not!” shrieked Miller, coming yet farther forward on his chair. (I expected, every moment, to see him sitting on the floor.) “Why, I saw it; and so did you.”
“I am speaking of the woman, not of the body,” said Thorndyke. “The mark that you saw was a post-mortem tattoo-mark. It was made after death. But the fact that it was made after death is good evidence, that it was not there during life.”
“Moses!” exclaimed the superintendent. “This is a facer. Are you perfectly sure it was done after death?”
“Quite sure. The appearance, through a powerful lens, is unmistakable. Tattoo-marks are made, as you know, of course, by painting Indian ink on the skin and pricking it in with fine needles. In the living skin the needle-wounds heal up at once and disappear, but in the dead skin the needle-holes remain unclosed and can be easily seen with a lens. In this case the skin had been well washed and the surface pressed with some smooth object; but the holes were plainly visible and the ink was still in them.”
“Well, I’m sure!” said Miller. “I never heard of tattooing a dead body before.”
“Very few people have, I expect,” said Thorndyke. “But there is one class of persons who know all about it: the persons who deal in Maori heads.”
“Indeed?” queried Miller. “How does it concern them?”
“Those heads are usually elaborately tattooed, and the value of a head depends on the quality of the tattooing. Now, when those heads became objects of trade, the dealers conceived the idea of touching up defective specimens by additional tattooing on the dead head, and from this they proceeded to obtain heads which had no tattoo-marks, and turn them into tattooed heads.”
“Well, to be sure,” said the superintendent, with a grin, “what wicked men there are in the world, aren’t there, Dr. Jervis?”
I murmured a vague assent, but I was principally conscious of a desire to kick myself for having failed to pick this invaluable clue out of George Chapman’s statement.
“And now,” said Miller,” we come to the box. How do you know it is the wrong one?”
“That,” replied Thorndyke, “is proved even more conclusively. The original box was made by Fletchers, in Holborn. It was sold to Chapman, and his initials painted on it, on the 9 of last April. I have seen the entry in the day-book. The locks of these boxes are made by Burden Brothers of Queen Victoria Street, and as they are quite high-class locks each is given a registered number, which is stamped on the lock. The number on the box that you have is 5007, and Burden’s books show that it was made and sold to Fletchers about the middle of July—the sale was dated the 13th. Therefore this can not be Chapman’s box.”
“Apparently not,” Miller agreed. “But whose box is it? And what has become of Chapman’s box?”
“That,” replied Thorndyke, “was presumably taken away in Mrs. Murchison’s dress-basket.”
“Then who the deuce is Mrs. Murchison?” demanded the superintendent.
“I should say,” replied Thorndyke, “that she was formerly known as Rebecca Mings.”
“The deceased!” exclaimed Miller, falling back in his chair with a guffaw. “My eye! What a lark it is! But she must have some sauce, to walk off with the jewellery and leave her own dismembered remains in exchange! By the way, whose remains are they?”
“We shall come to that presently,” Thorndyke answered. “Now we have to consider the man you have in custody.”
“Yes,” agreed Miller, “we must settle about him. Of course if it isn’t his box, and the body isn’t Mings’ body, that puts him out of it so far. But there are those remains that we dug up in his cellar. What about them?”
“That question,” replied Thorndyke, “will, I think, be answered by a general review of the case. But I must, remind you that if the box is not Chapman’s, it is some other person’s; that is to say, that if Chapman goes out of the case, as to the Stoke Varley incidents, someone else comes in. So, if the body is not Mings’ body, it is some other woman’s, and that other woman must have disappeared. And now let us review the case as a whole.
“You know about the pocket-picking charge. It was obviously a false charge, deliberately prepared by ‘planting’ the purse; that is, it was a conspiracy. Now what was the object of this conspiracy? Clearly it was to get Chapman out of the way while the boxes were exchanged at Stoke Varley, and the remains deposited in the river and elsewhere. Then who were the conspirators—other than the agent who planted the purse?
“They—if there were more than one—must have had access to Mings, dead or alive, in order to make the exact copy, or tracing, of her tattoo-mark. They must have had some knowledge of the process of post-mortem tattooing. They must have had access to Chapman’s house. And, since they had in their possession the dead body of a woman, they must have been associated with some woman who has disappeared.
“Who is there who answers this description? Well, of course, Mings had access to herself, though she could hardly have taken a tracing from her own arm, and she had access to Chapman’s house, since she had possession of the latchkey. Then there is a man named Gamble, with whom Mings was on terms of great intimacy. Now Gamble was formerly a dealer in tattooed Maori heads, so he may be assumed to know something about post-mortem tattooing. And I have ascertained that Gamble’s wife has disappeared from her usual places of resort. So here are two persons who, together, agree with the description of the conspirators. And now let us consider the train of events in connection with the dates.
“On July the 29th Chapman came to town from Stoke Varley. On the 30th he was arrested as a pick pocket. On the 31st he was committed for trial. On the 2nd of August Mrs. Gamble went away to the country. No one seems to have seen her go, but that is the date on which she is reported to have gone. On August the 5th Mrs. Murchison deposited at Stoke Varley a box which must have been purchased between the 13th of July and the 4th of August, and which contained a woman’s arm. On the 14th of August that box was opened by the police. On the 18th human remains were discovered in Chapman’s house. On the 27th Chapman was released from Brixton. On the 28th he was arrested for murder at Stoke Varley. I think, Miller, you will agree that that is a very striking succession of dates.”
“Yes,” Miller agreed. “It looks like a true bill. If you will give me Mr. Gamble’s address, I’ll call on him.”
“I’m afraid you won’t find him at home,” said Thorndyke. “He has gone into the country, too; and I gather from his landlord, who holds a returned cheque, that Mr. Gamble’s banking account has gone into the country with him.”
“Then,” said the superintendent “I suppose I must take a trip into the country, too.”
“Well, Thorndyke,” I said, as I laid down the paper containing the report of the trial of Gamble and Mings for the murder of Theresa Gamble, one morning about four months later, “you ought to be very highly gratified. After sentencing Gamble to death and Mings to fifteen years’ penal servitude, the judge took the opportunity to compliment the police on their ingenuity in unravelling this crime, and the Home Office experts on their skill in detecting the counterfeit tattoo-marks. What do you think of that?”
“I think,” replied Thorndyke, “that his lordship showed a very proper and appreciative spirit.”
THE TRAIL OF BEHEMOTH (1927)
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