The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective

by Susannah Stapleton

  A similar technique involved, in Kate Easton’s words, ‘what some detectives might call blackmailing the blackmailer’ – and that was exactly what it was. She explained how she had successfully dispatched the ‘Terror of the Tea Rooms’ (a professional seductress who picked up her victims over afternoon tea) by writing a polite note offering her the choice between leaving the country or being shadowed constantly by detectives who would warn everyone of her true intentions. The woman left by the next boat.40

  By her own admission, Maud relished blackmail cases, calling them ‘extraordinarily interesting because you do get some real insight into the curious workings of people’s minds.’41 I could see why. Of all the work private detectives undertook, this type of crime highlighted the very worst in people. Maud’s interest lay in the psychology of the perpetrators (‘It is really astonishing what the blackmailer will think and do’), but I found the victims even more interesting. Did they curl up and allow themselves to be bled dry or put up a fight?

  Some fought back in extraordinary ways, as was demonstrated by a case that had bounced around the courts in Belfast for a number of years. It started in the hands of an unnamed private detective who was hired in 1921 to investigate some threatening letters sent to various members of the wealthy Walker family. The letters had come from a middle-aged woman called Ellen Whan, who had given birth to Mr Walker’s child when she was a young maidservant and was now seeking payment in exchange for her silence.

  The letters were disturbing enough – one was a drawing of a coffin with details of Mrs Walker’s impending funeral, another said, ‘I will shoot you’ – but then the chocolates began to arrive. The first box was laced with oxalic acid, the second with phosphoric match heads, the third with broken glass.42 The matter was handed over to the police, and Ellen Whan was charged with attempted murder. In 1928, however, the case returned to the courts with new evidence that she had been framed by Mrs Walker, who had sent many of the letters and bought the oxalic acid herself.43

  This was an extreme example, but amateur blackmail cases were rarely clear cut. Was Ellen Whan justified in her original demand? In a world where many struggled to feed their families whilst others breakfasted on champagne, who could blame the poor and downtrodden for attempting to extract their due from those who had wronged them? Maud didn’t, if her statement in 1924 was anything to go by:

  Some of the cases are sad, as, for instance, when the offender does not start with the idea of blackmail, but is pushed into it by force of circumstances. It may be that he is almost destitute and has lost everything of value except this one piece of information which he threatens to use.44

  How else could one expect to attain any measure of meaningful justice from a system tipped so heavily in favour of the rich and the male?

  One Harrods tennis outfit (cheap)

  Lady’s bicycle in good condition (£3 10s.)

  One large easy chair (£5)

  Harley-Davidson and sidecar, late 1919, in perfect condition (£120)

  Two Aylesbury ducks, five Runners, and twelve hens in full lay (12s. 6d. each)

  There were no dark secrets or menaces there, just a jumble of things that the residents of Pearley, Finchley Avenue were attempting to offload through the Hendon and Finchley Times between 1918 and 1921. They were also seeking a housekeeper (‘good home, wages and outings – Apply after 7 pm’) and, for some reason, frequently looking to buy gentlemen’s tricycles.45

  Using a mishmash of electoral rolls, old census reports and army records, I had established that the house in Finchley Avenue was more crowded than I had thought – and not just with poultry. There was Edith, of course, and Harry, who had clung on to life despite the misgivings of the Pearl Assurance Company; the housekeeper appeared to be a woman called Helen Barber, but also in residence was the youngest of Harry’s eight siblings, Charles Lawrence Elliott, and his wife Mollie. At some point, there was also a puppy, although whether it survived into doghood was unclear:46

  Tennis, ducks, lost dogs: it was all very suburban. The Harley-Davidson added an edgy touch, but it was still far removed from the picture of the Elliotts’ home life that I’d imagined. It soon became apparent, however, that life at Pearley was not all it seemed.

  The mystery started to emerge as I tried to find out more about Charles. Less than robust health seemed to run in the family. According to his First World War record, Charles had left the family home in Hackney to report for duty in the Army Cyclist Corps in July 1915. He was nineteen years old. His recurrent piles weren’t ideal for a cyclist, but neither was his club foot encased in its special boot, which the medical examiners appeared to have missed. As such, he undertook only light duties and was eventually sent to work in the Labour Corps storerooms. In March 1918, he was finally discharged as permanently unfit due to his disability, but he’d given it his best, as a note by his commanding officer made clear: ‘A very good man – honest & trustworthy.’47

  After moving in with Edith and Harry at Pearley, however, he appeared to have made a remarkable recovery, to such an extent that the Sportsman’s Battalions would have welcomed him with open arms. In October 1920, for example, he took silver in the Gentleman’s Championship Medal at the Finchley Swimming Gala.48 In 1926, he was fined twenty shillings for haring around in a noisy motor car.49 Ancestry even had his aviator’s certificate, which he’d gained in a de Havilland Gipsy Moth at the Cotswold Aero Club in August 1934.50 In the accompanying photograph, he looked quite the debonair flying ace:

  He had a completely different build to the weedy eight-and-a-half stone he had presented to the army at nineteen. His occupation was given as ‘Dentist’ and his address at that point was the flat in Great Russell Mansions.

