X. Jones—Of Scotland Yard Read online

  But if such tonic stage were not relieved by the clonic, as, for instance, if it were too long prolonged, paralysis of the center of respiration would take place—and death would “beat the patient” to the clonic stage!

  And, in tetanoid epilepsy, there is no clonic stage!

  Or, if there is—none have ever lived through to prove the point; more briefly stated, the clonic stage, for some unknown reason, lies so far off that it never arrives!

  The disorder seems to have been first described by Pritchard in 1822, in his “Diseases of the Nervous System”—page 108—in case any medical readers of this report care to survey it. There is, in the attack of tetanoid epilepsy, a single powerful tetanic contraction of certain muscles which is as forcible and complete as though the body were full of strychnine—and with, of course, that vise-like grip on the muscles of the chest, locking up the respiration. And no relaxation thereof by any ensuing clonic stage. The only relaxation following being that which comes, eventually, with death. In a particular case described by Pritchard and personally seen by him, the victim of an attack—a woman—continued to stand erect in front of—and leaning against—the very washbowl where she had gone to wash her hands, and where she was stricken. As rigid, indeed, as though hypnotized.

  And in such a case as the above, or in any case of tetanoid epilepsy, the patient is indeed strangled: strangled from within. The garotte used by Nature is invisible—and tightened from the cerebral cortex—but in no wise less tight, less fearful, than one of wire.

  I may say here and now that I have subsequently elicited not only that Marceau did have epilepsy—but that he had an evolving epilepsy which was heading definitely on towards the rare tetanoid form, and that he had already passed from the petit mal form to the nocturnal stage of the grand mal form, and from there to the regular stage where attacks can take place in the daytime, with the patient up and awake. But I perceived plainly even last October—after, that is, breaking down, through a study of the “deviations” in the case, the quite obligational theory of the Lilliputian being landed from an autogiro—that all the evidences were present in the Marceau history of a continually recurring epileptiform disturbance within him with a standardized aura consisting of a momentary hallucination of some horrific baby. (The exact nature of which hallucination I elicited only this morning.) But why horrific? Because the victim was masochistic—as also elicited this morning. And why—a baby? In view of Marceau’s paranoiacal distrust of Lilliputians in the scheme of existence, a masochistic hallucination would likely have taken the form of some minikin being. Being saturated with Yttran, as Marceau obviously was all through those first months of 1935, and even before as we know now, he certainly had had no convulsions, nocturnal or otherwise, for a long time; but had he not been saturated with Yttran, the day he was in Wormwood Scrubbs, he would have had—for the horrific baby came to him that day. And again, later, on Hampstead Heath. And he knew, when he wrote sadly in his diary after the mentions of “The Babe from Hell” the words “God help me,” that that baby but indicated the presence of a sudden cerebral dissociation which, were it not for the drug within him, would have meant a convulsion.

  So now we have Marceau going out on the lawn, an epileptic beyond peradventure, and deprived now for about 2 days, more or less, of Yttran, a drug which kept his nervous system sort of—well—anaesthetized.18 We have him overworking, to take full advantage of the unusual concatenation of full moon and extreme dryness—i.e., complete mistlessness—which characterized that famous day of his death, if not to beat a possible rain or windstorm that by next day could blow half his seed away; irritated by the acid-seared ring about his neck, burning more angrily as the half hours went by.19 And we have Marceau—but let us see what Doctor Yorke Jarvis-Winstanley, neurologist, of 34 Harley Street, London, has to say covering the situation. Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley has just returned to London to address, as president of the International Neurological Association, the Quintennial meeting scheduled to open tomorrow at Westminster Hall. The subject of his discourse will be something never yet presented in the history of medicine, and medical men, the world over, are waiting eagerly for it: for the subject will be “Antarctic Neurosis.” Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley retired from practice over a years ago and isolated himself with the Llewellyn-Barker Expedition in the Antarctic for over 2 full years to study the subtle changes of mentality in men subjected to the long protracted summer night—and the brief sunny winter season of the Antarctic. His promise to present this unusual subject in London on February 25, 1937, tallied most beautifully with my own promised release date for this report, and established even more than ever my own significant release date of February 24th!

