Black Museum-05-The Bloodstained Brick Bat

This is Orson Welles, speaking from London. The Black Museum. Here in the grim stone structure on the Thames, which houses Scotland Yard, is a warehouse of homicide. A museum of everyday objects, cigarette boxes, appointment books, a hat rack, all are touched by murder.

Now here's a brick there. coarse-grained rough-edged familiar. Perhaps your own home is built of bricks exactly like this one. In this case, however, no home was built by such a brick, rather. A home was destroyed by it.

Destroyed forever. It's still such a normal-looking object, Inspector. Is it really? Will that broken corner? Will the stains still on its edges? I suppose you're right, sir. If there's one thing that can upset normalcy, it's spilt blood.

And today that blood-stained brick-pat can be seen here in the Black Museum. From the annals of the Criminal Investigation Department of the London Police, we bring you the dramatic stories of the crimes recorded by the objects in Scotland Yard's Gallery of Death, the Black Museum.

Here we are in the Black Museum, Scotland Yard's Museum of Murder. Yes, he relies death upon these tables within these cabinets, the files of death, labeled with day and date, a name, a victim.

Here's a hackrack. I'd define such a commonplace object here, perhaps, but observe. Here were the wood curves from base to shaft, three brownish stains, blood dripped here, a weapon concealed within the line even over co-trestains, which placed a murderer at the scene of crime. Broken alibi. That's another story. Here's how brick that. Of such bricks

are garden walls built. Later the ivy or some such creeping vine grows over them hiding the sharp edges, softening the four square contours. This brick too was meant for such bucolic purposes. Well, as it happened, things didn't work out that way.