Книга - The Perfect Crime: The Big Bow Mystery
The Perfect Crime: The Big Bow Mystery
Israel Zangwill
John Curran
The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is the world’s first locked-room mystery, a seemingly impossible crime story as powerful as any that have copied the scenario since.“The Detective Story Club”, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.Originally published as The Big Bow Mystery in 1891, and re-published by the Detective Club to coincide with a new film version called ‘The Perfect Crime’, Israel Zangwill’s novel invented the concept of the ‘locked room mystery’ and influenced almost every crime writer thereafter.‘A man is murdered for no apparent reason. He has no enemies and there seemed to be no motive for anyone murdering him. No clues remained and the instrument with which the murder was committed could not be traced. The door of the room in which the body was discovered was locked and bolted on the inside, both windows were latched, and there was no trace of any intruder. The greatest detectives in the land were puzzled. Here indeed was the perfect crime, the work of a master mind. Can you solve the problem which baffled Scotland Yard for so long, until at last the missing link in the chain of evidence was revealed?’This new edition includes a brand new introduction by the Golden Age crime expert, Dr John Curran, author of ‘Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks’.
Published by COLLINS CRIME CLUB
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain as The Big Bow Mystery by Henry & Co. 1892
Published as The Perfect Crime by The Detective Story Club Ltd
for Wm Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1929
‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’
first published by Graham’s Magazine 1841
Introductions © John Curran 2015
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1929, 2015
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008137281
Ebook Edition © August 2015 ISBN: 9780008137298
Version: 2015-07-06
Contents
Cover (#uacf2590d-190f-5a22-944e-76a201443cef)
Title Page (#uaa469eba-fa2d-5f42-8cd1-500d988ac9b8)
Copyright (#u5f3c4442-12bb-5c9a-a216-dc732c55231c)
Introduction (#u737e56a7-c69a-53ec-8dbd-7edf5c78f715)
The Big Bow Mystery: BY ISRAEL ZANGWILL (#u5cdec45c-bf0b-55fe-a77c-069dee6a0fa3)
Preface of Murders and Mysteries (#uadd877cc-1d61-5b3a-9d6f-d858c50850bb)
Note (#u8d26b934-40e4-5dad-96e2-c9f80447cfc6)
Chapter I (#uc2a4a97f-8abc-5ff0-841f-aaba16bfbfe9)
Chapter II (#u38369851-6e1d-5d0d-a781-96c453639221)
Chapter III (#u653a6301-945e-5f99-b934-783f0745a25b)
Chapter IV (#u7bcad575-c677-515b-adfe-a8334d24aa70)
Chapter V (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter VI (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter VII (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter VIII (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter IX (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter X (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter XI (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter XII (#litres_trial_promo)
The Murders in the Rue Morgue: BY EDGAR ALLAN POE (#litres_trial_promo)
Introduction (#litres_trial_promo)
The Murders in the Rue Morgue (#litres_trial_promo)
The Detective Story Club (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
INTRODUCTION (#ua41f9b6c-3cc3-5ff7-bd8f-cd6565d8d990)
WHEN a corpse is found, with its throat cut and no sign of a weapon, in a room locked and bolted from the inside, both murder and suicide must be discarded as impossible. But writers of detective fiction, and their readers, are more circumspect. For them these fascinating conditions pose the questions: Whodunit? and, even more intriguingly, How?
Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ (1841) was not only the first detective story, but also the first locked-room detective story; and The Big Bow Mystery (1892) by Israel Zangwill (1864–1926) was the first book-length example of the form. As such, it occupies an important place in the history of detective fiction.
The story first appeared in 1891 as a serial in the London daily Star newspaper, for which Zangwill worked at the time; it was published in book form the following year and collected in Zangwill’s The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes in 1903. In a preface, written for an 1895 edition of his book, the author perceptively acknowledged what is, in essence, the ‘fair-play’ rule of detective fiction (as adopted many years later by the Detection Club) when he wrote:
‘The indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and unable to be solved by the reader, and that that the writer’s solution should satisfy. And not only must the solution be adequate, but all its data must be given in the body of the story.’
Zangwill had long suspected, he explained, that ‘no mystery-monger had ever murdered a man in a room to which there was no possible access’ and that, although he had devised such a solution, it lay dormant until the editor of ‘a popular London evening newspaper’ asked him ‘to provide…a more original piece of fiction’. As the story unfolded—written in a fortnight ‘day by day’, according to the author—readers of the serial submitted ‘unsolicited testimonials in the shape of solutions’, although they ‘had failed, one and all, to hit on the real murderer’. (One can’t help wondering if the variety of possible solutions put forward in the course of the novel were some of these suggestions.)
The previous quarter-century had seen the publication of landmark novels of detective fiction: Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone (1868), Charles Dickens’s The Mystery of EdwinDrood (1870), Anna Katharine Green’s The Leavenworth Case (1878). And in the years immediately preceding The Big Bow Mystery the appearance of the world’s first ‘consulting detective’, Sherlock Holmes, ushered in the pre-Golden Age of detective fiction. Two of Holmes’s full-length investigations—A Study in Scarlet (1888) and The Sign of (the) Four (1890)—were followed by the first dozen of the phenomenally successful short stories in the Strand magazine, beginning in July 1891 with ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’. So when Zangwill’s novel was published, the public appetite for crime fiction was well established—and almost insatiable.
Zangwill, the son of Latvian and Polish immigrants, was born in London’s East End and showed literary promise as early as eighteen. A teacher for some years after he graduated from London University, he eventually left the profession to write full-time, publishing hundreds of essays, as well as novels, short stories and plays produced in London and New York. His work concentrated on political, social and Jewish issues but The Big Bow Mystery was his only venture into detective fiction.
Given this background, his novel is more socially aware than many of its contemporaries. Two of the main characters are closely involved with the labour movement and a detailed picture of the social conditions of London’s East End and its denizens is conveyed through the characters and their circumstances. Dickensian names—the upright Arthur Constant, the hugely entertaining Mrs Drabdump, the enigmatic Edward Wimp, the elusive Jessie Dymond and the wonderfully named Denzil Cantercot—help to reinforce this milieu. A less than flattering picture of the police, and their initial attempts to solve the case, against a background of ‘a frigid grey mist’ and ‘cold [that] cut like a many-bladed knife’ contribute to the overall mood of a powerless stratum of society.
In the course of the novel the reader is treated to a baffling murder, an investigation, an inquest, a checking of alibis, a court case, a last-minute revelation and a shocking denouement; in fact, most of the components of the best detective fiction. And throughout, the locked room problem shares centre-stage with the ‘whodunit’ element. A nod to Poe in Chapter IV and the somewhat similar problem presented to his detective and readers in ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ is inevitable; although rest assured that while the problem in both stories may be similar, Zangwill’s solution is totally different. Arguably it is superior, because, like all clever solutions, it contains elements of the psychological as well as the physical; as the villain confidently asserts in the closing pages, ‘to dash a half-truth in the world’s eyes is the surest way of blinding it altogether’. The explanation of the riddle is, in retrospect, tantalisingly simple and maddeningly obvious and, as with many such problems, if you can discern the ‘how’, you automatically know the ‘who’. Variations on the solution have been adapted and adopted many times since; and by some of the most resourceful practitioners in the genre.
Perhaps because ‘the solution of the inexplicable problem agitated mankind from China to Peru’ and had been ‘discussed in every language under the sun’, the novel features, in the closing chapters, the (unnamed) Home Secretary, as well as a guest appearance by William Gladstone. Zangwill writes in a prefatory Note that the justification for introducing the then Prime Minister ‘into a fictitious scene is defended on the grounds that he is largely mythical’.
Within a decade of Zangwill’s novel, Sherlock Holmes returned, miraculously, from the Reichenbach Falls, Chesterton’s immortal Father Brown and Freeman’s famous Dr Thorndyke began their careers in ‘The Blue Cross’ (1903) and The Red Thumb Mark (1907) respectively; and the world of crime fiction was never the same again.
The Big Bow Mystery was filmed in a semi-silent version as The Perfect Crime in 1928 and as The Verdict in 1946. With the former very much in the public consciousness when Collins began The Detective Story Club imprint in July 1929, Zangwill’s book was an obvious choice as one of the launch titles, and explains the change of title on the jacket, even though it was still entitled The Big Bow Mystery inside.
