R. Austin Freeman

Dr. Thorndyke’s Crime File

A Selection of His Most Celebrated Cases

Warsaw 2022

Contents

I. MEET DR THORNDYKE

II. THE EYE OF OSIRIS

CHAPTER I. THE VANISHING MAN

CHAPTER II. THE EAVESDROPPER

CHAPTER III. JOHN THORNDYKE

CHAPTER IV. LEGAL COMPLICATIONS AND A JACKAL

CHAPTER V. THE WATERCRESS-BED

CHAPTER VI. SIDELIGHTS

CHAPTER VII. JOHN BELLINGHAM’S WILL

CHAPTER VIII. A MUSEUM IDYLL

CHAPTER IX. THE SPHINX OF LINCOLN’S INN

CHAPTER X. THE NEW ALLIANCE

CHAPTER XI. THE EVIDENCE REVIEWED

CHAPTER XII. A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

CHAPTER XIII. THE CORONER’S QUEST

CHAPTER XIV. WHICH CARRIES THE READER INTO THE PROBATE COURT

CHAPTER XV. CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE

CHAPTER XVI. O ARTEMIDORUS, FAREWELL!

CHAPTER XVII. THE ACCUSING FINGER

CHAPTER XVIII. JOHN BELLINGHAM

CHAPTER XIX. A STRANGE SYMPOSIUM

CHAPTER XX. THE END OF THE CASE

III. THE ART OF THE DETECTIVE STORY

IV. THE MYSTERY OF ANGELINA FROOD

CHAPTER I–THE DOPER’S WIFE

CHAPTER II–RE-ENTER “MR. JOHNSON”

CHAPTER III–ANGELINA FROOD

CHAPTER IV–DEALS WITH CHARITY AND ARCHAEOLOGY

CHAPTER V–JOHN THORNDYKE

CHAPTER VI–THE SHADOWS DEEPEN

CHAPTER VII–MRS. GILLOW SOUNDS THE ALARM

CHAPTER VIII–SERGEANT COBBLEDICK TAKES A HAND

CHAPTER IX–JETSAM

CHAPTER X–WHICH DEALS WITH ANCIENT MONUMENTS AND A BLUE BOAR

CHAPTER XI–THE MAN WITH THE MOLE

CHAPTER XII–THE PRINTS OF A VANISHED HAND

CHAPTER XIII–THE DISCOVERY IN BLACK BOY-LANE

CHAPTER XIV–SERGEANT COBBLEDICK IS ENLIGHTENED

CHAPTER XV–THE END OF THE TRAIL

CHAPTER XVI–THE INQUIRY AND A SURPRISE

CHAPTER XVII–THORNDYKE PUTS DOWN HIS PIECE

CHAPTER XVIII–THE UNCONTRITE PENITENT

CHAPTER XIX–EXPLANATIONS

V. 5A KING’S BENCH WALK

VI. MR. POTTERMACK’S OVERSIGHT

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER I–MR. POTTERMACK MAKES A DISCOVERY

CHAPTER II–THE SECRET VISITOR

CHAPTER III–MR. POTTERMACK GOES A-SUGARING

CHAPTER IV–THE PLACING OF THE SUN-DIAL

CHAPTER V–DR. THORNDYKE LISTENS TO A STRANGE STORY

CHAPTER VI–DR. THORNDYKE BECOMES INQUISITIVE

CHAPTER VII–THE CRIMINAL RECORDS

CHAPTER VIII–MR. POTTERMACK SEEKS ADVENTURE

CHAPTER IX–PROVIDENCE INTERVENES

CHAPTER X–A RETROSPECT

CHAPTER XI–MR. POTTERMACK’S DILEMMA

CHAPTER XII–THE UNDERSTUDY

CHAPTER XIII–THE SETTING OF THE TABLEAU

CHAPTER XIV–THE DISCOVERY

CHAPTER XV–DR. THORNDYKE’S CURIOSITY IS AROUSED

CHAPTER XVI–EXIT KHAMA-HERU

CHAPTER XVII–DR. THORNDYKE RELATES A QUEER CASE

CHAPTER XVIII–THE SUN-DIAL HAS THE LAST WORD

I. MEET DR THORNDYKE

A FASCINATING INSIGHT INTO THE CHARACTER WRITTEN BY THE AUTHOR

MY subject is Dr. John Thorndyke, the hero or central character of most of my detective stories. So I’ll give you a short account of his real origin; of the way in which he did in fact come into existence.

