The accused, on being confronted with this new witness, did not appear in any way startled or disconcerted. On the contrary, he maintained the same calm demeanour which had characterized him throughout. He declared the man with the wooden leg was simply an impostor, bribed to appear against him by Peter Guerre, and that it was all part of a conspiracy to deprive him of his lawful wife and the property he lawfully inherited.
In giving his testimony, the man with the wooden leg, while vehemently denying that he had been bribed, and protesting he was the real Martin Guerre, appeared very flustered, and his evidence struck many of those present as forced and unconvincing.
The next step, however, on the part of the prosecution, and one which had probably been well rehearsed beforehand, was to confront the man with the wooden leg with the Guerres. This proved fatal to the accused. Directly the eldest of Martin Guerre’s sisters saw the new witness, she threw herself into his arms, calling him her dear lost brother. Her three sisters followed suit. Then, amid the most tense silence, Bertrande was called. The moment she entered the Court and saw the man with the wooden leg, she became greatly agitated, and bursting into tears fell on her knees before him, crying out that he was her real husband and imploring his forgiveness.
That, in the opinion of the judges, settled the matter. They at once pronounced the accused to be guilty of all the charges brought against him, and sentenced him to be executed. Four days later, that is to say on 16 September 1560, the sentence was carried into effect.
The condemned man, bareheaded, clad only in his shirt, holding in one hand a burning taper, and with a rope round his neck, was, first of all, made to kneel before the door of the Church of Rieux and ask pardon of God, the King, the local authorities, the presumed real Martin Guerre, in other words the man with the wooden leg, and Bertrande. Then, with a cruelty characteristic of those times, he was taken to a scaffold, which had been erected just outside Martin Guerre’s house, and in the presence of Bertrande and all the Guerre family, he was slowly strangled, his body being subsequently burned.
If Bertrande did feel any pity for him, she certainly did not manifest any, but seems to have remained perfectly indifferent to his sufferings. That he was an impostor should not, perhaps, be doubted, since it is said that he made a full and spontaneous confession of his guilt without any coercion whatever.
But, at the same time, it seems to me quite conceivable that this unfortunate man really may have been Martin Guerre, and that he made a false confession with regard to his identity, anticipating torture if he did not.
The question as to whether the man with the wooden leg was the real Martin Guerre may, I think, safely be answered in the negative. It must be remembered that the soldier from Rochefort had publicly declared, most probably at the instigation of Peter Guerre, that the real Martin Guerre, having lost a leg in the wars, was wearing a wooden one. What an inducement then for an adventurer, chancing to have lost a leg, to pretend to be Martin Guerre, the owner of no inconsiderable property and a pretty wife! Learning, too, of Peter Guerre’s fanatical hatred of the man who had for three years passed as Martin Guerre and was now accused of being Arnold Tilh, he would, of course, bank considerably on Peter Guerre’s support, reckoning that with such an influential ally the risk of exposure would not be very great.
Or, again, and what, I think, is more likely, Peter Guerre may have engineered the whole thing and have bribed the man with the wooden leg to play the rôle of Martin Guerre.
As I have already stated, the man with the wooden leg appeared very confused in Court; his replies to questions put to him were evasive and shifty, and he gave not a few of those present in Court the impression that he was not genuine and merely acting a part he found extremely difficult to maintain. Were he the real Martin Guerre, many argued, he would surely have made known his presence in Rieux or Artigues before his appearance at the trial, and the fact of his not having done so suggested he was purposely kept out of the way, lest he should be asked too many questions.
The fact that Bertrande and Martin Guerre’s sisters proclaimed the man with the wooden leg to be the genuine Martin Guerre the moment they set eyes on him proved nothing, since they had all been just as ready with their recognition in the case of “Arnold Tilh”, so that, if they had been so easily deceived on one occasion, why should they not be on another?
But apart from the fact that their identification was thus proved to be futile, it is more probable than not that, in the case of the man with the wooden leg, they had all acted under the coercion of the vindictive Peter Guerre.
