The mystery of Angelina Frood
I gave them a brief account of the happenings of the previous night
and this morning’s sequel, to which they listened with deep attention.
When I had finished Mr. Japp said: “You have done a very great
kindness to my friend Mrs. Frood. It will be an immense relief to her
to know that she can walk abroad without the danger of encountering
this man. Besides, if he had stayed here he would probably have found
her out.”
“He might even have found her at home,” said Bundy, “and that would
have been worse. So I propose a vote of thanks to the doctor--with
musical honours. For-hor he’s a jolly good fell----”
“There, that’ll do, Bundy, that’ll do,” said Mr. Japp. “I never saw
such a fellow. You’ll have the neighbours complaining.”
Bundy leaned towards me confidentially and remarked in a stage
whisper, glancing at his partner: “Fidgetty old cove; regular old
kill-joy.” Then, with a sudden change of manner, he asked: “What about
that wall job, Japp? Are you going to have a look at them?”
“I can’t go at present,” said Japp. “Bulford will be coming in
presently and I must see him. Have you got anything special to do?”
“Only old Jeffson’s lease, and that can wait. Shall I trot over and
see what sort of mess they are making of things?”
“I wish you would,” said Japp; whereupon Mr. Bundy removed his
spectacles, stuck in his eye-glass, extracted from the desk his hat
and gloves which he assumed with the aid of the looking-glass, and
took his stick from the corner. Then he looked at me reflectively and
asked:
“Are you interested in archæology, Doctor?”
“Somewhat,” I replied. “Why do you ask?”
“Because we are putting some patches in the remains of the city wall.
It isn’t much to look at, and there isn’t a great deal of the original
Roman work left; but if you would care to have a look at it you might
walk up there with me.”
I agreed readily, being, as I have said, somewhat at a loose end, and
we set forth together, Bundy babbling cheerfully as we went.
“I have often thought,” said he, “that there must have been something
rather pleasant and restful about the old walled cities, particularly
after curfew when the gates were shut--that is, provided you were
inside at the time.”
“Yes,” said I. “An enclosed precinct has a certain agreeable quality
of seclusion that you can’t get in an open town or village. When I was
a student, I lived for a time in chambers in Staple Inn, and it was,
as you say, rather pleasant, when one came home at night, and the
porter had let one in at the wicket, to enter and find the gates
closed, the courts all quiet and empty, and to know that all traffic
was stopped and all strangers shut out until the morning. But it
doesn’t appear to be in accordance with modern taste, for those old
Chancery Inns have nearly all gone, and there is no tendency to
replace them with anything similar.”
“No,” Bundy agreed, stopping to look up at an old timber house, “taste
in regard to buildings, if there is any--Japp says there isn’t--has
changed completely in the last hundred years or so. Look at this alley
we are in now. Every house has got a physiognomy of its own. But when
we rebuild it, we shall fill it up with houses that will look as if
they had been bought in packets like match-boxes.”
Gossiping thus, we threaded our way through all sorts of queer little
alleys and passages. At length Bundy stopped at a wooden gate in a
high fence, and, pushing it open, motioned for me to enter; and as I
did so he drew out the key which was in the lock and put it in his
pocket.
The place which we had entered was a space of waste land, littered
with the remains of some old houses that had been demolished and
enclosed on three sides by high fences. The fourth side was formed by
a great mass of crumbling rubble, patched in places with rough masonry
and brickwork, and showing in its lower part the remains of courses of
Roman bricks. It rose to a considerable height, and was evidently of
enormous thickness, as could be seen where large areas of the face had
crumbled away, exposing great cavities, in which wall-flowers,
valerian and other rock-haunting plants, had taken up their abode. On
one of these a small gang of men were at work, and it was evident that
repairs on a considerable scale were contemplated, for there were
several large heaps of rough stone and old bricks, and in a cart-shed
in a corner of the space were a large number of barrels of lime.
As we entered, the foreman came forward to meet us, and Bundy handed
him the key from the gate.
“Better keep it in your pocket,” said he. “Mr. Japp is rather
particular about keys that he has charge of. He doesn’t like them left
in doors or gates. How are the men getting on?”
“As well as you can expect of a lot of casuals like these,” was the
reply. “There isn’t a mason or a bricklayer among them, excepting that
old chap that’s mixing the mortar. However, it’s only a rough job.”
We walked over to the part of the old wall where the men were at work,
and the appearances certainly justified the foreman’s last remark. It
was a very rough job. The method appeared to consist in building up
outside the cavity a primitive wall of unhewn stone with plenty of
mortar, and, when it had risen a foot or two, filling up the cavity
inside with loose bricks, lumps of stone, shovelfuls of liquid mortar,
and chunks of lime.
I ventured to remark that it did not look a very secure method of
building, upon which Bundy turned his eyeglass on me and smiled
knowingly.
“My dear Doctor,” said he, “you don’t appear to appreciate the
subtlety of the method. The purpose of these activities is to create
employment. That has been clearly stated by the town council. But if
you want to create employment you build a wall that will tumble down
and give somebody else the job of putting it up again.”
Here, as a man suddenly bore down on us with a bucket of mortar, Bundy
hopped back to avoid the unclean contact, and nearly sat down on a
heap of smoking lime.
“You had a narrow escape that time, mister,” remarked the old
gentleman who presided over the mortar department, as Bundy carefully
dusted his delicate shoes with his handkerchief; “that stuff would
’ave made short work of them fine clothes of yourn.”