To discover the origin of John Thorndyke I have to reach back into the past for at least fifty years, to the time when I was a medical student preparing for my final examination. For reasons which I need not go into I gave rather special attention to the legal aspects of medicine and the medical aspects of law. And as I read my text-books, and especially the illustrative cases, I was profoundly impressed by their dramatic quality. Medical jurisprudence deals with the human body in its relation to all kinds of legal problems. Thus its subject matter includes all sorts of crime against the person and all sorts of violent death and bodily injury: hanging, drowning, poisons and their effects, problems of suicide and homicide, of personal identity and survivorship, and a host of other problems of the highest dramatic possibilities, though not always quite presentable for the purposes of fiction. And the reported cases which were given in illustration were often crime stories of the most thrilling interest. Cases of disputed identity such as the Tichbourne Case, famous poisoning cases such as the Rugeley Case and that of Madeline Smith, cases of mysterious disappearance or the detection of long-forgotten crimes such as that of Eugene Aram; all these, described and analysed with strict scientific accuracy, formed the matter of Medical Jurisprudence which thrilled me as I read and made an indelible impression.

But it produced no immediate results. I had to pass my examinations and get my diploma, and then look out for the means of earning my living. So all this curious lore was put away for the time being in the pigeon-holes of my mind–which Dr. Freud would call the Unconscious–not forgotten, but ready to come to the surface when the need for it should arise. And there it reposed for some twenty years, until failing health compelled me to abandon medical practice and take to literature as a profession.

It was then that my old studies recurred to my mind. A fellow doctor, Conan Doyle, had made a brilliant and well-deserved success by the creation of the immortal Sherlock Holmes. Considering that achievement, I asked myself whether it might not be possible to devise a detective story of a slightly different kind; one based on the science of Medical Jurisprudence, in which, by the sacrifice of a certain amount of dramatic effect, one could keep entirely within the facts of real life, with nothing fictitious excepting the persons and the events. I came to the conclusion that it was, and began to turn the idea over in my mind.

But I think that the influence which finally determined the character of my detective stories, and incidentally the character of John Thorndyke, operated when I was working at the Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital. There I used to take the patients into the dark room, examine their eyes with the ophthalmoscope, estimate the errors of refraction, and construct an experimental pair of spectacles to correct those errors. When a perfect correction had been arrived at, the formula for it was embodied in a prescription which was sent to the optician who made the permanent spectacles.

Now when I was writing those prescriptions it was borne in on me that in many cases, especially the more complex, the formula for the spectacles, and consequently the spectacles themselves, furnished an infallible record of personal identity. If, for instance, such a pair of spectacles should have been found in a railway carriage, and the maker of those spectacles could be found, there would be practically conclusive evidence that a particular person had travelled by that train. About that time I drafted out a story based on a pair of spectacles, which was published some years later under the title of The Mystery of 31 New Inn, and the construction of that story determined, as I have said, not only the general character of my future work but of the hero around whom the plots were to be woven. But that story remained for some years in cold storage. My first published detective novel was The Red Thumb-mark, and in that book we may consider that John Thorndyke was born. And in passing on to describe him I may as well explain how and why he came to be the kind of person that he is.

I may begin by saying that he was not modelled after any real person. He was deliberately created to play a certain part, and the idea that was in my mind was that he should be such a person as would be likely and suitable to occupy such a position in real life. As he was to be a medico-legal expert, he had to be a doctor and a fully trained lawyer. On the physical side I endowed him with every kind of natural advantage. He is exceptionally tall, strong, and athletic because those qualities are useful in his vocation. For the same reason he has acute eyesight and hearing and considerable general manual skill, as every doctor ought to have. In appearance he is handsome and of an imposing presence, with a symmetrical face of the classical type and a Grecian nose. And here I may remark that his distinguished appearance is not merely a concession to my personal taste but is also a protest against the monsters of ugliness whom some detective writers have evolved.

