Chapter II: The Case of the White Foot-Prints (2)

Three days later I found myself at Margate sitting beside Thorndyke in a room adjoining the Town Hall, in which the inquest on the death of Mrs. Toussaint was to be held. Already the coroner was in his chair, the jury were in their seats and the witnesses assembled in a group of chairs apart. These included Foxton, a stranger who sat by him--presumably the other medical witness--Mrs. Beddingfield, Mr. Wardale, the police superintendent and a well-dressed coloured man, whom I correctly assumed to be Mr. Macauley.

As I sat by my rather sphinx-like colleague my mind recurred for the hundredth time to his extraordinary powers of mental synthesis. That parting remark of his as to the possible nature of the poison had brought home to me in a flash the fact that he already had a definite theory of this crime, and that his theory was not mine nor that of the police. True, the poison might not be strophanthus, after all, but that would not alter the position. He had a theory of the crime, but yet he was in possession of no facts excepting those with which I had supplied him. Therefore those facts contained the material for a theory, whereas I had deduced from them nothing but the bald, ambiguous mathematical probabilities.

The first witness called was naturally Dr. Foxton, who described the circumstances already known to me. He further stated that he had been present at the autopsy, that he had found on the throat and limbs of the deceased, bruises that suggested a struggle and violent restraint. The immediate cause of death was heart failure, but whether that failure was due to shock, terror, or the action of a poison he could not positively say.

The next witness was a Dr. Prescott, an expert pathologist and toxicologist. He had made the autopsy and agreed with Dr. Foxton as to the cause of death. He had examined the liquid contained in the bottle taken from the hand of the deceased and found it to be a watery infusion or decoction of strophanthus seeds. He had analyzed the fluid contained in the stomach and found it to consist largely of the same infusion.

“Is infusion of strophanthus seeds used in medicine?” the coroner asked.

“No,” was the reply. “The tincture is the form in which strophanthus is administered unless it is given in the form of strophanthin.”

“Do you consider that the strophanthus caused, or contributed to death?”

“It is difficult to say,” replied Dr. Prescott. “Strophanthus is a heart poison, and there was a very large poisonous dose. But very little had been absorbed, and the appearances were not inconsistent with death from shock.”

“Could death have been self-produced by the voluntary taking of the poison?” asked the coroner.

“I should say, decidedly not. Dr. Foxton’s evidence shows that the bottle was almost certainly placed in the hands of the deceased after death, and this is in complete agreement with the enormous dose and small absorption.”

“Would you say that appearances point to suicidal or homicidal poisoning?”

“I should say that they point to homicidal poisoning, but that death was probably due mainly to shock.”

This concluded the expert’s evidence. It was followed by that of Mrs. Beddingfield, which brought out nothing new to me but the fact that a trunk had been broken open and a small attaché case belonging to the deceased abstracted and taken away.

“Do you know what the deceased kept in that case?” the coroner asked.

“I have seen her put her husband’s letters into it. She had quite a number of them. I don’t know what else she kept in it except, of course, her cheque book.”

“Had she any considerable balance at the bank?”

“I believe she had. Her husband used to send most of his pay home and she used to pay it in and leave it with the bank. She might have two or three hundred pounds to her credit.”

As Mrs. Beddingfield concluded, Mr. Wardale was called, and he was followed by Mr. Macauley. The evidence of both was quite brief and concerned entirely with the disturbance made by Bergson, whose absence from the court I had already noted.

The last witness was the police superintendent, and he, as I had expected, was decidedly reticent. He did refer to the footprints but, like Foxton--who presumably had his instructions--he abstained from describing their peculiarities. Nor did he say anything about finger-prints. As to the identity of the criminal, that had to be further inquired into. Suspicion had at first fastened upon Bergson, but it had since transpired that the Swede sailed from Ramsgate on an ice-ship two days before the occurrence of the tragedy. Then suspicion had pointed to the husband, who was known to have landed at Liverpool four days before the death of his wife and who had mysteriously disappeared. But he (the superintendent) had only that morning received a telegram from the Liverpool police informing him that the body of Toussaint had been found floating in the Mersey, and that it bore a number of wounds of an apparently homicidal character. Apparently he had been murdered and his corpse thrown into the river.

