d
received the best letters. Those papers that couldn't get interesting
letters stopped the correspondence and sneered at the "sensationalism"
of those that could. Among the mass of fantasy there were not a few
notable solutions, which failed brilliantly, like rockets posing as
fixed stars. One was that in the obscurity of the fog the murderer had
ascended to the window of the bedroom by means of a ladder from the
pavement. He had then with a diamond cut one of the panes away, and
effected an entry through the aperture. On leaving he fixed in the pane
of glass again (or another which he had brought with him), and thus the
room remained with its bolts and locks untouched. On its being pointed
out that the panes were too small, a third correspondent showed that
that didn't matter, as it was only necessary to insert the hand and undo
the fastening, when the entire window could be opened, the process being
reversed by the murderer on leaving. This pretty edifice of glass was
smashed by a glazier, who wrote to say that a pane could hardly be fixed
in from only one side of a window frame, that it would fall out when
touched, and that in any case the wet putty could not have escaped
detection. A door panel sliced out and replaced was also put forward,
and as many trap-doors and secret passages were ascribed to No. 11
Glover Street as if it were a medieval castle. Another of these clever
theories was that the murderer was in the room the whole time the police
were there--hidden in the wardrobe. Or he had got behind the door when
Grodman broke it open, so that he was not noticed in the excitement of
the discovery, and escaped with his weapon at the moment when Grodman
and Mrs. Drabdump were examining the window fastenings.

Scientific explanations also were to hand to explain how the assassin
locked and bolted the door behind him. Powerful magnets outside the door
had been used to turn the key and push the bolt within. Murderers armed
with magnets loomed on the popular imagination like a new microbe. There
was only one defect in this ingenious theory--the thing could not be
done. A physiologist recalled the conjurers who swallowed swords--by an
anatomical peculiarity of the throat--and said that the deceased might
have swallowed the weapon after cutting his own throat. This was too
much for the public to swallow. As for the idea that the suicide had
been effected with a penknife or its blade, or a bit of steel, which had
got bur