The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Unsolved Mysteries (83 page)

What was not known to Poe in 1842 is that Mary’s employer, John Anderson, had been questioned by the police as a suspect; like all the others, he was released. But fifty years later – in December 1891 – new evidence was to emerge. By that time Anderson had been dead ten years; he became a millionaire, and died in Paris. Apparently he had told friends that he had experienced “many unhappy days and nights in regard to her” (Mary Rogers), and had been in touch with her spirit. His heirs contested his estate, and in 1891 his daughter tried to break her father’s will on the grounds that when he signed it he was mentally incompetent. The case was settled out of court, and the records destroyed. But a lawyer named Samuel Copp Worthen, who had been closely associated with Anderson’s daughter Laura Appleton, knew that his firm had kept a copy of the testimony in the Supreme Court of New York in 1891, and he made it his business to read it. He finally described what he had learned in the periodical
American Literature
in 1948. It revealed that Anderson had been questioned by the police about the death of Mary Rogers, and that this had preyed on his mind, so that he
later declined to stand as a candidate for mayor of New York, in case someone revealed his secret.

The most significant part of the testimony was the assertion that Anderson had admitted to paying for an abortion for Mary Rogers and had got “in some trouble over it”. But he had insisted that he had not “had anything, directly, himself, to do with her problems”.

This would obviously explain Mary’s week-long disappearance from the cigar store, and the fact that she looked tired and ill when she returned. It probably also explains why she decided to leave the store a week later – not because of gossip about the naval officer, but because she needed more time to convalesce.

Worthen’s theory is that in the six months after leaving the cigar store Mary again got herself pregnant, and once more appealed to Anderson for help. When she left home that Sunday morning she intended to go to Hoboken for an abortion. (In fact, there was a story that Mrs Loss, the tavern-owner, had admitted on her deathbed that Mary Rogers had died during an abortion; there is no hard evidence for this confession, but it is known that the District Attorney was inclined to the abortion theory of Mary’s death.) She died during the abortion, and her body was dumped in the river to protect the abortionist – the dark-skinned man with whom she was seen on the ferry – and Mrs Loss’s family.

How does this theory fit the known facts? The answer is: very well indeed, particularly if we make the natural assumption that the father of the second unborn child was Daniel Payne – for it seems unlikely that Mary agreed to marry him, then continued her affair with her former lover. (Nothing is known about this former lover, but Anderson is obviously a suspect.) We must assume, then, that Payne knew perfectly well that Mary was on her way to Hoboken to have an illegal operation. We may also probably assume that the pregnancy was still in its early stages, and that Mary anticipated very little trouble – after all, she had recovered from the earlier abortion in a week, though it still left her feeling ill. Mary’s mother was probably also in the secret. Duke comments: “It was generally believed at the time that the murdered girl’s mother knew more about her daughter’s mysterious admirer than she chose to tell”.

What of the evidence about the gang? It is possible, of course, that a young girl was actually seen entering the woods with a gang of men, and that this was nothing to do with Mary Rogers. But it far more probable that the anonymous letter claiming that Mary had entered the woods with six ruffians was sent by Mrs Loss or one of her friends – it came from Hoboken. Then all she had to do was to persuade two of her
relatives or friends to claim that they were the men on the beach, and that they had seen Mary enter the woods and seen the boat with three men that landed shortly afterwards . . . The result would be a perfect red herring, directing the attention of the police away from her own abortion parlour.

What of the petticoat found later in the woods? This, significantly enough, was found by Mrs Loss’s children. We may assume that the petticoat, the umbrella and the handkerchief were left behind in Mrs Loss’s roadhouse when Mary’s body was dragged to the water in the middle of the night, and were later planted in the woods, in a place where the bushes were broken, to suggest evidence of a struggle.

And what of the evidence that Mary had been raped? This, apparently, was the coroner’s report; we do not know whether she was examined by a doctor or if so what the doctor concluded. What we
do
know is that Mary’s body was already decomposing, and that because of the hot July weather it was buried within a few hours of being taken out of the water; so any inquest would have been performed in haste. In 1841 the science of legal medicine was in its infancy, and it is doubtful whether anyone took a vaginal swab and examined it under a microscope for spermatozoa. What was probably taken for evidence of rape was actually evidence of an abortion that had gone wrong.

Duke reports that Daniel Payne committed suicide “at the same spot in the woods where his sweetheart was probably slain”. Other writers on the case have questioned this (notably Charles E. Pearce in
Unsolved Murder Mysteries
, 1924). But Payne’s suicide would certainly be consistent with the theory that he was the father of the unborn child.

It is a disappointing – if obvious – solution to one of the great “murder mysteries”, that Mary Rogers died in the course of an abortion. Why is it not more generally known? Partly because Poe himself obscured the truth. In the 1850 edition of Poe’s works published in the year after his death “Marie Roget” appeared with a footnote that stated:

But this is obviously impossible. Mrs Loss only seems to have confessed that Mary had died in the course of an abortion in her tavern. Poe’s
theory was that she was murdered by a man “in a passion” who then dragged her body to the seashore. The likely truth seems to be that she died of an air embolism, and that the abortionist, with the aid of Mrs Loss, made the death look like murder by tying a strip of cloth round her throat; the two of them then probably carried it to the water. Poe’s “Marie Roget”, far from being an amazingly accurate reconstruction of the murder, is simply a bad guess. Poe may not have been a murderer, but he was undoubtedly a liar.