DR JOHN CURRAN
Dublin, March 2015
THE BIG BOW MYSTERY (#ua41f9b6c-3cc3-5ff7-bd8f-cd6565d8d990)
PREFACE OF MURDERS AND MYSTERIES (#ua41f9b6c-3cc3-5ff7-bd8f-cd6565d8d990)
AS this little book was written some four years ago, I feel able to review it without prejudice. A new book just hot from the brain is naturally apt to appear faulty to its begetter, but an old book has got into the proper perspective and may be praised by him without fear or favour. The Big Bow Mystery seems to me an excellent murder story, as murder stories go, for, while as sensational as the most of them, it contains more humour and character creation than the best. Indeed, the humour is too abundant. Mysteries should be sedate and sober. There should be a pervasive atmosphere of horror and awe such as Poe manages to create. Humour is out of tone; it would be more artistic to preserve a sombre note throughout. But I was a realist in those days, and in real life mysteries occur to real persons with their individual humours, and mysterious circumstances are apt to be complicated by comic. The indispensable condition of a good mystery is that it should be able and unable to be solved by the reader, and that the writer’s solution should satisfy. Many a mystery runs on breathlessly enough till the dénouement is reached, only to leave the reader with the sense of having been robbed of his breath under false pretences. And not only must the solution be adequate, but all its data must be given in the body of the story. The author must not suddenly spring a new person or a new circumstance upon his reader at the end. Thus, if a friend were to ask me to guess who dined with him yesterday, it would be fatuous if he had in mind somebody of whom he knew I had never heard. The only person who has ever solved The Big Bow Mystery is myself. This is not paradox but plain fact. For long before the book was written, I said to myself one night that no mystery-monger had ever murdered a man in a room to which there was no possible access. The puzzle was scarcely propounded ere the solution flew up and the idea lay stored in my mind till, years later, during the silly season, the editor of a popular London evening paper, anxious to let the sea-serpent have a year off, asked me to provide him with a more original piece of fiction. I might have refused, but there was murder in my soul, and here was the opportunity. I went to work seriously, though the Morning Post subsequently said the skit was too laboured, and I succeeded at least in exciting my readers, so many of whom sent in unsolicited testimonials in the shape of solutions during the run of the story that, when it ended, the editor asked me to say something by way of acknowledgement. Thereupon I wrote a letter to the paper, thanking the would-be solvers for their kindly attempts to help me out of the mess into which I had got the plot. I did not like to wound their feelings by saying straight out that they had failed, one and all, to hit on the real murderer, just like real police, so I tried to break the truth to them in a roundabout, mendacious fashion, as thus:
To the Editor of The Star.
Sir: Now that The Big Bow Mystery is solved to the satisfaction of at least one person, will you allow that person the use of your invaluable columns to enable him to thank the hundreds of your readers who have favoured him with their kind suggestions and solutions while his tale was running and they were reading? I ask this more especially because great credit is due to them for enabling me to end the story in a manner so satisfactory to myself. When I started it, I had, of course, no idea who had done the murder, but I was determined no one should guess it. Accordingly, as each correspondent sent in the name of a suspect, I determined he or she should not be the guilty party. By degrees every one of the characters got ticked off as innocent—all except one, and I had no option but to make that character the murderer. I was very sorry to do this, as I rather liked that particular person, but when one has such ingenious readers, what can one do? You can’t let anybody boast that he guessed aright, and, in spite of the trouble of altering the plot five or six times, I feel that I have chosen the course most consistent with the dignity of my profession. Had I not been impelled by this consideration I should certainly have brought in a verdict against Mrs Drabdump, as recommended by the reader who said that, judging by the illustration in the Star, she must be at least seven feet high, and, therefore, could easily have got on the roof and put her (proportionately) long arm down the chimney to effect the cut. I am not responsible for the artist’s conception of the character. When I last saw the good lady she was under six feet, but your artist may have had later information. The Star is always so frightfully up to date. I ought not to omit the humorous remark of a correspondent, who said: ‘Mortlake might have swung in some wild way from one window to another, at any rate in a story.’ I hope my fellow-writers thus satirically prodded will not demand his name, as I object to murders, ‘at any rate in real life’. Finally, a word with the legions who have taken me to task for allowing Mr Gladstone to write over 170 words on a postcard. It is all owing to you, sir, who announced my story as containing humorous elements. I tried to put in some, and this gentle dig at the grand old correspondent’s habits was intended to be one of them. However, if I am to be taken ‘at the foot of the letter’ (or rather of the postcard), I must say that only today I received a postcard containing about 250 words. But this was not from Mr Gladstone. At any rate, till Mr Gladstone himself repudiates this postcard, I shall consider myself justified in allowing it to stand in the book.
Again thanking your readers for their valuable assistance,
Yours, etc.
One would have imagined that nobody could take this seriously, for it is obvious that the mystery-story is just the one species of story that cannot be told impromptu or altered at the last moment, seeing that it demands the most careful piecing together and the most elaborate dovetailing. Nevertheless, if you cast your joke upon the waters, you shall find it no joke after many days. This is what I read in the Lyttelton Times, New Zealand: ‘The chain of circumstantial evidence seems fairly irrefragable. From all accounts, Mr Zangwill himself was puzzled, after carefully forging every link, how to break it. The method ultimately adopted I consider more ingenious than convincing.’ After that I made up my mind never to joke again, but this good intention now helps to pave the beaten path.
I. ZANGWILL
London, September 1895
NOTE (#ulink_6b63671c-9f20-5bc5-a98d-f39a79c0de84)
THE Mystery which the author will always associate with this story is how he got through the task of writing it. It was written in a fortnight—day by day—to meet a sudden demand from the Star, which made ‘a new departure’ with it.
The said fortnight was further disturbed by an extraordinary combined attack of other troubles and tasks. This is no excuse for the shortcomings of the book, as it was always open to the writer to revise or suppress it. The latter function may safely be left to the public, while if the work stands—almost to a letter—as it appeared in the Star, it is because the author cannot tell a story more than once.
The introduction of Mr Gladstone into a fictitious scene is defended on the ground that he is largely mythical.
I. Z.
CHAPTER I (#ulink_a55d184d-8285-53c2-a86d-a883cfe267bd)
ON a memorable morning of early December London opened its eyes on a frigid grey mist. There are mornings when King Fog masses his molecules of carbon in serried squadrons in the city, while he scatters them tenuously in the suburbs; so that your morning train may bear you from twilight to darkness. But today the enemy’s manoeuvring was more monotonous. From Bow even unto Hammersmith there draggled a dull, wretched vapour, like the wraith of an impecunious suicide come into a fortune immediately after the fatal deed. The barometers and thermometers had sympathetically shared its depression, and their spirits (when they had any) were low. The cold cut like a many-bladed knife.
Mrs Drabdump, of 11 Glover Street, Bow, was one of the few persons in London whom fog did not depress. She went about her work quite as cheerlessly as usual. She had been among the earliest to be aware of the enemy’s advent, picking out the strands of fog from the coils of darkness the moment she rolled up her bedroom blind and unveiled the sombre picture of the winter morning. She knew that the fog had come to stay for the day at least, and that the gas bill for the quarter was going to beat the record in high-jumping. She also knew that this was because she had allowed her new gentleman lodger, Mr Arthur Constant, to pay a fixed sum of a shilling a week for gas, instead of charging him a proportion of the actual account for the whole house. The meteorologists might have saved the credit of their science if they had reckoned with Mrs Drabdump’s next gas bill when they predicted the weather and made ‘Snow’ the favourite, and said that ‘Fog’ would be nowhere. Fog was everywhere, yet Mrs Drabdump took no credit to herself for her prescience. Mrs Drabdump indeed took no credit for anything, paying her way along doggedly, and struggling through life like a wearied swimmer trying to touch the horizon. That things always went as badly as she had foreseen did not exhilarate her in the least.
Mrs Drabdump was a widow. Widows are not born but made, else you might have fancied Mrs Drabdump had always been a widow. Nature had given her that tall, spare form, and that pale, thin-lipped, elongated, hard-eyed visage, and that painfully precise hair, which are always associated with widowhood in low life. It is only in higher circles that women can lose their husbands and yet remain bewitching. The late Mr Drabdump had scratched the base of his thumb with a rusty nail, and Mrs Drabdump’s foreboding that he would die of lockjaw had not prevented her wrestling day and night with the shadow of Death, as she had wrestled with it vainly twice before, when Katie died of diphtheria and little Johnny of scarlet fever. Perhaps it is from overwork among the poor that Death has been reduced to a shadow.
Mrs Drabdump was lighting the kitchen fire. She did it very scientifically, as knowing the contrariety of coal and the anxiety of flaming sticks to end in smoke unless rigidly kept up to the mark. Science was a success as usual; and Mrs Drabdump rose from her knees content, like a Parsee priestess who had duly paid her morning devotions to her deity. Then she started violently, and nearly lost her balance. Her eye had caught the hands of the clock on the mantel. They pointed to fifteen minutes to seven. Mrs Drabdump’s devotion to the kitchen fire invariably terminated at fifteen minutes past six. What was the matter with the clock?