“This is very terrible,” said the coroner. “Does this second murder throw any light on the case which we are investigating?”

“I think it does,” replied the officer, without any great conviction, however, “but it is not advisable to go into details.”

“Quite so,” agreed the coroner. “Most inexpedient. But are we to understand that you have a clue to the perpetrator of this crime--assuming a crime to have been committed?”

“Yes,” replied Platt. “We have several important clues.”

“And do they point to any particular individual?”

The superintendent hesitated. “Well--” he began, with some embarrassment, but the coroner interrupted him.

“Perhaps the question is indiscreet. We mustn’t hamper the police, gentlemen, and the point is not really material to our inquiry. You would rather we waived that question, Superintendent?”

“If you please, sir,” was the emphatic reply.

“Have any cheques from the deceased woman’s cheque-book been presented at the bank?”

“Not since her death. I inquired at the bank only this morning.”

This concluded the evidence, and after a brief but capable summing-up by the coroner, the jury returned a verdict of “wilful murder against some person unknown.”

As the proceedings terminated, Thorndyke rose and turned round, and then to my surprise I perceived Superintendent Miller, of the Criminal Investigation Department, who had come in unperceived by me and was sitting immediately behind us.

“I have followed your instructions, sir,” said he, addressing Thorndyke, “but before we take any definite action I should like to have a few words with you.”

He led the way to an adjoining room and, as we entered, we were followed by Superintendent Platt and Dr. Foxton.

“Now, Doctor,” said Miller, carefully closing the door, “I have carried out your suggestions. Mr. Macauley is being detained, but before we commit ourselves to an arrest, we must have something to go upon. I shall want you to make out a prima facie case.”

“Very well,” said Thorndyke, laying upon the table the small, green suit-case that was his almost invariable companion.

“I’ve seen that prima facie case before,” Miller remarked with a grin, as Thorndyke unlocked it and drew out a large envelope. “Now, what have you got there?”

As Thorndyke extracted from the envelope Polton’s enlargements of my small photographs, Platt’s eyes appeared to bulge, while Foxton gave me a quick glance of reproach.

“These,” said Thorndyke, “are the full-sized photographs of the footprints of the suspected murderer. Superintendent Platt can probably verify them.”

Rather reluctantly Platt produced from his pocket a pair of whole-plate photographs, which he laid beside the enlargements.

“Yes,” said Miller, after comparing them, “they are the same footprints. But you say, Doctor, that they are Macauley’s footprints. Now, what evidence have you?”

Thorndyke again had recourse to the green case, from which he produced two copper plates mounted on wood and coated with printing ink.

“I propose,” said he, lifting the plates out of their protecting frame, “that we take prints of Macauley’s feet and compare them with the photographs.”

“Yes,” said Platt. “And then there are the finger-prints that we’ve got. We can test those, too.”

“You don’t want finger-prints if you’ve got a set of toe-prints,” objected Miller.

“With regard to those finger-prints,” said Thorndyke. “May I ask if they were obtained from the bottle?”

“They were,” Platt admitted.

“And were there any other finger-prints?”

“No,” replied Platt. “These were the only ones.”

As he spoke he laid on the table a photograph showing the prints of the thumb and fingers of a right hand.

Thorndyke glanced at the photograph and, turning to Miller, said:

“I suggest that those are Dr. Foxton’s finger-prints.”

“Impossible!” exclaimed Platt, and then suddenly fell silent.

“We can soon see,” said Thorndyke, producing from the case a pad of white paper. “If Dr. Foxton will lay the finger-tips of his right hand first on this inked plate and then on the paper, we can compare the prints with the photograph.”

Foxton placed his fingers on the blackened plate and then pressed them on the paper pad, leaving on the latter four beautifully clear, black finger-prints. These Superintendent Platt scrutinized eagerly, and as his glance travelled from the prints to the photographs, he broke into a sheepish grin.