  It may be mentioned that at the time of the “Marceau Murder” Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley had been in the Antarctic for at least 4 months, having joined the expedition on the Ross Barrier on December 29, 1934, via the fast Norwegian whaling ship Blue Nose out from New Zealand, and the airplane Auckland Gull from Young Island on the Antarctic Circle. At the time of Marceau’s death, as has been previously said, the receiving radio apparatus of the expedition was out of commission. Had Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley even heard of the “Marceau Murder” as the “Marceau Murder” in the condensed form in which it was broadcast from Melbourne Station 3-L-O, he would still no more have connected it with the man, under whose identity he met Marceau, than he would connect the moon with the King’s birthday, since Marceau, following his strange erratic custom, had given to Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley the name of Cyril Saintsbury, residence, Glastonbury, Somerset!

  Let me, however, present Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley’s affidavit to me, made at London this morning:

  Doctor Yorke Jarvis-Winstanley (affidavit of February 24th, 8 a.m. London time, made at his home in Regents Park, London, to X. Jones): “Yes, I do happen to remember a patient named Saintsbury. Cyril the first name was. Yes, he was deaf, but that is not the reason for my recollecting him. I happen to recall him because I had a cousin of the name of Saintsbury, near Glastonbury where this chap claimed to hail from, and we had quite a pow-wow proving we were not related! This Saintsbury consulted me in Harley Street a few times, prior to my leaving for the Antarctic. You say he’s dead, eh? And you’re in the criminological investigation line? Well, it won’t hurt, I daresay, to outline Saintsbury’s case. He came to me originally believing he had epilepsy—in fact, I recall his saying he’d retired from city life because he was convinced that certain nocturnal disturbances he’d been having for some years were epilepsy. Unfortunately, in his particular case, no family history whatsoever was available to help confirm or belie even a tentative diagnosis, for the fellow was—or at least claimed to be—a foundling. And I say ‘claimed to be’ because, by Jove, I had a sort of feeling at the time that he was lying on that score—and intended that I should make my diagnosis solely on the facts in his case, and not be influenced in any way whatsoever by any particular hereditary factors. But to continue with him. The symptoms he gave seemed to show that his disturbances were epilepsy, all right—but of course one doesn’t jump abruptly to conclusions in such things, and I gave him a complete examination. Yes, we have so frequently to differentiate epilepsy from other things—yes, tumor of the brain—uremia—cerebral abscess—multiple sclerosis. Not to omit mentioning our old friend hysteria. His own diagnosis was right, however. Epilepsy! Worse, his disturbances—purely nocturnal, thus far—were becoming more severe. I knew, at that first visit, that they would evolve, in less than no time, to some form of the day-time convulsion. In fact, the poor devil had one seizure—presumably his first daylight attack, too—in my office on his second visit. The disease, you see, had already definitely there passed to the daytime stage. He—what’s that? Was it suggestive in any way of tetanoid epilepsy? Well—by George!—you do know something about an exceedingly rare form of that disease, don’t you? Well all I can say in reference to such a technical question is that the tonic stage of the chap’s spasm was so long prolonged that I actually began to believe
that the clonic stage never was going to arrive—and give him a draught of air. But it did arrive finally—as it always seems to do. And he—what’s that? Could that first stage, in some subsequent attack, have been prolonged by Nature long enough to suffocate him to death? And could his form of epilepsy have developed on to tetanoid epilepsy—possessing no clonic stage whatever? We-ell—you’re asking a question on which even experts would be at variance—on certain phases. I personally think, as did Cobb, who made considerable electro-myographic studies on experimental convulsions, that the tonic and clonic stages are both ‘tetanic.’ And the latter but the former, but with a series of remissions. And so—if the chap is dead in an attack—with no sign whatsoever of a clonic stage having intervened to relieve his asphyxia—you are at liberty to write your own ticket—for I jolly well shan’t do so for you, don’t you know, not having studied the case during its progression, and up to its end. And—now what’s that? Was he visited by an aura? Well—well—you are an odd sort of criminological investigator, I must say, searching for subjective things—instead of objective! However, I presume you know what you’re doing.

