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burglary, the police quickly began to doubt that this was the case. No one had seen or heard any intruders the night before (though a neighbor did claim to hear groans emanating from Lord Williams’s room, during the night). Marks on the back door suggested that it had been violently forced open. But it became clear to the police that the door had been forced from the inside, where several bolts had already been drawn. Moreover, any intruders exiting from this door would have to scale a high wall to escape the property, a wall thoroughly whitewashed, which would have shownmarks of intrusion; it did not. A careful search showed no marks of forced entry whatsoever outside the back door. It was highly unlikely that anyone had used this door for entry or escape, and much more likely that someone had doctored the door to create the appearance of a burglary. By the time of the inquest, the police had concluded that this was an inside job, with particular suspicion falling on Cour-voisier, a native of Switzerland who had only been in service with Russell for five weeks. Courvoisier’s odd behavior had attracted attention: besides the fact that he was inexplicably nearly dressed upon being woken, he displayed a great deal of anxiety during the search, and continually “kept running and drinking water.” His reaction to the crime, as well, demonstrated a shocking lack of empathy for the victim. One of the police on the case, Inspector John Tedman—the same John Tedman, incidentally, who had witnessed Oxford’s odd behavior at the Shepherd and Flock—was from the start suspicious of the valet, noting Courvoisier’s self-centered reaction to the crime: “this is a shocking job; I shall lose my place and lose my character.” And then there was Courvoisier’s suspicious wealth: he had in his room a banknote and change amounting to six sovereigns; asked where he obtained the note, he claimed he got it in making change for his master. Most damning at all, a chisel had been found among Courvoisier’s possessions, and the chisel exactly fit marks left when the kitchen drawers had been forced.
    The police hoped that the murderer had not yet removed the stolen items from the house. The items actually stolen were few, and were small—larger items of far greater value in Russell’s room were, surprisingly, left alone. Besides the plate from which Russell had eaten the night of his death, and various items of cutlery, there were banknotes, coins, and rings taken from the fingers of the dead man. The police tore up floorboards and baseboards. On Friday, they made the discovery that led to Courvoisier’s arrest: behind the skirting-board in the butler’s pantry, a room that was for Courvoisier’s use alone, workmen found two banknotes—for £5 and £10—and much of Russell’s stolen jewelry. Courvoisier washeld in his room under close observation until Sunday, when he was conveyed to Tothill Fields prison. After repeated examination of the crime at Bow Street, he was at the end of May committed to Newgate, to be tried at the Old Bailey on the 18th of June.
    This news of the murder electrified Mayfair—the Times reported that the carriages of the fashionable clogged the area for days. While murder and burglary were far from uncommon in London in 1840, this particular murder trumped others in terms of public fascination, playing on a host of British fears. For one thing, the crime took place in the most fashionable neighborhood in the metropolis, and the victim was an aristocrat, the brother of the fifth Duke of Bedford, and the uncle of a leading Whig politician of the day, Sir John Russell, the future prime minister. Then there was the terrifying thrill that accompanied the growing realization that Russell had been slaughtered by his own servant. The Times noticed the growing fear, not that the criminal could strike again—he couldn’t, of course—but