THE CRIME
In the month of March, eighteen hundred and ninety-two, the people of
Melbourne were startled by glaring headlines in the morning newspapers
announcing the discovery of a murder in the suburb of Windsor.
During the historic "boom" that started into life all manner of
activities in and about the Victorian capital during the middle and
later "eighties," a great stimulus to building operations had been
felt, not only in the city itself, but also through all the extensive
district outlying it. The suburb of Windsor enjoyed its share in this
evidence of prosperity, and sanguine speculators, viewing through
the glasses of a happy optimism a rush of new inhabitants to the
fortunate city, erected in gleeful haste a multitude of dwellings
for their purchase and occupancy. New streets were laid out across
the former barren stretches of the suburb, and lined on either side
by "semi-detached villas"--imposing as to name, but generally more
or less "jerry-built," and exceedingly modest in their aspect.[3]
These structures were of what we might now call a standardized
pattern--housing two families side by side with a dividing partition
between them, and of a single story, with an attic above. Between each
two connected dwellings (which were fronted by a shallow veranda,
and contained three or four rooms for each resident family) ran a
narrow alley, hardly wide enough for a real separation between one
building and the next, but sufficiently so to justify the description
of "semi-detached" which their inventor, by a happy inspiration, had
applied to them.
The "Great Melbourne Boom"--as I believe it is still referred to as
distinguishing it from all other "booms," of various dimensions, which
preceded or have followed it--spent its force, unfortunately, before
the hopes of the speculators who had ridden into Windsor on its flood
had been realized; and amid the wreck and flotsam that remained to
mark its ebb, some mournful miles of these "semi-detached villas" were
conspicuous.
So complete was the disaster that many of the owners of these
properties paid no further heed to them:--and it was with an emotion
akin to surprise that, on a day in the month and year above mentioned,
the agent of a certain house in Andrew street received a visit from a
woman with a view to renting it. Why the prospective tenant should have
selected this particular "villa" out of the scores of others precisely
like it that lined both sides of this street, is not known--nor might
she herself have had any definite reason for her choice. Perhaps it was
Chance; perhaps Providence--the terms are possibly synonymous:--but at
all events her action proved to be the first and most important of the
threads that wove themselves together in a net to entrap, and bring to
justice, one of the craftiest and most relentless murderers of the age.
The agent, apprised by his visitor of her desire to examine the house,
eagerly prepared to accompany her, but could not find the key. A
search among his records followed; from which the fact resulted that,
in the previous December, he had rented the house to a gentlemanly
stranger, who, in lieu of affording references, had established
confidence by paying three months' rent in advance. In the prevailing
depression of the local real estate business the agent had given so
little attention to his lines of empty properties that he had not since
even visited the house in question--the more so as the period for which
payment had been made was not yet expired. Assured by his visitor,
however, that the house was certainly unoccupied, he went with her to
the door, which he opened with a master-key with which he had equipped
himself.
The house was in good order throughout--in fact it seemed never to
have been occupied. The prospective tenant inspected it carefully and
with approval, and could discover but one objection; she was sure she
noticed a disagreeable odor in the parlor. Her companion (as is natural
to agents with a house to dispose of) failed to detect this:--if it
existed it was doubtless due to the fact that the house had been closed
for some time; he would have it thoroughly aired and overhaul the
drains--after which she could call again. This she agreed to do, gave
the agent her name and address, and departed.
Left to himself, the agent began an investigation. With senses
quickened, perhaps, by the favorable prospect of business, he became
aware that the atmosphere of the parlor was undoubtedly oppressive;
and as he moved about in search of the cause he observed that near the
open fireplace it was positively sickening. Examining this feature of
the room more carefully, he discovered that the hearth-stone had been
forced up at one end, cracking and crumbling the cement in which it
had been set, and from the inch-wide aperture thus formed came forth
a stench so overpowering that he recoiled in horror, and gasping and
strangling, staggered into the open air.
The police authorities were notified, and a mason was sent for with his
tools. The hearth-stone was wrenched from its place, and in the hollow
space beneath, encased in cement, knees trussed up to chin and bound
with cords, lay the body of a young woman--nude save for the mantle of
luxuriant dark hair that partly shrouded her, and with her throat cut
from ear to ear.
* * * * *
About a week before Christmas of the previous year, the North German
Lloyd S. S. "Kaiser Wilhelm II." from Bremen to Plymouth _via_ the Suez
Canal and Colombo, debarked its passengers at the port of Melbourne.
Among the second-class contingent who had taken ship at Plymouth were
"Albert Williams" and his wife Emily. They had not been long married,
and their destination was understood by their fellow-passengers to be
Colombo; but on reaching that port they remained on board and continued
to Melbourne. It was remarked that Mrs. Williams, who up to that time
had been the life of the company, fell thereafter under increasing
fits of uneasiness and melancholy--until, at the time of arrival at
Melbourne, she had drawn so far aloof from her former friends of the
passage that none concerned themselves regarding her plans, or even
final destination, in the new land.[4]
No such change, however, was noted in the demeanor of her husband.
