MUSIC AND MYSTERY.

Otago Witness, Issue 3372, 30 October 1918, Page 54

MUSIC AND MYSTERY.

VIOLIN-PLAYING AS A BLIND. It is a striking fact that the ordinary criminal is peculiarly deficient in musical sense (says an English •writer). While some of the most notorious offenders have been good performers on one instrument or another, the majority of the criminal population, though they may like noise, lack in a peculiar degree the musical faculty. Lombroso, the great criminologist, caused one of his colleagues, Gradenigo, to make a series of experiments as to the ordinary offender's sense of hearing He found that 72 per cent, of the criminals were remarkably inferior to the ordinary person in this respect. Music, except of the most barbaric Kind, would hardly appeal to them. But music has now and again attracted the notorious offender. Years ago circumstances led the police to investigate the contents of a villa in Peckham. The mysterious gentleman to whom it belonged had fallen into their hands, and they were curious to learn all they could about him. The place was beautifully and artistically furnished. But among the most remarkable contents of those rooms were the musical instruments. There was a magnificent piano, and close to it was a guitar—a Feautiful instrument, superbly inlaid. But the violin was evidently the favourite instrument. There were nine of them—all Cremonas of excellent quality, too I '

The owner of that house was a mysterious dark-skinned person. He had been interrupted while breaking into a house at Blackheath, and had nearly murdered a policeman before being captured. He gave the name-of James Ward; but he was, the detectives found later, Charles Peace, the murderer and burglar for whom they had been seeking for years. Those not cost him a penny! He had stolen every one of them from houses he had broken into. Peace was bv no means an indifferent performer on the instruments. He had, some years before, taken lessons of one of the best-known teachers of the violin at Sheffield. One of the criminals that Robert Pinkerton, the American detective, brought to justice was, like Peace, an artist on the violin. Bemgrove—such was his name—used to take apartments at a good hotel. He was a man of refined manners, and his wife was a charming invalid lady. Poor Mrs Bemgrove received the most devoted attention from her husband. Every evening he played the violin to her, and sometimes, when she was unable to sleep, he played almost the night long. Suspicious circumstances, however, led to Robert Pinkerton investigating those sleepless nights of the devoted couple, and he discovered that whenever Mrs Bemgrove had a night like that some great burglary was effected in the neighbourhood. But how could Bemgrove be suspected of being concerned in them? The people in the hotel had heard his violin till the small hours of the morning. That playing was a mere blind to help Bemgrove to establish an alibi. It was the lady—she was by no means an - invalid—who performed. Her husband used to make his exit by the window of the rooms they occupied, do his evil work, and return to their apartments by means of a rope ladder that his "watchful wife let down for him.

Canler, the chief of the Paris police, was once sorely perplexed by the apparently incessant tuning of a piano in a district that he frequently visited in the hope of laying his hands on an offender he much -wanted. He could never find him, though he felt assured the "wanted" one was somewhere in hiding. And that piano was always being tuned! The noise came to him from a house nearly opposite the one he suspected of sheltering his quaiTy. At last a more than usually acute detective suggested that the tuning conveyed a message sent by am accomplice warning the culprit to escape, and the tuner one day found himself rudely interrupted in his attentions to hUI beloved instrument. The [warning voio*

•was stopped, and Canler, entering tho cpposite house, pounced on his man. Mr Arthur Morrison, in his book of detective stories, "Adventures 'of Martin Hewitt," tolls how a crime was revealed by tho reading of a secret message hidden in the writing of some bars of music—"Bhe Flitterbat Lancers." The notes represented certain letters. This was a method of communication adopted by a Woman swindler named Forrest. She carried on a correspondence with an accomplice wholly by means of the most innocent-looking pieces of music, The most acute readers of her correspondence could hardly suspect those innocent-looking sheets. Yet there was something queer about them! The lady usually sent only a torn-off sheet, with just the most innocent message written on it. It was at last noticed that under some of the notes there were minute dots in ink. What was the meaning of them? An expert in cryptographic communication at last succeeded in discovering the key. The trick was quite simple—when one knew it.