I have had great doubts as to the desirability of printing the following narrative. I do so, because I think it worth record. Strictly speaking, it is no experience whatever of mine. It was given to me in manuscript by the medical man who induced me to follow up the Bridge mystery. Perhaps flattered by the respect I paid his first communication, he offered me a second. I give it precisely as he handed it to me, believing this to be the only justifiable way in which to present it to the public. To begin [It is the doctor speaking]:—*
* Many persons will find a surprising similarity between this tale and the particulars of the destruction of Francis Saville Kent, the little victim of the Road Hill tragedy. But there is a radical difference between the two cases, for it will be found that in this paper the perpetrator of the horrid deed was not a person that could be identified as representing any of the occupants of Mr. Kent's house on the night of the catastrophe. On the contrary, the principal character is a visitor to the house in which the action takes place; whereas, in the terribly real case near Frome, no visitor was in that house at the time of the tragedy. However, if readers are determined to see in this paper an attempt at an elucidation of the Road mystery, I am not amenable for being unable to blind them on this point. I may add, that until this most extraordinary of cases is cleared up, if ever it can be, all the occupants of that house must rest under a certain kind of suspicion; any attempt, therefore, to relieve the number by fixing the calamity of the act upon an individual, would be an act of great kindness and justice, however hard it might bear upon the latter.
* * * * * * * *
I was sitting, perhaps a little sadly, looking out into the street from a drear tavern window, and thinking of a lost home, when I heard these words in a low soft voice—
“There’s no reason in the whole business from beginning to end.”
I knew the tones in a moment, or suspected I did, which is pretty much about the same thing, for suspicion is frequently but cautious certainty; and starting up, I looked over the screen which separated my dismal dinner-table from the next.
It was Hardal beyond a doubt. Hardal himself—as frail, wild-looking, and attractive as ever—a man neither beautiful nor elegant, and yet one after whom clear-headed and observant passers-by generally looked with an inquiring and a puzzled air.
Hardal is a thin, short, sallow-faced man, with mournful-looking yet penetrating eyes, and he has a habit of looking at people, which as frequently irritates some as it awes others.
This peculiarity I marked at our school, and I have, during the last year or so, had ample opportunities of observing my old school-chum's odd qualification—for I need not say that, recognising him, I made myself known immediately. Amongst men who have gone to school and been thrashed together, there is always much mutual candour to be found, and plenty of the hail-fellow-well-met good fellowship.
Hardal was known at school as the queerest fellow out—he is known at this moment at the common-law bar as the most eccentric barrister who ever donned a stuff gown and a wig. At school he was doubted for his oddity—now he is questioned for his eccentricity. At school he never got on amongst his school-fellows, and now he does not progress in the midst of his fellow-men. The man is the child of the youth, and the same prejudices pervade both. They but follow the law of hereditary transmission. It is the misfortune of unknown genius to be doubted, as it is the glory of known genius to be held in awe. Hardal was and is an unknown genius. As a boy he was thought to be mad, this being one of the privileges of genius, and as a man I doubt if his associates feel quite sure that he is sane. He knows his own position as well as any man, and he says—“I shall never rise out of nothingness (because I am not an ordinary man) unless extraordinary circumstances surround me, when nothing will impede my rise. I am a man who cannot make an opportunity, but who, having an opportunity given him, will use it to good account, unless pulled down by the vain or ignorant, or both kinds of fools, about him.”
At school, nothing would turn Hardal from what he thought to be right. I remember the especial case which caused him to be dubbed a sneak, and which was really the cause of his abandoning the academy where we met.
A very mild, modest, junior Latin master had arrived, and as boys are cowards enough to be unable to forgive mildness and modesty, the new man was turned into a butt. The grossest questions were put to him, and letters of the nastiest character slipped into his desk through the crack on the top of it. He took all these performances very quietly, though it was whispered about that he had been heard to sob in his own room. But the hat business, at the end of his first week, outraged even his rosewater blood.
The poor man had quietly taken his hat from a peg and put it on his head, preparatory to going out with a copy of his beloved Persius under his arm, when down fell the body and crown of the hat to the ground, leaving above the junior Latin master's surprised countenance the rim, like a queer crown, turned up on the edge next the head with the leather lining of the hat itself.
