Ill Met by Gaslight: Five Edinburgh Murders (16 page)

When she returned to say that the baby was sound asleep, she found Chantrelle `coming from the direction of the window, as if after raising the bottom sash of the window’. He now asked her if she didn’t smell gas. At first she could detect nothing, but in a little found the smell quite strong, though not what she would call `a suffocation smell’.

Chantrelle now set off in search of a physician, having instructed Mary to test the gas at the bracket and then turn it off. He called on Dr James Carmichael of Northumberland Street, not the nearest medical man. The family had no regular doctor, since Chantrelle, with his claimed expertise, was accustomed to treat their ailments himself, and maintained a well-stocked pharmacopeia. He knew Carmichael however, as a fellow Mason. He gave a message to Carmichael’s servant and hurried home. Carmichael arrived about twenty-past eight. He had had to dress, but since his servant had given him the message at seven-forty, and Northumberland Street is at most seven minutes walk from Chantrelle’s home, he had hardly made remarkable speed.

Carmichael was sufficiently impressed by the smell of gas, even though the door and window had been open for some time, to insist that Lizzie be moved through to the other bedroom. Not unnaturally he prepared to treat it as a case of gas poisoning. Being inexperienced in such cases, he sent a note to Dr Henry Littlejohn, the Police-Surgeon, whom he knew to be interested in such matters. He also sent Mary Byrne to get a bottle of brandy, and used various methods to try to resuscitate Lizzie’s breathing. These included the administration of an enema of brandy. All efforts were in vain, but Carmichael soon noticed that the brandy was beginning to disappear `though neither Madame Chantrelle nor myself took any’. A medical student, George Harrison, who resided with Carmichael and who came along later, about a quarter-past ten, at his request, found that, `Chantrelle had drink upon him’. When he arrived, Chantrelle was sitting by the bed, holding his wife’s wrists; he did not seem very excited.

By this time however Dr Littlejohn had already arrived. He had one advantage over Carmichael, and a sore one it was for Chantrelle: he had some knowledge of how things stood in George Street, having been involved with both of them before. That had been on the occasion of Chantrelle’s arrest; then, Lizzie and her mother had called on the police surgeon to say that Chantrelle’s conduct `was such as to make her suspect his sanity’. Now, although Littlejohn did not suspect that gas might not be responsible for Lizzie’s condition, his special knowledge made him alive to what might be the implications of her state. At first, he had thought Lizzie already dead; then he was certain that she would not recover. He considered it therefore imperative that her friends should be there, and asked Chantrelle if his mother-in-law had been summoned. Chantrelle, who, understandably, had no desire to see Mrs Dyer in the house, claimed that he did not know her address. Littlejohn had no time for such nonsense. Young Eugene was despatched to fetch his grandmother. Littlejohn went further however. He said that in his opinion Lizzie should be removed to the Royal Infirmary. Chantrelle made no objection, and Littlejohn -left on other business, sending word also to the Gas Company that they should inspect Chantrelle’s house. At this time he considered gas-poisoning `the only possible explanation’.

Mrs Dyer arrived, accompanied by her family doctor, Dr Gordon, who had come however in the capacity of a friend not that that made much difference. He later claimed to have come to the immediate conclusion that Lizzie’s symptoms indicated narcotic, rather than gas, poisoning. If so, he does not appear to have imparted his suspicion to anyone else at the time, for when Lizzie was admitted to the infirmary at about a quarter to two, it was as someone suffering from gaspoisoning. She was immediately examined by the celebrated Dr Douglas MacLagan, Professor of Medical Jurisprudence at the University. He found her, `lying totally insensible, with the muscles relaxed, and the pupils of the eyes somewhat contracted. She was incapable of being roused; the respiration was interrupted and the heart’s action was scarcely discernible. The pulse of the wrist was not to be felt … the heart’s action was so feeble that he had to use his stethoscope to hear whether it beat or not…‘Moreover, and more importantly, when MacLagan applied his mouth and nose closely to the patient, he could detect no smell of gas. He concluded therefore that it was rather a case of narcotic poisoning, possibly opium or morphia. He remained with Lizzie for about an hour, applying artificial respiration, the interrupted current of a galvanic battery, and giving her another enema of brandy.

