Paris by this stage, suffused with the new light of electricity, had been reborn in elegance. It would have been a thrilling city in which to begin a new life, especially given the circumscribed possibilities of life back in London.
Yet this might be an assumption too far; Hannah Dobbs’ own disappearance – or the vanishing of her old self at any rate – seems to have been too complete for anything to be stated with iron certainty.
According to one suggestion put forward in a genealogy discussion conducted a few years ago, Peter Bastendorff’s move to Paris was his last: he was said to have died in January 1898. He was also said to have left the sum of £160 (now worth about £11,000) to his sister, Elizabeth. There was no hint of any other bequests; not a suggestion that a more constant companion had inherited more.
But the business notices in the national newspapers in London announced the winding up of his remaining commercial concerns; that the company James N. Roberts, ‘trading as’ Peter Bastendorff, a bamboo furniture maker, was now bankrupt.
And by this stage, 4, Euston Square seemed to have gained, rather than faded, in notoriety. Which each passing year, the dank mystery of Matilda Hacker seemed to become ever more tantalising to an ever-widening reading public. Indeed, the house was about to take on a most unwelcome new life.
26
A Length of Washing Line
The police and the Home Office had tried to think of different angles by which they might have attacked the investigation; re-arresting Hannah Dobbs on a charge of larceny had been one idea to once more bring all the concerned residents of 4, Euston Square to court in the hope that more light be let within. But then, in the wake of the perjury and libel trials, it seemed clear that anyone who might have had any confession to make was going to hold rigidly to their carefully crafted stories.
Certainly, there was nothing more that the Scotland Yard detective Charles Hagen could do; and in any case, there was a range of new cases to occupy him. At the time, increasing numbers of passionately angry and radicalised French and German émigrés were settling in the area around Fitzroy Square (where the Bastendorffs had begun their careers). Some had set up inflammatory anarchist and socialist newspapers and, in 1881, Hagen was forced to make several arrests, following the publication of one particularly seditious journal.
In April of that year, Hagen, with three colleagues, raided the offices of Freiheit (which means political freedom or liberty) and arrested the editor Johann Most, who was, as the reports said, ‘deprived of his watch, money, bank book and letters’. The offices were said to be in ‘a very dirty condition’; Most was described as ‘a literary man’;1 he was rather more than that. An exile from Germany, he was one of the continent’s most voluble anarchists, who believed fervently in the legitimacy of violence for political ends. The arrest was prompted by the paper’s exultant reaction to the bloody assassination of the Russian Czar Alexander II. The charge, curiously, was ‘libel’; the underlying concern was clearly about the contagion of revolutionary sentiment. This was already a time of Fenian dynamite bombings in London and around the country. Hagen and his Scotland Yard colleagues were clearly concerned about anarchic Europeans sparking more violence. Such bomb-throwing figures would later inspire Joseph Conrad’s chilling novel The Secret Agent.
These were the sorts of émigrés that would have made the Bastendorff brothers flinch; they had come to London to participate in this blossoming bourgeois life, not to scorn it.
Charles Hagen won promotion again in the meantime, rising to become Chief Inspector of the Metropolitan Police. Although he was now less frequently out in the field, he still took a particular interest in cases that had a continental flavour. What cannot be known is if he ever had an itching sense of frustration about the Matilda Hacker case. It was upon his instincts that Hannah Dobbs had been charged; and there had never been any indication that he had been satisfied by her acquittal.
Did he occasionally sit back, late into an evening, and brood over other possible explanations, motives, killers? Who else might possibly have been in 4, Euston Square, and who might have had some murderous intention that escaped initial attention?
His interest might have been revivified by the news of Severin Bastendorff’s removal to the asylum; reflexively nervous attitudes to mental health back then must have made Hagen wonder about the possibility. It is more difficult to see now. The assault upon his wife with an umbrella notwithstanding, Bastendorff was certainly delusional but he did not seem to be suffering from psychosis. Nor indeed among his later hospital notes was there the least indication of violent tendencies.