  A club foot or haemorrhoids didn’t preclude any of this, of course, although the type of fitness regime required to transform him into a strapping pilot would have been challenging. What was more suspicious was that whilst married to Mollie, trading as a Harley Street dentist and performing weekend aerobatics over the Cotswolds, Charles also appeared to have another wife in Clapham and a thriving business manufacturing radios.

  I went back over everything and double checked. Had I got confused, or missed something? Was it just coincidence that Edith and Harry knew two men with identical names who had been born on the same day? But, no, the evidence was clear. Only one such man existed. Harry’s brother, the real Charles Lawrence Elliott, lived in Queen’s Road, Clapham with his wife Kate. He built radios for a living, and had followed his father into being a Freeman of the City of London. Whoever was living with Edith and Harry was an imposter.

  What was going on? Were the Elliott boys’ criminal roots stronger than I thought? Were they running some kind of scam? Or were Edith and Harry somehow beholden to this man and his wife? Maybe I’d been reading too many of Maud’s stories, but life in suburbia suddenly looked a lot more interesting.

  The Clairvoyante Case

  BY MAUD WEST

  One day a well-known lawyer came to my office and asked me to handle a case which, from the beginning, interested me greatly. He represented an extremely wealthy family, which possessed a closely guarded secret. This secret, shared only by three senior members of the family, had somehow become known, and an unknown individual was making excellent capital out of his knowledge, and had already secured several handsome money ‘presents’ from the family as the price of his silence.

  His method of getting this money paid over was so clever that there was not the slightest clue as to his identity, and therefore it was impossible to interview this impudent blackmailer and to discover how he had obtained possession of the secret.

  I asked the solicitor if the three members of the family had discussed the secret at any time, and he elicited from his clients that they had done so, but only on occasions when they were alone, so they thought it impossible for it to leak out in this direction. However, the idea occurred to me that it was very possible that someone employed in the house had overheard one of
these conversations and communicated the information to some individual outside, and I decided to start my investigations from this basis.

  Altogether there were eight servants of both sexes employed in and about the house, and I puzzled my brains as to the best method by which I could get into the confidence of each of these servants and discover whether a conversation had been overheard and the secret divulged that way.

  Eventually I formed a plan. I sent off an operative post haste and engaged a room over some business premises in a small town which was situated near the house. We furnished this room with dark hangings and crystal globes, and after a great deal of trouble secured the atmosphere usually associated with palmists and fortune-tellers. Then I had a wonderful robe made, covered with black cats and moons, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of the ‘seeress.’

  Shortly afterwards all the servants at the house received a printed circular which informed them that ‘Madame—, the celebrated clairvoyante,’ had taken a branch office in the nearby town, and that she would be glad to give one free reading to the recipient of the circular.

  The plot worked, although results did not happen as quickly as I had hoped, and it was some three weeks before the first maid-servant from the house appeared. I told her fortune (I made it a very good one), and, by some cleverly planned questions, managed to elicit from her quite a little information about the other maids in the house. She went off very pleased with her ‘free reading,’ and promised that she would send the other servants.

  One by one, they came, usually on their afternoon off, and it was quite obvious to me after I had seen and talked with each one, that they were innocent of any complicity in the blackmail. But there was one maid-servant who had not taken advantage of my free offer, and it was only after a great deal of scheming in which I used two of the other maid-servants as my unconscious aids – they having told her how marvellous my readings and advice were – that I managed to get this particular girl to come for a reading.

  Directly I saw this girl and talked to her I was struck by her astuteness and intelligence, and I made up my mind that I would endeavour to use the scheme which I had worked out might be successful if I suspected one of the servants.

  I had previously interviewed the members of the family, and discovered as nearly as possible the circumstances under which the conversations between themselves had taken place; the time of night or day, and the exact descriptions of the different rooms in which they had talked.

  With these facts in my mind, after I had turned the lights down to a glimmer and produced my crystal globe, which I placed on the table between us, I began to describe a scene which was a vague description of one of the rooms where the discussion had taken place. Then I described the members of the family seated together talking, and, as I noticed the girl’s face growing whiter and whiter, it became obvious to me that I was on the right track, and that this was the girl who had listened and overheard the conversation.

  I next began to describe a personality like that of the girl on the opposite side of the table. Then I said that I saw her in my crystal listening to the grave secret being discussed.

  I was watching the girl out of the corners of my eyes, and I could see that she was thoroughly frightened. I began to advise her that her connection with some outside person, with reference to the secret she had overheard, was a very dangerous thing, and might bring very great difficulties into her life.

  Suddenly the girl gave an exclamation and burst into tears, and almost before I realised the absolute success of my scheme she was letting out the truth.

  She had overheard the conversation, and had told her sweetheart. He was the unknown individual who had, by means of anonymous letters, so cleverly blackmailed the family, and, although for certain reasons no proceedings were taken against him, an interview which he had shortly afterwards with a male member of my staff convinced him that any further lapse on his part would quickly end him in gaol.51

  Chapter Nine

  Wanted: Someone Innocent

  Experience has to be earned, but it is fine capital.

