Death Locked In Read online

  Sarah Malcolm was a Tartar in the dock. The chaplain of Newgate had already noted with regret that she was of a most bold, daring, boisterous, and willful spirit. These qualities now stood her in good stead, for in those days a murderer in the dock stood entirely alone. He was allowed no legal counsel, but must speak for himself as he had the wit and the courage. Many a culprit stood mum before the court and went mum to the gallows; but not Sarah Malcolm. She heckled every witness.

  Mr. Kerrel and Mr. Gehagan led off. They told how she had been taken up. Mr. Gehagan repeated his monotonous profanity with modest pride; he had much ado, he told the court, to keep his hands off the bitch. The watchmen, in more moderate terms, told their story of her taking-up. Sarah Malcolm cross-questioned them all.

  Then Mrs. Love and Mrs. Oliphant were called to repeat how they had made that gruesome discovery.

  Mrs. Oliphant added a piquant detail. She had visited Mrs. Duncomb the night before the murders, and had heard foreboding talk. Mrs. Duncomb was sorry Mr. Grisly had left, because it was so lonesome. Sarah Malcolm was sitting by the fire with the old serving-woman. “My mistress talks of dying,” said the old servant, “and would have me die with her.” The court thrilled at this specimen of prophecy. Counsel disregarded it. He proceeded to treat Mrs. Oliphant as a locked-room expert, doubtless in view of her prowess in getting one open.

  “You say you opened the casement, and found the door locked and bolted; how do you think the persons who did the murder could get out?”

  “I don’t know,” said Oliphant. “I heard somebody say, they must get down the chimney, it is a large kitchen chimney.”

  “Is there any way for a person to get out and leave the door bolted?”

  “I know of none.”

  “Mr. Grisly’s chambers have been empty, you say, ever since Tuesday, could they not get into his chambers, and so into hers?”

  “I don’t know: there is a silly lock to his door, and I believe it may be easily picked.”

  This left the puzzle of the locked room still unsolved. Sarah Malcolm thought it a good point, and pressed it in her heckling. She only succeeded in drawing a sharp remark from the bench:

  “Somebody did get in and out too, that is plain to a demonstration,” said the judge, plying his nosegay of herbs against the gaol infection.

  The prosecuting counsel was ready to demonstrate.

  “My lord, we shall now show that it was practicable for the door to be bolted withinside by a person who was without.” The prosecutor put his investigator on the stand, and the classic string trick was exposed in court for the first time: “There being a difficulty started how the door could be bolted with inside, I took Mr. Farlow, porter of the Temple, with me; he put a string about the neck of the bolt, and then I shut him out, and he pulled the bolt to by both ends of the string, and then letting go one end, he pulled the string out.” Sarah Malcolm closed the proceedings with an eloquent speech in her own defense; but she marred all with the impudence of her closing remark:

  “My lord,” said Sarah Malcolm coolly to the judge, “as there was more money found upon me than belonged to Mrs.

  Duncomb, I hope your lordship will be so good as to order what was my own to be returned to me.”

  His lordship did no such thing. He listened to the jury’s verdict of guilty, and sentenced her to be hanged by the neck until dead.

  This closed the matter of Mrs. Lydia Duncomb, as far as the law was concerned. The Alexanders were held a while, and then let go. After a little indecision the law took them up again, and then they faded from public gaze. They must have got off, for they figure in none of the black lists of the hanged. It is odd no one of the three turned King’s Evidence.

  Meanwhile they took Sarah Malcolm back to Newgate. She had two weeks of life left.

  The chaplain of Newgate could make nothing of her. She declined to confess herself a murderess. She declared herself a Romanist. “She is a most obdur’d, impenitent sinner!” ejaculated the good man in despair.

  William Hogarth came down to Newgate and painted her picture, which subsequently adorned the wall of Horace Walpole’s gingerbread castle at Strawberry Hill. There she sits on her plain gown and kerchief, with her apron looped up and the fear of death on her face, the lips compressed, the nostrils dilated, the eyes slewed slidewise. She might have been hearing already the awful admonition of the bellman of St. Sepulcher’s, fee d by some dead worthy to chant outside the condemned cell his lugubrious reminder:

  “All you that in the condemned hold do lie,

  Prepare you, for tomorrow you shall die.

