Ngaio Marsh - Collected Short Fiction of Ngaio Marsh

2) Contrary to the suggestions of the brothers Godfrey, it had not been bitten off by a shark but had been severed by the teeth of a hacksaw.

3) The hand was that of a woman .

This damaging report was followed by a statement from an engraver. The initials A. H., on the inside of the ring, had not been made by a professional’s tool, said this report, but had been scratched by some amateur.

The brothers Godfrey were called in and asked whether, in view of the evidence, they would care to make a further statement.

Elisha Godfrey then made what must have struck the police as one of the most impertinently unlikely depositions in the annals of investigation.

Elisha said that in his former statement he had withheld certain information which he would now divulge. Elisha said that he and his brother had been sitting on the sands when from behind a boulder, there appeared a man wearing blue goggles and a red wig and saying, “Come here! There’s a man’s hand on the beach!”

This multi-colored apparition led Elisha and his brother to the hand, and Elisha had instantly declared, “That’s Howard’s hand.”

The goggles and wig had then said, “Poor fellow… poor fellow.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before about this chap in the goggles and wig?” the police asked.

“Because,” said Elisha, “he begged me to promise I wouldn’t let anyone know he was there.”

Wearily, a sergeant shoved a copy of this amazing deposition across to Elisha. “If you’ve still got the nerve, sign it.”

The Godfreys read it through and angrily signed.

The police, in the execution of their duty, made routine inquiries for information about a gentleman in blue goggles and red wig in the vicinity of Sumner and Taylor’s Mistake on the day in question.

To their intense astonishment they found what they were after.

Several persons came forward saying that they had been accosted by this bizarre figure, who excitedly showed them a paper with the Godfreys’ name and address on it and told them that the Godfreys had found Howard’s hand.

The police stepped up their inquiries and extended them the length and breadth of New Zealand. The result was a spate of information.

The wig and goggles had been seen on the night of the alleged drowning, going north in the ferry steamer. The man who wore them had been run in for insulting a woman, who had afterwards refused to press charges. He had taken jobs on various farms. Most strangely, he had appeared at dawn by the bedside of a fellow worker and had tried to persuade this man to open a grave with him. His name, he had said, was Watt. Finally, and most interesting of all, it appeared that on the 18th of December the goggles and wig had gone for a long walk with Mrs. Sarah Howard.

Upon this information, the police arrested the Godfrey brothers and Mrs. Howard on a charge of attempting to defraud the insurance companies.

But a more dramatic arrest was made in a drab suburb of the capital city. Here the police ran to earth a strange figure in clothes too big for him, wearing blue goggles and a red wig. It was the missing Arthur Howard.

At the trial, a very rattled jury found the Godfreys and Mrs. Howard “not guilty” on both counts and Howard guilty on the second count of attempting to obtain money by fraud.

So far, everything ties up quite neatly. What won’t make sense is that Howard did his best to look like a disguised man, but came up with the most eye-catching “disguise” imaginable.

No clue has ever been produced as to the owner of the hand. Of eight graves that were subsequently opened in search for the body to match the hand, none contained a dismembered body. But the hand had been hacked off by an amateur. Could Howard have bribed a dissecting-room janitor or enlisted the help of some undertaker’s assistant? And if, as seemed certain, it was a woman’s hand, where was the rest of the woman?

Then there is Howard’s extraordinary masquerade. Why make himself so grotesquely conspicuous? Why blaze a trail all over the country? Did his project go a little to his head? Was he, after all, a victim of the artistic temperament?

The late Mr. Justice Alper records that Howard’s lawyer told him he knew the answer. But, soon after this, the lawyer died.

I have often thought I would like to use this case as the basis for a detective story, but the material refuses to be tidied up into fiction form. I prefer it as it stands, with all its loose ends dangling. I am loath to concoct the answers. Let this paradoxical affair retain its incredible mystery. It is too good to be anything but true.

“Bollinger 71,” said Lord John Challis.

“Thank you, my lord,” said the wine-waiter.

He retrieved the wine-list, bowed and moved away with soft assurance. Lord John let his eyeglass fall and gave his attention to his guest. She at once wrinkled her nose and parted her sealing-wax lips in an intimate smile. It was a pleasant and flattering grimace and Lord John responded to it. He touched his little beard with a thin hand.

“You look charming,” he said, “and you dispel all unpleasant thoughts.”

“Were they unpleasant?” asked his guest.

“They were uncomplimentary to myself. I was thinking that Benito—the wine-waiter, you know—had grown old.”

“But why—?”

“I knew him when we were both young.”

The head-waiter materialised, waved away his underlings, and himself delicately served the dressed crab. Benito returned with the champagne. He held the bottle before Lord John’s eyeglass and received a nod.

“It is sufficiently iced, my lord,” said Benito.

The champagne was opened, tasted, approved, poured out, and the bottle twisted down in the ice. Benito and the head-waiter withdrew.

“They know you very well here,” remarked the guest.

“Yes. I dined here first in 1907. We drove from the station in a hansom cab.”

“We?” murmured his guest.

“She, too, was charming. It is extraordinary how like the fashions of to-day are to those of my day. Those sleeves. And she wore a veil, too, and sat under the china cupid mirror as you do now.”

“And Benito poured out the champagne?”

“And Benito poured out the champagne. He was a rather striking looking fellow in those days. Black eyes, brows that met over his nose. A temper, you’d have said.”

“You seem to have looked carefully at him,” said the guest lightly.

“I had reason to.”

“Come,” said the guest with a smile, “I know you have a story to tell and I am longing to hear it.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Very well, then.”

Lord John leant forward a little in his chair.

“At the table where that solitary lady sits—yes—the table behind me—I am looking at it now in the cupid mirror —there sat in those days an elderly woman who was a devil. She had come for the cure and had brought with her a miserable niece whom she underpaid and bullied and humiliated after the manner of old devils all the world over. The girl might have been a pretty girl, but all the spirit was scared out of her. Or so it seemed to me. There were atrocious scenes. On the third evening—”

“The third?” murmured the guest, raising her thinned eyebrows.

“We stayed a week,” explained Lord John. “At every meal that dreadful old woman, brandishing a repulsive ear-trumpet, would hector and storm. The girl’s nerves had gone, and sometimes from sheer fright she was clumsy. Her mistakes were anathematised before the entire dining-room. She was reminded of her dependence and constantly of the circumstance of her being a beneficiary under the aunt’s will. It was disgusting—abominable. They never sat through a meal without the aunt sending the niece on some errand, so that people began to wait for the moment when the girl, miserable and embarrassed, would rise and walk through the tables, pursued by that voice. I don’t suppose that the other guests meant to be unkind but many of them were ill-mannered enough to stare at her and wait for her reappearance with shawl, or coat, or book, or bag, or medicine. She used to come back through the tables with increased gaucherie. Every step was an agony and then, when she was seated, there would be merciless criticism of her walk, her elbows, her colour, her pallor. I saw it all in the little cupid mirror. Benito came in for his share too. That atrocious woman would order her wine, change her mind, order again, say it was corked, not the vintage she ordered, complain to the head-waiter—I can’t tell you what else. Benito was magnificent. Never by a hairsbreadth did he vary his courtesy.”