The Waterloo Legs

His Majesty's Government's real-life Sherlock Holmes, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, just sensationally foiled in Brighton Trunk Murders No. 1 and No. 2 (TIME, March 4), last week had on his laboratory table two human legs, neatly cut off below the kneecap. They were found last week under the seat of a train arriving at Waterloo Station.

Pronouncing them male, Sir Bernard scraped the legs, analyzed the scrapings. "Peroxide," he observed. "Evidently used to whiten the flesh." Traces were also found of a depilatory. But it was the bones of the toes and insteps which interested Sherlock Spilsbury most. "Toe bones abnormally cramped." he said. "Insteps abnormally arched, as if deformed from wearing women's high-heeled shoes. Um, most curious."

Since English editors make it their duty to shield the public from certain facts of life, they deduced from Sir Bernard's findings not that the Waterloo legs had belonged to a pervert but that the murdered man "may have been attending a masquerade party."

The Waterloo legs, Sir Bernard thought, had been lifeless only twelve hours. When railway attendants reported that three lackadaisical young men had loitered around the car in which the legs were found before the train left a suburban station, Scotland Yard announced that they are being "sought for questioning." As in Brighton Trunk Murder No. 1, when found, the Waterloo legs were wrapped in newspapers which had absorbed most of the blood, then encased in brown paper.

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