A silent witness
that one of the clauses stipulated that his body should be cremated.
So I shall have to verify the death for the purpose of the cremation
certificate. We’d better pop round and see him at once.”
With characteristic impulsiveness he sprang to his feet, snatched his
hat from its peg, and started forth, leaving me to follow.
“Beastly nuisance, these special regulations,” said Batson, as he
ambled briskly up the street. “Give a lot of trouble and cause a lot
of delay.”
“Isn’t the ordinary death certificate sufficient in a case of
cremation?” I asked.
“For purposes of law it is, though there is some talk of new
legislation on the subject, but the Company are a law unto themselves.
They have made the most infernally stringent regulations, and, as
there is no crematorium near London excepting the one at Woking, you
have to abide by their rules. And that reminds me--” here Batson
halted and scowled at me ferociously through his spectacles.
“Reminds you?” I repeated.
“That they require a second death certificate, signed by a man with
certain special qualifications.” He stood awhile frowning and
muttering under his breath and then suddenly turned and bounced off in
a new direction.
“Going to catch the other chappie and take him with us,” he explained,
as he darted out into the Hampstead Road. “Be off my mind then. A
fellow named O’Connor, Assistant Physician to the North London
Hospital. He’ll do if we can catch him at home. If not, you’ll have to
manage him.”
Batson looked at his watch--holding it within four inches of his
nose--and broke into a trot as we entered a quiet square. Halfway up
he halted at a door which bore a modest brass plate inscribed “Dr.
O’Connor,” and seizing the bell-knob, worked it vigorously in and out
as if it were the handle of an air-pump.
“Doctor in?” he demanded briskly of a startled housemaid; and, without
waiting for an answer, he darted into the hall, down the whole length
of which he staggered, executing a sort of sword-dance, having caught
his toe on an unobserved door-mat.
The doctor was in and he shortly appeared in evening dress with an
overcoat on his arm, and apparently in as great a hurry as Batson
himself.
“Won’t it do to-morrow?” he asked, when Batson had explained his
difficulties and the service required.
“Might as well come now,” said Batson persuasively; “won’t take a
minute and then I can go away in peace.”
“Very well,” said O’Connor, wriggling into his overcoat. “You go along
and I’ll follow in a few minutes. I’ve got to look in on a patient on
my way up west, and I shall be late for my appointment as it is. Write
the address on my card, here.”
He held out a card to my principal, and when the latter had scribbled
the address on it, he bustled out and vanished up the square. Batson
followed at the same headlong speed, and, again overlooking the mat,
came out on the pavement like an ill-started sprinter.
Gayton Street, at which we shortly arrived, was a grey and dingy
side-street exactly like a score of others in the same locality, and
Number 23 differed from the rest of the seedy-looking houses in no
respect save that it was perhaps a shade more dingy. The door was
opened in answer to Batson’s indecorously brisk knock by a woman--or
perhaps I should say a lady--who at once admitted us and to whom
Batson began, without preface, to explain the situation.
“I got your note, Mrs. Samway. Was going to bring my friend, here,
round to see the patient. Very unfortunate affair. Very sad.
Unexpected, too. Didn’t seem particularly bad yesterday. What time did
it happen?”
“I can’t say exactly,” was the reply. “He seemed quite comfortable
when I looked in on him the last thing at night, but when I went in
about seven this morning he was dead. I should have let you know
sooner, but I was expecting you to call.”
“H’m, yes,” said Batson, “very unfortunate. By the way, Mr. Maddock
desired that his remains should be cremated, I think?”
“Yes, so my husband tells me. He is the executor of the will, you
remember, in the absence of any relatives. All Mr. Maddock’s relations
seem to be in America.”
“Have you got the certificate forms?” asked Batson.
“Yes. My husband got all the papers from the undertaker this
afternoon.”
“Very well, Mrs. Samway, then we’ll just take a look at the body--have
to certify that I’ve seen it, you know.”
Mrs. Samway ushered us into a sitting-room where she had apparently
been working alone, for an unfinished mourning garment of some kind
lay on the table. Leaving us here, she went away and presently
returned with a sheaf of papers and a lighted candle, when we rose and
followed her to a back room on the ground floor. It was a smallish
room, sparely furnished, with heavy curtains drawn across the window,
and by one wall a bed, on which was a motionless figure covered by a
sheet.
Our conductress stood the candlestick on a table by the bed and
stepped back to make way for Batson, who drew back the sheet and
looked down on the body in his peering, near-sighted fashion. The
deceased seemed to be a rather frail-looking man of about fifty, but,
beyond the fact that he was clean shaven, I could form very little
idea of his appearance, since, in addition to the usual bandage under
the chin to close the mouth, a tape had been carried round the head to
secure a couple of pads of cotton wool over the eyes to keep the
eyelids closed.
As Batson applied his stethoscope to the chest of the dead man, I
glanced at our hostess not without interest. Mrs. Samway was an
unusual-looking woman, and I thought her decidedly handsome though not
attractive to me personally. She seemed to be about thirty, rather
over the medium height and of fine Junoesque proportions, with a small
head very gracefully set on the shoulders. Her jet-black hair,
formally parted in the middle, was brought down either side of the
forehead in wavy, but very smooth, masses and gathered behind in a
neat, precisely-plaited coil. The general effect reminded me of the
so-called “Clytie,” having the same reposefulness though not the
gentleness and softness of that lovely head. But the most remarkable
feature of this woman was the colour of her eyes, which were of the
palest grey or hazel that I have ever seen; so pale in fact that they
told as spots of light, like the eyes of some lemurs or those of a cat
seen in the dusk; a peculiarity that imparted a curiously intense and
penetrating quality to her glance.