Boys never spare the ridiculous, and this spectacle created such a roar of laughter, that Bargee, the nom-de-ferule of the immense doctor who governed us, came tramping out of his private room, to which we used to go for judgment, with the air of an outraged elephant.
There stood the young Latin master, still crowned. Of course Bargee, the unjustest of men, fell upon the junior master at once, and bullied him handsomely, and this bringing about a general explanation of the performance, Bargee delivered himself of this ukase—no boy to enter the playground till the culprit was found out, five shillings being offered as a reward to any Bargee’s evidence, witness not being an actual accomplice.
Every community has its cowards, and within five minutes Seth Cundle, the stupidest and most thrashed of boys, was accused by Allen Buckenham of the crime.
Seth hadn't a word to say—he believed himself born to blows and injustice, and of course soon involved himself in such a whirl of contradictions, that ignorant old Bargee set him down as guilty at once, and being hoisted, he received thrashing number one.
Now this thrashing shook Bargee's state desk, at which the operation took place, and the hat-rim, which had been brought forward in accusation, fell with the shock upon the school desk below and close up to the Bargee's. This desk was shared by Hardal and myself. We sat side by side.
I saw Hardal pick it up; turn it over and over; then he smelt the leather.
All that morning he was, I saw, uneasy. He had said to me, “Look here, Roddy; you know the rim was stuck on to the body with gum; now you know Cundle isn't a dandy, and hasn't got any gum; and besides, if he had, he would not have thought to stick on the rim. You know, Roddy, it wasn't Cundle; and I mean to find out who it was.”
Now I want the reader to mark this perception, forecasting as it does that which he applied to the discovery of a certain mysterious slaying of a child. Hardal knew that a number of our boys used gum-water, scented with various perfumes, for making kiss-curls, and sticking them on their foreheads. These were the boys we called dandies. Cundle certainly wasn't one of them; his hair was always as rough as a long-haired mat. Hardal was quite sure, by smelling the gum on the inner part of the rim, that Cundle was not the guilty party—who was? Of this I felt sure, knowing him well, that he, if any one, would find out the culprit—and he did.
It was in the afternoon, and poor old Seth was about to get his third elevation, when Hardal, as though unable to restrain himself, started up and said, “Sir, Dr.—, Cundle didn’t do it.” The school became immediately as silent as the grave.
Hardal’s case was opened, and looked into to the bottom in no time. He showed the gum marks, pointed out that only a few boys had gum-bottles, and then told Dr.—that the gum on the hat, if wetted, smelt strongly of roses. Of course the reader sees the argument. Old Bargee, with the air of having found it all out himself, ordered every box to be searched. But one bottle of rose-scented gum was found—in the box of Dandy Buckenham, who, panic-stricken, admitted his guilt, and literally “got it.”
“I knew it,” said Hardal to me; “and he fixed upon Seth because he is a fool.” I saw tears in my schoolmate's eye as he spoke; and yet the boys made such war against him for that evidence of his love of truth and justice, that actually he left the doctor’s, and I never heard of or saw him till we met by the sign of his voice, in that dull dining-room in the Strand tavern.
I will pass over the meeting between us. I had always known Hardal to be no common man; and therefore I was not disturbed by the extreme emotion he betrayed in seeing me. “It's like a dip in the past,” he said; “and the past with me is always brighter than the present.”
Of course our talk soon referred to the accident of our recognition; the words Hardal had used, and what I had heard, “There's no reason in it from beginning to end.”
“I suppose,” said I, referring to the words, “you were at your old game again?”
“Yes,” said he, “I am trying to elucidate the mystery of that murder, if murder it was, in the house of that Mr. Cumberland, in the North of England. It is the most contradictory business I ever came across.”
“It is,” I answered. “But why did you say ‘if murder it is?' Surely there can be no doubt of that?”
“Surely?” Hardal returned. “You think there can be no doubt of murder because you think in ordinary channels. You hear of a body found under the ordinary conditions of a murdered person; and therefore you jump at the conclusion that a murder has been committed. This is ridiculous, when the whole facts of the case are taken into consideration; but, Roddy, as I used to call you, I noticed just now that when I mentioned the name Cumberland—there, you have started again—why?”
“I know the Cumberlands,” I said, “well, and pity them much. They are nice people, and are suffering horribly, as I know.”
“You are acquainted with them?”
“Well—thoroughly,” I returned.
