The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (9 page)

It was a difficult meeting, with the senior detective anxious to keep a grip on the speculation and Britton anxious not to say anything which the detective did not want said, looking to him constantly for approval before speaking to me. Is that . . .? Britton would say. Yes, that’s fine, Short would reply. The meeting made me think again of Janet Brown; the remoteness of her life and the elusive, troubling horror of her death. No one, except of course the person who was there with her when it occurred, could say exactly how she had come to die or why it had to happen. As Britton readily conceded, the skills or wisdom of offender profiling could never be a science of precision. He too had noticed how little there was to know about Janet Brown. It was very important, he said, to know about her. But what you had was a tight picture with very little detail available. It was not a question of the detail being concealed so much as it simply not being there at all.

When it came to the incident itself, Britton did not know what to make of the means of entry. The person had come prepared to do what they did. “You saw time, you saw effort and application, but you also saw a woefully inadequate appreciation of what was required to complete the task.” It was as if somebody was mirroring the real methods of a housebreaker without actually knowing how to do it.

This was not, he said, a situation where somebody had broken into a house to steal and panicked on seeing the occupant and hit her and rushed out again. Janet Brown had been fully controlled by her killer and she had little opportunity or inclination to resist. People did not just use handcuffs to control, they used fear as well. And it wasn’t only the victim who had been controlled; the assailant had very much been in control of his own feelings too. Britton singled out the fact that he would have had to step over Mrs Brown’s body to go upstairs afterwards, and step over her again when he came back down.

With regard to the alarm, and whether it had been triggered by Mrs Brown or by the killer, Britton said he could not decide between the two possibilities. But, if it was Mrs Brown, it would be an interesting person who could do all this while the alarm was ringing full blast. He also pointed out that, with the curtains open downstairs and the lights on, it would have been possible for a passer-by to look in and see some of what had gone on. It was a quiet area, of course, but the assailant must still be a risk-taker.

Both Short and Britton believe the killer is likely to be a local man, or at least, a man who is familiar with the area and they both believe this man will be known to a wife, partner or parent. They think this person might have noticed some change in behaviour, or be suppressing their own fear that a person they know could be involved.

Britton speculated that the killer would have had a relationship that had failed or be in a relationship that was failing now. He would not have gone around boasting about it, after killing Janet Brown, but the change in his demeanour would have been observable. He might have become very agitated, or more agitated, preoccupied and withdrawn or he might have shown disproportionate interest in the reporting of the killing, with an elevation in his mood from the buzz of achievement.

Imagine, Britton said, a person who had crossed a threshold and knew they could never go back. It was an awesome thing to have done and there would be the awareness of the police investigation and the fear of the knock at the door.

By now, the case had become defined for me by what it was not about. The removal of the more feasible possibilities was pushing it towards an altogether darker place. This could not simply be a burglary gone awry. It was not a killing with a domestic motivation. It had nothing to do with the family or a lover or anything like that. There was nothing in Janet Brown’s life, or in her past, that could suggest a motive for murder. It would have made sense as a sexually motivated crime, except that there was no physical evidence of sexual assault. It was as if it was nothing to do with her at all, except that it appeared that she had been singled out in some aberrant way and had not been randomly selected as a victim.

What you were left with was the nightmarish prospect of a stranger, a man, driven by unknowable instincts to plan and smash his way into a woman’s home. It must have been a terrifying invasion. You could picture Janet Brown, at home in bed, oblivious to what was about to happen. It was better then to picture this other person, sitting at home still, waiting anxiously for the knock at the door. You could guess that there was nothing very special about them, either.

