Serpents in Paradise by Martin Edwards & Martin Edwards

Author:Martin Edwards & Martin Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2015-10-26T04:00:00+00:00

The Naturalist at Law

R. Austin Freeman

Richard Austin Freeman (1862–1943) was a doctor who turned to writing detective fiction to supplement his income after ill health affected his career; he had contracted blackwater fever while working for the Colonial Service in west Africa. At first he collaborated with the medical officer at Holloway Prison, J.J. Pitcairn, but he found fame after branching out on his own, and creating Dr John Thorndyke.

Thorndyke, a specialist in medico-legal jurisprudence, with chambers at King’s Bench Walk, first appeared in The Red Thumb Mark (1907), and his popularity was such that Freeman continued to write about him to the end of his life. The Thorndyke mysteries derive their strength from Freeman’s scientific knowledge. He researched his plots meticulously, and this cleverly crafted story is one of his finest.

***

A hush had fallen on the court as the coroner concluded his brief introductory statement and the first witness took up his position by the long table. The usual preliminary questions elicited that Simon Moffet, the witness aforesaid, was fifty-eight years of age, that he followed the calling of a shepherd and that he was engaged in supervising the flocks that fed upon the low-lying meadows adjoining the little town of Bantree in Buckinghamshire.

“Tell us how you came to discover the body,” said the coroner.

“ ’Twas on Wednesday morning, about half-past five,” Moffet began. “I was getting the sheep through the gate into the big meadow by Reed’s farm, when I happened to look down the dyke, and then I noticed a boot sticking up out of the water. Seemed to me as if there was a foot in it by the way it stuck up, so as soon as all the sheep was in, I shut the gate and walked down the dyke to have a look at un. When I got close I see the toe of another boot just alongside. Looks a bit queer, I thinks, but I couldn’t see anything more, ’cause the duck-weed is that thick as it looks as if you could walk on it. Howsever, I clears away the weed with my stick, and then I see ’twas a dead man. Give me a rare turn, it did. He was a-layin’ at the bottom of the ditch with his head near the middle and his feet up close to the bank. Just then young Harry Walker comes along the cart-track on his way to work, so I shows him the body and sends him back to the town for to give notice at the police station.”

“And is that all you know about the affair?”

“Ay. Later on I see the sergeant come along with a man wheelin’ the stretcher, and I showed him where the body was and helped to pull it out and load it on the stretcher. And that’s all I know about it.”

On this the witness was dismissed and his place taken by a shrewd-looking, business-like police sergeant, who deposed as follows:

“Last Wednesday, the 8th of May, at 6.15 a.m.,

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