Case of Francesca Nicholson

Whitehall 1212. For the first time in history, Scotland Yard opens its official files to bring you the authentic true stories of some of its most baffling cases.

These are the true stories, for obvious reasons been changed. The stories are presented with the full cooperation of Scotland Yard. Research on Whitehall 1212 is furnished through Percy Hoskins at the London Daily Express. The stories for radio are written and directed by Willis Cooper.

Listen now to Chief Superintendent John Davidson, Curator of Scotland Yard's famous Black Museum, for a briefing on Case Number 270809. Good afternoon. I hope you don't think that we are mere souvenir collectors here in the Black Museum.

We do collect articles that have figured in many of the crimes we have solved, but we have better reasons for doing so than the morbid satisfaction of bloating over them. They form a kind of criminal compendium, not of how to do murder, but how murder has been done.

The items we have on our shelves here fall into several categories. Illustrations of motives, demonstrations of methods and means, and examples of the mistakes that cause the murderers arrest and punishment. Of course, we have these souvenirs from other types of cases.

Of the reputation of the Black Museum rests largely upon the predilection of the human race for violence and unlawful death. If you're contemplating this oldest of crimes, bear in mind the fact that here at Scotland Yard, we have thousands of reminders of the hopelessness of it and change your mind before the hangman says to you,

sayon here please, as he did to the man who owned this dark gray shirt. Yes, that's blood on it. Some of it is his. Chief Inspector Eric Lincoln solved that case. Number 270809, I'll ask him to take over.