menu_book Chapter 12

CHAPTER XII. My relations with Thorndyke were rather peculiar and a little inconsistent. I had commissioned him, somewhat against his inclination, to investigate the circumstances connected with the death of Harold Monkhouse. I was in fact his employer.

And yet, in a certain subtle sense, I was his antagonist, for I held certain beliefs which I hath unconsciously looked to him to confirm. But apparently he did not share those beliefs. As his employer, it was clearly my duty to communicate to him any information which he might think helpful or significant, even if I considered it irrelevant.

He had in fact explicitly pointed this out to me, and he had specially warned me to refrain or selecting facts which might become known to me according to my view of their possible bearing on the case. But yet this was precisely what I felt myself constantly tempted to do, and as we sat at lunch in his chambers on the day after my visit to Barbara, I found myself consciously

suppressing certain facts which had then come to my knowledge. And it was not that those facts appeared to me insignificant. On the contrary, I found them rather surprising. Finally I had the feeling that they would probably convey to Thorndyke a significance that would be erroneous and misleading.

There was, for instance, the appearance of Wallingford in Kensington Gardens. Could it have been sheer chance? If so, it was a most remarkable coincidence, and one naturally tends to look askance at remarkable coincidences. In fact, I did not believe it to be coincidence at all.

I felt little doubt that Wallingford had been lurking about the neighbourhood of Barbara's flat and had followed us, losing sight of us temporarily when we turned into the by-path. But knowing Wallingford as I did, I attached no importance to the incident. It was merely a freak of an unstable emotional man impelled by jealousy to make a fool of himself.

Again, there was Wallingford's terror of Thorndyke and his ridiculous delusions on the subject of the shadowings. How easy it would be for a person unacquainted with Wallingford's personality to read into them a totally misleading significance. Those were the thoughts that drifted half-consciously through my mind as I sat opposite my friend

at the table. So not without some twinges of conscience, I held my peace. But I had not allowed for Thorndyke's uncanny capacity for inferring what was passing in another person's mind. Very soon it became evident to me that he was fully alive to the possibility of some

reservations on my part, and when one or two discrete questions had elicited some fact which I ought to have volunteered, he proceeded to something like definite cross-examination. So the household is broken up and the inmates scattered, he began, when I had told him that I had obtained possession of the keys. And Mabel Withers seems to have vanished, unless the police have kept her in view.

Did you hear anything about Miss Norris? Not very much. Barbara and she have exchanged visits once or twice, but they don't seem to see much of each other. And what about Wallingford?

He seems to have been much disturbed by Miller's dissent on him. I had to admit that he was in a state bordering on panic. And what did Mrs. Monkhouse think of the forged orders on Dimmesdale's headed paper? He hadn't disclosed that. She thinks that he bought the cocaine at a druggist in the ordinary way, and I didn't

think it necessary to undeceive her. No, the least said, the soonest mended. Did you gather that she sees much of Wallingford? Yes, rather too much. He was haunting her flat almost daily until she gave him a hint not to make his visits

too noticeable. Why do you suppose he was haunting her flat? So far as you can judge, Mayfield, that is in the strictest confidence you understand, does there seem to be anything between them beyond ordinary friendliness? Not on her side, certainly, but on his, yes, undoubtedly.

His devotion to her amounts almost to infatuation, and has for a long time passed. Of course she realizes his condition, and though he is rather a nuisance to her, she takes a very kindly and indulgent view of his vagaries. Naturally, as any well-disposed woman would. I suppose you didn't see anything of him yesterday?

Of course I had to relate the meeting in Kensington Gardens, and I could see by the way Thorndyke looked at me that he was wondering why I had not mentioned the matter before. It almost looks at he as if he had followed you there. Was there anything in his manner of approach that seemed to support that idea? I think there was, for I saw him at some distance, and here I felt bound to describe Wallingford's

peculiar tactics. But said Thorndyke, why was he looking about behind him? He must have known that you were in front. It seems, I explained feebly, that he has some ridiculous idea that he is being watched and followed.

