The magic casket
“We have called,” said Thorndyke, “about a man named Ingle.”
“Ingle--Ingle,” repeated Halbury. “Now, let me see----”
“Stock-Orchard Crescent, Holloway,” Thorndyke explained.
“Oh, yes. I remember him. Well, how is he?”
“He’s dead,” replied Thorndyke.
“Is he really?” exclaimed Halbury. “Now that shows how careful one
should be in one’s judgments. I half suspected that fellow of
malingering. He was supposed to have a dilated heart, but I couldn’t
make out any appreciable dilatation. There was excited, irregular
action. That was all. I had a suspicion that he had been dosing
himself with trinitrine. Reminded me of the cases of cordite chewing
that I used to meet with in South Africa. So he’s dead, after all.
Well, it’s queer. Do you know what the exact cause of death was?”
“Failure of a dilated heart is the cause stated on the
certificates--the body was cremated; and the ‘C’ Certificate was
signed by you.”
“By me!” exclaimed the physician. “Nonsense! It’s a mistake. I signed
a certificate for a Friendly Society--Mrs. Ingle brought it here for
me to sign--but I didn’t even know he was dead. Besides, I went away
for my holiday a few days after I saw the man, and only came back
yesterday. What makes you think I signed the death certificate?”
Thorndyke produced Stalker’s précis and handed it to Halbury, who
read out his own name and address with a puzzled frown. “This is an
extraordinary affair,” said he. “It will have to be looked into.”
“It will, indeed,” assented Thorndyke; “especially as a suspicion of
poisoning has been raised.”
“Ha!” exclaimed Halbury. “Then it was trinitrine, you may depend. But
I suspected him unjustly. It was somebody else who was dosing him;
perhaps that sly-looking baggage of a wife of his. Is anyone in
particular suspected?”
“Yes. The accusation, such as it is, is against the wife.”
“H’m. Probably a true bill. But she’s done us. Artful devil. You can’t
get much evidence out of an urnful of ashes. Still, somebody has
forged my signature. I suppose that is what the hussy wanted that
certificate for--to get a specimen of my handwriting. I see the ‘B’
certificate was signed by a man named Meeking. Who’s he? It was Barber
who called me in for an opinion.”
“I must find out who he is,” replied Thorndyke. “Possibly Dr. Barber
will know. I shall go and call on him now.”
“Yes,” said Dr. Halbury, shaking hands as we rose to depart, “you
ought to see Barber. He knows the history of the case, at any rate.”
From Wimpole Street we steered a course for Howland Street, and here
we had the good fortune to arrive just as Dr. Barber’s car drew up at
the door. Thorndyke introduced himself and me, and then introduced the
subject of his visit, but said nothing, at first, about our call on
Dr. Halbury.
“Ingle,” repeated Dr. Barber. “Oh, yes, I remember him. And you say he
is dead. Well, I’m rather surprised. I didn’t regard his condition as
serious.”
“Was his heart dilated?” Thorndyke asked.
“Not appreciably. I found nothing organic; no valvular disease. It was
more like a tobacco heart. But it’s odd that Meeking didn’t mention
the matter to me--he was my locum, you know. I handed the case over to
him when I went on my holiday. And you say he signed the death
certificate?”
“Yes; and the ‘B’ certificate for cremation, too.”
“Very odd,” said Dr. Barber. “Just come in and let us have a look at
the day book.”
We followed him into the consulting room, and there, while he was
turning over the leaves of the day book, I ran my eye along the shelf
over the writing-table from which he had taken it; on which I observed
the usual collection of case books and books of certificates and
notification forms, including the book of death certificates.
“Yes,” said Dr. Barber, “here we are; ‘Ingle, Mr., Stock-Orchard
Crescent.’ The last visit was on the 4th of September, and Meeking
seems to have given some sort of certificate. Wonder if he used a
printed form.” He took down two of the books and turned over the
counterfoils.
“Here we are,” he said presently; “‘Ingle, Jonathan, 4th September.
Now recovered and able to resume duties.’ That doesn’t look like
dying, does it? Still, we may as well make sure.”
He reached down the book of death certificates and began to glance
through the most recent entries.
“No,” he said, turning over the leaves, “there doesn’t seem to be----
Hullo! What’s this? Two blank counterfoils; and about the date, too;
between the 2nd and 13th of September. Extraordinary! Meeking is such
a careful, reliable man.”
He turned back to the day book and read through the fortnight’s
entries. Then he looked up with an anxious frown.
“I can’t make this out,” he said. “There is no record of any patient
having died in that period.”
“Where is Dr. Meeking at present?” I asked.
“Somewhere in the South Atlantic,” replied Barber. “He left here three
weeks ago to take up a post on a Royal Mail Boat. So he couldn’t have
signed the certificate in any case.”
That was all that Dr. Barber had to tell us, and a few minutes later
we took our departure.
“This case looks pretty fishy,” I remarked, as we turned down
Tottenham Court Road.
“Yes,” Thorndyke agreed. “There is evidently something radically
wrong. And what strikes me especially is the cleverness of the fraud;
the knowledge and judgment and foresight that are displayed.”
“She took pretty considerable risks,” I observed.
