CHAPTER IV

In Which Margaret Confers with Dr. Thorndyke

The sun was shining pleasantly on the trees of King’s Bench Walk, Inner Temple, when Margaret approached the handsome brick portico of number 5A and read upon the jamb of the doorway the name of Dr. John Thorndyke under the explanatory heading “First pair.” She was a little nervous of the coming interview, partly because she had met the famous criminal lawyer only twice before, but more especially by reason of a vague fear that her uneasy suspicions of her husband might presently be turned into something more definite and disagreeable.

Her nervousness on the first score was soon dispelled, for her gentle summons on the little brass knocker of the inner door—the “oak” was open—was answered by Dr. Thorndyke himself, who greeted her as an old friend and led her into the sitting-room, where tea-things were set out on a small table between two armchairs. The homely informality of the reception, so different from the official stiffness of Mr. Penfield, instantly put her at her ease; and when the tea-pot arrived in the custody of a small gentleman of archdiaconal aspect and surprisingly crinklyness of feature, she felt as if she were merely paying some rather unusual kind of afternoon call.

Dr. Thorndyke had what would, in his medical capacity, have been called a fine bedside manner; pleasant, genial, sympathetic, but never losing touch with the business on hand. Insensibly a conversation of pleasing generality slipped into a consultation, and Margaret found herself stating her case, apparently of her own initiative. Having described her interview with Mr. Penfield and commented on the old lawyer’s very unhelpful attitude, she continued:

“It was Mr. Rodney who advised me to consult you. As a civil lawyer with no experience of criminal practice, he felt hardly competent to deal with the case. That was what he said. It sounds rather ominous; as if he thought there might be some criminal element in the affair.”

“Not necessarily,” said Thorndyke. “But your husband is missing; and a missing man is certainly more in my province than in Rodney’s. What did he suggest that you should ask me to do?”

“I should wish, of course,” replied Margaret, “to get into communication with my husband. But if that is not possible, I should at least like to know what has become of him. Matters can’t be left in their present uncertain state. There is the future to think of.”

“Precisely,” agreed Thorndyke, “and as the future must be based upon the present and the past, we had better begin by setting out what we actually know and can prove. First, I understand that on the 23rd of June, your husband left Sennen, and was seen by several persons to leave, on a yacht in company with Mr. Varney and that there was no one else on board. The yacht reached Penzance at about half-past two in the afternoon and your husband went ashore at once. He was seen by Mr. Varney to land on the pier and go towards the town. Did any one besides Mr. Varney see him go ashore?”

“No—at least I have not heard of any one. Of course, he may have been seen by some fisherman or strangers on the pier. But does it matter? Mr. Varney saw him land and he certainly was not on the yacht when Mr. Rodney arrived half an hour later. There can’t be any possible doubt that he did land at Penzance.”

“No,” Thorndyke agreed; “but as that is the last time that he was certainly seen alive and as the fact that he landed may have to be proved in a court of law, additional evidence would be worth securing.”

“But that was not the last time that he was seen alive,” said Margaret; and here she gave him an account of Varney’s expedition to Falmouth, explaining why he went and giving full particulars respecting the steamer; all of which Thorndyke noted down on the note-book which lay by his side on the table.

“This is very important,” said he, when she had finished. “But you see that it is on a different plane of certainty. It is hearsay at the best and there is no real identification. What luck did Mr. Varney have at Ipswich?”

“He went down there on the evening of the 27th—the day after his visit to Falmouth. He went straight to the quay-side and made inquiries about the steamer _Hedwig_, which he learned had left about noon, having come in about nine o’clock on the previous night. He talked to various quay loafers and from one of them ascertained that a single passenger had landed; a big man, carrying a large bag or portmanteau in his hand and a coat of some kind on his arm. The passenger landed alone. Nothing was seen of any woman.”

“Did Mr. Varney take the name and address of his informant at Ipswich or the one at Falmouth?”

“I am afraid not. He said nothing about it.”

“That is unfortunate,” said Thorndyke, “because these witnesses may be wanted as they might be able to identify a photograph of your husband. We must find out from Mr. Varney what he did in the matter.”

Margaret looked at Dr. Thorndyke with a slightly puzzled expression. “You speak of witnesses and evidence,” said she, “as if you had something definite in your mind. Some legal proceedings, I mean.”