“Would it?” said Bundy, dusting his shoes yet more carefully and
wiping the soles on the turf.
“Ah,” rejoined the old man; “terrible stuff is quicklime. Eats up
everything same as what fire does.” He rested his hands on his shovel,
and, assuming a reminiscent air, continued: “There was a pal o’ mine
what was skipper of a barge. A iron barge, she was, and he had to take
on a lading of lime from some kilns. The stuff was put aboard with a
shoot. Well, my pal, he gets ’is barge under the shoot and then ’e
goes off, leavin’ ’is mate to see the lime shot into the hold. Well,
it seems the mate had been takin’ some stuff aboard, too. Beer, or
p’raps whisky. At any rate, he’d got a skinful. Well, presently the
skipper comes back, and he sees ’em a-tippin’ the trucks of lime on to
the shoot, and he sees the barge’s hold beginning to fill, but ’e
don’t see ’is mate nowhere. He goes aboard, down to the cabin, but
there ain’t no signs of the mate there, nor yet anywheres else. Well,
they gets the barge loaded and the hatch-covers on, and everything
ready for sea; and still there ain’t no signs of the mate. So my pal,
rememberin’ that the mate--his name was Bill--rememberin’ that Bill
seemed a bit squiffy, supposed he must ’ave gone overboard. So ’e
takes on a fresh hand temporary and off ’e goes on ’is trip.
“Well, they makes their port all right and brings up alongside the
wharf, but owing to a strike among the transport men they can’t unload
for about three weeks. However, when the strike is over, they rigs a
whip and a basket and begins to get the stuff out. All goes well until
they get down to the bottom tier. Then one of the men brings up a bone
on his shovel. ‘Hallo!’ says the skipper, ‘what’s bones a-doin’ in a
cargo of fresh lime?’ He rakes over the stuff on the floor and up
comes a skull with a hole in the top of it. ‘Why, blow me,’ says the
skipper, ‘if that don’t look like Bill. He warn’t as thin in the face
as all that, but I seem to know them teeth.’ Just then one of the men
finds a clay pipe--a nigger’s head, it was--and the skipper
reckernizes it at once. ‘That there’s Bill’s pipe,’ sez he, ‘and them
bones is Bill’s bones,’ ’e sez. And so they were. They found ’is
belt-buckle and ’is knife, and ’is trouser buttons and the nails out
of ’is boots. And that’s all there was left of Bill. He must have
tumbled down into the hold and cracked his nut, and then the first
truckful of lime must ’ave covered ’im up. So, if you sets any value
on them ’andsome shoes o’ yourn, don’t you go a-treadin’ in quick
lime.”
Bundy looked down anxiously at his shoes, and, having given them an
additional wipe, he moved away from the dangerous neighbourhood of the
lime and we went together to examine the ancient wall.
“That was rather a tall yarn of the old man’s,” remarked Bundy. “Is it
a fact that lime is as corrosive as he made out?”
“I don’t really know very much about it,” I replied. “There is a
general belief that it will consume almost anything but metal. How
true that is I can’t say, but I remember that at the Crippen trial one
of the medical experts--I think it was Pepper--said that if the body
had been buried in quicklime it would have been entirely
consumed--excepting the bones, of course. But it is difficult to
believe that a body could disappear completely in three weeks, or
thereabouts, as our friend said. How fine this old wall looks with
those clumps of valerian and wallflowers growing on it! I suppose it
encircled the town completely at one time?”
“Yes,” he replied, “and it is a pity there isn’t more of it left, or
at least one or two of the gateways. A city gate is such a magnificent
adornment. Think of the gates of Canterbury and Rye, and especially at
Sandwich, where you actually enter the town through the barbican; and
think of what Rochester must have been before all the gates were
pulled down. But you must hear Japp on the subject. He’s a regular
architectural Jeremiah. By the way, what did you think of Mrs. Frood?
You saw her last night, didn’t you?”
“Yes. I was rather taken with her. She is very nice and friendly and
unaffected, and good-looking, too. I thought her distinctly handsome.”
“She isn’t bad-looking,” Bundy admitted. “But I can’t stand her voice.
It gets on my nerves. I hate a squeaky voice.”
“I shouldn’t call it squeaky,” said I. “It is a high voice, and rather
sing-song; and it isn’t, somehow, quite in keeping with her appearance
and manner.”
“No,” said Bundy, “that’s what it is. She’s too big for a voice like
that.”
I laughed at the quaint expression. “People’s voices,” said I, “are
not like steamers’ whistles, graduated in pitch according to their
tonnage. Besides, Mrs. Frood is not such a very big woman.”
“She is a good size,” said he. “I should call her rather tall. At any
rate, she is taller than I am. But I suppose you will say that she
might be that without competing with the late Mrs. Bates.”
“Comparisons between the heights of men and women,” I said cautiously,
“are rather misleading,” and here I changed the subject, though I
judged that Bundy was not sensitive in regard to his stature, for
while he was cleaning the lime from his shoes I had noticed that he
wore unusually low heels. Nor need he have been, for though on a small
scale, he was quite an important-looking person.
“Don’t you think,” he asked, after a pause, “that it is rather queer
that the man Frood should have gone off so soon? He only came down
yesterday, and he can’t have made much of a search for Madame.”