The mystery of Angelina Frood
distribution of bulk. This exhibits opposite tendencies in the two
sexes. In the female, the great mass is central--the hip region; and
from this the form diminishes in both directions. The whole figure,
including the arms, is contained in an elongated ellipse. And the
tendency affects the individual members. The limbs are bulky where
they join the trunk, they taper pretty regularly towards the
extremities, and they terminate in relatively small hands and feet.
The hands themselves taper as a whole, and the individual fingers
taper markedly from a comparatively thick base to a pointed tip.
“In the male figure the opposite condition prevails; it tends to be
acromegalous. The central mass is relatively small, the peripheral
masses is relatively large. The hip region is narrow, and there is a
great widening towards the shoulders. The limbs taper much less
towards the extremities, and they terminate in relatively large hands
and feet. So, too, with the hands; they tend to be square in shape,
and the individual fingers--excepting the index finger--are nearly as
broad at the tips as at the base.
“Of the second group of differences we need consider only one or two
instances. The general rule is that certain contour lines tend in the
male to be vertical or horizontal in direction and in the female to be
oblique. A man’s neck, at the back, is nearly straight and vertical; a
woman’s shows a sweeping oblique curve. The angle of a man’s lower jaw
is nearly a right angle; there is a vertical and a horizontal ramus. A
woman’s lower jaw has an open angle and its contour forms an oblique
line from the ear to the chin. But the most distinctive difference is
in the ear itself. A man’s ear has its long diameter vertical; a
woman’s has the long diameter oblique; and the obliquity is usually
very marked.
“Bearing these differences in mind, and remembering that they are
subject to variation in individual cases, let us now return to Mr.
Bundy. His hands, as I have said, had the feminine character. His feet
were small even for a small man; his ears were set obliquely and the
line of his jaw was oblique with an open angle. His shoulders had
evidently been made up by the tailor, and he seemed rather wide across
the hips for a man. In short, all those bodily characteristics which
were not concealed or disguised by the clothing were feminine. It was
a rather remarkable fact; so much so that I began to ask myself if it
were possible that he might actually be a woman in disguise.
“I watched him narrowly. There was nothing distinctive in his walk,
but there was in the movements of the arms. He flourished his stick
jauntily enough, but he had not that ‘nice conduct of a clouded cane’
that is as much a social cachet in our day as it was in the days of
good Queen Anne. It needs a skill born of years of practice to manage
a stick properly, as one realizes when one sees the working man taking
his Malacca for its Sunday morning walk. Mr. Bundy had not that skill.
His stick was a thing consciously carried; it was not a part of
himself. Then the movement of the free arm was feminine. When a woman
swings her arm she swings it through a large arc, especially in the
backward direction--probably to avoid her hip--and the palm of the
hand tends to be turned backward. A man’s free arm either hangs
motionless or swings slightly, unless he is walking very fast; it
swings principally forward, and the palm of his hand inclines inwards.
These are small matters, but their cumulative significance is great.
“Further, there was the mental habit. Bundy was jocose and playfully
ironic. But a gentleman of twenty-five doesn’t ‘pull the leg’ of a
gentleman of fifty whom he knows but slightly; whereas a lady of
twenty-five does. And very properly,” he added, seeing that Angelina
had turned rather pink. “That is a compliment in a young lady which
would be an impertinence in a young man. No doubt, when the equality
of the sexes is an accomplished fact, things will be different.”
“It will never be an accomplished fact,” said Angelina. “The equality
of the sexes is like the equality of the classes. The people who roar
for social equality are the under-dogs; and the women who shout for
sex equality are the under-cats. Normal women are satisfied with
things as they are.”
“Hearken unto the wisdom of Angelina,” said Thorndyke, with a smile.
“But perhaps she is right. It may be that the women who are so eager
to compete with men are those who can’t compete with women. I can’t
say. I have never been a woman: whereas Angelina has the advantage of
being able to view the question from both sides.
“The _prima facie_ evidence, then, suggested that Mr. Bundy was a
woman. But as this was a _prima facie_ improbability, the matter had
to be gone into further. On Mr. Bundy’s cheeks and chin was a faint
blue colouration, suggestive of such a growth of whiskers and beard as
would be appropriate to his age. Now if those whiskers and that beard
were genuine, the other signs were fallacious. Mr. Bundy must be a
man. But his cheeks looked perfectly smooth and clean; and it was
about seven o’clock in the evening. My own cheeks and Strangeways’
were by this time visibly prickly; and as he had been with us all day,
Mr. Bundy could not have shaved since the morning. I tried vainly to
get a closer view, and was considering how it could be managed when
Providence intervened.”
“I know,” said Angelina. “It was that beastly mosquito.”
“Yes,” agreed Thorndyke. “But even then I could not get a chance to
look at the skin closely. But when we got Mr. Bundy into the surgery,
and examined the bite through a lens, the murder was out.”
“You could see there were no whiskers?” said Angelina.
