Strict searches by the police, multitudinous inquiries by amateur detectives,
reams of letters and conjectures in the newspapers, have all failed to produce Miss Hickman, the lady doctor who on August 15th left the Royal Free Hospital in Gray's Inn Road, apparently to take the air for a moment, and then vanished from human ken. All the usual theories, elopement, murder, sudden insanity, seem to be vain in presence of contradicting facts. Why should an excellent and unusually able young lady of twenty-eight voluntarily disappear, to the amazement of her friends and the grief of her relations ? If her brain or memory failed, she would still surely be about and visible somewhere. If murdered, where is the body, always the most difficult of all things to conceal, and, as many must know of the crime, why does not somebody peach ? The latest evidence seems to point to a flight to Broadstairs, where a clerk who had repeatedly seen her is sure that he saw and spoke to her ; but if so, why does no one in Broadstairs, where people are presumably as inquisitive as elsewhere, reveal her habitat ? One remarkable accompany- ing feature of the case is the consensus of doctors and police- men as to the frequency with which individuals become suddenly and completely bereft of memory, usually for a short period.
Previous page