“I have,” he replied. “If your husband makes no sign and if he does not presently appear, certain legal proceedings will become inevitable.” He paused for a few moments and then continued: “You must understand, Mrs. Purcell, that when a man of any position—and especially a married man—disappears from ‘his usual places of resort,’ as the phrase goes, he upsets all the social adjustments that connect him with his surroundings, and, sooner or later, those adjustments have to be made good. If he disappears completely, it becomes uncertain whether he is alive or dead; and this uncertainty communicates itself to his property and to his dependents and relatives. If he is alive, his property is vested in himself; if he is dead it is vested in his executors or in his heirs or next of kin. Should he be named as a beneficiary in a will and should the person who has made that will die after his disappearance, the question immediately arises whether he was dead or alive at the time of the testator’s death; a vitally important question, since it affects not only himself and his heirs but also the other persons who benefit under the will. And then there is the status of the wife, if the missing man is married; the question whether she is a married woman or a widow has, in justice to her, to be settled if and when possible.

“So you see that the disappearance of a man like your husband sets going a process that generates all sorts of legal problems. You cannot simply write him off and treat him as non-existent. His life must be properly wound up so that his estate may be disposed of, and this will involve the necessity of presuming his death; and presumption of death may raise difficult questions of survivorship, although these may arise at any moment.”

“What is meant by a question of survivorship?” Margaret asked.

“It is a question which arises in respect of two persons, both of whom are dead and concerning one or both of whom the exact date of death is unknown. One of them must have died before the other—unless they both died at the same instant. The question is, which survived the other? Which of them died first? It is a question on which may turn the succession to an estate, a title, or even a kingdom.”

“Well,” said Margaret, “it is not likely to arise in respect of Dan.”

“On the contrary,” Thorndyke dissented, “it may arise to-morrow. If some person who has left him a legacy should die to-day, that person’s will could not be administered until it had been decided whether your husband was or was not alive at the time the testator died; that is, whether or not he survived the testator. But, as matters stand, we can give no answer to that question. We can prove that he was alive at half-past two on the 23rd of June. Thenceforward we have no knowledge of him.”

“Excepting what Mr. Varney has told us.”

“Mr. Varney’s information is legally worthless unless he can produce the witnesses and unless they can identify a photograph or otherwise prove that the man whom they saw was actually Mr. Purcell. You must ask Mr. Varney about it. However, at the moment you are more concerned to find out what has become of your husband. I suppose I may ask a few necessary questions?”

“Oh, certainly,” she replied. “Pray don’t have any scruples of delicacy. Ask anything you want to know.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Purcell,” said Thorndyke; “and to begin with the inevitable question: Do you know of, or suspect, any kind of entanglement with any woman?”

The direct, straightforward question came rather as a relief to Margaret, and she answered without embarrassment: “Naturally, I suspect, because I can think of no other reason for his leaving me in this way. But to be honest, I have never had the slightest grounds of complaint in regard to his behaviour with other women. He married me because he fell in love with me, and he has never seemed to change. Whatever he has been to other people, to me he has always appeared, in his rough, taciturn way, as devoted as his nature allowed him to be. This affair is an utter surprise to me.”

Thorndyke made no comment on this, but following the hint that Margaret had dropped, asked: “As to his character in general, what sort of man is he? Is he popular, for instance?”

“No,” replied Margaret, “he is not very much liked; in fact, with the exception of Mr. Varney, he has no really intimate friends, and I have often wondered how poor Mr. Varney put up with the way he treated him. The truth is that Dan is rather a bully; he is strong, big and pugnacious and used to having his own way and somewhat brutal, at times, in his manner of getting it. He is a very self-contained, taciturn, rather secretive man and—well, perhaps he is not very scrupulous. I am not painting a very flattering picture, I am afraid.”

“It sounds like a good portrait, though,” said Thorndyke. “When you say that he is not very scrupulous, are you referring to his business transactions?”

“Well, yes; and to his dealings with people generally.”

“By the way,” asked Thorndyke, “what is his occupation?”

Margaret uttered a little apologetic laugh. “It sounds absurd, but I really don’t quite know what his business is. He is so very uncommunicative. I have always understood that he is a financier, whatever that may be. I believe he negotiates loans and buys and sells stocks and shares but he is not on the Stock Exchange. He has an office in Coleman Street in the premises of a firm of outside brokers and he keeps a clerk, a man named Levy. It seems to be quite a small establishment, though it appears to yield a fair income. That is all I can tell you, but I daresay Mr. Levy could give you other particulars if you wanted them.”

“I will make a note of the address, at any rate,” said Thorndyke, and, having done so, he asked: “As to your husband’s banking account; do you happen to know if any considerable sum has been drawn out quite lately, or if any cheques have been presented since he disappeared?”

“His current account is intact,” she replied. “I have an account at the same bank and I saw the manager a couple of days ago. Of course, he was not very expansive, but he did tell me that no unusual amounts had been withdrawn and that no cheque has been presented since the 21st of June, when Dan drew a cheque for me. It is really rather odd, especially as the balance is somewhat above the average. Don’t you think so?”