Ha! said Thorndyke. Now I wonder who he supposes watching and following him. I fancy he suspects you, I replied, and so the murder was out, with the additional fact that I had not been very ready with my information. Thorndyke, however, made no comment on my reticence beyond the steady and significant

look at me. So, said he, he suspects me of suspecting him. Well, he is giving us every chance. But I think, Mayfield, you would do well to put Mrs. Monkhouse on her guard. If Wallingford makes a public parade of his feelings towards her, he may put dangerous

ideas into the head of Mr. Superintendent Miller. You must realize that Miller is looking for a motive for the assumed murder. And if it comes to his knowledge that Harold Monkhouse's secretary was in love with Harold Monkhouse's wife, he will think that he has found a motive that is good enough. Yes, that had occurred to me, and in fact I did give her a hint to that effect, but

it was hardly necessary. She had seen it for herself. As we now seem to have exhausted this topic, I ventured to make a few inquiries about the rather farcical infernal machine. Did your further examination of it, I asked, yield any new information?

Very little, Thorndyke replied, but that little was rather curious. There were no fingerprints at all. I examined both the pistol and the jar most thoroughly, but there was not a trace of a finger mark to say nothing of a print. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that the person who sent the machine wore gloves

while he was putting it together. But isn't that a rather natural precaution in these days, I asked? A perfectly natural precaution in itself, he replied, but not quite consistent with some other features. For instance, the wadding with which the pistol barrel was plugged consisted of a little ball

of ninning wool of a rather characteristic green. I will show it to you, and you will see that it would be quite easy to match and therefore possible to trace. But you see that there are thus shown two contrary states of mind. The gloves suggest that the sender entertained the possibility that the machine might fail

to explode, whereas the wool seems to indicate that no such possibility was considered. He rose from the table, lunch being now finished, and brought from a locked cabinet a little ball of wool of a rather peculiar greenish-blue. I took it to the window and examined it carefully, impressed by the curious inconsistency which he had pointed out.

Yes, I agreed, there could be no difficulty in matching this. But as to tracing it, that is a different matter. There must have been thousands of skeins of this sold to at least hundreds of different persons. Very true, said he, but I was thinking of it rather as a corroborating item in a train

of circumstantial evidence. He put the corroborating item back in the cabinet and, as at this moment a taxi was heard to draw up at our entry, he picked up a large attache case and proceeded me down the stairs. During the comparatively short journey, I made a few not very successful efforts to

discover what was Thorndyke's real purpose in making this visit of inspection to the dismantled house. But his reticence and mine were not quite similar. He answered all my questions freely. He gave me a wealth of instances illustrating the valuable evidence obtained by the inspection

of empty houses. But none of them seemed to throw any light on his present proceedings. And when I pointed this out, he smilingly replied that I was in precisely the same position as himself. We are not looking for corroborative evidence, said he.

That belongs to a later stage of the inquiry. We are looking for some suggestive fact which may give us a hint where to begin. Naturally, we cannot form any guess as to what kind of fact that might be. It was not a very illuminating answer, but I had to accept it, although I had a strong suspicion that Thorndyke's purpose was not quite so vague as he represented it to be,

and determined unobtrusively to keep an eye on his proceedings. Can I give you any assistance? I inquired craftily, when I had led him into the hall and shut the outer door. Yes, he replied. There is one thing that you can do for me which will be very helpful.

I have brought a packet of cards with me. Here he produced from his pocket a packet of stationer's postcards. If you will write on each of them the description in particulars of one room with the name of the occupant in the case of bedrooms, and lay the card on the mantlepiece of the room which it describes, I shall be able to reconstitute the house as it was when it was inhabited.

Then we can each go about our respective businesses without hindering one another. I took the cards, and the fairly broad hint, and together we made a preliminary tour of which now that the furniture, carpets, and pictures were gone, looked very desolate and forlorn, and as it had not been cleaned since the removal, it had a depressingly dirty and squalid appearance.