Mrs Drabdump had an immediate vision of Snoppet, the neighbouring horologist, keeping the clock in hand for weeks and then returning it only superficially repaired and secretly injured more vitally ‘for the good of the trade’. The evil vision vanished as quickly as it came, exorcised by the deep boom of St Dunstan’s bells chiming the three-quarters. In its place a great horror surged. Instinct had failed; Mrs Drabdump had risen at half-past six instead of six. Now she understood why she had been feeling so dazed and strange and sleepy. She had overslept herself.
Chagrined and puzzled, she hastily set the kettle over the crackling coal, discovering a second later that she had overslept herself because Mr Constant wished to be woke three-quarters of an hour earlier than usual, and to have his breakfast at seven, having to speak at an early meeting of discontented tram-men. She ran at once, candle in hand, to his bedroom. It was upstairs. All ‘upstairs’ was Arthur Constant’s domain, for it consisted of but two mutually independent rooms. Mrs Drabdump knocked viciously at the door of the one he used for a bedroom, crying, ‘Seven o’clock, sir. You’ll be late, sir. You must get up at once.’ The usual slumberous ‘All right’ was not forthcoming; but, as she herself had varied her morning salute, her ear was less expectant of the echo. She went downstairs, with no foreboding save that the kettle would come off second best in the race between its boiling and her lodger’s dressing.
For she knew there was no fear of Arthur Constant’s lying deaf to the call of duty—temporarily represented by Mrs Drabdump. He was a light sleeper, and the tram conductors’ bells were probably ringing in his ears, summoning him to the meeting. Why Arthur Constant, B.A.—white-handed and white-shirted, and gentleman to the very purse of him—should concern himself with tram-men, when fortune had confined his necessary relations with drivers to cabmen at the least, Mrs Drabdump could not quite make out. He probably aspired to represent Bow in Parliament; but then it would surely have been wiser to lodge with a landlady who possessed a vote by having a husband alive. Nor was there much practical wisdom in his wish to black his own boots (an occupation in which he shone but little), and to live in every way like a Bow working man. Bow working men were not so lavish in their patronage of water, whether existing in drinking glasses, morning tubs, or laundress’s establishments. Nor did they eat the delicacies with which Mrs Drabdump supplied him, with the assurance that they were the artisan’s appanage. She could not bear to see him eat things unbefitting his station. Arthur Constant opened his mouth and ate what his landlady gave him, not first deliberately shutting his eyes according to the formula, the rather pluming himself on keeping them very wide open. But it is difficult for saints to see through their own halos; and in practice an aureola about the head is often indistinguishable from a mist.
The tea to be scalded in Mr Constant’s pot, when that cantankerous kettle should boil, was not the coarse mixture of black and green sacred to herself and Mr Mortlake, of whom the thoughts of breakfast now reminded her. Poor Mr Mortlake, gone off without any to Devonport, somewhere about four in the fog-thickened darkness of a winter night! Well, she hoped his journey would be duly rewarded, that his perks would be heavy, and that he would make as good a thing out of the ‘travelling expenses’ as rival labour leaders roundly accused him of to other people’s faces. She did not grudge him his gains, nor was it her business if, as they alleged, in introducing Mr Constant to her vacant rooms, his idea was not merely to benefit his landlady. He had done her an uncommon good turn, queer as was the lodger thus introduced. His own apostleship to the sons of toil gave Mrs Drabdump no twinges of perplexity. Tom Mortlake had been a compositor; and apostleship was obviously a profession better paid and of a higher social status. Tom Mortlake—the hero of a hundred strikes—set up in print on a poster, was unmistakably superior to Tom Mortlake setting up other men’s names at a case. Still, the work was not all beer and skittles, and Mrs Drabdump felt that Tom’s latest job was not enviable. She shook his door as she passed it on her way to the kitchen, but there was no response. The street door was only a few feet off down the passage, and a glance at it dispelled the last hope that Tom had abandoned the journey. The door was unbolted and unchained, and the only security was the latchkey lock. Mrs Drabdump felt a whit uneasy, though, to give her her due, she never suffered as much as most housewives do from criminals who never come. Not quite opposite, but still only a few doors off, on the other side of the street, lived the celebrated ex-detective Grodman, and, illogically enough, his presence in the street gave Mrs Drabdump a curious sense of security, as of a believer living under the shadow of the fane. That any human being of ill-odour should consciously come within a mile of the scent of so famous a sleuth-hound seemed to her highly improbable. Grodman had retired (with a competence) and was only a sleeping dog now; still, even criminals would have sense enough to let him lie.
So Mrs Drabdump did not really feel that there had been any danger, especially as a second glance at the street door showed that Mortlake had been thoughtful enough to slip the loop that held back the bolt of the big lock. She allowed herself another throb of sympathy for the labour leader whirling on his dreary way toward Devonport Dockyard. Not that he had told her anything of his journey beyond the town; but she knew Devonport had a Dockyard because Jessie Dymond—Tom’s sweetheart—once mentioned that her aunt lived near there, and it lay on the surface that Tom had gone to help the dockers, who were imitating their London brethren. Mrs Drabdump did not need to be told things to be aware of them. She went back to prepare Mr Constant’s superfine tea, vaguely wondering why people were so discontented nowadays. But when she brought up the tea and the toast and the eggs to Mr Constant’s sitting-room (which adjoined his bedroom, though without communicating with it), Mr Constant was not sitting in it. She lit the gas, and laid the cloth; then she returned to the landing and beat at the bedroom door with an imperative palm. Silence alone answered her. She called him by name and told him the hour, but hers was the only voice she heard, and it sounded strangely to her in the shadows of the staircase. Then, muttering, ‘Poor gentleman, he had the toothache last night; and p’rhaps he’s only just got a wink o’ sleep. Pity to disturb him for the sake of them grizzling conductors. I’ll let him sleep his usual time,’ she bore the teapot downstairs with a mournful, almost poetic, consciousness that soft-boiled eggs (like love) must grow cold.
Half-past seven came—and she knocked again. But Constant slept on.
His letters, always a strange assortment, arrived at eight, and a telegram came soon after. Mrs Drabdump rattled his door, shouted, and at last put the wire under it. Her heart was beating fast enough now, though there seemed to be a cold, clammy snake curling round it. She went downstairs again and turned the handle of Mortlake’s room, and went in without knowing why. The coverlet of the bed showed that the occupant had only lain down in his clothes, as if fearing to miss the early train. She had not for a moment expected to find him in the room; yet somehow the consciousness that she was alone in the house with the sleeping Constant seemed to flash for the first time upon her, and the clammy snake tightened its folds round her heart.
She opened the street door, and her eye wandered nervously up and down. It was half-past eight. The little street stretched cold and still in the grey mist, blinking bleary eyes at either end, where the street lamps smouldered on. No one was visible for the moment, though smoke was rising from many of the chimneys to greet its sister mist. At the house of the detective across the way the blinds were still down and the shutters up. Yet the familiar, prosaic aspect of the street calmed her. The bleak air set her coughing; she slammed the door to, and returned to the kitchen to make fresh tea for Constant, who could only be in a deep sleep. But the canister trembled in her grasp. She did not know whether she dropped it or threw it down, but there was nothing in the hand that battered again a moment later at the bedroom door. No sound within answered the clamour without. She rained blow upon blow in a sort of spasm of frenzy, scarce remembering that her object was merely to wake her lodger, and almost staving in the lower panels with her kicks. Then she turned the handle and tried to open the door, but it was locked. The resistance recalled her to herself—she had a moment of shocked decency at the thought that she had been about to enter Constant’s bedroom. Then the terror came over her afresh. She felt that she was alone in the house with a corpse. She sank to the floor, cowering; with difficulty stifling a desire to scream. Then she rose with a jerk and raced down the stairs without looking behind her, and threw open the door and ran out into the street, only pulling up with her hand violently agitating Grodman’s door-knocker. In a moment the first floor window was raised—the little house was of the same pattern as her own—and Grodman’s full fleshy face loomed through the fog in sleepy irritation from under a nightcap. Despite its scowl the ex-detective’s face dawned upon her like the sun upon an occupant of the haunted chamber.
‘What in the devil’s the matter?’ he growled. Grodman was not an early bird, now that he had no worms to catch. He could afford to despise proverbs now, for the house in which he lived was his, and he lived in it because several other houses in the street were also his, and it is well for the landlord to be about his own estate in Bow, where poachers often shoot the moon. Perhaps the desire to enjoy his greatness among his early cronies counted for something, too, for he had been born and bred at Bow, receiving when a youth his first engagement from the local police quarters, whence he drew a few shillings a week as an amateur detective in his leisure hours.
Grodman was still a bachelor. In the celestial matrimonial bureau a partner might have been selected for him, but he had never been able to discover her. It was his one failure as a detective. He was a self-sufficing person, who preferred a gas stove to a domestic; but in deference to Glover Street opinion he admitted a female factotum between ten a.m. and ten p.m., and, equally in deference to Glover Street opinion, excluded her between ten p.m. and ten a.m.