“I do,” he answered. “It suggests that your husband’s disappearance was unpremeditated and that extreme precautions are being taken to conceal his present whereabouts. But the mystery is what he is living on if he took no considerable sum with him and has drawn no cheques since. However, we had better finish with the general questions. You don’t appear to know much about your husband’s present affairs; what do you know of his past?”

“Not a great deal; and I can think of nothing that throws any light on his extraordinary conduct in taking himself off as he has done. I met him at Maidstone about six years ago. He was then employed in the office of a large paper mill—Whichboy’s mill, I think it was—as a clerk or accountant. He had then recently come down from Cambridge and seemed in rather low water. After a time, he left Whichboy’s and went to London, and very shortly his circumstances began to improve in a remarkable way. It was then that he began his present business, which I know included the making of loans because he lent my father money; in fact it was through these transactions and his visits on business to my father that the intimacy grew which resulted finally in our marriage. He then seemed, as he always has, to be a keen business man, very attentive to the main chance, not at all sentimental in his dealings, and, as I have said, not overscrupulous as to his methods.”

Thorndyke nodded gravely but made no comment. The association of loans to the father with marriage with an evidently not infatuated daughter seemed to throw a sufficiently suggestive light on Daniel Purcell’s methods.

“And as to his personal habits and tastes?” he asked.

“He has always been reasonably temperate, though he likes good living and has a robust appetite; and he really has no vices beyond a rather unpleasant temper and excessive keenness on money. His principal interest is in boating, yachting and fishing; he does not bet or gamble, and his relations with women have always seemed to be perfectly correct.”

“You spoke of his exceptional intimacy with Mr. Varney. Is the friendship of long standing?”

“Yes, quite. They were school-fellows, they were at Cambridge together and they both came down about the same time and for a similar reason. Both their fathers got suddenly into financial difficulties. Dan’s father was a stockbroker, and he failed suddenly, either through some unlucky speculations or through the default of a client. Mr. Varney’s father was a clergyman, and he, too, lost all his money, and at about the same time. I have always suspected that there was some connexion between the two failures, but I have never heard that there actually was. Dan is as close as an oyster, and, of course, Mr. Varney has never referred to the affair.”

“Mr. Varney is not associated with your husband in business?”

“No. He is an artist—principally an etcher, and a very clever one too. I think he is doing quite well now, but he had a hard struggle when he first came down from Cambridge. For a couple of years he worked for an engraver, doing ordinary copperplate work for the trade, and I understand that he is remarkably skilful at engraving. But now he does nothing but etchings and mezzotints.”

“Then his activities are entirely concerned with art?”

“I believe so, now, at any rate. After he left the engraver he went to a merchant in the City as a clerk. But he was only there quite a short time, and I fancy he left on account of some sort of unpleasantness, but I know nothing about it. After that he went abroad and travelled about for a time making sketches and drawings of the towns to do his etchings from; in fact he only came back from Belgium a couple of months ago. But I am afraid I am wasting your time with a lot of irrelevant gossip.”

“It is my fault if you are,” said Thorndyke, “since I put the questions. But the fact is that nothing is irrelevant. Your husband has vanished into space in a perfectly unaccountable manner, and we have to find, if we can, something in his known circumstances which may give us a clue to the motive and the manner of his disappearance and his probable whereabouts at present. Has he any favourite haunts abroad or at home?”

“He is very partial to the Eastern counties, especially the broads and rivers of Norfolk. You remember he was on his way to Oulton Broad when he disappeared.”

“Yes; and one must admit that the waterways of Norfolk and Suffolk, with all their endless communications, would form an admirable hiding-place. In a small yacht or covered boat a man might lose himself in that network of rivers and lakes and lie hidden for months; creeping from end to end of the county without leaving a trace. We must bear that possibility in mind. By the way, have you brought me a copy of that very cautious letter of Mr. Penfield’s?”

“I have brought the letter itself,” she replied, producing it and laying it on the table.

“Thank you,” said Thorndyke. “I will make a copy of it and let you have the original back. And there is another question: has the letter which Mr. Penfield ought to have received been returned to you?”

“No,” replied Margaret.

