Freeman, R Austin - For the Defence: Dr. Thorndyke (1934)

The forensic detective

Holmes’s activities with test-tube and Bunsen burner were largely for show, but several writers have taken the trouble to develop detectives with credible forensic skills. Long before the recent flurry of interest in plucky, good-looking young female pathologists (who always go out at night to meet sinister witnesses in deserted locations), researchers like Dr. Priestley (by John Rhode) in the UK and Craig Kennedy (by Arthur Reeve) in the USA were examining the evidence in their labs. Preceding all these was the immensely popular Dr. John Thorndyke, whose investigations cover 23 books, mostly chronicled by his faithful associate Christopher Jervis. Both men are medical doctors, and Thorndyke also has legal qualifications which stand him in good stead when testifying in court.

The story

It is 1928 (the book was published in 1934). The story begins with Andrew Barton, at his country house, receiving a letter from his ne’er-do-well cousin Ronald. Andrew is married, a wealthy painter; Ronald a sponger who lives off others. Not for the first time, Ronald wants a loan – of fifty pounds. And he wants to visit – an event which Andrew is determined to prevent. For Andrew’s good looks have been horribly disfigured by a cricketing accident to his face, and he fears that the family resemblance of the handsome Ronald to his younger self might prove too much for his wife Molly. Andrew puts his mind to work on a scheme to avert the visit.

This involves deceiving his wife, and – after a domestic scene with some mild humour on the topics of five o’clock tea and womens’ hats – he goes off to initiate the scheme with a slight sense of guilt. The guilt continues to plague him as he makes his preparations; he tells Molly he is going to London, but in fact he plans to call on Ronald a day before the visit is due, to forestall him. Andrew is not accustomed to deceiving his wife, and his peace of mind is disturbed.

On the evening before his trip he takes a solitary walk along a deserted road. A car stops nearby; it is driven by a woman and contains a male passenger. The man calls Andrew over, but as he is approaching the car two masked bandits emerge from the darkness. They seize Andrew and shove him towards the car, apparently intending to rob the occupants. The passenger draws a pistol; shots are exchanged and the car drives off. The would-be thieves release Andrew and set off in their own car.

Andrew returns home unhurt. Molly advises him to keep quiet about the affair in case a witness tries to implicate him in the crime. Andrew concurs, with reservations, and agrees to wear his spectacles to disguise his features. These are what we would now call ‘prosthetics’; they include a flesh-coloured insert which conceals the damage to his face.

The night’s events are driven from his mind by his trip to Crompton the following day to see Ronald. He packs a cheque and some cash in an attache-case, and catches an early train. He fills in time with a visit to a picture-dealer, and locates Ronald’s dwelling in a shabby alleyway near a police station. The same alley contains the premises of a Professor Booley, who advertises as follows:

“GOOD LOOKS ARE THE SUREST PASSPORTS TO SUCCESS. IF NATURE HASN’T GIVEN THEM TO YOU, COME IN AND LET ME MAKE GOOD HER FAILURE. … WHY HAVE A CROOKED NOSE? DON’T. LET ME STRAIGHTEN IT OUT.”

A few minutes later Ronald meets Andrew in the street. Andrew leaves his attache-case in his cousin’s lodgings and they set off to find a place for lunch. After lunch they walk along the cliff-tops to the beach. The day is hot, and they descend the chalk cliffs to a secluded bay, and take a nude swim; their only observers being a remote fishing lugger. As the lugger disappears from sight behind a headland, there is a fall of chalk from the cliff face, and Ronald is killed, his face battered beyond recognition.

Andrew, aghast, slowly recovers his wits, dresses and sets off back towards Crompton, intending to tell the police. He becomes lost, and, looking for his spectacles, discovers that he has put on Ronald’s suit, his own being under the rock fall.

Back in the alleyway, he is about to enter the police station when he sees his own description on a ‘Wanted’ poster: the car driver of the night before has died, and the woman has identified Andrew as the gunman. A description of his battered face is given. Andrew retreats from the police station. Where is he to go? His injury marks him out unmistakeably. Then he passes the establishment of Professor Booley.

