A LONDON MYSTERY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20355, 12 March 1928, Page 6

A LONDON MYSTERY.

GIRL WITH RED HAT. What is the key to the mystery surrounding the death of Constance Watson, a 21-year-old waitress, whose body was found floating on the Thames after she had been missing from home for five days? What was at first thought to bs a case of accidental drowning has been followed by a sensational disclosure by the police surgeon that the girl did not die of drowning at all, but from shock, and that she was almost -undoubtedly, dead before she entered the water. The circumstances under which she came to be in the water are now engaging the. closest attention of the police. The (’.rad girl was a waitress employed at the Chalet Tea Rooms, Oanhury liardens. Kingston-on-Thames. She did not live at home, but had a room in Kingston where she slept. She was last seen by some friends late on the night of her disappearance, when she refused all offers of an escort home. Constance Watson did not turn up at her work in the restaurant next morning, and nothing more was seen or heard of her until the body was found in the river. Another baffling feature of the case that has been disclosed by the dead girl’s landlady is that, when Miss Watson left her lodgings for the last time she was wearing a new red hat, the hat was found hanging on the bedpost in the girl’s room on the morning following her disappearance. How the hat got back, although the girl herself was not seen or heard to come in, is an enigma. “ Miss Watson always struck me as being a happily-disposed girl,” said her landlady, “ although she was rather fond of keeping late hours at night. When I asked her once what time the cafe closed she replied, ‘ Oh, all hours,’ and explained that a lot of late business was done with the bargees on the river. “ The evening before Miss Watson left my house never to return again she came running in and asked me to admire a new red hat that she said she had bought. She went out with it on her head, and that was the very last that I saw of her. But it wag not the last I had seen of the hat, for next morning, on entering her bedroom as usual, expecting to find her there waiting for her cup of tea, the first thing I saw was the red hat hanging on the bedpost, although the bed itself had not been slept in. “ I was utterly at a loss to account for the bat being there and its owner missing.” At the inquest on Miss U atson an open verdict was returned.