Murder of the Black Museum 1875-1975: The Dark Secrets Behind a Hundred Years of the Most Notorious Crimes in England

by Honeycombe, Gordon

  Strangely, Muir happened to meet Mahon again the very next day, Saturday, in Victoria Street between 12 noon and 1 pm. Mahon was carrying a kitbag in which would soon repose the newly bought knife and saw. That night he travelled down to Eastbourne, collected Emily Kaye and took her to the Officer’s House.

  No one knows for certain when Emily Kaye died. But she survived their first night together in the bungalow, which was spent in the bedroom that would be occupied by Miss Duncan the following weekend. Emily was seen through a window on the Sunday morning, 13 April, by a butcher who called to deliver some meat. On the same day, Emily called at a neighbouring bungalow to borrow some milk. On Monday, 14 April, she apparently visited Eastbourne, for a letter she wrote to Edith Warren was marked ‘Kenilworth Court Hotel, Eastbourne, Monday’, although it need not have been written there. The letter was not in fact posted until 16 April, when it was dropped by Mahon into a letterbox in south-west London. It read:

  Pat arrived intact, but with his arm in a sling, on Saturday, and we are having a very nice time of it; quiet, a nice change from town. He particularly wants to get to Paris for Easter, and would like you and Fred both to have dinner with us when we return to town. We shall have a few days, about a fortnight, before setting on our final journey … All news when we meet. Lots of love to all the pals and yourself, old bean – Pete.

  Miss Warren tore the letter up and threw the pieces into a bin, where they remained until the police, pursuing their enquiries, retrieved them and stuck them together.

  The letter ties in, although somewhat loosely, with the fact that the last time Emily Kaye was seen alive was at the Kenilworth Court Hotel on either Monday or Tuesday (the 14th or 15th), when she called and enquired whether any letters or a parcel had arrived. The receptionist was uncertain about the exact date.

  Despite Mahon’s later insistence that Miss Kaye died on the Tuesday night after a day-trip to London – where he pretended to go to the passport office while she went to her club – it seems likely that she died on Monday the 14th. In cross-examination at his trial, he said that Miss Kaye was with him in Hastings on the 15th, when at 3.40 pm he sent the telegram to Miss Duncan asking her to meet him the following day at Charing Cross. If Miss Kaye was with him in Hastings, they could have gone there from London. But no evidence was ever produced to show that either Mahon or Miss Kaye was in London on the 15th, or that she was ever in Hastings.

  What is fairly certain, however, is that she wrote a second letter to Edith Warren, dated 14 April – although Mahon later claimed that she actually wrote it on Tuesday the 15th. This letter read:

  Dear old Phiz … I am sorry that I shall not after all be able to see you before my departure. As you can imagine, there has been a lot to do … We shall be travelling overland through France and Italy en route to the Cape. On arrival there I will write regarding prospects and other matters in general. I wish to thank you for all the kindness and friendship you have shown me in the past. One cannot put into words just what one feels, but I am sure you will understand and appreciate just what is in my mind. Any letters addressed to me care of Standard Bank, Cape Town, will find me. As I have said earlier, I will write fully on my arrival. Believe me, yours, Emily Kaye.

  There is something oddly formal about this letter. One wonders whether it was for some reason written under duress. It is hardly the kind of farewell letter that a woman writes to her best friend.

  Mahon’s accounts of the death of Emily Kaye vary in detail (and date). What follows is the story he told the Old Bailey court when he gave evidence in his own defence. He said that after they returned to the bungalow on Tuesday evening, 15 April, he lit a fire. In doing so he carried the coal scuttle from the dining room into the sitting room. There were some large lumps of coal in the scuttle, which he broke up with a small wooden-handled axe, laying it afterwards on the sitting-room table at which Miss Kaye was seated, writing letters. He said she wrote two letters that night, both to Edith Warren. When she finished writing, he said, she looked up and stated: ‘Pat, I’m determined to settle this matter one way or the other tonight.’ She tossed the two letters over to him and said: ‘These letters and my actions mean that I have burned my boats.’ By this he understood that she meant leaving her club. ‘For me there is no turning back,’ she continued. ‘Can’t you realise, Pat, how much I love you, and that you are everything to me, and that I can never share you with another?’ He said: ‘Why can’t we be pals?’ She replied: ‘What’s the use of palship to me, to one of my nature?’ ‘That’s all I can offer you,’ he replied. Then, according to him, she became very excited. He realised that a crisis was coming. She was, he said, ‘distracted and overwrought’.

  At this point the judge intervened. ‘This is a descriptive sort of narrative,’ he said. ‘We want to know what happened.’

