Beneath the linen mangle in the barn, the earth had only just been smoothed over. Weber claimed to have moved the great press because his mother-in-law had complained of its inconvenient placement; the machine had since been returned to its former position, yet the soil could no longer conceal that which the neighbours and the magistrates were soon to unearth. In the autumn of 1853, a corpse interred for more than a twelvemonth restored to justice the name of a man whom the village had believed long departed of his own free will.
It had all begun with an act of violence. In the night between the 10th and 11th of October, the proprietor of a Saxon estate, designated only by the initial S., was twice awakened by a commotion. Towards two o’clock in the morning, he ventured out to inspect the outbuildings. Near the courtyard gate, two men sprang upon him. He knocked one down with a shovel, but the second struck him upon the head. The fallen assailant regained his feet, and both fell upon the master of the estate with redoubled fury. Roused by his cries, his sons appeared at the casement; the aggressors fled through an aperture breached in a clay wall.
The injuries were numerous. The physician noted lacerations to the skull and hands, alongside a concussion and lesions of the ear that threatened permanently to impair S.’s already feeble hearing. On the following day, the magistrates ordered a search of the neighbouring dwellings. Master Weaver Weber was discovered with his head bound in linen. He explained that whilst lifting his stocking-frame, a sharp ridge had struck him. Yet in his bedchamber, not a single drop of blood could be found; the physician deemed his explanation entirely implausible. Weber ultimately confessed to having attempted a burglary in company with an accomplice. The inquest, broadened to encompass other housebreakings, soon laid bare a criminal past far more extensive than that single nocturnal assault.
It was at this juncture that a neighbouring woman came forward. One morning, a considerable time before, having come to fetch water from Weber’s yard, she had caught sight of him in the barn by the light of a lantern. He had moved the heavy linen mangle from one wall to the other and was levelling the soil. At her greeting, he had appeared thoroughly startled; he told her he was setting the machine within easier reach of his mother-in-law. The remark had seemed singular, yet not sufficient to prompt a denunciation. Only when the magistrates came to learn of Weber’s burglaries did her recollection assume a grave significance.
It was conjectured that the disturbed earth might conceal stolen goods. The mangle was shifted once more to its customary place, and the digging began. A few strata down, the investigators came upon a male corpse already in an advanced state of decomposition. The physicians could no longer examine the soft tissue, but the cranial bones bore extensive fractures dealt by multiple blows from a blunt instrument. The lesions to the jaw and visage might well have proved fatal; those at the base of the skull constituted, in the physicians’ opinion, an indubitable and instantaneous cause of death. The villagers recognised the weaver Böhme, Weber’s former journeyman and lodger, who had long since vanished.
His disappearance had not initially aroused suspicion. Böhme had spoken at times of emigrating to America and had dropped hints of suicide; his melancholy had struck those who knew him. Weber had recounted seeing him depart laden with finished work. He even claimed to have left the key beneath the door so that Böhme might re-enter should he return during the night. This outward solicitude had helped cast the departure in the light of a voluntary resolution.
Brought before the corpse, Weber appeared distraught, then retreated into sullen silence. He ended by admitting that he had slain Böhme and buried him within the barn. At first, he alleged that a quarrel and a scuffle had taken an ill turn. This account could not withstand scrutiny. He then confessed to having struck his sleeping companion deliberately with an axe, thereafter wrapping his head in cloths to stay the flow of blood, and conveying the body to the shed.
Why slay the man who shared his secret? Weber explained that Böhme had grown morose following the murder of Schneider, committed three years prior. He dreaded that his accomplice might one day speak, particularly if he embarked for America, or that drunkenness and remorse might prompt him to reveal all. He fancied, moreover, that Böhme might come into a substantial sum of money and vanish, leaving him utterly exposed. These fears, he admitted, had preyed upon his mind for nearly six months before he proceeded to the deed. The peril was no novel accusation from without: it arose from what he dreaded within the breast of the man who already possessed knowledge of the first murder.
That first crime had begun with false intelligence. In the night between the 18th and 19th of September 1850, a man had knocked upon the door of Schneider’s estate. He announced that the proprietor’s brother, who dwelt in the neighbouring town of P., was gravely ill and desired his presence. Schneider’s wife went down to unbolt the door; she remarked that the stranger found his way about the house unaided, as though familiar with the premises. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, kept his head lowered, and concealed his features; she fancied she discerned a black moustache, perhaps painted upon his lip. Schneider likewise harboured misgivings regarding the messenger’s identity, but departed with him nonetheless.
The wife explained that she had dreaded this visit, yet had failed to dissuade her husband. The purported messenger gave himself out as a neighbour known by the sobriquet of “Chocoladen-Kühn.” The night watchman, whom she subsequently asked whether this man resided near Schneider’s brother, reassured her on that score. Yet the real Kühn had not stirred from his house nor from the town that night, and the brother was in no way indisposed. In the morning, Schneider’s maidservant set out to sell butter at the market. Along the path, she observed first traces of blood, then a pipe, and finally the body of her master lying in a flax field.
The post-mortem examination disclosed numerous wounds to the head and face. The physicians ascribed them to an edged weapon employed with sweeping blows; several strokes had cleaved through the bone, penetrating to the meninges and the very substance of the brain. They concluded that Schneider had succumbed swiftly. Beside him lay his cloak, a torn tobacco pouch, and a pipe; his purse, rifled of its coin, had been cast aside nearby.
For a long while, the crime remained unsolved. Its meticulous preparation appeared to betoken an intimate acquaintance with Schneider’s habits, yet no one could identify the nocturnal messenger. Three years later, Weber recounted that Böhme had proposed the enterprise for a fee. He had consented, so he said, because he was in sore need of money and harboured no grievance whatever against Schneider. Böhme was to lure the proprietor from his dwelling; Weber, armed with a broad knife sharpened with a file, was to lie in wait amidst the thickets.
According to this confession, Böhme had donned his Sunday coat, a broad black hat, and an artificial moustache that rendered his countenance unrecognisable. He had impersonated the messenger. When the two men passed Weber along the lane, the latter snatched off Schneider’s cap and dealt him several blows upon the head. Böhme was said to have remained motionless at first; once Schneider had expired, he aided in dragging the body into the field and seized the purse. Weber maintained that Böhme gave him one thaler. He could offer no lucid explanation for his accomplice’s motive, reciting only a rumour that Schneider held money he refused to restore.
Thus did this belated confession leave much in the dark. Weber reiterated that the design and initiative had originated entirely with Böhme; the judicial inquiry established neither prior enmity between them and Schneider, nor any relation between the households capable of illuminating the motive. The magistrates also weighed the possibility of complicity on the part of Schneider’s widow, yet failed to establish it; she was acquitted. Weber’s wife, too, fell under suspicion regarding the death of Böhme; the investigations concerning her tended only to corroborate the accounts and admissions of her husband.
Weber never stood before his judges. He succumbed in prison to consumption prior to the conclusion of the proceedings, maintaining to his dying breath that he had spoken the truth. There was thus no verdict to sift, in the matter of these two murders, that which the confession established from that which it left obscured. Beneath the mangle restored to its place, the earth had yielded Böhme’s bones; Weber’s word, for its part, restored to justice the murder of Schneider, yet yielded neither a trial nor complete certainty as to the underlying motives.
Archival Note: The retrospective chapter in the Neue Pitaval sets forth Weber’s confessions, the recorded medical findings, and the examination of the suspicions directed against the two widows. Weber died in detention prior to judgment; hence, no judicial sentence on his account is recorded. The Saxon village and the abbreviated town of P. remain unidentified in the excerpt. The local transcription has not been collated against the original facsimile.