She spoke excellent English, though she had a foreign accent. Witness concluded that she was either Italian or French. She was of medium height with a particularly pale face, large black eyes, and smooth black hair untouched with grey. She was not a young woman--about forty, witness thought. Her hair was worn in bands, and she was dressed entirely in black. Witness presumed she was a widow--at all events, she looked like one. She herself took in the bread each day, and paid for it on the spot. He saw no one else in the house, although he called there up to June 29th. Witness never saw deceased.
"Richard Brass, of Tottenham-court Road, butcher, gave much the same evidence. The same woman called on him, and gave a similar account of herself. He was to call each morning for orders at 64A, Athelstane Place. He did so up to June 29th, and was paid cash on delivery of the meat up to the 26th. The woman appeared to be the only person in the house, and he saw her last on June 26th. But on the 27th and 28th no meat was taken in, and the house appeared to be deserted. He thereupon informed the police. Witness never saw either Mr. Hain or the deceased.
"Amelia Rankin said that she was employed as a domestic servant at the house opposite to No. 64A. She saw a tall, fair-bearded man enter it on several occasions; also a pale, dark-haired woman, but she did not pay much attention to either. Once she noticed a young gentleman with a dark moustache looking out of the first-floor front window. He was laughing and talking with some one inside whom she did not see. He appeared to be quite happy. She believed, after viewing the corpse, that the young gentleman she saw was the deceased. She heard no noise, and saw nothing likely to arouse suspicion in any way. As a rule she was in the kitchen with her mistress (who kept a boarding-house), and it was seldom either of them was in the front of the house during the day. It was possible many people might have gone in and out without her being aware of it.
"Several witnesses resident in Athelstane Place gave much the same evidence. Some saw Mr. Hain, some the housekeeper, but none save Amelia Rankin caught a glimpse of the deceased. Nearly all the houses on either side of and opposite to No. 64A are boarding-houses, from which the lodgers are absent all day, and as the landladies and their servants are mostly occupied in the back premises, No. 64A was not observed in any special degree. Indeed, there was nothing about the house to arouse remark in any way.
"Dr. Rayner, of Bloomsbury Square, stated as the result of a post-mortem examination that in his opinion death was caused by a wound in the heart, apparently inflicted by some such instrument as a steel knitting-needle. The clothes over the breast: that is to say, the waistcoat, shirt, and undervest, were unbuttoned, tending to show that the deceased was unconscious when the wound was inflicted. With an instrument of the kind supposed, it would probably be necessary to open the clothes. The right hand had been cut off, and, judging from the neatness of the operation, a surgical instrument would seem to have been used for this purpose. The hand itself, distorted and swollen, was found in the grate. The bones of the hand were diseased, but not sufficiently so to warrant amputation. Witness was of opinion that the hand had been cut off by a surgeon. He did not believe that an untrained person could have performed the operation with the requisite skill. Deceased had been murdered--judging from the condition of the body--two days before the discovery of the remains on June 28th; that is to say, on June 26th. In answer to a question put by one of the jury, witness stated that there was no smell of chloroform perceptible about the clothes of the deceased or in the room.
"Inspector Jain, who discovered the body, said that it was lying on a sofa placed behind the drawing-room door. The clothing over the chest and region of the heart had been disturbed, and the collar and necktie removed. The shirt-studs, sleeve-links, and watch of the deceased were missing, and the pockets were empty. The marks on the linen had been cut out. There were no rings on the fingers of the left hand. The deceased was tall and dark-complexioned, with smooth dark hair and a small black moustache.
"From the condition of the body--the nails, for instance, were extremely well-cared for--deceased had evidently been a man accustomed to the refinements of life. His underlinen was of the finest quality, and the suit of grey tweed was evidently the work of a high-class tailor. The boots were of Russia leather, and were particularly well-shaped. Witness thought deceased must have been a gentleman in easy circumstances. On searching the house neither trunk, clothes, linen, nor papers of any kind were to be found; in fact, nothing which would be likely to reveal deceased's name or position. The only strange thing he had noticed was the fact that the clothes smelled strongly of sandal-wood. The furniture and appointments of the house were the property of the landlord, but neither Mr. Hain nor the housekeeper had left anything behind them by which they could be traced. Up to the present, in spite of all efforts, no clue to the whereabouts of either the tenant or his housekeeper had been found.
"After a brief deliberation the jury returned a verdict of 'wilful murder' against some person or persons unknown."
PART V.
Extract from The Morning Planet, July 1, 1891--:--
"Despite the triteness of the proverb, We are constrained to remark with regard to the Athelstane Place murder that once again truth is stranger than fiction. Had one of our writers of detective stories imagined so extraordinary a crime as having taken place in the heart of a busy neighbourhood, within hearing, almost within sight of hundreds of people, he would have been scoffed at for exceeding the bounds of probability. It would, we assert, have been termed exaggeration of the wildest order. But it has been proved possible in fact, and No. 64A, Athelstane Place, Bloomsbury, now enjoys the distinction, albeit no enviable one, of having provided London with a mystery so unfathomable that it is extremely doubtful whether it will ever be plumbed by the keenest of detectives. For the unravelling of so complex a riddle we need the Sergeant Cuff of Wilkie Collins, or the Monsieur Dupin of Edgar Allen Poe--in a word, a fabulous detective such as we have not at the present time amongst us.
"Plainly stated, the facts are these:--A house is taken by a man who calls himself by the, to us, obviously false name of Francis Hain. Beyond the fact that he wore a pair of smoked-glass spectacles, there appears to have been little about him to cause remark. The payment of a quarter's rent in advance appears to have answered satisfactorily those questions which the landlord would otherwise surely have felt it incumbent upon him to ask; at all events, the usual formalities with respect to references were in this case entirely dispensed with. Ostensibly, the house was rented with the object of carrying out certain experiments of a scientific nature. A nameless woman, calling herself the housekeeper, is the active agent between Mr. Hain, so called, and the local tradesmen. Observe, the butcher and the baker see no one but this woman; they neither of them see the tenant of 64A or the deceased. By chance a domestic servant sees both, but naturally enough takes small notice of either. Up to June 26th the housekeeper herself receives the food from the tradesmen, and pays them for it in cash. This, of itself, might or might not be indicative of a preconceived intention to leave the house suddenly. After the 26th the housekeeper is seen no more, and on the 28th the house is broken into, and the dead man's body is discovered. The medical evidence goes to prove that he was done to death on the 26th, and it is from that day also that we lose sight of Mr. Hain. Both tenant and housekeeper vanish as completely as if the earth had swallowed them up. Thus we are deprived of the only two persons who at this time seem to have had any connection with the dead man. Their disappearance, coincident as it is, of itself arouses suspicion. Moreover, by the careful removal of all marks from the linen of the deceased, we are left without what otherwise might have lent an important clue to his identity.
"Here, then, is the problem with which our detective force is confronted. For ourselves, in a case like this, where the elementary facts are so completely concealed, we can at most theorise and surmise. For some reason, impossible to guess, the victim would seem to have been inveigled into the Athelstane Place house. As his right hand was diseased, it is not impossible that he went there, or, as we think, is more likely, was taken there by some accomplice ostensibly to have an operation performed. That a surgical instrument was used we may safely conclude from the evidence of Dr. Rayner. Mr. Hain called
