Mr Briggs' Hat: The True Story of a Victorian Railway Murder (13 page)

The Police Commissioner Sir Richard Mayne had also received a recent visit that raised questions about the direction in which the investigation was moving. Colonel Reade Revell said that an acquaintance – another man keen to keep the police out of his affairs and his name out of the papers – claimed to have spoken to Thomas Briggs on the Fenchurch Street platform on the 9th. While at Bow Station, this friend had received a telegraphic message summoning him back to the City. Quitting the train and catching sight of Thomas Briggs, he had asked the old man to relay a message to his family that he would be late home. During that brief conversation this man had also noted that two other men shared Briggs’ compartment.

The story corroborated Thomas Lee’s evidence and fitted with several other sightings which suggested that two men – neither of them similar in description to Franz Müller – were seen in the murdered man’s compartment before the attack. None of these
statements had been made public. Had Briggs found himself confronted by two other well-dressed villains in the inescapable confinement of his compartment? Mayne had also received a letter, from
Mr Knox of Camberwell
, relating a similar tale: that the cousin of a boy at the local school had been on the train and was sure that he had also seen two men alongside Briggs that night. The Police Commissioner scrawled a note to Inspector Williamson about his interview with Colonel Revell but this, and the letter from Mr Knox, may simply have foundered in the piles of letters and statements from hoaxers and timewasters still littering police desks at Scotland Yard. No further statements were taken and it appears that neither report was followed up.

A new rumour began to circulate, suggesting that the pilot boat leaving the
Victoria
at Worthing had taken on a passenger who had changed his mind and asked to disembark. Ordered to investigate, Daniel Howie found that the pilot, William Atkinson, was already away with another ship but
his daughter was able to confirm three things
that set the policeman’s mind at rest. She said that the pilot boat habitually collected several pilots before heading for land which might account for the rumour. She also thought it impossible that a passenger would have been allowed to join the pilot boat; and she confirmed that her father often carried letters ashore on behalf of passengers. As he left her, Howie thought it was likely that Müller had asked Atkinson to post the note addressed to his landlady Ellen Blyth and he was satisfied that Müller was unlikely to have escaped with the pilot as feared.

There were other small satisfactions for the police. Inspector Williamson was gratified to learn that
Professor Taylor’s scrutiny
of the material found in Müller’s fireplace had allowed him to conclude that the blood was human. Additionally, the identity of the cab passenger whose flaring match had revealed a concealed pistol turned out to be
a respected warder
from a nearby house of correction, closing the loop on an unresolved suspicion.

As these several inconsistencies began to be clarified, Inspector Williamson allowed himself to be reassured that the murderer of Thomas Briggs was still on board the
Victoria
as she sailed west towards New York, completely unaware that the police were on his trail.

CHAPTER 14

Ninety in the Shade

The Commissioner wrote personally to Thomas James Briggs to request the victim’s second-eldest son to re-attend Bow Street later that week, on Friday 22 July. It would mark almost a fortnight since his father was attacked in carriage 69.

As they worked to construct a case against the German tailor, both Inspector Frederick Williamson and Sir Richard Mayne concluded that the papers taken to America by Inspector Tanner might not be quite as watertight as they had hoped. Although the extradition treaty between England and America was generally honoured, there had been
several instances of oneupmanship
and intransigence between the two nations during which prisoner surrender had been denied. With hindsight, both Williamson and the Police Commissioner considered that the depositions taken at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday the 19th had been rushed. It troubled both men that the American authorities might rule them insufficient either to arrest or to extradite Müller.

New statements – more of them and all containing finer detail – would have to be swiftly prepared. If this could be concluded at Bow Street on Friday, then they could be taken to New
York by Inspector Kerressey on the Inman Line’s
City of Cork
which was due to leave Liverpool on Saturday morning.

As the witnesses were rounded up for another day at the magistrates’ court, the press got wind of the plans. Aware now of the direction of the police investigation and of Inspector Tanner’s pursuit, groups of sightseers began to amass around the entrance from the early hours of Friday, straining for a glimpse of the characters whose stories filled their daily papers. Outside, it was another splendid day and the temperature was already
ninety degrees in the shade
. Inside, newspaper reporters jostled for position amid the airless crush of the close little courtroom, notebooks poised.

The session began mid-morning and Chief Magistrate Thomas Henry once again presided. Thomas James Briggs repeated his identification of the chain and walking stick that had belonged to his father. The train guard Benjamin Ames reprised his evidence, as did John Hoffa, and Robert Death stood in for his absent brother to describe their suspicious customer and identify the various chains.

Attention turned to the eight witnesses whose official statements were to be taken in public for the first time. Elizabeth Repsch agreed with Jonathan Matthews’ earlier deposition that the crumpled hat definitely belonged to the German suspect. As Inspector Kerressey showed her the hat found on the train, she was adamant:
I know it from the peculiar colour of the lining. I have frequently observed the lining when he has come to our house wearing it.
Telling the court that Müller had boasted about his new gold chain and ring when he visited on Monday the 11th, she confirmed what she had already told Inspector Tanner, that on that visit Müller had been wearing a different hat,
which he put down and I observed it was nearly a new one with a white silk lining. I said to him ‘why you extravagant man, another new hat?’ He said he had had it a month and that he had smashed his old one and thrown it in the dust hole.

As the day wore on, Dr Brereton recalled the blood-soaked earth on the site where the body was found. He also described his examination of the carriage on the following morning, his discovery of the broken link in its floor matting and the victim’s wounds as catalogued in the post-mortem report. Next, the policeman Edward Dougan described the state of the victim when he was found and detailed the contents of Thomas Briggs’ pockets: the quantity of money, a bunch of keys, half a first-class return train ticket, a silver snuffbox and a number of letters. He recalled the victim’s rumpled shirt and its single remaining stud, his diamond ring, the gold fastener for a guard chain hanging in the buttonhole of his waistcoat and the fact that Briggs’ watch and chain were missing. Following Dougan, train guard William Timms went over the details of the discovery of the body on the line, and then Briggs’ nephew David Buchan confirmed that his uncle was sober when he left Nelson Square, being
a man of
extremely temperate habits
.

