The Lady in the Cellar

by Sinclair McKay

  The arms and legs were ‘dissevered’,10 but not through violence; more simply the result of decay. How long had this corpse been in that cellar? The doctor investigated what remained of the viscera. Of the brain, there was nothing left but a ‘soft semi fluid’.11 The eyes were no longer there. The cartilage of the nose had also disappeared. Dr Davis and his sons wondered if it was possible that the body had been partly consumed by rats; but there was no obvious sign of this. And then the fragments of rope that were left twined around the neck; on further investigation of this extremely delicate twine, there were small patches of flesh left beneath it that seemed indented by the pressure.

  This was a new age of forensics; and the little that remained of the flesh and internal organs would be subjected to much more detailed tests. Was there, for instance, any trace of a poison such as arsenic to be found in the system? It was too early to presume that strangulation had been the cause of death. None the less, even before the closer examinations could be carried out, the doctor knew that he was looking at a victim of murder. This was not some well-dressed lady who had somehow found her way into a coal cellar and expired of natural causes.

  Under the flickering yellow of the gas, with the grey spring sky outside the gothic window, Dr Davis made his further preliminary guesses: this was a body of a woman who had been around five feet tall, with the possibility of a slight curvature to the spine. That, together with the earlier estimated age added to the mystery.

  It wasn’t just the evidence of violence; it was the fact that, judging by the very advanced state of decay, the murdered body of a finely dressed lady had lain in that particular coal cellar for what could have been several years.

  3

  The Man from X Division

  The Scotland Yard detective assigned to this macabre case was German-born, fluent in several European languages and had had some extraordinary experience across a wide range of cases, some of which involved a degree of espionage.

  It was clearly felt within the Metropolitan Police that another dimension of expertise would be invaluable here: the name ‘Bastendorff’ might have suggested that a detective with a European family background would be ideal for examining the household at number 4, Euston Square.

  Inspector Charles Hagen was a rising star. He was one of the pioneers of the recently formed Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

  The new CID itself was the result of a dramatic modernisation programme within the Metropolitan Police. This was partly a swift means of distancing itself from the former detective department, which had been undermined by several scandalous cases of corruption. But it was also a response to a fast-growing, thickly populated, increasingly cosmopolitan city.

  In previous years, detection had been largely instinct combined with circumstantial evidence; by the late 1870s, such techniques as fingerprinting and the photographing of convicted criminals were being introduced and used with growing confidence. The art of detection was becoming a science.

  Among those thriving in this new department were Inspector Abberline (who ten-years later would find himself confronted with the ‘Jack The Ripper’ murders). Meanwhile, Inspector Hagen, it was declared in The Times, would also form part of this ‘X Division’. (The ‘X’ had no special significance except to differentiate the new CID from the other alphabetically coded policing districts of London.)

  Hagen was already a familiar name to newspaper readers; a few years earlier, he had spent some time ‘in attendance’ to the Prince of Wales as a form of police bodyguard. In 1873, he accompanied the Prince on a state visit to Austria; and there was a comical moment one evening as the Prince, who had been attending a dinner at the Vienna Exhibition, left the restaurant, followed closely by the detective. The Austrian police, with no idea who he was, swooped in and arrested Hagen. He was ‘conveyed to prison by the Austrian police for pressing too closely upon their Royal Highnesses footsteps.’1 He was released very soon after as the mistake became plain. Even though the incident was treated light-heartedly, it spoke of a certain official nervousness: this was a febrile time in Europe; an era of terrorism and assassination.

  Following on from his royal duties, Inspector Hagen set to work on a wide variety of cases in London; and these cases reflected the city’s increasingly continental nature. A striking example was when Hagen was called upon to investigate an ugly case of extortion in Bloomsbury. The victim, Herr Sigmund Diespeker, president of the German Benevolent Society, was entrapped by a young woman called Elise Arnold. Miss Arnold claimed that she was leaving London and wanted him to look after her dog. He was lured to her room in a lodging house, whereupon he was ambushed by German thugs, who roughed him up, accused him of sinister sexual intent towards Miss Arnold and demanded money to prevent further violence. When the case was brought before the court, Hagen was required to act as an interpreter for the defendants and the witness.

  A rather more ambitious crime involving Count Schuvaloff, the Russian Ambassador to London, required Hagen’s expertise in 1877. The Count had been approached by a gentleman called Janacek Williams, claiming to be an inventor who had perfected two new super-weapons: ‘three cannon of an extraordinary character for destructive purposes’ and ‘a contrivance for infallibly picking up torpedoes and so completely neutralising their effect’.2

  Count Schuvaloff was sceptical – quite wisely as it happens: Williams was a serial swindler, his targets frequently German. Less baroque than the top secret weapons fraud, but slightly more cruel were his attempts, via advertisements placed in German newspapers, to entice men to come to London on the pretence of securing (nonexistent) jobs for them for a fee. Inspector Hagen moved in for the arrest. The con man was sentenced to six-months hard labour and was led from the dock ‘crying piteously and wringing his hands’.3

  By 1878, X Division of Scotland Yard had developed intriguingly close ties with police forces across Europe; the efficiency of telegraphy among other elements made such co-operation possible. But it was also indicative of the porous nature of many national borders at the time. Unlike in countries in continental Europe, new arrivals to Britain were not required to register with the police, and there were no limits placed on the amount of time they might spend here. This meant that as well as an increasingly thriving number of different nationalities in London in the 1870s, there were fugitives, too.

