The inquest on the Great Comm Street murder has not
been well directed by Dr. Lankester, who has allowed the inquiry to diverge into all sorts of irrelevant channels, and has interspersed it with jokes neither very good in themselves nor very suitable to the grim subject under investigation, and it has hitherto yielded no new result. In the meantime, a foreigner has been arrested under suspicious circumstances at Guildford who, in some respects, corresponds to the description of the murderer, and who cannot give a coherent account of himself. He admits that he slept in London on Christmas Eve,—at the house of a man named Poniatowsky, as he declares,—that he was previously in Leicester Square, and that he had a pocket knife, which he says he lost a fortnight ago. He " left London two days and a half after last Christmas, and went to Liver- pool, with the intention of going to New York," but for some reason unexplained, he altered his mind. He gives contra- dictory accounts of himself, and is altogether evidently labour- ing under some sense of suspicion or danger, but as yet there is no direct evidence against him. The waitresses from the Al hambra have failed to identify him, and he has been remanded. He is not in want of money, for three napoleons were found upon him, and so far that agrees fairly with the presumed position of the murderer, for it is quite clear that the theft of the valueless jet earrings and the purse with a shilling in it, was a blind to dis- guise the real motive of the act,—probably jealousy or revenge.
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