Some of the best mysteries are from a long time ago. Could be that the crime solving techniques are much better today, or maybe the mystery was just never meant to be solved.
Matron Missing in Paris
A distraught young Englishwoman came to the British Embassy in Paris one day in May 1889. She and her mother, on their way home from India, had checked into a hotel not long before, as the mother had fallen ill. She told the embassy how the hotel doctor had examined her mother and sent the daughter out for medicine. When she returned, the hotel staff denied ever having seen her mother. Only the younger woman’s name was in the hotel register. When she insisted on seeing the room her mother had occupied, she found it was not the one she remembered and even the doctor denied ever having met her before. Unable to make her story believed, the young woman ended up in an asylum in England.
Some have speculated that the mother had contracted plague in the Far East and that the hotel had conspired to suppress the news – even going so far as to redecorate her mother’s hotel room and to dispose of the corpse – rather than lose business. But the only evidence to support the case of the vanished matron was the young woman’s own testimony: a sign of madness, possibly, but if true, surely enough to drive her mad regardless.
It would be nice to know if this lady was crazy, or if the information she presented is real. One of those things we probably will never know!
Let's go to the patio for our coffee. Another hot one is on the way!
