thumb was of the kind
known as a ‘twinned loop.’
“Bearing this fact in mind, you will understand that I was quite
interested to find that the print on the sketch--also that of a right
thumb--had a twinned loop pattern. I noted the fact as a coincidence,
but, of course, attached no importance to it until Jardine told me
that the artist who painted the sketch habitually worked in gloves;
and even then I merely made a mental note that I would ascertain who
and what the artist was.
“I need not go over our examination of the scene of the crime. I need
only say that I was deeply interested in following the track along
which the body had been carried because I was on the look-out for
something; and that something was a house or other building in which
the body might have been temporarily deposited.
“My hypothesis seemed to demand such a building. For, since the body
was quite fresh and _rigor mortis_ was only beginning when Jardine saw
it at Gayton Street, it must have been frozen very shortly after
death. Now, it obviously could not have been carried from Hampstead to
Gayton Street on a man’s back; the alternative is either a vehicle
waiting at an appointed place--and necessarily not far away--or a
house or other building to which the body could be taken. But the
vehicle would, under the circumstances be almost impracticable. It
would hardly be possible to make an appointment with any exactness as
to time; and the presence of a waiting or loitering vehicle would, at
such an hour--it was about midnight, you will remember--be almost
certain to arouse suspicion and inquiry.
“On the other hand, a house to which the body could be conveyed would
meet the conditions perfectly. When once the body was deposited there,
the danger of pursuit would be practically at an end; and it would be
quite possible to have a supply of the liquid gas ready for use on its
arrival. This is assuming long premeditation and very deliberate
preparation; an assumption supported by Gill’s peculiar tenancy of the
factory.
“I, therefore, kept a sharp look-out for a likely house or building;
and, as Jardine and I came out of Ken Wood by the turnstile, behold! a
house which answered the requirements to perfection. It was a solitary
house; there was no other house near; and it lay right on the track
along which the body had apparently been carried. Instantly, I decided
to investigate the recent history of that house and its tenants; but
Jardine saved me the trouble. From him I learned that, at the time of
the assumed murder, it had been inhabited by the artist whom he had
mentioned, but that it had now been empty for a week or two.
“Here were news indeed! This artist, who habitually wore gloves and
whose right thumb-print was a twinned loop, had been living in this
house at the time of the assumed murder, but had been living elsewhere
at the time of the cremation! It was a striking group of facts, and I
eagerly availed myself of the opportunity of looking over the house.
“At first, the examination was quite barren and disappointing. The
man’s habits, as shown by the few discarded articles of use or other
traces, were of no interest to me--and still less to Jardine; and of
traces of his personality there were none. I searched all the rejected
canvases and every available scrap of paper in the hope of collecting
some fresh finger-prints, but without the smallest result. In fact,
the examination looked like being an utter failure up to the very
last, when we entered the stable-loft; but here I came upon one or two
really significant traces of occupation.
“The first of these was a smooth, indented line on the floor, as if
some heavy, metallic object had been dragged along it, with other,
rougher lines, apparently made by a heavy wooden case. Then there was
a quantity of straw, not new straw such as you might expect to find in
a stable-loft, but straw that had evidently been used for packing.
And, finally, there was a pair of canvas pliers which appeared to have