The Devil's Gentleman

by Harold Schechter

  According to Moore, who had been summoned to the sick man’s room soon after Barnet was first stricken, the clubman suspected from the first that he had been poisoned.

  “Why, what have you taken?” Moore had asked, alarmed at Barnet’s condition.

  “There’s the damned stuff in the wastebasket,” said the ashen-faced man between groans.

  Moore dug through the trash but could find nothing. Heaving himself from the bed, Barnet staggered over to the basket and fished out a small tin of Kutnow’s Powder, which he handed to Moore before being overcome with a spasm of nausea.

  As Barnet made for the bathroom, Moore undid the lid, dipped the end of his first finger into the powder, then touched it to his tongue. It had, he told McCluskey, “a bitter, metallic taste, not like any medicine I’ve ever tasted. It was as though I had a mouthful of copper pennies.”

  Even after he was diagnosed with diphtheria, Barnet continued to believe that, as he told Moore, he had “taken enough poison to kill fifty men.” He seemed to know, despite his doctors’ reassurances, that he would never recover. At one point, Moore found him sitting up in bed, gazing out the nearby window with a look of infinite sadness.

  “Moore,” said Barnet, coming out of his reverie, “I owe a tailor some money.” He then instructed the valet to telephone his banker and have fifty dollars sent up to the room. Moore obeyed, and a short while later, a messenger arrived with the cash. Barnet then instructed Moore to take eight dollars to the tailor.

  Even at the time, Moore had been struck by this seemingly minor request. It was as though Barnet were settling up his debts before his final leave-taking.

  “And what happened then?” McCluskey inquired.

  “I paid the tailor,” Moore replied, “and kept the receipt and a few days afterward gave it to Mr. Barnet’s brother.” By then, Barnet was dead.

  McCluskey was curious about the timing of certain incidents in Moore’s account. Exactly when, he asked, had Barnet remarked that he had taken enough poison to kill fifty men?

  “I think it was three days before he died,” said Moore. “I could fix the time more accurately if Miss Bates was here. She overheard the conversation.”5

  “And who is Miss Bates?” asked McCluskey, scribbling the name in his notepad.

  She was one of the two private nurses hired to be with Barnet around the clock, explained Moore. Her first name was Addie. She lived at a rooming house at 12 West Twenty-second Street.

  Detective Arthur Carey was sent in a coupe to pick up Miss Bates and bring her back to police headquarters for questioning. Her testimony, when reported by the yellow press, would add a sensational new element to the case, and help throw a circumstantial net around Roland Molineux that he would have an increasingly hard time wriggling out of.

  On the first of November, as Miss Bates explained to her interrogators, Dr. Douglass had summoned her to his home, where he told her of a man named Barnet, a member of the Knickerbocker Athletic Club, who was suffering from a case of diphtheria. Agreeing to accept the case, she proceeded to the club, where she found the patient suffering from a “very sore throat.”

  Later that same afternoon, Dr. Douglass arrived and gave her instructions. For the next nine days, until Barnet’s death, she remained at his side for twelve-hour stretches, administering his medicine, spraying his throat, and feeding him whatever small amounts of nourishment he was capable of taking.

  It was clear to the nurse that Barnet was a very popular man. “Many messages of sympathy came for him over the telephone.” Miss Bates spoke to each of the well-wishers, explaining that the patient was too weak to take the call. Several of Barnet’s club members also came to his door, hoping to be let in to see him, though at Douglass’s orders none was admitted. One gentleman who lived down the hall made daily inquiries about Barnet’s health and had flowers sent to the room on several occasions.

  Barnet, in his failing condition, seemed utterly indifferent to these gestures. Only once did he display a spark of interest. It happened a few days before his death, when he awoke from a troubled sleep to find that a big bouquet of chrysanthemums had been delivered to his room. It was accompanied by a note, which, at Barnet’s request, Miss Bates read aloud to the stricken man. The “affectionate nature” of the message left little doubt in her mind that the writer, a woman, “had a deep regard” for Barnet.

  “I wonder how she knew I was ill?” was all Barnet said when Miss Bates finished reading the note.

  And who, exactly, sent this affectionate message? McCluskey now asked.