I had just noted these particulars when Batson, having finished his
examination, held out the stethoscope to me.
“May as well listen, as you’re here,” said he, and, turning to our
hostess, he added: “Let us see those papers, Mrs. Samway.”
As he stepped over to the table, I took his place on a chair by the
bedside and proceeded to make an examination. It was, of course, only
a matter of form, for the man was obviously dead; but having insisted
so strongly on the necessity of verifying the death I had to make a
show of becoming scepticism. Accordingly I tested, both by touch and
with the stethoscope, the region of the heart. Needless to say, no
heart-sounds were to be distinguished, nor any signs of pulsation;
indeed, the very first touch of my hand on the chilly surface of the
chest was enough to banish any doubt. No living body could be so
entirely destitute of animal heat.
I laid down the stethoscope and looked reflectively at the dead man,
lying so still and rigid, with his bandaged jaws and blindfolded eyes,
and speculated vaguely on his personality when alive and on the hidden
disease that had so suddenly cut him off from the land of the living;
and insensibly--by habit I suppose--my fingers strayed to his clammy,
pulseless wrist. The sleeve of his night-shirt was excessively long,
almost covering the fingers, and I had to turn it back to reach the
spot where the pulse would normally be felt. In doing this, I moved
the dead hand slightly and then became aware of a well-marked _rigor
mortis_, or death stiffening in the arm of the corpse; a condition
which I ought to have observed sooner.
At this moment, happening to look up, I caught the eye of Mrs. Samway
fixed on me with a very remarkable expression. She was leaning over
Batson as he filled up the voluminous certificate, but had evidently
been watching me, and the expression of her pale, cat-like eyes left
no doubt in my mind that she strongly resented my proceedings. In some
confusion, and accusing myself of some failure in outward decorum, I
hastily drew down the dead man’s sleeve and rose from the bedside.
“You noticed, I suppose,” said I, “that there is fairly well-marked
_rigor mortis_?”
“I didn’t,” said Batson, “but if you did it’ll do as well. Better
mention it to O’Connor when he comes. He ought to be here now.”
“Who is O’Connor?” asked Mrs. Samway.
“Oh, he is the doctor who is going to sign the confirmatory
certificate.”
Again a gleam of unmistakable anger flashed from our hostess’ eyes as
she demanded:
“Then who is this gentleman?”
“This is Dr. Humphrey Jardine,” said Batson. “’Pologize for not
introducing him before. Dr. Jardine is taking my practice while I’m
away. I’m off to-night for about a week.”
Mrs. Samway withered me with a baleful glance of her singular eyes,
and remarked stiffly:
“I don’t quite see why you brought him here.”
She turned her back on me, and I decided that Mrs. Samway was somewhat
of a Tartar; though, to be sure, my presence was a distinct intrusion.
I was about to beat a retreat when Batson’s apologies were interrupted
by a noisy rat-tat at the street door.
“Ah, here’s O’Connor,” said Batson, and, as Mrs. Samway went out to
open the door, he added: “Seem to have put our foot in it, though I
don’t see why she need have been so peppery about it. And O’Connor
needn’t have banged at the door like that, with death in the house.
He’ll get into trouble if he doesn’t look out.”
Our colleague’s manner was certainly not ingratiating. He burst into
the room with his watch in his hand protesting that he was three
minutes late already, “and,” he added, “if there is one thing that I
detest, it’s being late at dinner. Got the forms?”
“Yes,” replied Batson, “here they are. That’s my certificate on the
front page. Yours is overleaf.”
Dr. O’Connor glanced rapidly down the long table of questions,
muttering discontentedly. “‘Made careful external examination?’ H’m.
‘Have you made a post mortem?’ No, of course, I haven’t. What an
infernal rigmarole! If cremation ever becomes general there’ll be no
time for anything but funerals. Who nursed the deceased?”
“I did,” said Mrs. Samway. “My husband relieved me occasionally, but
nearly all the nursing was done by me. My name is Letitia Samway.”
“Was the deceased a relation of yours?”
“No; only a friend. He lived with us for a time in Paris and came to
England with us.”
“What was his occupation?”
“He was nominally a dealer in works of art. Actually he was a man of
independent means.”
“Have you any pecuniary interest in his death?”
“He has left us about seventy pounds. My husband is the executor of
the will.”
“I see. Well, I’d better have a few words with you outside, Batson,
before I make my examination. It’s all a confounded farce, but we must
go through the proper forms, I suppose.”
“Yes, by all means,” said Batson. “Don’t leave any loop-hole for
queries or objections.” He rose and accompanied O’Connor out into the
hall, whence the sound of hurried muttering came faintly through the
door.
As soon as we were alone, I endeavoured to make my peace with Mrs.
Samway by offering apologies for my intrusion into the house of
mourning.
“For the time being,” I concluded, “I am Dr. Batson’s assistant, and,
as he seemed to wish me to come with him, I came without considering