He was well to the fore in all the interests and amusements that
offer themselves on shipboard, rallied his wife in no very refined or
considerate terms upon her growing depression, and devoted most of his
spare time to a pet canary, which he had brought aboard in an elaborate
gilt cage; keeping it constantly near him on deck by day, and at night
sharing with it his stateroom.[5]
A month's association with him had not increased the liking of his
fellow-voyagers. The compulsory intimacies engendered by a long journey
by sea afford a trying test of character, and to it the temperament
of the so-called Albert Williams failed satisfactorily to respond.
Strange and contradictory moods were noticed in him. At times he was
morose and "grouchy," at times feverishly jovial and even hilarious,
and the transition from one to the other of these states of mind was
often startlingly abrupt. He seems, indeed, to have "got on the nerves"
of all his associates on the voyage--and so at length it happened that
when he went ashore, carrying the cage and canary solicitously in his
hand and followed by his silent and sad-faced wife, both passengers and
officers were at one in the aspiration that they might never see his
sort again.
Repairing to a "Coffee-Palace"--by which sounding title temperance
hotels in Australia are identified--the couple spent some days in its
respectable retirement; then their belongings were entrusted to a
carrying-company, and were by it conveyed to the "semi-detached villa"
in Windsor. The canary, chirping and fluttering joyously in its cage,
which was promptly hung in the veranda, excited for several days the
mild interest of the neighbors and a few casual passers-by--but of the
people in the house very little was seen. Now and then a gentleman in
smoking-jacket and embroidered velvet cap was observed in the veranda,
feeding and chirruping to the canary, but his companion seems to
have kept herself in complete seclusion. Her murder may, indeed, have
followed swiftly upon her entrance into the house; however that may
be, some ten days later the canary was no longer seen in the veranda,
a carrier came with his cart and took away a quantity of trunks and
boxes, and as he deliberately drove away his employer kept pace with
him on the sidewalk, jauntily swinging the cage with its feathered
occupant in his hand.
The trunks and boxes were taken to an auction-room in Melbourne, where,
after due advertisement, their contents were offered for public sale;
women's garments and jewelry, for the most part, and heterogeneous
odds and ends. The owner of these properties was present when the sale
took place, and seemed much interested in their disposition:--but when
the canary and its cage were offered he suddenly declared that he
would not sell them, and when the auction closed took them away with
him. He subsequently appeared in the town of Sale, several hundred
miles away, and at other remote localities--perhaps with the idea of
misleading possible pursuit or for some other purpose unknown:--but in
all his wanderings he took the canary with him, and by his devotion to
it attracted an attention to himself which had much to do with his
identification when he was finally apprehended.
Returning to Melbourne, where he had before assumed the new _alias_
of "Baron Swanston," he finally disposed of the cage and the canary
to the auctioneer of his former acquaintance. Then he disappeared as
completely as though the earth had opened and engulfed him--his crime
successfully committed and unsuspected, his very name unknown, his
tracks as completely covered as was the nearly decapitated body of his
victim beneath the cemented hearth-stone of the house at Windsor.
But even then the mysterious power of Chance--or Providence--was at
work to his undoing. A peculiarity of many Australian dwellings--a
peculiarity which the hastily-constructed "villas" in Windsor
shared--is found in the fact that they have no cellars. This assists
the work of rapid building, so important when a "boom" is on:--so
the ground upon their sites had simply been levelled, a surface of
cement laid, and the buildings set above it upon a layer of beams
and brickwork. Nothing could be easier, under such a principle of
construction, than to remove the hearth-stone, dig a grave under it
through the thin layer of cement and into the soil below, conceal the
body therein, restore the earth to its place, and fix the stone in
position again.
What emotion the murderer may have felt when, after excavating under
the cement to the depth of about eighteen inches, his tools struck
upon solid rock, and he could dig no further, may be left to the
imagination. Perhaps he felt no emotion whatever, not appreciating the
fatal nature of this check to his plans. At all events he had no choice
but to accept the situation, crowd the body into the shallow space, and
by pouring cement about it and the covering hearth-stone insure the
lasting secrecy of the crime. He may have been ignorant, too, of the
enormous expansive power of the gases released by decomposition, which
under ordinary conditions might have been absorbed by the covering and
underlying soil:--here, however, with solid rock below, they struggled
in their close confinement until their barrier at its weakest point
gave way, and forcing up the hearth-stone disclosed to the world the
horror that it had concealed.
And here is the strangest circumstance of all. Although it had been
known to a few surveyors and builders, and to certain owners of
buildings that had been erected, that a large part of the land on
which the suburb was built rested upon a rock formation, examinations
that were made subsequent to the discovery of the murder showed that
at no point did this impenetrable foundation approach nearly to the
surface of the soil, save under this particular house of the tragedy!
Ages ago this flat table of stone had been laid down--and to the
dwelling fortuitously built upon it, with hundreds of others lying
empty about it for him to choose, the murderer had been guided across
fifteen thousand miles of sea, there to prepare for himself detection
not only for one crime, but for the other even more heinous which had
so briefly preceded it.