"Yes," she said. "My brother always had a fear of something happening to him, and lest his papers should be taken from him, he was in the habit of writing his name on a slip of paper and sewing it up in the lining of his waistcoats."
The official went at once to the room in which the clothes were kept locked away, ripped open the lining of the waistcoat, and found inside it a slip of paper, on which was written in the same handwriting as that on the envelope: "I am John Wilson of New York."
There was nothing more to be said. The evidence was accepted as conclusive. The inquest was held, and the lady arranged the funeral.
As she stated that her brother was insured in New York for a large sum of money, and that she was his only relative, and entitled to the insurance, the matter passed into the hands of a firm of solicitors, and the necessary certificates of death and burial were supplied.
There the matter would have ended, so far as the police on this side were concerned, and would probably have been forgotten, but for the startling fact that some months later a communication came from New York which put an extraordinary complexion on the affair.
One of the insurance-offices declined to pay, and advised the solicitor who had acted in England that the person whose certificate had been forwarded was not John Wilson of New York, as John Wilson, the person whose life they had insured, had been found alive, and this John Wilson was the brother of the lady who claimed the insurance-money.
There the matter rests at present, so far as the mortuary authorities are concerned.
If the American statement is correct, then a man who was not John Wilson must have committed suicide with the name of John Wilson not only in his pocket, but with a second clue to identification sewn up in the lining of his clothing. John Wilson's sister had informed the authorities that it was there, and there they had found it.
The man was a carpenter by trade, according to his own last recorded statement. How did he come to sew another man's name in his clothing, and then deliberately commit suicide? Did he personate an insured person to oblige someone else? Or was it one of those extraordinary coincidences of two men of the same name and nationality having the same habit of preparing for identification in case of accident?