It was the deposition of Thomas Lee that galvanised the reporters on the side benches, all of them alert for new information.

Lee was coy about his reasons for being at Bow Station on 9 July – he said he had
gone for a walk –
but he stuck determinedly to the story he had already told the police. Thomas Briggs and he were well acquainted, he said, and they had spoken for several minutes while the train waited at the platform. Briggs was then
quite well and in his usual spirits
. By his side was an apparently tall, thin man and opposite him sat
a thick set man with lightish sandy whiskers with his hand in the loop of the carriage, and the hand seemed to be a large one.

Asked how it was that he could see so clearly on a dark night, Lee replied confidently that
the light from one of the gas lamps on the platform was full upon his face.

In the muggy courtroom the reporters scratched down statements that would provide fodder for the weekend papers.
Thomas James’ grief reminded them that a husband and father, violently murdered, was still mourned. The witnesses, by turns flustered, eager, nonplussed or reticent, provided a diverting cast. The exhibited hat, chains, cane, bag, cardboard box and pawnbrokers’ tickets were all props worthy of the melodrama of the gaslit stage. Beyond these, Thomas Lee’s evidence raised questions about Franz Müller’s guilt. If there had been two men in the carriage at Bow with Thomas Briggs it seemed clear that neither corresponded with descriptions of Müller. Bare-faced and thin, he was said to be short. Might he have appeared taller than he actually was when seen by Thomas Lee? If he
was
one of the two men, then where was his accomplice? Unsure what to make of Lee’s statement and of its refusal to coalesce with the evidence so far amassed against Müller, the press wondered whether this witness was to be trusted or whether the direction of the police investigation was flawed.

*

By just after six o’clock on Friday evening, Inspector Walter Kerressey was armed with
a bundle of new documents
certified by Chief Magistrate Henry and by the United States Minister Charles Adams, a dossier designed to withstand the most careful scrutiny of American law.
He also carried
a duplicate arrest warrant, fresh Home Office letters for the consul in New York, a brand new passport and a small parcel containing the three gold chains.

Accompanied by Superintendent William Tiddey, Kerressey made his way to Euston Square Station. By the next morning he would be on board the
City of Cork
, a ship capable of reaching ten knots, newer and faster even than the
City of Manchester
. It would easily outpace the
Victoria
and might even beat Inspector Tanner to New York.

There would be silence for at least a month while the investigation continued in London. That morning, as the witnesses were
gathering in Bow Street, Inspector ‘Dolly’ Williamson had received a second, unwelcome intelligence from Colonel Hogg, announcing that they had a
man in custody
whom we suspect to be Müller
. A foreigner had apparently been arrested for stealing two bags from a railway station and was found to have a duplicate ticket for a gold watch pawned in Shoreditch on 29 June, and a memo book containing the name Müller. Hogg was jumpy and Williamson had taken the next express for Stafford.

It turned out to be a fruitless journey. The arrested man bore no resemblance to Jonathan Matthews’ photograph of Franz Müller, nor to either of the men described by Thomas Lee. Leaving him in custody, Williamson boarded the next train south, bringing with him a photograph of the prisoner, his notebook and the pawn ticket. He would soon find that none of it added up.
Summoned by a concerned Mr Henry to Bow Street
on Saturday morning, Inspector Williamson reported that the whole business had been a waste of time.

Still disquieted by shipping agent James Gifford’s concern that he had given the wrong information to the police, Inspector Williamson left Bow Street for the docks, where Daniel Howie had brought together Robert Death, Ellen Blyth and Thomas Lee. Boarding the ship
Cornelius Grinnell
, Williamson took the German passengers Phillip Wetzell and Wilhelm Müller to one side and paraded them before the waiting group. No one recognised either of the men. Both were quickly released.

Williamson’s confidence that Tanner had not embarked on a wild goose chase was further bolstered by the arrival of the much-anticipated documents from the Préfecture de Police in Paris. In response to their request for details of the murder of Judge Poinsot four years earlier, the French authorities had forwarded a careful description of their suspect, the escaped convict Charles Judd. He was, it turned out,
ferocious
in appearance:
about five feet five inches tall with brown hair, grey eyes, a long face with a large chin, broken teeth, a black beard and a red scar over his left eye. A photograph of Judd was attached. It bore no resemblance either to Franz Müller or to either of the men described by Thomas Lee. Charles Judd was finally out of the frame for the murder of Thomas Briggs.

CHAPTER 15

Who but a Madman?

The assassin
– for it would be an affectation to scruple about disregarding in this instance the sound conventional rule that untried men are presumably innocent – has succeeded in temporarily escaping,
reported the
Liverpool Mercury. He doubtless hugs himself in the fond belief that the broad Atlantic will soon roll between him and the baffled avengers of blood … As this man’s guilt is deeper and darker than the guilt of common murderers so it seems right and fitting that his punishment should include elements of mortal anguish beyond any penalties which the law can inflict … the concentrated agony … of the dock, the condemned cell and the scaffold
. The
Liverpool Mercury
was not alone in deciding that the German was guilty. Although the rule of innocent until proven guilty was enshrined in English law the Victorian press paid
little heed to prohibitions
against stirring up prejudice against suspects or prisoners awaiting trial. Yet the fact that every scrap and rumour – no matter how false or vitriolic – could be published in order to boost newspaper circulations did cause
a frisson of unease
in legal quarters.