The magic casket
slate-topped table, like some solemn effigy on an altar tomb, and drew
back the sheet that covered it. We all approached, stepping softly,
and stood beside the table, looking down with a certain awesome
curiosity at the still, waxen figure that, but a few hours since, had
been a living man like ourselves. The body was that of a good-looking,
middle-aged man with a refined, intelligent face--slightly disfigured
by a scar on the cheek--now set in the calm, reposeful expression that
one so usually finds on the faces of the drowned; with drowsy,
half-closed eyes and slightly parted lips that revealed a considerable
gap in the upper front teeth.
Thorndyke stood awhile looking down on the dead man with a curious
questioning expression. Then his eye travelled over the body, from the
placid face to the marble-like torso and the hand which, though now
relaxed, still lightly grasped a tuft of water-weed. The latter
Thorndyke gently disengaged from the limp hand, and, after a glance at
the dark green, feathery fronds, laid it down and stooped to examine
the right arm at the spot above the elbow that Parton had spoken of.
“Yes,” he said, “I think I should call it a bruise, though it is very
faint. As you say, it might have been produced by a blow with a stick
or rod. I notice that there are some teeth missing. Presumably he wore
a plate?”
“Yes,” replied Parton; “a smallish gold plate with four teeth on
it--at least, so his brother told me. Of course, it fell out when he
was in the water, but it hasn’t been found; in fact, it hasn’t been
looked for.”
Thorndyke nodded and then turned to the sergeant.
“Could I see what you found in the pockets?” he asked.
The sergeant complied readily, and my colleague watched his orderly
procedure with evident approval. The collection of envelopes was
produced from an attaché-case and conveyed to a side table, where the
sergeant emptied out the contents of each into a little heap, opposite
which he placed the appropriate envelope with its written description.
Thorndyke ran his eye over the collection--which was commonplace
enough--until he came to the tobacco pouch, from which protruded the
corner of a scrap of crumpled paper. This he drew forth and smoothed
out the creases, when it was seen to be a railway receipt for an
excess fare.
“Seems to have lost his ticket or travelled without one,” the sergeant
remarked. “But not on this line.”
“No,” agreed Thorndyke. “It is the Tilbury and Southend line. But you
notice the date. It is the 18th; and the body was found on the morning
of Wednesday, the 19th. So it would appear that he must have come into
this neighbourhood in the evening; and that he must have come either
by way of London or by a very complicated cross-country route. I
wonder what brought him here.”
He produced his note-book and was beginning to copy the receipt when
the sergeant said:
“You had better take the paper, sir. It is of no use to us now, and it
isn’t very easy to make out.”
Thorndyke thanked the officer, and, handing me the paper, asked:
“What do you make of it, Jervis?”
I scrutinized the little crumpled scrap and deciphered with difficulty
the hurried scrawl, scribbled with a hard, ill-sharpened pencil.
“It seems to read Ldn to ‘C.B. or S.B., Hlt’--that is some ‘Halt,’ I
presume. But the amount, 4/9, is clear enough, and that will give us a
clue if we want one.” I returned the paper to Thorndyke, who bestowed
it in his pocket-book and then remarked:
“I don’t see any keys.”
“No, sir,” replied the sergeant, “there aren’t any. Rather queer,
that, for he must have had at least a latch-key. They must have fallen
out into the water.”
“That is possible,” said Thorndyke, “but it would be worth while to
make sure. Is there anyone who could show us the place where the body
was found?”
“I will walk up there with you myself, sir, with pleasure,” said the
sergeant, hastily repacking the envelopes. “It is only a quarter of an
hour’s walk from here.”
“That is very good of you, sergeant,” my colleague responded; “and as
we seem to have seen everything here, I propose that we start at once.
You are not coming with us, Parton?”
“No,” the doctor replied. “I have finished with the case and I have
got my work to do.” He shook hands with us heartily and watched
us--with some curiosity, I think--as we set forth in company with the
sergeant.
His curiosity did not seem to me to be unjustified. In fact, I shared
it. The presence of the police officer precluded discussion, but as we
took our way out of the town I found myself speculating curiously on
my colleague’s proceedings. To me, suicide was written plainly on
every detail of the case. Of course, we did not wish to take that
view, but what other was possible? Had Thorndyke some alternative
theory? Or was he merely, according to his invariable custom, making
an impartial survey of everything, no matter how apparently trivial,
in the hope of lighting on some new and informative fact?
The temporary absence of the sergeant, who had stopped to speak to a
constable on duty, enabled me to put the question.
“Is this expedition intended to clear up anything in particular?”
“No,” he replied, “excepting the keys, which ought to be found. But
you must see for yourself that this is not a straightforward case.
That man did not come all this way merely to drown himself in a ditch.
I am quite in the dark at present, so there is nothing for it but to
examine everything with our own eyes and see if there is anything that
has been overlooked that may throw some light on either the motive or
the circumstances. It is always desirable to examine the scene of a
crime or a tragedy.”
Here the return of the sergeant put a stop to the discussion and we
proceeded on our way in silence. Already we had passed out of the
town, and we now turned out of the main road into a lane or by-road,
bordered by meadows and orchards and enclosed by rather high
hedgerows.