The professor is packing, due to leave the country and return to his home in the USA, but he agrees to do what he can for Andrew. The nose is to be built back up with paraffin wax, which must be moulded into shape. Anxious to conceal any link with his own identity, Andrew opts for a Roman nose rather than the Grecian that he began life with. The painful operation is carried out; Andrew is given a mirror and finds himself regarding the face of his cousin Ronald.

He dines happily with the Professor, little realizing what awaits him: he was far from perceiving that the control of his future had passed out of his hands; that events were already shepherding him irresistibly in a particular direction without regard to his inclinations or desires. It was only by degrees, as he began to make his plans, that he realised how little choice he had; how completely he had become the creature of circumstance.

Andrew returns to the alleyway alone. He sees his cousin’s body brought to the police station, along with Andrew’s clothes, by a constable and a fisherman. He retreats to Ronald’s lodgings, where he meets and pays off the landlady to whom Ronald owes money. Now he needs to plan his future.

The following morning he travels to London to cash the cheque he had made out to Ronald. He decides to continue in Ronald’s identity, and takes a set of rooms in his name. A report of the inquest on the car murder reveals that he has been named as the gunman. Andrew is clearly safest out of the way.

But taking on Ronald’s identity has its drawbacks. An angry woman accosts him from the platform as he leaves on a train. The newspaper report of the inquest on Ronald reveals that the body has been identified as Andrew’s, but there are doubts about how and why he came to meet his death. Molly Barton is adamant that some kind of foul play must have been involved.

Wanting to get in touch with Molly, Andrew writes to her in the character of Ronald, proposing that he visit her at home. She agrees; and an awkward visit takes place. Andrew realises that in adopting the character of Ronald he has lost the woman he loves; Molly mourns her reluctance to share Andrew’s interests when he was alive. She reiterates her conviction that foul play took place on the beach.

Andrew returns to Ronald’s life; and the woman from the platform catches up with him. She is Ronald’s deserted wife Lizzie, whom he married under the name of Tony Neville; believing Andrew to be Ronald, she offers him a reconciliation; but when Andrew feigns ignorance, she threatens to rake up his – i.e. Ronald’s – disreputable past. False names are mentioned, and a prison term. Andrew’s protestations do nothing to shake her resolve.

Despite mounting apprehension, Andrew settles down in his new lodgings to try and paint. He sketches his landlady, and begins to wander through London looking for other subjects. Beginning a painting on Hampstead Heath, he is accosted by a passer-by who enquires about his movements. The reason becomes apparent when he returns two days later with a police officer: still posing as Ronald, Andrew is arrested under the name of Anthony Kempster. At the police station Lizzie Neville identifies him as her husband, and he is arrested on a charge of impersonation to fraudulently obtain life insurance. He is still carrying Ronald’s wallet, and in it there is a bill which identifies him as Kempster.

He is detained and fed, brought before a magistrate and remanded in custody. For the first time he learns what ‘Anthony Kempster’ is supposed to have done; impersonated a elderly invalid for the purpose of obtaining life insurance in his name, and later – after the invalid’s death – marrying his wife. This is Lizzie Neville, who is now in agonies of remorse for informing upon him.

Andrew is taken away in a police van to a jail cell – both are described here in detail for keen students of the period. (The cell’s contents include a ‘slate, with a stump of pencil’, and a good deal of graffiti.) Andrew settles down to await his fate, but his warder, Officer Bolton, urges him to seek legal advice. Andrew returns to court and is committed for trial. A few days later he is stunned out of his apathy by another blow: he is identified as Ronald and charged with the murder of Andrew Barton.

Aided by Officer Bolton and the prison doctor, Andrew begins to take action. The doctor suggests an advocate for him – the great Dr. John Thorndyke – and Andrew agrees.

Thorndyke arrives the next day. He cuts a commanding figure: a very impressive person with a distinctly imposing presence, due not alone to the stature, the upright, dignified carriage and the suggestion of physical strength. Andrew confides his real identity to him, and Thorndyke makes his first test by examining the reconstructed nose. Reassured, he extracts the remainder of the long strange story. He shows a surprising interest in details: the family tree of the Bartons and the paintings of Andrew’s landlady. He asks Andrew to sign papers, and with Holmesian loftiness dismisses the matter of payment. The passive Andrew is clearly overwhelmed by this icon of massive authority. And Thorndyke brings good news; the car murder charge against Andrew Barton has been dropped.

