The Inspector hurried away and a few minutes afterwards the favourite came in alone for the second race on the card. The stewards immediately afterwards announced that racing would be abandoned on account of the fog increasing, and I made my way to the railway station and went home by the members’ train.
Directly I reached home I turned eagerly to my newspaper file and read up the Hannaford murder. I knew the leading features, but every detail of it had now a special interest to me, seeing that Dorcas Dene had taken the case up.
These were the facts as reported in the Press:
Early in the morning of January 5 a maidservant rushed out of the house, standing in its own grounds on Haverstock Hill, calling ‘Murder!’ Several people who were passing instantly came to her and inquired what was the matter, but all she could gasp was, ‘Fetch a policeman’. When the policeman arrived he followed the terrified girl into the house and was conducted to the drawing-room, where he found a lady lying in her nightdress in the centre of the room covered with blood, but still alive. He sent one of the servants for a doctor, and another to the police station to inform the superintendent. The doctor came immediately and declared that the woman was dying. He did everything that could be done for her, and presently she partially regained consciousness. The superintendent had by this time arrived, and in the presence of the doctor asked her who had injured her.
She seemed anxious to say something, but the effort was too much for her, and presently she relapsed into unconsciousness. She died two hours later, without speaking.
The woman’s injuries had been inflicted with some heavy instrument. On making a search of the room the poker was found lying between the fireplace and the body. The poker was found to have blood upon it, and some hair from the unfortunate lady’s head.
The servants stated that their master and mistress, Mr and Mrs Hannaford, had retired to rest at their usual time, shortly before midnight. The housemaid had seen them go up together. She had been working at a dress which she wanted for next Sunday, and sat up late, using her sewing-machine in the kitchen. It was one o’clock in the morning when she passed her master and mistress’s door, and she judged by what she heard that they were quarrelling. Mr Hannaford was not in the house when the murder was discovered. The house was searched thoroughly in every direction, the first idea of the police being that he had committed suicide. The telegraph was then set to work, and at ten o’clock a man answering Mr Hannaford’s description was arrested at Paddington Station, where he was taking a ticket for Uxbridge.
Taken to the police station and informed that he would be charged with murdering his wife, he appeared to be horrified, and for some time was a prey to the most violent emotion. When he had recovered himself and was made aware of the serious position in which he stood, he volunteered a statement. He was warned, but he insisted on making it. He declared that he and his wife had quarrelled violently after they had retired to rest. Their quarrel was about a purely domestic matter, but he was in an irritable, nervous condition, owing to his health, and at last he had worked himself up into such a state, that he had risen, dressed himself, and gone out into the street. That would be about two in the morning. He had wandered about in a state of nervous excitement until daybreak. At seven he had gone into a coffee house and had breakfast, and had then gone into the park and sat on a seat and fallen asleep. When he woke up it was nine o’clock. He had taken a cab to Paddington, and had intended to go to Uxbridge to see his mother, who resided there. Quarrels between himself and his wife had been frequent of late, and he was ill and wanted to get away, and he thought perhaps if he went to his mother for a day or two he might get calmer and feel better. He had been very much worried lately over business matters. He was a stock-jobber, and the market in the securities in which he had been speculating was against him.
At the conclusion of the statement, which was made in a nervous, excited manner, he broke down so completely that it was deemed desirable to send for the doctor and keep him under close observation.
Police investigations of the premises failed to find any further clue. Everything pointed to the supposition that the result of the quarrel had been an attack by the husband – possibly in a sudden fit of homicidal mania – on the unfortunate woman. The police suggestion was that the lady, terrified by her husband’s behaviour, had risen in the night and run down the stairs to the drawing-room, and that he had followed her there, picked up the poker, and furiously attacked her. When she fell, apparently lifeless, he had run back to his bedroom, dressed himself, and made his escape quietly from the house. There was nothing missing so far as could be ascertained – nothing to suggest in any way that any third party, a burglar from outside or some person inside, had had anything to do with the matter.
The coroner’s jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder, and the husband was charged before a magistrate and committed for trial. But in the interval his reason gave way, and, the doctors certifying that he was undoubtedly insane, he was sent to Broadmoor.
Nobody had the slightest doubt of his guilt, and it was his