“Ha!” said Thorndyke. “That is important because it is undoubtedly a remarkable circumstance and rather significant. A letter in the wrong envelope practically always implies another letter in another wrong envelope. Now a letter was almost certainly written to Mr. Penfield and almost certainly sent. It was presumably a business letter and of some importance. It ought certainly to have been returned to the sender, and under ordinary circumstances would have been. Why has it not been returned? The person to whom it was sent was the person to whom the mysterious communication that Mr. Penfield received was addressed. That communication, we judge from Mr. Penfield’s letter, contained some highly confidential matter. But that implies some person who was in highly confidential relations with your husband. The suggestion seems to be that your husband discovered his mistake after he had posted the letter or letters and that he went at once to this other person and informed him of what had happened.”

“Informed her,” Margaret corrected.

“I must admit,” said Thorndyke, “that the circumstances give colour to your inference; but we must remember that they would apply equally to a man. They certainly point to an associate of some kind. The character of that associate and the nature of the association are questions that turn on the contents of that letter that Mr. Penfield received.”

“Do you think,” asked Margaret, “that Mr. Penfield would be more confidential with you than he was with me?”

“I doubt it,” was the reply. “If the contents of that letter were of a secret nature, he will keep them to himself; and quite right, too. But I shall give him a trial all the same, and you had better let him know that you have consulted me.”

This brought the conference to an end, and shortly afterwards Margaret went on her way, now more than ever convinced that the inevitable woman was at the bottom of the mystery. For some time after she had gone Thorndyke sat with his notes before him, wrapped in profound thought and deeply interested in the problem that he was called upon to solve. He did not share Margaret’s suspicions, though he had not strongly contested them. To his experienced eye, the whole group of circumstances, with certain points which he had not thought fit to enlarge on, suggested something more sinister than a mere elopement.

There was Purcell’s behaviour, for instance. It had all the appearances of an unpremeditated flight. No preparations seemed to have been made; no attempt to wind up his affairs. His banking account was left intact, though no one but he could touch it during his lifetime. He had left or sent no letter of farewell, explanation or apology to his wife; and now that he was gone, he was maintaining a secrecy as to his whereabouts so profound that apparently he did not even dare to draw a cheque.

But even more significant was the conduct of Mr. Penfield. Taking from its envelope the mysterious letter that had come to Sennen and exploded the mine, Thorndyke spread it out and slowly read it through; and his interpretation of it now was the same as on the occasion when he heard Margaret’s epitome of it at Sennen. It was a message to Purcell through his wife, telling him that something which had been discovered was not going to be divulged. What could that something be? The answer, in general terms, seemed to be given by Penfield’s subsequent conduct. He had been absolutely uncommunicative to Margaret. Yet Margaret, as the missing man’s wife, was a proper person to receive any information that could be given. Apparently, then, the information that Penfield possessed was of a kind that could not be imparted to any one. Even its very nature could not be hinted at.

Now what kind of information could that be? The obvious inference was that the letter which had come to Penfield contained incriminating matter. That would explain everything. For if Penfield had thus stumbled on evidence of a crime, either committed or contemplated, he would have to choose between denouncing the criminal or keeping the matter to himself. But he was not entitled to keep it to himself; for, other considerations apart, this was not properly a client’s secret. It had not been communicated to him; he had discovered it by accident. He was therefore not bound to secrecy and he could not, consequently, claim a lawyer’s privilege. In short, if he had discovered a crime and chose to suppress his discovery, he was, in effect, an accessory, before or after the fact, as the case might be; and he would necessarily keep the secret because he would not dare to divulge it.

This view was strongly supported by Purcell’s conduct. The disappearance of the latter coincided exactly with the delivery of the mysterious letter to Penfield. The inference was that Purcell, having discovered his fatal mistake, and assuming that Penfield would immediately denounce him to the police, had fled instantly and was now in hiding. Purcell’s and Penfield’s conduct were both in complete agreement with this theory.

But there was a further consideration. If the contents of that letter were incriminating, they incriminated some one besides Purcell. The person for whom the letter was intended must have been a party to any unlawful proceedings referred to in it. He—or she—must, in fact, have been a confederate. Now, who could that confederate be? Some one, apparently who was unknown to Margaret, unless it might be the somewhat shadowy Mr. Levy. And that raised yet a further question: What was Purcell? How did he get his living? His wife evidently did not know, which was a striking and rather suspicious fact. He had been described as a financier. But that meant nothing. The word financier covered a multitude of sins; the question was, what sins did it cover in the present instance? And the answer to that question seemed to involve a visit of exploration to Coleman Street.

As Thorndyke collected his notes to form the nucleus of a dossier of the Purcell Case he foresaw that his investigations might well unearth some very unlovely skeletons. But that was no fault of his, nor need the disclosures be unnecessarily paraded. But Margaret Purcell’s position must be secured and made regular. Her missing husband must either be found and brought back or he must be written off and disposed of in a proper and legal fashion.