Moreover in each room a collection of rubbish and discarded odds and ends had been roughly swept up on the hearth, converting each fireplace into a sort of temporary dustbin. After a glance around the rooms on the ground floor, I made my way up to the room in which Harold Monkhouse had died, which was my principal concern as well as Thorndyke's. Well, Mayfield, the latter remarked, running a disparaging eye round the faded, discoloured

walls and the blackened ceiling, you will have to do something here. It is a shocking spectacle. Would you mind roughly sketching out the position of the furniture? I see that the bedstead stood by this wall with the head, I presume, towards the window, and the bedside table about here, I suppose, at his right hand.

By the way, what was there on that table? Did he keep a supply of food of any kind for use at night? I think they usually put a little tin of sandwiches on the table when the night preparations were made. You say they, who put the box there?

I can't say whose duty it was in particular. I imagine Barbara would see to it when she was at home. In her absence it would be done by Madeleine or Mabel. Not Wallingford? No, I don't think Wallingford ever troubled himself about any of the domestic arrangements

excepting those that concerned Barbara. Do you know who made the sandwiches? I think Madeleine did as a rule, I know she did sometimes. And as to drink? I suppose he had a water bottle at any rate?

Yes, that was always there, and a little decanter of whiskey. But he hardly ever touched that. Very often a small flagon of lemonade was put on the table with the sandwiches. And who made the lemonade? Madeleine.

I know that because it was a very special brand which no one else could make. And supposing the sandwiches and the lemonade were not consumed, do you happen to know what became of the remainder? I have no idea. Possibly the servants consumed them, but more probably they were thrown away.

Well-fed servants are not partial to remainders from a sick room. You never heard of any attacks of illness among any of the servants? Not to my knowledge, but I shouldn't be very likely to, you know. No. You notice, Mayfield, that you have mentioned one or two rather material facts that were

not disclosed at the inquest? Yes, I was observing that. And it is just as well that they were not disclosed. There were enough misleading facts without them. Thurndike smiled indulgently.

You seem to have made up your mind pretty definitely, on the negative side at least, he remarked. And then, looking round once more at the walls with their faded, loosened paper, he continued, I take it that Mr. Monkhouse was not a fresh air enthusiast. He was not, he replied.

He didn't much care for open windows, especially at night. But how did you arrive at that fact? I was looking at the wallpaper. This is not a damp house, but yet the paper on the walls of this room is loosening and peeling off in all directions.

And if you notice the distribution of this tendency, you get the impression that the moisture which loosened the paper proceeded from the neighbourhood of the bed. The wall which is most affected is the one against which the bed stood, and the part of that wall that has suffered most is that which was nearest to the occupant of the bed, and especially to his head.

That large piece hanging down is just where the mainstream of his breath would have impinged. Yes, I see the connection now you mention it, and yet I am surprised that his breath alone should have made the air of the room so damp. All through the winter season, when the window would be shut most closely, the gas was burning, and at night when the gas was out, he commonly had his candle lamp alight.

I should have thought that the gas and the candle together would have kept the air fairly dry. That, said Thorndyke, is a common delusion. As a matter of fact, they would have quite the opposite effect. You have only to hold an inverted tumbler over a burning candle to realize, from the

moisture which immediately condenses on the inside of the tumbler, that the candle, as it burns, gives off quite a considerable volume of steam. But of course the bulk of the moisture which has caused the paper to peel in this room came from the man's own breath. However, we didn't come here for debating purposes.

Let us complete our preliminary tour, and when we have seen the whole house, we can each make such more detailed inspection as seems necessary for our particular purposes. We accordingly resumed our perambulation, but I noticed that Thorndyke deposited his attache case in Monkhouse's room with the evident intention of returning thither, both of us looking about narrowly.

Thorndyke, no doubt in search of the mysterious traces of which he had spoken, and I with an inquisitive endeavour to ascertain what kind of objects or appearances he regarded as traces. We had not gone very far before we encountered an object that even I was able to recognize as significant.

It was in a corner of the long corridor that we came upon a little heap of rubbish that had been swept up out of the way, and at the very moment when Thorndyke stopped short with his eyes fixed on it, I saw the object, a little wisp of knitting wool of the well-remembered green colour. Thorndyke picked it up, and having exhibited it to me, produced from his letter case a

little envelope such as Seidman used, in which he put the treasure trove, and as he uncapped his fountain pen, he looked up and down the corridor. "'Which is the nearest room to this spot?' he asked. "'Madeleine's,' I replied. "'That is the door of her bedroom on the right.

