The Ardlamont Mystery

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXII, Issue 22262, 9 November 1935, Page 17 (Supplement)

The Ardlamont Mystery

Unsolved Crimes

IT is a raw December day in Edinburgh. Prosperous folk hurry ing in the streets shiver involuntarily aa the coin of their charity is seized by tho blue fingers of the ragged beggar. . . But inside the gloomy building they are passing more than one brow is damp with the sweat of a suspense so painful that the atmosphere seems almost suffocating. It is the High Court of Justiciary The Lord Justice-clerk, impassive on the Bench, glances from the pale, cul-tured-looking rnun in the dock to the foreman of the jury, which for ten days has listened to the evidence oi nearly ano hundred witnesses and the arguments of brilliant counsel, and has now to utter a verdict on which hangs a human life. A wigged figure breaks the tense silence with a fateful question, and the foreman bends forward a little to reply: "Not proven I" A pause. Then a murmur runs round the court —of relief, of surprise, of dissent, accoiding to the views of those who have heard the tangled story that has been told and debated inside and outside those walls. A few formalities, and then Alfred John Monson, whose life has hung in tho balance for three months, leaves the dock, a free man—free, but with neither the vindication of innocence nor the stigma of guilt. ***** Such was the closing scene of a case which in its day aroused as great public interost and as keen controversy as? any of the notorious trials of history In its main outlines the case of the Ardlamont Mystery—as it has been called, because its scene was laid near Ardlamont House, a property in Argyllshire—was neither more nor less sordid or unusual than many others in which according to the allegation of the prosecution, a desperate need for money was the motive, rather than those of love, or revenge

It was, however, especially noteworthy for its contribution to the ageold controversy regarding the value of circumstantial evidence. "A witness may lie," a famous ludge has declared, "but if you see smoke coming out of a chimney you may reasonably conclude that there is a fire in the house." But, as Professor Hans Gross, the "Father of Criminology," insisted, it is

comparatively easy to accumulate a mass of 'such evidence, but quite another to decide what deductions may lustly be drawn from it. It was exactly on this No Man's Land that the battle was fought between the eminent experts called by the prosecution and the defence respectively in the Ardlamont Mystery. The two chief figures in the case were:

Alfred John Monson, a well-educated man of early middle age, who was accused on two counts of murdering and of attempting to murder Windsor Dudley Cecil Hambrough. who at the time of his death on August 10, 1893, was a 20-year-old lieutenant in the 3rd (Militia) Battalion of the West Yorkshire Regiment. Cecil Hambrough was the son ot Major Dudley Hambrough. The major held a life interest (in Scotland he would be called the heir of entail) in the Hambrough family estates, which were producing between £4OOO and £SOOO a year, and he also had a prospective interest in other property. * He was not, however, very wise in money matters, and was admittedly in serious financial difficulties when his son reached the age of 17, and it became necessary to think of preparing the lad for the Army career for which Major Hambrough destined him. The major had had financial dealings with a certain Mr. Tottenham, a London financier, and Tottenham introduced Alfred Monson to him in 1890, with the suggestion that Monson should undertake Cecil's tuition and guidanct•it a fee cf £3OO a year. This was arranged, and Cecil went to Yorkshire, where Monson and his family were living near Ripley. *** ' * * For Borne time Major Hambrough and Monson continued to be on good terms and Monson figured in some rather jomplicated negotiations aimed at extricating the major from his difficulties I'hey were not successful, however, and a coolness ensued, which ended in Majoi Hambrough trying to induce his son to return homo. Cecil, however, preferred life with the Monsons to the ups and downs ol his father's existence, and refused to retufn. He had already entered the Militia (in those days a stepping-stone to the Regular Army), and he and Monson were excellent friends. For some time, it was admitted, both Monson and Cecil had been receiving financial aid from Mr Tottenham—aid which in Monson's case waß necessarv for in August, 1892, he was adjudged a bankrupt In the following January he and Cecil tried to raise money on the young man's expectancy in the Hambrough estates, but tho effort was not successful.

In May (1893) Monson secured a lease of Ardlamont House, an Argyllshire property in the Kilfinan district to which one could travel by steamer from Glasgow, disembarking preferably at the Kames pier, about five miles from the house. As Monson could not himself contract the lease, it was done in

TWO ACCIDENTS IN TWO DAYS

the names of Cecil Hambrough and a Mr. Jerningham, the latter being put forward by Monson as Cecil's guardian, and as sound security for the rent, which was to be £450 for the season, payable iu portions. Alonson, his wife and children and a governess, went to Ardlamont, and Cecil joined them there after finishing his period of training with the Militia. In July there began attempts to effect an insurance on Cecil's life, and although at first unsuccessful, the Mutual Life Assurance Company of New York and Glasgow finally accepted the young man's proposal for a £20,000 insurance, divided into two policies of £IO,OOO each. The first premium (£194) was paid by Monson.

