The constable came and examined all, and then very naturally asked who had been quarrelling with the baker. With a man of Coglin’s disposition it would have been safer to ask whom he had not been quarrelling with. Coglin went over the names of some of his foes, but, having had the best of the slight affair with the herring hawker, he never thought of naming Burfoot.
The constable made no great progress with the case, and I suspect did not exert himself much, as there was general rejoicing over the baker’s calamity, which was thought to be well deserved. Finding this to be the case, Coglin insisted on having a detective brought from Edinburgh. The case was important, he declared—nothing but a conspiracy conceived and executed by half of the town’s folks, including a magistrate and several leading town councillors, and he would have the law to them though he should have to call in the aid of the Home Secretary himself. Accordingly I went down to look at the place, and was greatly amused by Coglin’s wild statements of his troubles and daily martyrdom. In looking over the bakehouse, I chanced to notice on the board which had been used to cover the “batch,” or “sponge,” a number of herring scales—almost enough to convey the idea of a hand-print.
I said nothing of the circumstance till I had examined the window sash, and found two similar hand-prints of herring scales there also.
“Are you in the habit of handling herring often?” I asked, to which he gave a prompt response in the affirmative.
“Oh, yes; there’s often as many as two dozen dishes of them here in the morning to be fired in the oven.”
“And you take toll of a herring out of each?” I laughingly observed.
“No, no, I never touch them,” he hastily returned; and then I showed him the herring scales on the board and the window sash. He looked grave enough for some moments, and then burst out into a ferocious “Aha!”
It was all he said for a few moments, but it clearly indicated that the herring scales had suggested a great idea to him. What the idea was I soon knew, for he proceeded to describe the encounter with Burfoot, and ended by boldly affirming that the herring man and no other was the author of the outrage. The inference seemed a very fair one, and after getting a description of the quarrel, I decided to see after the herring man. The result of my investigations in that direction was absolute failure, so far as bringing home the guilt to Burfoot was concerned. I not only got clear proof that Burfoot on the night and morning of the outrage had been out of the town altogether, but that he had been confined to bed and too ill to move out of the house. Nothing could be clearer than the evidence on this point; and when I had finished I was convinced that, whether Burfoot had planned the outrage or no, he at least could not have been the actual perpetrator.
Nothing more seemed to come of the herring scales, and I reported the result to Coglin, who received it with a burst of abuse.
“And you call yourself a detective?” he scornfully shouted, and his private opinions which followed are not worth recording.