  The nurse could not say. The writer had not used her full name. Miss Bates did, however, clearly recall the signature on the note: “Yours, Blanche.”6

  37

  For a free spirit like Blanche with her bottomless appetite for “gaiety and glamor,” the circumstances in which she now found herself were almost unbearably grim. Instead of the life she had envisioned when she finally accepted Roland’s proposal—the dinners at Delmonico’s, the evenings at the opera, the parties with “people of brilliance and clever ability”—she was trapped within the confines of her in-laws’ “staid and dull” Brooklyn home, whose heavy mid-Victorian furnishings and somber atmosphere made it feel less like a refuge than a mausoleum.1

  To keep the family safe from the prying eyes of reporters and curiosity seekers, the General saw to it that the draperies were drawn at all times. The wintry daylight never penetrated the house. The only illumination came from the elaborate, old-fashioned ceiling fixtures and the glowing coals in the black-onyx fireplaces.2

  Intensifying the gloom of her surroundings was the dark mood of the people she shared them with. To be sure, the General did his best to maintain a cheerful demeanor. But at times, Blanche would see him sitting alone, looking heartsore and haggard—an old, careworn man. As for Roland—who now spent much of his time huddling with his attorneys—his assurances that the whole absurd affair would soon be resolved struck her as increasingly forced and brittle.3

  Newspapers claimed that, after reading accounts of the investigation, Blanche had suffered a complete nervous collapse and was in such dire condition that her family feared for a “fatal termination of her illness.”4 But like so much of what passed for truth in the yellow press, this report was wildly exaggerated. In point of fact, Blanche had only the sketchiest idea of what was happening beyond Fort Greene Place, since at the General’s orders, newspapers were forbidden in the house. She had no way of knowing that, thanks to the ballyhoo whipped up by Pulitzer and Hearst, the Molineux case had already become the biggest crime story in years. Or that she herself had become the focus of intense—and decidedly prurient—fascination.

  That the yellow papers intended to exploit the Molineux case for every last bit of entertainment value was made vividly clear in their splashy Sunday supplements, which—in addition to their usual mix of lurid adventure tales (WHITE WOMAN AMONG THE CANNIBALS!), pseudoscientific essays (ARE SEA SERPENTS REAL?), believe-it-or-not oddities (HE HICCOUGHED FOR FIVE DAYS!), mildly risqué features (PRETTY ANNETTE’S GAUZY SILK BATHING SUITS), and full-color comics—began running regular articles related to the Great Poison Mystery.5

  In early January, for example, the World’s Sunday supplement featured a lengthy piece titled HISTORICAL POISONERS AND HOW THEY HAVE SLAIN THE VICTIMS OF THEIR HATE AND PASSION. In graphic and gruesome detail, the article recounted the “horrible crimes” of illustrious Old World poisoners, from Caligula to Louis XIV. The main focus of the piece, however, was Lucrezia Borgia, whose seductively posed portrait—reproduced from a painting by German artist Wilhelm von Kaulbach—occupied the center of the page. So great was her notoriety, the article noted, that her very name had become a byword for female treachery. “Thus,” said the writer, “we hear that ‘Mrs. Botkin is a Borgia,’ or that ‘there may be a Lucrezia Borgia in the Adams-Cornish mystery.’”6

  Hearst’s Journal, meanwhile, countered with a remarkable Sunday feature titled OLD SLEUTH’S DAUGHTER UNRAVELS T
HE MYSTERY OF NEW YORK’S GREAT POISON SECRET. A thinly fictionalized account of the Adams-Barnet affair, this story was written by one Rena I. Halsey, daughter of a popular dime novelist named Harlan P. Halsey, whose most famous creation was a detective known as “Old Sleuth.” The elder Halsey having died the previous year, Hearst had hired the daughter to “take up the facts as known to the public and work out a solution to the mystery.”