Having satisfied himself of Andrew’s bona fides, Thorndyke returns five days later with his colleague Jarvis, and his instructing solicitor Marchmont to act as a legal ‘figure-head’. They take Andrew to the prison infirmary where Thorndyke employs a ‘secret process’ on his own nose and Jarvis’s as well as Andrew’s.

Andrew comes to trial at last. Sir Oliver Blizzard, for the prosecution, points out the unusual nature of the case: the first difficulty is to prove whether murder was done at all; this is the hurdle that must be cleared before guilt can be brought home to the prisoner. He presents his case in a fluent speech for the prosecution, setting out Andrew’s activities prior to the accident and ‘Ronald’s’ activities afterwards, and pointing out each incriminating fact. It looks very much as if Ronald has killed his cousin and stolen his money, perhaps visiting Dr. Booley to conceal the marks made during a struggle between them.

Molly Barton is called and the cross-examinations begin. Thorndyke is unruffled by the weight of evidence. He coaxes out of Molly Barton her opinion that the new Ronald is a changed man. The picture-seller, the waiter and the lugger captain all give their evidence. Thorndyke stresses the difficulty involved in lifting the rock with which ‘Ronald’ is supposed to have killed his cousin. The sergeant from the police station and the landlady give evidence. She identifies Andrew’s attache case as having been in ‘Ronald’s’ possession.

The prosecution now bring forth their expert witness, the pathologist Sir Artemus Pope. But Pope is adamant that the injuries to the victim are more consistent with a natural rock fall than with an attack. Another ray of hope appears when Thorndyke elicits from him the opinion that the victim’s nasal injuries don’t correspond with those Andrew Barton is described as having had.

Andrew himself is called to the witness box and tells his story. He successfully rebuts the attacks of Sir Oliver. Thorndyke’s colleague Jervis plays his part, testifying to the vertical fall of the block of chalk and the absence of previous damage to the victim’s nasal bones. Lizzie Neville declares that the prisoner’s voice and manner don’t match those of her husband. Mr. Montagu, an art dealer, identifies ‘Ronald’s’ portraits of his landlady as unmistakeably Andrew’s work. Ronald’s previous stay in prison comes in handy; for his fingerprints have been taken and can be shown to differ from Andrew’s.

Thorndyke’s closing speech is rather long-winded but it puts the points in Andrew’s favour. A verdict is handed down of Not Guilty, Andrew is freed, and the Prosecution is generous in defeat.

About the Book

At the time this was written Freeman was well into a long series of Thorndyke books and perhaps becoming a little fed up with his character. By keeping him in the background, he could tell an intriguing story, and have Thorndyke appear as a deus ex machina to straighten it all out at the end. This book is free from the sentiment that appears in some of the others, notably those concerning the debut of Christopher Jervis as an investigator and the arrival of Thorndyke’s assistant Polton, who doesn’t appear here. The chain of incredible coincidences is also atypical; Thorndyke’s cases are usually less romantic.

What are we to make of the case? Andrew Barton, the hero, is cloth-headed and passive; but is he completely wrong? There were just as many false arrests in 1928 as there are today, and the prospect of a hanging at the end added considerably to the terrors involved. The system for housing and accommodating prisoners is presented without comment, and we see little of Andrew’s companions in prison, but they must have been a fairly rough and wretched bunch.

In fact, Andrew Barton has something in common with Dashiell Hammett’s Flitcraft, mentioned in The Maltese Falcon. Flitcraft, according to Sam Spade, is a man who was on his way home from work when a steel girder fell a few inches away from him. Startled out of his rut, Flitcraft pulls up roots and vanishes to a new state, where he establishes a new life under another name. Tracking him down, Spade finds him married to the same kind of woman, in the same kind of house, with the same kind of job that he left. “He became accustomed to beams falling,” Spade explains. “Then they stopped falling, and he became accustomed to that again.” In Andrew’s case, it is a hundredweight of chalk that falls: and the description of Ronald’s legs, moving spiderlike for a few seconds afterwards, does a lot to explain his subsequent panicky flight. After all, if Ronald had chosen the right clothes to sit on, it would have been Andrew under that lot.

