“‘Well, one evening—to be precise, it was Christmas Eve—Mrs. Turner was found at the foot of the hall staircase with her neck broken. There was no direct evidence as to how she came there, but as one of the stair-rods was found loose, it was presumed that she fell over it, and, accordingly, a verdict of accidental death was returned. Charles Turner left the house directly afterwards, and a few months ago married my niece, Maisie. As far as I know, what you have seen has never been seen by anyone else, but coughing in the house has been heard, and it is quite plain to me now that Charles Turner murdered his first wife. I only pray to Heaven he won’t serve Maisie the same.’
“But he did,” Mr. Vandergooch added, “for she, too, was found at the foot of the staircase with her neck broken! In all probability she had possessed some idiosyncrasy that worried and annoyed him; or, possibly having once taken to murder, he felt he must go on with it—the habit of homicide being, no doubt, just as fascinating as the habit of drugs or of drink.
“Nothing, however, was proven, and, for all I know to the contrary, he may still be alive, still be killing people to appease his hyper-sensitive and outraged nerves.”
This experience of Mr. Vandergooch made me think; and eventually led to my devoting no small amount of attention to psychology and criminology. From what a variety of influences, it seemed to me, any one act might be induced, and to what innumerable and varied causes any one crime, for instance murder, might be traced. A minute bone pressing on a certain section of the brain, a stomach continually overladen with beefsteak and other animal food, over-excited nerves, the sight of some locality, such as a wood, an object, such as a knife, all may lead to the same thing—the desire to kill; whilst, at the same time, the superphysical, through the agency of some evil spirit continually whispering to its selected victim the arrestive, the compelling thought, almost enforces any and every sort of crime. Seeing, then, that in every act of cruelty or violence it is more than likely that either one or other of these factors has been at work, is it fair that we should so readily condemn and therewith rest content?
True, it may be, and, I believe, it is expedient to punish the criminal, but surely it is even more urgent that we should make ourselves thoroughly acquainted with his case, so that we may if possible discover the factor that conduces to his crime, and then either destroy or counteract it.
From St. Louis I went to New York, where I lodged in a fifty cent. hotel in West Quay.
It was not a particularly elevating neighbourhood, but it was one that boasted of several haunted houses. I was taken to see one of them—a small store that supplied seamen’s kits—by a fellow lodger, who, if I remember rightly, bore the name of Boxer. The proprietor of the store was a Swede; his name I cannot quite recall, it was, I believe, Jansen, or something like Jansen. He was at first extremely reticent, but on my assuring him that I was not in touch with any of the New York journals, and would not connive at his story getting into print, he agreed to tell me what had happened.
Calling his wife, a plain, stolid-looking woman, dressed in a neat and spotlessly clean print gown, he led the way upstairs to the top landing. There he stopped opposite a closed door, in front of which stood a large oak chest. “That’s the room,” he said; “we’ve barricaded it like that to prevent the children going in. When we first came here, my wife, and I, and our youngest child, Bertha, slept there. But we none of us liked the room, and we soon began to have very disturbed nights. I had ghastly nightmares, and so had my wife.
“And Bertha too,” Mrs. Jansen chimed in; “she used to dread being left alone in the room even for five minutes, and used to cry till one or other of us went to her.”