Murder At Gorse Hall

[Mayerling]

Hi Stan

That account was written by Freeman Wills Crofts, whoever he is. It was supposedly from a book called Great Unsolved Crimes.

Freeman Wills Crofts was once one of the leading Detective Story writers in Great Britain. His specialty was any crime (especially murder) involving British Railways. A typical example is his novel THE CASK (republished about twenty years ago by Dover Books) dealing with the discovery of a dead body in a cask that was sent on a train, and how the Scotland Yard inspector finally finds out who it is, how the person died, and who did the crime.

With the decline of railways due to the motorcar, truck, and aeroplane, Crofts tales became dated and quaint. However, he was spoofed marvelously by Monty Python in a sketch where Graham Chapman (as the inspector) has gathered all the suspects together to reveal the solution. His point deals with whether the victim boarded his train at the time he was supposedly seen at the station. Chapman (of course) in typical Crofts manner starts rattling off the time table of the train and when it arrived at that station and left. But after he makes his comment, Cleese, Palin, Idle, and Jones all protest that the Chapman has overlooked various side details concerning holiday schedules, the effects of renting "Special" trains on the schedules, repair delays, etc. The end result is five men trying to straighten out the time schedule problem so that we don't care any longer about who killed the man!

Jeff

[PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR 1]

I just finished Jonathan Goodman's book on this case. He mentions the suspect that Julian Fellowes focused on (the brother of Storr's possible lover, Maria Hohl), but he seemed to think it was probably Mark Wilde, the second man tried for the murder, and thinks he would have been convicted had the witnesses not discredited themselves by identifying Cornelius Howard at the first trial.

An interesting read.

It was certainly Mark Wilde.

Julian Symons reported in 1960 that it was rumoured that some local businessmen paid the cost of Wilde's passage to Australia.

He was eventually traced to Australia.

Symons is one of those who have been convinced that Storrs held back the identity of the murderer and also that his employee's suicide is suspicious.

In my opinion, he was wrong on both counts.