CRIME AND DETECTION.
WHENEVER a crime has been committed, or supposed to have been committed, and the police admit that they are unable to lay their bands on the criminal, one point
should be steadily kept in sight. In certain kinds or classes of crime, especially in the case of brutal assault, the element of luck or chance may enter in so largely as to make the task of the detective almost hopeless from the beginning. In particular is this true of violent killing in public places, by methods at the disposal of any passer-by. "I do not advise you to commit a murder," a well-known Judge once remarked, "but if I were to do so, I should counsel you to meet your man on the high road and cut a stake out of the hedge." He meant that the annals of his Court proved that the simplest, most open form of attack was, on the whole, the least risky.
The careful planning of secret murder means the inevitable building up of lengthening chains of evidence ; in the case of unpremeditated assault, if once the criminal can step clear away, there is no more in his past to connect him with that particular action than there is in the past of a hundred other persons who have walked in the open sunlight over the same road. The murder becomes a " mystery " ; and when " mysteries " are few and far between, there ought to be every disposition to take for granted the fact that it is not the fault of the police that they cannot be solved. But when "mystery" succeeds "mystery," and not only is no solution forthcoming, but the elementary precautions through which a solution might be achieved are repeatedly not taken, it becomes a question whether "luck" is, after all, the greatest element in preventing the answer to questions asked by the public of the police.
The Merstham "tunnel mystery" of last September has been succeeded by another quite as inexplicable. In the Merstham Tunnel case there is very little doubt in the minds of competent authorities that murder was committed. The young woman whose body was found in the tunnel was travelling in a train destined for Brighton in circumstances and at a time of night which made it practically certain that she must have had some unusual purpose in doing so. Marks of violence were found on her body which pointed to the fact that she was the victim of assault, and there was other evidence which went to prove that she had met by appoint- ment a companion, who either directly or indirectly was the means of her death. The affair came into the glare of the newspapers, and as a consequence action was taken by Scotland Yard; but nothing resulted from the tardy research made, and the author of the crime, if it was a crime, is still undiscovered. The papers have lately been full of another "tunnel mystery" in some respects quite as strange, and as yet also unexplained. The known facts are scanty, but fairly clear. A young girl, Mlle. Rochaid, was travelling back on January 18th, after the holidays, from Dinard, in France, to the Priory of Princethorpe, near Rugby. She was, by all accounts, a healthy young woman and in good spirits, and was looking forward to her return to her schoolfellows under the care of the Prioress, to whom she had written affectionate letters. The steamer and the train to London happened to be a little late, and on her way she expressed to a casual travelling com- panion her fear that she would not be able to catch a train from Euston to Rugby before 2.45 p.m. This turned out to be the case, and, having been driven across London, she telegraphed from Euston that she would arrive by the train starting at that hour. So much is quite clear.
It is also known that she stayed for some time in the ladies' waiting-room at Easton Station. It is further stated that she was seen in conversation with a strange woman on the platform, and that she appeared to be somewhat agitated; according to one account, she asked a passer-by to change a silver coin for smaller money, when the woman with whom she was seen in conversation was apparently Watching or following her. The next point is that she was noticed to start alone in a second-class carriage in the 2.45 p.m. train, which stops at three places only—Willesden, Bletchley, and Northampton—before reaching Rugby at 4.47. It is believed that at one or other of these places, one or more passengers entered and left the carriage. In any case, when the train ran into Rugby Station the door of the carriage was swinging open, and a small bag having been found on the seat, a search was made down the line, with the result that in the Crick Tunnel, into which the train runs just before reaching Rugby, the body of Mlle. Rochaid was found, tenibly mutilated. Either she had fallen out of the carriage, or had been hurled out. She was wearing little jewellery, and what she was wearing was found on her, with the exception of a chain and medal, which she is said to have greatly prized, and which commemorated her reception into a particular Conventual Order.
Not all these facts were discovered at the inquest, which does not appear to have been conducted with the care and regard for detail which might have been expected after the failure of the police in the Merstham Tunnel ease. The amateur detectives, however, have got to work, and if two or three of the hastily put together theories are worth chronicling, they are these. First, that Mlle. Rochaid suffered from an obscure brain disease called "claustrophobia," which led her, through hatred of being shut up alone, to throw herself into open space. The answer to that is that the girl had often travelled alone, was not hysterical, and, in any case, was prac- tically at the end of her journey. Would not the wild impulse of the disease have attacked her long before reaching Rugby ? and why, if she suffered from it, did she choose an empty carriage at Euston ? The second theory is that her death was the result of pure accident; her dress, perhaps, had been shut in the door by a passenger leaving the carriage at North- ampton, she was trying to free herself, and in opening the carriage-door the huge pressure of the draught created toire her out on the line. Third, the theory has been started that there is actually in existence a form of railway maniac, whose insanity takes the shape of attacking young women in the solitary publicity of travelling. This theory is apparently endorsed by Professor Murton Collins, who has pointed out that since the Merstham Tunnel case there have been three other instances of young women being found on railway lines, from all appearances thrown out of trains, and that in no single case has any evidence been brought forward to show why they should have committed suicide, how an accident could possibly have occurred, or whether or not they were attended by, or attacked by, a companion.
It may quite conceivably be the fact that all these occurrences are merely a series of coincidences, and that it is really by an oversight that the public do not recognise the actual number of authenticated cases of persons who have accidentally been thrown out of trains. But even that suggestion leaves one question still unanswered. That question refers to the guardians of the public in the persons of the railway officials, the police, and the coroner and his jury. If every one is not agreed that the Merstham Tunnel case was one of murder, it is at least true that many competent authorities think that it was. It is also common ground that in that case many mis- takes were made; that Scotland Yard did not get to work till too late; that the railway carriage in which the young woman travelled was not put aside to be examined until examination was almost bound to be fruitless ; and that though it was ascertained that the victim had dined within two hours of death, the inquest never revealed the result of intelligent search at restaurants where a meal might have been taken. In a word, Professor Churton Collins in charging the police with having failed in this case has not yet been challenged. It is now pointed out that three other open verdicts have been pro- nounced by juries on somewhat similar cases. Would it not have been expected, therefore, that in a case such as the Crick Tunnel " Mystery " those precautions would have been taken which were recognised to be wanting in previous cases ? Ought not the carriage in which Mlle. Rochaid travelled to have been immediately detached and kept under observation P Might not an exhaustive table have been made of the tickets issued for the journey on
which she travelled ? Might not the best brains of the detective service have been put to work on the case a little earlier than ten days or a fortnight after the crime was committed or the accident happened ? It was either crime or accident; it ought not to be beyond the power of the protec- tive and detective forces in existence to discover which it was of the two.
Is the reason of the delay and failure, perhaps, the fact that the British public in its heart greatly dislikes the idea of a force of detectives working silently and suspiciously, as all such forces to be valuable must work ? Some such dominant feeling possibly accounts for such cases as the Merstham Tunnel " Mystety " ending so often in wind and forgetfulness. The public hates the notion of a murder going undetected, but, illogically enough, it prefers its criminals knocked down or caught on the spot, and cannot bear to think that un- recognised detectives may be creeping about in indiarubber- soled boots. It would not tolerate that a dossier should be kept of innocent and suspected alike. Perhaps only by somewhat un-English methods could the railway criminal, if he exists, be caught; but it is doubtful if the public would not prefer the failure of the police to effect an arrest in any particular case, to the general atmosphere of suspicion and unrest that would exist under other methods of scientific police detection.
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