Evening Star Newspaper, January 31, 1932, Page 75

Magasine ArtNotes WASHINGTON, PART 7. D. C, JANUARY 31, 1932. Fiction m———— Bridge 201 PAGES. QT SR g Lessons in Conquering Crime American Detectives May Learn a Thing or Two From Britain in Bring- ing Criminals to Justice. Scotland Yard Is Not Alzways Called in, but It Has an Enviable Record for Solving Mysteries That Baffle the Regular Police and Here Are the Stories of Some of Its Feats. ORE murders are committed in Eng- land during a year than in any other country. A few of them take place in real life; thousands occur in the endless detective fiction that uses England for its stage setting. These fiction . murders have one thing in common. No sooner is the corpse discovered, hanging headless, feet up, from a curtain pole, or sprawled on the floor in the musty paneled library of the ancestral castle with a Malay poison dart through the body, than the author immediately calls in Scot- land Yard. A dapper little man, with derby hat and stiff collar, arrives. He makes pointed re- marks about the local police and then after a hundred pages of sparkling intuitions solves the case. It is not so, unfortunately, in real life, as was shown once more just a few months ago, when all England was baffled by a murder which, in its possibilities, quite surpassed the most imagina- tive fiction. A young army officer living near the military training grounds at Aldershot, 40 miles from London, sat at dinner with his wife on the eve- ning of June 20. They had been married but seven months; it was her second marriage. The chief dish at dinner was a pair of Manchurian partridges, fowl caught in Manchuria and sent to England in cold storage. The larger partridge was served to the husband and the smaller one to his wife. He cut a piece from his bird and took a few pites. “I say, what a ghastly taste this bird has,” he said, turning to his wife. “Taste it.” His wife took a small piece and found it ter- ribly bitter. e “There must be something wrong with it,” he continued. Calling the servant, he gave orders that the bird should be burned immediately. In three hours the young officer was dead; and his dog, who got a piece of the fowl in spite of all precautions, died the following morning. The doctor’s verdict was, “Death by poisoning from strychnine administered in food.” The local police were called in immediately. They soon found that nothing was wrong with any of the other birds in the shipment. They learned also that the pair sold to his cook had been lying in the refrigerator on the back porch of the house all that day, where any one might have got at them. No strangers had been seen about the house. But the young officer had served in India for a long time. Had some enemy, made in the course of service out there, appeared to carry out a long planned revenge? News of the officer's death was published in the newspapers the next morning. On the following day the victim’s father received a telegram from Dublin, addressed to his complete address, which was not known except to intimate friends, and containing three grisly words: “Hooray, hooray, hooray.” o In America a Money Transfer Means Armored Cars and Alert Guards— In England It Is Done Differently. P e S s ey “a 3 . William C. White .Dm-wiflgs b’v Stockton J[u/fom’ The local police sent men to Dublin and found that the telegram was sent by one “J. Hartigan,” who had given a false address in Dublin; yet that name was found on the passenger list of a boat that ran from England to Irelawd. The hand- writing on the telegraph blank resembled that of a German. The police secured a vague descrip- tion of the man and began a search for him. At the same time they carefully investigated the young officer’s friends and acquaintances and questioned particularly the man who had been the first husband of the young wife. This man insisted that while he was certain that foul play had occurred, he was innocent, “no matter what insinuation or direct accusation is made against me.” He proved, further, that he was away from Aldershot at the time of the officer’s death. Three weeks had passed since the poisoned partridge had been served, and each path of so- lution had turned into a blind alley. Then Orientalists entered the investigation and thoroughly confused theories and suspicions. They said that the Chinese in that Manchurian district from which the partridges had come often attach berries of nux vomica, the strych- nine bush, on to the wild garlic which is the favorite food of these game birds. The birds swallow the poison during feeding, thus saving the Chinese the trouble of shooting them; the Chinese claim that if the birds are properly cleaned no harm can come to humans from eat- ing them. Other experts in that part of the world added a second story—that very often partridges poisoned with strychnine are used as a bait for fur-bearing animals. Had some Manchurian poacher found a trap so baited, removed the birds, and, pretending to have bagged them, sold them to a game dealer, who eventually shipped them to England? Whatever the answer, it was unknown Six weeks after the death of the young officer. In its place stood three questions: Who had killed him, if it was murder? Why had he got such a tre- mendous dose of poison, having eaten almost none of the fowl? And why, if the birds were roasted together, had the little bird not been poisoned, thus killing the wife as well? It was demonstrated by actual cooking that one poi- soned bird could “infect” the other during baking. The mystery caught England’s imagination; it surpassed any of the recent “thrillers.” News- papers, seeing the tremendous difficulty the local police were having, began to urge, “Call in Scotland Yard.” That great institution of detective skill, with its 900 detectives and its millions of fingerprints, was stgnding by, doing nothing. For there was nothing it could do, since Scotland Yard has no original jurisdiction outside the London area. It can work on pe-case outside unless in- vited by the local police. AND did the local police call in Scot- land Yard? They did not! A fiction writer would have had the Yard in long before, and the inspector would have turned out to be an expert, just as a side line, on things Chinese. But in this ac- tual case the head of the local police said, “We are quite capable of conducting our own affairs. I don’t want any further reference made to this!” Thus Scotland Yard waits, unable to investigate any crime that may occur, roughly, more than 15 miles outside of the center of London unless the local authorities so desire. And they do not always so desire, for the local police have reputations to earn or to maintain, a duty which they oft- times consider more important than solving crime. Scotland Yard has about 20,000 em- ployes, 19,000 of them, in uniform, work- ing out of district police stations and attending to the routine matters of