But all the principal bedrooms are on this floor in Barber's Boudoir as well. This heap of rubbish is probably the sweepings from all the rooms. That is what it looks like,' he agreed as he wrote the particulars on the envelope and slipped the latter in his letter case. You notice that there are some other trifles in this heap, some broken glass, for instance.

But I will go through it when we have finished our tour, though I may as well take this now.' As he spoke, he stooped and picked up a short piece of rather irregularly shaped glass rod with a swollen rounded end. "'What is it?' I asked.

"'It is a portion of a small glass pestle, and it belongs to one of those little glass mortars such as chemists use in rubbing up powders into solutions or suspensions. You had better not touch it, though it has probably been handled pretty freely. But I shall test it on the chance of discovering what it was last used for.' He put it away carefully in another seat envelope and then looked down thoughtfully

at the miniature dust heap. But he made no further investigations at the moment and we resumed the perambulation, I placing the identification card on the mantle piece of each room, while he looked sharply about him, opening all cupboards and receptacles and peering into their usually empty interiors. When we had inspected the servants' bedrooms and the attics, leaving the indispensable

down to the basement and visited the kitchen, the scullery, the servants' parlor and the cellars, and this brought our tour to an end. "'Now,' said Thorndyke, we proceed from the general to the particular. While you are drawing up your schedule of dilapidations, I will just browse about and see if I can pick up any stray crumbs in which inference can find nourishment.

It isn't a very hopeful quest, but you observe that we have already lighted on two objects which may have a meaning for us.' "'Yes, we have ascertained that someone in this house used a particular kind of wool and that someone possessed a glass mortar. Those do not seem to me very weighty facts.'

"'They are not,' he agreed. Indeed, they are hardly facts at all. The actual fact is that we have found the things here. But trifles light as air sometimes serve to fill up the spaces in a train of circumstantial evidence.

I think I will go and have another look at that rubbish heap.' I was strongly tempted to follow him, but could hardly do so in face of his plainly expressed wish to make his inspection alone. Moreover, I had already seen that there was more to be done than I had supposed. The house was certainly not in bad repair, but neither did it look very fresh nor attractive.

Furniture and especially pictures of a way of marking indelibly the walls of a room and the paintwork in several places showed disfiguring traces of wear. But I was anxious to let this house, even at a nominal rent, so that by a few years normal occupation its sinister reputation might be forgotten and its value restored. As a result, I was committed to a detailed inspection of the whole house and the making

of voluminous notes on the repairs and redecorations which would be necessary to tempt even an impecunious tenant to forget that this was a house in which a murder had been committed. For that was the current view, erroneous as I believed it to be. Notebook in hand, I proceeded systematically from room to room and from floor to floor, and became so engrossed with my own business that I almost forgot Thorndyke, though I could

hear him moving about the house, and once I met him, on the first floor, with a couple of empty medicine bottles and a small glass jar in his hands, apparently making his way to Harold's room where, as I have said, he had left his attache case. In that room I left to the last, as it was already entered in my list and I did not wish to appear to spy upon Thorndyke's proceedings.

When at length I entered the room I found that he, like myself, had come to the end of his task. On the floor his attache case lay open, crammed with various objects, several of which appeared to be bottles, wrapped in oddments of waste paper, including some pieces of wallpaper which he had apparently stripped off ad hoc when the other supplies failed, and among

which I observed a crumpled flypaper. Respecting this I remarked, I don't see why you are burdening yourself with this. A flypaper is in no sense an incriminating object, even though such things have, at times, been put to unlawful use. Very true, he replied, as he peeled off the rubber gloves which he had been wearing during

the search. A flypaper is a perfectly normal domestic object, but as you say, it can on occasion be used as a source of arsenic for criminal purposes, and a paper that has been so used will be found to have had practically the whole of the arsenic soaked out of it. As I happened to find this in the servant's parlour, it seemed worthwhile to take it to

see whether its charge of arsenic had or had not been extracted. But I objected, why on earth should the Poisoner, if there really is such a person, have been at the trouble of soaking out flypapers when apparently he was able to command an unlimited supply of Fowler's solution? Quite a pertinent question, Mayfield, he rejoined.