“Yes, but only the risks that were unavoidable. Everything that could
be foreseen has been provided for. All the formalities have been
complied with--in appearance. And you must notice, Jervis, that the
scheme did actually succeed. The cremation has taken place. Nothing
but the incalculable accident of the appearance of the real Mrs. Ingle
and her vague and apparently groundless suspicions, prevented the
success from being final. If she had not come on the scene, no
questions would ever have been asked.”
“No,” I agreed. “The discovery of the plot is a matter of sheer bad
luck. But what do you suppose has really happened?”
Thorndyke shook his head.
“It is very difficult to say. The mechanism of the affair is obvious
enough, but the motives and purpose are rather incomprehensible. The
illness was apparently a sham, the symptoms being produced by
nitro-glycerine or some similar heart poison. The doctors were called
in, partly for the sake of appearances and partly to get specimens of
their handwriting. The fact that both the doctors happened to be away
from home and one of them at sea at the time when verbal questions
might have been asked--by the undertaker, for instance--suggests that
this had been ascertained in advance. The death certificate forms were
pretty certainly stolen by the woman when she was left alone in
Barber’s consulting room, and, of course, the cremation certificates
could be obtained on application to the crematorium authorities. That
is all plain sailing. The mystery is, what is it all about? Barber or
Meeking would almost certainly have given a death certificate,
although the death was unexpected, and I don’t suppose Halbury would
have refused to confirm it. They would have assumed that their
diagnosis had been at fault.”
“Do you think it could have been suicide, or an inadvertent overdose
of trinitrine?”
“Hardly. If it was suicide, it was deliberate, for the purpose of
getting the insurance money for the woman, unless there was some
further motive behind. And the cremation, with all its fuss and
formalities, is against suicide; while the careful preparation seems
to exclude inadvertent poisoning. Then, what was the motive for the
sham illness except as a preparation for an abnormal death?”
“That is true,” said I. “But if you reject suicide, isn’t it rather
remarkable that the victim should have provided for his own
cremation?”
“We don’t know that he did,” replied Thorndyke. “There is a suggestion
of a capable forger in this business. It is quite possible that the
will itself is a forgery.”
“So it is!” I exclaimed. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“You see,” continued Thorndyke, “the appearances suggest that
cremation was a necessary part of the programme; otherwise these
extraordinary risks would not have been taken. The woman was sole
executrix and could have ignored the cremation clause. But if the
cremation was necessary, why was it necessary? The suggestion is that
there was something suspicious in the appearance of the body;
something that the doctors would certainly have observed or that would
have been discovered if an exhumation had taken place.”
“You mean some injury or visible signs of poisoning?”
“I mean something discoverable by examination even after burial.”
“But what about the undertaker? Wouldn’t he have noticed anything
palpably abnormal?”
“An excellent suggestion, Jervis. We must see the undertaker. We have
his address: Kentish Town Road--a long way from deceased’s house, by
the way. We had better get on a bus and go there now.”
A yellow omnibus was approaching as he spoke. We hailed it and sprang
on, continuing our discussion as we were borne northward.
Mr. Burrell, the undertaker, was a pensive-looking, profoundly civil
man who was evidently in a small way, for he combined with his
funereal functions general carpentry and cabinet making. He was
perfectly willing to give any required information, but he seemed to
have very little to give.
“I never really saw the deceased gentleman,” he said in reply to
Thorndyke’s cautious inquiries. “When I took the measurements, the
corpse was covered with a sheet; and as Mrs. Ingle was in the room, I
made the business as short as possible.”
“You didn’t put the body in the coffin, then?”
“No. I left the coffin at the house, but Mrs. Ingle said that she and
the deceased gentleman’s brother would lay the body in it.”
“But didn’t you see the corpse when you screwed the coffin-lid down?”
“I didn’t screw it down. When I got there it was screwed down already.
Mrs. Ingle said they had to close up the coffin, and I dare say it was
necessary. The weather was rather warm; and I noticed a strong smell
of formalin.”
“Well,” I said, as we walked back down the Kentish Town Road, “we
haven’t got much more forward.”
“I wouldn’t say that,” replied Thorndyke. “We have a further instance
of the extraordinary adroitness with which this scheme was carried
out; and we have confirmation of our suspicion that there was
something unusual in the appearance of the body. It is evident that
this woman did not dare to let even the undertaker see it. But one can
hardly help admiring the combination of daring and caution, the
boldness with which these risks were taken, and the care and judgment
with which they were provided against. And again I point out that the
risks were justified by the result. The secret of that man’s death
appears to have been made secure for all time.”
It certainly looked as if the mystery with which we were concerned
were beyond the reach of investigation. Of course, the woman could be
prosecuted for having forged the death certificates, to say nothing of
the charge of bigamy. But that was no concern of ours or Stalker’s.
Jonathan Ingle was dead, and no one could say how he died.
On our arrival at our chambers we found a telegram that had just
arrived, announcing that Stalker would call on us in the evening; and
as this seemed to suggest that he had some fresh information we looked
forward to his visit with considerable interest. Punctually at six
o’clock he made his appearance and at once opened the subject.
“There are some new developments in this Ingle case,” said he. “In the
first place, the woman, Huggard, has bolted. I went to the house to
make a few inquiries and found the police in possession. They had come