“This is Ponder’s Road,” said the sergeant. “It leads to Renham, a
couple of miles farther on, where it joins the Aylesbury Road. The
cart track is on the left a little way along.”
A few minutes later we came to our turning, a narrow and rather muddy
lane, the entrance to which was shaded by a grove of tall elms.
Passing through this shady avenue, we came out on a grass-covered
track, broken by deep wagon-ruts and bordered on each side by a ditch,
beyond which was a wide expanse of marshy meadows.
“This is the place,” said the sergeant, halting by the side of the
right-hand ditch and indicating a spot where the rushes had been
flattened down. “It was just as you see it now, only the feet were
just visible sticking out of the duck-weed, which had drifted back
after Moffet had disturbed it.”
We stood awhile looking at the ditch, with its thick mantle of bright
green, spotted with innumerable small dark objects and showing here
and there a faint track where a water-vole had swum across.
“Those little dark objects are water-snails, I suppose,” said I, by
way of making some kind of remark.
“Yes,” replied Thorndyke; “the common Amber shell, I think--_Succinea
putris_.” He reached out his stick and fished up a sample of the
duck-weed, on which one or two of the snails were crawling. “Yes,” he
repeated. “_Succinea putris_ it is; a queer little left-handed shell,
with the spire, as you see, all lop-sided. They have a habit of
swarming in this extraordinary way. You notice that the ditch is
covered with them.”
I had already observed this, but it hardly seemed to be worth
commenting on under the present circumstances--which was apparently
the sergeant’s view also, for he looked at Thorndyke with some
surprise, which developed into impatience when my colleague proceeded
further to expand on the subject of natural history.
“These water-weeds,” he observed, “are very remarkable plants in their
various ways. Look at this duck-weed, for instance. Just a little
green oval disc with a single root hanging down into the water, like a
tiny umbrella with a long handle; and yet it is a complete plant, and
a flowering plant, too.” He picked a specimen off the end of his stick
and held it up by its root to exhibit its umbrella-like form; and as
he did so, he looked in my face with an expression that I felt to be
somehow significant; but of which I could not extract the meaning. But
there was no difficulty in interpreting the expression on the
sergeant’s face. He had come here on business and he wanted to “cut
the cackle and get to the hosses.”
“Well, sergeant,” said Thorndyke, “there isn’t much to see, but I
think we ought to have a look for those keys. He must have had keys of
some kind, if only a latch-key; and they must be in this ditch.”
The sergeant was not enthusiastic. “I’ve no doubt you are right, sir,”
said he; “but I don’t see that we should be much forrarder if we found
them. However, we may as well have a look, only I can’t stay more than
a few minutes. I’ve got my work to do at the station.”
“Then,” said Thorndyke, “let us get to work at once. We had better
hook out the weed and look it over; and if the keys are not in that,
we must try to expose the bottom where the body was lying. You must
tell us if we are working in the right place.”
With this he began, with the crooked handle of his stick, to rake up
the tangle of weed that covered the bottom of the ditch and drag the
detached masses ashore, piling them on the bank and carefully looking
them through to see if the keys should chance to be entangled in their
meshes. In this work I took my part under the sergeant’s direction,
raking in load after load of the delicate, stringy weed, on the pale
green ribbon-like leaves of which multitudes of the water-snails were
creeping; and sorting over each batch in hopeless and fruitless search
for the missing keys. In about ten minutes we had removed the entire
weedy covering from the bottom of the ditch over an area of from eight
to nine feet--the place which, according to the sergeant, the body had
occupied; and as the duck-weed had been caught by the tangled masses
of water-weed that we had dragged ashore, we now had an uninterrupted
view of the cleared space save for the clouds of mud that we had
stirred up.
“We must give the mud a few minutes to settle,” said Thorndyke.
“Yes,” the sergeant agreed, “it will take some time; and as it doesn’t
really concern me now that the inquest is over, I think I will get
back to the station if you will excuse me.”
Thorndyke excused him very willingly, I think, though politely and
with many thanks for his help. When he had gone I remarked:
“I am inclined to agree with the sergeant. If we find the keys we
shan’t be much forrarder.”
“We shall know that he had them with him,” he replied. “Though, of
course, if we don’t find them, that will not prove that they are not
here. Still, I think we should try to settle the question.”
His answer left me quite unconvinced; but the care with which he
searched the ditch and sorted out the weed left me in no doubt that,
to him, the matter seemed to be of some importance. However, nothing
came of the search. If the keys were there they were buried in the
mud, and eventually we had to give up the search and make our way back
towards the station.
As we passed out of the lane into Ponder’s Road, Thorndyke stopped at
the entrance, under the trees, by a little triangle of turf which
marked the beginning of the lane, and looked down at the muddy ground.
“Here is quite an interesting thing, Jervis,” he remarked, “which
shows us how standardized objects tend to develop an individual
character. These are the tracks of a car, or more probably a
tradesman’s van, which was fitted with Barlow tyres. Now there must be