BLUE ANCHOR POISONING MYSTERY

Otago Witness, Issue 3662, 20 May 1924, Page 22

BLUE ANCHOR POISONING MYSTERY

SENSATIONAL EVIDENCE. LONDON, May 11. Counsel for the Crown told a remarkable story at the inquest in the By fleet poisoning case concerning the relations between Mrs Jones and Vaquier (who lias been arrested on a charge of murdering Jones). She visited Biarritz on January 7 She there met the accused, who was an hotel wireless operator, and later accompanied him to another hotel, where they lived as man and wife. They afterwards stayed in Paris and London hotels on the same conditions. When a housemaid in the Hotel Bussell remonstrated, Mrs Jones asserted that she was Vaquier’s wife. Vaquier arrived on February 14 at the Blue Anchor Hotel in Byfleet. He afterwards accompanied Mrs Jones everywhere. The hotel staff commented on their relationship. She refused to leave her husband, who was a heavy drinker, and who on mornings after his bouts was in the habit of taking salts. A party was held at the hotel on the night of March 28. The next morning Vaquier was seen to remove a bottle from a shelf where Jones kept his salts. Later Jones took some of the .salts, and exclaimed: “My God they’re bitter.” His wife examined the dregs, and said they had been tampered with. While Jones was in his death agony Vaquier, on the pretext that it was for a doctor, obtained possession of the salts bottle, which Mrs Jones found empty and recently washed out. Vaquier asked, “ Is he ill?” and she replied: “No, dead; you did it.” A week later she alleged that Vaquier isaid: “ I did it, Mabs, for you.” A chemist gave evidence that Vaquier on March 1 bought sufficient strychnin* to kill four persons. The inquest was adjourned