Yet should we pay more attention to Hannah Dobbs’ pamphlet? If we were to do so, we would have to think of the Bastendorff that she and the journalists portrayed: a man seemingly perpetually in the tight grip of financial worries; a sexual adventurer with an apparent disregard for consequences. The police of course found – and Hannah Dobbs admitted – that the stories of a murdered Mr Findlay and a nameless little boy and indeed a dog were little more than fairy tales. But what of Matilda Hacker?
The exact date of her death was never established; so in one sense, Bastendorff’s alibi about having spent the weekend shooting in Erith might have been disregarded. But what then could possibly have happened? We would have to envisage the eccentric lady returning from one of her promenades, or perhaps from a mission to her Lincoln’s Inn solicitor, and letting herself into 4, Euston Square with her latchkey. Is there the chance that Bastendorff had picked up on the truth of her reasonably substantial wealth? Had he glimpsed the expensive-looking clothes and jewels and imagined that they betokened greater hidden riches? Had Hannah Dobbs mentioned the ‘roll’ of bank-notes that the old lady kept concealed within her clothes?
Miss Hacker had of late become a favourite with his young children; perhaps he had heard them excitedly discussing the grand old lady and The Book of Dreams. Perhaps the lady had woven some fantastical yarns about herself to the children.
But then a great leap is required; to picture the circumstances in which Severin Bastendorff might enter her room with the intention to rob her. Perhaps he has waited until she is out upon one of her errands. We would have to imagine him moving through that garden-facing second-floor room, searching the drawers of her writing desk, or examining the clothes that she always kept not in the wardrobe but in her hamper trunk, patting them down for money. A noise upon the stair, a movement of the door knob; Miss Hacker has returned unexpectedly to behold the scene. And she understands very quickly what it is about.
So we would have to imagine Severin’s panic; his efforts to silence her instant, noisy outrage. Matilda Hacker was known to have a temper like molten lava; and a scene such as this would be sufficient for an eruption. And so it is that Bastendorff might grab hold of her, to stop her shouting to his wife; and perhaps the struggle grows more physical, more furious, and then in his panic, his hands move to her throat in an effort to muffle her noise. She struggles furiously; he tightens his grip; and now the only thing that matters is ensuring that she makes no noise at all. Soon, there is nothing; her eyes are wide but there is no breath.
Then the aftershock of horror; the blank fugue state as he waits to make sure the house is quiet and empty, then carries her body downstairs, out to the kitchen, and then swiftly out of the basement door, and across the narrow yard to the coal cellars, where he secrets her in the furthest corner. He finds a length of clothes line; perhaps he is frightened she is still alive. So a couple of minutes in that musty darkness, winding the line around the old lady’s neck, and pulling it tight until he can be completely sure that there is no trace of breathing.
But none of this makes much sense, even in a case of psychosis. If the motive was primarily financial, why would Bastendorff have bestowed several highly identifiable items of value upon Hannah Dobbs? Surely he would have taken them himself to a pawn shop very far from the house, and then used the cash for whatever purpose he chose?
And again, even in
a case of psychosis, it would require quite an extraordinary level of abstraction to give no further thought to a corpse in a cellar which was frequently used by servants, and regularly seen by delivery men. Surely his priority, if this had been the case, would have been to await the most opportune moment to remove the body, take it a long distance from the house, and perhaps dispose of it by night on the wild heathlands of Hampstead or Epping Forest?
There is another faint – and distinctly baroque – possibility that might have commanded the attention of Inspector Charles Hagen: that the murderer of Matilda Hacker was not a resident in the house at all. Hagen would have seen, one year after the trials, an intriguing news report concerning an alleged long-lost brother of Matilda Hacker called Edmund, who had been missing for some considerable number of years; and of how Edmund’s children were now petitioning to be recognised in the wider Hacker family inheritance (which had been added to by Matilda Hacker’s property interests).
