FROM THE CASE JOURNALS OF SIR RICHARD FRANCIS BURTON: THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE CROSS-CHANNEL GRASSHOPPER (Part 2)
Burton & Swinburne in THE STRANGE AFFAIR OF THE CROSS-CHANNEL GRASSHOPPER is currently being recounted on Twitter. Every 30 tweets or so, I shall post the story so far (with amendments if necessary) here.
Chapter 1: The Dead Engineer (cont.)
"He lived nearby, I presume?"
"Yes. On Bellringer Lane."
"Then I suggest we go there at once. I would like to see where he died."
Trounce agreed, so he, Swinburne and I took our leave of Straightfellow and, thankfully, left the morgue. We boarded the hansom and set off. As we were jolted along, I asked Trounce about the Prentiss household.
"He was a bachelor," said the policeman. "And lived alone but for his housekeeper, Mrs Chant. The house is small; a parlour, a dining room, a study, a bedroom and a kitchen."
"Mrs Chant doesn't live in the house?" I asked.
"No. She works from 8am until 9pm then goes home. She found him dead this morning. According to Straightfellow, Prentiss died close on midnight. He was discovered slumped over his desk."
Over the course of the next fifteen minutes or so, Trounce and Swinburne chatted, but I didn't hear their words; I was lost in thought.
Cobra venom. Was there an Indian connection?
The hansom trundled on, moving slowly through the murk, until we finally reached Bellringer Lane. Trounce hammered on the roof with his cane. The cab stopped and we clambered out.
"Shall I wait again, guv'nor?"
I handed the cabby his coins. "No need, this time, my man. Thank you."
I had seen, through the pall, that a number of police vehicles stood nearby.
"In here," Trounce said, and led us to the door of a house. A constable stood guard outside. He nodded a greeting to Trounce as we entered. We found ourselves in a narrow hallway with a staircase to our left. A door to our right led into the study; a smallish room with blueprints and engineering diagrams pinned to its walls. It was sparsely furnished but for a large desk by the window, a drawing board, a couple of messily filled bookshelves, and a fireplace.
"He was sitting there," Trounce said, pointing at the desk. "Slumped forward with his head resting on his hands. A quick death?"
I nodded. "Yes. He was undoubtedly overcome by drowsiness, his breathing slowed, then he passed out and died. Cobra venom is merciful, at least."
I stepped to the desk and examined the articles on it. A pen, a journal, a pocket watch, a number of books, and a machine component. There was a half written entry in the journal, obviously interrupted when the poison took effect. It was extremely technical in nature. Prentiss, it seemed, was struggling to redesign a spring housing in the Channel Hopper's machinery. An Engineer to the last, poor chap. I picked up the metal component and quickly concluded that it was the very item he'd been writing about; moulded iron, nothing more.
"You handled that as if it might be a bomb!" Swinburne observed, as I placed it back on the desk.
"Of course I did!" I replied. "The venom was injected into his hand. No one had entered the room. Obviously, then, something he handled injected it. Something here."
Trounce removed his bowler hat and slapped it. "I was barking up the wrong tree, then!" he grumbled. "I suspected a poisoned dart!"
"If it was a dart, what happened to it?"
He shrugged: "Maybe some sort of ingenious dissolving whatnot."
Swinburne applauded. "Bravo, Trounce!" he cried. "You mean like the murderous dagger fashioned from ice!"
"Quite so," the detective agreed. "Exactly that!"
"It's an interesting theory," I said, picking up the pocket watch. "But from where was the dart shot? The door and window are locked."
"Chimney sweep!" Trounce offered, glancing at the fireplace. "Came down the flue and used a blowpipe."
"Ha!" Swinburne shrilled, excitedly.
"Stick your finger in the embers, see if they're warm," I suggested. Trounce did so and was rewarded with a blister. "Blast!" he cursed.
"So the fire was doubtlessly burning when our man died; hence, no boy in the chimney."
I noticed an odd seam in the body of the watch. I was being cautious; holding the timepiece gingerly with my fingernails. Held normally, its base would sit against the base of my palm. The ball of my thumb and three of my fingers would grip its sides. Carefully, I applied pressure to those areas. Nothing happened. Trounce and Swinburne were watching me as I turned the watch, considering it from every angle.
"Prentiss died around midnight," I said. "This timepiece stopped working at ten o'clock." I gripped the winder and tried to turn it. "Yet," I noted, "it is fully wound."
I turned to my assistant. "Algy, would you take out your watch, please?"
He did as instructed.
"Look at it and imagine it has stopped. Pretend that you have wound it up but it still isn't working. What do you do?"
Swinburne raised his watch to his ear. "Confound the pesky thing!" he cried, melodramatically, then shook it. He looked at it again, and tapped its glass with a fingernail. He smiled at me and shrugged. I nodded, then imitated each of his actions. When I tapped the glass, the thing that I had half expected occurred. With a click and a whirr, a little spike shot out of the watch's base. It retracted in an instant. "By Jove!" Trounce yelled. "Fiendish!"
"And deadly!" Swinburne added.
I raised my eyebrows and said: "Gentlemen, I venture to suggest that the murderer is a Technologist!"
End of Chapter 1
The investigation is continued on Twitter @StrangeAffairs
