Murder mystery

“ So far as the circumstances are known to us, a murder, if it had occurred, would have been an impromptu murder, committed in a more or less public place. But the first indication of a murder of that kind is usually—the discovery of the body. ”

“ They will always begin at the wrong end. The question, 'Who is the murderer?' does not arise until it is certain that there has been a murder; and it can't be certain that there has been a murder until it is certain that the missing person is dead. ”

“ It is a mistake to confound strangeness with mystery. The most commonplace crime is often the most mysterious because it presents no new or special features from which deductions may be drawn. This murder would have been infinitely more difficult to unravel had the body of the victim been simply found lying in the roadway without any of those outré and sensational accompaniments which have rendered it remarkable. ”

“ Yet even the javelin-men were cast into the shade by the other great feature of the assize week. The crime of murder remains, after all is said and done, the one thing which most fascinates the public mind. And when to murder is added mystery, and when that mystery centres round the figure of a woman, and when that woman is young and beautiful, and in a social position which does away with the presence of squalid details or coarse motives, the public may be pardoned if they take the very fullest interest in her fate. ”

“ The curiosity excited, the alarm produced, and the peculiarity of each succeeding discovery of the mangled members of the body, and the seemingly impenetrable mystery in which the circumstances of such a murder were shrouded, all conspired to awaken suspicion, renew inquiry, and incite to fresh exertion, until at last the mystery was developed by the family of the deceased. ”

“ A murder so mysterious, and so perplexing in all its particulars, was never before committed in Paris—if indeed a murder has been committed at all. The police are entirely at fault—an unusual occurrence in affairs of this nature. ”

“ Now, the only facts we have as yet gathered about this murder are: that the man was young, dissipated, and was stabbed through the heart by some very small instrument or weapon; that his assailant was an inmate of the Rosemere; that the crime was committed on Tuesday night; and, lastly, that whoever placed the body where it was found must, at one time or another, have had the key to the outside door in his or her possession. Whatever else we may think or believe, is purely speculative. ”

“ Keeping now steadily in mind the points to which I have drawn your attention—that peculiar voice, that unusual agility, and that startling absence of motive in a murder so singularly atrocious as this—let us glance at the butchery itself. Here is a woman strangled to death by manual strength, and thrust up a chimney, head downwards. Ordinary assassins employ no such modes of murder as this. ”

“ The most sanguinary murder is a poor thing if people know how and by whom it was done. Mystery is essential in a crime that is to occupy the mind of the public. The murder in the great house in Portland Place had all the elements of enduring success—wealth, beauty, secrecy, and that Italian flavour which offered poignant possibilities of jealousy or revenge, or perhaps a life-long vendetta, as the motive of the crime. ”

“ Enough of murder, and mystery, which always seems to double the crime it hides, was in this brief and tragic story to lay upon the beautiful but fatal field the memory of blood. The country people always avoided the place ”

“ No one was injured except the two wretched beings who met their just and awful fate in the grave they had prepared for themselves. They have passed away from this world, but it will be long before the memory of their crime and its involvements will be forgotten. It has been determined to pull down the fatal house in which the murder was committed, and to rebuild it anew. ”

“ APPARITION INVESTIGATED.
In a village in one of the midland counties of Scotland, lived a widow, distinguished among her neighbours for decency of manners, integrity, and respect for religion. She affirmed that, for several nights together, she had heard a supernatural voice exclaiming aloud, Murder! Murder! This was immediately reported through the neighbourhood: all were alarmed, and looked around them with solicitude for the detection of the murder which they supposed to have been committed ”

“ Writing at high pressure, we have neither the time nor the space for a careful consideration of all the features of this Mystery-murder--no longer a mystery, thanks to the doings of the child-heroine, Gracie Death, and of Richard Remington, who, with the son of the murdered man, almost fell a victim to one of the vilest conspiracies in the history of crime. To-morrow we shall go fully into all the details; to-day we must content ourselves with supplementing the report of the police court proceedings and incidents by such further particulars as have come to our knowledge. ”

“ The murder could not have been committed without a motive, and it must be possible to discover what that motive was. Somebody must have stood to benefit in some way by her death; and I am going to find that person, or those persons, if I give up the rest of my life to the search. ”

“ About the murder itself there is not much to tell. The man, I believe, was an inhuman scoundrel, and the woman first killed him in desperation, and afterwards herself in despair. The only detail connected with the actual crime of which I have ever heard, was the gale that was blowing that night—the fiercest known to this countryside in that generation; and it has always been said since that any misfortune to the Mervyns—especially any misfortune connected with the curse—comes with a storm of wind. ”

“ The police are confounded by the seeming absence of motive—not for the murder itself, but for the atrocity of the murder. They are puzzled, too, by the seeming impossibility of reconciling the voices heard in contention, with the facts that no one was discovered upstairs but the assassinated Mademoiselle L'Espanaye, and that there were no means of egress without the notice of the party ascending. The wild disorder of the room; the corpse thrust, with the head downward, up the chimney; the frightful mutilation of the body of the old lady ”

“ I speak of this point chiefly for the sake of method; for the strength of Madame L’Espanaye would have been utterly unequal to the task of thrusting her daughter's corpse up the chimney as it was found; and the nature of the wounds upon her own person entirely preclude the idea of self-destruction. Murder, then, has been committed by some third party; and the voices of this third party were those heard in contention. Let me now advert—not to the whole testimony respecting these voices—but to what was peculiar in that testimony, Did you observe anything peculiar about it? ”

