The Vanishing Man: a Detective Romance
Copyright© 2024 by R. Austin Freeman
Chapter 11: The Evidence Reviewed
“So the game has opened,” observed Thorndyke, as he struck a match. “The play has begun with a cautious lead off by the other side. Very cautious, and not very confident.”
“Why do you say ‘not very confident’?” I asked.
“Well, it is evident that Hurst—and, I fancy, Jellicoe too—is anxious to buy off Bellingham’s opposition, and at a pretty long price, under the circumstances. And when we consider how very little Bellingham has to offer against the presumption of his brother’s death, it looks as if Hurst hadn’t much to say on his side.”
“No,” said Jervis, “he can’t hold many trumps or he wouldn’t be willing to pay four hundred a year for his opponent’s chance; and that is just as well, for it seems to me that our own hand is a pretty poor one.”
“We must look through our hand and see what we do hold,” said Thorndyke. “Our trump card at present—a rather small one, I am afraid—is the obvious intention of the testator that the bulk of the property should go to his brother.”
“I suppose you will begin your inquiries now,” said I.
“We began them some time ago—the day after you brought us the will, in fact. Jervis has been through the registers and has ascertained that no interment under the name of John Bellingham has taken place since the disappearance; which was just what we expected. He has also discovered that some other person has been making similar inquiries; which, again, is what we expected.”
“And your own investigations?”
“Have given negative results for the most part. I found Doctor Norbury, at the British Museum, very friendly and helpful; so friendly, in fact, that I am thinking whether I may not be able to enlist his help in certain private researches of my own, with reference to the changes effected by time in the physical properties of certain substances.”
“Oh; you haven’t told me about that,” said Jervis.
“No: I haven’t really commenced to plan my experiments yet, and they will probably lead to nothing when I do. It occurred to me that, possibly, in the course of time, certain molecular changes might take place in substances such as wood, bone, pottery, stucco, and other common materials, and that these changes might alter their power of conducting or transmitting molecular vibrations. Now, if this should turn out to be the case, it would be a fact of considerable importance, medico-legal and otherwise; for it would be possible to determine approximately the age of any object of known composition by testing its reactions to electricity, heat, light and other molecular vibrations. I thought of seeking Doctor Norbury’s assistance because he can furnish me with materials for experiment of such great age that the reactions, if any, should be extremely easy to demonstrate. But to return to our case. I learned from him that John Bellingham had certain friends in Paris—collectors and museum officials—whom he was in the habit of visiting for the purpose of study and exchange of specimens. I have made inquiries of all of these, and none of them had seen him during his last visit. In fact, I have not yet discovered anyone who had seen Bellingham in Paris on this occasion. So his visit there remains a mystery for the present.”
“It doesn’t seem to be of much importance, since he undoubtedly came back,” I remarked; but to this Thorndyke demurred.
“It is impossible to estimate the importance of the unknown,” said he.
“Well, how does the matter stand,” asked Jervis, “on the evidence that we have? John Bellingham disappeared on a certain date. Is there anything to show what was the manner of his disappearance?”
“The facts in our possession,” said Thorndyke, “which are mainly those set forth in the newspaper report, suggest several alternative possibilities; and in view of the coming inquiry—for they will, no doubt, have to be gone into in Court, to some extent—it may be worth while to consider them. There are five conceivable hypotheses”—here Thorndyke checked them on his fingers as he proceeded—”First, he may still be alive. Second, he may have died and been buried without identification. Third, he may have been murdered by some unknown person. Fourth, he may have been murdered by Hurst and his body concealed. Fifth, he may have been murdered by his brother. Let us examine these possibilities seriatim.
“First, he may still be alive. If he is, he must either have disappeared voluntarily, have lost his memory suddenly and not been identified, or have been imprisoned—on a false charge or otherwise. Let us take the first case—that of voluntary disappearance. Obviously, its improbability is extreme.”
