The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (26 page)

A photograph of the original telegram was published in the
Daily
Sketch
, and on 2 August, a postcard was received addressed to “The Editor”, purporting to have been written in London on 1 August. It read:

“To add to the mystery,” the coroner continued, “the contents of the telegram were known to me before the last hearing, but it was deemed inadvisable to reproduce it at the last adjourned hearing. Although we thought this was assured, the telegram was published without consulting me or my officer.

“The great handicap in this case is that the bird was destroyed. Had that not been done the case was a simple one.”

Captain Chevis, brother of the deceased officer, was then called, and said that the “Hooray” telegram arrived at five p.m. on 24 June, the day of his brother’s funeral.

He did not know anyone in Dublin likely to send a telegram of the kind or anyone answering to the description which the telegraph clerk gave of the sender. His brother had never been in Ireland in his life.

Mrs Chevis in her evidence said she had given all possible information in connection with the inquiry. There were no telegrams belonging to her husband which might throw any light on the case.

Describing what took place at dinner on the evening of the tragedy, she said that her husband had two glasses of sherry after tasting the partridge, which he got for himself. Bulger, the batman, would have removed the dirty glasses and the cook would have washed them. She did not move them. The partridge she had on her plate tasted “fusty”, but there was no bitter, sharp or offensive taste. Both the partridges were cooked together in a tin and they were basted in the same fat.

She only took one mouthful and it was vaguely unsavoury. She was absolutely sure that her husband told Bulger to burn the partridge. He was very anxious that the dog should not get it. She knew no one of the name of Hartigan and no one in the household knew anyone of that name. Lieutenant Chevis, as far as she knew, had no friends or relatives called Hartigan.

Dr J.H. Ryffel, analyst to the Home Office, was then called and described the results of his examination of the contents of the stomach of the deceased man and of other articles removed from the bungalow. The latter included sink-water from the drains of the bungalow, a basin containing dripping, a vegetable dish containing peas and potatoes, an empty tin, a packet of gravy mixture, some anchovy sauce, a bag of flour and a tin of carbolic. He also examined some material from Mrs Chevis after she had been taken ill. This and similar material from Lieutenant Chevis were mixed together and gave a yield of strychnine corresponding to a total in the amount received of .3 of a grain. The material from Lieutenant Chevis contained a large amount of strychnine. He also found a small amount of strychnine in the dripping and more in the gravy, which was very bitter. There was no strychnine in the water or other materials.

“I concluded,” continued Dr Ryffel, “that the total quantity of strychnine associated with the partridges amounted to at least two grains. This is an extremely rough calculation and would depend on what other materials were employed. The total quantity would depend on the proportion of the bird eaten, which I understand was very small.”

In his view if only a small proportion of the bird had been eaten the quantity in the bird was very considerable.

The minimum fatal dose of strychnine was half a grain.

Dr Ryffel added that he had received three partridges taken from the cold stores of the company who sold the partridges to Lieutenant Chevis, but none of them contained strychnine.

The coroner asked the witness: “Supposing this bird had picked up strychnine when alive, could it have been absorbed sufficient to show the amount eaten by Lieutenant and Mrs Chevis?”

“I do not think so,” replied Dr Ryffel. “The only thing would seem to me that if a partridge had taken a large amount of strychnine material in its crop, after it was in cold storage the amount might have diffused into the bird.” He understood, however, that the crop was cleaned at the shop before the birds were sent out and would not be included in the cooking. He did not think the bird could have absorbed the amount of strychnine into its own substance because it would be dead long before. On the other hand, if strychnine was injected into the substance of the bird it would stay there and stay during the cooking. But this is not strychnine taken by the bird in life. It is strychnine inserted into it afterwards.

“Strychnine itself is very insoluble, but it would be slightly soluble in fat, and two birds basted in the same fat would certainly give a proportion of strychnine on the second bird after cooking.”

In answer to further questions, Dr Ryffel said: “Strychnine has to be absorbed from the intestines and when it is taken, as in this case, with a large amount of fat, the absorption is much slower than if taken by itself. The fact that Mrs Chevis’s symptoms did not come on till later would point to her having less and to the fact that she did not pass her food on as rapidly as her husband. Strychnine could be fatal within two hours, but in the case of Lieutenant Chevis it was fourteen hours, because he was kept alive by artificial respiration and he ultimately died of failure of respiration.”

A police-inspector of Camberley said he searched the bungalow and found nothing in writing connected with the case. He had searched the Poison Registers of chemists in Frimley, Farnborough, Bagshot and Camberley, but found no evidence of any sales of strychnine.

A brother-officer in the Royal Artillery stated that Lieutenant Chevis was very popular and as far as he knew he had no enemies. He saw Lieutenant and Mrs Chevis on the day of the fatal meal and they both appeared in perfect health and quite happy.

Nicholas Bulger, batman to Lieutenant Chevis, said he did not serve any drinks at dinner that night. Mrs Chevis served the partridges and he handed the vegetables. He came from the south of Ireland, but he did not know anyone of the name of Hartigan. He removed the bird and took it into the kitchen and gave it to the cook. Mrs Chevis told him to destroy it; not to burn it. When he took it to the cook, he said: “This is to be destroyed,” but she put it on the fire.

Mrs Yeoman, the cook, said that the safe in which the partridges had been kept was outside the bungalow and had no lock. She noticed nothing unusual about the birds. She had no friends in Ireland and did not know anyone of the name of Hartigan.

The manager of the firm who sold the partridges said they came from Manchuria. They had sold Manchurian birds for years and never had any complaints. They were delivered to the bungalow in a covered van which was kept locked.

