The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

MURDER HATH CHARMS by Christianna Brand

The case of Adelaide Bartlett is one of a clutch of Victorian poisoning dramas that galvanized the British murder-reading public during the closing years of the nineteenth century. There mere several crowd-pleasing features: the accused woman, at thirty, was still young and presentable, born in France, and the widow of a prosperous grocer ten years older than she was. Adelaide was accused of murdering him with liquid chloroform. The fact that she had slept with her husband’s brother within a year of her marriage furnished a further frisson. Although acquitted, most observers of the case believe that Mrs Bartlett was a very lucky woman. Her case has prompted a number of full-length books, including a novelised interpretation by the crime writer Julian Symons, Sweet Adelaide. This miniature treatment first appeared in 1974, in a collection of (mostly fictional) short crime stories by the detective writer Christianna Brand (1909-88).Her mystery novels (including Green for Danger, which was filmed starring Alistair Sim) appeared over a period of some forty years. She also wrote books for children, most notably Nurse Matilda (1963), illustrated by her cousin Edward Ardizzone.

Murder hath charms, we must confess, for those of us not too closely brushed against it; and how much more so “when a lady’s in the case”-those delicious pouter-pigeon ladies who so closely followed each other into the dock in the latter half of the last century: with their bosoms and their bustles and their tight little waists, all starry-eyed. And when, furthermore, the truth of their innocence or guilt must now be for ever in doubt-they are surely irresistible? Mrs Bravo so plump and pretty, lacing the wine or the water with antimony-did she or didn’t she? Poor Florence Maybrick, adding to her elderly husband’s already sufficient consumption of aphrodisiac arsenic-did she or didn’t she? And Adelaide, sweet Adelaide, with her great big brown eyes and her great big brown bottle of chloroform-did she or didn’t she…? We shall never know now.

It was in the year 1875 that the friends of Miss Adelaide Blanche de la Tremoille purchased for her a husband-in the shape of a Wicked Grocer named Edwin Bartlett, who thenceforward kept her in a cage most cruelly all day-and in a separate bed most cruelly all night. Or so said Adelaide, on trial for his murder eleven years later. For he believed that a man should have two wives, one for use and one for companionship; and Adelaide, he explained to her, was to be the one for companionship.

To add to the improbability of her name, Adelaide Blanche de la Tremoille was, as Miss Austen would say, the natural daughter of Somebody-rich enough to have provided for her adequately, “decent enough to have wished for concealment”. She was nineteen when the marriage was arranged but Edwin, having “a reverential regard for advanced learning” of which he himself had very little, packed her off to boarding school for the next three years and only then received her permanently into his home. He had invested his own purchase price in the family grocery business and now had a chain of flourishing shops. They set up house in rooms over one of these establishments in Herne Hill.

There she remained, poor young creature, very friendless, occupying herself with her needlework, music and the care of some Newfoundland dogs which her husband bred “for showing”-one gets the impression that there was not very much that Edwin did just for fun-and which were kept in kennels close by. Her sole companion was her aged father-in-law who, devoted to his son, with whom he incessantly talked business, had disapproved of the marriage and henceforward disliked and distrusted her.

After two years of this she petitioned for a baby of her own; and at last, evidently feeling that the better the day the better the deed, Edwin relented and on a Sunday afternoon “a single act” took place. Adelaide became triumphantly pregnant and, attended only by a midwife named Annie Walker, in due course she was delivered of a child. But the baby was stillborn. She went through a bad time, declared herself unwilling to have any more children; platonic relations were resumed and that was that.

Or so said Adelaide.

After several changes of residence, in the course of which they got rid of the company of Bartlett senior, the couple finally came to rest in Claverton Street, Pimlico-a typical London house of that period, of which so many still exist-one of a long, stuccoed terrace, with steps up to the front door and two pillars and a balcony forming a porch. But it was not much of a life for an active and alertly minded young woman: two first-floor rooms, divided only by partitioning doors, and all the housework and cooking done by a landlady…

Or it wouldn’t have been; but by now a new and exciting element had been introduced. The Reverend George Dyson had arrived upon the Bartletts’ scene.

The Rev. George was attached to a Wesleyan chapel, where his duties appear to have been light for soon he was spending a great deal of time with the Bartletts, both of whom quite doted upon him (a young man with a large, plummy face, soft, dark eyes and a plentiful, black drooping moustache, it is nowadays hard to find much charm in him)-and soon he had undertaken to promote even further the advanced learning for which Edwin had so much regard. Latin, history, mathematics and geography-the last perhaps somewhat in the general direction of Oh, my America, my new-found-land!-a poem by a fellow cleric considerably more literate, if a great deal naughtier, in verse than the Rev. George. For while Donne addressed himself strictly to his bird, with George it was all his birdie-

Who is it that hath burst the door

Unclosed the heart that shut before,

And set her queen-like on its throne

And made its homage all her own?-

My birdie!

