“DEVIL'S DIAGRAM."

Dunstan Times, Issue 3382, 11 July 1927, Page 7

“DEVIL'S DIAGRAM."

MURDER IN THE NAME OF LOVE

Who shall read the dark riddle of the human heart? The love of woman at its best is a Divine gift, yet in an evil hour it may turn to madness, tearing and rending like some devil unchained (writes Charles Pilley, in the “Sunday Chropicle”).

It was a fateful moment for Mrs Fulham,-* the young wife of the assistant examiner of military accounts at Allahabad, when Lieutenant Clark, of the Indian Medical service, a handsome Eurasian with a roving eye for a pretty woman, stepped into her life. Had some Eastern seer been present at their first meeting he might have discerned upon the horizon a cloud no bigger than a man’s hand, yet destined before long to blanket the heavens with the dark shadow of unspeakable crime.

In the crystal’s magic depths he might have beheld the dread climax of events then in their smiling infancy, the terrible scene in the courthouse at Allahabad four years later, when a man and woman, like fierce animals at bay, fought with avenging justice for their lives.

But no hint of tragedy is present to the minds of the gay throng at the Residency ball, where Mrs Fulham and her darkskinned cavalier dance till the small hours, careless of the jealous glances of the woman’s husband, dark portents of the gathering storm. Will a happily-married woman, the devoted mother of four young children, yield to the promptings of illicit passion, stake all upon the mad gamble of n lawless: and unsanctified love? Certain it is that before long the couple were on terms which threatened to make shipwreck of the Fulhams’ home, to rob the babies of their birthright, the husband of what he held dearest on earth. For in the mind of this woman, to all appearances a homely, unadventurous type, there was some latent streak of madness, which beneath the soft glances of her handsome dance partner leapt ominously to life. Soon she was writing to him in the following terms“ln your presence I seem to melt and become like wax, instead of being strong and making you listen to me, sweetheart, darling. My hubby was very angry. He saw you talking to me. ... He did not see anything beyond our whispering, but that was enough to make him jealous and angry. . . . . I can only ask you to wait for me till I can come to you free and unfettered.”

In the background was another shadowy figure, the wife of Lieutenant Clark, who had been married some yeans prior to his fli’st meeting with Mrs Fulham. The ageold plot of the intersecting triangles the Devil’s diagram,- the primitive markings of the beast in man!

How early in their guilty intimacy the infatuated couple hatched their diabolical plan for wresting by violence what thev called their “freedom,” cannot be said with certainty. The wickedness of thendesign, revealed in all its hideous enormity to the Chief Justice and a European jury in the High Court at Allahabad, almost passes belief. _ / The case for the prosecution was trial Mrs Fulham had poisoned her husband and that Lieutenant Clark had hired natives to bludgeon hisi wife to death in her bed, the pair having criminally conspired to perpetuate this double murder for the advancement of their baffled intrigue.

The male prisoner, it was alleged, had used his facilities as a doctor to supply Mrs Fulham with poisons which she undertook to administer to her husband in food and medicine, carefully in small doses so as not to excite suspicion, though with uo aim hut foul murder. At the same time Mrs Clark was secretly supplied with noxious drugs, but she, mysteriously, seemed “poison proof,” and at length, growing impatient, her blackhearted husband "conducted hired assassins to her sleeping tent and hade them do their worst. As regards the death of Mr Fulham, which had been falsely certified by Lieutenant Clark himself in his capacity as a doctor as due to general paralysis, the defence, if it could be so called, was characteristically callous and cruel. It had never been her intention, Mrs Fulham declared, to kill her husband, hut merely to make him so ill that he would he invalided to England, leaving her a clear road to her lover’s arms. Unfortunately for the prospects of this repulsive plea," the wretched woman had recorded in black and . white, for the information of her assassin lover, the daily progress of her infamous design of murdering her children’s father. In the lieutenant’s possession, upon his arrest, were found 400 letters from Mrs Fulham, tidily arranged in bundles, docketed, and endorsed with the date of receipt. In the literary Chamber of Horrors these missives must rank for ever with the foulest

