On the morning of the 19th of February 1761, Mrs. King’s maidservant opened the parlour door and was directed to light the fire. She then went upstairs to the apartment of Theodore Gardelle, who gave her two letters to carry towards the Haymarket, together with a guinea to be changed for the purchase of some snuff. Mrs. King bade her not to go out, observing that there was no one else to answer the door. Gardelle thereupon went down into the parlour. In that house in Leicester Fields, a mere absence of a few minutes was to separate the ordinary run of household labor from the murder presently to be committed.
Gardelle was a native of Geneva. He had attended the academy there, then studied miniature-painting in Paris before returning to his birthplace, where he married. Discontented with his domestic state, he subsequently quitted his home for London and took lodgings in the house of Mrs. King. On that morning, according to the confession preserved by Borrow, Mrs. King heard his footstep and demanded who was there.
In the account furnished by the slayer, she addressed him in harsh and abusive terms. Gardelle answered that she was an impertinent woman. Mrs. King thereupon struck him upon the left side; he pushed her back. In retreating, her foot caught in the carpet, and she fell violently, striking her head against the bedpost. Gardelle’s first impulse, as he stated, was to raise her up and to staunch the blood flowing from her mouth. She threatened him with the utmost rigour of the law. He then fell into a sudden fury, seized an ivory comb with a sharp, pointed handle, and threatened her in turn if she did not hold her peace.
She would not be silenced. In his confession, Gardelle declared that, transported with rage, he plunged the handle of the comb into her throat, thereby killing her. He threw the bedclothes over the body. Overcome by terror, he swooned away. When he came to himself, the maid had just returned with the snuff. She called out to her mistress, but received no answer. Having taken her breakfast, she set about cleaning and ordering Gardelle’s room. He presently came down from the garret, dressed in different clothes and appearing, to her eyes, visibly perturbed.
Having dispatched her with a letter to Suffolk Street, he offered her an explanation upon her return: Mrs. King, he said, had gone away in a carriage with a gentleman. The girl gave no credit to the tale. She was well aware that her mistress had had no time to dress, and suspected that the pair had profited by her absence to indulge in an intrigue. Towards three o’clock in the afternoon, Gardelle sent her once more to Suffolk Street with another message. In the hours that followed, he paced incessantly through the house, going up and down stairs without pause. Whilst she was abroad, he resolved to discharge the maid, lest she should discover the crime.
The administrative detail of this dismissal proved an embarrassment. The maid could not write, and Gardelle lacked sufficient command of English to draw up a formal discharge. He engaged a person named Brocket to draft it for him. The latter inquired of the girl whether Gardelle possessed the authority to turn her away. She replied that she knew nothing of the matter. Brocket observed that Gardelle claimed to have received such authority, adding that Mrs. King was abroad and would bring home another servant with her. The girl construed her dismissal after her own fashion, taking it to be the consequence of the illicit familiarity she presumed to exist between her mistress and the lodger.
When she returned, Gardelle paid her her wages, added a gratuity, and made her set her mark to the receipt. As she quitted the house, she met the footman of a Mr. Wright, who had come to prepare for his master’s return. She bade him wait, believing Mrs. King might yet make her appearance, having supposed her abed since the morning. The footman, however, departed, and Gardelle remained alone. He went into Mrs. King’s chamber, stripped the corpse, and laid it upon the bed. He hid the bloodstained shift in a bag beneath his own bed, locked his own shirt in a drawer, and put the fouled sheets to soak in a wash-tub.
The footman, whose name was Pelsey, returned to announce that his master had found other lodgings. Being unable to remove his effects immediately, he lay that night in the garret. On the following morning, he asked for Mrs. King. Gardelle replied that she had gone out. Two days after the murder, another visitor, one Mozier, arrived to take her to the opera, pursuant to an agreement between them. Gardelle declared that she had set out for Bristol or Bath. Observing his sullen air, and attributing it to the absence of his mistress, Mozier sent a young woman to bear him company. Gardelle seemed by no means pleased by her arrival, yet he did not turn her away; the chronicle records that he feared a refusal might awaken suspicion.
On the following morning, he rose before the young woman and made a fire. When she came downstairs after ten o’clock, she found him busily engaged; he sent her to fetch a charwoman. On Monday, he desired this woman to tell Wright’s footman that the girl then in the house had been sent by Mrs. King to look after the premises. The footman did not believe the story. He had seen Gardelle and the girl in bed together, and held such an account to be wholly improbable. He repeatedly asked where Mrs. King might be; Gardelle persisted in answering that she was at Bath or Bristol.
On Tuesday, the footman perceived a foul stench in the garret. Gardelle explained that it arose from a bone he was burning. The excuse was partially true: he had been burning some of Mrs. King’s bones. In the night, after the footman was in bed, Gardelle sent the girl to rest, and then proceeded to dismember the body. He concealed in the garret the pieces of flesh severed from the bones, and threw the entrails down the privy. On Wednesday, he dismissed the young woman whom Mozier had sent, telling her that Mrs. King was expected to return that evening.
The charwoman and the footman remained in the house. The cistern being dry, the woman went to fetch water from the tub in the back kitchen. She felt something soft within it, but conceived no suspicion of murder. On the morrow, the blankets that Gardelle had thrown over the body were found in the water. The footman thereupon sent for the dismissed maid; she denied having placed the linen there. He then informed his master. Mr. Baron, an apothecary, came to inquire for Mrs. King. Gardelle repeated his story of her journey.
The discharged maid was examined by Sir John Fielding. A warrant was issued for the apprehension of Gardelle, and Baron accompanied the constables. Gardelle denied the crime and fell into violent fits. When the key to Mrs. King’s chamber was demanded of him, he said that she had carried it with her into the country. A constable entered through the window and admitted the rest into the room. Blood was discovered upon the bed. Upstairs, the hidden linen was found; a bricklayer and a carpenter were set to search the house, and they discovered human remains in the garret, the bowels in the privy, and burnt bones near the fireplace.
A casket which Gardelle had committed to a man’s keeping was found to contain Mrs. King’s watch and sundry other effects. While in prison, Gardelle swallowed opium with the design of ending his life, but survived. He requested to be brought before a magistrate and made a confession; the justice heard his declaration, but would not suffer him to sign it, lest it be turned against him in evidence. Gardelle subsequently swallowed several halfpence in a further attempt to destroy himself. He was brought to trial at the Old Bailey on the 2nd of April 1761, and convicted. Though at first he had exhibited violent agitation, he appeared on the following day more resigned to his fate.
Being questioned as to why he had not fled abroad, he answered that he had feared some innocent person might be accused of the murder. The chronicle records that he likewise expressed an utter abhorrence for the woman Mozier had sent him, though he had not dared to drive her from the house. His first answer could in no way excuse the concealed corpse, the repeated falsehoods told to the footman, nor the dismembered remains scattered through the premises. The chronicle records these words as those of a condemned felon who, after several days spent in deceiving all about him, now pleaded the fear of deceiving justice itself.
On the 4th of April, Gardelle was conveyed in a cart to the place of execution in the Haymarket. The procession halted for some time near the house where Mrs. King had been murdered. A vast concourse of people witnessed his hanging; Borrow observes that they testified their joy in a manner too tumultuous for so awful a solemnity. The body was subsequently hung in chains upon Hounslow Heath. Mrs. King, whose departure for Bristol or Bath had been so boldly affirmed, had never once stepped across the threshold of the house.