I | j An Army pupil, on fishing and : : shooting trips with his tutor, j : was saved from drowning; j then shot in a wood. i THE STORY OF THE \ \ FAMOUS | MURDER TRIAL is retold by I FRANCIS D.GRIERSON j

Now conies a point which was subsequently to become an important issue in Monson's trial. The policies were dated August 4, and on August 7 Cecil wrote to an official of the insurance company asking him to deliver them to Monson's wife, to whom he wished to assign them. Cecil also executed a letter to Mrs Monson assigning the policies to jer "as security against all liabilities incurred by you on my behalf, and in the event of my death occurring before the repayment of these moneys you will bo the sole beneficiary of these policies." Here, it may be pointed out—as Monson's counsel did at the trial that if Cecil died (as he did) before reaching the ago of 21, the policy money could not be recovered As Monson declared that he was unaware of this fact, the suggestion was that the whole transaction was due merely to Cecil's desire to reward those for whose kindness to him he was grateful. And now there comes into the picture a character whose proceedings formed one of the greatest mysteries in the whole affair.

On Tuesday, August 8, the day after Cecil had written the two letters mentioned, there arrived at Ardlamont a man introduced by Monson as one Scott, who was described as an engineer, who had come to inspect the boilers of a yacht which Monson had bought on Cecil's behalf. Cecil, enjoying to the full the opportunities for outdoor sport afforded by the estate, made Scott a welcome guest, and the three men got on excellently.

On the Wednesday (August 9) after dinner* Monson, Cecil and Scott went to Ardlamont Bay to fish Scott remained on shore, but Rlonson and Cecil put out in a boat. When they all returned to the house about midnight. Monson and Cecil were wet through, but they laughingly explained that they had had a mishap. On this incident, however, the Crown later based its charge against Monson of attempting to murder Cocil It was found that a hole had been cut in the boat Monson's account of the affair was that in the darkness the boat had struck a rock and capsized. Cecil, who could not swim, clung to the rock, while Monson swain to the shore, obtained another boat and picked Cecil up. "In fact," said Monson, "so far from trying to murder him I saved his life." Early next morning (Wednesday, August 10), Mrs Monson, the children and the governess left to £0 by boat to Glasgow, where they were to spend the day, and soon afterwards Monson, Scott and Cecil set out on what was to be the latter's last adventure. They were going shooting, and Monson carried a 12-bort? shotgun. Cecil's gun was a 20-bore. A witness named James Dunn saw them enter a field, and presently they entered a wood and were lost to his sight. Soon afterwards Monson qnd Scott returned to the house nnd informed the butler that Cecil had shot himself accidentally. The butler and other servants hurried with Monson to the north end of the wood, where Cecil's doad body was found, with a gunshot wound in the head. He was lying on his back, with his head to the north, between the edge of the wood and a plantation ■)! trees. A doctor was called. He saw no cause for suspicion. Scott then left Ardlamont, and was not heard of again until nearly a year later, long after Monson's trial had ended. Cecil's body was taken to Ventnor (Isle of Wight) for burial, and no more was heard of the matter until officials of the insurance company, who had been approached by Mr. Tottenham on Mrs. Monson's behalf, began investigations. These inquiries led to the exhumation of Cecil's body, and the arrest oi Monson on August 29 v After three months* preparation the case came into court, Mr. Asher, Q.C., the Solicitor-General, loading for the Crown, and Mr. J. Comrie Thomson for the defence. It was an extraordinary legal battle conducted on both sides with admir-

able forensic ability that never passed the bounds of the strictest equity. Of the 94 witnesses, many were experts They included Sir Henry Littlejohn, the famous medical authority, Dr Matthew Hay, Dr P. H. Watson, Dr. Joseph Bell, Mr. Speedy, a naturalist, and others. * * * * # The contention of the defence was that Cecil had been carrying his gun at the "trail" when he stumbled in getting over a fence, and the weapon exploded and shot linn' When it was proved (a point which had escaped the doctor who first saw the body) that he had been killed by snot from a 12-bore gun, Monson explained that he and Cecil had exchanged guns shortly after leaving the house Monson declared that he and Scott (who could not be called, having disappeared; had not seen the accident happen. They had heard a shot, called out to Cecil, and, on receiving no reply, had, walked in the direction of the sound and found tlio young man lying dead. "The case is purely ono of circumstantial evidence," said the Jus-tice-clerk in charging the jury. "Everything in" it depends on inferences to be drawn, and it is quite certain that, in a caso where the evidence is purely circumstantial, if every link in it is a sound link and is well welded into the next, there cannot be a stronger case than that." The defence argued, with reason, that Monson had no motive tor taking the life of a young man on whom his financial future appeared to depend. • » • » * There can, one thinks, be no doubt that, the Crown failed to prove that Monsou killed Cecil Hambrough. In an English court Monson would nave boen either acquitted or convicted; as it was, the law of Scotland allowed him to be sent forth under a cloud. A point made, for example, by the Crown was the position of the dead youth's body It was argued that this showed that he had been struck by shot from a gun held horizontally The point was met by the contention that Monson and Scott had moved the body from the spot where they found it. Another question raised was the distance at which a charge of shot firod from a gun will begin to spead, but competent witnesses were oddly at variance on the point. When Mr Scott failed to appear at the trial the court pronounced sentence of "outlawry" against him. In May of the following year, however, he turned up, figuring in a conjuror's entertainment in an Edinburgh music-hall While there ho appealed to the Court of Justiciary to withdraw the sentence of outlawry pronounced against him, and this the Court did. So closed the last chapter of the story —leaving the Ardlamont Mystery still as much a mystery as ever