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To spring like an Indian tiger upon the witness of his crime was Ratanji's instant reaction. A little later Dr. Ruxton got out his scalpels, his knives, his surgical saws. He cut off Mrs. Ruxton's nose, ears, fingertips and toetips — extremities which to an expert criminal pathologist such as Britain's famed Sir Bernard Spilsbury would reveal traces of asphyxia and indicate that death had come by strangulation. As to Mary Jane Rogerson, Dr. Ruxton figured on fooling police into thinking she might have been a man. With this in mind he detached from her corpse the entire face, stripping it off the skull with his scalpels and completing his attempt at sex-obliteration in the most thorough manner. Later cutting off the faceless head, he wrapped it in an old white blouse which had been patched under the arms. He sawed off arms and legs which he wrapped in sheets from the London Sunday Graphic for Sept. 15 and the Aug. 5 and 7 issues of Labor's Daily Herald. Finally Ratanji went somewhat surgically berserk, butchering and slashing the chunks of flesh that had been wife & nurse and at last contriving to dump the lot into a narrow Scottish ravine appropriately known to local rustics as "The Devil's Beef Tub."
Late that afternoon Dr. Ruxton sent not for his usual charwoman but for a Mrs. Hampshire, a humble soul who was working off a debt to the doctor and might keep her mouth shut. She found, as she afterwards testified, the house a shambles, with straw littered in all the rooms and on the stairs, carpets spread out in the rain in the back yard, and the bath tub stained a curious yellow most difficult to scrub clean. After she had done her work, Mrs. Hampshire had pressed upon her by her Oriental creditor a blue serge suit with bloodstains all over it. Explained Ratanji, "I cut my finger opening a can." The waistcoat was so badly stained that even the frugal charwoman could think of nothing to do with it except burn it.
All this was on Sept. 15 and in Lancaster. Not until Sept. 29 did two ladies stopping at the Buccleuch Arms Hotel, Moffat, Scotland, notice, on strolling near The Devil's Beef Tub, chunks which they as ladies had no stomach to examine. In a decorous way they intimated on returning from their stroll to the Buccleuch Arms that things were not as they should be in The Devil's Beef Tub. Instantly the place was swarming with strong-stomached tourists, Scottish villagers and police inspectors. The services of Sir Bernard Spilsbury were not required. Scotland did its own expert pathological sleuthing at Edinburgh University. Soon, except for the fact that one torso remained missing, there were pieced together by two meticulous Scottish University professors remains of a female of 20, provisionally known as "Body No. 1," and another female of 35, "Body No. 2."
The rest was capable British police inquiry throughout the United Kingdom for citizens who had missed a pair of women. Up to this time Dr. Ruxton's neighbors had credulously accepted his casual references to Mrs. Ruxton's erratic behavior in having gone away for a visit and taken along the children's nurse, without a word to him or any of them.