“Tell me,” Hardal eagerly continued, “do they wish this affair of the loss of the child investigated? Or after the horrible investigations which have taken place, do they shrink from further examination?”
“On the contrary,” I returned, “nobody is more anxious than the father of the dead child to learn the cause by which he came to his death.”
“Then you can give me an introduction to this Mr. Cumberland, if I assure you I think I have the clue to the catastrophe?”
“I will go down with you to his place,” I said, “and put myself at your service; but in the first instance you must really convince me you have a good basis to rest your attempts upon.”
For you see, even I, knowing Hardal well, doubted him. I do firmly believe that to be doubted is one of the inherent curses of genius.
“That’s but rational,” said Hardal; “but don't be judicial,” he urged, “or you will doubt. This murder, as I will call it for the sake of brevity, was no common crime, and must be accounted for by no common reasoning. When Newton made his great gravity discovery, he did not judge by ordinary efforts; had he, he would have perhaps died nameless. Now listen. There are two conditions of absolute murder, which should be both present to exhibit absolute murder, and of which the first cannot be absent. The first is motive; the second, concealment of the body. If a man kill another without motive, then the act is not murder, which is wilful taking away of life; while if a man kill another, motive being present, without taking either the precaution of concealing the body, or deflecting suspicion from himself, the plot is defective, and argues insanity, or a weakness which may be called insanity, in the perpetrator. For instance, if I kill a man in my office on a second floor by shooting him, is not the act weak? I warn those about me with the pistol, and I have no means of hiding the body. I have been acting either in a state of permanent or temporary insanity; I am no true murderer, who should not only show motive, but a perfectly logical self-preservation.
“Now what real motive has there been for the destruction of the child in this case?
“Now what self-preservative means by the hiding of the body have been shown by the destroyer?
“Let me lay the facts of this history before you. The family went to bed at the ordinary hours on a given night. In the nursery are three beds, one under the window in which a child about four years old is asleep, a second in which a younger child sleeps, and a third in which a nurse sleeps, generally by herself, but which, on the occasion of the murder, as I will still call it, is partly occupied by a friend of the nurse's.
“The nurse falls to sleep at eleven o'clock, and wakes at five in the morning, it then having been light two hours, for the catastrophe takes place towards the end of June. As would be natural, she looks over the room to the cot in which the boy is sleeping, and misses him from the bed. Supposing that the child has gone, or been taken, to the mother's room, which is only across the passage, the nurse falls asleep again, and only wakes when it is time to rise. She gets up, dresses the little girl who sleeps in the cot near her, and then very naturally goes to the mother's door, and asks for the child. He is not there. Supposed to be upstairs in an elder sister's room, application is made there without success. The alarm is taken, and the house searched, with no results beyond these—the drawing-room door and one of the drawing-room windows are found open. The father immediately sets out in a vehicle for a police-constable, believing the child to have been stolen, and the search for the child is continued. While the father is still away, the body of the child is found, thrust out of sight, not concealed, just below the seat of the servant's closet, and wrapped in a blanket.
“These are the broad outlines of the case, and though we already find two far from comprehended facts, we are not yet staggered. These facts are—First, that one of the drawing-room windows is open; and second, that the concealment of the body betrays as much weakness as that of the ostrich, which hides its head in a bush and thinks itself concealed from the hunter. The body was concealed—if concealment it can be called—exactly in the place and in a manner where it must be immediately discovered, and is thrust into the closet under circumstances which could not remain unseen. Indeed, this concealment is so weak that it suggests idiocy.
“But when we come to investigate the many peculiar facts of this act, each one of which takes it out of the list of ordinary sentient murders, we must feel that to apply the ordinary rules of causes and effects to this affair, is taking exactly that road which must lead to nothing but disappointment.
“In the first place, it is extraordinary that any human being could have entered the room without waking some of the inmates. However, let this pass, and come to the removal of the child. He was removed with womanly care, being wrapped in a blanket. Now comes the question—Whence came the blanket? The answer is—From between the sheet and counterpane which formed the upper clothing of the bed. Well, we can understand that, in stealing a child, even a man might think of removing it in a blanket; but when it comes to a question of murder, this use of the blanket is inexplicable.
