Nobody came forward to identify the dead woman. The inquest elicitedthe following facts.
Shortly after one o’clock on January 8th, a well-dressed woman with aslight foreign accent had entered the offices of Messrs Butler and Park,house agents, in Knightsbridge. She explained that she wanted to rent orpurchase a house on the Thames within easy reach of London. The partic-ulars of several were given to her, including those of the Mill House. Shegave the name of Mrs. de Castina and her address at the Ritz, but thereproved to be no one of that name staying there, and the hotel people failedto identify the body.
Mrs. James, the wife of Sir Eustace Pedler’s gardener, who acted as care-taker to the Mill House and inhabited the small lodge1 opening on the mainroad, gave evidence. About three o’clock that afternoon, a lady came to seeover the house. She produced an order from the house agents, and, as wasthe usual custom, Mrs. James gave her the keys to the house. It was situ-ated at some distance from the lodge, and she was not in the habit of ac-companying prospective2 tenants3. A few minutes later a young man ar-rived. Mrs. James described him as tall and broad- shouldered, with abronzed face and light grey eyes. He was clean-shaven and was wearing abrown suit. He explained to Mrs. James that he was a friend of the ladywho had come to look over the house, but had stopped at the post office tosend a telegram. She directed him to the house, and thought no moreabout the matter.
Five minutes later he reappeared, handed back the keys and explainedthat he feared the house would not suit them. Mrs. James did not see thelady, but thought that she had gone on ahead. What she did notice wasthat the young man seemed very much upset about something. “He lookedlike a man who’d seen a ghost. I thought he was taken ill.”
On the following day another lady and gentleman came to see the prop-erty and discovered the body lying on the floor in one of the upstairsrooms. Mrs. James identified it as that of the lady who had come the daybefore. The house agents also recognized it as that of “Mrs. de Castina.”
The police surgeon gave it as his opinion that the woman had been deadabout twenty-four hours. The Daily Budget had jumped to the conclusionthat the man in the Tube had murdered the woman and afterwards com-mitted suicide. However, as the Tube victim was dead at two o’clock andthe woman was alive and well at three o’clock, the only logical conclusionto come to was that the two occurrences had nothing to do with eachother, and that the order to view the house at Marlow found in the deadman’s pocket was merely one of those coincidences which so often occurin this life.
A verdict of “Wilful Murder against some person or persons unknown”
was returned, and the police (and the Daily Budget) were left to look for“the man in the brown suit.” Since Mrs. James was positive that there wasno one in the house when the lady entered it, and that nobody except theyoung man in question entered it until the following afternoon, it seemedonly logical to conclude that he was the murderer of the unfortunate Mrs.
de Castina. She had been strangled with a piece of stout4 black cord, andhad evidently been caught unawares with no time to cry out. The blacksilk handbag which she carried contained a well-filled notecase and someloose change, a fine lace handkerchief, unmarked, and the return half of afirst-class ticket to London. Nothing much there to go upon.
Such were the details published broadcast by the Daily Budget, and“Find the Man in the Brown Suit” was their daily war cry. On an averageabout five hundred people wrote daily to announce their success in thequest, and tall young men with well-tanned faces cursed the day whentheir tailors had persuaded them to a brown suit. The accident in theTube, dismissed as a coincidence, faded out of the public mind.
Was it a coincidence? I was not so sure. No doubt I was prejudiced—theTube incident was my own pet mystery—but there certainly seemed to meto be a connexion of some kind between the two fatalities5. In each therewas a man with a tanned face—evidently an Englishman living abroad—and there were other things. It was the consideration of these other thingsthat finally impelled6 me to what I considered a dashing step. I presentedmyself at Scotland Yard and demanded to see whoever was in charge ofthe Mill House case.
My request took some time to understand, as I had inadvertently selec-ted the department for lost umbrellas, but eventually I was ushered7 into asmall room and presented to Detective Inspector8 Meadows.
Inspector Meadows was a small man with a ginger9 head and what I con-sidered a peculiarly irritating manner. A satellite, also in plain clothes, satunobtrusively in a corner.
“Good morning,” I said nervously10.
“Good morning. Will you take a seat? I understand you’ve something totell me that you think may be of use to us.”
His tone seemed to indicate that such a thing was unlikely in the ex-treme. I felt my temper stirred.
“Of course you know about the man who was killed in the Tube? Theman who had an order to view this same house at Marlow in his pocket.”
“Ah!” said the inspector. “You are the Miss Beddingfeld who gave evid-ence at the inquest. Certainly the man had an order in his pocket. A lot ofother people may have had too—only they didn’t happen to be killed.”
I rallied my forces.
“You didn’t think it odd that this man had no ticket in his pocket?”