However, if neither the man with the wooden leg nor the man who had been executed was the real Martin Guerre, what had become of him? He was last seen, it will be remembered, that summer morning, some seven or eight years after his marriage, walking along the road leading from his home, through lonely lanes and fields, in the direction of his father’s house. He was well known to have had several inveterate enemies, youths who bitterly resented his prosperity and coveted both his wife and fortune. What more likely, then, than that these envious youths had banded together and murdered him, burying his body in one of the many unfrequented spots all around Artigues?
I can find no definite statement that this explanation of his disappearance was seriously considered at the time, but so obvious is it that there was both motive and opportunity for murder, that were it not for Bertrande’s having been so sure, to begin with, and apparently up to the commencement of his trial, that the man who claimed to be her husband, and with whom she subsequently lived for three years, was her husband, I should say that, without doubt, Martin Guerre was murdered. It is the inconsequent and unsatisfactory behaviour of Bertrande herself that, in my opinion, makes any certain solution to the mystery of her husband’s disappearance impossible.
THE CASE OF THE SALMON SANDWICHES
(Annie Hearn, 1930)
Daniel Farson
Everything about Annie Hearn suggested a long, grey spinsterhood. Plain, slightly dowdy and prematurely middle-aged, she had spent much of her life nursing various ailing relatives in the north of England. In 1919, she claimed to have married a Dr Leonard Hearn in London, but this appears to be unsubstantiated. So is her claim to have been widowed within a week of the wedding. In the early twenties, Mrs Hearn moved south to Cornwall, nursing an elderly aunt and a sister, both of whom died under her care. A local farmer and his wife were in the habit of taking Annie Hearn with them on various outings. For one of these trips, she prepared tinned salmon sandwiches, dressed with her own homemade salad cream. Two weeks later, the farmer’s wife was dead from arsenical poisoning. Annie Hearn disappeared, apparently into thin air. When she was found, she was arrested and tried for murder, but the jury acquitted her and Mrs Hearn walked free. The mystery of what really happened to the poisoned neighbour was never solved. The case caught the attention of the writer and broadcaster Daniel Farson (1927–97). Farson was a rumbustious alcoholic who moved to the West Country in the 1960s from London, where he was a familiar figure in louche Soho circles. He wrote a book on Jack the Ripper, claiming the killer was M.J. Druitt, a barrister who, on 8 September 1888, played cricket for Blackheath less than six hours after Annie Chapman was hacked to death in Spitalfields.
It became one of the most mysterious cases of murder this century, but it had a jaunty beginning. On the afternoon of Saturday 18 October 1930, three people set out by motor car from the small Cornish village of Lewannick, near Launceston, for a trip to the nearby seaside resort of Bude. William Thomas, a farmer, and his wife Alice were taking their neighbour Annie Hearn on an outing. Annie had been on her own since the death of her elder sister Minnie in July and the Thomases had decided that a trip might cheer her up.
Annie Hearn was something of a mystery in the neighbourhood. She lived at Trenhorne House, just outside Lewannick, a hundred yards or so up the road from the Thomases at Trenhorne Farm. She was a “foreigner” from the north of England who had come to Cornwall in 1921. She was appare
ntly a widow, probably in her mid forties, though no one was certain of her age—not even Annie herself. She had known bad luck: her husband had left her only a week after their marriage; her aunt had died at Trenhorne House after a long illness, and then tragedy had struck again with the painful death of her sister Minnie. It was only natural that William and Alice should feel sorry for the lonely woman who lived nearby. Alice made her junkets and clotted cream, which her husband took to Trenhorne House. He had shown sufficient trust in her to lend her thirty-eight pounds two years earlier when she was short of money.
The three left for Bude in William Thomas’s car at three p.m. One of the lesser resorts on the north Cornish coast, it was a drive of twenty miles (thirty kilometres). They went to Littlejohn’s Cafe (no longer in existence), where they ordered tea. When they were seated, Annie produced a packet of sandwiches, carefully prepared by herself with tinned salmon and her own salad cream, as her contribution to the treat. By today’s standards this seems an odd thing to do, but not then. “Remember,” says a relative of Jack Littlejohn today, “you’re in Cornwall now. That’s the way they did things here, saving the pennies.”
