The American newspaper heading, OYSTER STARTS JAM PROBE, is by
this time classic. A recent London picture paper's
WIDOW FINDS START LOST WOMAN CHECK-UP, runs it fairly close. Apropos of that (and it is only fair to give this much aid to interpretation) the French papers have been deriving great journalistic satisfaction from recent events at Crawley and thereabout, and permit themselves to comment on them with a free- dom which the law of libel rightly forbids here. As far as facts are concerned, one man has been charged with one murder, and that is all anyone is justified in saying. As for other recent disappearances on which speculation has suddenly flared up, the obvious connection, real or imaginary, is the acid bath. If one body has been destroyed in an acid bath—which may or may not be the case ; that remains to be proved in court—so many dozens of others may have been. But to assume that is miles from the discovery of traces of the victims —of whom no trace has probably been left—and a hundred miles from the discovery of their murderers, if they were murdered. And the acid bath idea, now that it has been well popularised, is not going to help future murderers much, for it is a stock-in-trade none too easy either to acquire or to conceal.
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