More from Dr.

Parker's Notebooks

15 February 1920

ln Paddington Station this morning Pons drew my attention to a laborer, both of

whose hands were badly callused - and not alone callused. The worst dermatoses
appeared along the forefinger, but were present on all the fingers, along the palm
down from the forefinger and on the thumb.
"What do you make of that fellow?" he asked.
"Why, he is obviously engaged in some occupation that calluses his hands."
"Nothing more? Arc not some of those calluses raised and the area around them
inflamed?"
"Yes, that's so, I agreed.
"This suggests nothing about the nature of his occupation?"
"Well, his calluses some of them appear to rise above blisters. So
he works with something hot. Perhaps iron.''
"Capital! Capital!'' exclaimed Pons, as our subject moved to board
a train. "Now carry on.''
''His occupation could thus be one of a number."} said defensively. "I think
not. I submit he is a glass-gatherer in a glass factory. His calluses are typical
of those made by the heat of the gathering iron.
The blisters beneath the calluses are distinctive."

17 FEBRUARY 1920

Inspector Jamison came in this afternoon, his face aglow with satisfaction. He
carried a well-wrapped parcel which he laid before Pons.
"Take a look at that, Pons," he said triumphantly. "We've been

looking for it a long time."

Pons carefully unwrapped the parcel, revealing an old book.
"Wiener Kinderlieder," he murmured. "Printed in 1437."
"Stolen from Baron Edouard Larbeau's collection six months ago.
It turned up at Sotheby's."
Pons was examining the rare volume with sober attention, his keen eyes narrowed.
"You took the thief!"he asked, looking up.
"Unfortunately, no. We turned up the book in a lot bought by
Sotheby's for auction. It was only one of Larbeau's books to be stolen and it came
in without being detected at first. Of course, they'd had word from us to be on the
watch for it. So we were called -traced the seller but our bird had flown. Two
others of the missing books were in his quarters. This book, though, was the most
valuable and the one Larbeau's wanted above all."
"A pity," said Pons crisply. "I fancy Baron Larbeau will not be
entirely pleased."
"Oh, as to that," said Jamison, "it's the book he wants- not the thief. Though
we'd sooner have had the thief."
"I rather think that the book is not quite in the same condition it
was when it was stolen," said Pons dryly.
Apprehension flickered in Jamison's eyes. "What do you mean?" "Why, it has been
taken apart and rebound," said Pons. "Quite
skillfully, too. Clearly not the work of an amateur."
"What would anyone want to do that for?" demanded Jamison with the kind of
truculence that hid his disbelief.
"Many of the forms of th.cse old volumes were enclosed in parchment, which
frequently bore inscriptions of more value to today's collector than the books
themselves. The bands of this book have been recently removed and the book rebound.
A highly professional piece of work. Small wonder it was turned in."
Crestfallen, Jamison muttered, "Larbeau may not notice it."
"I daresay he would not help doing so," said Pons. "Depend on it. Collectors are
immediately aware of such details, however trivial they may seem to you or to me."

18 FEBRUARY 1920

Pons on the Stupidities of Forgers. "Some forgers are incredibly skillful , yet
often overlook some inconsequential detail inconsequential, that is, to them.
Latouche, a forger in the early decades of the last century, once prepared a
fraudulent document dated to the fourth century. He used parchment which had been
gnawed by mice, leaving a patently identifiable hole. On tl1c initial page of the
document, Latouche broke a word at the left edge of the mousehole, and carried on
with it on the right, suggesting that the parchment bad been so damaged when the
document had been prepared; but on the second page he stupidly omitted a portion of
the word between the edges of the mousehole, as had the recreant mouse gnawed it
away. Manifestly, then. if there had been a hole in the parchment when the first
page of the document had been prepared, but none when the second was done, the
fraudulence of the document was clearly established .
''In many cases a simple lack of knowledge betrays the forger�
the use of ink or paper not yet invented at the time the work was purportedly dated
-the making of erasures, which can always be detected either by chemical analysis
or the use of ultraviolet light, the so-called 'black light' the misspelling of
words by one presumably too educated to have been guilty of such errors the use of
documentary stamps not yet in use at the dating of the document in question, most
commonly here in England the use of a King's head stamp on documents executed
during the reign of our late queen such stamps, of course, being not then in
existence. You will find many similar stupidities ser down in Gross, Lucas and
other authorities in the domain of criminal investigation ."

2 1 FEBRUARY l920

In the course of a visit to 7B today Inspector Jamison remarked that the police
bad at last captured a member of a "smash and grab" gang that had operated
successfully for several months. The captive was a girl of seventeen.
A flicker of interest shone in Pons's eyes. "Does it not seem unlikely that so
young a girl would be a member of a professional gang of criminals?" he asked.

