The blue scarab
finger-prints is raised. But it would be interesting to know how he
got them and what they are like. We must try to find that out.
However, to return to your case, since your theory and the police
theory are probably the same, we may as well consider the value of
your inferences.
“At present we are dealing with the case in the abstract. Our data are
largely assumptions, and our inferences are largely derived from an
application of the mathematical laws of probability. Thus we assume
that a murder has been committed, whereas it may turn out to have been
suicide. We assume the murder to have been committed by the person who
made the footprints, and we assume that that person has no little
toes, whereas he may have retracted little toes which do not touch the
ground and so leave no impression. Assuming the little toes to be
absent, we account for their absence by considering known causes in
the order of their probability. Excluding--quite properly, I
think--Raynaud’s disease, we arrive at frost-bite and ergotism. But
two persons, both of whom are of a stature corresponding to the size
of the footprints, may have had a motive--though a very inadequate
one--for committing the crime, and both have been exposed to the
conditions which tend to produce frost-bite, while one of them has
probably been exposed to the conditions which tend to produce
ergotism. The laws of probability point to both of these two men; and
the chances in favour of the Swede being the murderer rather than the
Canadian would be represented by the common
factor--frost-bite--multiplied by the additional factor, ergotism. But
this is purely speculative at present. There is no evidence that
either man has ever been frost-bitten or has ever eaten spurred rye.
Nevertheless, it is a perfectly sound method at this stage. It
indicates a line of investigation. If it should transpire that either
man has suffered from frost-bite or ergotism, a definite advance would
have been made. But here is Polton with a couple of finished prints.
How on earth did you manage it in the time, Polton?”
“Why, you see, sir, I just dried the film with spirit,” replied
Polton. “It saves a lot of time. I will let you have a pair of
enlargements in about a quarter of an hour.”
Handing us the two wet prints, each stuck on a glass plate, he retired
to the laboratory, and Thorndyke and I proceeded to scrutinize the
photographs with the aid of our pocket lenses. The promised
enlargements were really hardly necessary excepting for the purpose of
comparative measurements, for the image of the white footprint, fully
two inches long, was so microscopically sharp that, with the
assistance of the lens, the minutest detail could be clearly seen.
“There is certainly not a vestige of little toe,” remarked Thorndyke,
“and the plump appearance of the other toes supports your rejection of
Raynaud’s disease. Does the character of the footprint convey any
other suggestion to you, Jervis?”
“It gives me the impression that the man had been accustomed to go
bare-footed in early life and had only taken to boots comparatively
recently. The position of the great toe suggests this, and the
presence of a number of small scars on the toes and ball of the foot
seems to confirm it. A person walking barefoot would sustain
innumerable small wounds from treading on small, sharp objects.”
Thorndyke looked dissatisfied. “I agree with you,” he said, “as to the
suggestion offered by the undeformed state of the great toes; but
those little pits do not convey to me the impression of scars
produced, as you suggest. Still, you may be right.”
Here our conversation was interrupted by a knock on the outer oak.
Thorndyke stepped out through the lobby and I heard him open the door.
A moment or two later he re-entered, accompanied by a short,
brown-faced gentleman whom I instantly recognized as Mr. Wardale.
“I must have come up by the same train as you,” he remarked, as we
shook hands, “and to a certain extent, I suspect, on the same errand.
I thought I would like to put our arrangement on a business footing,
as I am a stranger to both of you.”
“What do you want us to do?” asked Thorndyke.
“I want you to watch the case, and, if necessary, to look into the
facts independently.”
“Can you give us any information that may help us?”
Mr. Wardale reflected. “I don’t think I can,” he said at length. “I
have no facts that you have not, and any surmises of mine might be
misleading. I had rather you kept an open mind. But perhaps we might
go into the question of costs.”
This, of course, was somewhat difficult, but Thorndyke contrived to
indicate the probable liabilities involved to Mr. Wardale’s
satisfaction.
“There is one other little matter,” said Wardale as he rose to depart.
“I have got a suit-case here which Mrs. Beddingfield lent me to bring
some things up to town. It is one that Mr. Macauley left behind when
he went away from the boarding-house. Mrs. Beddingfield suggested that
I might leave it at his chambers when I had finished with it; but I
don’t know his address, excepting that it is somewhere in the Temple,
and I don’t want to meet the fellow if he should happen to have come
up to town.”
“Is it empty?” asked Thorndyke.
“Excepting for a suit of pyjamas and a pair of shocking old slippers.”
He opened the suit-case as he spoke and exhibited its contents with a
grin.
“Characteristic of a negro, isn’t it? Pink silk pyjamas and slippers
about three sizes too small.”
“Very well,” said Thorndyke. “I will get my man to find out the
address and leave it there.”
As Mr. Wardale went out, Polton entered with the enlarged photographs,
which showed the footprints the natural size. Thorndyke handed them to
me, and as I sat down to examine them he followed his assistant to the
laboratory. He returned in a few minutes, and after a brief inspection
of the photographs, remarked:
“They show us nothing more than we have seen, though they may be
useful later. So your stock of facts is all we have to go on at
present. Are you going home to-night?”