(Mary Rogers, 1841)

Irving Wallace

The murder of an obscure New York shopgirl, Mary Cecilia Rogers, in 1841 would have been long forgotten but for her fleeting acquaintance with one of America’s most brilliant nineteenth-century writers, Edgar Allan Poe (1809–49). The reckless and gifted Poe based his Gothic tale
The Mystery of Marie Roget
on her case. Irving Wallace (1916–90) was a American magazine writer in the 1930s and 1940s, before turning to screenwriting and fiction. Since publishing his first novel in 1959, Wallace has become one of America’s most popular and successful writers. However, his first book was not a novel at all, but a survey of the
“lives of extraordinary people who inspired memorable characters in fiction,” published in 1955 as
The Fabulous Originals
. In it, Wallace related the true stories of the real people who became immortalized in nineteenth- and twentieth-century fiction, such as Dr Joseph Bell (whose life inspired Conan Doyle to create Sherlock Holmes) and Deacon Brodie (Robert Louis Stevenson’s inspiration for Dr Henry Jekyll and Mr Edward Hyde). Edgar Allan Poe made no secret of the source of his fictional character Marie Roget; he wrote to friends that his creation was inspired by the unsolved murder of Mary Rogers.

For eighteen months during 1837 and 1838, Edgar Allan Poe, after being fired as editor of a Richmond literary magazine for excessive drinking, was a resident of New York City. He dwelt, with his pale, somewhat retarded child-bride, Virginia, and his matronly, possessive aunt and mother-in-law, Maria Clemm, in a cheap apartment on Sixth Avenue.

Poe, trying unsuccessfully to freelance for magazines, often restless with despair, became a familiar figure on Broadway. Few persons who saw him forgot him. In his neat, shabby, black swallow-tail coat and mended military cape, striding nervously, briskly along, he had the look of a neurotic peacock. His head, set large on a slender frame, seemed always in the clouds. His hair and scrub moustache were dark brown, his eyes sad and grey, and it was remarked that he had “hands like bird claws”.

His destination in many of these walks, as a few would remember after his death, was John Anderson’s tobacco shop at 319 Broadway, near Thomas Street. This small store was a popular hangout for famous authors like James Fenimore Cooper, as well as for magazine editors, newspaper reporters, and gamblers employed in the vicinity. And here Poe came for gossip and stimulation, and certainly for contacts.

When he had money, which was not often, Poe brought cigars or plugs of tobacco from the beautiful salesgirl behind the counter. She was employed, largely because of her vivacity and comeliness, as a full-time clerk, and her name was Mary Cecilia Rogers. It may be assumed that Poe, through the frequency of his visits and small purchases, knew her fairly well. He could not know, however, how soon Miss Rogers would serve him in another capacity.

By early 1839 the strange, eloquent, self-styled “magazinist” was no longer a regular customer of John Anderson, tobacconist. Poe was established at $800 a year salary—the greatest sum he would ever earn in his life, and considerably more than his total income from the ten books he would write—as managing editor of a periodical in nearby Philadelphia. The periodical was owned by a reformed comedian named William Burton, who eventually sold it to George Graham, a cabinet-maker turned publisher.

Poe was retained as editor of
Graham’s
Magazine
, and he worked doggedly in a third-floor cubicle shared with a Swedish assistant, reading and purchasing manuscripts, laying out new issues, and writing criticism and fiction. In short months his industry and ability helped boom the circulation of
Graham’s
from 5,000 to 37,000. Occasionally, as his duties demanded it, he made the uncomfortable six-hour train trip to New York City. It may be assumed that on these short visits he looked in on John Anderson’s tobacco shop and renewed his acquaintance with Mary Rogers, the attractive clerk behind the counter.

We do not know the date when Edgar Allan Poe last laid eyes on Mary Rogers. But we do know, approximately, the date when he first saw her name in print. Poe was a habitual reader of the sensational penny papers. Some of his finest fiction was culled from seemingly insignificant news items. Only months before, having read of an escaped orang-utan, he had conceived the world’s first detective story and published it in
Graham’s
as “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. Thus it was, in early August of 1841, that Poe consulted his latest batch of New York newspapers and stumbled upon the familiar name of Mary Rogers.