“But the following eccentricity of this catastrophe is the most marvellous in the whole history. The counterpane and the sheet must have been very considerably displaced by the removal of the blanket from between them. And yet we find them not only not disrupted, but smoothed, and arranged as though the bed had been made after the murder and before its discovery. Yet this is not so, for the impression of the child's body is found on the bed, and beneath the smoothed sheets.
“Now, whether the child were removed living or dead from the bed, the re-arrangement of the bed-clothing is inexplicable. Would a sentient murderer, or even a sentient child-thief, have remained to rearrange the sheet and counterpane? Again, if two accomplices were not present, the one murderer would have had to lay the child down while the sheet and counterpane were smoothed. Could the child, if alive when removed from the room, have slept through all these extraordinary proceedings without waking?
“Now comes the removal of the body from the house. The drawing-room window is found open, and this is the only exit from the house discovered unfastened. It is a remarkable fact that this window is the most distant means of exit out of the house from the spot at which the body was found.
“To reach that closet, the person carrying the child had to pass round the front of the house, and between it and the road, then to pass the yard-gates, behind which was a watch-dog, and so reach the closet. The closet reached, the child's body is slashed in the most horrible manner, the head is nearly severed from the body, and a frightful stab is found through the body, and near the heart.
“The poor child's body, wrapped in the blanket, is then thrust down the closet for but a few feet, when it rests on the splash-board, and is there found. Also is discovered a small piece of flannel.
“Thus things stand to the inquest, at which all the facts above narrated are stated, and also the following. The nurse says of the arranged bed, ‘the bedclothes were placed neatly, as if I or his mother had done it.' The dog is found to be quite in ordinary health on the morning after the murder. Next follows the evidence of the man who discovered the body, and he states that he found about two tablespoonfuls of blood of a dark colour on the ground of the closet. Outside the closet, a piece of bloody newspaper is found, and this is never identified as having formed part of any paper in the house. The evidence of the surgeon is exceedingly important as throwing light on many otherwise inexplicable circumstances of the case. He states that the mouth was discoloured, that the small quantity of blood on the floor of the closet does not represent anything like the entire mass of blood in the child's veins, and that the absence of blood from the walls of the closet goes to prove that the wounds were inflicted after death, or just as death was being consummated, and the action of the heart had ceased.* In fact, the evidence of the doctor goes to show that the child was smothered before the wounds across the throat and in the breast were made. The surgeon represented the wounds as of the most savage nature—the throat being cut to the bone, and the chest wound evidencing great force. The doctor, viewing the body at nine a.m., pronounces death to have taken place quite five hours previously—this gives four o'clock as the latest time of the murder (it having then been light one hour, and, it may be supposed, plenty of summer labourers about), while, as the family went to bed at about half-past eleven, midnight may be taken as the earliest hour at which the act could have been committed. This narrows the time of the deed from midnight to four—or more likely, from midnight to two in the morning.
* To the general reader, perhaps not fully acquainted with the human blood circulation system, this sentence requires some explanation. The whole blood of the human body (nay, indeed, that of all living things in more or less time) passes in about three minutes throughout the body—leaving the heart by one series of veins, those which beat, or pulsate, and returning by a second series of veins, which do not pulsate. Now, the blood is forced forward by jerks, those of the heart, and at each jerk the heart-veins, or arteries, distend a little. Let one of these arteries be cut while life is in the heart, and the blood will spurt out exactly as water from a burst water-pipe, and fly all manner of ways around—and at the murderer, if murderer there be; while if an artery be cut after death, or after the cessation of the heart's action, and while the body is yet warm, the still but partially congealed blood (for blood begins to congeal the moment it ceases to be propelled by the heart's motion) will gradually ooze out in a dark-coloured stream. Hence, in the case of this child, there being no marks on the wall or seat of the closet, and there being only a little dark blood on the floor, the certain conclusion is that death had taken place before the wounds were made.
“In summing up, the coroner, apparently a not too able man, lays most stress upon the drawing-room window being found open about a foot.
“Many events follow the coroner's inquest. The mysteries rather than the atrocities of the case attract public notice, and at last a splendid yet ordinary investigation is made—it fails entirely and quite naturally. To hope to discover extraordinary answers to ordinary questions is to be too rational.
“A boy of sixteen, an out-door servant of Mr. Cumberland's, is the first to be suspected, for he had been discharged the day before the murder; but he is shown to have slept at home on the night of the murder, and about two miles away from the scene of the catastrophe—and he is freed from suspicion.
