Such deception may be long undetected when it is no one’s business to expose it. Where crime complicates it, where the police are on the alert and have an object in hunting the wrong-doer down, disappearance is seldom entirely successful. Dr. Jekyll could not cover Mr. Hyde altogether when his homicidal mania became ungovernable. The clergyman who lived a life of sanctity and preached admirable sermons to an appreciative congregation for five full years was run down at last and exposed as a noted burglar in private life. “Sir Granville Temple,” as he called himself, when he had committed bigamy several times, was eventually uncloaked and shown up as an army deserter whose father was master of a workhouse. Criminals who seek effacement do not take into sufficient account the curiosity and inquisitiveness of mankind. At times, just after the perpetration of a great crime, when the criminal is missing and the pursuit at fault, every gossip, landlady, “slavey,” local tradesman, ’bus conductor, lounger on the cab rank, newsboy, railway guard, becomes an active amateur agent of the police, prying, watching, wondering, looking askance at every stranger and newcomer; ready to call in the constable on the slightest suspicion, or immediately report any unusual circumstance. The rapid dissemination of news to the four quarters of the land by our far-reaching, indefatigable, and wide-awake Press has undoubtedly secured many arrests. The judicious publication of certain details, of personal descriptions, of names, aliases, and the supposed movements of persons in request, has constantly borne fruit. In France police officials often deprecate the incautious utterances of the Press, but it is a common practice of theirs in Paris to give out fully prepared items to the newspapers with the express intention of deceiving their quarry; the missing man has been lulled into fancied security by hearing that the pursuers are on a wrong scent, and, issuing from concealment, “gives himself away.”
III.—THE PRESS AN AID TO THE POLICE.
Long ago, as far back as the murder of Lord William Russell by Courvoisier, proof of the crime was greatly assisted by the publication of the story in the Press. Madame Piolaine, an hotel-keeper, read in the newspaper of the arrest of a suspected person, recognising him as a man who had been in her service as a waiter. Only a day or two after the murder he had come to her, begging her to take charge of a brown paper parcel, for which he would call. He had never returned, and now Madame Piolaine hunted up the parcel, which lay at the bottom of a cupboard, where she had placed it. The fact that Courvoisier had brought it justified her in examining it, and she now found that it contained a quantity of silver plate, and other articles of value. When the police were called in, they identified the whole as part of the property abstracted from Lord William Russell’s. Here was a link directly connecting Courvoisier with the murder. Hitherto the evidence had been mainly presumptive. The discovery of Lord William’s Waterloo medal, with his gold rings and a ten-pound note, under the skirting-board in Courvoisier’s pantry was strong suspicion, but no more. The man had a gold locket, too, in his possession, the property of Lord William Russell, but it had been lost some time antecedent to the murder. All the evidence was presumptive, and the case was not made perfectly clear until Madame Piolaine was brought into it through the publicity given by the Press.
In the murder of Mr. Briggs by the German, Franz Müller, detection was greatly facilitated by the publicity given to the facts of the crime. The hat found in the railway carriage where the deed had been done was a chief clue. It bore the maker’s name inside the cover, and very soon a cabman who had read this in the newspaper came forward to say he had bought that very hat at that very maker’s for a man named Müller. Müller had been a lodger of his, and had given his little daughter a jeweller’s cardboard box, bearing the name of “Death, Cheapside.” Already this Mr. Death had produced the murdered man’s gold chain, saying he had given another in exchange for it to a man supposed to be a German. There could be no doubt now that Müller was the murderer. His movements were easily traced. He had gone across the Atlantic in a sailing ship, and was easily forestalled by the detectives in a fast Atlantic liner, which also carried the jeweller and the cabman.
Where identity is clear the publication of the signalement, if possible of the likeness, has reduced capture to a certainty; it is a mere question then of time and money. Lefroy, the murderer of Mr. Gold, was caught through the publicity given to his portrait, which had appeared in the columns of the Daily Telegraph. Some eminent but highly cautious police officers nevertheless deprecate the interference of the Press, and have said that the premature or injudicious disclosure of facts obtained in the progress of investigation has led to the escape of criminals. It is to be feared that there is an increasing distrust of the official methods of detection, and the Press is more and more inclined to institute a pursuit of its own when mysterious cases continue unsolved. We may yet see this system, which has sometimes been employed by energetic reporters in Paris, more largely adopted here. Without entering into the pro’s and con’s of such competition, it is but right to admit that the Press, with its powerful influence, its ramifications endless and widespread, has already done great service to justice in following up crime. So convinced are the London police authorities of the value of a public organ for police purposes, that they publish a newspaper of their own, the admirably managed Police Gazette, which is an improved form of a journal started in 1828. This gazette, which is circulated gratis to all police forces in the United Kingdom, gives full particulars of crimes and of persons “wanted,” with rough but often life-like woodcut portraits and sketches that help capture. Ireland has a similar organ, the Dublin Hue and Cry; and some of the chief constables of counties send out police reports that are highly useful at times. Through these various channels news travels quickly to all parts, puts all interested on the alert, and makes them active in running down their prey.
IV.—THE IMPORTANCE OF SMALL CLUES.
Detection depends largely, of course, upon the knowledge, astuteness, ingenuity, and logical powers of police officers, although they find many independent and often unexpected aids, as we shall see. The best method of procedure is clearly laid down in police manuals: an immediate systematic investigation on the theatre of a crime, the minute examination of premises, the careful search for tracks and traces, for any article left behind, however insignificant, such as the merest fragment of clothing, a scrap of paper, a harmless tool, a hat, half a button; the slow, persistent inquiry into the antecedents of suspected persons, of their friends and associates, their movements and ways, unexplained change of domicile, proved possession of substantial funds after previous indigence—all these are detailed for the guidance of the detective. It will be seen in the following pages how small a thing has often sufficed to form a clue. A name chalked upon a door in tell-tale handwriting; half a word scratched upon a chisel, has led to the identification of its guilty owner, as in the case of Orrock. A button dropped after a burglary has been found to correspond with those on the coat of a man in custody for another offence, and with the very place from which it was torn. The cloth used to enclose human remains has been recognised as that used by tailors, and the same with the system of sewing, thus narrowing inquiry to a particular class of workmen; and the fact is well illustrated in the detection of Voirbo, to be hereafter told. The position of a body has shown that death could not have been accidental. A false tooth, fortunately incombustible, has sufficed for proof of identity when every other vestige has been annihilated by fire, as in the case of Dr. Webster of Boston.
In one clear case of murder, detection was aided by the simple discovery of a few half-burnt matches that the criminal had used in lighting candles in his victim’s room to keep up the illusion that he was still alive. A dog, belonging to a murdered man, had been seen to leave the house with him on the morning of the crime, and was yet found fourteen days later alive and well, with fresh food by him, in the locked-up apartment to which the occupier had never returned. The strongest evidence against Patch, the murderer of Mr. Blight at Rotherhithe, was that the fatal shot could not possibly have been fired from the road outside, and the first notion of this was suggested by the doctor called in, afterwards eminent as Sir Astley Cooper. In the Gervais case proof depended greatly upon the date when the roof of a cellar had been disturbed, and this was shown to have been necessarily some time before, for in the interval the cochineal insects had laid their eggs, and this only takes place at a particular season. We shall see in the Voirbo case, quoted above, how an ingenious police officer, when he found bloodstains on a floor, discovered where a body had been buried by emptying a can of water on the uneven stones and following the channels in which it ran.