“It wasn’t that,” replied Thorndyke. “It was something much more
conclusive. You may know that the whole of the human body excepting
the palms of the hands, the soles of the feet, and the eyelids, is
covered with a fine down, technically called the lanugo. It consists
of minute, nearly colourless hairs set quite closely together, and may
be seen as a sort of halo on the face of a woman or child when the
edge of the contour is against the light. On the face of a
clean-shaved man it is, of course, absent, as it is shaved off with
the whiskers. Now on Mr. Bundy’s face the lanugo was intact all over
the blue area. It followed that he had never been shaved. It further
followed that the blue colouration was an artificial stain. But this
made it practically a certainty that Mr. Bundy was a woman.
“The question now was: If Mr. Bundy was a woman, what woman was he?
The obvious answer seemed to be, Angelina Frood. She was missing; but
if the disappearance was an imposture, someone on the spot was
planting the clues. That someone would most probably be Mrs. Frood,
herself. But if she were lurking in the neighbourhood, she must be
disguised; and here was a disguised woman. Nevertheless, obvious as
the suggestion was, the thing suggested seemed to be impossible.
Strangeways knew both Angelina and Bundy and he had not recognized the
latter; and I had a vague impression that he had seen them together,
which, of course, would absolutely exclude their identity. A little
judicious conversation with him, however, showed that neither
objection had any weight. He had never seen them both at one time; and
his description of Mrs. Frood made it clear that she had appeared to
him totally unlike Bundy.
“The next thing was to ascertain definitely if this woman really was
Mrs. Frood, and fortunately I had the means of making a very simple
test. Strangeways had given me a photograph of Angelina bearing the
address of a theatrical photographer, and from him I obtained seven
different photographs in various poses. Then I received from
Strangeways the group-photograph that was taken of us by the city
wall, which contained an excellent portrait of Mr. Bundy. Out of this
photograph I cut a small square containing Bundy’s head, soaked it in
oil of bergamot, and mounted it in Canada balsam on a glass plate.
This made the paper quite transparent, so I now had a transparent
positive. I selected from the photographs of Angelina one that was in
a pose exactly similar to the portrait of Bundy--practically full
face--and treated it in the same way. Then I handed the two
transparencies to my assistant, and he, by means of our big copying
camera, produced two life-sized negatives, exactly alike in
dimensions. With prints from these negatives we were able to perform
some experiments. From Angelina’s portrait I carefully cut out the
face, leaving the hair and neck, and slipped Bundy’s portrait behind
it, so that his face appeared through the hole. We could now see how
Bundy looked with Angelina’s hair, and, on putting it beside an
untouched portrait of Angelina, it was obvious, in spite of the
eye-glass, that it was the same face. For you must remember that the
Angelina that we had was the real person, not the made-up Angelina
whom Strangeways had seen.
“This success encouraged us to take a little more trouble. My man,
Polton, made some black paper masks, with the aid of which he produced
two composite photographs, one of which had Bundy’s face and
Angelina’s hair, neck, and bust, while the other had Angelina’s face
and Bundy’s hair, forehead, neck, and bust. The eye-glass was the
disturbing factor, though it showed very little, and Bundy managed it
so skilfully that it hardly affected the shape of the eye and the set
of the brow. Still, it was necessary to eliminate it, and as painting
was out of our province, we invoked the aid of Mrs. Anstey, who is a
very talented portrait painter and miniaturist. She touched out the
joins in the composites, painted out the eye-glass in the one and
painted an eye-glass into the other. And now the identity was
complete. The Bundy-Angelina portrait was identical with the
photographer’s portrait, and the Angelina-Bundy photograph was Mr.
Bundy to the life.
“However, we made a final test. Polton reduced the Bundy-Angelina
portrait to cabinet size, and made a couple of carbon prints, which I
brought down here and exhibited; and as Strangeways accepted them as
portraits of Angelina, I considered the proof complete.”
Here Angelina interrupted: “But what about that brooch? I never had a
brooch like that.”
Thorndyke smiled a grim smile. “I asked Mrs. Anstey to paint in a
brooch of a characteristic design.”
“What for?” asked Angelina.
“Ah!” said Thorndyke, “thereby hangs a tale.”
“Oh! a serpent’s tail, I suppose,” said Angelina.
“You will be able to judge presently,” he replied. “The brooch had its
uses. Well, to continue: The identity of Mr. Bundy was now established
as a moral certainty. But it was not certain enough for legal
purposes. I wanted conclusive evidence; and I wanted to ascertain
exactly how the transformation effects were worked. I had noted that
Bundy and Angelina occupied adjoining houses which were virtually the
two moieties of a double house with a common covered passageway. I
assumed that the two houses communicated, but it was necessary to
ascertain if they really did. The only way to establish the facts was
to inspect the house in which Angelina had lived, and this I
determined to do, in the very faint hope that I might be able, at the
same time, to get one or more of Angelina’s finger-prints. I made a
pretext for visiting the house with Strangeways, and we had the
extraordinary good luck to find Mrs. Gillow just going out, so we had
the house to ourselves. But this was not the only piece of luck, for
we found that Angelina had taken a drink from the bedroom tumbler and
water-bottle before going out, and had left on them a complete set of
beautiful finger-prints, of which I secured a number of admirable
photographs.