  Just a few weeks before the events at 4, Euston Square, Hagen found himself in pursuit of a French man called Monthaye, a forger who had fled Paris. In his absence, Monthaye had been sentenced by the French courts to ten-years’ hard labour. Hagen and a colleague tracked the man down to a tavern in the heart of the City. A ‘desperate struggle’ broke out and Monthaye managed to escape from the inn. The detectives gave chase through the narrow, twisting streets, for some distance. The felon was caught and brought before Bow Street to face extradition.

  So, by the time the public were learning of the grisly find in Euston Square, Inspector Hagen of X Division was a regular figure in the ‘Police Intelligence’ columns read all over the country. There was now some glamour attached to his job; a coalescing sense (after earlier decades of mistrust) that the detectives of Scotland Yard had unusual powers of perception. Not only could they detect guilt, but they could also somehow see within men’s hearts and divine motivations.

  Yet the Euston Square case was to take the Inspector into darker, and very much more complex, territory. There was a sense here that Scotland Yard was approaching the affair with a proper sympathy and sensitivity, as well as rigour, by appointing a policeman of German heritage to a case involving a German household. This seemed an acknowledgement that a household called Bastendorff might otherwise be vulnerable.

  His initial task was to question Severin and Mary Bastendorff. It is difficult to know whether he spoke to Bastendorff in German; that was certainly his approach in other cases. Both husband and wife appeared genuinely mystified by the discovery of the corpse. They could not tell the Inspector whose body it might have been
. Bastendorff gave voice to his own theory: that one night, some time ago, he had been alerted to a noise outside the scullery of the house next door, in the basement area just by the cellar. It was a lady, in a state of advanced inebriation. The gate to the steps down from the street had not been locked that evening. The lady in question was drunk and lost. So was it possible that the body in the cellar was another such unfortunate who had made her way down there by mistake?

  Nothing at that stage could be wholly discounted, but Inspector Hagen’s next task was to carry out a thorough examination of the house: every floor, every room.

  The Bastendorffs had little choice but to look on as Hagen went about his minute exploration of all the cupboards, the drawers, the wardrobes, all their own possessions, as well as the furniture in the empty tenants’ rooms. Every corner of their house, from the water closet to the kitchen, was subject to his scrutiny. Hagen spent a great deal of time in the coal cellar, examining the floor, the brickwork, for any traces of marks. When he was back in the house and climbing the stairs to the top floor, he asked Bastendorff how best he might gain entry to the attic.

  It is easy to envisage the two men on that shadowy third-floor landing, Bastendorff having procured the wooden steps, and informing the detective that the attic was always open; Hagen climbing those steps, pushing against the attic door – and finding resistance.

  There are no notes to suggest that he enlisted Bastendorff’s help; but it initially seemed that the door was jammed. Hagen examined it further; contrary to what Bastendorff had said, it had been tightly bolted.

  After some further effort with the stiff bolt, Hagen forced the attic door open, and climbed up into the darkness. There was little up there to detain him save one incongruous item: a wickerwork tray of a type that belonged to a basket trunk, which held a few miscellaneous items, including an eyeglass. The tray was passed down and Hagen had it taken to the police station for further examination.

  More questioning: this time directed at Bastendorff’s brothers, Joseph and Anton, in the bamboo workshop and the young men they employed. And then, after all that, there was little more at that stage to be done: Inspector Hagen had taken in the initial measure of this couple, their young children, the house they ran. He was not yet to know just how deep this mystery would become.

  4

  A City of Disappearances

  The ghoulish sightseers had arrived almost immediately; and by the time the sinister discovery in the cellar had been reported in the national and the local newspapers, the crowd outside number 4, Euston Square was almost a mob. It had to be held in check by policemen who were detailed to stand watch over the premises.

  To the smarter neighbours, the horror would have assumed two forms: the first, most obviously, concerning the dark secrets that had been concealed in their midst; the second, the sense that the carefully maintained gentility of Euston Square might be ruined by an unwholesome reputation attached to one house. Such things had happened elsewhere.

  And in the dazed hours following the removal of the body, there is little to suggest how the Bastendorffs dealt with the menacing presence of the onlookers outside their door; or, indeed, what sort of discussions they had between them concerning the hideous mystery.

  They had moved into the house three years previously, in 1876; the state of the uncovered corpse suggested to one mortuary observer that its presence in the cellar might have pre-dated their arrival. All that is certain in those immediately adjacent hours is that the new lodger Mr Brooks – for whom the coal cellar was being cleared – announced that in the circumstances, he and his family would not be moving into 4, Euston Square.