“A daughter of Mr. Cumberland is then taken into custody, because one of her night dresses is missing, and this investigation failing, the nurse herself is literally put upon her trial, apparently because she has said the boy was ‘killed for vengeance,' and because a fragment of flannel is found in the water-closet, and under the body of the child, and which might or might not have been there before the murder. This accusation fails as did the other, though it is conducted magnificently—upon the basis that the murder is one of an ordinary character, committed with ordinary motive and action, but about which many extraordinary circumstances cling. The lawyer who conducts the case points out many valuable facts. He urges that, as there are no marks of external violence about the house, did any one from without commit the crime he must have had an accomplice within the house. He then points out that the window is found only a foot wide open—not wide enough for the passage of any one carrying a child—and as the window upon being raised higher makes a noise, he suggests, not only that this proves it was raised by a member of the household, but that it was raised as a blind—he does not, however, tell us of what character. He then argues from the state of the bed that two persons were engaged in the murder, not questioning the eccentricity of this needless act, or doubting if the boy is alive when removed from the room. In fact, this gentleman's argument is, the murder was committed by an inmate of the house, and the nurse is most likely to have committed it.*
* The friend of the nurse, who slept with her, it is seen is not suspected. There are reasons for this.
“The case fails entirely—the girl is liberated, and the mystery remains, and has remained, as unaccountable as it was on the first morning after the murder.”
* * * * * *
Here Hardal, who by this time had a wild look in his eyes, rested for a moment, and then continued: “Now, Roddy, hear my version of the business, and then help me to prove it if you like. There are three questions to be answered:—1. Was the murder committed by a non-occupant? 2. Was the murder committed by an occupant? 3. By whom, and wherefore, was the murder committed?
“1. Was the murder committed by a non-occupant?
“If so, he would act either with the connivance of some one within the house, or by himself. Now I think that the awful investigation to which the household has been submitted, pretty clearly proves the absence of an accomplice in the shape of one of its members. Yet there are no signs of a burglarious entry into the house, and therefore if a stranger did enter it, the entry was made by extraordinary means. The only probable one was by a first or upper floor window. Now could this have been done? There is no vine or other creeper about the house by which a window could be reached, say by a revengeful gipsy whom Mr. Cumberland may have threatened, while if a ladder were used it seems impossible to suppose the dog, much less the whole household, could have slept through the noise of fixing it to a window. Again, a gipsy, the most likely man to take such a kind of revenge as the abstraction or killing of a child, would have silenced the dog—an art in which gipsies are known to be proficients.
“The health of the dog next morning, and his silence during the night, prove, first that he was not tampered with; secondly, that he was disturbed by no stranger. Then did any one, not being an inmate of the house, and yet known to the dog, commit the crime? A means of entry to the house is totally absent. Again, did any one conceal himself in the house? This suggestion is the only one holding good in favour of the theory that the murder was committed by a non-occupant. But in the face of this argument stands the peculiarity that in such a case there was evident mystification of the household by leaving the premises, not by a door, but a window, and then partially closing that window.
“2. Was the murder committed by an occupant?
“If it has been shown that it is highly improbable that the crime was committed by a non-occupant, it results that the probability of its having been committed by an occupant is just in inverse proportion with that improbability.
“3. By whom, and wherefore was the murder committed?”
Here Hardal drew a long breath, drank off a large glass of water, and wiping his hot forehead, he continued—“I am going to commit myself to an extraordinary series of—of statements, and if you are like the majority of fools about one, you will pshaw me, and prove by naught that there's nothing in what I say.
“In the first place, let me back my statements with these extraordinary lines taken from a Times leader on the whole of this case.
“‘As a painful result, therefore, we are left with the circle of suspicion as narrow as ever, and with the additional embarrassment ensuing on the successive failures of justice…It really seems almost a case for the art of clairvoyance, or the old machinery of the divining rod. Ordinary agencies are completely at fault.'
“This is the Times! You see a complete admission that the whole inquiry is a balk; and yet a clinging to the belief that it is cunning and not ignorance which has foiled the inquirer, for the Times continues: ‘But we trust that in one respect the views of the magistrate will be carried out. There should not be a remission, even for a single moment, of vigilance or observation.'
“Nor has there been—and nothing has been discovered.
