The mystery of Angelina Frood
full-grown, able-bodied woman who has got all her wits about her. No,
Doctor, I am afraid we must take the view that the woman who was
carried up Black Boy-lane was a dead woman. All I want to point out is
that the other view is a bare possibility, and that we mustn’t forget
it.”
“But,” I urged, “don’t you think that the fact that she was being
carried towards the town strongly suggests that she was alive? Why on
earth should a murderer bring a body, at great risk of discovery, from
the river, where it could easily have been disposed of, up into the
town? It seems incredible.”
“It does,” he agreed. “It’s a regular facer. But, on the other hand,
suppose she was alive. What could they have done with her? How could
they have kept her out of sight all this time? And why should they
have done it?”
“As to the motive,” said I, “that is incomprehensible in any case. But
what do you suppose actually happened?”
“My theory of it is,” he replied, “that two men, at least, did the
job. Both may have been local waterside men, or there may have been a
stranger with a water-rat in his pay. I imagine the crime was
committed at Chatham, somewhere near the Sun Pier, and that the body
was put in a boat and brought up here. It was a densely foggy night,
you remember, so there would have been no great difficulty; and there
wouldn’t be many people about. The part of it that beats me is what
they meant to do with the body. They seem to have brought it
deliberately from Chatham right up into Rochester Town; and they have
got rid of it somehow. They must have had some place ready to stow it
in, but what that place can have been I can’t form the ghost of a
guess. It’s a fair knock-out.”
“You don’t suppose old Israel Bangs knows anything about it?” I
suggested.
The sergeant shook his head. “I’ve no reason to suppose he does,” he
replied. “And it is a bad plan to make guesses and name names.”
We walked up and down the Esplanade for nearly an hour, discussing
various possibilities; but we could make nothing of the incredible
thing that seemed to have happened in spite of its incredibility. At
last we gave it up and returned to the Guildhall, where, as we parted,
he said a little hesitatingly: “I heard you tell Mr. Bundy that Dr.
Thorndyke was coming down for the week-end. It wouldn’t be amiss if
you were to put the facts of the case before him. It’s quite in his
line, and I think he would be interested to hear about it; and he
might see something that I have missed. But, of course, it must be in
strict confidence.”
I promised to try to find an opportunity to get Thorndyke’s opinion on
the case, and with this we separated, the sergeant retiring to his
office and I making my way homeward to prepare a report for dispatch
by the last post.
CHAPTER XIV.
SERGEANT COBBLEDICK IS ENLIGHTENED
The custom which had grown upon my part of meeting Thorndyke at the
station on the occasion of his visits was duly honoured on the present
occasion, for the surprising discoveries in Black Boy-lane, which I
had described in my report to him, made me eager to hear his comments.
Unfortunately, on this occasion, he had come down by an unusually late
train, and the opportunity for discussion was limited to the time
occupied by the short walk from Rochester Station to my house. For it
was close upon dinner time, and I rather expected to find Bundy
awaiting us.
“Your report was quite a thrilling document,” he remarked, as we came
out of the station approach. “These new discoveries seem to launch us
on a fresh phase of the investigation.”
“Do they seem to you to offer any intelligible suggestions?” I asked.
“There is no lack of suggestions,” he replied. “To a person of
ordinary powers of imagination, a number of hypotheses must present
themselves. But, of course, the first thing to consider is not what
might have happened, but what did happen, and what we can safely infer
from those happenings. We can apparently take it as proved that the
body was carried through the lane; and everything goes to show that it
was carried from the river towards the town. The first clear inference
is that we can completely exclude accident, pure and simple. The
body--living or dead--may be assumed to have been carried by some
person or persons. We can dismiss the idea that the woman walked up
the lane. But if someone carried the body, someone is definitely
implicated. The affair comes unquestionably into the category of
crime.”
“That doesn’t carry us very far,” I said, with a sense of
disappointment.
“It carries us a stage farther than our previous data did, for it
excludes accident, which they did not. Then it suggests not only
premeditation, but arrangement. If the body was brought up from the
river, there must have been some place known to, and probably prepared
by, those who brought it, in which it could be deposited; and that
place must have been more secure than the river from which it was
brought. But the river, itself, was a very secure hiding-place,
especially if the body had been sunk with weights. Now, this is all
very remarkable. If you consider the extraordinary procedure; the
seizure of the victim at Chatham; the conveyance of the body from
thence to this considerable distance; the landing of it at the wharf;
the conveyance of it by an apparently selected route--at enormous risk
of discovery, in spite of the fog--to an appointed destination: I say,
Strangeways, that if you consider this astounding procedure, you
cannot fail to be convinced that there was some definite purpose
behind it.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “that seems to be so. But what could the purpose be?
It appears perfectly incomprehensible. It only makes the mystery more
unsolvable than ever.”
“Not at all,” he rejoined. “There is nothing so hopeless to
investigate as the perfectly obvious and common-place. As soon as an
apparently incomprehensible motive appears, we are within sight of a
solution. There may be innumerable explanations of a common-place
action; but an outrageously unreasonable action; pursued with definite
and considered purpose, can admit of but one or two. The action, with
its underlying purpose, must be adjusted to some unusual conditions.