‘I want you to come across at once,’ Mrs Drabdump gasped. ‘Something has happened to Mr Constant.’
‘What! Not bludgeoned by the police at the meeting this morning, I hope?’
‘No, no! He didn’t go. He is dead.’
‘Dead?’ Grodman’s face grew very serious now.
‘Yes. Murdered!’
‘What?’ almost shouted the ex-detective. ‘How? When? Where? Who?’
‘I don’t know. I can’t get to him. I have beaten at his door. He does not answer.’
Grodman’s face lit up with relief.
‘You silly woman! Is that all? I shall have a cold in my head. Bitter weather. He’s dog-tired after yesterday—processions, three speeches, kindergarten, lecture on “the moon”, article on co-operation. That’s his style.’ It was also Grodman’s style. He never wasted words.
‘No,’ Mrs Drabdump breathed up at him solemnly, ‘he’s dead.’
‘All right; go back. Don’t alarm the neighbourhood unnecessarily. Wait for me. Down in five minutes.’ Grodman did not take this Cassandra of the kitchen too seriously. Probably he knew his woman. His small, bead-like eyes glittered with an almost amused smile as he withdrew them from Mrs Drabdump’s ken, and shut down the sash with a bang. The poor woman ran back across the road and through her door, which she would not close behind her. It seemed to shut her in with the dead. She waited in the passage. After an age—seven minutes by any honest clock—Grodman made his appearance, looking as dressed as usual, but with unkempt hair and with disconsolate side-whisker. He was not quite used to that side-whisker yet, for it had only recently come within the margin of cultivation. In active service Grodman had been clean-shaven, like all members of the profession—for surely your detective is the most versatile of actors. Mrs Drabdump closed the street door quietly, and pointed to the stairs, fear operating like a polite desire to give him precedence. Grodman ascended, amusement still glimmering in his eyes. Arrived on the landing he knocked peremptorily at the door, crying, ‘Nine o’clock, Mr Constant; nine o’clock!’ When he ceased there was no other sound or movement. His face grew more serious. He waited, then knocked, and cried louder. He turned the handle, but the door was fast. He tried to peer through the keyhole, but it was blocked. He shook the upper panels, but the door seemed bolted as well as locked. He stood still, his face set and rigid, for he liked and esteemed the man.
‘Ay, knock your loudest,’ whispered the pale-faced woman. ‘You’ll not wake him now.’
The grey mist had followed them through the street door, and hovered about the staircase, charging the air with a moist, sepulchral odour.
‘Locked and bolted,’ muttered Grodman, shaking the door afresh.
‘Burst it open,’ breathed the woman, trembling violently all over, and holding her hands before her as if to ward off the dreadful vision. Without another word, Grodman applied his shoulder to the door, and made a violent muscular effort. He had been an athlete in his time, and the sap was yet in him. The door creaked, little by little it began to give, the woodwork enclosing the bolt of the lock splintered, the panels bent upward, the large upper bolt tore off its iron staple; the door flew back with a crash. Grodman rushed in.
‘My God!’ he cried. The woman shrieked. The sight was too terrible.
Within a few hours the jubilant news-boys were shrieking ‘Horrible Suicide in Bow,’ and The Moon poster added, for the satisfaction of those too poor to purchase: ‘A Philanthropist Cuts His Throat.’
CHAPTER II (#ulink_0b5b8d38-fd54-56b0-ba3e-64bf781cc8c9)
BUT the newspapers were premature. Scotland Yard refused to prejudice the case despite the penny-a-liners. Several arrests were made, so that the later editions were compelled to soften ‘Suicide’ into ‘Mystery’. The people arrested were a nondescript collection of tramps. Most of them had committed other offences for which the police had not arrested them. One bewildered-looking gentleman gave himself up (as if he were a riddle), but the police would have none of him, and restored him forthwith to his friends and keepers. The number of candidates for each new opening in Newgate is astonishing.
The full significance of this tragedy of a noble young life cut short had hardly time to filter into the public mind, when a fresh sensation absorbed it. Tom Mortlake had been arrested the same day at Liverpool on suspicion of being concerned in the death of his fellow-lodger. The news fell like a bombshell upon a land in which Tom Mortlake’s name was a household word. That the gifted artisan orator, who had never shrunk upon occasion from launching red rhetoric at Society, should actually have shed blood seemed too startling, especially as the blood shed was not blue, but the property of a lovable young middle-class idealist, who had now literally given his life to the Cause. But this supplementary sensation did not grow to a head, and everybody (save a few labour leaders) was relieved to hear that Tom had been released almost immediately, being merely subpoenaed to appear at the inquest. In an interview which he accorded to the representative of a Liverpool paper the same afternoon, he stated that he put his arrest down entirely to the enmity and rancour entertained towards him by the police throughout the country. He had come to Liverpool to trace the movements of a friend about whom he was very uneasy, and he was making anxious inquiries at the docks to discover at what times steamers left for America, when the detectives stationed there in accordance with instructions from headquarters had arrested him as a suspicious-looking character. ‘Though,’ said Tom, ‘they must very well have known my phiz, as I have been sketched and caricatured all over the shop. When I told them who I was they had the decency to let me go. They thought they’d scored off me enough, I reckon. Yes, it certainly is a strange coincidence that I might actually have had something to do with the poor fellow’s death, which has cut me up as much as anybody; though if they had known I had just come from the “scene of the crime”, and actually lived in the house, they would probably have—let me alone.’ He laughed sarcastically. ‘They are a queer lot of muddle-heads are the police. Their motto is, “First catch your man, then cook the evidence”. If you’re on the spot you’re guilty because you’re there, and if you’re elsewhere you’re guilty because you have gone away. Oh, I know them! If they could have seen their way to clap me in quod, they’d ha’ done it. Lucky I know the number of the cabman who took me to Euston before five this morning.’
‘If they clapped you in quod,’ the interviewer reported himself as facetiously observing, ‘the prisoners would be on strike in a week.’
‘Yes, but there would be so many blacklegs ready to take their places,’ Mortlake flashed back, ‘that I’m afraid it ’ould be no go. But do excuse me. I am so upset about my friend. I’m afraid he has left England, and I have to make inquiries; and now there’s poor Constant gone—horrible! horrible! and I’m due in London at the inquest. I must really run away. Goodbye. Tell your readers it’s all a police grudge.’
‘One last word, Mr Mortlake, if you please. Is it true that you were billed to preside at a great meeting of clerks at St James’s Hall between one and two today to protest against the German invasion?’
‘Whew! So I was. But the beggars arrested me just before one, when I was going to wire, and then the news of poor Constant’s end drove it out of my head. What a nuisance! Lord, how troubles do come together! Well, goodbye, send me a copy of the paper.’
Tom Mortlake’s evidence at the inquest added little beyond this to the public knowledge of his movements on the morning of the Mystery. The cabman who drove him to Euston had written indignantly to the papers to say that he had picked up his celebrated fare at Bow Railway Station at about half-past four a.m., and the arrest was a deliberate insult to democracy, and he offered to make an affidavit to that effect, leaving it dubious to which effect. But Scotland Yard betrayed no itch for the affidavit in question, and No. 2138 subsided again into the obscurity of his rank. Mortlake—whose face was very pale below the black mane brushed back from his fine forehead—gave his evidence in low, sympathetic tones. He had known the deceased for over a year, coming constantly across him in their common political and social work, and had found the furnished rooms for him in Glover Street at his own request, they just being to let when Constant resolved to leave his rooms at Oxford House in Bethnal Green and to share the actual life of the people. The locality suited the deceased, as being near the People’s Palace. He respected and admired the deceased, whose genuine goodness had won all hearts. The deceased was an untiring worker; never grumbled, was always in fair spirits, regarded his life and wealth as a sacred trust to be used for the benefit of humanity. He had last seen him at a quarter past nine p.m. on the day preceding his death. He (witness) had received a letter by the last post which made him uneasy about a friend. Deceased was evidently suffering from toothache, and was fixing a piece of cotton-wool in a hollow tooth, but he did not complain. Deceased seemed rather upset by the news he brought, and they both discussed it rather excitedly.
By a JURYMAN: Did the news concern him?
MORTLAKE: Only impersonally. He knew my friend, and was keenly sympathetic when one was in trouble.
CORONER: Could you show the jury the letter you received?
MORTLAKE: I have mislaid it, and cannot make out where it has got to. If you, sir, think it relevant or essential, I will state what the trouble was.
CORONER: Was the toothache very violent?
MORTLAKE: I cannot tell. I think not, though he told me it had disturbed his rest the night before.
CORONER: What time did you leave him?
MORTLAKE: About twenty to ten.
CORONER: And what did you do then?
MORTLAKE: I went out for an hour or so to make some inquiries. Then I returned, and told my landlady I should be leaving by an early train for—for the country.
