SEND FOR THE POLICE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 309, 24 May 1911, Page 3

SEND FOR THE POLICE.

MESSAGE ON A DOOR. | MYSTERIOUS DOUBLE TRAGEDY, j "Send for the police." That was the message, written on a piece of paper nailed to the door of Plukley Grange, Bether&den (about eight miles from Ashford, Kent), which confronted the postman when he called on Wednesday, March 22. The house bad been occupied for about three years by Mr. Louis Brandt, a German, and his English wife. The police were fetched, but they found all the doors locked. They procured a ladder and gained admission through a window. In one of the rooms they discovered Mrs. Brandt dead in bed, with a wound in her head. On the lloor was a double-barrelled shot gun, which had recently been discharged. Mr. Brandt was discovered dead in the kitchen, shot through the chest, with a revolver lying by his side. So far as the neighbors know the couple were on good terms; their financial position was good, and locally no light can be thrown on the cause of the tragedy.

Mr. Brandt had the house built for him. It is a pretty little place surrounded by 20 acres of land, devoted to vegetables, fruit, etc., which Mr. Brandt cultivated himself. They kept no servants, Mrs. Brandt doing all the housework. The rooms were well but not extravagantly furnished, and altogether the impression given in the neighborhood was that the <jouple were well-to-do, retired business people. Mr. and Mrs. Brandt were regarded as rather eccentric, the latter particularly so. Recently she was heard to ask her husband to drive a dog away. On his refusal she took a gun and shot the animal dead. Though the couple made a number of acquaintances they had no intimate friends in the district. No one knew their previous history, though there was a story current that Mr. Brandt had been "a big man in Germany."

A singular incident is that on Tuesday night a visitor from London, a German, called at the hotise accompanied by a railway porter, who undertook to direct him. They knocki d for some time, but failed to make anyone hear. The porter says he saw the notice on the door, but did not attach any importance to it, because, he had heard that the Brandts were eccentric people. LETTERS EXPLAINING THE TRAGEDY. Later on the visitor was seen walking about, and on Wednesday morning he hailed the milkman. As he spoke in German, the latter could not under- • stand him, but contrived to make out the one word "station." The German, an elderly man, who looked as if he had slept in the stable, put his travelling rug and portmanteaux into the milkcart, and was driven to Plukley station, a mile and a half away. Efforts have been made to trace the stranger, but without result. A telegram in German was received from London on Wednesday, addressed to Mr. Brandt, and is now in possession of the police. Letters addressed to the coroner in the handwriting of the dead man luive been found, and sufficient has became known as to their contents to enable the statement to be made that they are unquestionably' the letters of a man whose mind had become unhinged, and who was in a state of mental turmoil. In them Brandt describes the manner in which he killed his wife, and the way in which he intended to take his own life. No actual motive is set out in them for the dual act of human destruction, but it is rendered (dear that Brandt was not directly actuated by any feelings of hatred or revenge towards his wife, to whom, in fact, he refers in one passage, as "My darling." Obviously the letters were written during a fairly lengthy interval between the death of his wife and the suicide of the husband. Little can at present be ascertained as to how long that interval was. It is clear that Brandt was seen in the neighborhood on Tuesday morning, but Mrs. Brandt had not lieen noticed about the house after Monday evening. The other point which has come out as to the contents of the letters is that a visitor, evidently a relative, was expected at the household. This is believed to be the individual alluded to above.