"Oh, the criminal classes make no differentiation among the ages or sexes,"
Jamison answered ponderously. "She claims she was hired to do it a likely story !
She sticks to it though, and she's belligerent about it."
"Let us just have a brief resume of the case," suggested Pons.
"II happened at Carville's Jewelers two days ago. An ordinarily clever operation.
The thieves came in - three young men, two together, the other separate. The girl,
Cicely Evans, was there when they came in, just looking around. Of a sudden she
fell to the floor in a faint or some sort of spell, and when Carville and one of
his lady clerks came around the counters, the thieves acted. They'd had time to
locate the gems they wanted, broke the cases, scooped them up, ran to a car outside
and got away. They had a Daimler with a chauffeur waiting. It went so fast no one
got the number. Carville was suspicious of the girl, and detained her until the
police came. They had a doctor examine her. Nothing could be found wrong -though of
course fainting doesn't show much in the way of physical symptoms. They put her
through it until she finally confessed with the story."
"How was she 'hired,' as you put it? Did she explain that?"
 "Oh, yes she had a ready explanation. She was sent out the evening before to get
something a package of cigars at a shop a few blocks from her home," said Jamison.
"When she got near to the house on her way back, a woman got out of a car that
stood across the street, crossed over, and offered her ten pounds to be at the
store at that hour of the morning, and when the three young men were in it, to give
them a little time to look around, and then to faint. She did it."
"Telling no one?"
"Oh, she said she talked it over with her uncle and aunt She lives with them. Her
parents live in Surrey. They didn't get along. Her uncle and aunt are a ruddy
couple. They didn't seem to think there was any harm in making ten pounds that
easily. But they claim the girl's always been a problem -stubborn, fiery of temper,
hard to get along with."
Pons sat for a few moments in thoughtful silence.
"There's no reason to accept her story," said Jamison defensively. "Let us just
examine it," said Pons. "She was sent out for cigars.
When she returned, the woman in the car was waiting for her?"

"So she says. Highly unlikely.''

'1submit that in matters of this kind one is faced with one of two alternatives
only either the story is true, or it is not true. You have subscribed to the latter
alternative. Let us suppose, however, that the Evans girl is telling the truth. Has
she given any description of the woman?"
"Only such a one as would fit roughly two hundred thousand
women in London," said Jamison grudgingly. "She had answers for us
when she made up her mind to give them."
"t does not occur to you that if the woman and the car were there, someone must
have known that the girl was coming along?"
''If the woman and the car existed, yes."
"You've asked her to name her accomplices?"
"We've been all through that," said Jamison impatiently. "She claims she doesn't
know them. Or to put it plain she won 't talk about them."
"Let us accept for the nonce the statements she has mad e."Jamison shifted
uneasily in his chair. "How could tl1at alter the fact that she did fake that spell
to distract Carville and his clerks?"
"lt doesn't She hasn't denied that. In any case, there were witnesses. She made
no attempt to escape?"
"Ob, yes. She panicked. But she was restrained by Carville." Jamison got up
abruptly. "There's no use in this fiddling, Pons. She's in it, no denying it. And
we'll get her accomplices."
"I fancy she has none," said Pons. He sat now with his eyes closed, his fingers
tented. "I put it to you , Jamison, you are looking in the wrong quarter. If the
girl was being waited for. then someone in that car must have known that she was
going to the shop and returning at that hour, someone who was acquainted perhaps in
league with the gang." Pons's eyes opened; they were dancing. "Change your tactics
and put her uncle through it, Jamison. I think it extremely likely that he will be
able to give you the names or the accomplices, if he will"

23 FEBRUARY 1920

Pons put down the News of the World this evening with a melancholy chuckle. "A
pharmacist has been hospitalized suffering

from accidental arsenical poisoning," he said. "A pharmacist of almost thirty

years" experience. Does that sound logical to you, Parker?"
"Hardly. A pharmacist of little experience might somehow contrive
to give himself enough arsenic to make himself ill, but one of as much experience
as this fellow would never be able to do it unless .he were bent on suicide - and
if that, he would have at his fingertips many more lethal and quick-acting poisons.
He would hardly resort to arsenic, when a little cyanide would do the job rapidly."
"His story does not seem to have been questioned by the examining
physician," continued Pons. "Yet it is plain as a pikestaff that his sister was
poisoning him for the sake of such small inheritance as might come her way."
"How can you say so?"
"The facts are only too clear. This fellow lived with his sister. He went
nowhere, and ate all his meals at home. During the noon hour his sister took his
place in the pharmacy , so that he could come home to eat the meal she had prepared
for him. It is a simple matter of having both adequate motive and opportunity -
opportunity to gel at the arsenic while she tended the pharmacy, and of putting it
into the meals she prepared for him."
"Will you enter the matter?"
He shook his head. "The dosage was not fatal. Unless he is an idiot, he will have
come to the correct explanation of his poisoning, and will make sure that he is not
again put into jeopardy."

24FEBRUARY 1920

Pons left beside my breakfast plate this morning a marked paragraph in the
morning Telegraph. Under a heading, "Jewel Thieves Caught," I read: "Two members of
the gang that made a smash raid at Carville's Jewelers on Tite Street last week
were apprehended today; a third and fourth are being sought. Information was lodged
with the police on enquiry by Theodore Evans, an associate of the thieves, and
uncle of a girl thought to be implicated in the robbery. Credit for astute
detection must go to Inspector Seymour Jamison of Scotland Yard ...."