CORONER: And that was the last you saw of the deceased?
MORTLAKE (with emotion): The last.
CORONER: How was he when you left him?
MORTLAKE: Mainly concerned about my trouble.
CORONER: Otherwise you saw nothing unusual about him?
MORTLAKE: Nothing.
CORONER: What time did you leave the house on Tuesday morning?
MORTLAKE: At about five and twenty minutes past four.
CORONER: Are you sure that you shut the street door?
MORTLAKE: Quite sure. Knowing my landlady was rather a timid person, I even slipped the bolt of the big lock, which was usually tied back. It was impossible for anyone to get in even with a latchkey.
Mrs Drabdump’s evidence (which, of course, preceded his) was more important, and occupied a considerable time, unduly eked out by Drabdumpian padding. Thus she not only deposed that Mr Constant had the toothache, but that it was going to last about a week; in tragi-comic indifference to the radical cure that had been effected. Her account of the last hours of the deceased tallied with Mortlake’s, only that she feared Mortlake was quarrelling with him over something in the letter that came by the nine o’clock post. Deceased had left the house a little after Mortlake, but had returned before him, and had gone straight to his bedroom. She had not actually seen him come in, having been in the kitchen, but she heard his latchkey, followed by his light step up the stairs.
A JURYMAN: How do you know it was not somebody else? (Sensation, of which the juryman tries to look unconscious.)
WITNESS: He called down to me over the banisters, and says in his sweetish voice: ‘Be hextra sure to wake me at a quarter to seven, Mrs Drabdump, or else I shan’t get to my tram meeting.’
(Juryman collapses.)
CORONER: And did you wake him?
MRS DRABDUMP (breaking down): Oh, my lud, how can you ask?
CORONER: There, there, compose yourself. I mean did you try to wake him?
MRS DRABDUMP: I have taken in and done for lodgers this seventeen years, my lud, and have always gave satisfaction; and Mr Mortlake, he wouldn’t ha’ recommended me otherwise, though I wish to Heaven the poor gentleman had never—
CORONER: Yes, yes, of course. You tried to rouse him?
But it was some time before Mrs Drabdump was sufficiently calm to explain that though she had overslept herself, and though it would have been all the same anyhow, she had come up to time. Bit by bit the tragic story was forced from her lips—a tragedy that even her telling could not make tawdry. She told with superfluous detail how—when Mr Grodman broke in the door—she saw her unhappy gentleman lodger lying on his back in bed, stone dead, with a gaping red wound in his throat; how her stronger-minded companion calmed her a little by spreading a handkerchief over the distorted face; how they then looked vainly about and under the bed for any instrument by which the deed could have been done, the veteran detective carefully making a rapid inventory of the contents of the room, and taking notes of the precise position and condition of the body before anything was disturbed by the arrival of gapers or bunglers; how she had pointed out to him that both the windows were firmly bolted to keep out the cold night air; how, having noted this down with a puzzled, pitying shake of the head, he had opened the window to summon the police, and espied in the fog one Denzil Cantercot, whom he called and told to run to the nearest police station and ask them to send on an inspector and a surgeon. How they both remained in the room till the police arrived, Grodman pondering deeply the while and making notes every now and again, as fresh points occurred to him, and asking her questions about the poor, weak-headed young man. Pressed as to what she meant by calling the deceased ‘weak-headed’, she replied that some of her neighbours wrote him begging letters, though, Heaven knew, they were better off than herself, who had to scrape her fingers to the bone for every penny she earned. Under further pressure from Mr Talbot, who was watching the inquiry on behalf of Arthur Constant’s family, Mrs Drabdump admitted that the deceased had behaved like a human being, nor was there anything externally eccentric or queer in his conduct. He was always cheerful and pleasant spoken, though certainly soft—God rest his soul. No; he never shaved, but wore all the hair that Heaven had given him.
By a JURYMAN: She thought deceased was in the habit of locking his door when he went to bed. Of course, she couldn’t say for certain. (Laughter.) There was no need to bolt the door as well. The bolt slid upward, and was at the top of the door. When she first let lodgings, her reasons for which she seemed anxious to publish, there had only been a bolt, but a suspicious lodger, she would not call him a gentleman, had complained that he could not fasten his door behind him, and so she had been put to the expense of having a lock made. The complaining lodger went off soon after without paying his rent. (Laughter.) She had always known he would.
CORONER: Was deceased at all nervous?
WITNESS: No, he was a very nice gentleman. (A laugh.)
CORONER: I mean did he seem afraid of being robbed?
WITNESS: No, he was always goin’ to demonstrations. (Laughter.) I told him to be careful. I told him I lost a purse with 3s. 2d. myself on Jubilee Day.
Mrs Drabdump resumed her seat, weeping vaguely.
CORONER: Gentlemen, we shall have an opportunity of viewing the room shortly.
The story of the discovery of the body was retold, though more scientifically, by MR GEORGE GRODMAN, whose unexpected resurgence into the realm of his early exploits excited as keen a curiosity as the reappearance ‘for this occasion only’ of a retired prima donna. His book, Criminals I Have Caught, passed from the twenty-third to the twenty-fourth edition merely on the strength of it. Mr Grodman stated that the body was still warm when he found it. He thought that death was quite recent. The door he had had to burst was bolted as well as locked. He confirmed Mrs Drabdump’s statement about the windows; the chimney was very narrow. The cut looked as if done by a razor. There was no instrument lying about the room. He had known the deceased about a month. He seemed a very earnest, simple-minded young fellow who spoke a great deal about the brotherhood of man. (The hardened old man-hunter’s voice was not free from a tremor as he spoke jerkily of the dead man’s enthusiasms.) He should have thought the deceased the last man in the world to commit suicide.
MR DENZIL CANTERCOT was next called. He was a poet. (Laughter.) He was on his way to Mr Grodman’s house to tell him he had been unable to do some writing for him because he was suffering from writer’s cramp, when Mr Grodman called to him from the window of No. 11 and asked him to run for the police. No, he did not run; he was a philosopher. (Laughter.) He returned with them to the door, but did not go up. He had no stomach for crude sensations. (Laughter.) The grey fog was sufficiently unbeautiful for him for one morning. (Laughter.)
INSPECTOR HOWLETT said: About 9:45 on the morning of Tuesday, 4th December, from information received, he went with Sergeant Runnymede and Dr Robinson to 11 Glover Street, Bow, and there found the dead body of a young man, lying on his back with his throat cut. The door of the room had been smashed in, and the lock and the bolt evidently forced. The room was tidy. There were no marks of blood on the floor. A purse full of gold was on the dressing-table beside a big book. A hip-bath with cold water stood beside the bed, over which was a hanging bookcase. There was a large wardrobe against the wall next to the door. The chimney was very narrow. There were two windows, one bolted. It was about eighteen feet to the pavement. There was no way of climbing up. No one could possibly have got out of the room, and then bolted the doors and windows behind him; and he had searched all parts of the room in which anyone might have been concealed. He had been unable to find any instrument in the room, in spite of exhaustive search, there being not even a penknife in the pockets of the clothes of the deceased, which lay on a chair. The house and the back yard, and the adjacent pavement, had also been fruitlessly searched.
SERGEANT RUNNYMEDE made an identical statement, saving only that he had gone with Dr Robinson and Inspector Howlett.
DR ROBINSON, divisional surgeon, said: The deceased was lying on his back, with his throat cut. The body was not yet cold, the abdominal region being quite warm. Rigor mortis had set in in the lower jaw, neck and upper extremities. The muscles contracted when beaten. I inferred that life had been extinct some two or three hours, probably not longer, it might have been less. The bedclothes would keep the lower part warm for some time. The wound, which was a deep one, was five and a half inches from right to left across the throat to a point under the left ear. The upper portion of the windpipe was severed, and likewise the jugular vein. The muscular coating of the carotid artery was divided. There was a slight cut, as if in continuation of the wound, on the thumb of the left hand. The hands were clasped underneath the head. There was no blood on the right hand. The wound could not have been self-inflicted. A sharp instrument had been used, such as a razor. The cut might have been made by a left-handed person. No doubt death was practically instantaneous. I saw no signs of a struggle about the body or the room. I noticed a purse on the dressing-table, lying next to Madame Blavatsky’s big book on Theosophy. Sergeant Runnymede drew my attention to the fact that the door had evidently been locked and bolted from within.
By a JURYMAN: I do not say the cuts could not have been made by a right-handed person. I can offer no suggestion as to how the inflicter of the wound got in or out. Extremely improbable that the cut was self-inflicted. There was little trace of the outside fog in the room.
POLICE-CONSTABLE WILLIAMS said he was on duty in the early hours of the morning of the 4th inst. Glover Street lay within his beat. He saw or heard nothing suspicious. The fog was never very dense, though nasty to the throat. He had passed through Glover Street about half-past four. He had not seen Mr Mortlake or anybody else leave the house.