“Yes, I shall go back to Margate to-morrow.”
“Then, as I have to call at Scotland Yard, we may as well walk to
Charing Cross together.”
As we walked down the Strand we gossiped on general topics, but before
we separated at Charing Cross, Thorndyke reverted to the case.
“Let me know the date of the inquest,” said he, “and try to find out
what the poison was--if it was really a poison.”
“The liquid that was left in the bottle seemed to be a watery solution
of some kind,” said I, “as I think I mentioned.”
“Yes,” said Thorndyke. “Possibly a watery infusion of strophanthus.”
“Why strophanthus?” I asked.
“Why not?” demanded Thorndyke. And with this and an inscrutable smile,
he turned and walked down Whitehall.
Three days later I found myself at Margate sitting beside Thorndyke in
a room adjoining the Town Hall, in which the inquest on the death of
Mrs. Toussaint was to be held. Already the coroner was in his chair,
the jury were in their seats and the witnesses assembled in a group of
chairs apart. These included Foxton, a stranger who sat by
him--presumably the other medical witness--Mrs. Beddingfield, Mr.
Wardale, the police superintendent and a well-dressed coloured man,
whom I correctly assumed to be Mr. Macauley.
As I sat by my rather sphinx-like colleague my mind recurred for the
hundredth time to his extraordinary powers of mental synthesis. That
parting remark of his as to the possible nature of the poison had
brought home to me in a flash the fact that he already had a definite
theory of this crime, and that his theory was not mine nor that of the
police. True, the poison might not be strophanthus, after all, but
that would not alter the position. He had a theory of the crime, but
yet he was in possession of no facts excepting those with which I had
supplied him. Therefore those facts contained the material for a
theory, whereas I had deduced from them nothing but the bald,
ambiguous mathematical probabilities.
The first witness called was naturally Dr. Foxton, who described the
circumstances already known to me. He further stated that he had been
present at the autopsy, that he had found on the throat and limbs of
the deceased, bruises that suggested a struggle and violent restraint.
The immediate cause of death was heart failure, but whether that
failure was due to shock, terror, or the action of a poison he could
not positively say.
The next witness was a Dr. Prescott, an expert pathologist and
toxicologist. He had made the autopsy and agreed with Dr. Foxton as to
the cause of death. He had examined the liquid contained in the bottle
taken from the hand of the deceased and found it to be a watery
infusion or decoction of strophanthus seeds. He had analyzed the fluid
contained in the stomach and found it to consist largely of the same
infusion.
“Is infusion of strophanthus seeds used in medicine?” the coroner
asked.
“No,” was the reply. “The tincture is the form in which strophanthus
is administered unless it is given in the form of strophanthin.”
“Do you consider that the strophanthus caused, or contributed to
death?”
“It is difficult to say,” replied Dr. Prescott. “Strophanthus is a
heart poison, and there was a very large poisonous dose. But very
little had been absorbed, and the appearances were not inconsistent
with death from shock.”
“Could death have been self-produced by the voluntary taking of the
poison?” asked the coroner.
“I should say, decidedly not. Dr. Foxton’s evidence shows that the
bottle was almost certainly placed in the hands of the deceased after
death, and this is in complete agreement with the enormous dose and
small absorption.”
“Would you say that appearances point to suicidal or homicidal
poisoning?”
“I should say that they point to homicidal poisoning, but that death
was probably due mainly to shock.”
This concluded the expert’s evidence. It was followed by that of Mrs.
Beddingfield, which brought out nothing new to me but the fact that a
trunk had been broken open and a small attaché case belonging to the
deceased abstracted and taken away.
“Do you know what the deceased kept in that case?” the coroner asked.
“I have seen her put her husband’s letters into it. She had quite a
number of them. I don’t know what else she kept in it except, of
course, her cheque book.”
“Had she any considerable balance at the bank?”
“I believe she had. Her husband used to send most of his pay home and
she used to pay it in and leave it with the bank. She might have two
or three hundred pounds to her credit.”
As Mrs. Beddingfield concluded, Mr. Wardale was called, and he was
followed by Mr. Macauley. The evidence of both was quite brief and
concerned entirely with the disturbance made by Bergson, whose absence
from the court I had already noted.
The last witness was the police superintendent, and he, as I had
expected, was decidedly reticent. He did refer to the footprints but,
like Foxton--who presumably had his instructions--he abstained from
describing their peculiarities. Nor did he say anything about
finger-prints. As to the identity of the criminal, that had to be
further inquired into. Suspicion had at first fastened upon Bergson,
but it had since transpired that the Swede sailed from Ramsgate on an
ice-ship two days before the occurrence of the tragedy. Then suspicion
had pointed to the husband, who was known to have landed at Liverpool
four days before the death of his wife and who had mysteriously
disappeared. But he (the superintendent) had only that morning
received a telegram from the Liverpool police informing him that the
body of Toussaint had been found floating in the Mersey, and that it
bore a number of wounds of an apparently homicidal character.