Barton County democrat., 1902-07-11
The Murder
at Fordha1n ~
BY JOHN H.. RAFTERY.

HE night clerk made long argu-
ment to the effect thatnearly every
celebrated murder mystery had been
solved at last, but old Barney Pa tton,
the house detective, refused to be con-
vinceG.
s'Your theory that murder will out
may be all right in what you call cele-
brated Crimes said the old fellow,
'sbut my experience is that it won't
wash as regards the mum berless minor
cases that are neither never solved
or in which the culprit is never pun
ished. And it isn't always. the fault of
the police, either. They may be moral
ly and most reasonably certain of the
guilt of man or woman and yet be
utterly unable to prove it to the sat
isfaction Of jury. There are so many
obstacles in the form of court practice,
SO many complicated hindrances "a the
technicalities of courts, that, to me,
the wonder is, so many criminals are
punished.
ST remember the first case I ever
worked on and what disappointment
it was to find myself balked at last by
the fixed requirements of that judicial
machinery that is supposed to be mex
orable in the pursuit of all wrong-61o-
ers. I was sent up from the city to the
town of Fordham, which had just been
shocked by a rather singular midnight
murder. The victim was married
woman named Celia Fordyce, who had
recently moved into the neighborhood
and was living in a pretty two-story
cottage at the edge of town, with her
husband and their only child, a daugh-
ter. 1t seems that he had been detained
till a late hour a t his store, and, having
walked hOmeward, was, within a block.
of his cottage when he heard cries of
murder, and, running forward, saw
Bertha, his daughter, in her night
gown, standing in the front veranda
screaming for help.
"She excitedly exclaimed that a bur
glar must have gotten into, the house
and killed Mrs. Fordyce while she slept.
It was nearly ten o'clock that morning
when I reached the house. glad to find
that the authorities of Fordham had
taken charge of the place and that the
house and its contents. had been kept
in the exact condition prevailing dur
ing the night of the crime. I learned
that Mrs. Fordyce's body had been
found on the floor of the back parlor
nearly six feet from the bed which she
had occupied; that Winchester rifle,
| the muzzle in her hand had been found
beside the body. An eXamina ton of
| the body and of the room showed that
| two shots had been fired-both from
| the rifle. One lodged in the woodwork
| of the bed, just above the pillow, and
| the other had passed through the wom-
ans heart, and was found under the
skin near the spinal column.
"Fordyce told me that the rifle had
always stood in the closet of the room
occupied by himself and his wife. That
since his coming to Fordham, it had
| never been out of its leather case. It
was evident that the murderer had
found the weapon, taken it out of its
case and turned it upon the awaken
ing woman. Was there another weap-
| on in the house? There had been, he
said pistol which was always kept
| loaded under his or his wife's pillow.
Where was it? Nobody knew. / ques-
toned Miss Bertha, who was a demrre,
rather comely girl of perhaps II. She
had been asleep in her room. which was
| the hall room on the second floor. The
first shot had awakened her and she
remembered sitting up in bed to listen.
Hearing no further disturbance, but
quite frightened, she got up and bolted
her door on the inside. Then she heard
a second shot and moment later the
sound as of body falling, then a rush
of footsteps up the carpeted stair and
back through the hall leading the
| length of the house. It had been some
minutes, she thought, before she
| gained courage to light the gas. Then
she called down over the balustrade,
but, getting no answer, came into the
hall, lighting each gas jet as she went,
till she was in the reception hall down
stairs From there she saw her moth
er, face-down, on the floor. Unlocking
the front door, which was fastened
with Yale lock and on the latch, she