He led me out into a large neglected garden and along a wide path that was all overgrown with weeds. As we went, I tried to collect and arrange my confused ideas, and suddenly a new discrepancy occurred to me. I proceeded to propound it.
“By the way, you are not forgetting that the two alleged deaths were some days apart? I saw Bendelow dead on a Monday. He had died on the preceding afternoon. But Crile’s funeral had already taken place a day or two previously.”
“I see no difficulty in that,” Thorndyke replied. “Crile’s funeral occurred, as I have ascertained, on a Saturday. You saw Bendelow alive for the last time on Thursday morning. Usher was sent for, and saw Crile dead on Thursday evening, he having evidently died—with or without assistance—soon after you left. Of course, the date of death given to you was false; and you mention in your notes of the case that both you and Cropper were surprised at the condition of the body. The previous funeral offers no difficulty, seeing that we know that the coffin was empty. This is what I thought you might be interested to see.”
He pointed to a flight of stone steps, at the bottom of which was a wooden gate set in the wall that enclosed the garden. I looked at the steps—a little vacantly, I am afraid—and inquired what there was about them that I was expected to find of interest.
“Perhaps,” he replied, “you will see better if we open the gate.”
We descended the steps, and he inserted a key into the gate, drawing my attention to the fact that the lock had been oiled at no very distant date and was in quite good condition. Then he threw the gate open, and we both stepped out on to the tow-path of the canal. I looked about me in considerable surprise, for we were within a few yards of the hut with the derrick and the little wharf from which I had been flung into the canal.
“I remember this gate,” said I; “in fact, I think I mentioned it to you in my account of my adventure here. But I little imagined that it belonged to the Morris’ house. It would have been a short way in, if I had known. But I expect it was locked at the time.”
“I expect it was,” Thorndyke agreed, and thereupon turned and re-entered. We passed once more down the long passage, and came out into Market-street, when Thorndyke locked the door and pocketed the key.
“That is an extraordinary arrangement,” I remarked; “one house having two frontages on separate streets.”
“It is not a very uncommon one,” Thorndyke replied. “You see how it comes about. A house fronting on one street has a long back garden extending to another street which is not yet fully built on. As the new street fills up, a shop is built at the end of the garden. A small house may be built in connexion with it and cut off from the garden, or the shop may be connected with the original house, as in this instance. But in either case the shop belongs to the new street and has its own number. What are you going to do now?”