: R. Austin Freeman
: The Red Thumb Mark
: Dead Dodo Crime Classics
: 9781508083542
: 1
: CHF 0.70
:
: Historische Romane und Erzählungen
: English
: 280
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
Fingerpri ts. A single print, being unique - not even identical twins have the same fingerprints - that single print found in the right place at the right time is sufficient to disclose the perpetrator of a crime.

 

Actually, there are those who claim that identifying and matching fingerprints is not sufficiently scientific and so the fingerprint doesn't carry the weight in court that it did only a decade ago. DNA is now the sexy evidence.

 

In The Red Thumbmark by R Austin Freeman, published in 1907, a single fingerprint is found at the scene of a crime. When the police are able to identify that fingerprint, the case seems closed.

 

But Dr Thorndyke, the detective/barrister/medical doctor who takes on defense of this suspect, thinks he can disprove the prosecution's case, based on that same fingerprint.

 

It does not take Dr Thorndyke to figure out who the criminal is. The mystery in this wonderful detective tale is who the lovely heroine is in love with. The answer may surprise you.

CHAPTER I: MY LEARNED BROTHER


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“CONFLAGRATAM AN° 1677. FABRICATAM AN° 1698. Richardo Powell Armiger Thesaurar.” The words, set in four panels, which formed a frieze beneath the pediment of a fine brick portico, summarised the history of one of the tall houses at the upper end of King’s Bench Walk and as I, somewhat absently, read over the inscription, my attention was divided between admiration of the exquisitely finished carved brickwork and the quiet dignity of the building, and an effort to reconstitute the dead and gone Richard Powell, and the stirring times in which he played his part.

I was about to turn away when the empty frame of the portico became occupied by a figure, and one so appropriate, in its wig and obsolete habiliments, to the old-world surroundings that it seemed to complete the picture, and I lingered idly to look at it. The barrister had halted in the doorway to turn over a sheaf of papers that he held in his hand, and, as he replaced t