47

“Saint-Germain the Deathless”

He is still regarded by many “occultists” as one of the most exciting and mysterious figures in the history of magic; some even believe that he is still alive. But everyone who has written about him has ended by wondering whether the secrets of “Saint-Germain the deathless” are a matter of mystery or merely of mystification. Since the enormous dossier on him collected at the orders of Napoleon III was destroyed by fire during the Commune, the question must remain unanswered. “Thus”, says one historian, “once again an ‘accident’ upheld the ancient law which decrees that the life of an adept must always be surrounded by mystery”.

When the Comte de Saint-Germain (he admitted the name was false) first appeared in France about 1756 he looked about fifty years old. He was a brilliant conversationalist, spoke many languages, possessed a knowledge of medicine, and was a first-rate experimental chemist. He was a small man, who dressed in black velvet with a white satin cravat (a sign of self-restraint in those days of magnificent male wardrobes), and whose manners were meticulously correct. He was obviously wealthy – he wore many diamonds and he had numerous servants. These seem to have been extremely well trained. When a sceptic said to one of them: “Your master is a liar” the man replied: “I know that better than you. He tells everyone that he is four thousand years old. But I have been in his service only a hundred years, and when I came the count told me that he was three thousand years old. Whether he has added nine hundred years by error, or whether he is lying, I do not know”. Another servant – his valet – was asked about some point of ancient history and replied: “Perhaps the count forgets that I have been in his service only five hundred years”.

It sounds as if he was an accomplished leg-puller, or perhaps merely a charlatan; but if so, it is not clear what he hoped to gain. He seems to have been wealthy; he was an accomplished violinist, a skilful painter,
and had a wide knowledge of music and painting – apparently he could identify most paintings at a glance. In
Historical Mysteries
, Andrew Lang suggests that he was the son of the ex-queen of Spain, Marie de Neuberg, who lived in Bayonne after the death of her husband Charles II. Marie’s lover was the finance minister, Count Andanero, and Lang thinks it possible that Saint-Germain was his son.

Before going to France, Saint-Germain had been in Vienna. He had met the Marshal de Belle-Isle, who had contracted some illness while campaigning in Germany; Saint-Germain cured him, and the marshal brought him back with him to Paris. Soon after, he cured a lady of the court of mushroom poisoning, and became a friend of Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV. The ladies of the court found him intriguing. Countess von Gergy, whose husband had been ambassador to Venice around 1710, thought she recollected his name, and asked him if his father had been there; Saint-Germain replied – typically – that he himself had been there at the time. “Impossible” said the countess; the man she had known had been at least forty-five at the time. Saint-Germain smiled mysteriously. “I am very old”. He then added various details about Venice, which convinced the countess that he knew what he was talking about. “You must be a devil”! exclaimed the countess, at which Saint-Germain began to tremble as if he had cramp and hurriedly left the room.

A decade earlier, Saint-Germain had been in London, and in 1745 was arrested as a spy of the Young Pretender, who was just marching on Derby. Horace Walpole noted in a letter:

No one knows where he was between 1745 and 1755. But by the late 1750s he was the talk of Paris. Madame du Hausset, a
femme de chambre
of Madame de Pompadour, wrote:

It seems clear from this that Saint-Germain treated the tales of his great age as a joke, and made no real attempt to impose them on Madame de Pompadour. The king’s foreign minister, the Duc de Choiseul, further confused the issue by hiring an impostor to impersonate Saint-Germain in the salons of Paris, and to discredit him by making absurd claims – such as claiming to have been a close friend of Saint Anne, mother of the Virgin Mary, and making remarks like “I always knew Christ would come to a bad end”.

So what do we actually know of the life of Saint-Germain? An autograph letter of 1735 proves that he was in The Hague in November of that year, but does not tell us why. Saint-Germain would then be about twenty-five years old. We know he was in England from 1743 to about 1745, and was arrested as a spy. The story given in Mrs Cooper-Oakley’s book on him is that someone who was jealous of him (because of a rivalry about a lady) planted a treasonable letter in his pocket, then had him arrested; he was able to prove his innocence.

By 1755 he was wealthy and was living in Vienna, where he was taken up by the Marshal de Belle-Isle and brought to Paris, where – as already noted – his conversation and his wide culture soon made him a favourite of the salons. He claimed to live off some food or elixir which he made himself, and would sit through dinners without eating. In fact his greatest interest seems to have been chemistry, and he had apparently discovered some process for dyeing silk and leather. He told the king that he could remove flaws from diamonds, and went off with a stone worth six thousand francs. A month later he returned the stone flawless, and a jeweller valued it at ten thousand francs. In all probability Saint-Germain simply substituted another stone, and gained the king’s
gratitude at the low price of four thousand francs. The result was that the king set up a labouratory at the Trianon, and installed Saint-Germain in apartments at the castle of Chambord, to work on his dyeing processes – the king hoped these would eventually bring large sums to the royal treasury, which badly needed replenishing. He became so much a familiar of Louis that the Duc de Choiseul wrote indignantly: “It is strange that the King is so often allowed to be almost alone with this man, though when he goes out he is surrounded by guards. . . .” He also referred to Saint-Germain as “the son of a Portuguese Jew”.