This effusion went on for many stanzas, all with the same refrain. After Edwin Bartlett died, the author was at great pains to get it back from Adelaide: and who can blame him?

The lessons took place in the front room at Claverton Street and often lasted all day; not surprising that sometimes Adelaide was so exhausted as to have to take them sitting on the floor, her head resting against George’s knee, the curtains drawn across and even pinned together, to take the strain from her eyes. These were very dark and large in an oval face, crowned by close-cropped, curly dark hair. The mouth is full-lipped and rather sensuous. No wonder that at last it was all too much for George who went to Edwin and confessed that he was becoming “too interested” in Adelaide.

Edwin was unperturbed. He begged George to continue as before and soon a somewhat astonishing situation emerged, which certainly was understood and accepted by all three-in which it was agreed that Edwin had some obscure condition which gave him not much longer to live and that Adelaide was more or less made over to George in advance, as his prospective wife.

October. November. On 8 December-in 1885, this is, the eleventh year of the marriage-Adelaide sent round the corner for the nearest available doctor. He found Edwin very low, weak and deeply depressed, suffering from sickness, diarrhoea, and haemorrhage of the bowels. On looking into the mouth, he observed also a blue line round the edge of the gums which suggested that at some time the patient had taken mercury. This in turn suggested what counsel later referred to euphemistically as “a pestilent disease” which, however, Edwin to the last refused to admit to; (one wonders a little, all the same, about that baby, stillborn to a perfectly strong and healthy young woman; and it does seem that Edwin was ever a prey to undefined, perhaps secret, fears). It later emerged that as a young man he had decided that dentures would be better than the real thing and had accordingly submitted to the awful agony of having all his own perfectly good teeth sawn off at the gums. The stumps had now decayed and his entire mouth was in an appalling condition. Within the next twelve days he had sixteen of these stumps removed; they revealed an underlying fungoid growth with resultant sloughing, eroding and sponginess which we may feel it more agreeable to pass over.

By the 19th however, things were much improved and the doctor wanted the patient to go away for a change-preferably without his wife who, said the doctor, “petted him too much”. But though brighter, Edwin was now terrified about his health and refused, and on the 23rd his fears seemed-to himself at any rate-justified. Whatever a lumbricoid worm may be, he passed a lumbricoid worm.

By this time it really seems fair to describe the wretched man as half out of his mind with fear, distress and a very understandable self pity. He felt worms constantly wriggling up and down his throat and one night, he told the doctor, he arose and stood before Adelaide as she slept, “extracting the vital force from her to himself”. And each time he grew a little brighter, fresh disaster struck. Now necrosis of the jaw was suggested and it had a frightening ring to it. On 31 December, New Year’s Eve, yet another stump of tooth must come out.

In preparation for this event, he ate for his breakfast half a dozen oysters and a large helping of jugged hare. On return from the dentist, “this remarkable invalid” had another half dozen oysters, a quantity of mango chutney-all by itself?-cake and tea; and ordered a large haddock for the next morning’s breakfast, saying that he would wake up early in anticipation of this treat.

Alas, he was destined never to wake up again.

Adelaide, meanwhile, had been looking after her husband with a truly devoted assiduity, sitting up with him all night and every night, holding his toe which seems to have afforded him some obscure satisfaction. On 27 December, however, four days before he died, a most curious event had taken place. She had-apparently accidentally-run into the Rev. George Dyson in the street, and had sent him off upon an errand. He was to obtain for her quite a large quantity of chloroform. Edwin had long suffered from an internal complaint, she explained, about which he was too sensitive to speak to anybody, and nothing but chloroform had ever been able to soothe him and send him to sleep. She had previously got it from her friend, the midwife, Annie Walker-this was untrue-but Annie Walker was now abroad. She could not ask the doctor for it as he would never understand how skilled she was in its use.

She said nothing about keeping the matter secret and George could not, later, say why he should have gone such an odd way about obtaining it-going round to three different chemists-collecting the amount in three small bottles-telling lies as to its intended purpose-transferring it all to one bottle and handing it to Adelaide surreptitiously; though that, he explained, was only because Edwin was present.

The bottle was never seen again; and four days later Edwin Bartlett lay dead with a large quantity of chloroform in his stomach.

Adelaide had awoken, she said, at four o’clock in the morning; had turned him on his back, tried to pour brandy down his throat-there was a smell of spilt brandy on his chest and half a glass of it on the mantelpiece within reach of his bed. She had sent the maid for the doctor and called up the landlord. He testified that the room had smelt “of paregoric or ether” and especially the brandy glass.