These are quite opposed to natural truth. In real life a first-class man of any kind usually tends to be a good-looking man.

Mentally, Thorndyke is quite normal. He has no gifts of intuition or other supernormal mental qualities. He is just a highly intellectual man of great and varied knowledge with exceptionally acute reasoning powers and endowed with that invaluable asset, a scientific imagination (by a scientific imagination I mean that special faculty which marks the born investigator; the capacity to perceive the essential nature of a problem before the detailed evidence comes into sight). But he arrives at his conclusions by ordinary reasoning, which the reader can follow when he has been supplied with the facts; though the intricacy of the train of reasoning may at times call for an exposition at the end of the investigation.

Thorndyke has no eccentricities or oddities which might detract from the dignity of an eminent professional man, unless one excepts an unnatural liking for Trichinopoly cheroots. In manner he is quiet, reserved and self-contained, and rather markedly secretive, but of a kindly nature, though not sentimental, and addicted to occasional touches of dry humour. That is how Thorndyke appears to me.

As to his age. When he made his first bow to the reading public from the doorway of Number 4 King’s Bench Walk he was between thirty-five and forty. As that was thirty years ago, he should now be over sixty-five. But he isn’t. If I have to let him “grow old along with me” I need not saddle him with the infirmities of age, and I can (in his case) put the brake on the passing years. Probably he is not more than fifty after all!

Now a few words as to how Thorndyke goes to work. His methods are rather different from those of the detectives of the Sherlock Holmes school. They are more technical and more specialized. He is an investigator of crime but he is not a detective. The technique of Scotland Yard would be neither suitable nor possible to him. He is a medico-legal expert, and his methods are those of medico-legal science. In the investigation of a crime there are two entirely different methods of approach. One consists in the careful and laborious examination of a vast mass of small and commonplace detail: inquiring into the movements of suspected and other persons; interrogating witnesses and checking their statements particularly as to times and places; tracing missing persons, and so forth–the aim being to accumulate a great body of circumstantial evidence which will ultimately disclose the solution of the problem. It is an admirable method, as the success of our police proves, and it is used with brilliant effect by at least one of our contemporary detective writers. But it is essentially a police method.

The other method consists in the search for some fact of high evidential value which can be demonstrated by physical methods and which constitutes conclusive proof of some important point. This method also is used by the police in suitable cases. Finger-prints are examples of this kind of evidence, and another instance is furnished by the Gutteridge murder. Here the microscopical examination of a cartridge-case proved conclusively that the murder had been committed with a particular revolver; a fact which incriminated the owner of that revolver and led to his conviction.

This is Thorndyke’s procedure. It consists in the interrogation of things rather than persons; of the ascertainment of physical facts which can be made visible to eyes other than his own. And the facts which he seeks tend to be those which are apparent only to the trained eye of the medical practitioner.

I feel that I ought to say a few words about Thorndyke’s two satellites, Jervis and Polton. As to the former, he is just the traditional narrator proper to this type of story. Some of my readers have complained that Dr. Jervis is rather slow in the uptake. But that is precisely his function. He is the expert misunderstander. His job is to observe and record all the facts, and to fail completely to perceive their significance. Thereby he gives the reader all the necessary information, and he affords Thorndyke the opportunity to expound its bearing on the case.

Polton is in a slightly different category. Although he is not drawn from any real person, he is associated in my mind with two actual individuals. One is a Mr. Pollard, who was the laboratory assistant in the hospital museum when I was a student, and who gave me many a valuable tip in matters of technique, and who, I hope, is still to the good. The other was a watch- and clock-maker of the name of Parsons–familiarly known as Uncle Parsons–who had premises in a basement near the Royal Exchange, and who was a man of boundless ingenuity and technical resource. Both of these I regard as collateral relatives, so to speak, of Nathaniel Polton. But his personality is not like either. His crinkly countenance is strictly his own copyright.

To return to Thorndyke, his rather technical methods have, for the purposes of fiction, advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that his facts are demonstrably true, and often they are intrinsically interesting. The disadvantage is that they are frequently not matters of common knowledge, so that the reader may fail to recognize them or grasp their significance until they are explained. But this is the case with all classes of fiction. There is no type of character or story that can be made sympathetic and acceptable to every kind of reader. The personal equation affects the reading as well as the writing of a story.

