THE DEAD MAN TALKING RIDDLE: CRIMINAL PAST SERIES PART THREE

THE saying goes that dead men tell no lies. Indeed, how on earth could a man shot through the temple at close range, the bullet passing through his brain from one side through the other, possibly be able to talk?

Yet a double shooting that left a newlywed couple dead certainly led to medical experts debating whether, indeed, a dead man might still be capable of speech.

It was two days before Christmas 1923, and Clara Allen, 23, said to be a "pleasant and cultivated person of thoroughly good character", had just made her way back to the lodgings in Heriothill Terrace (pictured) she shared with her 21-year-old electrical engineer husband Frederick.

The couple had married just three months earlier and this was to be their first Christmas together as husband and wife, spent quietly in their small furnished rooms amid working-class tenements in Broughton.

It was Saturday and fair-haired Clara had been out shopping; among her purchases an extravagant roast that she planned to cook for their Christmas dinner.

She was an apparently conscientious wife: by all accounts Frederick's meal was on the table when he arrived home from work that afternoon, around 1pm. But at 1.40pm, the peace and quiet was shattered by the distinctive and shocking sound of two shots ringing out.

The landlady dashed to the couple's room calling: "What's wrong Mrs Allen?"

Inside she saw Clara's husband bleeding profusely from a wound in the head.

"For God's sake," he told the startled landlady. "Fetch a policeman and a doctor, I am bleeding to death."

She had barely reached the end of the landing, when another shot rang out.

By the time a local police officer arrived, accompanied by an ambulance, Frederick was dead.

A search of the room revealed a staggering collection of weaponry: four revolvers - two of them heavy calibre service guns - and 200 rounds of ammunition.

The couple were buried together at Piershill Cemetery on Christmas Day, the general consensus being that Frederick had shot and killed his wife using one of the heavy calibre revolvers, before turning the other weapon on himself.

In the immediate aftermath, the biggest mystery seemed to be what on earth had caused this charming couple to take such extreme action. There had been no significant rows, the rent was paid on time, indeed, nothing out of the ordinary.

But as investigators probed deeper, an even bigger question mark appeared over the tragedy.

By Boxing Day, medical experts had ascertained that Frederick's head wound was so severe that his brain would have been instantly put out of action. They found the bullet had passed straight through his skull, ripped through his brain and lodged in a wall directly in line with where he would have been standing.

The third shot, they concluded, had missed entirely - the bullet was found in the ceiling.

Which could only mean that when the landlady dashed to the scene to find Frederick pleading for help, he was speaking after he had died.

Experts argued his voice and muscles were merely obeying commands sent from the brain seconds earlier. The third shot, they suggested, must either have been the result of a reflex action or the pistol fired when Mr Allen fell.

There was a more likely explanation for what may have prompted the tragedy. Frederick, they found, was a heavy drug user who had always been interested in research into chemicals, probably those with a highly hallucinogenic effect.

That along with a fascination for firearms - explaining the stock of weapons found in the house - turned into a lethal combination.

The state of motorist Alexander Munro's mind when he mowed down two pedestrians, leaving one fatally injured, was also of great debate among medical experts.

Witnesses claimed Munro had been driving along Shandwick Place at excessive speed on January 25, 1930 when his car struck a Mrs Hectorina Kinnaird, killing her, and leaving pedestrian David Wood injured.

Munro, 22, drove off and police later charged him with driving while drunk.

But in a three-day trial that gripped the city, defence lawyers used medical experts to argue that Munro wasn't drunk, instead he had entered a bizarre trance-like state, similar to sleepwalking, at the time of the accident.

In spite of his claims, he was still found guilty of killing Mrs Kinnaird, jailed for 15 months and fined GBP750.

Certainly there were questions over the fragile state of Neil Quinn's mind when he claimed the life of his unfortunate wife Elizabeth before taking his own.

The 30-year-old had seen action in France in 1915 and then in Mesopotamia - no doubt bloody and brutal experiences that left a festering wound on the young Black Watch soldier.

He had been wounded in France, barely recovering from his injuries before joining the 2nd Battalion Black Watch in the furnace of a war against the Turks.

There the battalion endured a 20-mile march across part of what is now modern-day Iraq, before being virtually wiped out by Turkish fire - just 99 officers and men left from a battalion 900 strong.

Nevertheless, he served until 1919. The five months following his return to his fourth-floor tenement in Cowgate - already condemned for demolition - must have meant a difficult period of readjustment for him and his wife.

A meal of sausages and onions was half cooked on the stove when a row broke out. When neighbours went to investigate, they found two bodies lying in the lobby, and a blood- stained razor inside their home.

Quinn had slashed his wife's throat before drawing the blade over his own, slicing so deeply that reports commented on how he had almost severed his own head from his body.

1922

The debate about the availability of cheap alcohol was as alive in the 1920s as today. The Chief Constable's report for 1922 pointed out that cheap methylated spirit was encouraging people to drink. One shilling and threepenny worth of the spirit - the same price as a tot of whisky - was enough, when diluted, to make half a dozen people drunk.

1928

The Commercial Hotel on Sandport Street, Leith, pictured below, was a hive of activity. Sadly for Italian-born owner Paul Naef, it was the wrong kind. Women and men - possibly foreign-looking and maybe seamen - were seen coming and going at all hours. He was found guilty of keeping a brothel in November 1928 and paid highly for his crime as he was ordered to be deported back to Italy.

1928

Stalking seems a modern offence, but in November 1928, Mary Mills, 34, became so upset by her married workmate's constant attention - following her and spying on her - that she began to talk of leaving for London. It was to tip obsessed James Marr over the edge. He picked up a knife at the picture framers where they both worked and killed her with it. He was sentenced to 12 years.

Edinburgh Evening News April 14, 2011