A MURDER MYSTERY
One day I entered the _Tribune_ office just as a tip came in of
a tragedy in the little village of Winnetka, in the northern suburbs.
Henry Lloyd, an editorial writer, lived there, and his wife had
telephoned that old Mr. Willson and his invalid wife had been found
horribly murdered in their home. The city editor directed me to go
after the story and I was the first one from the city to reach the
scene of the crime.
I found a crowd of excited villagers gathered at the home of the
murdered couple, but not one among them could tell much more than
that Mr. Willson was president of Winnetka, and its richest citizen
and that Mrs. Willson was so eccentric that servants would not remain
with them. For years they had lived alone, Mr. Willson caring for his
crazed wife and doing the housework. He was rated a millionaire and
had the reputation among his neighbors of being stingy, and a hard
man in business dealings. The murder was a mystery. No clues had been
discovered; no one was suspected.
Neal McKeague, who kept a butcher shop nearby, had been the last to see
the old man alive. He had told how Mr. Willson came into his shop the
night before and selected a larger steak than customary because he was
expecting company from Chicago. I inquired for the butcher and was told
that he had taken an early train to the city, leaving immediately after
the tragedy was discovered. He wouldn’t be back until night. His shop
was closed.
The Willson homestead was an attractive place, occupying an entire
block, the large, old-fashioned house standing in the middle, almost
concealed from the street by the great elm trees with which it was
surrounded. The village constable let me into the house through a
window. On the floor of the living-room was the body of the murdered
millionaire, a bullet wound in his breast. He had been shot through
the heart. There were signs of a violent struggle. The old man had
evidently made a hard fight for his life. Furniture was overturned
and near the body was an empty metal box, in which money and valuable
papers had probably been kept. Some of the papers, deeds and mortgages
among them, were scattered about the room, tossed hurriedly aside by
the murderer while searching for whatever he was after. There was no
money. If there had been it had been taken.
The constable showed me a vest button he found on the floor of the
living-room. There were broken threads in the eye to which bits of
shoddy were clinging. We compared it with the buttons of Mr. Willson’s
vest and found it distinctly different. Evidently it had been wrenched
from the vest of the murderer during the struggle. I cautioned the
constable to take good care of the button, as it might prove important
in identifying the murderer. It was the only clue.
When the constable led me to the floor above I was confronted with the
most gruesome sight I ever beheld. On a bed was the brutally mutilated
body of old Mrs. Willson the face horribly crushed. Everything near it
was bespattered with blood. What struck me as peculiar was that she had
not been shot to death, like her husband. There was no sign of a bullet
wound. The implements with which she was slain were on the floor. She
had first been beaten with a pair of heavy tongs the murderer had
snatched from the fireplace, and when they had come apart he had used
the saber of her dead soldier son that had hung in a scabbard on the
wall. The scabbard was dented by the savage blows that had been dealt
on the poor woman’s head.
Assuming that both Mr. Willson and Mrs. Willson had been killed by the
same person, why wasn’t the revolver used for both murders?
What prompted the murderer to discard the easier weapon after shooting
his first victim?
Why was Mrs. Willson so cruelly butchered?
These were the confusing thoughts that raced through my brain as I
gazed on the sickening tragedy. Descending the staircase, I noticed a
blood smear on the wallpaper, the entire length of the stairs, as if
made by a bloody raincoat. It had rained all of the night before.
We went into the kitchen to look for indications of company having been
there for supper, but the dishes from the evening meal had been washed
and put away. Everything was in order. We looked in the refrigerator
and searched the garbage can for traces of the steak the village
butcher said had been bought in anticipation of visitors coming to
supper from Chicago. There was not a scrap of meat to be found. If
company had come from Chicago, they couldn’t have remained long, else
how could the dishes have been put away and no remaining signs of the
evening meal be apparent, between their departure and the coming of the
murderer. Surely, if the visitors from Chicago had committed the crime,
they wouldn’t have remained to clear away the supper table and wash and
put away the dishes and silverware. The more I thought about this the
more desirous I became for the butcher to return from the city and tell
me what he could.
