3

The Man from X Division

The Scotland Yard detective assigned to this macabre case was German-born, fluent in several European languages and had had some extraordinary experience across a wide range of cases, some of which involved a degree of espionage.

It was clearly felt within the Metropolitan Police that another dimension of expertise would be invaluable here: the name ‘Bastendorff’ might have suggested that a detective with a European family background would be ideal for examining the household at number 4, Euston Square.

Inspector Charles Hagen was a rising star. He was one of the pioneers of the recently formed Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

The new CID itself was the result of a dramatic modernisation programme within the Metropolitan Police. This was partly a swift means of distancing itself from the former detective department, which had been undermined by several scandalous cases of corruption. But it was also a response to a fast-growing, thickly populated, increasingly cosmopolitan city.

In previous years, detection had been largely instinct combined with circumstantial evidence; by the late 1870s, such techniques as fingerprinting and the photographing of convicted criminals were being introduced and used with growing confidence. The art of detection was becoming a science.

Among those thriving in this new department were Inspector Abberline (who ten-years later would find himself confronted with the ‘Jack The Ripper’ murders). Meanwhile, Inspector Hagen, it was declared in The Times, would also form part of this ‘X Division’. (The ‘X’ had no special significance except to differentiate the new CID from the other alphabetically coded policing districts of London.)

Hagen was already a familiar name to newspaper readers; a few years earlier, he had spent some time ‘in attendance’ to the Prince of Wales as a form of police bodyguard. In 1873, he accompanied the Prince on a state visit to Austria; and there was a comical moment one evening as the Prince, who had been attending a dinner at the Vienna Exhibition, left the restaurant, followed closely by the detective. The Austrian police, with no idea who he was, swooped in and arrested Hagen. He was ‘conveyed to prison by the Austrian police for pressing too closely upon their Royal Highnesses footsteps.’¹ He was released very soon after as the mistake became plain. Even though the incident was treated light-heartedly, it spoke of a certain official nervousness: this was a febrile time in Europe; an era of terrorism and assassination.

Following on from his royal duties, Inspector Hagen set to work on a wide variety of cases in London; and these cases reflected the city’s increasingly continental nature. A striking example was when Hagen was called upon to investigate an ugly case of extortion in Bloomsbury. The victim, Herr Sigmund Diespeker, president of the German Benevolent Society, was entrapped by a young woman called Elise Arnold. Miss Arnold claimed that she was leaving London and wanted him to look after her dog. He was lured to her room in a lodging house, whereupon he was ambushed by German thugs, who roughed him up, accused him of sinister sexual intent towards Miss Arnold and demanded money to prevent further violence. When the case was brought before the court, Hagen was required to act as an interpreter for the defendants and the witness.

A rather more ambitious crime involving Count Schuvaloff, the Russian Ambassador to London, required Hagen’s expertise in 1877. The Count had been approached by a gentleman called Janacek Williams, claiming to be an inventor who had perfected two new super-weapons: ‘three cannon of an extraordinary character for destructive purposes’ and ‘a contrivance for infallibly picking up torpedoes and so completely neutralising their effect’.²

Count Schuvaloff was sceptical – quite wisely as it happens: Williams was a serial swindler, his targets frequently German. Less baroque than the top secret weapons fraud, but slightly more cruel were his attempts, via advertisements placed in German newspapers, to entice men to come to London on the pretence of securing (nonexistent) jobs for them for a fee. Inspector Hagen moved in for the arrest. The con man was sentenced to six-months hard labour and was led from the dock ‘crying piteously and wringing his hands’.³

By 1878, X Division of Scotland Yard had developed intriguingly close ties with police forces across Europe; the efficiency of telegraphy among other elements made such co-operation possible. But it was also indicative of the porous nature of many national borders at the time. Unlike in countries in continental Europe, new arrivals to Britain were not required to register with the police, and there were no limits placed on the amount of time they might spend here. This meant that as well as an increasingly thriving number of different nationalities in London in the 1870s, there were fugitives, too.

Just a few weeks before the events at 4, Euston Square, Hagen found himself in pursuit of a French man called Monthaye, a forger who had fled Paris. In his absence, Monthaye had been sentenced by the French courts to ten-years’ hard labour. Hagen and a colleague tracked the man down to a tavern in the heart of the City. A ‘desperate struggle’ broke out and Monthaye managed to escape from the inn. The detectives gave chase through the narrow, twisting streets, for some distance. The felon was caught and brought before Bow Street to face extradition.

So, by the time the public were learning of the grisly find in Euston Square, Inspector Hagen of X Division was a regular figure in the ‘Police Intelligence’ columns read all over the country. There was now some glamour attached to his job; a coalescing sense (after earlier decades of mistrust) that the detectives of Scotland Yard had unusual powers of perception. Not only could they detect guilt, but they could also somehow see within men’s hearts and divine motivations.

Yet the Euston Square case was to take the Inspector into darker, and very much more complex, territory. There was a sense here that Scotland Yard was approaching the affair with a proper sympathy and sensitivity, as well as rigour, by appointing a policeman of German heritage to a case involving a German household. This seemed an acknowledgement that a household called Bastendorff might otherwise be vulnerable.

His initial task was to question Severin and Mary Bastendorff. It is difficult to know whether he spoke to Bastendorff in German; that was certainly his approach in other cases. Both husband and wife appeared genuinely mystified by the discovery of the corpse. They could not tell the Inspector whose body it might have been. Bastendorff gave voice to his own theory: that one night, some time ago, he had been alerted to a noise outside the scullery of the house next door, in the basement area just by the cellar. It was a lady, in a state of advanced inebriation. The gate to the steps down from the street had not been locked that evening. The lady in question was drunk and lost. So was it possible that the body in the cellar was another such unfortunate who had made her way down there by mistake?

Nothing at that stage could be wholly discounted, but Inspector Hagen’s next task was to carry out a thorough examination of the house: every floor, every room.

The Bastendorffs had little choice but to look on as Hagen went about his minute exploration of all the cupboards, the drawers, the wardrobes, all their own possessions, as well as the furniture in the empty tenants’ rooms. Every corner of their house, from the water closet to the kitchen, was subject to his scrutiny. Hagen spent a great deal of time in the coal cellar, examining the floor, the brickwork, for any traces of marks. When he was back in the house and climbing the stairs to the top floor, he asked Bastendorff how best he might gain entry to the attic.

It is easy to envisage the two men on that shadowy third-floor landing, Bastendorff having procured the wooden steps, and informing the detective that the attic was always open; Hagen climbing those steps, pushing against the attic door – and finding resistance.

There are no notes to suggest that he enlisted Bastendorff’s help; but it initially seemed that the door was jammed. Hagen examined it further; contrary to what Bastendorff had said, it had been tightly bolted.

After some further effort with the stiff bolt, Hagen forced the attic door open, and climbed up into the darkness. There was little up there to detain him save one incongruous item: a wickerwork tray of a type that belonged to a basket trunk, which held a few miscellaneous items, including an eyeglass. The tray was passed down and Hagen had it taken to the police station for further examination.

More questioning: this time directed at Bastendorff’s brothers, Joseph and Anton, in the bamboo workshop and the young men they employed. And then, after all that, there was little more at that stage to be done: Inspector Hagen had taken in the initial measure of this couple, their young children, the house they ran. He was not yet to know just how deep this mystery would become.