A Scandal in Bohemia by Gideon Haigh

Author:Gideon Haigh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760144166
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

10

BLOOD IN THE LANEWAY

‘They say all the world loves a lover – apply that saying to murder and you have an even more infallible truth.’

– Agatha Christie, The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)

As Mollie Dean passed 5 Addison Street at around 12.40 a.m., her assailant came from behind and fractured her skull above the right ear with what was probably a tyre iron; then, as she fell, he hit her again, cracking and exposing the bone above her left eyebrow; her bloodied hair brushed the picket fence. Whether he was the trailing figure, or had lain in wait in the house’s recessed gate, the killer made the most of his opportunity; he undertook the rest of his task with similar deliberation, dragging Mollie’s disabled figure by the ankles to the west side of the street, leaving marks in the dust, and down a diagonal laneway – the bluestone laneway behind the home of Mollie’s uncle Daniel and aunt Emily, by then long abed. Even today it is a dark lane, and about 6 metres in, to the right, a brick wall forms a prow that obscures an old garage door and a patch of concrete from street view.

The hail of blows was furious; they also formed part of a methodical subjection. The killer tried using Mollie’s underskirt to secure her hands, and one of her dark stockings, tied in three strong knots, to attempt a strangulation.* He tore at her clothing, leaving a profusion of scratches and abrasions. Then, in a macabre apery of the sex act, he plunged his tyre iron or equivalent into her vagina, inflicting a superficial internal tear. This took time, but he must have felt he had it – until, perhaps, he was disturbed, for he left his victim just alive. Chances are he moved off down the laneway, emerging in Milton Street, from where it was only five minutes on foot to the canal – useful for the disposal of a murder weapon.

At about 12.55 a.m., Beatrice Owen of 5 Addison Street was awoken by groaning. Her mother, Isabella, thought it might be local cats; her brother Fred dismissed it as a dream. But from the verandah of the family’s bungalow, the human origins of the sounds across the road grew more apparent, even through a screen of cypress trees. Going to the gate, Fred spied the belongings on the pavement. The moans were from the laneway opposite. He threw on clothes and dashed for South St Kilda Post Office to call the police from its phone box. One of Victoria’s half-dozen radio-equipped patrol cars, cruising near Luna Park, was directed to the address, and pulled up just before 1.30 a.m. And as Constable Alfred Guider followed the bloody drag marks across the road and down the laneway, his eyes made out a shadowy supine form.

Mollie Dean lay prone on the concrete, legs spread-eagled, dress and chemise pulled up to expose her breasts, bleeding from her head and vaginal wounds, and exhaling further blood with every insensible noise.

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