Chantrelle arrived at the infirmary while this was going on, and was told that the case was now regarded as one of narcotic poisoning. He asked MacLagan if he knew they had had an escape of gas. That was all his conversation with the doctors, but he flew out at Mrs Dyer, telling her that they were murdering Lizzie by their treatment. He had a low opinion of other doctors, and particularly of the infirmary. Years before he had told Mrs Dyer that they had murdered her husband there; now it was his -wife’s turn. He said he could not remain there to watch them do so, and stormed out, to return home. Mary Lethbridge, a nurse in the infirmary, described him demonstrating that the gas meter was broken and the dial running round, by making a circle with his forefinger. She had thought -him reluctant to approach the bed, and she did not think he showed much anxiety about Lizzie. By the time he returned just after four, Lizzie was dead; everyone else had gone. He had returned home in the meanwhile, given the maid money to buy food for the children’s dinner, and finished the brandy. It must have been a bitter hour. Apart from other considerations, the abandonment of the gas theory would certainly mean the refusal of the insurance company to accept Lizzie’s death as accidental; and so, bang would go the thousand pounds he so desperately needed. But perhaps the brandy clouded his perceptions for the moment, and he did not yet realise this.

Meanwhile, having laid aside the gas theory, the doctor now started to explore the possibilities of other forms of poisoning. They soon fastened on opium. That raised difficulties. Post-mortem examination might reveal the cause of death, but, again, it might not. As Dr MacLagan was to say. `it is a very rare thing to discover chemically traces of opium at all in the body. It is, I believe, from the length of the fatal illness in opium poisoning that we do not find it. Some of the other vegetable poisons that we find kill more rapidly … every poison is absorbed into the system, but this one disappears in the system.’ That was a real problem. Certainly Lizzie’s symptoms were consistent with opium poisoning, though some things that might be looked for were absent; on the other hand they were by no means inconsistent with coal-gas poisoning - even the disappearance of the smell of gas could be accounted for by her exposure to a pure air, in which the smell could be expected to dissipate itself. However, there were other means at hand. Lizzie had vomited, and her nightdress, the sheets and pillowcase on which she had been lying, all bore the stains of her sickness. These might yield evidence to analysis, and, the police, who had been early alerted, took possession of them. It was to be urged, on the other hand, that Chantrelle had had ample opportunity to remove them and destroy the evidence, an opportunity which he had made no attempt to seize; equally, it was eventually to be suggested that others, especially Mrs Dyer, had had the chance to tamper with them. There was to be some uncertainty as to which stains were present at which time.

It was also necessary to establish the cause of the escape of gas, for that there had been one was undeniable, though it might not perhaps have been the cause of death. A gasfitter was sent round by the Company on Wednesday, 2 January, in response to Dr Littlejohn’s note. He established the fact of an escape, and that it did not come from the meter. He then made no further inspection: `we are not allowed to make any inspection if the escape is from internal fittings. The householder in that case makes the inspection himself; it is only for escape at the meter that the Company is responsible’, he explained, giving a good example of the working of demarcation practices. Accordingly, since Chantrelle took no action himself to determine the cause, a criminal officer, William Frew, requisitioned two other gasfitters from the Company, and examined the flat on the Friday. They were not long in finding the cause. A bracket had at some time been removed from the architrave of the window. The fitter thrust his hand behind the shutter and found a loose pipe. They then searched more thoroughly and discovered the corresponding pipe lying on the floor. Both pipes had been sealed up, but the end of one piece had been wrenched off. The fitter gave it as his opinion that, `it could have been done very rapidly … you could do it in two turns back and forward’.