We have only to consider to what conditions it could be adjusted, and
which, if any, of those conditions actually exist, and the explanation
of the apparently incomprehensible action comes into view. But here we
are at our destination, and there is our friend, Bundy, standing on
the doorstep. By the way, I have brought one or two photographs of
Mrs. Frood for you to look at.”
We arrived in time to intervene and put an end to a preliminary
skirmish between the irrepressible Bundy and Mrs. Dunk, and when
greetings had been exchanged, Thorndyke went up to his room to wash
and deposit his luggage.
“Well, John,” said Bundy, when he had hung up his hat, “it is very
pleasant to see my old friend after this long separation. Very good of
him, too, to invite an insignificant outsider like me to meet his
distinguished colleague. You are a benefactor to me, John.”
“Don’t talk nonsense, Peterkin,” said I. “You know we are always glad
to see you. I invite you for my own pleasure and Thorndyke’s, not for
yours.”
Bundy gave my arm a grateful squeeze. “Good old John,” said he.
“Nothing like doing it handsomely. But here is the great man himself,”
he added, as Thorndyke entered the dining-room, carrying a cardboard
box, “with instruments of magic. He’s going to do a conjuring trick.”
Thorndyke opened the box and delicately picked out four photographs,
all mounted and all of cabinet size, which he stood up in a row on the
mantelpiece. Two of them were from the same negative, one being
printed in red carbon, the other in sepia. The remaining two were
ordinary silver prints of the conventional trade type.
Bundy looked at the collection with not unnatural surprise.
“Where did these things come from?” he asked.
“They came from London,” replied Thorndyke, “where things of this kind
grow. Strangeways asked me to get him some samples. How do you like
them? My own preference is for the carbons, and of the two I think I
like the red chalk print the better.”
I ran my eye along the row and found myself in strong agreement with
Thorndyke. It was not only that the carbon prints had the advantage of
the finer medium. The treatment was altogether more artistic, and the
likeness seemed better, in spite of a rather over-strong top-lighting.
“Yes,” I said, “the carbons are infinitely superior to the silver
prints, and of the two I think the red is the better because it
emphasises the shadows less.”
“Is the likeness as good as in the silver prints?” Thorndyke asked.
“Better, I think. The expression is more natural and spontaneous. What
do you say, Peter?”
As I spoke I looked at him, not for the first time, for I had already
been struck by the intense concentration with which he had been
examining the two carbons. And it was not only concentration. There
was a curious expression of surprise, as if something in the
appearance of the portraits puzzled him.
He looked up with a perplexed frown. “As to the likeness,” said he, “I
don’t know that I am a particularly good judge. I only saw her once or
twice. But, as far as I remember, it seems to be quite a good
likeness, and there can be no question as to the superiority, in an
artistic sense, of the carbons. And I agree with you that the shadows
are less harsh in the red than in the sepia. Who is the photographer?”
He picked up the red print and, turning it over, looked at the back.
Then, finding that the back of the card was blank, he picked up the
sepia print and inspected it in the same way, but with the same
result. There was no photographer’s name either on the back or front.
“I have an impression,” said Thorndyke, “that the carbons were done by
a City photographer. But my man will know. He got them for me.”
Bundy set the two photographs back in their places, still, as it
seemed to me, with the air of a man who is trying vainly to remember
something. But, at this moment, Mrs. Dunk entered with the soup
tureen, and we forthwith took our places at the table.
We had finished our soup, and I was proceeding to effect the
dismemberment of an enormous sole, when Bundy, having fortified
himself with a sip of Chablis, cast a malignant glance at Thorndyke.
“I have got some bad news for you, Doctor,” said he.
“Which doctor are you addressing?” Thorndyke asked.
“There’s only one now,” replied Bundy. “T’other one has been degraded
to the rank of John.”
“That happens to be my rank, too,” observed Thorndyke.
“Oh, but I couldn’t think of taking such a liberty,” Bundy protested,
“though it is very gracious and condescending of you to suggest it.
No, your rank and title will continue to be that of doctor.”
“And what is your bad news?”
“It is a case of a lost opportunity,” said Bundy. “‘Of all the sad
words of tongue or pen,’ and so on. It might have been ten shillings.
But it never will now. Cobbledick has got your ten bob.”
“Do you mean that Cobbledick has found the missing key?”
“Even so, alackaday! The chance is gone for ever.”
“Where did he find it?” Thorndyke asked.
“Ah!” exclaimed Bundy. “There it is again. The tragedy of it! He
wasn’t looking for it at all. He just fell over it in a field where he
was searching for relics of Mrs. Frood.”
“Your description,” said Thorndyke, “is deficient in geographical
exactitude. Could you bring your ideas of locality to a somewhat
sharper focus? There are probably several fields in the neighbourhood
of Rochester.”
“So there are,” said Bundy. “Quite a lot. But this particular field
lies on the right, or starboard, side of a small thoroughfare called
Black Boy-lane.”