  Maud West, 19281

  ‘HOW’S YOUR LIVER? … Do you feel tired and drowsy? Do you feel depressed?’ What about chilblains, biliousness or brain fog? Do you have a Strange Fear of People, Places and Things? Dandruff? Judging by the advertisements pouring out of Albion House after the war, the people of Britain had been left in an itchy and twitchy state after four years of conflict.2 But, as ever, its residents were on hand to provide relief through dubious patent remedies. One new enterprise had taken the quackery to a new level, however. Run by a former mining engineer called Frederick Turquand, the Albion Electric Company was hawking a High Frequency Electricity machine for the home treatment of everything from lacklustre hair to shell shock.3

  Curious as to what this marvellous contraption looked like – was it more akin to a cattle prod or an electric chair? – I’d searched patent records to see if Turquand had submitted an application with the necessary drawings. He hadn’t. But, whilst looking, I found that a Henry Elliott of Pearley, Finchley Avenue was also something of an inventor. In 1927, he’d taken out a patent for a hat and coat hook that could be affixed to the wall using a suction cup:4

  It was the perfect gift for a roving lady detective in need of somewhere to park a rakish cap, but it also got me thinking about Harry’s involvement in the Maud West agency. Although he cropped up in the press occasionally as an assistant detective and was named as the manager in one advert, he’d also been described as ‘a husband of independent means.’ Was he just a silent partner, fully hands on, or somewhere in between? The coat hook suggested that he spent a fair amount of time tinkering in a shed, which in turn possibly explained the obsession at Pearley for purchasing gentlemen’s tricycles. There was also evidence that he had business interests elsewhere: in 1925, he’d been sued for debt by a man from Friern Barnet and had told the judge, whether truthfully or not, that he had lost £500 on some financial speculation and was only earning £4 a week.5 If he had independent means, they weren’t very reliable.

  Curious inventions aside, Albion House was as colourful as ever, largely thanks to an influx of theatrical agents. Given the building’s proximity to London’s theatreland, there had always been a few rattling around, but now agencies and production companies were spread throughout the building. Many specialized in variety and music hall and summoned performers to their offices for auditions, ensuring a steady flow of chorus girls, acrobats and pantomime dames clattering up the stairs.6 Another noticeable change was that the car showroom on the ground floor now displayed rows of Buicks, Fords and Chevrolets, all made by American manufacturers who had taken over redundant wartime production plants.7

  The effect of the war was also evident in the activities of another newcomer, Frederick Turquand’s wife: whilst Mr T was jolting men out of their shell shock, Mrs T (a ‘splendidly energetic woman’, as one would expect) was tending to casualties of a different sort. Mrs Turquand’s Bureau for the Aristocratic Poor had opened its doors in 1921 to find domestic work for society women who had been driven to ‘stark, staring ruin’ after losing their menfolk in the war. As the London social correspondent of the Queenslander reported:

  In one country mansion there are three of her clients, two holding titles, who undertake the entire domestic work. No one can know better than a born gentlewoman how another gentlewoman’s house should be kept, and I feel sure these mistresses who employ such find they have treasures.8

  It was a noble effort, but such women represented only a tiny proportion of those who found themselves unexpectedly having to make their own way in life, with all the challenges that presented.

  There had been more women than men in Britain for decades, but the slaughter of nearly three-quarters of a million soldiers had made the gender imbalance perceptibly worse. As young officers were represented disproportionately in this figure, middle-class women in their twenties and thirties were particularly affected. Whereas th
ey might have had expectations of marriage and motherhood, many now had little choice but to go it alone. For some, the opportunities they forged in business and public life would be their salvation, but, as Maud pointed out, there were also plenty of traps in this brave new world for the unwary.

  There were, of course, the ever-present bounders, gigolos and love rats to lead them astray, and blackmailers to pounce on any indiscretions, but in 1919 she identified a new threat, one that had emerged as a direct result of the war. The victims, she said, were young women who had worked in munitions factories and other wartime enterprises. Having laboured around the clock for four years with little opportunity to spend their wages, many had substantial savings and no idea what to do with them. Circulars and advertisements promised all manner of business and investment opportunities. As Maud wrote:

  I don’t say that all of them are fraudulent, but many of them are – the ‘partnership’ fraud is being worked now for all it is worth by alert but entirely unscrupulous people. Their victims are, for the most part, girls who are not very well educated, and who are inexperienced and quite ignorant of the world. It is simply astounding how readily some of these girls have been induced to part with their savings.9

  She told of one client who had fallen prey to a gang who haunted tea shops and restaurants looking for young women with money to spare. ‘She was a pretty girl of about twenty-three who had been working, I believe, at Gretna during the war,’ Maud wrote. She had saved over £400 and was staying in London with her aunt, enjoying her new-found financial freedom. One night, whilst dining alone at a West End restaurant, she fell into conversation with a young man. Romance blossomed. At a concert one afternoon, they bumped into one of his friends, ‘a genial, prosperous-looking gentleman of about sixty’, who took them to tea and persuaded them to become managing partners in his new photographic business. The price of each partnership was £400. It was to be a joyous adventure with people she liked. After Maud’s client had handed over her portion of the money, however, both men disappeared.