For the purposes of the legal action, the children were asking the courts to accept that Edmund Hacker was dead. Anyone who had read the enormously popular Charles Dickens novel Our Mutual Friend, first published in 1864, might have immediately wondered to themselves if the wider family could really be so certain that he was in his grave. The contrivance in the Dickens story is of a wronged protagonist, thought to have been murdered, who moves among the streets of London under an assumed identity.
The fortunes of the Hacker family seemed strikingly eccentric as they were; was it beyond the realms of possibility that this brother, who appeared to have abandoned his wife and children, was not dead?
What if this brother had been among those in pursuit of Matilda Hacker, those aggrieved creditors? What if he had returned from wherever he had been, in need of some of that family inheritance of which she had now received such a grand share thanks to the death of their sister? She moved like a nervous sparrow from house to house; was it partly not merely to evade irritated builders and tenants but also a rather more shadowy figure from her earlier years?
But to imagine such a shadowy figure, perhaps following her back to Euston Square from the lawyer’s office in Lincoln’s Inn, is somehow too reminiscent of a Wilkie Collins novel: the long estranged brother biding his time outside Euston Square, effecting entrance, confronting Matilda Hacker in her room when he knows the house to be largely empty. It would not explain murder, nor quite why such a figure would risk discovery by spending time looking for a suitable hiding place in the cellar for the body.
And indeed the news story might not have been as firm as it first seemed; for there was no subsequent attempt to follow it up. This was not for lack of interest in the Euston Square Murder, which was to crop up frequently in the press for many years yet.
And so the strongest possibility is that Charles Hagen’s instincts were right after all. If we look once more at Hannah Dobbs – even through the distorting glass of the ghostwritten memoir – we see interestingly that she, like her employer, might have been subject to a particular mental health condition.
Her kleptomania was perhaps a symptom of something wider. Even in her own words, she was fascinatingly blank about the endless compulsion to steal, and about her complete inability to regard the property of others as private. But she was also fascinatingly blank about much else. This was clear not merely in the pamphlet but also in her many appearances in court, which took on increasingly theatrical aspects. The lies simply grew larger and ever more baroque and then utterly grotesque. What then if this was not a desperate survival strategy but in fact the indicator of a deeper derangement?
Hannah Dobbs’ mother had reported early on in the case that she feared that her daughter would bring disgrace. What if she meant a stigma rather darker?
In today’s terms, we might understand Hannah Dobbs better as a sociopath: utterly lacking any empathy or remorse. This of course would not automatically make her a killer. But what if the relationship between herself and Matilda Hacker had been more complicated than the jury could guess?
In that 1887 court appearance before he was taken to Colney Hatch, Severin Bastendorff exclaimed that the old woman’s death was the responsibility of his brother, Peter, ‘and his wife’, meaning Hannah. It is possible that he was closer to it than anyone. There clearly was a fervid atmosphere within 4, Euston Square in that autumn of 1877; and Matilda Hacker might have been sensitive to it as well.
We can imagine her having retired to bed for the night; her bedroom in darkness, the occasional noise of a passing horse-drawn cab outside. She might be aware of Mr Riggenbach downstairs preparing for bed. And then the house becoming still and quiet. But then we would also imagine how Matilda Hacker – in common with ladies of her age, a light sleeper – would then awake in the darkness of the small hours, fully alert. She would be acutely sensitive to the noise of furtive footsteps trying to find the places on the stairs that would not creak. The movement on the upper landing, the sound of doors being opened and closed quietly.
It would be on nights such as these when a lodger would understand that these houses could have an uncanny quality, putting them some distance from feeling like a family home. An unfamiliar tread on the stairs would heighten any sense of vulnerability; and there would also be the discomfort of sensing that the house is permeable, porous; that even when it was supposed to be locked up at night, strangers could still be creeping past your door.
And the response to being awoken and then lying in that state of tense speculation about who was abroad in the small hours would naturally be one of anger.
This is the time when lovers meet secretly; the maid and the young man who has his own latchkey. Matilda Hacker lies and listens to the forbidden assignation. Perhaps she has heard two or three times. Perhaps, as a result, she is becoming increasingly furious about life in number 4, Euston Square.