Edwin’s father arrived. He had long been making not very thickly veiled suggestions that his daughter-in-law was trying to poison her husband and he now kissed his dead son and at the same time sniffed at his lips: and announced that there must be a post mortem. The Rev. George, on the other hand, was concerned only and immediately with Number One. He began to panic about that chloroform and-on his way to chapel to take a service-disposed of the original three small bottles under separate bushes on Wandsworth Common. He then rushed to Adelaide and demanded the return of My Birdie; and receiving no satisfaction from her, proceeded to unburden his heart to friends.

Adelaide, betrayed, sought out the doctor and unburdened hers. She had really wanted the chloroform, she now declared, because Edwin, in his brief moments of returning spirits showed signs of wishing to claim rights which he had never demanded before. Feeling herself to have been almost officially handed over to the Rev. Dyson, she had felt this to be not quite decent. She could hardly explain it to a clergyman, so she had told him a tarradiddle to persuade him to get her the chloroform, privately proposing to sprinkle it on a handkerchief, wave it in her husband’s face and so subdue his unwelcome passions. She had had no occasion to use it, but on that night, the evening of his death, she had felt so bad about keeping a secret from him that she had broken down and confessed it all and handed over the bottle. They had had a talk, “serious but amicable” and he had put the bottle on the mantelpiece by the bedside, turned over and gone to sleep-or to sulk, she rather unexpectedly amended. Next morning she had taken the bottle, not observing whether or not any of the contents was missing, and put it in a drawer of her dressing table. There the police had-somewhat unaccountably, it must be confessed-overlooked it in their search and when she left the house for ever she had taken it with her and thrown it from the window of the train into a pond. It must be added in Adelaide’s disfavour that at this time the pond in question is said to have been frozen over.

A simple little story-allowing for Adelaide’s undoubted tendency to embroider the truth. It had only one drawback: nobody believed it.

On the other hand…

On the other hand, thundered the medical witnesses at her subsequent trial, it was impossible to administer chloroform to a conscious person without an agonised struggle and outcry: and in this case there had been demonstrably been none. And it was equally impossible for anyone unskilled to administer chloroform to an unconscious person, without leaving signs of burning in the throat; and in this case there were none. No attempt at murder by this means had ever been recorded.

So with all the bad will in the world-how could Adelaide have got the chloroform down her husband’s throat?

Suicide and accident were of course canvassed. She had left him for some little time while she went into the next room to prepare herself for the night’s vigil-which for some reason she appears to have spent fully dressed. But if he had then accidentally-or for that matter, purposely-drunk from the bottle, he must have cried out in pain and she must have heard him through the partitioning doors which were all that divided the two rooms. At any rate, she would not have found him when she came back, apparently peacefully at rest. There seemed no alternative to murder. Only-how?

By first rendering him partially insensible by inhalation of the chloroform, suggested the Crown, either while he was asleep (extremely difficult, protested the medical witnesses) or by some sort of persuasion; and then pouring the fatal dose down his throat. But, declared a specialist in such matters, though in a person losing consciousness there might be a moment between the time they were still able to swallow and the failure of that reflex-“the most careful doctor could not measure or predict its existence”.

Very well, said the Crown (in essence) you know that: but Adelaide didn’t, did she? Suppose she just had a bash and struck the lucky moment?

Or, it has since been suggested, might she not easily have persuaded him to take a dose?-trusting her implicitly as he did and with his deep respect for her “learning”. He had been suffering from sleeplessness and nothing else so far had done him any good. (It is put forward in a recent book on the case that Adelaide was in fact a thoroughly wicked woman who all along had been poisoning her husband; that she had borrowed the lumbricoid worm from one of the Newfoundland dogs-not a very charming idea-and introduced it deliberately, further to cast gloom and despondency; and that finally underhypnotism she induced him, to take the dose.)

But the question always seems to come back to this-why should she? They all three believed that Edwin had not long to live-or why the arrangement, which undoubtedly existed, about handing her over to the Rev. Dyson? Dyson, by the rules of his church, could not marry for some little time to come, and meanwhile she was free, indeed encouraged, by her husband to spend most of her time with him-curtains drawn, head on knee, My Birdie and all the rest of it. Moreover, no one was ever found to say that to the end she had been anything but an affectionate, tenderly careful and much loved wife. So why take so appalling a risk?-why with so little care or concealment court a death-sentence for murder? Adelaide was a clever creature, the very readiness and glibness of her innumerable fibs proves that: would she for a moment have trusted George Dyson-a man of God, after all-to keep silent when his purchase of the chloroform became known?-nor had she ever asked him to keep the matter secret. Then-just to tip the stuff down her husband’s throat, leaving no possible alternative to her own guilt when, as must inevitably happen, the cause of his death was proved. No attempt to set the stage for accident or suicide: why the removal of the chloroform bottle which made either impossible? And she was already aware that the embittered old father-in-law was accusing her of causing his son’s illness.