The crime had been discovered by a school-teacher, the only person
in the village who was privileged to come to the Willson home. The
constable summoned her from the crowd to tell me her story. It wasn’t
much. Mr. Willson had sent her a note the previous evening, asking her
to come in the morning and look after his wife, as he had to go into
the city on business. He would go by an early train, but she would find
the key to the front door under the mat. When she got to the house she
was surprised to find that the blinds had not been opened. The key
was not under the mat. As all of the doors were locked, she lifted a
window sash and crawled into the living-room. Mr. Willson lay dead on
the floor. There was a pool of blood near the body and the overturned
furniture and scattered papers told of a tragedy. She went no farther
and hurried from the house.
The first person she met as she ran excitedly up the street was butcher
McKeague. She told him what she had discovered, but he directed her
to tell others as he was on his way to the depot to catch a train for
Chicago.
She hurried on and spread the news as she went. This was about all she
could tell me. The only relative she ever heard of was James Appleton
Willson, a nephew. He was a Chicago real estate man, not on good terms
with his uncle and never visited at his home. Nor were there ever
any visitors. The school-teacher was the only villager who had been
permitted to enter the house since Mrs. Willson lost her mind. It was a
touching story of a husband’s devotion that she told me. He never left
her if he could avoid it, shutting his home against his neighbors that
her demented condition might not attract curious attention. For years
he had cared for her as tenderly as if she had been a sick child.
The next train from Chicago brought a squad of reporters and a
half-dozen Pinkerton detectives, with Superintendent Robertson of the
Pinkerton agency personally to direct the men. They began searching for
clues in the usual way. When Neal McKeague returned from the city he
was asked to tell about Mr. Willson coming to his place for a steak the
evening before and what was said about expecting visitors. Robertson
seemed to attach considerable importance to the statement, although I
told him that I had learned from the station agent that no strangers
arrived on any of the evening trains. The detectives suggested that
they might have driven out from Chicago. It was before the days of
motor cars. Drive twenty miles in a rainstorm when there were numerous
trains! I couldn’t reconcile it with my way of reasoning.
I learned from some of the villagers that Mr. Willson had befriended
McKeague, selling him the property where his shop stood on the
easy-payment plan and loaning him the money with which to establish
himself in business. There had been some ill feeling when McKeague
discovered that the lot where his shop stood had once belonged to the
village and that Mr. Willson couldn’t give clear title to it. The day
before the tragedy they had words about the title in the village post
office and Mr. Willson had angrily demanded the money that was due him.
McKeague was a good-looking young Canadian who had been employed
in a shop where Mr. Willson formerly traded. The close-fisted old
millionaire fell out with his butcher over prices and partly out of
spite and to establish a competitive shop, he set the butcher’s helper
up in business.
What impressed me strongly was that when McKeague was told of the
murder by the school-teacher he hurried off to Chicago without stopping
to investigate. I called his attention to this and he attempted to
explain by saying that he had promised to pay an overdue bill that
morning at a wholesale market and he was afraid if he delayed doing
so his meat supply would be shut off. He gave me the name of the
wholesaler with whom he traded and the names and addresses of persons
he had called on during the day. He appeared to have perfect control
and to answer without show of irritation any questions that were asked
him.
I couldn’t help thinking that McKeague knew more about the tragedy than
he professed to. That night I wrote a story that pointed a finger of
suspicion at McKeague.
I followed up the story the next day by visiting all of the addresses
the butcher had furnished, and one that he didn’t mention. At a
wholesale market on North Clark Street, where he was being pressed for
payment of a bill, I learned that in settling his account he tendered
a bank note of large denomination that had never been creased. This
further excited my suspicion, for a village butcher was not likely to
have so large a bank note come to him in his trade and the added fact
that it had never been creased by frequent handling, inspired a thought
that it had recently been in Mr. Willson’s treasure box that I had seen
on the floor near his dead body.
Inquiry revealed that at none of the places where he visited did
McKeague once mention the shocking tragedy that had been uncovered a
few minutes before he came to the city. I reasoned that an innocent man
would have talked of little else, particularly when the victim was the
most important man in his home town and his benefactor.
The place that he visited and didn’t tell me about, I found by
accident. After making the round of the addresses furnished by McKeague
I started for Winnetka to learn what the detectives had discovered
during the day. While crossing Wells Street bridge to reach the
Northwestern railroad station, a tugboat darted from under the bridge,
belching sooty smoke over me and soiling my linen.
I stepped into a small shop for a clean collar. The clerk said my
collar wasn’t so badly soiled as one a customer wore in the previous
morning. His was stained with blood. I don’t know why I asked, news
instinct, perhaps, but I did ask what time it was the customer called
and the time the clerk gave me corresponded with the arrival of the
train that brought the butcher from Winnetka. His description of the
customer tallied with McKeague.