They ate most of the salmon sandwiches and afterwards the two women went for a stroll while William Thomas took a walk on his own. He stopped at the nearest inn, The Grove Hotel, for a couple of whiskies, with the excuse that he was feeling queasy. When he rejoined the ladies, his wife complained of “a sticky taste” in her mouth and asked if they could buy some fruit; her husband bought her some bananas.
They started the drive back to Trenhorne Farm at six forty-five p.m. but were forced to make a number of stops on the way because Mrs Thomas was suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea. On their return to the farm, they sent for Dr Graham Saunders, who arrived at nine thirty p.m. He found Mrs Thomas’s symptoms consistent with food poisoning, but did not think she was seriously ill and recommended a diet of whitebait and water.
Now it was Annie’s turn to play the good neighbour and she rallied nobly, staying at the farm to nurse Alice Thomas who improved steadily. Oddly, it was eleven days before Alice’s mother, Mrs Parsons, heard of her daughter’s illness, although she lived only five miles (eight kilometres) away—apparently Alice did not want her mother to be alarmed. Once she knew, she came over to nurse her daughter herself; Annie continued to run the house and do the household cooking. The doctor was sufficiently reassured to stop calling every day, and the following Sunday Alice Thomas was able to come down for lunch—a traditional meal of roast mutton, sprouts and potatoes, prepared by Annie. Alice ate hers in the dining room while the others stayed in the kitchen. At nine p.m. Thomas carried his wife upstairs, giving her an aspirin from a bottle that Annie had supplied.
During the night, Alice became ill again. In the morning Thomas sent for the doctor, who was so shocked by the change that had taken place in his patient that he called in a consultant. Alice was now delirious, partly paralysed and unable to use her legs—and the consultant agreed with Dr Saunders’ suspicion that she had arsenical poisoning. They transferred the patient immediately to Plymouth City Hospital where she was admitted just before midnight on Monday 3 November. By nine thirty-five the next morning, she was dead.
Because of the doctor’s report about possible poisoning, a post mortem was held. The organs sent to the Exeter city analyst were found to contain 0.85 grains (56 mg) of arsenic. This finding should have remained confidential, but William Thomas somehow got to hear of it. He warned Annie that there might be inquiries by the police and possibly an inquest. The rumours spread, and festered in the retelling, so that the funeral of Alice Thomas on Saturday 8 November took place in an atmosphere of high tension. Subjected to stares, whispers and innuendos, Annie Hearn braved it out until the accusations against her were finally voiced the following day in the Thomases’ dining room at Trenhorne Farm. Percy Parsons, the dead woman’s brother, said to Annie Hearn: “We haven’t met, but I’ve heard about you and them tinned sandwiches you was responsible for. What d’you put in them? That’s what I’d like to know. Something wrong from all accounts. This needs clearing up, ’tis not the end of it, no way.”
Understandably distressed, Annie confided to her neighbour Mrs Spears, who lived in the other wing of Trenhorne House, “They seem to think I have poisoned Mrs Thomas with the sandwiches. They think down there all tinned food is poisoned!”
Meanwhile, the behaviour of William Thomas struck some people as peculiar, too. Far from accusing Annie, he asked her to stay on at the farm, but demanded some form of receipt for the thirty-eight pounds she had borrowed two years before. Distraught, she refused to sit down and eat with him, and burst out, “I’ll never forget that horrid man Parsons and the things he said. I’ve lost my appetite … life isn’t worth living.” She ran off up the lane and, when she failed to return, Thomas called at her house. There was no answer.
On 11 November Thomas received a poignant letter from Annie, posted the previous afternoon from nearby Congdon’s Corner, in which she insisted on her innocence but clearly threatened suicide. Or was the letter a bluff? The “awful man” was Percy Parsons, the dead woman’s brother.
Dear Mr Thomas,
Goodbye. I am going out if I can. I cannot forget that awful man and the things he said. I am innocent, innocent. She is dead and it was my lunch she ate. I cannot bear it. When I am dead they will be sure I am guilty, and you at least will be clear. May your dear wife’s presence guard and comfort you still. Yours, A.H. My life is not a great thing anyhow, now dear Minnie’s gone. I should be glad if you send my love to Bessie and tell her not to worry about me. I will be all right. My conscience is clear, so I am not afraid of the afterwards. I am giving instructions to Webb about selling the things, and hope you will be paid in full. It is all I can do now.