  In the resulting story, “Old Sleuth” encounters barely disguised versions of Roland B. Molineux, Blanche Chesebrough, Henry Barnet, Harry Cornish, and Katherine Adams (here renamed Reginald B. Martineau, Bertha Chesney, Robert Bennett, Harold Cornell, and Mrs. Albro). Inevitably, the ace detective cracks the case, though readers expecting anything like a plausible solution to the actual crime were in for a disappointment, since the killer in Miss Halsey’s tale turns out to be a wholly fictitious creation named Florence Applegate—an aging beauty with “strange, weird” eyes who murders out of jealousy.7

  Hearst’s recasting of the Adams-Barnet case as a cheesy whodunit was a pioneering instance of a phenomenon that would define the coming century, when the boundary between news and entertainment became increasingly blurred. On another day, the Journal ran a feature on the death of Henry Barnet in the form of a “graphic story”: an eight-panel comic strip illustrating the fate of the “first victim of the poisoner” from his drinking of the Kutnow Powder to his final illness.8

  Not to be outdone, Pulitzer’s paper presented a summary of the case in the form of a stage play, complete with a “Cast of Characters” a synopsis of the “Great Double Poisoning Drama” divided into acts and scenes (“ACT I—Death of Barnet. SCENE I—Barnet’s apartment in the Knickerbocker Athletic Club. Barnet and Dr. Beaman Douglass in consultation”); and the kind of cliff-hanging conclusion that, a few decades later, would become a staple of Saturday matinee movie serials (“ACT IV—The Audience Waits for the Arrest. But of whom? And when, if ever? What dramatist’s imagination has set the stage for such a play as this?”)9

  In keeping with the increasingly melodramatic coverage of the story, Blanche was first introduced to the public in the stock role of the Dark Lady, a mysterious seductress whose entrance was heralded with teasing hints and (quite literal) foreshadowings.

  ENTER THE INEVITABLE WOMAN, announced the Journal on January 6, reporting the discovery of a “mysterious letter, signed with a woman’s first name” that had been “sent to Henry Barnet during the illness that preceded his death.”10

  WHO IS BLANCHE? blared the paper on the following day, publicly identifying for the first time the signature on the “affectionate” missive that Barnet had supposedly “read and reread…up to the very time of his death.”11

  On that same day, the World featured a lurid, attention-grabbing drawing on its front page. The illustration shows a gloved hand labeled “Police” pulling back a dark curtain to expose a bottle of cyanide of mercury. In the glaring light, the bottle casts the shadow of a young woman’s profile. The caption reads: “A Qualitative Analysis.”

  For anyone following the Adams-Barnet case—which, by that point, would have been much of the city’s population—the meaning of this cartoon was unmistakable. As the police investigation brought more facts to light, it was increasingly clear that behind the death of Henry Barnet loomed a beautiful woman.

  The face of that shadowy figure was first revealed to the public a few days later. FIRST PUBLISHED PORTRAIT OF MRS. ROLAND B. MOLINEUX, trumpeted a headline in the World. The accompanying picture—a handsome pen-and-ink sketch apparently copied from a group photograph of a choral society Blanche once belonged to—showed a smiling young woman with the radiant all-American charm of one of Charles Dana Gibson’s idealized beauties.

  By then, reporters had not only identified the mysterious sender of the Barnet letter as Roland Molineux’s wife but had dug up a wealth of information on the former Blanche Chesebrough. LIFE OF MRS. MOLINEUX READS LIKE A ROMANCE, proclaimed a lengthy article in the World, which offered a surprisingly detailed—if not wholly accurate—account of her life, from her peripatetic childhood through her early musical studies to her marriage to Roland Molineux. The picture that emerged in the paper was of a young woman whose beauty, grace, and exceptional singing talent made her irresistibly alluring to both Roland and Henry Barnet, turning the two men into bitter rivals for her affection. “Molineux is said by his friends to be of a very jealous disposition,” the paper reported, “and it was not long before he and Barnet became engaged in a quarrel about the handsome girl. Their mutual dislike grew into hatred and it soon became known among their friends that they were avowed enemies on account of Miss Chesebrough.”12

  Immured in the Molineuxs’ fortress-like home, where (as she writes in her memoirs) “the news sheets were not even unfolded in my presence,”13 Blanche was unaware of her new notoriety. Up until that point, the Adams-Barnet case already had the makings of a major media sensation: scandalous doings in the upper-crust world of Manhattan’s elite athletic clubs; the scapegrace son of a Civil War hero; deadly poisons sent through the mail; dark hints of drugs and strange disguises and unspecified “degeneracy.”

