Page:The Adventure at Heath Crest.pdf/8

146 "Oh, of course he didn't want to go into the house and make a fuss and upset everybody after what I told him, but he said that he'd like to come down here and just inspect the body this morning, so as he could make an official report why the warrant wasn't executed. Ah! here he is! Good-morning, sergeant."

Time was getting on, so as soon as the detective had been admitted I told the undertaker to open the coffin, and he set to work with his screw-driver. I noticed that although he used a brace and centre-bit apparatus, he seemed to have a good deal of trouble in getting the screws out; Mrs. Fahbwerker must have driven them in with the strength of desperation. She was certainly a clever and resourceful woman. At length all the screws were extracted, and while the mortuary keeper pushed the lid aside, the undertaker plucked off the underlying sheet. For a second or two we all gaped stupidly at one another, and then the detective went down on his hands and knees and rapidly strewed the floor with about a hundred-weight of coal and several large books, which were the only contents of the coffin!

It was the coroner's officer who first broke the silence. "Well," he chuckled, "this would have been a good funeral! Have you got your warrant, sergeant? You'll need a coal-van to take your prisoner in."

The laugh (half-hysterical from myself) which we all found for the witticism was an unspeakable relief to my nerves, for so long at their highest tension.

"Yes, I've got it," replied the detective grimly, "and, what's more, I mean to execute it. But, between the lot of you, you've given him twelve hours' start of me! Did you measure the body?" he asked of the undertaker.

"Only under the sheet," the latter admitted. "He seemed stiff enough then, but I wasn't in the room a couple of minutes."

"You never saw the body either, did you, doctor?"

"No," I replied. "Mrs. Fahbwerker came and told me he was dead just when I was very busy and only too glad to get rid of her by giving her the certificate. When I wanted to see the body the next day, she told me the coffin was screwed down."

"A clever dodge, certainly, if it had come off," was Brown's comment.

"But where can he be?" I exclaimed.

"Waiting for his wife on the other side of the Channel, most likely. What's the time now? Eight-thirty. There's time yet! Good-morning, gentlemen," and the door slammed on the detective.

The coroner's officer advised me to call and see the coroner "as soon as possible," but it was late in the afternoon before I was able to get to the office and make a rather shamefaced explanation. As I left a paper-boy outside was howling: "Mysterious affair at Hampstead!" and in some trepidation I bought an evening paper. I ran my eye down the pink column, but this was all I read:—

Yes, as the detective had observed, it was certainly a clever dodge. Although I could not help seeing I had been made a fool of, yet it was undeniable that any medical man might have been deceived by such a carefully-prepared train of symptoms. Fahbwerker, when his arrest was impending, must have resolved to disappear, and doubtless experimented until he had found the utmost dose of antipyrin he thought he could take with safety; but he had nearly overdone it—a very little more and he would have killed himself in reality! The Fahbwerkers had probably considered Walland's absence as their golden opportunity, and from my apparent inexperience were unprepared for my insistence on viewing the body, a course which they evidently knew I was under no legal obligation to take. After all, I should never have done this, and the bogus funeral might have been held, if it had not been for the accident which led me to the chemist's shop.