Gerald Kersh - The Best of Gerald Kersh

I was supposed to be an intelligent officer, as far as that goes in the Police Force. But that isn’t quite good enough. In those days all the so-called intelligence in the world wouldn’t get a policeman very far – seniority aside – unless he had a kind of spectacular way of showing it.

I’m not embittered, mind you. Nothing against the Force. Only I ought to have known when to stop talking.

At first, like everybody else, I thought nothing of it. The police were called in after the doctor, merely as a matter of routine, d’you see. I was on the beat then, in Hammersmith. Towards about eight o’clock one Sunday morning, neighbours on either side of a little house on Spindleberry Road were disturbed by the hysterical crying of a child at No. 9.

At first there was some talk of the N.S.P.C.C., but there was no question of that, because the people at No. 9 were, simply, a little orphan girl, aged eight, and her aunt, Miss Pantile, who thought the world of her niece and, far from ill-treating the child, had a tendency to spoil her; because the little girl, whose name was Titania, was delicate, having had rheumatic fever.

As is not uncommon, the houses in Spindleberry Road are numbered, odd coming up and even going down. The neighbours in question, therefore, were Nos. 7 and 11. Spindleberry Road, like so many of them put up around Brook Green before the turn of the century, is simply a parallel of brick barracks, sort of sectionalised and numbered. Under each number, a porch. In front of each porch, iron railings and an iron gate. At the back of each and every house, a bit of garden. I mention this, d’you see, because these houses, from a policeman’s point of view, present only an elementary problem: they are accessible from front or back only.

Beg pardon – I’ve never quite lost the habit of making everything I say a kind of Report…. Well, hearing child crying, neighbours knock at door. No answer. No. 7 shouts through letter-box: ‘Open the door and let us in, Titania!’ Child keeps on crying. Various neighbours try windows, but every window is locked from the inside. At last No. 11, a retired captain of the Mercantile Marine, in the presence of witnesses, bursts in the back door.

Meanwhile, one of the lady neighbours has come to get a policeman, and has found me at the corner of Rowan Road. I appear on the scene.

Not to bother you, sir, with the formalities: being within my rights, as I see them in this case, I go in, having whistled for another policeman who happens to be my Sergeant. The house is in no way disturbed, but all the time, upstairs, this child is screaming as if she is being murdered, over and over again: ‘Auntie Lily’s dead! Auntie Lily’s dead!’

The bedroom is locked on the inside. Sergeant and I force the lock, and there comes out at us a terrified little golden-headed girl, frightened out of her wits. The woman from No. 11 soothes her as best she can, but the Sergeant and I concentrate our attention upon Miss Lily Pantile, who is lying on a bed with her eyes and mouth wide open, stone dead.

The local doctor was called, of course, and he said that, as far as he could tell, this poor old maiden lady had died of something like a cerebral hæmorrhage at about three o’clock in the morning. On a superficial examination, this was as far as he cared to commit himself. He suggested that this was a matter for the coroner.

And that, as far as everybody was concerned, was that, d’you see. Only it was not. At the Inquest, it appeared that poor Miss Pantile had met her death through a most unusual injury. A gold-eyed crewel needle had been driven through her skull, and into her brain, about three inches above the left ear!

Now here, if you like, was a mystery with a capital M .

Miss Pantile lived alone with her eight-year-old niece. She had enough money of her own to support them both, but sometimes made a little extra by crewel work – you know, embroidering with silks on a canvas background. She was especially good at crewelling roses for cushion covers. The needle she favoured – she had packets and packets of them – was the Cumberland Crewel Gold Eye, one of which had found its way, nobody knew how, through her skull and into her brain. But how could it possibly have found its way there? – that was the question.

There was no lack of conjecture, you may be sure. Doctors cited dozens of instances of women – tailoresses and dressmakers, particularly – who had suddenly fallen dead through having needles embedded in various vital organs. Involuntary muscular contractions, it was demonstrated, could easily send an accidentally-stuck-in needle, or portion of a needle, working its way between the muscles for extraordinary distances, until it reached, for example, the heart….

The coroner was inclined to accept this as a solution, and declare a verdict of Death by Misadventure. Only the doctor wouldn’t have that. Such cases, he said, had come to his attention, especially in the East End of London; and, in every case, the needle extracted had been in a certain way corroded, or calcified, as the case might be. In the case of Miss Lily Pantile, the crewel needle – upon the evidence of a noted pathologist – had been driven into the skull from the outside, with superhuman force. Part of the gold eye of the needle had been found protruding from the deceased’s scalp…. What did the coroner make of that? – the doctor asked.

The coroner was not anxious to make anything of it but routine inquiry.

In the opinion of the doctor, could an able-bodied man have driven a needle through a human skull with his fingers?

Definitely, no.

Might this needle, then, have been driven into Miss Pantile’s skull with some instrument, such as a hammer?

Possibly; but only by someone of ‘preternatural skill’ in the use of fine steel instruments of exceptional delicacy….

The doctor reminded the coroner that even experienced needlewomen frequently broke far heavier needles than this gold-headed crewel needle, working with cloth of close texture. The human skull, the doctor said – calling the coroner, with his forensic experience, to witness – was a most remarkably difficult thing to penetrate, even with a specially designed instrument like a trephine.

The coroner said that one had, however, to admit the possibility of a crewel needle being driven through a middle-aged woman’s skull with a hammer, in the hands of a highly-skilled man.

… So it went on, d’you see. The doctor lost his temper and invited anyone to produce an engraver, say, or cabinet-maker, to drive a crewel needle through a human skull with a hammer ‘with such consummate dexterity’ – they were his words, sir – as to leave the needle unbroken, and the surrounding skin unmarked, as was the case with Miss Pantile.

There, d’you see, the coroner had him. He said, in substance: ‘You have proved that this needle could not have found its way into the late Miss Pantile’s brain from inside. You have also proved that this needle could not have found its way into Miss Pantile’s brain from outside.’

Reprimanding somebody for laughing, then, he declared an Open Verdict.

So the case was closed. A verdict is a verdict, but coroners are only coroners, even though they may be backed by the Home Office pathologist. And somehow or other, for me, this verdict was not good enough. If I had been that coroner, I thought to myself, I would have made it: Wilful Murder by a Person, or Persons, Unknown.

All fine and large. But what person, or what persons, known or unknown, with specialised skill enough to get into a sealed house, and into a locked room, hammer a fine needle into a lady’s skull, and get out again, locking all the doors behind him, or them, from the inside – all without waking an eight-year-old girl sleeping by the side of the victim?