  Watch all, and pray, the hour is drawing near,

  That you before the Almighty must appear.

  Examine well yourselves, in time repent,

  That you may not t’eternal flames be sent.

  And when St. Sepulcher’s bell tomorrow tolls,

  The Lord above have mercy on your souls!

  Past twelve o’clock!”

  But even that solemn admonition, reverberating on the cold spring night, could not quite quench Sarah Malcolm’s spirit.

  “D’ye hear, Mr. Bellman,” she called from her cell when the chant was done, “call for a pint of wine, and I will throw you a shilling to pay for it,” and down went the shilling accordingly.

  They hanged her in Fleet Street, before Mitre Court, near the Inner Temple, “because of the atrociousness of her crimes, and for terror to other wickedly disposed people.” She went to her death neatly dressed in a crepe mourning gown, holding up her head in the cart with an air, and her color was so high that spectators did not scruple to allege that she was painted.

  They ran the cart under the gallows, and put the noose about her neck. Just before the cart drew away she looked towards the Temple, and cried out:

  “Oh! My master, my master! I wish I could see him!”

  Mr. Kerrel was nowhere to be seen. But perhaps he came to her later, for the Gentleman’s Magazine reported:

  “Her Corpse was carried to an Undertaker upon Snow Hill where Multitudes of People resorted, and gave Money to see it; among the rest a Gentleman in deep new Mourning, who kiss’d her . . .”

  Who killed the women of Tanfield Court?

  That question is bound up with the Locked Room puzzle: who left the door bolted on the inside and why, and how was it done?

  It was not Sarah Malcolm. She didn’t know how it was done, or even that it was done. The best information she could give the examining alderman was something about a spring lock.

  It was not her three accomplices. If we accept Sarah Malcolm’s story, it exonerates them. She sat within earshot, for when they “hipped” softly to attract her attention, she replied at once. She told them to pull the spring lock to, and she heard them do it. If they had fiddled around doing the string trick, she would have known it. More, sitting within earshot, she heard not a sound of Ann Price’s bitter struggle for her life. The robbers came out and told her they had left their victims gagged; nothing the lookout had heard caused her to disbelieve them.

  Then who killed those three women, and left the door bolted on the inside, and why, and how was it done?

  A piece of the puzzle has vanished, here and there, with the lapse of time, notably the big piece labeled “Motive”; but enough pieces remain, and I have faithfully recorded them here, to delineate the face of the murderer.

  Suppose.

  Suppose you hated, with a half-insane hate, the girl called Ann Price. Suppose you looked out of a window, early Sunday morning, and saw in the room across the court Ann Price’s mistress, bound and gagged on her bed. It would occur to you in a flash, here is this household delivered into my hands. You would get out at the window with your case-knife. It is easy to go around the roof by the gutters; it will be done again tomorrow. You go around. Mrs. Duncomb’s casement is locked, but you break the glass, put your hand in, and lift the latch. The old woman is quickly strangled. In the next room the sick old servant goes as easily. In the next ro
om, nearest the door, you know your enemy lies. You enter stealthily.

  Ann Price is asleep; bound, and gagged, and asleep.

  Suppose an idea of refined cruelty enters your half-insane mind. You will not kill Ann Price. You will leave her alive in a locked house with the two dead women. The law will do the rest, with all the appurtenances of lingering shame and terror. You step to the outer door and shoot the bolt. Now you have only to loose the sleeping girls bonds, and escape the way you came. You turn from the bolted door.

  Ann Price is awake and looking at you. Now you will have to kill her. She breaks out of her bonds in the extreme of her terror, and the fight is bloody; but at last she lies still with the blood on her hair. You do not tarry to unbolt the door, but flee in haste over the roof, the way you came. You hope no one heard the struggle, and in fact no one did, for Mr. Knight and Mr. Grisly are gone away, and Mr. Kerrel and Mr. Gehagan have been making a night of it.

