NEW YORK MYSTERY.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 163, 15 August 1914, Page 3

NEW YORK MYSTERY.

DOCTOR SEES PATIENT SHOT. / ____ 7 All the elements of a detective story, r -snvs the New York correspondent of the "Daily Mail," are presented by the mystery of the shooting of Mrs "William D. Bailey, wife of a rich New "York hat manufacturer.

While in the consulting-room of Dr 'Edwin Carman, a fashionable physician of Freeport, Long Island, she was killed by an unknown person who thrust a revolver through the window from outside, fired, and mysteriously disappeared.

l>r Carman has stated that he saw a liand'holdiug a revolver at the window, a shot was fired, and that Mrs Bailev fell dead. Detectives discovered that for several "weeks past the doctor's wife had been listening by means of a dictapltone (a telephone for reproducing, sounds made ■at some distance from the receiver and transmitted by a wire to another room) to the conversations of her husband ~with lady patients. " . They questioned Mrs Carman, who •caimly admitted that she removed the dictaphone after the murder, as she feared that it might be discovered by the authorities and that her husband might thus learn of the manner iu which she spied on him.

Mrs Carman, a tall, somewhat heavily built woman, whose dark hair is tinged "with grey, is older than her husband. " I couldn't hear very well with the •dictaphone,'' she said, "but what I did . overhear convinced me that my suspicions were utterly unfounded and that thi doctor was absolutely loyal to me." She insisted that neither before nor afier the murder had she eVer set eyes on Mr;; Bailey. Yet George Golder, one of the patients waiting to see the doctor at the time Mrs Bailey was- shot, insists that two . minutes after the shot was fired Mrs Carman rushed, highly excited, into the consulting room and assisted the husband to carry the body to a conch. It was Mrs Carman, lie says, who crossed Mrs Bailey's arms on herbrerfst. Mrs Carman assures tlie authorities that Golder is mistaken, and says it was her sister, . Mrs Ida Powell, who performed these offices for the dead woman. It is necessary, adds the correspondent. to explain that in addition to Mrs Powell the Carman household includes Mr and Mrs Piatt Conklin, the parents of Mrs Carman, and the young daughter of the physician. A "Woman and a Girl. According to Golder, some time before the shot was fired a lad}', and a ;young girl walked past the'window'of - the consulting room and entered the -house,!.'where the girl '"strummed' r the piano. ; . A voice, presumably that of the lady, •then said, "This is no time for playing. '.' : Mrs.Carman, in a three hours' cross- • examination which the coroner declares •completely satisfies him of hen innocence, said that she returned home from New York at seven o 'clock in the evening of the murder. She immediately went to her- bedroom, undressed,, and went to bed, as :she was suffering from a headache. rShe did not use the- dictaphone. She was awakened by a noisse and heard a «commotion but did not go downstairs. Her mother and sister corroborate her that she was in bed at the "time of the murder. More mystery is added to the case by •a story of how the dictaphone came to lr- installed in Dr Carman's consulting ro

$ . - cording to Mr Turner, president of tiie Dictograph Company, Mrs Carman virile I him some weeks ago, saying that she whs a women's tailor ' and av:shed to have an instrument by which she could overhear the conversation of employees whom she suspected of dishonesty. j»ut after a few minutes' conversation she admitted her true identity, and explained that recently through a window of .the consulting room she saw her husband kissing a nurse.

She said she would induce her husband to take her for a, brief trip while the dictaphone was being installed. Working in Secret.

A mechanic was sent at the appointed time to the liquse of Dr Carman, and was met by Mrs Carman's mother, who said: "I don't like to be mixed up in such an affair as this, but I'supposes my daughter knows best." The mechanic been instructed to adopt elaborate precautions to avoid discovery, and to indicate what his er rand was when the front door was opened by holding his hat in his left hand. He carried out these instructions faithfully. With Mrs Conklin standing guard to prevent the servants from learning his business,- he went to the consulting room and placed the transmitting instrument on the wall behind the doctor's instrument case. *

"After that," says the mechanic, "I tore away some wall paper and concealed the dictaphone' wire behind it, running the wire down to a board under the door. I next attached the wire behind the telephone wire on the stairway, and fixed two ear-pieces in the drawer of Mrs Carman's writing desk in her bedroom.

"I then suggested to the woman who was watching me that she should go downstairs and talk in different parts of the consulting room in a low voice. She did so. I not only heard her words even when she softened them to a whisper, but also heard something drop on the floor while she talked.

"When she returned I repeated all Bhe said, and told her I heard something fall 011 the floor. She showed me a hairpin she had dropped, and said she was satisfied. The work took me an hour and a half.''

It was June 25 when the dictaphone was thus installed. Last Thursday Mrs Carman returned to the offices of the company with her mother and declared herself quite satisfied with the dictaphone, with which she had heard several conversations between the doctor and his woman patients. She carried a large bundle of bank uotes in her hard, and expressed a desire to buy the instrument outright instead of renting it. / r ier completing the transaction slie left. Of all those concerned in the case Mrs Carman is by far the calmest. She replied to all questions with an appur-

out eagerness to tell of her own accord all she knew. She directed the attention of the Public Prosecutor to a pistol belonging to her husband, which was kept in one of the drawers in a bedroom wardrobe. The pistol was purchased by the doctor last year, after an attempt had been made to rob lii Seemingly it has not been used.

Dr Carman, who learned of the existence of the dictaphone from his wife's own lips, added 1.0 his own'previous testimony. He said that the hand which was thrust through the window' was a large one; it seemed too big to bo a woman's hami. ])r Carman informed the authorities that the husband of cue of his patients a few days ago telephoned to him a threatening message. The identity of this person has not been revealed by tJir authorities.