MURDER OF EMMA BELL

The crowd going home from the resorts and roof gardens August 9th was
startled by the wild cries of the newsboys: "Extra! Extra! All about the
mysterious murder!"

Murders are not so rare in New York as to cause any genuine sensation
among its people when one is announced in the public press, but mystery
has ever been attractive to the human race, and the details of the
present case as contained in the columns of the papers were so involved
in conjecture as to arouse the interest of every reader. The only facts
that were clear were that Mrs. Emma Bell had been found dead in the
sitting-room of her apartment on East 56th Street with a box of candied
fruit on the table near her, which had just been opened, and which,
according to the postmark stamped on the paper enclosing the box, had
been mailed to her from Boston. Written on thin paper that was so
pasted as to cover the entire top of the box was the inscription, "With
best wishes to you and Alice. J. E."

A weird description of the lifelike appearance of the woman when found,
seated in her chair, with eyes staring and pupils dilated, was given in
the best reportorial style. The coroner had taken possession of
everything and had ordered the apartment sealed until an inquest could
be held. Whether or not the candied fruit had anything to do with the
death, and if so who could have sent it, were all matters of speculation
which the various writers had covered in from one to four columns,
according to their respective imaginative qualities and newspaper
instinct, but none of them gave the slightest intimation as to the
suspected person, if murder really had been committed.

More or less accurate likenesses of Mrs. Bell were given with all the
events of her life that seemed spectacular, the most prominent of which
was that her neighbors had long speculated as to her source of
livelihood, since her husband's death some four years previously, and
with characteristic charity such speculation led to hints along
salacious trails and the dark recesses of public suspicion. The events
of the injury to her little girl, and her treatment by Dr. Earl, and
the devotion of the volunteer nurse, lacked nothing in their interesting
narration in connection with the supposed murder mystery, and assisted
very materially in enhancing that mystery through the glamour of
prominent personages who were so well in the foreground of the story.

The coroner's jury sat upo