A Century After, Cariboo Mystery Still Resonates
Part 1
1920s Quesnel was generally quiet and law-abiding. It took months before residents began to wonder if there wasn’t something seriously amiss.
NOTICE!
TO ADAH HALDEN AND ARTHUR HALDEN:
Take notice that you have been sued in the Country Court, holden at Quesnel, by David Arthur Clark, and that a copy of the summons has been filed for you in the Quesnel Registry of the said Court. You are required to dispute the said action by filing a dispute note in the said Registry within twenty days of the first appearance of this advertisement.
EDGAR C. LUNN, Registrar.
First appearance of advertisement is on the 8th day of January, 1921.
* * * * *
Such was the legal notice posted in the Quesnel Cariboo Observer on Jan. 8, 1921. There’s nothing really out of the ordinary about this advertisement of a century ago. You still see similar notices in newspapers, often posted by storage firms that have emptied lockers or the like because the client has discontinued paying rent, or mechanics’ liens. After a stated length of time, the contents or goods are put up for sale to recover their outstanding debts.
But there’s something unique about this advertisement in the Quesnel newspaper.
Although it wasn’t widely known, Adah and Arthur Halden and their teenage son had gone missing; had been missing, in fact, for almost six months. No wonder David Clark, their hired hand who’d granted them a large loan wanted to track them down to recover the money he claimed they owed him.
Three months later, on April 23rd, the Observer carried another legal advertisement:
NOTICE!
Will the car driver who took out the Halden family from Dragon Lake on October 28th last, communicate with the Provincial Police, at Quesnel?
Any person who has seen any of the Halden family between October 29th last and present date, please notify the Provincial Police, Quesnel. -----
* * * * *
Even in a small frontier town such as Quesnel, just 500 souls, how could three people who didn’t own a car just up and leave without someone beside their hired hand being aware of the fact? In most small communities in those days, everyone knew almost everything about their neighbours.
Sure, the Haldens had only been two years on their spring-fed acreage on Dragon Hill, two miles east of town, and they kept pretty much kept to themselves, other than for occasional shopping trips to town. But they were by no means unsociable, even having shared their home with a family that needed temporary accommodation.
No one knew much more about them than that Arthur and Adah Halden, in their mid-40s, with their 14-year-old stepson Stanley Wright, had bought the run-down property and set to work making it self-sustaining with cows, pigs and chickens. They so loved their new home with its panoramic vista of the town and the Fraser and Quesnel rivers below, they named it Grand View Farm.
But the task of clearing their land had proved to be more than they could handle themselves, or the work was going too slowly, so that summer they let it be known that they were hiring. Somehow they connected with David Arthur Clark, a returned soldier in his late 20s or early 30s. Nothing is known of his background but he was socially outgoing, and the Haldens quickly bonded. In following months, smoke from burning brush fires became a hallmark of Grand View Farm.
It was November before someone realized they hadn’t seen the Haldens for quite some time. Clark, however, was often in town, so they asked him about his employers. Oh, Arthur’s brother had died and they’d left for Spokane to attend his funeral.
There the matter stood for another week when, during another visit to town, Clark presented himself before B.C. Provincial Police Constable G.H. Greenwood. He needed advice, he said. So much time had passed without the Haldens returning or even contacting him, that he was concerned.
Not for their welfare, but for the fact that they owed him money.
Greenwood advised him to get a lawyer and to Quesnel’s only legal counsel, E.J. Avison. Clark showed a promissory note in the significant amount of $1250. In his sworn declaration he deposed that, on or about October 29, 1920, the Haldens left for Spokane. That he’d made “most careful enquiries from the postmaster and all likely persons,” but hadn’t learned anything of their whereabouts. He believed they’d left the country and didn’t propose to return. He also said that he wasn’t Arthur Halden’s only creditor in town.
Hence his choosing to serve a collection order on them via what became Government Agent Lunn’s Legal Notice of Jan. 8, 1921.
Even before public declaration of Clark’s financial arrangement with the Haldens and the suspicion that they’d skipped the country to avoid paying him back, Clark had struck up casual relationships with some neighbours and townsfolk. The previous Christmas, the friendly bachelor had been invited to dinner with the Anderson family.
To their surprise and discomfort, he showed up bearing gifts. Not the usual candies or other trivials, but expensive jewellery: a horseshoe brooch set with pearls and a plain gold ring inscribed, “A.G. for Father, 1892”. Waving aside the Andersons’ protests, Clark said he took the ring from a dead German and bought the brooch in England. To another family, he gave a gold-plated army badge made into a brooch.
Word of Clark’s generosity soon spread, even reaching the ears of Const. Greenwood, and got the veteran policeman to thinking. It all seemed so strange: the Haldens leaving town without a word. Surely, they should have returned from a funeral, long ago. He decided to do some quiet checking.
