A TALE OF HORROR.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2917, 1 August 1882, Page 3

A TALE OF HORROR.

The London correspondent of the « K.Z.‘ Times,” relates the following blood-curdling story Could the Thames and Seme yield np all their mysteries, the world would he glutted with its fill of horrors. Only the other day a question was asked in Parliament respecting the immense number of bodies taken out of our metropolitan rirer daring the five years. The> number was over 1800, or about one a day, and of this number an open ▼erdict was recorded in about 700 eases. It is sometimes thought that the French detectives are more astute in detect* ing crimes than our English police—•tall events they have just brought to justice the criminals in one of the most sensational of tragedies. Some days ago, the body of a man was thrown up on the'.Seine bank wrapped round with a coil of heavy gas-pipe ; the mouth was bound with a napkin, and the lips fastened with pins to keep the mouth from opening. Not a shred of clothing was left to give a clue to identity ; but an annoymous letter guided the poiice to the house of a certain apothecary, whose wife confessed that the murdered man was her paramour. He had been an apprentice of her husband’s, and it was said owed everything in life to his master. This he repaid by seducing his benefactor’s wife. The husband, on discovering the intrigue, com* polled her to decoy her lover to a desolate bouse in the country where he accreted himself, and then, in a room colored red to conceal blood marks, fell upon his rival whilst actually embracing ms mistress. A desperate struggle took place, but the seducer was overcome with a blow from a hammer, and subsequently thrust through and through with a sword-stick. The wife and her brother-in-law now appeared on the scene, and the victims mouth was pinned up with pins, taken from the woman’s dress, to prevent the water getting Into the stomach and causing the body to float, after which the piping was wound round, and the corpse was wheeled on a barrow to the river in the dead of night, and there thrown over a bridge by the outraged husband. These facts he has himself admitted to, hot inasmuch as the men concerned in this deed of blood are doubtful characters, the police are auspicious that the Mason was encouraged by the husband for pecuniary reasons, •nd that subsequently the murder was Perpetrated for the purpose of robbery, f this suspicion be true, it discloses a depth of infamy on all sides that is most incredible, especially in the case of the woman luring her lover by a hellish •nbrats tq thf terrible doom which ulio

knew awaited him, while the subsequent scene in which she assisted to pin his lips together is unparalleled in its atrocity. For the credit of human nature let us hope the theory of the police may prove untrue, and that the victim only met a deserved fate~at the hands of his benefactor. Of course the woman declares she acted throughout under threat of instant death. S