“Now in the first place,” continued Hardal, “let us see who were sleeping in the house on the night in question.
“The inmates on the night of the murder were thirteen in number, ten being adults, and of these some six were able in a measure to exonerate each other. Three slept in one apartment, three in a second, and two in a third, and two more in a fourth; so that, apart from the inmates of the nursery itself, there were but two persons in the house who could not call a certain kind of evidence to their behaviour throughout the night. The cook and the housemaid slept together, the two eldest sisters slept together, and Mr. and Mrs. Cumberland had a young child sleeping in their bedroom. Mr. William Cumberland and Miss Constance Cumberland had each a room a-piece, whilst the two youngest children—the little boy who was murdered and an infant of two years old, were in the nursery with the nurse, as was also a visitor of the nurse, a kind of relation well known in the house and to the children, and who had frequently expressed extreme love for the little murdered child.
“Now,” continued Hardal, “I venture to state at once that there is no evidence of ordinary murder in this case—that its whole facts exhibit an extraordinary amount of eccentricity; and that the murder was eccentrically committed by an inmate of the house. And as most eccentricity is an evidence of mental weakness, I come to the conclusion that if the murderer (as I will call him or her) were aware of his crime, he being eccentric, and therefore weak, would not be able to resist such an extreme investigation as that which has been made. Thus I deduce that the act was committed while the murderer was asleep, and while under the influence of murderous monomania.
“It now remains to be ascertained who was, by the facts of the case, the person most likely to have been under this influence. As to the supposition that murder can be done in the sleep, and that a mania to destroy or act abnormally, may torment a human being for years without a second soul knowing anything about the matter, there are too many well evidenced cases to permit much doubt on these points.
“As regards somnambulism, we find the cases of acts in a somnambulistic state are not frequent; yet, at the same time, not so extremely rare as to be valueless in urging my argument. In Rees' Cyclopædia we find Dr. Stewart saying:—‘There are many cases in which sleep seems to be partial; that is, when the mind loses its influence over some powers and retains it over others.' Dr. Darwin considers somnambulism not so much sleep as a state approximating to epilepsy. Some cases of sleep-walking, where a series of acts have been carried out, are on record. They all agree with the waking thoughts in some measure. One case we have of a boy who, being very fond of grapes, starts off in the middle of the night for a vineyard, and gathers the fruit. In another case, a boy rising in his sleep in the dark, calls for a light to find his clothes by, and this being brought, he dresses with ease, and a cuckoo-bell clock striking, he says, ‘There be cuckoos here.' As a proof that the predominating idea submerges all others, this same boy would be sensible of pinches or slight blows, unless ‘he was at the time strongly impressed with some other thing.' The watcher of this lad bid him ‘write a theme.' They say, ‘We saw him light a candle, take pen, ink, and paper from the drawer of his table, and begin to write while one of those about him began to dictate.' Here is a series of events, and yet this case thoroughly illustrates my argument that the acts are imperfect, or rather exhibit imperfection, for the inkstand, which he had opened his eyes to find, being removed, ‘his hand returned as usual to the place where he thought it was.' It must be observed that the motion of his hand was rapid till it reached the height of the inkstand, and then he moved it slowly till the pen gently touched the table as he was seeking for the ink.'*
*For further information see Hoffman's Dissertatio do Somnambulismo.
“Of homicidal monomania, Dr. Copeland (Dic. Medicine, vol. ii., article ‘Insanity') says:—‘Murder, or attempts to murder, are made by insane persons, 1. When impelled by an involuntary impulse, or instinctive desire, which they are unable to resist; 2. When actuated by motives on which they are capable of reasoning, and whilst conscious of the evil they have committed; 3. When influenced by delusions, hallucinations, or false perceptions; 4. When excited by passion or opposition; 5. When they believe they are opposing an enemy; and 6. When the intelligence is so prostrate as to be incapable of distinguishing right from wrong, and when they act from imitation. The first of these cases is the most frequent, and to which I will draw attention. Persons will appear to enjoy reason; they are irresistibly impelled, with a full consciousness of their state, to commit the crime they most hate. The question is, is there really a form of insanity in which a person may enjoy reason unimpaired and yet commit the greatest crimes? I say, yes. One person suddenly becomes red in the face, imagines he hears a voice addressing him, and acts according to its injunction. Another, a husband, is persuaded his wife is unfaithful to him, although he has considered all the circumstances, and finds them in her favour—and an act of murder is committed. A third, a mother of a family, believes herself in distress, and in a fit of despair she attempts to kill them, when maternal tenderness, speaking louder than despair, exclaims, ‘Protect my children from me.' Another well-authenticated instance is that of a maid, who, on each occasion of her dressing the infant committed to her care, was seized with an uncontrollable desire to kill it. All these instances may be referred to as momentary delusions or hallucinations, under the influence of which crimes or insane actions may be committed, after which a lucid period occurs.
