The Big Bow Mystery | Page 8

smashed in, and the lock and the
bolt evidently forced. The room was tidy. There were no marks of
blood on the floor. A purse full of gold was on the dressing-table beside
a big book. A hip-bath, with cold water, stood beside the bed, over
which was a hanging bookcase. There was a large wardrobe against the
wall next to the door. The chimney was very narrow. There were two
windows, one bolted. It was about eighteen feet to the pavement. There
was no way of climbing up. No one could possibly have got out of the
room, and then bolted the doors and windows behind him; and he had
searched all parts of the room in which any one might have been
concealed. He had been unable to find any instrument in the room in

spite of exhaustive search, there being not even a penknife in the
pockets of the clothes of the deceased, which lay on a chair. The house
and the back yard, and the adjacent pavement, had also been fruitlessly
searched.
Sergeant RUNNYMEDE made an identical statement, saving only that
he had gone with Dr. Robinson and Inspector Howlett.
Dr. ROBINSON, divisional surgeon, said: "The deceased was lying on
his back, with his throat cut. The body was not yet cold, the abdominal
region being quite warm. Rigor mortis had set in in the lower jaw, neck,
and upper extremities. The muscles contracted when beaten. I inferred
that life had been extinct some two or three hours, probably not longer,
it might have been less. The bed-clothes would keep the lower part
warm for some time. The wound, which was a deep one, was five and a
half inches from right to left across the throat to a point under the left
ear. The upper portion of the windpipe was severed, and likewise the
jugular vein. The muscular coating of the carotid artery was divided.
There was a slight cut, as if in continuation of the wound, on the thumb
of the left hand. The hands were clasped underneath the head. There
was no blood on the right hand. The wound could not have been
self-inflicted. A sharp instrument had been used, such as a razor. The
cut might have been made by a left-handed person. No doubt death was
practically instantaneous. I saw no signs of a struggle about the body or
the room. I noticed a purse on the dressing-table, lying next to Madame
Blavatsky's big book on Theosophy. Sergeant Runnymede drew my
attention to the fact that the door had evidently been locked and bolted
from within."
By a JURYMAN: I do not say the cuts could not have been made by a
right-handed person. I can offer no suggestion as to how the inflictor of
the wound got in or out. Extremely improbable that the cut was
self-inflicted. There was little trace of the outside fog in the room.
Police constable Williams said he was on duty in the early hours of the
morning of the 4th inst. Glover Street lay within his beat. He saw or
heard nothing suspicious. The fog was never very dense, though nasty
to the throat. He had passed through Glover Street about half-past four.

He had not seen Mr. Mortlake or anybody else leave the house.
The Court here adjourned, the coroner and the jury repairing in a body
to 11 Glover Street, to view the house and the bedroom of the deceased.
And the evening posters announced "The Bow Mystery Thickens."

III
Before the inquiry was resumed, all the poor wretches in custody had
been released on suspicion that they were innocent; there was not a
single case even for a magistrate. Clues, which at such seasons are
gathered by the police like blackberries off the hedges, were scanty and
unripe. Inferior specimens were offered them by bushels, but there was
not a good one among the lot. The police could not even manufacture a
clue.
Arthur Constant's death was already the theme of every hearth,
railway-carriage, and public-house. The dead idealist had points of
contact with so many spheres. The East-end and the West-end alike
were moved and excited, the Democratic Leagues and the Churches,
the Doss-houses and the Universities. The pity of it! And then the
impenetrable mystery of it!
The evidence given in the concluding portion of the investigation was
necessarily less sensational. There were no more witnesses to bring the
scent of blood over the coroner's table; those who had yet to be heard
were merely relatives and friends of the deceased, who spoke of him as
he had been in life. His parents were dead, perhaps happily for them;
his relatives had seen little of him, and had scarce heard as much about
him as the outside world. No man