Foreign News: Sherlock Spilsbury

An unwholesome taint hung last week over Brighton. The feminine mayor of this most respectable resort on the whole so-called “British Riviera” was almost frantic when embarrassed policemen broke the news to her. In the parcel room of balmy, blissful Brighton’s sprawling railway station the headless, armless, legless torso of a woman had been found in a small trunk. Shrilled Mayor Margaret Hardy: “This case belongs to London! Nothing like this has ever happened before in Brighton.”

If the Home Office had not decided that here was a case for Sir Bernard Spilsbury interest might not have mounted to such feverish heights. Sir Bernard Spilsbury is Britain’s living successor to mythical Sherlock Holmes. He specializes in macabre cases in which there seem to be no clues. Who but Sir Bernard could have brought to justice Norman Thorne who hanged his sweetheart and then buried her deep beneath the plowed topsoil of his farm? The latest achievement of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, British readers were reminded by the million last week, was his feat in persuading a jury to send Reginald Hicks to the gallows for holding his father-in-law’s head in an oven with the gas turned on. Reginald Hicks insisted that his father-in-law turned on the gas and stuck his own head into the oven. But, as a result of the great sleuth’s finespun deductions, Reginald Hicks was hanged by the neck until dead. Last week Sir Bernard Spilsbury left London for Brighton hailed by Britain’s more sensational newsorgans as “Europe’s greatest criminologist.”

Of good omen was the finding in London, just before Sir Bernard left, of a pair of legs in a suitcase left at King’s Cross Station which proved to be the legs of the Brighton torso. As he went to work Sir Bernard Spilsbury preserved the Sherlock Holmes tradition of keeping mum, but he had his Dr. Watson in Chief Detective Pelling. The sole clue seemed to be that both legs and torso were wrapped in the same sort of brown wrapping paper and on the paper around the torso appeared the letters “f o r d.” Chief Detective Pelling titillated the Empire by as much as admitting that Sir Bernard Spilsbury as much as thought these four letters were the end of a place name such as “Guilford.” Apparently even Sir Bernard was somewhat baffled. He asked the Home Office to order Scotland Yard to request by radio that police throughout the United Kingdom search all parcels which had remained more than two weeks in station check rooms. No sooner had this search begun than the remains of a stillborn baby were found at Brighton in a wicker basket which had been checked on Feb. 24. “You see it was a wicker fish basket,” explained the checkroom attendant. “That was why we didn’t think there was anything strange.” As Sir Bernard Spilsbury’s next discovery it was revealed that the torso was that of a woman who would have become a mother in five months. “Now if we could just find her head and arms,” remarked a local Brighton bobbie, “that would be a great help.”