The Court here adjourned, the Coroner and the jury repairing in a body to 11 Glover Street to view the house and the bedroom of the deceased. And the evening posters announced: ‘The Bow Mystery Thickens’.
CHAPTER III (#ulink_a2e41c7d-f893-500b-aec4-2a148804326b)
BEFORE the inquiry was resumed, all the poor wretches in custody had been released on suspicion that they were innocent; there was not a single case even for a magistrate. Clues, which at such seasons are gathered by the police like blackberries off the hedges, were scanty and unripe. Inferior specimens were offered them by bushels, but there was not a good one among the lot. The police could not even manufacture a clue.
Arthur Constant’s death was already the theme of every hearth, railway carriage and public house. The dead idealist had points of contact with so many spheres. The East End and West End alike were moved and excited, the Democratic Leagues and the Churches, the Doss-houses and the Universities. The pity of it! And then the impenetrable mystery of it!
The evidence given in the concluding portion of the investigation was necessarily less sensational. There were no more witnesses to bring the scent of blood over the coroner’s table; those who had yet to be heard were merely relatives and friends of the deceased, who spoke of him as he had been in life. His parents were dead, perhaps luckily for them; his relatives had seen little of him, and had scarce heard as much about him as the outside world. No man is a prophet in his own country, and, even if he migrates, it is advisable for him to leave his family at home. His friends were a motley crew; friends of the same friend are not necessarily friends of one another. But their diversity only made the congruity of the tale they had to tell more striking. It was the tale of a man who had never made an enemy even by benefiting him, nor lost a friend even by refusing his favours; the tale of a man whose heart overflowed with peace and goodwill to all men all the year round; of a man to whom Christmas came not once, but three hundred and sixty-five times a year; it was the tale of a brilliant intellect, who gave up to mankind what was meant for himself, and worked as a labourer in the vineyard of humanity, never crying that the grapes were sour; of a man uniformly cheerful and of good courage, living in that forgetfulness of self which is the truest antidote to despair. And yet there was not quite wanting the note of pain to jar the harmony and make it human. Richard Elton, his chum from boyhood, and vicar of Somerton in Midlandshire, handed to the coroner a letter from the deceased about ten days before his death, containing some passages which the coroner read aloud: ‘Do you know anything of Schopenhauer? I mean anything beyond the current misconceptions? I have been making his acquaintance lately. He is an agreeable rattle of a pessimist; his essay on “The Misery of Mankind” is quite lively reading. At first his assimilation of Christianity and Pessimism (it occurs in his essay on “Suicide”) dazzled me as an audacious paradox. But there is truth in it. Verily, the whole creation groaneth and travaileth, and man is a degraded monster, and sin is over all. Ah, my friend, I have shed many of my illusions since I came to this seething hive of misery and wrongdoing. What shall one man’s life—a million men’s lives—avail against the corruption, the vulgarity and the squalor of civilization? Sometimes I feel like a farthing rushlight in the Hall of Eblis. Selfishness is so long and life so short. And the worst of it is that everybody is so beastly contented. The poor no more desire comfort than the rich culture. The woman to whom a penny school fee for her child represents an appreciable slice of her income is satisfied that the rich we shall always have with us.
‘The real crusted old Tories are the paupers in the Workhouse. The Radical working men are jealous of their own leaders, and the leaders of one another. Schopenhauer must have organized a labour party in his salad days. And yet one can’t help feeling that he committed suicide as a philosopher by not committing it as a man. He claims kinship with Buddha, too; though Esoteric Buddhism at least seems spheres removed from the philosophy of “The Will and the Idea”. What a wonderful woman Madame Blavatsky must be. I can’t say I follow her, for she is up in the clouds nearly all the time, and I haven’t as yet developed an astral body. Shall I send you on her book? It is fascinating…I am becoming quite a fluent orator. One soon gets into the way of it. The horrible thing is that you catch yourself saying things to lead up to “Cheers” instead of sticking to the plain realities of the business. Lucy is still doing the galleries in Italy. It used to pain me sometimes to think of my darling’s happiness when I came across a flat-chested factory girl. Now I feel her happiness is as important as a factory girl’s.’
Lucy, the witness explained, was Lucy Brent, the betrothed of the deceased. The poor girl had been telegraphed for, and had started for England. The witness stated that the outburst of despondency in this letter was almost a solitary one, most of the letters in his possession being bright, buoyant and hopeful. Even this letter ended with a humorous statement of the writer’s manifold plans and projects for the New Year. The deceased was a good churchman.
CORONER: Was there any private trouble in his own life to account for the temporary despondency?
WITNESS: Not so far as I am aware. His financial position was exceptionally favourable.
CORONER: There had been no quarrel with Miss Brent?
WITNESS: I have the best authority for saying that no shadow of difference had ever come between them.
CORONER: Was the deceased left-handed?
WITNESS: Certainly not. He was not even ambidextrous.
A JURYMAN: Isn’t Shoppinhour one of the infidel writers, published by the Freethought Publication Society?
WITNESS: I do not know who publishes his books.
THE JURYMAN (a small grocer and big raw-boned Scotchman, rejoicing in the name of Sandy Sanderson and the dignities of deaconry and membership of the committee of the Bow Conservative Association): No equeevocation, sir. Is he not a secularist, who has lectured at the Hall of Science?
WITNESS: No, he is a foreign writer—(Mr Sanderson was heard to thank Heaven for this small mercy)—who believes that life is not worth living.
THE JURYMAN: Were you not shocked to find the friend of a meenister reading such impure leeterature?
WITNESS: The deceased read everything. Schopenhauer is the author of a system of philosophy, and not what you seem to imagine. Perhaps you would like to inspect the book? (Laughter.)
THE JURYMAN: I would na’ touch it with a pitchfork. Such books should be burnt. And this Madame Blavatsky’s book—what is that? Is that also pheelosophy?
WITNESS: No. It is Theosophy. (Laughter.)
MR ALLEN SMITH, secretary of the Tram-men’s Union, stated that he had had an interview with the deceased on the day before his death, when he (the deceased) spoke hopefully of the prospects of the movement, and wrote him out a check for 10 guineas for his union. Deceased promised to speak at a meeting called for a quarter past seven a.m. the next day.
MR EDWARD WIMP, of the Scotland Yard Detective Department, said that the letters and papers of the deceased threw no light upon the manner of his death, and they would be handed back to the family. His Department had not formed any theory on the subject.
The Coroner proceeded to sum up the evidence. ‘We have to deal, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘with a most incomprehensible and mysterious case, the details of which are yet astonishingly simple. On the morning of Tuesday, the 4th inst., Mrs Drabdump, a worthy, hard-working widow, who lets lodgings at 11 Glover Street, Bow, was unable to arouse the deceased, who occupied the entire upper floor of the house. Becoming alarmed, she went across to fetch Mr George Grodman, a gentleman known to us all by reputation, and to whose clear and scientific evidence we are much indebted, and got him to batter in the door. They found the deceased lying back in bed with a deep wound in his throat. Life had only recently become extinct. There was no trace of any instrument by which the cut could have been effected; there was no trace of any person who could have effected the cut. No person could apparently have got in or out. The medical evidence goes to show that the deceased could not have inflicted the wound himself. And yet, gentlemen, there are, in the nature of things, two—and only two—alternative explanations of his death. Either the wound was inflicted by his own hand, or it was inflicted by another’s. I shall take each of these possibilities separately. First, did the deceased commit suicide? The medical evidence says deceased was lying with his hands clasped behind his head. Now the wound was made from right to left, and terminated by a cut on the left thumb. If the deceased had made it he would have had to do it with his right hand, while his left hand remained under his head—a most peculiar and unnatural position to assume. Moreover, in making a cut with the right hand, one would naturally move the hand from left to right. It is unlikely that the deceased would move his right hand so awkwardly and unnaturally, unless, of course, his object was to baffle suspicion. Another point is that on this hypothesis, the deceased would have had to replace his right hand beneath his head. But Dr Robinson believes that death was instantaneous. If so, deceased could have had no time to pose so neatly. It is just possible the cut was made with the left hand, but then the deceased was right-handed. The absence of any signs of a possible weapon undoubtedly goes to corroborate the medical evidence. The police have made an exhaustive search in all places where the razor or other weapon or instrument might by any possibility have been concealed, including the bedclothes, the mattress, the pillow, and the street into which it might have been dropped. But all theories involving the wilful concealment of the fatal instrument have to reckon with the fact or probability that death was instantaneous, also with the fact that there was no blood about the floor. Finally, the instrument used was in all likelihood a razor, and the deceased did not shave, and was never known to be in possession of any such instrument. If, then, we were to confine ourselves to the medical and police evidence, there would, I think, be little hesitation in dismissing the idea of suicide. Nevertheless, it is well to forget the physical aspect of the case for a moment and to apply our minds to an unprejudiced inquiry into the mental aspect of it. Was there any reason why the deceased should wish to take his own life? He was young, wealthy and popular, loving and loved; life stretched fair before him. He had no vices. Plain living, high thinking and noble doing were the three guiding stars of his life. If he had had ambition, an illustrious public career was within reach. He was an orator of no mean power, a brilliant and industrious man. His outlook was always on the future—he was always sketching out ways in which he could be useful to his fellow-men. His purse and his time were ever at the command of whosoever could show fair claim upon them. If such a man were likely to end his own life, the science of human nature would be at an end. Still, some of the shadows of the picture have been presented to us. The man had his moments of despondency—as which of us has not? But they seem to have been few and passing. Anyhow, he was cheerful enough on the day before his death. He was suffering, too, from toothache. But it does not seem to have been violent, nor did he complain. Possibly, of course, the pain became very acute in the night. Nor must we forget that he may have overworked himself, and got his nerves into a morbid state. He worked very hard, never rising later than half-past seven, and doing far more than the professional ‘labour leader’. He taught and wrote as well as spoke and organized. But on the other hand all witnesses agree that he was looking forward eagerly to the meeting of tram-men on the morning of the 4th inst. His whole heart was in the movement. Is it likely that this was the night he would choose for quitting the scene of his usefulness? Is it likely that if he had chosen it, he would not have left letters and a statement behind, or made a last will and testament? Mr Wimp has found no possible clue to such conduct in his papers. Or is it likely he would have concealed the instrument? The only positive sign of intention is the bolting of his door in addition to the usual locking of it, but one cannot lay much stress on that. Regarding the mental aspects alone, the balance is largely against suicide; looking at the physical aspects, suicide is well nigh impossible. Putting the two together, the case against suicide is all but mathematically complete. The answer, then, to our first question—did the deceased commit suicide?—is that he did not.’