“Now child-murder, as a rule, is always maniacal, for the simple reason that the child cannot excite motive. Those cases of infanticide in which no insanity is present, are those in which the mother kills from shame or want. Such a motive in this case is absent; while the majority of child-murders being committed by women, the inference perhaps stands, that in the absence of motive it is a female murderer who destroyed this child.
“The circumstantial evidence of the case goes to prove that the nurse or nurse's visitor (present on the night of the murder) committed the act in a state of unconsciousness (or sleep), because there is no waking evidence of guilt, and in a state of monomania, because there is no evidence of motive. There is one indirect evidence of ‘unconscious thought' about the murdered child in the following statement:—
“‘It has been stated by a young woman who lived as nursemaid in the family about twelve months since, that on one occasion when there were only two members of the family at home, the little boy who has been murdered was found in his cot with the bed-clothes turned back carefully, and some woollen socks and some flannels, in which he was put to bed, he being unwell on the previous night, were taken off. One of the socks was found in the morning on the table in the bedroom, and the other in the course of the following day on Mrs. Cumberland's bed, but Mrs. Cumberland was wholly unable to account for its appearance in that place.' ‘These statements,' says the ignorant writer from whom we quote the last sentences, ‘have, however, no immediate bearing upon this mysterious case.'
“They have much bearing, for they show in this house somewhere an abnormal unhealthy state in some one. They prove the work of one who can act in sleep; and supposing this person to be cursed with murderous monomania, and accepting the fact that a series of acts can be done in sleep, we come to the conclusion that the incident of the socks shadows out the possibility of the house being the scene of a series of unconscious deeds.
“I say,” continued Hardal, “that the incomprehensible acts of this murder prove that they were done in unconsciousness, in insanity, and by a woman.
“In the first place, take the wrapping of the blanket about the child. Would a conscious, sane murderer do this? Whereas, would it not be the daily habit of a nurse of little children? Again, the quilt and sheet are straightened; this is the work of a nurse. But they are straightened over an unmade bed, which suggests an imperfect consciousness of action. Now, it has been urged that there must have been two persons engaged in this murder, because of these straightened bed-clothes; for it is asked, had a single murderer only been present, where was the child placed while this work was done? This question does not seem to have suggested itself—why was this uncalled-for, needless, and irrational act performed?
“I believe that the child was dead before taken from the bed—that he was suffocated with the pillow; and the whole of the doctor's evidence goes to prove that death took place before the victim was carried to the closet.
“The next act was to remove the body from the house, and, as you know, it was carried past the boundary of the house at that point farthest of all parts of the house from the spot where it was found—I mean one of the drawing-room windows, which was discovered open a foot wide the next morning. It has been argued, that as the window could not be opened higher than a foot without making a noise, which would have alarmed house and dog, and that as a foot was not width enough to allow of the passage of a human creature carrying a child, that therefore the opening of this window was a ‘blind.' No such thing; a foot in width would be quite enough for a young person to press through, while the dead child may have been passed out first, laid upon the grass, and afterwards picked up.
“Now follows the most irrational fact of the case: the bearer of the child, in preference to carrying away the child, and flinging it in a pond, a well, or even hedge, as a sentient murderer would have done, prefers to pass in front of the house, before the road, past the gates below which the dog frequently growls at passers-by, and so to the closet, which a conscious member of the household must know is provided with a splash-board, which will at once arrest anything cast down the closet.
“The dog does not give the alarm, an evidence either that he is awake, and, knowing the person, does not bark, or that the person walks so lightly—as is the case with sleep-walkers—that the animal is not awakened by the footsteps.