The Coroner then summed up and said there was no doubt that Lieutenant Chevis died from asphyxia following the poison cased by eating the partridge. There was no evidence to show how the strychnine came to be in the birds. He had sifted all the evidence and could find nothing to lead him to any conclusion as to whether this was a case of accidental death, a foul murder, or whether it was a case of negligent dealing with things served up to eat as amounted to manslaughter.

The proper verdict was asphyxia following strychnine poisoning caused by eating partridge, with insufficient evidence to show how the strychnine came to be in or on the partridge. The jury, after a consultation of five minutes, returned with an open verdict.

What is the solution of the mystery involved in this extraordinary case? Misadventure may be ruled out, as even if the partridges had picked up strychnine in Manchuria, it could not have been absorbed into the flesh of the birds. It is also most unlikely that a poison such as strychnine could have got into the partridges by accident. It must, therefore, be concluded that the strychnine must have been deliberately introduced into the birds by some person with the object of killing both Lieutenant Chevis and his wife.

The Home Office expert in his evidence said he concluded that a considerable quantity of strychnine must have been present in the birds, and as the flesh was so strongly impregnated with the poison it would appear as if a solution had been injected.

Strychnine hydrochloride occurs in small white crystals, the maximum dose being one eighth of a grain. It is only soluble in about forty parts of water, but it dissolves in about eighty parts of alcohol. Its taste is characteristic and extremely bitter. Sprinkled on the back of a bird, even in the form of a powder, it would not be absorbed into the flesh. It is a drug so readily recognizable from the taste that even an enemy would hesitate before using it to murder an unsuspecting person.

An obvious question arises; does a clue lurk in the cruel telegram sent from Dublin to the father of Lieutenant Chevis? How did the sender of that message know of the tragedy before it was published in the Press? There could have only been one object in sending it, and that was to express the sender’s delight that the murderer had succeeded in his purpose.

No motive can be assigned for the perpetration of the crime, but the fact that the brutal telegram was addressed to the victim’s father shows that the sender knew the anguish it would cause.

Taking all the circumstances known into consideration, one is led to the conclusion that the murder was the work of a homicidal maniac who had a fancied grievance against the family.

Armed with a hypodermic syringe charged with a solution of strychnine, which could be made from the tablets sold for that purpose, he would watch for his opportunity. The meat-safe was open to anyone outside the bungalow, and it would be but the work of a moment to inject the contents of the syringe into the birds and to slip away without being seen. The strychnine would thus be absorbed into the flesh of the birds and the cooking afterwards would assist it.

That murder was intended there can be no doubt. Whoever the unknown miscreant may have been, he was never traced in spite of all the efforts of the police, and the mystery of the murder of the unfortunate young officer remains a mystery still.

(James Maybrick, 1889)

Maurice Moiseiwitsch

Florence Maybrick was an American abroad, and Americans in particular are fascinated by her ordeal, accused of the cruellest of murders in the bombazine bosom of Victorian England. She was a looker (men considered her the most beautiful woman in Liverpool) whose feckless upbringing as a southern belle and coquettish drawl affronted the provincial hypocrisies and pretensions of Cottonopolis and damned her as a scarlet adulteress. A nosy children’s nanny intercepted a letter from Florence to her lover. Another servant at Mrs Maybrick’s house witnessed her mistress soaking flypapers in water, a time-honoured way of obtaining arsenic. Shortly after this, her drug-popping husband James, twenty-three years her senior, died, evidently of arsenical poisoning. Florence Maybrick’s trial for murder and subsequent sentence of death (commuted at the last moment to life imprisonment) quickly became an international
cause célèbre
. Some modern commentators have called it the English Dreyfus case. Of it, Raymond Chandler wrote:
“The question will never be settled . . . It’s just too damned difficult.” Was it murder? Was Florence a cunning and determined poisoner who persisted in her efforts to dispose of her husband despite the hourly surveillance of a suspicious and hostile family circle? Or was she the grand victim of Victorian hypocrisies, so acutely personified in her dead husband? Of the many treatments of the Maybrick case, this from 1962 by Maurice Moiseiwitsch is perhaps the most approachable. It comes from a selection of five famous trials, Moiseiwitsch’s only venture into true crime; he was mainly a novelist, but in the sixties he also wrote a biography of his famous uncle, the Russian virtuoso pianist Benno Moiseiwitsch. In this account of the puzzling Maybrick saga, Maurice Moiseiwitsch combines a strong narrative drive with a balanced and lucid assessment of the complex medical evidence.

James Maybrick was an eccentric, an oddity so rare that even amongst the English, who pride themselves on their eccentricity, he must be considered a queer fish. He worried constantly about his health, but even amongst hypochondriacs he was an eccentric because, not content with taking innumerable patent medicines to improve it, he indulged in all sorts of experiments with powerful drugs and poisons taken as “pick-me-ups”—jaborandi, cascara, strychnine, henbane, morphia, prussic acid, papain, iridin and arsenic; above all, arsenic, which seemed to be his favourite. When he died more than a hundred bottles of medicine were found in his home, twenty-eight more in his office, and boxes and packages of arsenic in the house, enough to kill more than fifty normal healthy people.

He was regarded as perfectly sane, and went about his business in the ordinary way; he married and begot children; he indulged in gallantries, he quarrelled with his wife. In short, apart from his grisly and dangerous hobby of taking poison, he behaved unexceptionally.

He died at his home, Battlecrease House, Aigburth, on 11 May 1889, at the age of fifty, and the only remarkable feature of his death that one can be really certain about is that his constitution had been able to withstand for many years the fiendish and unnatural assaults to which he had subjected it.