The coroner paused, and everybody drew a long breath. The lucid exposition had been followed with admiration. If the coroner had stopped now, the jury would have unhesitatingly returned a verdict of ‘murder’. But the coroner swallowed a mouthful of water and went on:
‘We now come to the second alternative—was the deceased the victim of homicide? In order to answer that question in the affirmative it is essential that we should be able to form some conception of the modus operandi. It is all very well for Dr Robinson to say the cut was made by another hand; but in the absence of any theory as to how the cut could possibly have been made by that other hand, we should be driven back to the theory of self-infliction, however improbable it may seem to medical gentlemen. Now, what are the facts? When Mrs Drabdump and Mr Grodman found the body it was yet warm, and Mr Grodman, a witness fortunately qualified by special experience, states that death had been quite recent. This tallies closely enough with the view of Dr Robinson, who, examining the body about an hour later, put the time of death at two or three hours before, say seven o’clock. Mrs Drabdump had attempted to wake the deceased at a quarter to seven, which would put back the act to a little earlier. As I understand from Dr Robinson, that it is impossible to fix the time very precisely, death may have very well taken place several hours before Mrs Drabdump’s first attempt to wake deceased. Of course, it may have taken place between the first and second calls, as he may merely have been sound asleep at first; it may also not impossibly have taken place considerably earlier than the first call, for all the physical data seem to prove. Nevertheless, on the whole, I think we shall be least likely to err if we assume the time of death to be half-past six. Gentlemen, let us picture to ourselves No. 11 Glover Street at half-past six. We have seen the house; we know exactly how it is constructed. On the ground floor a front room tenanted by Mr Mortlake, with two windows giving on the street, both securely bolted; a back room occupied by the landlady; and a kitchen. Mrs Drabdump did not leave her bedroom till half-past six, so that we may be sure all the various doors and windows have not yet been unfastened; while the season of the year is a guarantee that nothing had been left open. The front door through which Mr Mortlake has gone out before half-past four, is guarded by the latchkey lock and the big lock. On the upper floor are two rooms—a front room used by deceased for a bedroom, and a back room which he used as a sitting-room. The back room has been left open, with the key inside, but the window is fastened. The door of the front room is not only locked, but bolted. We have seen the splintered mortice and the staple of the upper bolt violently forced from the woodwork and resting on the pin. The windows are bolted, the fasteners being firmly fixed in the catches. The chimney is too narrow to admit of the passage of even a child. This room, in fact, is as firmly barred in as if besieged. It has no communication with any other part of the house. It is as absolutely self-centred and isolated as if it were a fort in the sea or a log-hut in the forest. Even if any strange person is in the house, nay, in the very sitting-room of the deceased, he cannot get into the bedroom, for the house is one built for the poor, with no communication between the different rooms, so that separate families, if need be, may inhabit each. Now, however, let us grant that some person has achieved the miracle of getting into the front room, first floor, 18 feet from the ground. At half-past six, or thereabouts, he cuts the throat of the sleeping occupant. How is he then to get out without attracting the attention of the now roused landlady? But let us concede him that miracle, too. How is he to go away and yet leave the doors and windows locked and bolted from within? This is a degree of miracle at which my credulity must draw the line. No, the room had been closed all night—there is scarce a trace of fog in it. No one could get in or out. Finally, murders do not take place without motive. Robbery and revenge are the only conceivable motives. The deceased had not an enemy in the world; his money and valuables were left untouched. Everything was in order. There were no signs of a struggle. The answer then to our second inquiry—was the deceased killed by another person?—is, that he was not.
‘Gentlemen, I am aware that this sounds impossible and contradictory. But it is the facts that contradict themselves. It seems clear that the deceased did not commit suicide. It seems equally clear that the deceased was not murdered. There is nothing for it, therefore, gentlemen, but to return a verdict tantamount to an acknowledgment of our incompetence to come to any adequately grounded conviction whatever as to the means or the manner by which the deceased met his death. It is the most inexplicable mystery in all my experience.’ (Sensation.)
THE FOREMAN (after a colloquy with Mr Sandy Sanderson): We are not agreed, sir. One of the jurors insists on a verdict of ‘Death from visitation by the act of God’.
CHAPTER IV (#ulink_a72f5b26-a075-551a-8cc4-3bb0b0d135de)
BUT Sandy Sanderson’s burning solicitude to fix the crime flickered out in the face of opposition, and in the end he bowed his head to the inevitable ‘open verdict’. Then the floodgates of inkland were opened, and the deluge pattered for nine days on the deaf coffin where the poor idealist mouldered. The tongues of the Press were loosened, and the leader writers revelled in recapitulating the circumstances of ‘The Big Bow Mystery’, though they could contribute nothing but adjectives to the solution. The papers teemed with letters—it was a kind of Indian summer of the silly season. But the editors could not keep them out, nor cared to. The mystery was the one topic of conversation everywhere—it was on the carpet and the bare boards alike, in the kitchen and the drawing-room. It was discussed with science or stupidity, with aspirates or without. It came up for breakfast with the rolls, and was swept off the supper-table with the last crumbs.
No. 11 Glover Street, Bow, remained for days a shrine of pilgrimage. The once sleepy little street buzzed from morning till night. From all parts of the town people came to stare up at the bedroom window and wonder with a foolish look of horror. The pavement was often blocked for hours together, and itinerant vendors of refreshment made it a new market centre, while vocalists hastened thither to sing the delectable ditty of the deed without having any voice in the matter. It was a pity the Government did not erect a toll-gate at either end of the street. But Chancellors of the Exchequer rarely avail themselves of the more obvious expedients for paying off the National Debt.
Finally, familiarity bred contempt, and the wits grew facetious at the expense of the Mystery. Jokes on the subject appeared even in the comic papers.