“There is only one discrepancy in this part of the affair. It stands thus: if the murderer was a sleep-walker, and, being a servant of the house, therefore better acquainted with the kitchen (the nearest way across the yard, in which is the dog, to the servants' closet, where the body is found) than the drawing-room, how is it she avoided the kitchen and the kitchen-yard? I answer, that it is impossible to bound the limits either of instinct, reason, or insanity in sleep-walking. These qualities cross and recross each other in an unending tangle.
“I now approach a fact in the case which proves monomaniac tendency and unconsciousness of act. The child is dead; and therefore if sentient motive only is present, the work now alone to be performed is the disposal of the body. Yet instead of this, we find the next act is the mutilation of the body in the most savage manner. The doctor tells us that the head was nearly severed from the body, and that great force must have been exerted to drive the weapon used into the breast. Now, where was the need to use the knife at all? The child was dead, or if not dead, to all appearance so, and yet it was mutilated, and blood spilt. The body is then wrapt in the blanket, which is another evidence of care; and the whole just thrown below the seat of the closet, so that it is found the moment after the blood is seen on the floor.
“The window is then left open, and so found in the morning.
“Upon the discovery of the murder nobody in the house betrays the least guilt, although all inferences but one point to the supposition that the murder has been committed in the house: that exception lying in the fact that a piece of bloody paper is found near the closet upon which a bloody knife has been wiped, and which paper has not been torn apparently from any paper in the house.
“The child's life has been taken away; it seems clear some one in the house has done it in the most slovenly manner, for the murder is found out in ten minutes after the alarm is given, and yet all appear innocent—all give exactly the same tale of a peaceful night and no disturbance. There is no apparent motive to kill the child, no evidence against anybody as the murderer, except an absent nightgown and a wretched piece of flannel, and after masses of investigation the fact remains where it was.
“Now see how beautifully my theory of sleeping monomania fits the difficulties of the case. The girl has a tendency to kill the child, such a tendency as many human beings experience, but have sufficient self-restraint to overcome. She is also a sleep-walker. The monomaniacal desire present in her sleep, she rises, and then commences an entanglement between her every-day and her monomaniacal acts. First she suffocates the child as a monomaniac, then as a nurse she envelopes it in the blanket, and smooths the unmade bed. Then she goes downstairs, no one hearing her, for the simple reason that sleep-walkers move and act without noise. Her half-sense warns her of the dog and of the creaking window. She stops raising it with its first signal of creaking—it is a foot wide, and she can press through the opening, dragging the dead child with her. Then, the half-mind bent on the dog, she forgets the roadway and the front of the house, and so reaches the closet, after either being recognised by the dog if awake, or walking so lightly as not to awake him if asleep. Then the monomaniacal desire is alight again, and hidden in the closet, the knife, whence taken I cannot tell, is used. There is no tell-tale blood on the girl's linen, because, as the doctor informs us, the dead blood did not spurt, but merely flowed. Then that most wild cut at the breast is made, the ungaping wound also proving that the knife entered dead flesh; and then the body is cast into the closet, little attempt being made to conceal it. The knife is then wiped on the unknown paper and hidden, the reason of it not found being that, in all probability, it was not, in the true sense of the word, concealed, but just thrown where no one would think of finding it. The girl then returns to the house, forgetting in her half-consciousness that the window remains open. She ascends quite noiselessly to her room, goes to bed, sleeps, and awaking, knows nothing of her dream or acts—a frequent case with sleep-walkers. What is to warn her of the truth when the murder is found out? No blood on her linen, no marks of gravel on her feet—for, as a sleep-walker, she may have rubbed them on the door-mat—nothing to tell her she is guilty. In fact, she is innocent, and so the mystery remains, and must remain, while the belief exists that the murder of this boy was a sentient act. Sentient—had it motive? Was it rationally done? If knowingly by any person in the house, why? If knowingly by any person not of the household, why? I urge, those who are accursed with monomania are many, and that in this case to monomania was superadded somnambulism. You say,” continued Hardal, “you know the father of the boy; introduce me to him, and let me try, for the sake of the many, to fix this act upon the one.”
“I will,” said I to Hardal, as he stopped suddenly; “let us at once start for the north.”
He took my hand, and that evening set out.
Hear the result….
[At this point the MS. breaks off. Should I obtain its sequel, I will, if I find it advisable to do so, publish the paper immediately. I never learnt my informant doctor’s address.]