The consensus of opinion is probably that Adelaide Barlett murdered her husband. This is to some extent on account of her lies-but we are nowadays sufficiently familiar with the phenomenon of the self-dramatist, the compulsive liar?-and the monotony and uselessness of her life would have conduced to both. Mostly, however, it is for lack of any alternative. And yet…

That Adelaide really cared two hoots for the Rev. Dyson, it is impossible to believe-except as a diversion from the tedium of her friendless life. But here was Edwin, however much she may have been devoted to him-with his toothless gums, sloughing and sponging and all the rest of it, with worms imaginary or otherwise crawling up and down his throat, with his crumbling jaw and that ominously suggestive blue line… Not exactly a proposition for a fastidious young woman, already sentimentally inclined elsewhere. And yet how to avoid wounding his feelings in his present extremely manic-depressive condition? She has been used, perhaps, to employing chloroform in her work with the dogs? At any rate, she sets about obtaining some. And sure enough, on New Year’s Eve, after his supper of aphrodisiac oysters, the mango chutney and cake-Edwin shows signs of rising uxorious desires.

Who can say what was done or spoken that night? She genuinely believed, perhaps, that she could quieten him down?-and he detected something and so she confessed it all? Or she had thought of a better plan: she would simply explain to him that her spiritual betrothal to George Dyson-which Edwin himself had promoted-forbade marital relations between them. Either way, she handed over the bottle, left it standing there unused on the mantel-shelf-they had a good talk and Edwin turned over and went to sleep.

Ortosulk, Adelaide had said.

Of course it was all nonsense about Edwin and his platonic relations with his wife: another of those tarradiddles so pointless as to suggest a guiltless, pathological cause for all Adelaide’s untruths. The famous “single act” on a Sunday afternoon which had resulted in the stillborn baby, was reduced to commonplace by the testimony of the midwife: “On all other occasions a preventative was used.” Edwin, in his fitful feelings of well-being, was simply asking for his customary cuddle. And for the first time, Adelaide was saying no.

Poor man! He is hateful to himself with his upset stomach and his gums and his necrosis and his lumbricoid worm; and now it seems he is hateful to Adelaide also. She has withdrawn her favours from him; she and George, the admired and beloved friend, appear to be calmly anticipating a near future when he, the obstructive husband, shall be out of the way…

A bottle of chloroform within reach. A glass of brandy to hand. He tips a large dose of the one into the other. The chloroform hangs in the brandy [11], suspended at its centre like a yolk in the white of an egg. Wrapped within its cocoon, the dose passes without pain or burning, all at one gulp-down the throat of the suicide.

Adelaide comes back from the other room. Edwin lies doggo. She settles herself for the night.

In the early hours of the morning she awakes; and he is dead.

As we have seen, Adelaide Bartlett was no fool. All along, the horrid old father-in-law has been making overt accusations and now his son is indeed dead, and it is she who has-apparently secretly, and giving false reasons-introduced the fatal dose. What to do? Get rid of the bottle of chloroform, at any rate, just get rid of it and trust to luck; nothing can be worse than leaving it here beside Edwin. Rinse out the glass, spill a bit of brandy around: but get rid of that bottle.

That she put it in her dressing-table drawer, we may take leave to doubt: laced into her corsets, more likely-no one went so far as to search her person. Then to send for the doctor (may he not, considering the patient’s long sickness, issue a death certificate without more ado?)-summon up the landlord, give way to a doubtless quite genuine grief. And when the Rev. George comes rushing round in a state about the chloroform, stamp your foot and cry out, “Oh, damn the chloroform!”-that none of it has been used and he had better just forget all about it and pipe down…

George on the contrary piped up and to such effect that he shortly afterwards found himself standing in the dock beside her, both of them charged with murder.

They let him go almost immediately-to testify against her with all the vehemence of his shocked and terrified heart. But then, after all, he believed her guilty.

The jury believed it too; but they couldn’t get round the doctors’ evidence in her defence and they brought in a verdict accordingly. “Although we think that grave suspicion attaches to the prisoner…” The court waited to hear no more: a huge burst of cheering rang out and for the only time in his long and brilliant career, her counsel, Sir Edward Clarke, put his head in his hands and wept.

“Now that Mrs Bartlett has been found not guilty of murdering her husband,” said the wits afterwards, “it seems only fair that in the interests of science, she should tell us how she did it.”