To the proverb, ‘You must not say Boo to a goose’, one added, ‘or else she will explain you the Mystery’. The name of the gentleman who asked whether the Bow Mystery was not ’arrowing shall not be divulged. There was more point in ‘Dagonet’s’ remark that, if he had been one of the unhappy jurymen, he should have been driven to ‘suicide’. A professional paradox-monger pointed triumphantly to the somewhat similar situation in ‘The Murder in the Rue Morgue’, and said that Nature had been plagiarising again—like the monkey she was—and he recommended Poe’s publishers to apply for an injunction. More seriously, Poe’s solution was re-suggested by ‘Constant Reader’ as an original idea. He thought that a small organ-grinder’s monkey might have got down the chimney with its master’s razor, and, after attempting to shave the occupant of the bed, have returned the way it came. This idea created considerable sensation, but a correspondent with a long train of letters draggling after his name pointed out that a monkey small enough to get down so narrow a flue would not be strong enough to inflict so deep a wound. This was disputed by a third writer, and the contest raged so keenly about the power of monkeys’ muscles that it was almost taken for granted that a monkey was the guilty party. The bubble was pricked by the pen of ‘Common Sense’, who laconically remarked that no traces of soot or blood had been discovered on the floor, or on the nightshirt, or the counterpane. The Lancet’s leader on the Mystery was awaited with interest. It said: ‘We cannot join in the praises that have been showered upon the coroner’s summing up. It shows again the evils resulting from having coroners who are not medical men. He seems to have appreciated but inadequately the significance of the medical evidence. He should certainly have directed the jury to return a verdict of murder on that. What was it to do with him that he could see no way by which the wound could have been inflicted by an outside agency? It was for the police to find how that was done. Enough that it was impossible for the unhappy young man to have inflicted such a wound and then have strength and will power enough to hide the instrument and to remove perfectly every trace of his having left the bed for the purpose.’ It is impossible to enumerate all the theories propounded by the amateur detectives, while Scotland Yard religiously held its tongue. Ultimately the interest on the subject became confined to a few papers which had received the best letters. Those papers that couldn’t get interesting letters stopped the correspondence and sneered at the ‘sensationalism’ of those that could. Among the mass of fantasy there were not a few notable solutions, which failed brilliantly, like rockets posing as fixed stars. One was that in the obscurity of the fog the murderer had ascended to the window of the bedroom by means of a ladder from the pavement. He had then with a diamond cut one of the panes away, and effected an entry through the aperture. On leaving he fixed in the pane of glass again (or another which he had brought with him), and thus the room remained with its bolts and locks untouched. On its being pointed out that the panes were too small, a third correspondent showed that that didn’t matter, as it was only necessary to insert the hand and undo the fastening, when the entire window could be opened, the process being reversed by the murderer on leaving. This pretty edifice of glass was smashed by a glazier, who wrote to say that a pane could hardly be fixed in from only one side of a window frame, that it would fall out when touched, and that in any case the wet putty could not have escaped detection. A door panel sliced out and replaced was also put forward, and as many trap-doors and secret passages were ascribed to No. 11 Glover Street as if it were a medieval castle. Another of these clever theories was that the murderer was in the room the whole time the police were there—hidden in the wardrobe. Or he had got behind the door when Grodman broke it open, so that he was not noticed in the excitement of the discovery, and escaped with his weapon at the moment when Grodman and Mrs Drabdump were examining the window fastenings.
Scientific explanations also were to hand to explain how the assassin locked and bolted the door behind him. Powerful magnets outside the door had been used to turn the key and push the bolt within. Murderers armed with magnets loomed on the popular imagination like a new microbe. There was only one defect in this ingenious theory—the thing could not be done. A physiologist recalled the conjurers who swallowed swords—by an anatomical peculiarity of the throat—and said that the deceased might have swallowed the weapon after cutting his own throat. This was too much for the public to swallow. As for the idea that the suicide had been effected with a penknife or its blade, or a bit of steel, which had got buried in the wound, not even the quotation of Shelley’s line, ‘Makes such a wound, the knife is lost in it’, could secure it a moment’s acceptance. The same reception was accorded to the idea that the cut had been made with a candlestick (or other harmless article) constructed like a sword-stick. Theories of this sort caused a humorist to explain that the deceased had hidden the razor in his hollow tooth! Some kind friend of Messrs Maskelyne and Cook suggested that they were the only persons who could have done the deed, as no one else could get out of a locked cabinet. But perhaps the most brilliant of these flashes of false fire was the facetious, yet probably half-seriously meant, letter that appeared in the Pell Mell Press under the heading of
‘THE BIG BOW MYSTERY SOLVED
‘Sir—You will remember that when the Whitechapel murders were agitating the universe, I suggested that the district coroner was the assassin. My suggestion has been disregarded. The coroner is still at large. So is the Whitechapel murderer. Perhaps this suggestive coincidence will incline the authorities to pay more attention to me this time. The problem seems to be this. The deceased could not have cut his own throat. The deceased could not have had his throat cut for him. As one of the two must have happened, this is obvious nonsense. As this is obvious nonsense I am justified in disbelieving it. As this obvious nonsense was primarily put in circulation by Mrs Drabdump and Mr Grodman, I am justified in disbelieving them. In short, sir, what guarantee have we that the whole tale is not a cock-and-bull story, invented by the two persons who first found the body? What proof is there that the deed was not done by these persons themselves, who then went to work to smash the door and break the locks and the bolts, and fasten up all the windows before they called the police in?
‘I enclose my card, and am, sir, yours truly
‘One Who Looks Through His Own Spectacles.’
‘[Our correspondent’s theory is not so audaciously original as he seems to imagine. Has he not looked through the spectacles of the people who persistently suggested that the Whitechapel murderer was invariably the policeman who found the body? Somebody must find the body, if it is to be found at all.—ED. P.M.P.]’
The editor had reason to be pleased that he inserted this letter, for it drew the following interesting communication from the great detective himself:
‘THE BIG BOW MYSTERY SOLVED
‘Sir—I do not agree with you that your correspondent’s theory lacks originality. On the contrary, I think it is delightfully original. In fact it has given me an idea. What that idea is I do not yet propose to say, but if “One Who Looks Through His Own Spectacles” will favour me with his name and address I shall be happy to inform him a little before the rest of the world whether his germ has borne any fruit. I feel he is a kindred spirit, and take this opportunity of saying publicly that I was extremely disappointed at the unsatisfactory verdict. The thing was a palpable assassination; an open verdict has a tendency to relax the exertions of Scotland Yard. I hope I shall not be accused of immodesty, or of making personal reflections, when I say that the Department has had several notorious failures of late. It is not what it used to be. Crime is becoming impertinent. It no longer knows its place, so to speak. It throws down the gauntlet where once it used to cower in its fastnesses. I repeat, I make these remarks solely in the interest of law and order. I do not for one moment believe that Arthur Constant killed himself, and if Scotland Yard satisfies itself with that explanation, and turns on its other side and goes to sleep again, then, sir, one of the foulest and most horrible crimes of the century will for ever go unpunished. My acquaintance with the unhappy victim was but recent; still, I saw and knew enough of the man to be certain (and I hope I have seen and known enough of other men to judge) that he was a man constitutionally incapable of committing an act of violence, whether against himself or anybody else. He would not hurt a fly, as the saying goes. And a man of that gentle stamp always lacks the active energy to lay hands on himself. He was a man to be esteemed in no common degree, and I feel proud to be able to say that he considered me a friend. I am hardly at the time of life at which a man cares to put on his harness again; but, sir, it is impossible that I should ever know a day’s rest till the perpetrator of this foul deed is discovered. I have already put myself in communication with the family of the victim, who, I am pleased to say, have every confidence in me, and look to me to clear the name of their unhappy relative from the semi-imputation of suicide. I shall be pleased if anyone who shares my distrust of the authorities, and who has any clue whatever to this terrible mystery, or any plausible suggestion to offer, if, in brief, any “One who looks through his own spectacles” will communicate with me. If I were asked to indicate the direction in which new clues might be most usefully sought, I should say, in the first instance, anything is valuable that helps us to piece together a complete picture of the manifold activities of the man in the East End. He entered one way or another into the lives of a good many people; is it true that he nowhere made enemies? With the best intentions a man may wound or offend; his interference may be resented; he may even excite jealousy. A young man like the late Mr Constant could not have had as much practical sagacity as he had goodness. Whose corns did he tread on? The more we know of the last few months of his life the more we shall know of the manner of his death.
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- Жанр: Зарубежные детективы, Современная зарубежная литература
- Язык: Книги на английском языке
- Объём: 220 стр. 1 иллюстрация
- ISBN: 9780008137298
- Дата выхода книги: 28 июня 2019
- Версия: 📚 Электронная книга
The first in a new series of classic detective stories from the vaults of HarperCollins is the world’s first locked-room mystery, a seemingly impossible crime story as powerful as any that have copied the scenario since.“The Detective Story Club”, launched by Collins in 1929, was a clearing house for the best and most ingenious crime stories of the age, chosen by a select committee of experts. Now, almost 90 years later, these books are the classics of the Golden Age, republished at last with the same popular cover designs that appealed to their original readers.Originally published as The Big Bow Mystery in 1891, and re-published by the Detective Club to coincide with a new film version called ‘The Perfect Crime’, Israel Zangwill’s novel invented the concept of the ‘locked room mystery’ and influenced almost every crime writer thereafter.‘A man is murdered for no apparent reason. He has no enemies and there seemed to be no motive for anyone murdering him. No clues remained and the instrument with which the murder was committed could not be traced. The door of the room in which the body was discovered was locked and bolted on the inside, both windows were latched, and there was no trace of any intruder. The greatest detectives in the land were puzzled. Here indeed was the perfect crime, the work of a master mind. Can you solve the problem which baffled Scotland Yard for so long, until at last the missing link in the chain of evidence was revealed?’This new edition includes a brand new introduction by the Golden Age crime expert, Dr John Curran, author of ‘Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks’.
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