Detective Alice Clement and The Dulcimer Murder
A murder mystery fit for the likes of Miss Marple, the case of The Dulcimer almost seems too implausible to be true. The calculating length some will go to to take another’s life is shocking to the general public, but not to Detective Alice Clement.
This story comes from an interview by journalist Courtney Riley Cooper with Alice Clement printed in the Bureau County Tribune, Princeton, Ill, on July 18, 1913.
One morning at the Chicago detective headquarters in the 1910s, a report of a death in the area of Clark Street came in. The Captain tasked two officers to investigate, Detective Williams and his partner, Officer Alice Clement. The Captain was sure Clement would be interested since she was drawn to the conditions of sex workers in that area.
The officers arrived at the tenement where the building’s janitor awaited them and climbed the rickety stairs. He took the officers to a small room of a young woman.
The janitor told Clement and Williams that the girl had died from typhoid. Williams gave the room a passing glance and announced that no crime had been committed and that they should head back to the station house. From his cursory glance, Williams had deduced that the young woman was a sex worker, and her death came from her high-risk lifestyle.
