The Potteries Examiner : — 1872-06-29 (Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England)

THE LONG FIRM AGAIN. —That troublesome ' ChaucbC, had put it, and it was found that no one fraternity known as " The Long Firm " has figured standing as he stood could possibly have seen at the Thames Police-court in the person of one the corpses inside the house. How, then, could James Campbell, who was charged with fraudulently he know that the crime had been committed? obtaining a quantity of rope and some mats from a The old people were known to be in the habit dealer in Shadwell. Other cases of a similar nature of locking their door with the key, and are to be brought u,ainst him, and he was committed yet Chauclul, who also must have known this, had for trial on the charge of fraud. taken a stick, quite as a matter of course, to push HATTLilaVing resisted what the Germans con- back the bolt, as if this were the onlyebstacle. His eider certain just demands on behalf of a merchant, house was searched, and a peek of cards found °errehas suffered the loss of two corvettes, which were spending exactly to the two lying on the floor, excaptured, in reprisal, by the German war ships eept that six, not two, cards were wanting to the Vireta and Gazelle. I puck.: It :was ascertained on inquiry that the pack  had been given Cluinclati by hie aunt, and on the police going to her she at once, in all innocence, explained that by a mistake she had given her nephew 29 earth instead of 32. This still left a card to account for, and search was long made for it in vain, . .  but at last it was found between the house and the cabaret to which Chauche had twiee gone. Here, then, was the pack complete. All these facts induced Chauch6 to change his line of defence, and he then made the extraordinary statement that, though he himself had not committed the murder, he knew something about it. It had been committed by his wife's paramour, Gustave Boitol, who had threatened him with death if he told the truth. Boitcl was at once arrested, but swore—acid his evidence was supported by two witnesses, his father and mother—that at the hour the clock stopped he was in his own house. Thereupon I he was released, but, having an idea that once released he could never be arrested again, I he very coolly confessed over his cups to a comrade that he was not in his house as he had sworn, but that he had really been present when Chauch6 committed the murder. Though greatly alarmed and amazed at being a second time arrested, he stuck to his last story. Soon after, Chauche's wife was induced to confess that her husband had thrown a hammer stained with blood into a pool close by. Boitel. on being examined, confirmed her confession. The pool was drained dry, and the hammer found. The evidence against Chauehd then seemed overwhelming—the silence) of the dog, the pack of cards, the bloodstained hammer, his knowledge where the hoard was kept, his premature cry of horror at bodies that he could not see. But he has confronted it by a fairly plausible and perfectly consistent story. Boitel, his wife's lover, knew through her as much as the husband did about the treasure, and was no , stranger to the dog. Nothing was more natural than that, being constantly at the house, he should have had some of Chatfclni's cards in his pocket, and as for the hammer it was he who first need it and then threw it into the pond. The wife and paramour, according to Chanche, are in a conspiracy to crush the husband. As for his cry about the bodies, he can swear he believes he saw them, but as he knew what Boitel had done this may have been a not unnatural illus. sion of an excited and alarmed imagination. It roust be added .hat Chaucha'.'s story is, if anything, strengthened by Bolters voluntary confession, when he believed himself safe, that he knew the real facts of the mu-dec. The case is creating intense excitement all through the Department, and is looked forward to with the keenest interest, the more especially as it will be conducted by ono of the ablest and most eloquent Public Prosecutors in h'rance —M. Lepelletier.