  “Yes, this chap Saintsbury had a rather unpleasant and distressing aura: he always saw—prior to these disturbances which he had come to believe were epilepsy—a child’s skeleton dressed in child’s clothes, advancing menacingly on him, a huge loaded pistol in its bony little hand, and its eye-sockets swarming with maggots. Rather a devil of a sight, eh what? And if you’re really interested in auras—this particular one was even preceded by an olfactory ‘pre-aura’—the smell of woodsmoke. But about the aura itself—the visual one—it came to him regularly in his dreams, too, showing apparently the presence of nocturnal epilepsy. And—what’s that? Did he show evidences of it—the aura, you meant—yes?—the day he had the seizure in my office? Yes. He cried out—oh—something like ‘God—you devil-baby!’ Yes, he asked me afterward, when he’d come out of the seizure, if he’d said anything—he assured me he knew that a certain thing he’d seen was a hallucination all right, but that it was so real that he couldn’t help but cry out at it. A psychological investigation? Did I make one? Oh yes, of course I made one on him, naturally, in order to ascertain if he were by any chance a victim of hysteria instead of epilepsy. Very masochistic the fellow was. Really liked, subconsciously, to be caused pain. And he had a sort of downright incipient paranoia against small people. Oh surely—that’s undoubtedly what determined the general form of his aura. I told him that we could probably abort the actual spasms—but not the aura. In fact, that aura was so beautifully standardized that I asked him to make me, thereafter, a complete record of its appearances so that we could chart—after I came back from Antarctica, that is—its frequency, and get some more data on this new drug Yttran that we’re now using in epilepsy. Yes, that’s right—I requested him to do that the same time I was also cautioning him to see his own local physician from time to time, and have a going over—since on his general health depended a tiny bit the degree of his nerve disability. Oh no, I did not advise him not to mention his nervous disability to his local physician—I merely emphasized that the latter’s particular job would be to see that Saintsbury was kept in best physical condition. Of course, if a patient says nothing to a physician about certain symptoms the latter has no way of knowing the patient has certain nervous diseases. Yttran? Well that’s the drug I prescribed in Saintsbury’s case. Yes. Daily doses of 15 grains. What would be the result, you ask, if after taking it regularly, he were deprived of it? Well, he’d be more susceptible to his disease than ever; would probably have a nervous explosion in about 48 hours due to the cumulative forces resulting from the withdrawal. I warned him specifically, in fact, that if he wasn’t well enough fixed to raise 2 shillings a day, day in and day out, he’d better not even start on Yttran, but go on bromides—or luminal—instead. Don’t mention it. Come back again when you’re at liberty to reveal the inside of the matter, and tell me what it’s all about, won’t you?”

  And I may say that long before the advent of Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley on the scene I wrote in, on my tentative solution, as the cause of Marceau’s death: “Asphyxia, due to paralysis of the respiratory center from too long locking up of the respiratory muscles in an epileptic seizure possessing a tonic phase so abnormally prolonged as to classify the seizure definitely as one of pure tetanoid epilepsy—the said seizure being induced mainly by approximate 48-hour withdrawal of sedative to which the victim had become specifically habituated.” And so, since Marceau was forcibly asphyxiated all right, but from within—and not from without!—and since we have Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley now available to give us any further medical information we may require, we may as well look into that acid-burned ring on Marceau’s neck which was thought to have been the mark of that forcible asphyxiation. In fact, let us hear what Dr. Jarvis-Winstanley just told me 5 minutes ago over the long-distance phone from London, as taken down by me while he talked.