“Easiest thing in the world to drop your ticket. Done it myself.”
“And no money.”
“He had some loose change in his trousers pocket.”
“But no notecase.”
“Some men don’t carry a pocketbook or notecase of any kind.”
I tried another tack11.
“You don’t think it’s odd that the doctor never came forward after-wards?”
“A busy medical man very often doesn’t read the papers. He probablyforgot all about the accident.”
“In fact, inspector, you are determined12 to find nothing odd,” I saidsweetly.
“Well, I’m inclined to think you’re a little too fond of the word, Miss Bed-dingfeld. Young ladies are romantic, I know—fond of mysteries and such-like. But as I’m a busy man—”
I took the hint and rose.
The man in the corner raised a meek13 voice.
“Perhaps if the young lady would tell us briefly14 what her ideas really areon the subject, inspector?”
The inspector fell in with the suggestion readily enough.
“Yes, come now, Miss Beddingfeld, don’t be offended. You’ve asked ques-tions and hinted things. Just straight out what it is you’ve got in yourhead.”
I wavered between injured dignity and the overwhelming desire to ex-press my theories. Injured dignity went to the wall.
“You said at the inquest you were positive it wasn’t suicide?”
“Yes, I’m quite certain of that. The man was frightened. What frightenedhim? It wasn’t me. But someone might have been walking up the platformtowards us—someone he recognized.”
“You didn’t see anyone?”
“No,” I admitted. “I didn’t turn my head. Then, as soon as the body wasrecovered from the line, a man pushed forward to examine it, saying hewas a doctor.”
“Nothing unusual in that,” said the inspector dryly.
“But he wasn’t a doctor.”
“What?”
“He wasn’t a doctor,” I repeated.
“How do you know that, Miss Beddingfeld?”
“It’s difficult to say, exactly. I’ve worked in hospitals during the war, andI’ve seen doctors handle bodies. There’s a sort of deft15 professional callous-ness that this man hadn’t got. Besides, a doctor doesn’t usually feel for theheart on the right side of the body.”
“He did that?”
“Yes, I didn’t notice it specially16 at the time—except that I felt there wassomething wrong. But I worked it out when I got home, and then I sawwhy the whole thing had looked so unhandy to me at the time.”
“H’m,” said the inspector. He was reaching slowly for pen and paper.
“In running his hands over the upper part of the man’s body he wouldhave ample opportunity to take anything he wanted from the pockets.”
“Doesn’t sound likely to me,” said the inspector. “But—well, can you de-scribe him at all?”
“He was tall and broad- shouldered, wore a dark overcoat and blackboots, a bowler17 hat. He had a dark-pointed beard and gold-rimmed eye-glasses.”
“Take away the overcoat, the beard and the eyeglasses, and therewouldn’t be much to know him by,” grumbled18 the inspector. “He could al-ter his appearance easily enough in five minutes if he wanted to—whichhe would do if he’s the swell19 pickpocket20 you suggest.”
I had not intended to suggest anything of the kind. But from this mo-ment I gave the inspector up as hopeless.
“Nothing more you can tell us about him?” he demanded, as I rose to de-part.
“Yes,” I said. I seized my opportunity to fire a parting shot. “His headwas markedly brachycephalic. He will not find it so easy to alter that.”
I observed with pleasure that Inspector Meadows’s pen wav
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1
lodge
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| v.临时住宿，寄宿，寄存，容纳；n.传达室，小旅馆 | |
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prospective
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| adj.预期的，未来的，前瞻性的 | |
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tenants
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| n.房客( tenant的名词复数 )；佃户；占用者；占有者 | |
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5
fatalities
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| n.恶性事故( fatality的名词复数 )；死亡；致命性；命运 | |
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6
impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7
ushered
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| v.引，领，陪同( usher的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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8
inspector
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| n.检查员，监察员，视察员 | |
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9
ginger
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| n.姜，精力，淡赤黄色；adj.淡赤黄色的；vt.使活泼，使有生气 | |
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nervously
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| adv.神情激动地，不安地 | |
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11
tack
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| n.大头钉；假缝，粗缝 | |
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12
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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13
meek
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| adj.温顺的，逆来顺受的 | |
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14
briefly
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| adv.简单地，简短地 | |
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15
deft
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| adj.灵巧的，熟练的（a deft hand 能手） | |
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16
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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17
bowler
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| n.打保龄球的人，（板球的）投（球）手 | |
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18
grumbled
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| 抱怨( grumble的过去式和过去分词 )； 发牢骚； 咕哝； 发哼声 | |
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19
swell
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| vi.膨胀，肿胀；增长，增强 | |
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pickpocket
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| n.扒手；v.扒窃 | |
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