  It was not just the idea of murder; it was the additional tragedy that the corpse could not be identified. Here was a body of a finely dressed, clearly refined lady to whom no-one could lay any claim. This, it seemed, was a grim parable of a modern city filled with almost four million souls: the realisation that some of these souls might vanish and not be missed by anyone.

  This was one of the reasons why the case was so fascinating for the newspaper and periodical reading public, both in Britain and across the Atlantic: this sense of London having become so vast and so amoral that even a fine lady could be murdered in circumstances of gothic anonymity.

  The authorities let it be known in the local newspapers that the remains of the body, which had been conveyed to St Pancras mortuary, would be available to view. There was the hope – despite the decay – that someone might be able to make an identification. The slightly rounded shoulders, the shade of the clumps of remaining hair, the golden brooch which had been made in Birmingham, they hoped that these fragments might prove some sort of memory spur.

  It is possible that the authorities anticipated a few members of the public making a visit; they would certainly have been ready for possible charlatans ready to lay claim to any potential riches that the well-dressed lady might have had.

  What the authorities had somehow not anticipated was London’s appetite for necrotic spectacle. By the second day, there were queues of people outside the mortuary.

  The appalled officials tried to initiate some close questioning of all these potential viewers to establish that their interest was quite genuine, and not simply voyeuristic.

  In the early fog of speculation, the one thing that could be said with certainty was that Severin Bastendorff and his wife gave every appearance of being unfailingly helpful, polite and attentive when dealing with the police; there was no sense at any time that they were withholding information. And so, as Inspector Hagen assessed the household, and began to piece together its recent history – not merely the paying guests who had come and gone, but the staff as well – he was already quietly pursuing two shrewd theories about the identity of the body, and about how the poor woman might have met her death.

  His first step, a precautionary one, was to reach a little further into the past; and to try and contact the house’s previous owner, a Mr Milnes. He had been the sculptor who had built the studio in the backyard, and who worked with life models.

  This had been the subject of local lascivious speculation. While other men earned their livings through honest toil, there was clearly a sense among some that this was not quite a proper calling; that a man so raffish and bohemian might be tempted by his nubile life models into immorality and, in turn, perhaps into darker depravity.

  Yet Mr Milnes was still pursuing his artistic career quite openly; he had simply moved to the exquisitely beautiful Forest of Dean, near Gloucester and the Welsh border. He was very quick to talk to the police; and they were equally quick to dismiss any idea that he might have a connection. They were satisfied that the body was not that of an artist’s life model.

  As this was unfolding, the national news coverage had inadvertently brought a potential lead out into the open. Down in Bideford, north Devon, the news story in the local journal concerning the discovery of the body was met with horror by two middle-aged parents, William and Susan Dobbs.

  They had not heard from their daughter, Hannah, for an unusually long time; it was as though she had vanished. Hannah Dobbs had been working in London as a maid.

  And the house in which she had lived and worked was 4, Euston Square.

  5

  ‘I Am Not a Judge of Human Bones’

  Hannah Dobbs’ parents ran The Blacksmith’s Arms public house by the river in Bideford. The last time they had seen their 24-year-old daughter was about six months previously when she had come down from London by train on a visit.

  On that occasion, Hannah ‘came … with two children’, ran one local news report, ‘and then stated that she was married to a Mr Bastendorff, of 4, Euston Square, but the children she said were not hers’.1

  William and Susan Dobbs had appeared to accept their daughter’s sudden manifestation as a married woman. There had been one more flying visit: from Hannah, and from the man who claimed to be her husband. ‘In November last,’ reported the Press Association, ‘a man, who ga
ve the name of Bastendorff, came to Bideford, and stayed several days, and passed as the husband of Hannah Dobbs.

  ‘A photographic likeness of this man is in the possession of Mrs Dobbs,’ continued the report. ‘Hannah Dobbs did not return to London in company with her supposed husband.

  ‘And after her supposed return to Euston Square, a telegram was sent back (to her parents) by Bastendorff saying she was safe.

  ‘From that day to this,’ the report stated, ‘no tidings whatever have been received of Hannah Dobbs by her parents, though repeated letters have been sent through to 4, Euston Square they have invariably been returned through the Dead Letter Office.’2

  The Western Morning News added: ‘Hannah Dobbs was a fine built woman, with fair complexion, light hair worn in curls (and) had lost a front tooth.’3

  So why did Hannah Dobbs’ parents not make more strenuous efforts during that time to get to the bottom of their daughter’s mysterious and uncharacteristic silence? At first there seemed to be a good reason. ‘While home at Bideford,’ the Press Association reported, ‘(Hannah) stated that on her return to London, she was going abroad to Germany with Dr Bastendorff, R.A., brother of her husband, and her parents naturally supposed she had so gone abroad.’

  But then there had been the first uncanny inkling of discomfort and anxiety. ‘They received a letter some little time after she had returned to London from a person (at another address) in Euston Square, asking what they should do with some boxes belonging to Hannah Dobbs, who had gone away.’4