MURDER AS A FINE ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9166, 22 September 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

MURDER AS A FINE ART.

THE SECRET OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT.

A few years ago the writer found his way along the curving shore of Galloway to the cottage of a grim old Scotswoman, Grace M'Credie. She was the survivor of what had become famous in Scotland, and had become known beyond the bounds of Scotland as the Glenluce murder. On the night of May 31, 1880, Grace, then an elderly woman between t>o and 70, went to bed in the outer room or kitchen. But, before she did so, James Milligan, the old man for whom she acted as housekeeper, had gone to rest in the inner apartment. The only other person in the house was a young girl who assisted Grace in her household duties, and who usually crept in and slept in the bed behind her. This night, all remained quiet till about 1 o'clock, when the wakeful ear of age was roused by what seemed to be a footiaii, and Grace, rising on her elbow, asked,'' Who is there ?" The answer was

A HEAVY RAIN OF BLOWS FROM AN AXE or hatchet; and the old woman, struggling out of bed, grappled in the dark with her armed assailant. He spoke no word, but strove to free his right hand, and went whirling about the room in deadly wrestle with his victim, who, now faint with loss of blood, tried to escape from the room. Two heavy blows laid her moaning and senseless on the threshold, with a gash in the shoulder, and others on the arms and face. In the room within a deadlier tragedy had already been enacted. Milligan was even now lying there prostrate on the floor from blows of the same axe, and when, a quarter of an hour later, the horror-struck villagers burst into a house filled with smoke and flame, they were too late to rescue the old man. Bus Grace recovered consciousness, and

FOUGHT WITH DEATH for six weeks as she had fought with the murderer, till, long before our meeting, the Grim Feature confessed himself badly beaten. But the story as told by Grace M'Credie (who now rests in peace near her old master's grave) was as nothing compared with the thrilling narrative of that midnight's work by another witness, who is still alive. Mary —, whose name we conceal, for, though no longer in Wigtonshire, she is still a young woman in opening life, was at the time of the tragedy about 15, and she told her story with that rude, blunt, breathless simplicity which makes you feel as if you were going through the crisis yourself. And what a crisis it was. The girl had been asleep at the back of the bed when she was wakened by the midnight blows descending on the old woman ; and in an agony of fear she climbed in the dark over the edge, and before the struggle was ended had scrambled under the bed, which, as is usual in Scottish cottages, was sunk into a recess in the wall. In a few seconds the fight was over, and nothing was heard but the convulsive breathing of her late protectress, lying in the doorway. Then soft steps pushed through the darkness—the man was moving about in his stockings, but still

TRAILING THE HEAVY AXE IN HIS RIGHT HAN Suddenly there was a pause—a noise—a spark ; he had struck a match ; and with it sputtering in his left hand ho searched round the room, and actually prised open a locked cupboard in the wall, and swept some 18s into his pocket. There was £200 in a room upstairs, which he missed. Then another match was struck, and the girl, gazing with fascinated eyes from under the bed-curtain, saw the assassin move toward the inner room, through the open door of which she now for the first time observed, with a spasm of renewed horror, her master's body lying on the floor. What was the deadly stranger doing? For some time she could not tell, but soon it was plain. He was throwing down the bed, furniture, pillows, sheets, blankets, in a heap beside the body of its late owner. And, having done so, he lighted another match, and, stooping down, set tire to the pile here and there, and stood back to watch the result. But at this point there happened something more full of urgent terror than anything in De Quincey's London narrative. While the girl was gazing at the side face of the assassin—gazing so fixedly that she was able to give the writer a fair general description of him—the fellow suddenly turned round, and walked straight across the room to where she crouched under the bed. ""Why i did not scream out," she said, wringing her hands as she spoke, " I don't know to this hour. I only know I could not." For half a minute, which seemed like half an eternity, he stood above her, his stockinged feet actually within six inches of her face. And then again there was a scratch, a sputter, a flash of light, and slowly and coolly—all his motions were deliberate—he applied the match, and

SET FIRE TO THE HANGINGS and coverlet of the bed under which the unseen witness at the moment crouched. The tension and agony of the scene could not last much longer. By this time thick volumes of smoke poured from the inner room. The murderer, who was short and thick-set, with a slight moustache, and dressed like an ordinary working man, put down his axe and looked round through the reflection of the rising tires, to find his cap. He missed it. But it was no time to delay. In another second he was striding along the passage to the back door of the house, which led to the garden and the moor behind, and the girl, all ear, bent breathlessly forward from her den. But the moment she heard the back door slammed softly she leaped up, rushed out into the passage, over Grace lying in her blood, and through the front door, and

FLUNG HERSELF IN A HYSTERICAL HEAP on the doorstep of the opposite house. In half a minute the whole inhabitants of Glenluce were at their windows. In three minutes more they were crowding round the burning house, amid wailing of the women and mutterings of " murder" by the men. At the very crisis of he crime, in the dead stillness of the night, just after the butchery had taken place within, wheels were heard passing outside along the winding street of the village. Xo part of the girl's story was more impressive than the way in which she told how her heart leaped at the sound, and how it died again within her when she saw the man with the axe exhibit not the least alarm as the vehicle came up to the front door arid rolled away in the other direction. Lastly, not only was

the undoubted murderer seen., not only did he leave behind the tools of his "art," but his cap was found in the room and recognised. A shopkeeper in the next town alleged that he had sold it to someone—to whom he could not saywithin a few months. And yet with all this mass of suggestion, down to the time of our visit, and, as far as we know, to this hour, the actor has never been found or even traced. Somewhere around this globe, somewhere amid the shifting masses of our AngloAmerican race, there is a middle-aged, thickset, imperturbable man, who carries in his hot heart the secret of that midsummer night of June.