  Are you safe? Not as long as a broken window points the way to the empty chambers across the court. There is only one way to be safe: you must be the one to break into the apparently locked dwelling.

  So you hang around. You hang around until the dinner guest comes knocking at the bolted door. There is an ugly moment when the locksmith is sent for; but your luck holds; he doesn’t come. You suggest a way in: you will enter Mr. Grisly’s chambers, for you have the key, and work your way around by the gutters, and enter by the window. No other woman has stomach for such airy peregrinations, and there is no man there to dispute the errand with you. So off you go, once more, out at the window and around the dizzy gutters. Once more you smash the smashed pane, and enter the apartment. Now there will be no one, ever, to say that the pane was smashed the night before. Didn’t Mrs. Love hear the tinkle of breaking glass? You draw back the bolt and let them in, Mrs. Love and Sarah Malcolm and half the world besides.

  Ann Oliphant must have laughed loud and long when they hanged Sarah Malcolm.

  Death Locked and Sealed

  Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814-1873)

  Le Fanu, an Irishman of Huguenot descent, was, in the words of the great ghost-story writer M. R. James, one of the best story-tellers of the nineteenth century. When he was almost fifty years old and by this time a widower and a recluse, Le Fanu published The House by the Churchyard, the first of a series of wonderfully atmospheric novels of mystery and intrigue. A number of these novels had their origins in short stories that Le Fanu had written and published many years before, and the basic story lines often went through a variety of incarnations before emerging as full-length novels. Uncle Silas (1864), with its truly malevolent villainess and her quite unforgettable comeuppance, is perhaps the best of them all and in the view of many commentators the outstanding mystery novel of the nineteenth century. It too had its roots in earlier, shorter versions, “The Murdered Cousin” in 1851 and originally in 1838 in the following story.

  THE following paper is written in a female hand, and was no doubt communicated to my much-regretted friend by the lady whose early history it serves to illustrate, the Countess D—.

  She is no more—she long since died, a childless and a widowed wife, and, as her letter sadly predicts, none survives to whom the publication of this narrative can prove “injurious, or even painful.” Strange! Two powerful and wealthy families, that in which she was born, and that into which she had married, have ceased to be—they are utterly extinct.

  To those who know anything of the history of Irish families, as they were less than a century ago, the facts which immediately follow will at once suggest the names of the principal actors; and to others their publication would be useless—to us, possibly, if not probably, injurious. I have, therefore, altered such of the names as might, if stated, get us into difficulty; others, belonging to minor characters in the strange story, I have left untouched.

  My dear friend,—You have asked me to furnish you with a detail of the strange events which marked my early history, and I have, without hesitation, applied myself to the task, knowing that, while I live, a kind consideration for my feelings will prevent your giving publicity to the statement; and conscious that, when I am no more, there will not survive one to whom the narrative can prove injurious, or even painful.

  My mother died when I was quite an infant, and of her I have no recollection, even the faintest. By her death, my education and habits were left solely to the guidance of my surviving parent; and, as far as a stern attention to my religious instruction, and an active anxiety evinced by his procuring for me the best masters to perfect me in those accomplishments which my station and wealth might seem to require, could avail, he amply discharged the task.

  My father was what is called an oddity, and his treatment of me, though uniformly kind, flowed less from affection and tenderness than from a sense of obligation and duty. Indeed, I seldom even spoke to him except at mealtimes, and then his manner was silent and abrupt; his leisure hours, which were many, were passed either in his study or in solitary walks; in short, he seemed to take no further interest in my happiness or improvement than a conscientious regard to the discharge of his own duty would seem to claim.

  Shortly before my birth a circumstance had occurred which had contributed much to form and to confirm my father’s secluded habits—it was the fact that a suspicion of murder had fallen upon his younger brother, though not sufficiently definite to lead to an indictment, yet strong enough to ruin him in public opinion.

