In the town of M——, in Holland, there lived, towards the close of the last century, an elderly widow, Madame Andrecht. She inhabited a house of her own, in company with her maid-servant, who was nearly of the same age. She was in prosperous circumstances; but, being in delicate health and paralysed on one side, she had few visitors, and seldom went abroad except to church or to visit the poor. Her chief recreation consisted in paying a visit in spring to her son, who was settled as a surgeon in a village a few miles off. On these occasions, fearing a return of a paralytic attack, she was invariably accompanied by her maid, and, during these visits, her own house was left locked up, but uninhabited and unwatched.
On the 30th June 17—, the widow returning to M—— from one of these little excursions, found her house had been broken open in her absence, and that several valuable articles, with all her jewels and trinkets, had disappeared. Information was immediately given to the authorities, and a strict investigation of the circumstances took place without delay.
The old lady had been three weeks absent, and the thieves of course had had ample leisure for their attempt. They had evidently gained access through a window in the back part of the house communicating with the garden, one of the panes of which had been removed and the bolts of the window forced back, so as to admit of its being pulled up. The bolts of the back-door leading into the garden had also been withdrawn, as if the robbers had withdrawn their plunder in that direction. The other doors and windows were uninjured; and several of the rooms appeared to have been unopened. The furniture, generally, was untouched; but the kitchen utensils were left in confusion, as if the robbers had intended removing them, but had been interrupted or pursued.
At the same time it was evident they had gone very deliberately about their work. The ceiling and doors of a heavy old press, the drawers of which had been secured by strong and well constructed locks, had been removed with so much neatness that no part of the wood-work had been injured. The ceiling and doors were left standing by the side of the press. The contents, consisting of jewels, articles of value, and fine linens, were gone. Two strong boxes were found broken open, from which gold and silver coin, with some articles of clothing, had been abstracted. The value of the missing articles amounted to about two thousand Dutch guldens. The house, however, contained many other articles of value, which, singularly enough, had escaped the notice of the thieves. In particular, the greater part of the widow's property consisted of property in the funds, the obligations for which were deposited, not in the press above-mentioned, but in an iron chest in her sleeping-room. This chest she had accidentally removed, shortly before her departure; placing it in a more retired apartment, where it had fortunately attracted no attention.
The robbery had, apparently, been committed by more than one person; and, it was naturally suspected, by persons well acquainted with the house, and with the circumstances of its inhabitants. The house itself, which was almost the only respectable one in the neighbourhood, was situated in a retired street. The neighbouring dwellings were inhabited by the poorer classes, and not a few of the less reputable members of society. The inner fosse of the town, which was navigable, flowed along the end of the garden through which the thieves had, apparently, gained admittance, being separated from the garden only by a thin thorn hedge. It was conjectured that the thieves had made their way close to the hedge by means of a boat, and from thence had clambered over into the garden, along the walks and flower-beds of which foot-marks were traceable.
The discovery of the robbery had created a general sensation, and the house was surrounded by a crowd of curious idlers, whom it required some effort on the part of the police to prevent from intruding into the premises. One of them only, a baker, and the inhabitant of the house opposite to that of the widow, succeeded in making his way in along with the officers of justice. His acquaintances awaited his return with impatience, trusting to be able, from his revelations, to gratify their curiosity at second-hand. If so, they were disappointed, for, on his exit, he assumed an air of mystery, answered equivocally, and observed, that people might suspect many things of which it might not be safe to speak.
In proportion, however, to his taciturnity was the loquaciousness of a woolspinner, Leendert Van N——, the inhabitant of the corner house next to that of the widow. He mingled with the groups who were discussing the subject; dropped hints that he had his own notions as to the culprits, and could, if necessary, give a clue to their discovery. Among the crowd who were observed to listen to these effusions, was a Jew dealer in porcelain, a suspected spy of the police. Before evening, the woolspinner received a summons to the town-house, and was called upon by the burgomaster for an explanation of the suspicious expressions he had used. He stammered, hesitated, pretended he knew of nothing but general grounds of suspicion, like his neighbours; but being threatened with stronger measures of compulsion, he at last agreed to speak out, protesting, at the same time, that he could willingly have spared persons against whom he had no grudge whatever, and would have been silent for ever, if he had foreseen the consequence of his indiscretion.
The substance of his disclosure was to this effect:—Opposite the German post-house, at the head of the street in which the woolspinner lived, there was a little alehouse. Nicholas D—— was the landlord. He was generally known among his acquaintances, not by his baptismal or family name, but by the appellation of the Blue Dragoon, from having formerly served in the horse regiment of Colonel Van Wackerbarth, which was popularly known by the name of the Blues. About two years before, he had become acquainted with and married Hannah, the former servant of Madame Andrecht, who had been six years in that situation, and possessed her entire confidence. Unwilling to part with her attendant, and probably entertaining no favourable notion of the intended husband, Madame Andrecht had long thrown impediments in the way of the match, so that the parties were obliged to meet chiefly at night, and by stealth. Nicholas found his way into the house at night through the garden of his acquaintance the woolspinner, and across the hedge which divided it from Madame Andrecht's. Of these nocturnal visits the woolspinner was at first cognisant, but, fearful of getting into a scrape with his respectable neighbour, he was under the necessity of intimating to the bold dragoon, that if he intended to continue his escalades, he must do so from some other quarter than his garden. Nicholas obeyed apparently, and desisted; but, to the surprise of the woolspinner, he found the lovers continued to meet not the less regularly in Madame Andrecht's garden. One evening, however, the mystery was explained. The woolspinner, returning home after dark, saw tied to a post in the canal, close by Madame Andrecht's garden, one of those small boats which were generally used by the dragoons for bringing forage from the magazine; and he at once conjectured that this was the means by which the dragoon was enabled to continue his nocturnal assignations. With the recollection of this passage in the landlord's history was combined a circumstance of recent occurrence, trifling in itself, but which appeared curiously to link in with the mode in which the robbery appeared to have been effected. Ten days before the discovery of the housebreaking, and while the widow was in the country, the woolspinner stated that he found, one morning, a dirty-coloured handkerchief lying on the grass bank of the fosse, and exactly opposite his neighbour's garden. He took it up and put it in his pocket, without thinking about it at the time. At dinner he happened to remember it, mentioned the circumstance to his wife, showed her the handkerchief, and observed jestingly, "If Madame Andrecht were in town, and Hannah were still in her service, we should say our old friend the Blue Dragoon had been making his rounds and had dropt his handkerchief." His wife took the handkerchief, examined it, and exclaimed, "In the name of wonder, what is that you say? Is not Hannah's husband's name Nicholas D——?" pointing out to him at the same time the initials N. D. in the corner. Both, however, had forgotten the circumstance till the occurrence of the robbery naturally recalled it to the husband's mind.
The woolspinner told his story simply; his conclusions appeared unstrained: suspicion became strongly directed against the Blue Dragoon, and these suspicions were corroborated by another circumstance which emerged at the same time.
During the first search of the house, a half-burnt paper, which seemed to have been used for lighting a pipe, was found on the floor, near the press which had been broken open. Neither Madame Andrecht nor her maid smoked; the police officers had no pipes when they entered the house; so the match had in all probability been dropped on the ground by the housebreakers.