Firstly, he could find no record of the Halden’s having received or sent a telegram, or a telephone call. The postmaster informed him that once substantial mail for the Haldens had trickled down, probably because some letters had been returned, marked, “Left the district, no forwarding address.”
As for the couple’s having left other debts than that claimed by their hired man, no one else could be found in town who admitted to having been stiffed.
Further inquiries disclosed that Mrs. Halden’s maiden name was Godfrey: Adah Godfrey. A.G., just like the initials on the ring Clark offered to the Andersons! The ring “taken from a dead German” that was inscribed in English!
With the help of BCPP detectives in Vancouver, Greenwood was put in touch with Adah Halden’s sister, Mrs. Thurza Hughes on Vancouver Island. The Parksville resident informed him that Adah had been widowed and Stanley Wright was her son from her first marriage. After marrying Arthur Halden, an engineer, they’d taken up farming in Quesnel, and Adah had recently received 1000 pounds sterling from a property sale in England.
Further inquiries confirmed that Arthur Halden didn’t have a brother in Washington, that no one of that surname had died in the state in 1920, that they’d left no other debts in Quesnel. Then Thurza Hughes identified the ring given to the Andersons as her sister’s memorial ring marking the death of their father. She did even better with the horseshoe brooch—she produced a photo showing Adah wearing it at her wedding in 1919!
All of which explains Const. Greenwood’s NOTICE! asking if anyone had given the Haldens a ride out of town on Oct. 28, 1920, or who’d seen any of the Halden family since the following day.
By now convinced of murder, and no doubt with the advice of Crown counsel, Greenwood acted, on Oct. 17, 1921, by taking Clark into custody, charged with the theft and possession of Adah Halden’s jewellery.
Ongoing news of the investigation and hints of something more sinister than the theft began to appear in the Quesnel newspaper’s columns “There have been no new developments during the week in connection with the disappearance of the Halden family from Grand View Ranch last fall. Some teeth were discovered in the ashes of a fire and have been sent to the provincial authorities for analysis. Clark, the man held in custody in connection with the disposal of some jewelery belonging to the missing woman, was again remanded before Magistrate Lunn.”
And: Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Godfrey, sister and brother of Mrs. Halden, were in town “from the coast”.
In a more detailed report, headlined, The Halden Mystery, the weekly Observer reported that the police had been busily scratching around for clues—literally.
“The men who were searching the ranch premises, under the direction of the Provincial Police, for a clew to the mystery, have met with no success, and the search has been discontinued. Some teeth were discovered in the ashes of a fire, and have been sent to the provincial authorities for analysis.
“Senior Constable Greenwood has investigated rumours that Halden was in the Soda Creek neighbourhood, only to prove them groundless. In the meantime inquiries are being pushed in every direction for some trace of the missing people, and the police are leaving no clue untraced...”
Were the police looking for human remains on Grand View Farm?
Indeed, they were. At least, they had the satisfaction of knowing that David Clark, the hired hand who’d been arrested April 17th, was under lock and key for his having possession of jewellery belonging to Adah Halden. This enabled Magistrate Lunn to buy more time by remanding him again.
Two weeks later, Clark was committed for trial by Magistrate Lunn and Justice of the Peace J. Holt. He was originally charged on three counts of theft of “different articles of jewelry,” but one charge was dismissed. Mrs. Hughes and Mr. Godfrey, sister and brother of the missing woman, had positively identified the other pieces of jewellery as the property of Adah Halden.
Given his choice of a speedy or jury trial, Clark, who’d been denied bail, opted for the latter and was bound over for the Spring Assize Court in Prince George, in June.
He’d unwittingly given the police the one thing they needed most at that stage of the investigation—more time.
On May 23, the Quesnel newspaper reported that provincial police had made inquiries in Europe, the U.S. and elsewhere in Canada and were awaiting replies. A week later, readers learned that Constable Greenwood had returned from the Assizes in Prince George where a jury had disagreed in Clark’s trial for the theft of “the Haldane jewels”. This, despite the testimony of Mrs. Halden’s brother and sister, and Const. Greenwood’s “able assistance”.
The Haldens’ former hired man was bound over for a second trial in the Fall; in the meantime, he’d cool his heels in Oakalla Jail if he couldn’t post bail of $5,000. The authorities obviously weren’t taking chances on his fleeing; $5,000 in 1921 is $80,000 today.
So far, the police were trying to trace three missing people. But, other than David Clark’s questionable version of events, and Adah Halden’s jewellery, they really had no evidence of anything so horrendous as triple-murder. This was Const. Greenwood’s job, and he was determined to solve the case even if he had to dig up every foot of ground on Grand View Farm and dismantle the house, board by board.
(To be continued)
