“Just let me tell you,” said Bell. With a plaintive noise Reggie submitted. There is an official theory that he will take more trouble for Superintendent Bell than any man alive. “Do you know Bournham, sir?”
“Not intimately. Too many tramlines. Always go out of London some other way that way. Sends a good many cases to my hospital. Serious, self - helpful middle - class cases.”
“That’s right,” Bell nodded. “It’s a good suburb. Pleasant place. Rural, you know - that’s the fine open spaces. Well, this last month or two, they’ve had several neat burglaries out there - all looking like local knowledge. The last was Sunday night. There’s an insurance broker, name of Goldschild, lives at Bournham. Not been there long. Sort of man that keeps a couple of servants and can dress his wife in diamonds. Well, last week - end, Mr. Goldschild and his wife went away to Brighton, leaving the house in charge of his chauffeur - gardener. Cook and housemaid had the week - end off. Sunday night, the chauffeur chap, who sleeps over the garage, says he saw everything fastened all right, and went to bed about eleven. Heard nothing till he was knocked up by a bright young constable, who saw a light in the house and knew the family were away. They went over the house, and, of course they didn’t find anybody. All they did find was a first - floor window open at the back. It didn’t look as if anything had been taken, and the chauffeur chap didn’t know exactly what there was to take. But, when old Goldschild came back on Monday, he said all the jewellery that his wife had left behind, locked up in her dressing - room, was gone. He puts it at ten thousand pounds’ worth, mostly diamonds. So then our fellows out there got busy. Like all these suburban houses, it simply asked to be broken into. Lock on the front door a craftsman could manage with some thread or a few needles. It isn’t certain which way he got in, but we know how he got out. Jumped from a first - floor bedroom at the alarm, and took a toss and left some blood on the crazy paving. There’s some more blood on the hedge at the bottom of the garden. That’s the way he went off.”
“Yes. I dare say he did,” Reggie yawned. “Not in my line. Not in my line at all. I don’t like diamonds. Futile things. Decorations for the aged. Who should not be decorated. Owners of diamonds and thieves of diamonds alike without interest. Sordid vocations both. Nothing human in it. Bell. Go away.”
“Oh, there’s some more yet, Mr. Fortune.” Bell protested. “I give you my word, it’s really tricky. I want some of your science. Let me tell you. When they got to examining this chauffeur chap, he remembered that as he came back from having his evening pint at the pub - that’d be about ten o’clock Sunday night - he saw a fellow, name of Blunt, strolling about the road. This Blunt is well known in Bournham. He’s come down in the world. He picks up a living as a jobbing gardener; he’s got an allotment, raises a bit o’ flowers an’ green - stuff, and so on. But he was a tradesman, and his people before him. They had a draper’s shop, quite a nice business, in his father’s time. Blunt never made much of a do of it. Matter of fifteen years ago, he had a fire in his shop.” Bell winked. “You know, sir. The sort of fire a chap does have when his business is going downhill. Well, Mr. Blunt was charged with arson. The jury disagreed, and he got off, but he went broke and never made a start again. He’s just hung on in Bournham, loafing round and scrounging. You know, the kind of chap people turn a blind eye on when he palms off rubbish on ‘em or begs a job he don’t do. He’s had a pretty close call, once or twice, with some larcenies out there, and his daughter, that’s been a shop assistant and cashier and what not, she could never hold down a job. Nothing definite, you know, but always a little something. There you have the Blunts.”
“Yes. Father and daughter.” Reggie uncoiled himself, and sat up. “What about the mother, Bell?”
“Dead,” said Bell. “Died soon after Blunt went smash, while the girl was still a tiny kid. Well, you see how it is, he knows Bournham inside out, and now we have this run of burglaries by somebody who had good information, and Blunt gets seen up Goldschild’s street just before the Goldschild diamonds were pinched. So, of course, our fellows looked up Mr. Blunt. Why was he in Goldschild’s road that night? Mr. Blunt says he wasn’t; he went for a walk after church - oh, yes, h goes to church, Mr. Blunt does - and walked on the common after. With his daughter. And she says the same. Nice and lively on a March night. Our chaps noticed Mr. Blunt had a thumb bound up. How did that happen? Oh, he cut it, chopping wood. Now, you remember, I told you there was blood on Goldschild’s crazy paving and blood on the hedge at the back. Well, that hedge is against the road which leads to Blunt’s allotment. So our fellows went down there. Blunt has a sort of hut for tools, and in that they found more bloodstains, on some coconut matting. That’s what I want you for, Mr. Fortune.”