But may I ask my learned friend whether he found the evidence relating to the Fowler's solution perfectly satisfactory? But surely, I exclaimed, you had the evidence of two expert witnesses on the point. What more would you require? What is the difficulty?

The difficulty is this. There were several witnesses who testified that when they saw the bottle of medicine, the Fowler's solution had not yet been added, but there was none who saw the bottle after the addition had been made. But it must have been added before Mabel gave the patient the last dose.

That is the inference. But Mabel said nothing to that effect. She was not asked what colour the medicine was when she gave the patient that dose. But what of the analysts and the postmortem? As to the postmortem, the arsenic which was found in the stomach was not recognised as

being in the form of Fowler's solution. And as to the analysts, they made their examination three days after the man died. Still, the medicine that they analysed was the medicine that the deceased had taken. You don't deny that, do you? I neither deny it nor affirm it.

I merely say that no evidence was given that proved the presence of Fowler's solution in that bottle before the man died, and that the bottle which was handed to the analysts was one that had been exposed for three days in a room which had been visited by a number of persons, including Mrs Monkhouse, Wallenford, Miss Norris, Mabel Withers, Amos Monkhouse, Dr. Dimmesdale and yourself.

You mean to suggest that the bottle might have been tampered with or changed for another? But my dear Thorndyke, why in the name of God should anyone want to change the bottle? I am not suggesting that the bottle actually was changed. I am merely pointing out that the evidence of the analysts is material only subject to the conditions that the bottle which they examined was the bottle from which the last

dose of medicine was given, and that its contents were the same as on that occasion, and that no conclusive proof exists that it was the same bottle or that the contents were unchanged. But what reason could there be for supposing that it might have been changed? There is no need to advance any reason. The burden of proof lies on those who affirm that it was the same bottle with the same

contents. It is for them to prove that no change was possible. But obviously a change was possible. But still I persisted. There seems to be no point in this suggestion.

Who could have had any motive for making a change? And what could the motive have been? It looks to me like mere logic chopping and hair splitting. You wouldn't say that if you were for the defence, Chuckle Thorndyke. You would not let a point of first-rate importance pass on a mere assumption, no matter how probable.

And as to a possible motive, surely a most obvious one is staring us in the face. Supposing some person in this household had been administering arsenic in the food. If it could be arranged that a poisonous dose could be discovered in the medicine, you must see that the issue would be at once transferred from the food to the medicine, and from those who control the food to those who control the medicine.

Which is in fact what happened. As soon as the jury heard about the medicine, their interest in the food became extinct. I listened to this exposition with a slightly skeptical smile. It was all very ingenious, but I found it utterly unconvincing. You ought to be pleading in court, Thorndyke, I said, instead of grubbing about in empty

houses and raking over rubbish heaps. By the way, have you found anything that seems likely to yield any suggestions? It is a little difficult to say, he replied. I have taken possession of a number of bottles and small jars for examination as to the contents, but have no great expectation in respect of them.

I also found some fragments of the glass mortar, an eight ounce mortar it appears to have been. Where did you find those, I asked? In Miss Norris's bedroom, in a little pile of rubbish under the grate. They are only tiny fragments, but the curvature enables one to reconstruct the vessel pretty accurately.

It seemed to me a rather futile proceeding, but I made no comment. Nor did I give utterance to a suspicion which I just flashed into my mind, that it was the discovery of these ridiculous fragments of glass that had set my learned friend splitting straws on the subject of the medicine bottle. I had not much light to suggestion as to the possible motive of that hypothetical substitution,

and I liked it less now that he had discovered the remains of the mortar in Madeleine's room. There was no doubt that Thorndyke had a remarkable constructive imagination, and as I followed him down the stairs and out into the square, I found myself faintly uneasy lest that lively imagination should carry him into deeper waters than I was prepared to navigate in his company. End of chapter 12