  Doctor Jarvis-Winstanley (talking from London): “Who’s that? Oh the chap—the criminological investigator? What’s that you say? Will a burned ring of skin prevent the spread of chronic skin disease past it? No! Pure poppycock! You say that this African resident chap Wyrene there in Paris, testifying for Britain, believes that increased cell resistance lies in the scar tissue where such burning has been made to take place? Nonsense! That’s African witch-doctor magic. That sort of magic gets even the white men who live there, after a while! No, skin disease can move majestically over scar tissue just the same as over pristine unblemished skin. What’s that? If a man had skin disease on his chest and shoulders, how could he prevent it from reaching his face? Oh—well, while I’m not a dermatologist, I know there are plenty of skin diseases that never even go to the face. I should, I believe, if I had such a problem, consult a dermatologist first for a very accurate diagnosis of my skin disease. Yes. Very well, then, I’ll hang up. Oh—what’s that? Is the color of the walls and ceiling of my consulting room on Harley Street a bright green? Well, I have no offices there whatsoever now, because of having just return—oh yes—I see—you mean at the time that that Saintsbury chap consulted me? Well, I don’t just understand—but the walls and ceiling were tinted green. Yes, that’s right—a brilliant green! That’s all then, you say? Well don’t forget to drop in sometime and tell me what this is about—yes—do that, dear chap. Good-bye!” 20

  But why did Marceau, a man who—according to certain facts set forth in a footnote herewith numbered 14—we now perceive was really 1/8 Jew, 1/8 Italian, and 3/4 Frenchman, go out on his lawn late that afternoon of May 10, 1935, with a clay shoe-shaped disc—or pair of such—or, even better, pair of miniature shoes—to sow Lilliputian footprints upon that precious area? And how, moreover, did he happen to sow them in such a peculiar way that the whole 2-dimensional geometry of the situation had to be interpreted only as it originally was? Certainly he did not do all this to create the world-wide murder mystery which he subsequently did—for he didn’t even anticipate dying!

  The answers to the above questions are found, strangely enough, in two extremely diverse circumstances: Marceau’s 1/8 Italian blood—and a recent thesis by a German professor in the field of ellipsonics!

  VIII.

  My somewhat far-fetched idea last fall, after I had, through eliciting and analyzing but part of the deviations in the Marceau Case, demolished completely the existence of the Lilliputian (and this is the theory, I’ll confess, which is advanced in that tentative solution of mine, sealed and deposited at Chancery Lane) was that Marceau had desired to discharge old Adam Tweedle, the gardener who came from town each day to work on his place, and, like the famous Aesop’s fable of the wolf and the lamb, wanted a good excuse: namely, that Tweedle, who was always overly friendly with the American McNulty children living next door, had permitted one of them to run about the precious lawn freely without so much as ordering it off. And that Marceau therefore determined secretly to lay a trail of footprints that would provide apparent moral supp
ort to him in giving Tweedle the sack! A thing not at all as difficult to do, as it sounds—as will also subsequently be shown. What did puzzle me, I’ll confess, was the mechanics21 of Marceau’s footprint-sowing, i.e., why he so operated as to create—with a minimum of manipulation of roller and self, and likewise inconvenience to himself—a trail that, though in most of its extent it was probably to be a medley of footprints upon reversed footprints—the signs of a juvenile walker retracing his own path—would, at least at the middle of the lawn, stand forth as a beautiful clearcut crossed “loop”!

  What I did not know, of course, was that this “loop” was for the critical inspection of a much sharper man than old Adam Tweedle—and through field glasses to boot!

  For the fact that the Lilliputian footprint trail (the famous Trail II-IV!) consists of virtually two different segments, at an angle with each other, shows that a crossed loop was under process of construction. Being sown, by stages, in the rolled dirt alongside the periphery of the gradually diminishing unrolled circular area in which Marceau was always free to walk about all he wished. Except that—of course—sometimes this inner circular area was elliptical! 22

  But here is a diagram which will show everything that happened on the Marceau lawn on the night of May 10, 1935. And it is made directly from—and upon!—the reproduction of the footprint trails as they appeared in the news story put out in America by the All-America News Service, that reproduction, in turn, having been taken photographically from the fusion footprint trail map in the dossier. Some shaded areas are here added, and, for clarity’s sake, Marceau’s own trails have been broken up into dotted lines.