As a thief in the night

by R. Austin Freeman

As he paused, I picked up Stella’s medallion and looked at it with a new and sombre interest. Holding it up before him, I said:

“I am assuming, Thorndyke, that the new facts were in some way connected with this. Am I right?”

“Yes,” he replied, “you are entirely right. The connection between that charming little work and the evidence that sent that monster of wickedness to her death is one of the strangest and most impressive circumstances that has become known to me in the whole of my experience. It is no exaggeration to say that when you and Stella were working on that medallion, you were forging the last link in the chain of evidence that could have dragged the murdress to the gallows.”

He paused, and, having replenished my glass, took the medallion in his hand and looked at it thoughtfully. Then he knocked out and refilled his pipe and I waited expectantly for the completion of this singular story.

Chapter XVIII.
The Final Proof

“We now,” Thorndyke resumed, “enter the final stage of the inquiry. Hitherto we have dealt with purely scientific evidence which would have had to be communicated to the jury and which they would have had to take on trust with no convincing help from their own eyes. We had evidence, conclusive to ourselves, that Monkhouse had been murdered by means of a poisoned candle. But we could not produce the candle or any part of it. We had nothing visible or tangible to show to the jury to give them the feeling of confidence and firm conviction which they rightly demand when they have to decide an issue involving the life or death of the accused. It was this something that could be seen and handled that I sought, and sought in vain until that momentous evening when I called at your chambers to return your diary.

“I remember that as I entered the room and cast my eyes over the things that were spread out on the table, I received quite a shock. For the first glance showed me that, amongst those things were two objects that exactly fulfilled the conditions of the final test. There was the wax mould—a part, and the greater part, of one of the suspected candles; and there was the tress of hair—a portion of the body of the person suspected to have been poisoned. With these two objects it was possible to determine with absolute certainty whether that person had or had not been poisoned with arsenic, and if she had, whether the candle had or had not been the medium by which the poison was administered.”

“But,” I said, “you knew from the diary of the existence of the wax mould.”

“I knew that it had existed. But I naturally supposed that the cast had been taken and the mould destroyed years ago, though I had intended to ask you about it. However, here it was, miraculously preserved, against all probabilities, still awaiting completion. Of course, I recognized it instantly, and began to cast about in my mind for some means of making the necessary examination without disclosing my suspicions. For you will realize that I was unwilling to say anything to you about Stella’s death until the question was settled one way or the other. If the examination had shown no arsenic either in the candle or in the hair, it would not have been necessary to say anything to you at all.

“But while I was debating the matter, the problem solved itself. As soon as I came to look at Stella’s unfinished works, I saw that they cried aloud to be completed and that Polton was the proper person to carry out the work. I made the suggestion, which I should have made in any case, and when you adopted it, I decided to say nothing but to apply the tests when the opportunity offered.”