“ There are leading points in the case which we may take as established beyond dispute. One is that a murder has been committed, a murder of extreme brutality, and distinguished by features of extreme cunning. Another, that the man murdered is Mr. Samuel Boyd. Another, that the murder was committed on the night of the 1st or the 2nd of March. ”

“ The worst that will happen to you is that you will have to repeat part of your story at the inquest. No one can suspect you of having killed the man. The body must have been hidden somewhere for twenty-four hours, and in your apartment there is no place you could have done this, except possibly in the small coat closet under the stairs. But your waitress swears that she cleaned that very closet on the morning after the murder. Neither were you able as far as I can see to procure a key to the vacant apartment. ”

“ These three facts being joined together, seemed perfectly to agree, and to confirm one another; and all believed some horrible murder had been committed. The relations of the gentleman thought they were called upon to make inquiry into the truth of these allegations: they accordingly came first to the church-yard, where, in company with the sexton, they examined all the graves with great care, in order to discover whether any of them had lately been dug, or had the appearance of containing more than one coffin. ”

“ Graves is alive at this moment seems to me infinitesimal. There was evidently a conspiracy to murder him, and the deliberate, persistent manner in which that object was being pursued points to a very strong and definite motive. ”

“ In six weeks or less from the date of this terrific event, the negro was set at liberty by a majority of voices among the magistrates. In that short interval other events had occurred no less terrific and mysterious. In this first murder, though the motive was dark and unintelligible, yet the agency was not so; ordinary assassins apparently, and with ordinary means, had assailed a helpless and unprepared family ”

“ Knots of men went hurrying by, and he caught snatches of their talk. There had been a murder—a man was murdered in his bed—it was a woman—a man had murdered his wife—there were two murders—three—the tale went every way, but it was always Murder, Murder, Murder. ”

“ Did you ever hear of a murderer getting a witness to his work who could see it or hear it? Murder is the work of stealth and craft in which there are not only no witnesses, but the traces are attempted to be obliterated. What is called sometimes circumstantial evidence is nothing in the world but that presumption of circumstances, it may be one or fifty. There isn’t any chain about it: the word “chain” is a misnomer as applied to it; it is the presentation of circumstances from which one is irresistibly driven to the conclusion that crime has been committed. ”

“ That night, gentlemen, a murder was committed of a deeper and darker dye than guilt ordinarily wears: a murder which in centuries hence will stand amongst the blackest chapters in the gloomy annals of crime. ”

“ We are next treated to an artistic study of murder in low life, the murderer being in hot pursuit of a young female in a nightgown, whose hair sets out straight as porcupine's quills from her head, and within an inch of the itching fingers of her pursuer, while behind him are laid out in an ascending scale the dead bodies of an old man, an old woman, and a child, the same being the victims he has just finished off. ”

“ In the solitude of that house, with ample fire in the stove, with ample wit of woman nobody has suggested that as to the first crime there was not ample opportunity, ample means and that nothing could be suggested as a reason why all the evidence of that crime could not have been amply and successfully concealed. But as to the second murder the question is one of more difficulty. I cannot answer it. You cannot answer it. You are neither murderers nor women. You have neither the craft of the assassin nor the cunning and deftness of the sex. ”

“ A murderer’s hand has been lifted against me while I slept—I have seen blood shed before my eyes, and could not stay the unrighteous hand of the murderer—I have had none to love me but one—no mother ever smiled upon me—no recollection of a father’s caress warms my heart. ”

“ There is this to be observed in the physiology of every murder,—that before the coroner's inquest the sole object of public curiosity is the murdered man; while immediately after that judicial investigation the tide of feeling turns; the dead man is buried and forgotten, and the suspected murderer becomes the hero of men's morbid imaginations.
John Mellish looked in at the door of the cottage to ask a few questions. ”

“ Does anybody want proof that she is blackhearted, treacherous, lying, cowardly, a secret murderer?” raved the girl. “Yes, a murderer! She wanted me to commit murder,—to let a sweet young creature starve on her sick-bed, and tried to bribe me with that very ear-ring. ”

“ If there ever was a murder committed of an especially atrocious description, one done under peculiarly horrifying and terrible circumstances, here is a wax figure of the murderer, and, if possible, of the victim. ”

“ The idea that murderers are haunted for ever by the memory of their guilt is as fallacious as the smug proverb that ‘Murder will out.’ For one murder that comes to light there are ten that remain in eternal darkness. ”

“ Its first effect was to paralyze her. She sat white and trembling, and her great eyes filled with horror. Then she began to scream wildly for help. The men and women came round her.
"Murder! murder!" ”

“ On the contrary, murders are almost invariably committed under the influence of the strongest excitement, even when the incentive is gain, and the murder has been deeply premeditated. That is a remarkable truth in the psychology of murder. ”

“ Murderers come into my shop, I won’t say every day, but often. My dear friend, the world is full of them. You will ask, if that is so why are so comparatively few murders committed? For this reason, very few people have the motive for slaying a fellow man or woman. I myself cannot remember a single time in my life when the commission of a murder would have benefited me much, and when that murder could have been committed by me with reasonable chance of not being discovered. ”

“ All people who have read anything, have read of the irresistible fascination that the scene of the murder has for the murderer, of the way in which the victim "haunts" the slayer, and of how the truth that "murder will out" is really based on the fact that the murderer is his own most dangerous accuser by reason of his life of terror, remorse, and terrible hallucination.
My case is in no wise parallel.
I am absolutely without fear, regret, remorse, repentance, dread or terror in the matter of my killing Sergeant Burker. ”