The clerk told me that when the customer removed the bloodstained
collar he exclaimed: “I was in a hell of a fight last night.” After
putting on a fresh collar the customer went to the back of the shop and
had a tailor replace a missing button on his vest!
The next morning the heading over my story on the front page of the
_Tribune_ was: “THOU ART THE MAN!”
Superintendent Robertson was called off the case by the Pinkertons and
in his place came blue-eyed Jim Maginn, the ablest detective I ever
came in contact with. He had brains and he knew how to use them. Once
he struck a trail he was as tenacious as a bull dog. He had read my
story that morning and he followed up the lead.
In the heap of ashes back of McKeague’s shop Maginn found some metal
buttons and decided that the butcher had burned the bloodstained
raincoat that smeared the wallpaper in the Willson home. Next he
searched the butcher’s bedroom and in a closet found a vest from which
a button had been yanked with such force that it left a hole. Another
button, different from the others, had been sewed on without much
effort to darn the hole. There were stains on the vest that looked like
blood, but this didn’t count for much as a butcher might have blood
on any of his clothing. The detective said a chemical analysis of the
stains would determine if the corpuscles were of human blood.
While Maginn was finding the vest, I got possession of another
important link in the chain of circumstantial evidence. It was a
revolver with which I shall always believe McKeague killed the old
millionaire. I had luncheon that day at the home of Mr. Lloyd, of
the _Tribune_ editorial staff, and Mrs. Lloyd, who had taken an
active interest in the tragedy handed me a small weapon she had found
beneath the mattress in her maid’s room, the significance of which was
that Belle Hagin, the maid, was McKeague’s sweetheart. On examining
the weapon I found that the cylinder would not revolve. Evidently the
cylinder pin had been lost and the round nail that had been put in its
place prevented the cylinder from turning. One could fire a single
shot, but the next time the trigger was pressed the hammer fell on the
empty cartridge. This cleared up the mystery in my mind as to why the
murderer discarded the revolver after shooting Mr. Willson and attacked
the helpless old woman with tongs and saber.
I reasoned that after the quarrel in the post office, McKeague went
to the Willson house, where the quarrel was renewed, and that when
Mr. Willson brought out his box of valuables there was a struggle and
he was shot. Mrs. Willson heard the shot and screamed and McKeague,
realizing that she knew who killed her husband, ran up the stairs
to her room. Unable to fire his weapon again, he grabbed the first
implement his eyes fell upon and beat her to death.
I hurried to Maginn with the revolver and after telling him my theory,
suggested that McKeague be taken into custody. He didn’t want to make
an arrest without consulting Mr. Pinkerton, so he instructed his men
not to lose sight of the butcher and returned to Chicago with his newly
discovered evidence.
The vest was turned over to a famous microscopist and I recall how
excited I got when the vest was put under a powerful glass and the
threads in the eyes of the detached button matched the broken threads
in the vest, for under the microscope the threads were magnified to the
size of a half-inch rope. The shreds of woolly fluff clinging to the
torn threads in the eyes of the button, were identical with the shade
and texture of the shoddy of the vest.
The heading over my story the next morning was: “THE SHADOW OF A
NOOSE.”
Before noon McKeague was brought to Chicago and placed in jail.
Although the evidence against him was purely circumstantial, the
general opinion was that he would be easily convicted, but Belle Hagin
helped to save him by testifying that she took the revolver from him
at a party one night when he had been drinking, two months before the
tragedy. She swore that it was hidden ever since under her mattress
and was there on the night the Willsons were murdered. Luther Laflin
Mills, the then prosecuting attorney, was blamed for the acquittal by
the newspapers and the criticism was not undeserved, for the prosecutor
went away on a long fishing trip in Canada and did not return to
Chicago in time properly to prepare the case for trial.
McKeague celebrated his acquittal by getting drunk and a few days later
he returned to Canada. Within a month he was in jail for felonious
assault on a woman. Some time after that Belle Hagin admitted that
she didn’t tell the truth about the revolver at the trial and the
Pinkertons were about to arrest him again and put him on trial for the
murder of Mrs. Willson, but a cowboy spared them from further trouble
by killing McKeague in a bar-room brawl out in North Dakota.