The Bournemouth mystery

EDMUND PEARSON

If this story were told in a detective novel it would have two conspicuous figures: the stupid chief of police, and the brilliant lawyer for the defense. The policeman would arrest his victim, and proceed to cook up a case. The brilliant attorney, in a dramatic scene, would prove the innocence of the prisoner, and forthwith discover the real murderer.

It would then appear that the murdered person had been extremely detestable—that being the comforting creed of most of the detective novelists. So the murder would prove to be not much of a crime, after all, and not very interesting, in any event.

But this is the story of an actual occurrence, although the work of discovering the offender had in it some peculiar resemblances to a detective yarn. It was known to the newspaper readers of Britain, in the winter and spring of 1921-22, as "The Bournemouth Mystery"—quite in the manner of Sherlock, himself.

There really was a local police chief: a plump person, not especially hawk-like in visage, but wearing a fireman's moustache. He had no record whatever for the solution of amazing problems of crime. His queer name was Shadrach Garrett.

And there was also a brilliant attorney for the defense: no less than Mr. A. C. Fox-Davies, barrister, who is the author of many works on heraldry, as well as two detective novels: The Mauleverer Murders, and The Dangerfield Inheritance.

Even those of us who have read only two or three hundred of the most recent detective novels, can imagine what chance a policeman, with almost no expert knowledge of heraldry, and a late-Victorian trust in the value of circumstantial evidence, should have against such a barrister.

Now, Garrett was awakened one chilly December morning and told some disturbing news. A farm labourer, on a lonely road three or four miles out of Bournemouth, had found the dead body of a young woman—a stranger to everyone in the town. She had been savagely beaten on the head, then dragged over to a hedge, and left there since the previous night.

The police arrived before traffic began to pass on the road. There was no indication as to the woman's name, and only one fact of importance to be observed. The tracks of one motor-car were clearly visible. Their position, in relation to some blood-stains, made it plain that the murdered woman had been brought in this car. And they showed that the car had Dunlop Magnum tires.

In a few hours the woman's identity was established. A man named Wilkins came down from London, looking for his sister, a Miss

Irene Wilkins who had advertised in The Morning Post, the day before, seeking a position as "lady-cook". She had been answered, the same day, by wire from Bournemouth:

COME IMMEDIATELY 430 TRAIN WATERLOO BOURNMOUTH CENTRAL CAR WILL MEET TRAIN EXPENCE NO OBJECT URGENT WOOD BEECH HOUSE

Miss Wilkins had wired to "Wood, Beech House" that she was coming, and had caught the 4-3O train. After she left, her telegram was returned to her home, with the information that Wood was not to be found. Her family felt concerned; but it was too late.

They might have been still more concerned had they known what the police were soon to discover,—that this was the third such telegram sent from Bournemouth within a week. Each was an attempt to decoy a woman down from London. One had asked an employment agency to send a "young plesent nurse companion for girl." To one of these messages a woman replied by coming to Bournemouth, but no one met her. The girl who got the other telegram took advice in the matter, and luckily decided not to come. But no gods of chance had intervened in behall of Irene Wilkins; nobody had noticed her on the train; and, apparently, no one had seen her arrive in Bournemouth. The curious plot had at last been successful.

The Morning Post is not a paper studied in the underworld; rather more is it associated with the Fine Old Crusted Tories, and pictures of elderly peers, reading it at breakfast. This fact, and the lavish hand of the writer of the three telegrams—each cost over two shillings—gave the public a delicious idea of "a wealthy roue", someone of exalted station, remaining quietly at home, and concocting foul schemes. Not only were Dr. Cream and Jack the Ripper resuscitated in the newspaper columns, but the more erudite criminologists in the clubs began to murmur of Gilles de Retz and M. le Marquis de Sade.

These notions still persist around Bournemouth. Many amateur detectives refuse to give up their fancy of a bad baronet, or a wicked old Marquis of Carabas, in his ogre's castle. To him, his minion in the motor-car brought the victim, and next morning, after the dreadful orgies were done, the same minion carried the dying girl away, and threw her body out by the roadside.

Policeman Garrett disagreed. Miss Wilkins's clothes were slightly wet, as with rain. There had been showers the night before as late as 8.20 o'clock. After that, no rain, and no dew, but a high, cold wind. She had arrived on the train at 7 P.M. Therefore, said he, the man who met her at the station had committed the murder between '7.15 and 8 o'clock, at the place where her body was found. There had been no dreadful house nor castle, no medieval scene, and worst of all, to the club-criminologists, no orgies.

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Garrett was delayed and hindered by the readiness of the public to give information. They showered him with no less than 22,000 documents and communications. The murder had been done by "a Welsh Jew", said one faction—for what reason, I do not know. Another group improved on this by suggesting "a Jew in a tam-o'shanter." And I suppose that any Jews in the neighborhood, given to wearing tam-o'-shanters, found it expedient to change headgear. Pater-familias or Pax vobiscum, or one of those writers to The Times, argued learnedly that as one of the telegrams had the word "Butler" in the signature, the murderer was an East Indian magnate, in search of a "housekeeper-mistress."

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For four months the police made no apparent progress, in spite of an enormous amount of heart-breaking work. But at last among the thousands of verbal communications and written messages, the needed information was found, swamped in this mass of documents. A designer of motor-cars, named Humphris, had travelled from London that night; and had seen a woman wearing a hat like that of Miss Wilkins. He saw that she was met by a man in chauffeur's uniform, and that they rode away together. A few days later he saw the car again and this time he noted the number.

Its owner was an elderly invalid, named Sutton. His alibi was perfect. The story told by his chauffeur, as to his actions on that December night, was good enough to pass the first examination, but not wholly satisfactory. This man, named Thomas Henry Allaway, gave samples of his handwriting, to compare with the originals of the three telegrams. There were differences in the writing, but he spelled "plesent" in the same manner. Yet there were available to the police no samples of his writing before the crime, and when he was unwarned.

With others, he was under observation until spring, when he suddenly stole his employer's check-book, and vanished, leaving a trail of forged checks. Garrett had now obtained an example of Allaway's writing, made before the murder. He arrested the chauffeur for forgery, and soon altered the charge to murder. This was after Allaway had been picked out from a group of other chauffeurs in uniform. The identification was made by the newsdealer who sold him The Morning Post, and by the three clerks to whom he had handed his three telegrams. Mr. Lloyd Woodland, in his history of the case, (in the Famous Trials Series) says that "a number of circumstantial facts, radiating inwards like the spokes of a wheel, pointed to Allaway as the only possibly guilty person. He was the single individual whom all the circumstances fitted."

Part of the mystery was never cleared. The vague term "sex-mania" hardly accounts for Allaway's peculiar action in luring women down from London. Nor is it known exactly what happened in that hour after Miss Wilkins arrived in Bournemouth. Those who always feel uneasy over a conviction by circumstantial evidence can be relieved by the fact that Allaway, before execution, confessed.