  Now, with the introduction of a romantic triangle involving a beautiful young woman and her two vying lovers, the last lip-smacking ingredient was added to the mix: a generous dollop of sexual titillation.

  38

  In commissioning Harlan P. Halsey’s daughter to produce a mystery story based on the Adams-Barnet case, Hearst’s paper was not simply offering its readers a bit of weekend diversion but taking a swipe at the New York City police. “The detectives of real life have studied, guessed, and theorized and arrived at no solution of the mysterious poisoning of Henry C. Barnet and Mrs. Kate Adams,” the editors explained in a prefatory note. “The letters from ‘Blanche,’ the relations of Roland Burnham Molineux and his wife with Barnet, the bottles of poison, the addresses on the wrappers, and a dozen other interesting discoveries have apparently led to nothing. The Journal has therefore asked ‘Old Sleuth,’ the famous detective of fiction, to take the facts as known to the public and work out a solution to the mystery.”1 The message couldn’t have been clearer: even a make-believe detective could do a better job than the city’s so-called professionals.

  As the days passed without an arrest, the yellow papers became increasingly harsh in their criticism of the detective bureau. The Journal was especially nasty. In one jeering cartoon, a fox labeled “Poisoner” runs circles around a big lumbering dog with a police helmet and the face of Captain McCluskey. In another, a hapless police bloodhound sniffs the air for clues, completely oblivious of the big wooden sign directly above his head that points to the solution of the poisoning case.

  In its relentless persecution of McCluskey, the paper described a half dozen murder mysteries that his bureau had failed to “unravel,” from the strangling of a young woman named Margaret Clarkson Crowley in March 1898 to the Christmas Eve stabbing of an “old florist” named Jean Baptiste Colin in his West Twenty-eighth Street tenement. MUST THE ADAMS CASE GO ON THIS FAILURE LIST? the headline demanded.2

  The paper was even more scathing on its editorial page, accusing the police not merely of incompetence but of corruption. “It will be time to credit the police having an honest intention in this matter when they have accomplished something,” one editorial thundered. “So far, they have only muddled the case, and have added to their customary stupidity the criminal offense of premeditated indifference.”3

  A few days later, Hearst leveled even more damning charges against McCluskey and his men:

  The same old farce is being played in the poisoning case. No arrests and no possibility of any. The police keep up a semblance of activity but they are very careful not to take any positive step.

  In the handling of this important case they have failed to demonstrate the slightest ability. No clew of value has been discovered by them. They have blundered at every point.

  With a stupidity that must have behind it
the incentive of an authoritative suggestion, the police have avoided confirming suspicions that might reveal the identity of the murderer. They have applied neither energy nor skill to the work, leaving to others the task of bringing the offense to justice.

  The public cannot be deceived by a pretense of eagerness. The promises of the police are valueless. They are only part of the carefully planned scheme to conceal the most brazen exhibition of official negligence that even the Police Department of New York has been guilty of.4

  To incite his readers to an even higher pitch of outrage, Hearst argued that the failure of the police to bring the poisoner to justice was worse than reprehensible; it was an active threat to the well-being of the public. POLICE TIE-UP IN THE ADAMS MYSTERY BREEDS NEW POISONINGS, blared one of the Journal’s more inflammatory headlines.5 According to the article, the poisoner’s success in eluding capture had emboldened other killers to emulate him, setting off a rash of copycat crimes.

  In Paducah, Kentucky, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Raab were poisoned “with a deadly drug in their breakfast.” William Bauer, a little boy from Sandusky, Ohio, “ate some candy which was given to him and died.” Poisoned tea was the culprit in the case of C. A. Glesner, a farmer from Carlinville, Illinois, who found a package of pekoe in his buggy, took it home, and drank a fatal cup with dinner. Pearl Holmes, “a little colored girl” from Annapolis, Maryland, perished after eating oatmeal spiked with arsenic, though “who would want to poison the little one is a mystery.” And in New York City, a young hairdresser named Marie Appell fell violently ill after eating an arsenic-laced “chocolate drop” from a box ostensibly sent to her by an unknown admirer.