The Third R. Austin Freeman Megapack. R. Austin Freeman
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“we seem to have got all the facts excepting the most important—the nature of the threats. What do you want us to do?”
“I want you to see Miss Fawcett—with me, if possible—and induce her to give you such details as would enable you to put a stop to the nuisance. You couldn’t come tonight, I suppose? It is a beast of a night, but I would take you there in a taxi—it is only to Tooting Bec. What do you say?” he added eagerly, as Thorndyke made no objection. “We are sure to find her in, because her maid is away on a visit to her home and she is alone in the house.”
Thorndyke looked reflectively at his watch.
“Half-past eight,” he remarked, “and half an hour to get there. These threats are probably nothing but ill-temper. But we don’t know. There may be some thing more serious behind them; and, in law as in medicine, prevention is better than a post-mortem. What do you say, Jervis?”
What could I say? I would much sooner have sat by the fire with a book than turn out into the murk of a November night. But I felt it necessary, especially as Thorndyke had evidently made up his mind. Accordingly I made a virtue of necessity; and a couple of minutes later we had exchanged the cosy room for the chilly darkness of Inner Temple Lane, up which the gratified parson was speeding ahead to capture a taxi. At the top of the Lane we perceived him giving elaborate instructions to a taxi-driver as he held the door of the cab open; and Thorndyke, having carefully disposed of his research-case—which, to my secret amusement, he had caught up, from mere force of habit, as we started—took his seat, and Meade and I followed.
As the taxi trundled smoothly along the dark streets, Mr. Meade filled in the details of his previous sketch, and, in a simple, manly, unaffected way dilated upon his good fortune and the pleasant future that lay before him. It was not, perhaps, a romantic marriage, he admitted; but Miss Fawcett and he had been faithful friends for years, and faithful friends they would remain till death did them part. So he ran on, now gleefully, now with a note of anxiety, and we listened by no means unsympathetically, until at last the cab drew up at a small, unpretentious house, standing in its own little grounds in a quiet suburban road.
“She is at home, you see,” observed Meade, pointing to a lighted ground-floor window. He directed the taxi-driver to wait for the return journey, and striding up the path, delivered a characteristic knock at the door. As this brought no response, he knocked again and rang the bell. But still there was no answer, though twice I thought I heard the sound of a bolt being either drawn or shot softly. Again Mr. Meade plied the knocker more vigorously, and pressed the push of the bell, which we could hear ringing loudly within.
“This is very strange,” said Meade, in an anxious tone, keeping his thumb pressed on the bell-push. “She can’t have gone out and left the electric light on. What had we better do?”
“We had better enter without more delay,” Thorndyke replied. “There were certainly sounds from within. Is there a side gate?”
Meade ran off towards the side of the house, and Thorndyke and I glanced at the lighted window, which was slightly open at the top.
“Looks a bit queer,” I remarked, listening at the letter-box.
Thorndyke assented gravely, and at this moment Meade returned, breathing hard.
“The side gate is bolted inside,” said he; and at this I recalled the stealthy sound of the bolt that I had heard. “What is to be done?”
Without replying, Thorndyke handed me his research-case, stepped across to the window, sprang up on the sill, drew down the upper sash and disappeared between the curtains into the room. A moment later the street door opened and Meade and I entered the hall. We glanced through the open doorway into the lighted room, and I noticed a heap of needlework thrown hastily on the dining-table. Then Meade switched on the hall light, and Thorndyke walked quickly past him to the half-open door of the next room. Before entering, he reached in and switched on the light; and as he stepped into the room he partly closed the door behind him.
“Don’t come in here, Meade!” he called out. But the parson’s eye, like my own, had seen something before the door closed: a great, dark stain on the carpet just within the threshold. Regardless of the admonition, he pushed the door open and darted into the room. Following him, I saw him rush forward, fling his arms up wildly, and with a dreadful, strangled cry, sink upon his knees beside a low couch on which a woman was lying.
“Merciful God!” he gasped. “She is dead! Is she dead, doctor? Can nothing be done?”
Thorndyke shook his head. “Nothing,” he said in a low voice. “She is dead.”
Poor Meade knelt by the couch, his hands clutching at his hair and his eyes riveted on the dead face, the very embodiment of horror and despair.
God Almighty!” he exclaimed in the same strangled undertone. “How frightful! Poor, poor Millie! Dear, sweet friend!” Then suddenly—almost savagely—he turned to Thorndyke. “But it can’t be, doctor! It is impossible—unbelievable. That, I mean!” and he pointed to the dead woman’s right hand, which held an open razor.
Our poor friend had spoken my own thought. It was incredible that this refined, pious lady should have inflicted those savage wounds, that gaped scarlet beneath the waxen face. There, indeed, was the razor lying in her hand. But what was its testimony worth? My heart rejected it; but yet, unwillingly, I noted that the wounds seemed to support it; for they had been made from left to right, as they would have been if self-inflicted.
“It is hard to believe,” said Thorndyke, “but there is only one alternative. Someone should acquaint the police at once.”
“I will go,” exclaimed Meade, starting up. “I know the way and the cab is there.” He looked once more with infinite pity and affection at the dead woman. “Poor, sweet girl!” he murmured. “If we can do no more for you, we can defend your memory from calumny and call upon the God of Justice to right the innocent and punish the guilty.”
With these words and a mute farewell to his dead friend, he hurried from the room, and immediately afterwards we heard the street door close.
As he went out, Thorndyke’s manner changed abruptly. He had been deeply moved—as who would not have been—by this awful tragedy that had in a moment shattered the happiness of the genial, kindly parson. Now he turned to me with a face set and stern. “This is an abominable affair, Jervis,” he said in an ominously quiet voice.
“You reject the suggestion of suicide, then?” said I, with a feeling of relief that surprised me.
“Absolutely,” he replied. “Murder shouts at us from everything that meets our eye. Look at this poor woman, in her trim nurse’s dress, with her unfinished needlework lying on the table in the next room and that preposterous razor loose in her limp hand. Look at the savage wounds. Four of them, and the first one mortal. The great bloodstain by the door, the great bloodstain on her dress from the neck to the feet. The gashed collar, the cap-string cut right through. Note that the bleeding had practically ceased when she lay Idown. That is a group of visible facts that is utterly inconsistent with the idea of suicide. But we are wasting time. Let us search the premises thoroughly. The murderer has pretty certainly got away, but as he was in the house when we arrived, any traces will be quite fresh.”
As he spoke he took his electric lamp from the research-case and walked to the door.
“We can examine this room later,” he said, “but we had better look over the house. If you will stay by the stairs and watch the front and back doors, I will look through the upper rooms.”
He ran lightly up the stairs while I kept watch below, but he was absent less than a couple of minutes.
“There is no one there,” he reported, “and as there is no basement we will just look at this floor and then examine the grounds.”
After a rapid inspection of the ground-floor rooms, including the kitchen, we went out by the back door, which was unbolted, and inspected the grounds. These consisted of a largish garden with a small orchard at the side. In the former we could discover no traces of