“Sold again!” he muttered. “They are the same prints.”

“Well,” said Miller in a tone of disgust, “you must have been a mug not to have thought of that when you knew that Dr. Foxton had handled the bottle.”

“The fact, however, is important,” said Thorndyke. “The absence of any finger-prints but Dr. Foxton’s not only suggests that the murderer took the precaution to wear gloves, but especially it proves that the bottle was not handled by the deceased during life. A suicide’s hands will usually be pretty moist and would leave conspicuous, if not very clear, impressions.”

“Yes,” agreed Miller, “that is quite true. But with regard to these footprints. We can’t compel this man to let us examine his feet without arresting him. Don’t think, Dr. Thorndyke, that I suspect you of guessing. I’ve known you too long for that. You’ve got your facts all right, I don’t doubt, but you must let us have enough to justify our arrest.”

Thorndyke’s answer was to plunge once more into the inexhaustible green case, from which he now produced two objects wrapped in tissue paper. The paper being removed, there was revealed what looked like a model of an excessively shabby pair of brown shoes.

“These,” said Thorndyke, exhibiting the “models” to Superintendent Miller--who viewed them with an undisguised grin--“are plaster casts of the interiors of a pair of slippers--very old and much too tight--belonging to Mr. Macauley. His name was written inside them. The casts have been waxed and painted with raw umber, which has been lightly rubbed off, thus accentuating the prominences and depressions. You will notice that the impressions of the toes on the soles and of the ‘knuckles’ on the uppers appear as prominences; in fact we have in these casts a sketchy reproduction of the actual feet.

“Now, first as to dimensions. Dr. Jervis’s measurements of the footprints give us ten inches and three-quarters as the extreme length and four inches and five-eighths as the extreme width at the heads of the metatarsus. On these casts, as you see, the extreme length is ten inches and five-eighths--the loss of one-eighth being accounted for by the curve of the sole--and the extreme width is four inches and a quarter--three-eighths being accounted for by the lateral compression of a tight slipper. The agreement of the dimensions is remarkable, considering the unusual size. And now as to the peculiarities of the feet. You notice that each toe has made a perfectly distinct impression on the sole, excepting the little toe, of which there is no trace in either cast. And, turning to the uppers, you notice that the knuckles of the toes appear quite distinct and prominent--again excepting the little toes, which have made no impression at all. Thus it is not a case of retracted little toes, for they would appear as an extra prominence. Then, looking at the feet as a whole, it is evident that the little toes are absent; there is a distinct hollow where there should be a prominence.”

“M’yes,” said Miller dubiously, “it’s all very neat. But isn’t it just a bit speculative?”

“Oh, come, Miller,” protested Thorndyke; “just consider the facts. Here is a suspected murderer known to have feet of an unusual size and presenting a very rare deformity; and here are a pair of feet of that same unusual size and presenting that same rare deformity; and they are the feet of a man who had actually lived in the same house as the murdered woman and who, at the date of the crime, was living only two doors away. What more would you have?”

“Well, there is the question of motive,” objected Miller.

“That hardly belongs to a prima facie case,” said Thorndyke. “But even if it did, is there not ample matter for suspicion? Remember who the murdered woman was, what her husband was, and who this Sierra Leone gentleman is.”

“Yes, yes; that’s true,” said Miller somewhat hastily, either perceiving the drift of Thorndyke’s argument (which I did not), or being unwilling to admit that he was still in the dark. “Yes, we’ll have the fellow in and get his actual footprints.”

He went to the door and, putting his head out, made some sign, which was almost immediately followed by a trampling of feet, and Macauley entered the room, followed by two large plain-clothes policemen. The negro was evidently alarmed, for he looked about him with the wild expression of a hunted animal. But his manner was aggressive and truculent.

“Why am I being interfered with in this impertinent manner?” he demanded in the deep, buzzing voice characteristic of the male negro.

“We want to have a look at your feet, Mr. Macauley,” said Miller. “Will you kindly take off your shoes and socks?”

“No,” roared Macauley. “I’ll see you damned first.”

