Department of Why-Isn't-This-a-Movie-Yet

Recently on tumblr I came across a link to a 2012 article about pre-WWI Chicago private eye Miss Cora M. Strayer and her colourful career. While looking for further details, I found out that the Chicago police, about a decade later, had an equally exciting female detective named Mrs. Alice Clement. An article titled "The Detective Wore Pearls" details her glamour and badassery, and mentions a murder case known as "The Dulcimer," but fails to give a full account.

I've now located a scan of the case's write-up in the Clinton Courier, as told by "The World's Greatest Female Detective," (Det. Sgt. Clement was not above a bit of self-promotion, and despite the title of this entry she actually did play herself in a silent film, now lost.)

I'm still puzzled by a few details of the case not covered in the article, mainly why the police were called in the first place if everyone believed the victim had died of typhoid. Some articles suggest the victim was a suspected prostitute; Clement simply states that the death was being checked because it happened in a slum tenement, and apparently policewomen of the time tended to double as social workers. It's possible she and her colleague were simply trying at first to identify the victim so the family could be notified.

At any rate, from there it turns into a Holmesean tale about a particularly cunning murder method.

As for Detective Clement -- sadly, after a career of "high heels furs, and ju-jistsu," she faded into retirement and died at forty-eight from diabetes and is largely forgotten. although apparently in her heyday, her very presence on the force caused the conservative Chief McWeeny (I'm not making that name up) to retire in protest.

On second thought, this needs to be a tv show, possibly with crossovers or flashbacks to Cora Strayer's investigations.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the law and the Atlantic

From 1920s female detectives to 1920s female criminals — apparently London’s West end had an all-woman organize crime syndicate called the Forty Elephants that began at least as far back as the 1870s and continued until the 1950s. Their heyday was in the ‘twenties, under the rule of a woman known as Alice Diamond. Most of them spent their ill-gotten gains on partying, but one apparently set up a carefully constructed alternate identity as an upper-class lady living out in the country who ran all the local social events and was known for her generosity (her frequent trips into London were explained as visits to her rakish husband, to plead with him to reform). So, basically that’s a real-life Agatha Christie novel right there.