The inference was clear. Chantrelle had come into the bedroom when summoned by Mary Byrne, concluded that Lizzie was dying, and at once, thinking of the insurance money, had sent Mary out of the room on the excuse that the baby was crying. In her absence he had torn off the end of the pipe, and allowed the gas to escape. It was the work of a moment. Even so, Mary had met him coming away from the window. Chantrelle denied any knowledge of the pipe’s existence. This denial was easily shown to be false. In August 1876 it happened that a gasfitter had been summoned to investigate an escape of gas in the same bedroom, and had discovered that it came from this same pipe, which had been inefficiently sealed when the bracket was removed. At the time Chantrelle had said that `he had not been aware that there was a gas pipe behind the shutter, and that it must have been that damned dirty German.’ It was assumed that he referred to a previous tenant. In any case the plea of ignorance could hardly be convincingly repeated.

There could be little doubt that Chantrelle had broken the pipe, and that he had done so in the hope of collecting the insurance money. Yet this explanation left a good deal unaccounted for. It did not necessarily mean that he had murdered Lizzie. It convicted him of callousness more certainly than of murder, and it was clumsy and unintelligent. Yet it nearly came off: Lizzie was treated for gas-poisoning, and was admitted to the infirmary on that basis. Neither Carmichael nor Littlejohn doubted this diagnosis, though Littlejohn’s knowledge of the Chantrelle family made him naturally suspicious of the cause of the escape of gas. And therein lay the measure of the stupidity of Chantrelle’s desperate effort, for it took only a minimal investigation to establish that the gas had been released from the broken pipe, and that the break could not have been- accidental. Accordingly, if Lizzie’s death had actually been caused by the gas, or if this had been accepted as the cause of death, it seems likely that the immediate case against Chantrelle would have been more clear-cut than it actually was to be. It could be established that he knew of the pipe behind the shutter, and that he had the opportunity to break it and the motive to seek an accidental explanation of Lizzie’s death. In every way then the action was. stupid, so much so that it is hard to believe that Chantrelle was in his right mind.

Probably he was not. The empty whisky bottle presents itself for consideration again. Assuming, for the moment, Chantrelle’s innocence, it is easy to reconstruct what happened. Roused from sleep by Mary, he wakes, his faculties still blurred by drink, to an immediate realisation that, somehow or other, for a reason he cannot establish, Lizzie is dying. At once the thought of the insurance money presents itself to him, and the memory of his conversation about the definition of accidental death flashes through his mind. In particular he recalls Mr Macwhinnie’s insistence that, `there must be outward and visible sign - an ascertained cause of death’. An accident must therefore be fabricated. He sends Mary from the room, and does the job, with no thought of probability, but acting rather with the confused brilliance of the drunk.

What if he was guilty? What if he had indeed, as the Crown was to insist, poisoned Lizzie with solid extract of opium. In this case too a satisfactory explanation is not hard to seek. He had all along intended to create the impression that gas was the cause of Lizzie’s death, since there could be no certainty that death from opium poisoning would be accepted by the insurance company as accidental, and it must be insisted that he had no other motive for killing Lizzie. (To suggest that his frequent threats provided such a motive, was merely silly, as his Counsel was to point out. Apart from his urgent need for money, he had no reason to murder Lizzie that he had not always had; arguably, less.) All he had to do then was wait until Lizzie was sufficiently doped by the opium, wait, that is, till she had lapsed into insensibility, and then turn on the gas at the bracket without lighting it. (Mary Byrne found it unusual that the gas was out - she had never found it like that before.) That had been the plan: to slip back into Lizzie’s room, and turn the handle, gently flooding the room with gas, so that, when Mary came to wake her, the cause of death would never be doubted; that was why he had removed the baby, an unnecessary action otherwise. But, fuddled by whisky, he forgot or bungled the job - no doubt the timing was a matter of nice discrimination: enough gas to suggest the cause of death, but not enough to stupefy him and the children in the next room. Perhaps he lay down for a moment, and passed out.

He must then have been astonished and distressed in the morning to find no smell of gas in the room at all. There, on the one hand, was Lizzie, certainly dying from the opium; here, on the other, was `no outward and visible sign - no ascertained cause of death’, and consequently, no insurance money. In the circumstances he had to think and act quickly. It was no good turning on the gas at the bracket now; that would be the first place Mary would check, and it could never admit enough gas before then to be credible. So, getting Mary out of the room, he attacked the pipe. It was the only hope of salvaging his plan, the only way in which he could ensure that there was at least a credible quantity of gas released.