Murder is usually a crime of
impulse, and the murderer a person of feeble self-control. Such persons
are most unlikely to make elaborate and ingenious arrangements for the
disposal of the bodies of their victims. Even the cold-blooded
perpetrators of the most carefully planned murders appear, as I have
said, to break down at this point. The almost insuperable difficulty of
getting rid of a human body is not appreciated until the murderer
suddenly finds himself face to face with it.
"In the case that you are suggesting, the choice would seem to lie
between burial on the premises or dismemberment and dispersal of the
fragments; and either method would be pretty certain to lead to
discovery."
"As illustrated by the remains of which you were speaking to Mr.
Bellingham," Jervis remarked.
"Exactly," Thorndyke answered, "though we could hardly imagine a
reasonably intelligent criminal adopting a watercress-bed as a
hiding-place."
"No. That was certainly an error of judgment. By the way, I thought it
best to say nothing while you were talking to Bellingham, but I noticed
that, in discussing the possibility of those being the bones of his
brother, you made no comment on the absence of the third finger of the
left hand.
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