II. THE EYE OF OSIRIS

CHAPTER I. THE VANISHING MAN

THE SCHOOL of St Margaret’s Hospital was fortunate in its lecturer on Medical Jurisprudence, or Forensic Medicine, as it is sometimes described. At some schools the lecturer on this subject is appointed apparently for the reason that he lacks the qualifications to lecture on any other. But with us it was very different: John Thorndyke was not only an enthusiast, a man of profound learning and great reputation, but he was an exceptional teacher, lively and fascinating in style and of endless resources. Every remarkable case that had ever been reported he appeared to have at his fingers’ ends; every fact–chemical, physical, biological, or even historical–that could in any way be twisted into a medico-legal significance, was pressed into his service; and his own varied and curious experiences seemed as inexhaustible as the widow’s cruse. One of his favourite devices for giving life and interest to a rather dry subject was that of analysing and commenting upon contemporary cases as reported in the papers (always, of course, with a due regard to the legal and social proprieties); and it was in this way that I first became introduced to the astonishing series of events that was destined to exercise so great an influence on my own life.

The lecture which had just been concluded had dealt with the rather unsatisfactory subject of survivorship. Most of the students had left the theatre, and the remainder had gathered round the lecturer’s table to listen to the informal comments that Dr. Thorndyke was wont to deliver on these occasions in an easy, conversational manner, leaning against the edge of the table and apparently addressing his remarks to a stick of blackboard chalk that he held in his fingers.

“The problem of survivorship,’ he was saying, in reply to a question put by one of the students, “ordinarily occurs in cases where the bodies of the parties are producible, or where, at any rate, the occurrence of death and its approximate time are actually known. But an analogous difficulty may arise in a case where the body of one of the parties is not forthcoming, and the fact of death may have to be assumed on collateral evidence.

“Here, of course, the vital question to be settled is, what is the latest instant at which it is certain that this person was alive? And the settlement of that question may turn on some circumstance of the most trivial and insignificant kind. There is a case in this morning’s paper which illustrates this. A gentleman has disappeared rather mysteriously. He was last seen by the servant of a relative at whose house he had called. Now, if this gentleman should never reappear, dead or alive, the question as to what was the latest moment at which he was certainly alive will turn upon the further question: “Was he or was he not wearing a particular article of jewellery when he called at the relative’s house?”’

He paused with a reflective eye bent upon the stump of chalk he still held; then, noting the expectant interest with which we were regarding him, he resumed:

“The circumstances in this case are very curious; in fact, they are highly mysterious; and if any legal issues should arise in respect of them, they are likely to yield some very remarkable complications. The gentleman who has disappeared, Mr. John Bellingham, is a man well known in archaeological circles. He recently returned from Egypt, bringing with him a very fine collection of antiquities–some of which, by the way, he has presented to the British Museum, where they are now on view–and having made this presentation, he appears to have gone to Paris on business. I may mention that the gift consisted of a very fine mummy and a complete set of tomb-furniture. The latter, however, had not arrived from Egypt at the time when the missing man left for Paris, but the mummy was inspected on the fourteenth of October at Mr. Bellingham’s house by Dr. Norbury of the British Museum, in the presence of the donor and his solicitor, and the latter was authorised to hand over the complete collection to the British Museum authorities when the tomb-furniture arrived; which he has since done.

“From Paris he seems to have returned on the twenty-third of November, and to have gone direct to Charing Cross to the house of a relative, a Mr. Hurst, who is a bachelor and lives at Eltham. He appeared at the house at twenty minutes past five, and as Mr. Hurst had not yet come down from town and was not expected until a quarter to six, he explained who he was and said he would wait in the study and write some letters. The housemaid accordingly showed him into the study, furnished him with writing materials, and left him.

“At a quarter to six Mr. Hurst let himself in with his latchkey, and before the housemaid had time to speak to him he had passed through into the study and shut the door.

“At six o’clock, when the dinner bell was rung, Mr. Hurst entered the dining-room alone, and observing the table was laid for two, asked the reason.

““I thought Mr. Bellingham was staying to dinner, sir,” was the housemaid’s reply.

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