Thomas immediately fetched a police officer and together they broke into Trenhorne House to find it empty. Annie Hearn had disappeared.
Was the letter an implicit admission of guilt despite her claim to innocence? Or was it the final testament of a woman weighed down by local gossip, attempting to do the honourable thing by saving the reputation of her friend William Thomas by destroying her own? Or could it have been a charade—a calculated deception by one guilty of murder? If that was the case, then Annie Hearn was a monster.
To start with, her movements were easy to trace. She had hired Hector Ollett, an ex-army man who ran the shop at Congdon’s Corner where she had posted the letter, to drive her down to Looe about twenty miles (thirty kilometres) away on the south coast. She paid him eighteen shillings, and he dropped her off at the bridge. After that the scent went cold, until the police found her check coat several days later, near the edge of the cliff. The conclusion was obvious: Annie Hearn had killed herself by jumping from the clifftop.
On 24 November, little more than a month since that outing to Bude, the inquest into the death of Alice Thomas began in Plymouth. The coroner asked William Thomas these vital questions:
“Had you any rat poison?”—Thomas replied that he had, “locked in my desk”.
“Did your wife ever object to Mrs Hearn coming to the house?”—“Never.”
“You and Mrs Thomas were friendly with Mrs Hearn’s sister?”—“Yes.”
“Did you ever give your wife any cause to be jealous of Mrs Hearn?”—“Never.”
A chemist from Launceston confirmed that he had supplied weedkiller for Mrs Hearn’s garden four years earlier. The powder, he said, was practically “all arsenic”. The verdict of the inquest was given on 26 November: “Murder by arsenical poisoning by some person or persons unknown.”
The original assumption of the police that Annie Hearn had jumped to her death had changed dramatically after the local fishermen pointed out that, if she had fallen from the spot near where her coat was found, her body would have struck the rocks and remained on the beach. If she had been swept out, she would have been washed up almost at once because of the home winds that had been prevalent for the previous t
en days. Two people had drowned in the area recently, and both were washed ashore within two days. Had she faked her suicide?
The police issued the following description, together with a photograph:
Mrs Hearn is aged forty-five, 5ft 2ins or 3ins [1.57 or 1.60 metres] in height, with grey eyes, brown shingled hair, of sallow complexion, and medium build. There is a noticeable defect in one of the front teeth. She walks briskly, carries her head slightly to the left, and when in conversation she has the habit of looking away from the person she is addressing. She is well-spoken but has a north country accent. She is of rather reserved disposition.
The police now began to take an interest in the death of Annie’s sister Minnie (Lydia) who had joined her at Trenhorne House in 1925. The sisters lived there with two other shadowy figures: an old Cornish woman called Mrs Aunger, who had since died; and Annie’s aunt, Miss Mary Everard, who had fallen ill and died in September 1926 after being nursed devotedly by her niece. Now people remembered that the aunt had left everything she possessed “to my dear niece Sarah Ann Hearn, except my mother’s picture.” The deaths of her aunt, who was seventy-six, and her sister, who was only fifty-two but who had suffered from chronic gastric catarrh and colitis, had seemed natural at the time. Now, however, the Home Office announced a decision to exhume the bodies, because the symptoms of their illnesses were also consistent with arsenical poisoning.
In Lewannick they still remember that macabre exhumation, which took place on Tuesday 9 December 1930 in a storm of snow and sleet. Mrs White, who was a girl at the time and still lives in Lewannick today, recalled the two policemen who guarded the gates of the churchyard and the trouble they took in erecting a screen of tarpaulins to prevent the public looking on. But since they completely forgot the houses at the back that overlooked the churchyard, she had a good view: “We could see all their pots and a box on the grave. They had the coffins taken up and we could see them with their tongs dropping things into jars.” These “things” were forwarded to Dr Roche Lynch, the Home Office analyst. In the remains of both bodies he found “distinct quantities of arsenic”.
The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes Page 34