“Oh, my Bell! This faith is affectin’. You show me a bloodstain, and I tell you who shed the blood. Yes. I am very good. But I can’t do that. Nobody can. I could tell you if Blunt had been killing a chicken, rabbit, lion, or what not. I might tell you which of the four groups of human blood the stains belonged to. And also from which of the four the stains on Goldschild’s paving and hedge came from. If you think that will give you a case against anybody, you are wrong.”
“Maybe so.” Bell nodded. “But, if you found that the blood in both places was from the same group, we should have reason to believe the burglar laid up in Blunt’s hut. Suppose we got blood of that group on Blunt’s bandage, then it would be pretty useful evidence.”
“You think so?” Reggie stared at him with sorrowful surprise. “Oh, my Bell! Do you hear me handing out that evidence to a jury? I do not. Any counsel who knew his job would make me look an ass. Which I should be. Suppose I could swear the blood in the garden, and the blood in the hut, and Blunt’s blood were all of the same group. Just like swearing the burglar is a blond and so is Blunt. Countless other people too. And there are countless people in each blood group. You can’t get an identification out of the serological test.”
“I could get a hint, though” - Bell gave a knowing nod - “and a pretty good hint. You give me that, sir and I’ll do the rest.”
“I wonder,” Reggie murmured.
“You know, Mr. Fortune, it is a clue; it sticks out, and we did ought to work on it.”
“What?” Reggie opened wide, aggrieved eyes. “Are you tellin’ me to do my duty? My dear Bell! Oh, my dear Bell!”
“Well, I beg your pardon, sir,” said Bell uncomfortably.
“Yes, I think so. I’m coming - I was coming. To your painful suburb. In this painful wind. Get on.”
As they drove away to Bournham, Bell made propitiatory conversation on the value of Mr. Fortune’s work. Mr. Fortune remained aloof and morose. “No. No more butter thanks,” he said at last. “Get this clear, Bell. The only force of blood group evidence is negative. Say the blood in the garden and the blood in the hut came from different groups, that does prove the fellow who bled over the burglary wasn’t the fellow who bled in the hut. But, if the dollops of blood come from the same group, it proves nothing at all. You think of science as an automatic machine - put in a penny and it’ll give you a box of matches. But that’s not the way it works. Just as likely to push on to you something you never thought of. Your penny don’t get you a box of matches, but a cold shower - or a white elephant.”
“I’m having a cold shower from you, Mr. Fortune,” said Bell reproachfully. “What’s in your mind? Do you think there’s something fishy about these blood traces?”
“No. Not specially. No. But I should say the essential, effective truth is not in ‘em. However. When we’ve got the wrong man convicted, let’s thank God we’ve done our duty.”
Their car turned away from the trams of Bournham and its shops, and came into a road which preserved some of the big trees of its rural past, and had set among them the shrubby gardens and houses of suburban opulence.
A constable paced by Goldschild’s gates. Reggie picked up a leather case, and they walked round the house, which was of whitish brick with sandstone trimmings, and came upon a man, in plain clothes, trying to get out of the wind. A patch of the crazy paving was covered by tarpaulin. “Take that off, George. Careful,” Bell ordered.
Reggie knelt down by some purple marks on the stone, worked at them, and put the results away. He stood up, and looked at the house. “Which is the window found open? That one. I see. More than twelve feet up. Theory is, he jumped from that, caught his foot in the crack of the paving by the saxifrage there, and fell prone. Yes. It could be. No blood on the window - sill or in the house?”
“Not a mark anywhere. Not even on the bureau where the jewellery was. The job was done in gloves, and with a neat outfit. Locks opened like cutting butter.”
“Oh, yes. That bein’ that, the next thing, please. Blood on the hedge.”
Bell took him across a lawn, past a bank of daffodils cowering from the wind, and on by a severe straight path between flowerless, dusty flower - beds. A high laurel hedge made the end of the garden, and there was a bolted gate in it. Beside the gate, sacking hung on the hedge. Bell drew that away. “Here you are, sir.” The laurel leaves bore clots and smears of blood. Reggie cut off the laurel twigs and stowed them in his case. “Now we go to Blunt’s humble agricultural hut.” He shivered. “Brrh! Is it far?”
“Five minutes sharp walking.”
“Sharp! Oh, my hat!” Reggie turned up the collar of his fur coat, and sank down inside it from the searching wind.
He did not walk sharply. It is doubted whether he can, though men have seen him run. The road beyond the hedge was in a primitive rural state - sand loosened by the dry March weather. He picked his way among the ridges and the ruts, huddled, stooping, peering at the ground.
For some little way there were garden hedges on either side. Then they came to a decayed fence, behind which was an allotment even less beautiful than allotments are wont to be in a cold March. Some of the worn - out greenstuff of the year before still raised bare stalks and shrivelled heads. Much of the ground was still undug.
At the hurdle which served for a gate a constable stood talking to a man and a woman. There seemed to be some temper in the conversation.
