The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-08
A FAMOUS MURDER MYSTERY

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  A FAMOUS MURDER MYSTERY l From Answers
 Tne mystery or the murder Tn the Hue Montmartre differs from all other crimi- nal mysteries in being absolutely unex- | plainable by any known rules of ogic or | reason.
 | True it Is that at least three enthrallng | detectives stores, by as many world-fa- nous authors, have been written round the crime, with view to showing, under | the guse of romance, how conceivable it might have been committed. In each in stance, however, the solution put forward does not fit in with the known facts of | the tragedy.
 l But here is the true story. Let the | reader judge for himself. The victim was a woman of somewhat coubtful reputation named Rose Delaco- wit, who dwelt by herself in a single room | fiat situated at the top of a big apartment | house in the Montmartre quarter of Paris. | She usually rose about noon, when her landlady was in the habit of knocking at her door, with a cup of coffee. One day. however, the ladlady knocked in vain. She could get no answer. This not | unnaturally alarmed her. because she had reason to know that the woman was in side and that she had no one with her. The landlady waited until o'clock in the afternoon. Then she called in the police, who broke open the door They found Rose Delacowit lying in bed on her back, dead. Further investigation showed that she had been stabbed through the heart.
 A single terrific blow had been dealt with long bladed knife, or sword, the force used being so great that the weapon had gone clean through the unfortunate girls body and had penetrated the mat tress upon which she was lying to a depth of three to four inches.
 Death, said the doctors, must have been instantaneous. Suicide was out of the question. Not even the strongest man could have inflicted such wound upon himself, and Rose Delacowit was hut a frai woman.
 It followed, therefore, that she had been murdered. But how? And by whom?
 The door of her flat had not only been locked on the inside, but bolted as well, and the police had the greatest difficulty in effectng an entrance. The one window was also securely fastened on the inside, and outside there was drop of 50 feet sheer to the pavement below.
 No weapon was found in the dead girls room and there were no signs of strug gle. Her jewelry and money were un- touched.
 Finally the landlady swore most posi- lively that Rose was alone when she retired the night before, and that 10 visitor could possibly have obtained ac- cess to her afterward without her knowl- edge.
 From the first Paris took a keen interest in the affair, and all sort of extraordinary theories were put forward. One was that monkey, armed with a knife, had climbed from the roof down the chimney Into the room, and after stabbing the girl In an access of animal frenzy, had es- capped by the way it came.
 This theory was elaborated by Poe in his fictitious Murders in the Rue Morgue," one of the stories founded on the occur icHtS. AS IcSdIus lilc dSludi iiiuiucf ol Rose Delacowit, however, it was proved that the chimney leading to her room was much too narrow to have admitted of the passage of an ape big enough to have done the deed. Besides, there were no soot marks found anywhere in tho room
 Another suggestion was that the un- known assassin had used powerful mag nets outside the door to turn the key and push the bolt within. The police experi- mented with magnets of all sorts and sizes, and found that the thing could not be done.
 Other theories, as for instance that a panel of the door had been cut out and scientifically replaced, that window pane had been similarly served. that access had been obtained from an adjoining flat by crawling under the flooring and then pushing up a plank, were proved to be equally untenable.
 Nevertheless, the fact remained that murder had been done. and that the mur- derer had got clear away after achieving the apparently impossible task of locking and bolting his victims door on the in side. The police gave it up. It seemed to them problem impossible of solution. Yet obviously a solution there must be if only one could hit upon it.