  This disgraceful and dreadful doubt cast upon the family name, my father felt deeply and bitterly, and not the less so that he himself was thoroughly convinced of his brother’s innocence. The sincerity and strength of this impression he shortly afterwards proved in a manner which produced the dark events which follow. Before, however, I enter upon the statement of them, I ought to relate the circumstances which had awakened the suspicion; inasmuch as they are in themselves somewhat curious, and, in their effects, most intimately connected with my after-history.

  My uncle, Sir Arthur T—n, was a gay and extravagant man, and, among other vices, was ruinously addicted to gaming; this unfortunate propensity, even after his fortune had suffered so severely as to render inevitable a reduction in his expenses by no means inconsiderable, nevertheless continued to actuate him, nearly to the exclusion of all other pursuits; he was, however, a proud, or rather a vain man, and could not bear to make the diminution of his income a matter of gratulation and triumph to those with whom he had hitherto competed, and the consequence was, that he frequented no longer the expensive haunts of dissipation, and retired from the gay world, leaving his coterie to discover his reasons as best they might.

  He did not, however, forego his favorite vice, for, though he could not worship his great divinity in the costly temples where it was formerly his wont to take his stand, yet he found it very possible to bring about him a sufficient number of the votaries of chance to answer all his ends. The consequence was, that Carrickleigh, which was the name of my uncle’s residence, was never without one or more of such visitors as I have described.

  It happened that upon one occasion he was visited by one Hugh Tisdall, a gentleman of loose habits, but of considerable wealth, and who had, in early youth, travelled with my uncle upon the Continent; the period of his visit was winter, and, consequently, the house was nearly deserted excepting by its regular inmates; it was therefore highly acceptable, particularly as my uncle was aware that his visitors tastes accorded exactly with his own.

  Both parties seemed determined to avail themselves of their suitability during the brief stay which Mr. Tisdall had promised; the consequence was, that they shut themselves up in Sir Arthur’s private room for nearly all the day and the greater part of the night, during the space of nearly a week, at the end of which the servant having one morning, as usual, knocked at Mr. Tisdall’s bedroom door repeatedly, received no answer, and, upon attempting to enter, found that it was locked; this appeared suspicious, and, t
he inmates of the house having been alarmed, the door was forced open, and, on proceeding to the bed, they found the body of its occupant perfectly lifeless, and hanging halfway out, the head downwards, and near the floor. One deep wound had been inflicted upon the temple, apparently with some blunt instrument which had penetrated the brain; and another blow, less effective, probably the first aimed, had grazed the head, removing some of the scalp, but leaving the skull untouched. The door had been double-locked upon the inside, in evidence of which the key still lay where it had been placed in the lock.

  The window, though not secured on the interior, was closed—a circumstance not a little puzzling, as it afforded the only other mode of escape from the room. It looked out, too, upon a kind of courtyard, round which the old buildings stood, formerly accessible by a narrow doorway and passage lying in the oldest side of the quadrangle, but which had since been built up, so as to preclude all ingress or egress; the room was also upon the second story, and the height of the window considerable. Near the bed were found a pair of razors belonging to the murdered man, one of them upon the ground, and both of them open. The weapon which had inflicted the mortal wound was not to be found in the room, nor were any footsteps or other traces of the murderer discoverable.

  At the suggestion of Sir Arthur himself, a coroner was instantly summoned to attend, and an inquest was held; nothing, however, in any degree conclusive was elicited; the walls, ceiling, and floor of the room were carefully examined, in order to ascertain whether they contained a trapdoor or other concealed mode of entrance—but no such thing appeared.

  Such was the minuteness of investigation employed, that, although the grate had contained a large fire during the night, they proceeded to examine even the very chimney, in order to discover whether escape by it were possible; but this attempt, too, was fruitless, for the chimney, built in the old fashion, rose in a perfectly perpendicular line from the hearth to a height of nearly fourteen feet above the roof, affording in its interior scarcely the possibility of ascent, the flue being smoothly plastered, and sloping towards the top like an inverted funnel, promising, too, even if the summit were attained, owing to its great height, but a precarious descent upon the sharp and steep-ridged roof; the ashes, too, which lay in the grate, and the soot, as far as it could be seen, were undisturbed, a circumstance almost conclusive of the question.