By the aid of “the first love” valuable goods were traced to Nottingham and others to Sheffield.
She told the detectives where to work and where to find, and she disclosed the name of her rival, Mrs. Thompson, who was asked to give her address.
Charles Peace, as we have had occasion to observe before, was by no means a man of retiring character, but in respect to audacity and assurance he was certainly able to hold his own with any of those great criminals in whose footsteps he so long and persistently followed. It must, however, be admitted that there was one bright spot in his character.
It was this: after his arrest and conviction he strove by every means in his power to prove the innocence of his wife.
It is certain that he only sought to become acquainted with those who were, in his estimation, likely to be useful to him in an emergency, and this statement has been fully borne out by the latest phase of the case.
A gentleman in Sheffield some years ago bestowed some favours on a member of the miscreant’s family, and his name and address had been treasured up, with a view to still further calls upon the benevolence that was once exercised in his behalf.
The gentleman in question was infinitely surprised one morning to receive a letter, which was directed in an unknown hand.
Tearing open the cover he saw a mass of cramped and crooked lines, which ran higgledy-piggledy over the paper, and showed that the hand which had written them might have been more familiar with the “jemmy” and the skeleton key than with the pen.
A further consideration of the document revealed that the author was either a most illiterate man, or that, to suit his own purpose, he would fain appear to be such.
The simple rules of grammar were set at defiance, and the attempts to decipher the letter were so painful that it would have been tossed impatiently aside had not the eye been caught by the signature, “Charles Peace or Ward.”