What little we see of Ronald is plausible enough, though his stretch in prison indicates he is not as smooth an operator as he thinks he is. Poor Lizzie Neville is clearly still very attached to him. In fact, she deserves more sympathy than she gets; she goes through the anguish of getting her husband – as she thinks – arrested, only to discover without warning that he is dead after all. Meanwhile Molly is a little too suspicious of the new ‘Ronald’ to be true – and would she really fail to recognise her husband? But the story rolls on smoothly through it all.

On his choice of an ‘inverted’ format, where the reader sees the events leading up to the ‘crime’, Freeman had this to say in an earlier book:

In real life, the identity of the criminal is a question of supreme importance for practical reasons; but in fiction, where no such reasons exist, I conceive the interest of the reader to be engaged chiefly by the demonstration of unexpected consequences of simple actions, of unsuspected causal connections, and by the evolution of an ordered train of evidence from a mass of facts apparently incoherent and unrelated. The reader's curiosity is concerned not so much with the question "Who did it?" as with the question "How was the discovery achieved?" That is to say, the ingenious reader is interested more in the intermediate action than in the ultimate result.

Is there a writer working today who could even construct a paragraph like this, let alone express the sentiments it contains?

Jon Jermey

Review by Nick Fuller

3/5

A decidedly uneven work, which falls into two sections markedly disparate in quality. The first concerns the adventures of Andrew Barton, whose inferiority complex, stemming from a broken nose, ultimately causes him to fall into a very nasty dilemma: if he proves he is Andrew, he will be arrested for one murder; if he doesn’t, he will be hanged as his cousin for his own murder. It has been said that tragedy is only comedy gone wrong, and the bones of the story are not too dissimilar from those of a Wodehouse novel. Unfortunately, the second half is rather flat. While there is, of course, nothing to complain about in Thorndyke’s reconstruction of the facts, it is very anti-climactic; there is never any doubt that Andrew will be acquitted, so suspense and tension are lost.

For the Defense: Dr. Thorndyke (1934) is one of Freeman's weakest books. It is not really a mystery. In fact, it does not fall into any well defined genre, although it has some affinities with Freeman's inverted tales. The book can be summarized as follows. Through a hideous series of disastrous coincidences, an innocent man loses his identity, and becomes accused of a crime. He hires Thorndyke as his lawyer, and Thorndyke straightens the whole mess out. The coincidences show some mild ingenuity: they are certainly bizarre and far ranging, with Freeman ringing every possible change in his hero's status.

In some ways the book resembles a Freeman inverted tale. As in the true inverteds, the first half of the tale shows us everything through the accused's eyes, giving us a step by step account of his actions. The latter part of the book shows Thorndyke establishing what really happened, collecting a great deal of scientific evidence to support his ideas. As in the true inverteds, there are no mysteries concealed from the reader, who sees everything just as the protagonist does.

However, this novel's paradigm is quite different from the inverteds' in key ways, ways that make the form weaker, and less interesting. In true inverteds, Thorndyke does much detective work to discover the truth. Here, he does not need to do anything of the sort. The protagonist simple tells him the whole story: Thorndyke is simply given the whole case on the platter. So Thorndyke does no detective work in the true sense. His only job is to gather scientific evidence that the protagonist's far-fetched sounding story is in fact true. This is not an especially difficult or interesting task. In fact, most people would not have the slightest difficulty coming up with the evidence Thorndyke finds. Similarly, the hero of this book does not do anything to actively commit or cover up a crime. He is simply buffeted about by fate.

The other big problem with this novel is its sheer unpleasantness as a piece of storytelling. The nightmarish events that befall the hero are distressing to think about. They are certainly not fun in any sense. Our hero also feels completely isolated from other people. He is unutterably unwilling to trust them in any way. This sense of social isolation and alienation casts a shadow over many of Freeman's books, especially his later ones.

Mike Grost