Then the scene of crisis: a Sunday afternoon on the cusp of autumn, as Matilda Hacker returns from one of her promenades in Hyde Park, she climbs the stairs to her room on the second floor. She opens the door and instantly she is suspicious. There is a sense of the furnishings and of her belongings having been disturbed. She has recently been watching the maid Hannah Dobbs, and has noted that she does not have the submissive eye of a servant; there is something too bold there. She suspects the girl might be a thief.
The house is quiet; Severin Bastendorff has gone down to Erith for more shooting; his wife has gone up the road to pay a visit on her mother; Mr Riggenbach is out on business. Out the back, the furniture workshop is closed for the sabbath. Perhaps Matilda Hacker has the house to herself.
The old lady looks into her hamper. Her belongings have certainly been moved about; though it does not look at first as if anything has been taken. None the less, there is something so brazen about the speculativeness of the rummage that Miss Hacker finds herself burning with rising indignation. She considers ringing for Hannah Dobbs; a tug of that length of material on the wall, the corresponding bell agitating in the kitchen. Yet even in her anger, she waits; for the smallest of creaks from up the stairs tells her that there will be a more opportune moment yet for furious confrontation.
And as Matilda Hacker sits motionless at her writing desk, staring out of the window at the cabs below, another creak, and another, then the sound of feet coming down the stairs, rouses her from her trance.
She moves to the door of her room and opens it at precisely the moment when those feet reach her landing. Matilda Hacker has surprised both Hannah Dobbs and Peter Bastendorff, who stand there in that semi-darkness. Perhaps there is a small smile of triumph on the older woman’s face. Perhaps Hannah Dobbs silently and urgently beckons Peter Bastendorff back up the stairs. The maid is supposed to be in charge of the children; the eldest have been persuaded to play in the attic – the baby is asleep – while the two lovers have carried out their secret encounter. And as Peter nods and moves, Matilda Hacker tells the maid that she wants to know what she means by it.
Hannah Dobbs replies that
she does not know what Miss Uish means. Again, there is a hard defiance in the maid’s eye and something odd about the shape of her mouth – not a sneer, but not quite straight either. The old lady beckons her over the threshold of her room. Both women hear the noise, from above, of Peter Bastendorff joining the children in the attic for their games while the baby sleeps.
With her anger sharpening, Matilda Hacker now accuses Hannah Dobbs of theft; the maid hotly denies it. The old woman shouts that her possessions have been disturbed, and that no-one had permission to rifle through her belongings; again, the maid denies it, her own temper rising.
It is then that Matilda Hacker, now almost in a trance of anger, tells Hannah Dobbs that she knows all about her dealings with Peter Bastendorff; how she has heard them through the night. Miss Hacker tells the maid she is resolved to speak to Mary Bastendorff about the squalid dealings taking place under her roof. A maid with no morals, and a young German tradesman slaking their lust in what should be a decent family home. Theft and fornication: these, declares Miss Hacker, are the foundations of 4, Euston Square.
From her time working on a dairy farm, Hannah Dobbs has long been physically strong; and when the old lady makes a move seemingly for the door, the maid moves to block her progress, going so far as to seize the old lady by the wrist. At first, in her flat voice, Hannah seeks to persuade the old lady that she is mistaken; that Peter Bastendorff is a particular friend, and that the only time she enters the lady’s room is to clean it.
The two women are engaged in a clumsy dance; the old lady struggling to get free of Hannah Dobbs’ grip, Hannah gradually pushing her back closer to the fireplace where some coal still glows from the morning fire. Matilda Hacker becomes ever angrier, and begins to use coarse language concerning the maid and her behaviour; and she is stronger than she looks too, for as the words come out in a near-growl, she is jerking back and forth, pulling the maid with her. Their struggle becomes more physical yet, with the maid attempting now to seize both the old lady’s arms. Matilda Hacker’s right arm comes free, and swings; a new glass gas lamp is knocked off the mantel-shelf, and it crunches into the green carpet.
The Lady in the Cellar Page 28