emanations of the human mind

As the Crown Prosecutor reads the letters to the jury women faint and sicken, strong men blench with horror. The accusing guilt of murder, mouthing the language of perverted love, mocking even the name of Deity, leaps blood-red from each scented page: “Oh, what a different wife your second one will be. The stakes are high, hut the prize is well worth striving for. Do consider and hit on a plan which will achieve our most deserved and longed-for results.” The plan, poison-tipped, is soon in her ruthless hands. She writes: “I am giving half a tonic powder daily in my husband’s Sanatogeu, because it is also a white powder. He mixes it up quite unsuspectingly. I feel sure God will soon bring usr together.” And again: “Really, I don’t know how escapes getting heatstroke, as he is in a very favourable condition for it. His eyes arc bloodshot, , his face purple. Would it be a painful death? How soon would unconsciousness supervene ? ’ ’

But these faint stirrings of compunction, if such they were, arc soon quenched in blacker vows: “1 have fully made up my mind to administer the liquid at dinner on the 27th, in mulligatawny soup, which will disguise the taste. Thursday will be the best day to finish this dreadful business. Send me the liquid after disguising its taste and I will do the rest.” A day or two later she writes to her lover; “The liquid has arrived safely, and, if it is God’s will, He will make all our efforts come to a successful issue to-day. It is exceptionally hot, and just the weather for heatstroke. This is really the crisis of both our lives.” The climax of cruelty is swiftly reached: “They have taken dear hubby to the hospital after a most dreadful night. He was in a raving delirium, then quite unconscious. But I have a great disappointment for you. It is evidently God’s will to spare hubby’s life. He is not going to die.” At the moment when Lieutenant Clark, having failed to poison his wife, was bribing native assassins to club her to death, he received this final letter from the degraded creature who, to usurp the dead woman’s place, had stooped to the lowest depths of crime: “The happy climax is still to come. Let us hops and pray that it is not far away, and that it will terminate

in our happy union, and a long married life, always together, my best beloved. —Gussie. ’ ’

“Till leath, my very own love.” To thL letter Lieutenant Clark, his wife’s blood fresh on his hands, had penned a fervent reply, ending with the blasphemous assurance that he would “some day prove Ids grateful love, ‘by God’s help and blessing.’ ’’ In regard to the assassination of Mrs Clark there could be only one verdict, and it may have been the consciousness ‘that he was, in any case, a doomed man which prompted Clark to confess from the dock that, after the initial failure, described in the letters, the subsequent murder of Mr Fulham was Ids unaided work, in which Mrs Fulham had had no part or share.

After this dramatic' avowal the fate of the accused wife could no longer be regarded as a foregone conclusion. The prisoners were undefended by counsel, and the Chief Justice, evidently an xious that no'point in the woman’s favour, however doubtful, should escape the jury, solemnly repeated ,to them the substance of Clark’s confession, which was in the following terms:

“At first I intended to make him sick by giving him small doses, so that he should have to leave the country. I was sorry fer his condition. That is why I killed him. I simply administereTt four drachms of antipyrin before dinner, and this killed him, 1 gave him antipyrin because he was a wreck, and I wanted to finish him off. Mrs Fulham did not know I was administering it. Can any eye in court read mercy on the stern-set faces of the jurymen as they file back into their box after a two hours’ absence? There is no mercy, but stark avenging justice. Guilty, both, of the full crime of wilful murder. Swooning in the arms of wardresses, Mrs Fulham can scarcely have heard the awful sentence of the law. But she was not to die. Instead, she was to become' the mother of an assassin’s child, and afterwards to drag out weary years of penal servitude at Naini TabClark was hanged at Allahabad. It is said he met his death with soldierly calm.