“You know the superstition, of course,” Hewitt said. “It did exist in this country in the last century, when there were plenty of dead men hanging at cross-roads, and so on. On the Continent, in some places, it has survived later. Among the Wallachian gipsies it has always been a great article of belief, and the superstition is quite active still. The belief is that the right hand of a hanged man, cut off and dried over the smoke of certain wood and herbs, and then provided with wicks at each finger made of the dead man’s hair, becomes, when lighted at each wick (the wicks are greased, of course), a charm, whereby a thief may walk without hinderance where he pleases in a strange house, push open all doors and take what he likes. Nobody can stop him, for everybody the Hand of Glory approaches is made helpless, and can neither move nor speak. You may remember there was some talk of ‘ thieves’ candles ‘ in connection with the horrible series of Whitechapel murders not long ago. That is only one form of the cult of the Hand of Glory.”
“Yes,” my uncle said; “I remember reading so. There is a story about it in the Ingoldsby Legends, too, I believe.”
“There is — it is called ‘The Hand of Glory,’ in fact. You remember the spell, ‘ Open lock to the dead man’s knock,’ and so on. But I think you’d better have the constable up and get this man into safe quarters for the night. He should be searched, of course. I expect they will find on him the hair I noticed to have been cut from Sneathy’s head.”
The village constable arrived with his iron handcuffs in substitution for those of cord which had so sorely vexed the wrists of our prisoner, and marched him away to the little lock-up on the green.
Then my uncle and Mr. Hardwick turned on Martin Hewitt with doubts and many questions:
“Why do you call it suicide?” Mr. Hardwick asked. “It is plain the Fosters were with him at the time from the tracks. Do you mean to say that they stood there and watched Sneathy hang himself without interfering?”
“No, I don’t,” Hewitt replied, lighting a cigar. “I think I told you that they never saw Sneathy.”
“Yes, you did, and of course that’s what they said themselves when they were arrested. But the thing’s impossible. Look at the tracks! ”
“The tracks are exactly what revealed to me that it was not impossible,” Hewitt returned. “I’ll tell you how the case unfolded itself to me from the beginning. As to the information you gathered from the Ranworth coachman, to begin with. The conversation between the Fosters which he overheard might well mean something less serious than murder. What did they say? They had been sent for in a hurry and had just had a short consultation with their mother and sister. Henry said that ‘ the thing must be done at once ‘; also that as there were two of them it should be easy. Robert said that Henry, as a doctor, would know best what to do.
“Now you, Colonel Brett, had been saying — before we learned these things from Mr. Hardwick — that Sneathy’s behaviour of late had become so bad as to seem that of a madman. Then there was the story of his sudden attack on a tradesman in the village, and equally sudden running away — exactly the sort of impulsive, wild thing that madmen do. Why then might it not be reasonable to suppose that Sneathy had become mad — more especially considering all the circumstances of the case, his commercial ruin and disgrace and his horrible life with his wife and her family? — had become suddenly much worse and quite uncontrollable, so that the two wretched women left alone with him were driven to send in haste for Henry and Robert to help them? That would account for all.
“The brothers arrive just after Sneathy had gone out. They are told in a hurried interview how affairs stand, and it is decided that Sneathy must be at once secured and confined in an asylum before something serious happens. He has just gone out — something terrible may be happening at this moment. The brothers determine to follow at once and secure him wherever he may be. Then the meaning of their conversation is plain. The thing that ‘ must be done, and at once,’ is the capture of Sneathy and his confinement in an asylum. Henry, as a doctor, would ‘ know what to do ‘ in regard to the necessary formalities. And they took a halter in case a struggle should ensue and it were found necessary to bind him. Very likely, wasn’t it?”
“Well, yes,” Mr. Hardwick replied, “it certainly is. It never struck me in that light at all.”
“That was because you believed, to begin with, that a murder had been committed, and looked at the preliminary circumstances which you learned after in the light of your conviction. But now, to come to my actual observations. I saw the footmarks across the fields, and agreed with you (it was indeed obvious) that Sneathy had gone that way first, and that the brothers had followed, walking over his tracks. This state of the tracks continued until well into the wood, when suddenly the tracks of the brothers opened out and proceeded on each side of Sneathy’s. The simple inference would seem to be, of course, the one you made — that the Fosters had here overtaken Sneathy, and walked one at each side of him.
“But of this I felt by — no means certain. Another very simple explanation was available, which might chance to be the true one. It was just at the spot where the brothers’ tracks separated that the path became suddenly much muddier, because of the closer overhanging of the trees at the spot. The path was, as was to be expected, wettest in the middle. It would be the most natural thing in the world for two well-dressed young men, on arriving here, to separate so as to walk one on each side of the mud in the middle.
“On the other hand, a man in Sneathy’s state (assuming him, for the moment, to be mad and contemplating suicide) would walk straight along the centre of the path, taking no note of mud or anything else. I examined all the tracks very carefully, and my theory was confirmed. The feet of the brothers had everywhere alighted in the driest spots, and the steps were of irregular lengths — which meant, of course, that they were picking their way; while Sneathy’s footmarks had never turned aside even for the dirtiest puddle. Here, then, were the rudiments of a theory.
“At the watercourse, of course, the footmarks ceased, because of the hard gravel. The body lay on a knoll at the left — a knoll covered with grass. On this the signs of footmarks were almost undiscoverable, although I am often able to discover tracks in grass that are invisible to others. Here, however, it was almost useless to spend much time in examination, for you and your man had been there, and what slight marks there might be would be indistinguishable one from another.
“Under the branch from which the man had hung there was an old tree stump, with a flat top, where the tree had been sawn off. I examined this, and it became fairly apparent that Sneathy had stood on it when the rope was about his neck — his muddy footprint was plain to see; the mud was not smeared about, you see, as it probably would have been if he had been stood there forcibly and pushed off. It was a simple, clear footprint — another hint at suicide.
“But then arose the objection that you mentioned yourself. Plainly the brothers Foster were following Sneathy, and came this way. Therefore, if he hanged himself before they arrived, it would seem that they must have come across the body. But now I examined the body itself. There was mud on the knees, and clinging to one knee was a small leaf. It was a leaf corresponding to those on the bush behind the tree, and it was not a dead leaf, so must have been just detached.
“After my examination of the body I went to the bush, and there, in the thick of it, were, for me, sufficiently distinct knee-marks, in one of which the knee had crushed a spray of the bush against the ground, and from that spray a leaf was missing. Behind the knee-marks were the indentations of boot-toes in the soft, bare earth under the bush, and thus the thing was plain. The poor lunatic had come in sight of the dangling rope, and the temptation to suicide was irresistible. To people in a deranged state of mind the mere sight of the means of self-destruction is often a temptation impossible to withstand. But at that moment he must have heard the steps — probably the voices — of the brothers behind him on the winding path. He immediately hid in the bush till they had passed. It is probable that seeing who the men were, and conjecturing that they were following him — thinking also, perhaps, of things that had occurred between them and himself — his inclination