“Then,” said Miller, “I arrest you on a charge of having murdered----”

The rest of the sentence was drowned in a sudden uproar. The tall, powerful negro, bellowing like an angry bull, had whipped out a large, strangely shaped knife and charged furiously at the Superintendent. But the two plain-clothes men had been watching him from behind and now sprang upon him, each seizing an arm. Two sharp, metallic clicks in quick succession, a thunderous crash and an ear-splitting yell, and the formidable barbarian lay prostrate on the floor with one massive constable sitting astride his chest and the other seated on his knees.

“Now’s your chance, Doctor,” said Miller. “I’ll get his shoes and socks off.”

As Thorndyke re-inked his plates, Miller and the local superintendent expertly removed the smart patent shoes and the green silk socks from the feet of the writhing, bellowing negro. Then Thorndyke rapidly and skilfully applied the inked plates to the soles of the feet--which I steadied for the purpose--and followed up with a dexterous pressure of the paper pad, first to one foot and then--having torn off the printed sheet--to the other. In spite of the difficulties occasioned by Macauley’s struggles, each sheet presented a perfectly clear and sharp print of the sole of the foot, even the ridge-patterns of the toes and ball of the foot being quite distinct. Thorndyke laid each of the new prints on the table beside the corresponding large photograph, and invited the two superintendents to compare them.

“Yes,” said Miller--and Superintendent Platt nodded his acquiescence--“there can’t be a shadow of a doubt. The ink-prints and the photographs are identical, to every line and skin-marking. You’ve made out your case, Doctor, as you always do.”

“So you see,” said Thorndyke, as we smoked our evening pipes on the old stone pier, “your method was a perfectly sound one, only you didn’t apply it properly. Like too many mathematicians, you started on your calculations before you had secured your data. If you had applied the simple laws of probability to the real data, they would have pointed straight to Macauley.”

“How do you suppose he lost his little toes?” I asked.

“I don’t suppose at all. Obviously it was a case of double ainhum.”

“Ainhum!” I exclaimed with a sudden flash of recollection.

“Yes; that was what you overlooked. You compared the probabilities of three diseases either of which only very rarely causes the loss of even one little toe and infinitely rarely causes the loss of both, and none of which conditions is confined to any definite class of persons; and you ignored ainhum, a disease which attacks almost exclusively the little toe, causing it to drop off, and quite commonly destroys both little toes--a disease, moreover, which is confined to the black-skinned races. In European practice ainhum is unknown, but in Africa, and to a less extent, in India, it is quite common. If you were to assemble all the men in the world who have lost both little toes, more than nine-tenths of them would be suffering from ainhum; so that, by the laws of probability, your footprints were, by nine chances to one, those of a man who had suffered from ainhum, and therefore a black-skinned man. But as soon as you had established a black man as the probable criminal, you opened up a new field of corroborative evidence. There was a black man on the spot. That man was a native of Sierra Leone and almost certainly a man of importance there. But the victim’s husband had deadly enemies in the native secret societies of Sierra Leone. The letters of the husband to the wife probably contained matter incriminating certain natives of Sierra Leone. The evidence became cumulative, you see. Taken as a whole, it pointed plainly to Macauley, apart from the new fact of the murder of Toussaint in Liverpool, a city with a considerable floating population of West Africans.”

“And I gather from your reference to the African poison, strophanthus, that you fixed on Macauley at once when I gave you my sketch of the case?”

“Yes; especially when I saw your photographs of the footprints with the absent little toes and those characteristic chigger-scars on the toes that remained. But it was sheer luck that enabled me to fit the key-stone into its place and turn mere probability into virtual certainty. I could have embraced the magician Wardale when he brought us the magic slippers. Still, it isn’t an absolute certainty, even now, though I expect it will be by to-morrow.”

And Thorndyke was right. That very evening the police entered Macauley’s chambers in Tanfield Court, where they discovered the dead woman’s attaché case. It still contained Toussaint’s letters to his wife, and one of those letters mentioned by name, as members of a dangerous secret society, several prominent Sierra Leone men, including the accused David Macauley.