He came across the bald news item on the second page of the
New York Sunday Mercury
for 1 August. Since it was often filled with errors, he consulted the other papers. James Gordon Bennett’s gaudy
New York Herald
for 5 August fully substantiated the
Mercury
’s story. We can believe that what Poe read grieved him deeply. For what he read told him that the pretty girl who so often sold him tobacco in the shop on Broadway had been brutally murdered. According to both accounts, Mary Cecilia Rogers was found floating in the Hudson River off Hoboken on Wednesday, 28 July 1841. She had been beaten and strangled, and was quite dead when fished out of the water.

Poe’s reaction to the crime was no different from that of most decent New Yorkers. True, they were used to murder. Only five years before, at a time when most newspapers thought crime an improper subject to report, James Gordon Bennett, that brash and colourful cross-eyed Scot, had given the
New York Herald
a circulation of 50,000 with his reporting of the Ellen Jewett case. Miss Jewett, an attractive prostitute, had been bloodily dispatched in a house of ill-fame, and Mr Bennett broke a tradition of journalistic silence on such matters by having a look at the corpse and reporting to all and sundry: “The body looked as white, as full, as polished as the purest Parian marble. The perfect figure, the exquisite limbs, the fine face, the full arms, the beautiful bust, all, all surpassed in every respect the Venus de Medici.” This story broke the ice, and thereafter the constant reader had gore delivered daily at his breakfast.

Yet, despite this saturation of homicide, the murder of young Mary Rogers affected the citizenry with a shock of dismay. Miss Rogers was not just another anonymous victim. She had been, the woodcuts and columns made plain, a Grecian beauty endowed with every virtue—and virginity besides. She had worked honestly for a living. She had been adored and respected by customers of consequence. She had been the kind of woman one married, or had for sister or daughter. She had been a girl to whom half of New York could be likened. Now she was dead—killed with ferocity, in secret—and now no one was safe.

We have, fortunately, the typical reaction of a New Yorker of the period. Philip Hone, a cultured, wealthy citizen who dabbled in politics and kept voluminous diaries, read the accounts of Miss Rogers’s slaying about the same time as Poe did, and recorded his feelings:

“Friday, 6 Aug—Shocking Murder. The body of a young female named Mary Cecilia Rogers was found on Thursday last in the river near Hoboken, with horrid marks of violation and violence on her person. She was a beautiful girl, an attendant in the cigar shop of John Anderson in Broadway. She left home for a walk on the Sunday previous and was seen near Barclay Street in company with a young man, as if on an excursion to Hoboken; since which no trace of her was found, until the dreadful discovery on Thursday.

“She is said to have been a girl of exceeding good character and behaviour, engaged to be married, and has no doubt fallen victim to the brutal lust of some of the gang of banditti that walk unscathed and violate the laws with impunity in this moral and religious city. No discoveries have yet been made.”

The mystery of Mary Rogers was a nine-week wonder. The leading Manhattan journals, the
Herald
, the
Commercial
Advertiser
, the
Courier
and
Enquirer
, the
Tribune
, inspired by the possibilities of record circulation, and the underpaid metropolitan police, inspired by offers of rewards amounting to the unheard-of figure of $1,195, kept the case boiling. Dozens of suspects, including two of Mary’s suitors, a sailor, two abortionists, a wood-engraver, and several Bowery gangs, were closely questioned. Every suspect and every clue led to a dead end. By mid-October another murder, equally savage, had taken over the headlines and the attention of the law, and the hunt for the killer of Mary Rogers was actually, if not technically, abandoned.

But if Mary Rogers was forgotten in New York, she was not forgotten in Philadelphia. From that first day when he had read of Mary’s death, Poe followed every new development in the case. He read as many papers as he could find, but principally a periodical called
Brother
Jonathan
, which gave the case the most complete coverage and often condensed the accounts of rival sheets. Poe’s later knowledge of the details of the crime makes it quite apparent that he filed away every clipping relating to Mary’s death and also made copious notes on the theories prevailing.