just as a soldier would who was about to attack a hostile fort. Think of Palmer, and his purchases of strychnine. This fellow walked about London all day—and whilst dabbling in horse business, contrived to slip into the chemist’s shop where he bought the deadly poison, and went down by train with his victim’s life in his pocket. When the Mannings invited their friend down-stairs to wash his hands in the back kitchen, his grave was already dug in the scullery. They had worked at it for days and nights beforehand. It is not reasonable to suppose that where murderers use so much forethought upon all the details of their crime, they do not take the chances of impunity into account. All their precautions are indeed directed to securing for themselves as many chances of impunity as possible.
The Road murder is still vested in impenetrable mystery. Sir George Lewis, no doubt, exercised a most wise discretion in declining to make the mystery a pretext for the issue of a special commission, which was to take evidence in the matter according to some fashion not in use amongst our criminal lawyers. If the administration of the criminal law can be improved, let these improvements be at once introduced for the benefit of all. Let us not hear of exceptional proceedings in any case simply because it is surrounded with mystery, and because public feeling is much excited upon it. This is just one of the instances in which persons accused, or suspected, require all the protection which the forms of law can throw around them, unless we wish to revive the days of the Star Chamber, and of High Commissions. There is happily one person whose assistance can almost always be depended upon in the detection of murder, and that is—the murderer himself. That wretched sot Manning, when at the little inn at Jersey, would turn the conversation every evening in the tap-room upon the subject of the murder in which he had been engaged, until at last suspicion fell upon him, and he was taken. It is hard for a murderer not to do too much or too little. It is difficult to walk about with such a burden at your heart, and to look your fellows in the face as if it was not there!
What an instance of this we have in this man Mullins, if it should, after all, turn out that he is the murderer of Mrs. Elmsley. There was no reason why he should speak. He had only to hold his tongue, and apparently he was safe, if he had also taken common precautions to place any articles which he had abstracted from the house in proper places for concealment. All circumstances as they stand at present tell fearfully against him. He leads the police to an outhouse in which, according to his own statement, he had seen the man Emms deposit a packet at a certain hour. He points out the very spot in which the packet was deposited, when the police had begun to flag in their researches. He states an hour at which he saw Emms place the packet there; at that hour it is proved that Emms was in his bed. The packet, when opened, did actually contain various articles which must have been taken from Mrs. Elmsley’s house after the murder. It was tied with an end of waxed string, and with the very same kind of waxed string were tied the very shoes which he had on his feet at the time the search was made. No doubt, now that suspicion—or something more—is fixed upon a particular man, many suggestions will be made, and many points will be inquired into, which will effectually allay all doubts as to his guilt or innocence. On the whole, it seems more probable that it was less the desire to obtain the reward, than a nervous anxiety to see the responsibility of the crime fixed upon another man, which induced Mullins to give to the police that information which has told with such fearful effect against himself.
LA GLOIRE.