“Jellicoe doesn’t think so,” said I. “He thinks it quite on the cards that John Bellingham is alive. He says that it is not a very unusual thing for a man to disappear for a time.”
“Then why is he applying for a presumption of death?”
“Just what I asked him. He says that it is the correct thing to do; that the entire responsibility rests on the Court.”
“That is all nonsense,” said Thorndyke. “Jellicoe is the trustee for his absent client, and, if he thinks that client is alive, it is his duty to keep the estate intact; and he knows that perfectly well. We may take it that Jellicoe is of the same opinion as I am: that John Bellingham is dead.”
“Still,” I urged, “men do disappear from time to time, and turn up again after years of absence.”
“Yes, but for a definite reason. Either they are irresponsible vagabonds who take this way of shuffling off their responsibilities, or they are men who have been caught in a net of distasteful circumstances. For instance, a civil servant or a solicitor or a tradesman finds himself bound for life to a locality and an occupation of intolerable monotony. Perhaps he has an ill-tempered wife, who, after the amiable fashion of a certain type of woman, thinking that her husband is pinned down without a chance of escape, gives a free rein to her temper. The man puts up with it for years, but at last it becomes unbearable. Then he suddenly disappears; and small blame to him. But this was not Bellingham’s case. He was a wealthy bachelor with an engrossing interest in life, free to go whither he would and to do whatsoever he wished. Why should he disappear? The thing is incredible.
“As to his having lost his memory and remained unidentified, that, also, is incredible in the case of a man who had visiting-cards and letters in his pocket, whose linen was marked, and who was being inquired for everywhere by the police. As to his being in prison, we may dismiss that possibility, inasmuch as a prisoner, both before and after conviction, would have full opportunity of communicating with his friends.
“The second possibility, that he may have died suddenly and been buried without identification, is highly improbable; but, as it is conceivable that the body might have been robbed and the means of identification thus lost, it remains as a possibility that has to be considered, remote as it is.
“The third hypothesis, that he may have been murdered by some unknown person, is, under the circumstances, not wildly improbable; but, as the police were on the look out and a detailed description of the missing man’s person was published in the papers, it would involve the complete concealment of the body. But this would exclude the most probable form of the crime—the casual robbery with violence. It is therefore possible, but highly improbable.
“The fourth hypothesis is that Bellingham was murdered by Hurst. Now the one fact which militates against this view is that Hurst apparently had no motive for committing the murder. We are assured by Jellicoe that no one but himself knew the contents of the will, and if this is so—but, mind, we have no evidence that it is so—Hurst would have no reason to suppose that he had anything material to gain by his cousin’s death. Otherwise the hypothesis presents no inherent improbabilities. The man was last seen alive at Hurst’s house. He was seen to enter it and he was never seen to leave it—we are still taking the facts as stated in the newspapers, remember—and it now appears that he stands to benefit enormously by that man’s death.”
“But,” I objected, “you are forgetting that, directly the man was missed, Hurst and the servants together searched the entire house.”
“Yes. What did they search for?”
“Why, for Mr. Bellingham, of course.”
“Exactly; for Mr. Bellingham. That is, for a living man. Now how do you search a house for a living man? You look in all the rooms. When you look in a room, if he is there, you see him; if you do not see him, you assume that he is not there. You don’t look under the sofa or behind the piano, you don’t pull out large drawers or open cupboards. You just look into the rooms. That is what these people seem to have done. And they did not see Mr. Bellingham. But Mr. Bellingham’s corpse might have been stowed away out of sight in any one of the rooms that they looked into.”
“That is a grim thought,” said Jervis; “But it is perfectly true. There is no evidence that the man was not lying dead in the house at the very time of the search.”
“But even so,” said I, “there was the body to be disposed of somehow. Now how could he possibly have got rid of the body without being observed?”
To read the complete story you need to be logged in:
Log In or
Register for a Free account
(Why register?)
* Allows you 3 stories to read in 24 hours.