  Mahon continued: ‘I said to Miss Kaye: “I’m going to bed,” and I moved away from the table to go to the bedroom. Miss Kaye said something, and as I turned by the bedroom door she threw the axe. I barely had time to avoid it striking me on the right shoulder. It hit over the door or framework of the door. I was astounded by the suddenness of the attack. She leapt across the room clutching at my face.’

  Here Mahon’s voice broke; he staggered; his shoulders heaved and he burst into tears. When he had composed himself, drying his eyes with a silk handkerchief, he went on with his narration:

  I did my best to keep her off. We struggled backwards and forwards, and I realised in a minute that I was dealing with a woman almost mad with anger. I tried to keep her off, but I realised she was getting the better of me … In an almost despairing throw I pushed Miss Kaye off and we both fell over the easy chair on the left of the fireplace. Miss Kaye’s head hit the cauldron and I fell with her – she was underneath. She had gripped me by the throat and I had gripped her by the throat. We were locked together. I think I must have fainted with the fear and shock. When I did become conscious of what had happened, Miss Kaye was lying by the coal scuttle and blood had flowed from her head. I tried to rouse her, pinched her, and called her by name, but she never moved or answered. I think I must have fainted again, or lay in a sort of stupor. I remember dashing water into her face. I must have gone half-mad. I went into the garden crazy with fear. I remember coming back to the bungalow later. Miss Kaye was still lying there, dead. That would be hours later, towards daybreak or at daybreak. It suddenly struck me what a fool I had been not to call for assistance, and it dawned on me what a horrible thing it was that she was lying there, and dead. The fact that she was dead flooded my mind.

  The judge interrupted: ‘You are asked what you did – not all this imagination.’

  Mahon then told the court how he had dragged Miss Kaye’s body into the second bedroom and covered it with a fur coat. He went to Eastbourne about breakfast-time, he said, and then to London to keep his appointment at Charing Cross with Miss Duncan.

  It was on this day that the first letter to Miss Warren was posted from somewhere in south-west London, and that was the night he spent in the Grosvenor Hotel, returning to Eastbourne the following day, Thursday. Before he did so, he sent a telegram at 9.55 am to his wife from Vauxhall Bridge Road near Victoria Station – ‘Expressed you urgent letter. Sorry impossible today. Mahon’

  It was not until the morning of Good Friday, 18 April, according to Mahon, that he began to dismember Miss Kaye’s corpse. He cut off her legs and then her head in order to pack her body into a trunk in the second bedroom. Having done so, he said, he then went by taxi to Eastbourne to meet Miss Duncan at the station just before 2 pm. He later told the police: ‘I should have gone stark raving mad if I had not had her with me. It was ghastly.’

  He and Miss Duncan returned to London on Easter Monday, and very late that night Mahon went home to Pagoda Avenue. But on Tuesday he was away again. He returned to the bungalow on Pevensey Bay, where he burnt the corpse’s head in the sitting-room grate, as well as the feet and legs. Apparently, he did this during a thunder
storm, and later he told his counsel that when he put the head on the blazing fire the eyes opened – just as there was a clap of thunder overhead. Lightning flashed, and he fled from the room in terror. Returning yet again to the bungalow on the Saturday, he disposed of further portions of the now putrefying corpse.

  He explained what he did in his first statement to the police:

  I had to cut up the trunk. I also cut off the arms. I burnt portions of them and then I had to think of some other method of disposing of the portions. I boiled some portions in a large pot in the bungalow. I cut the portions up small, packed them in a brown bag, and I threw them out of the train while I was travelling between Waterloo and Richmond … I had intended to go home Sunday night, and as I could not dispose of all the portions between Waterloo and Richmond, I went on to Reading and stayed at the Station Hotel in the name of Rees.

  This was on the night of 27 April. He arrived about 7 pm, and as he had some luggage with him no deposit was required. ‘Next morning I came to London and left the bag in the cloakroom at Waterloo – on the Monday morning.’

  One wonders at Mahon’s dreadful persistence, at the enormity of his terrible task and the mess he made of it. One wonders how the soda-fountain salesman remained in his right mind, and what Mrs Jessie Mahon thought of his comings and goings and of the strain that must have shown itself in his eyes, face and behaviour. She must have been very concerned and suspicious. But of what? Was she distressed by the thought that he was in the throes of another torrid affair? Or did she suspect something else?

  On the last day of April, she took her worries to a friend, a former railway policeman. She also gave him a cloakroom ticket that she had found in her husband’s pockets, and asked the ex-detective to find out what it was that Pat had left at Waterloo Station. This he did, presenting the ticket at the cloakroom of the south station at Waterloo. He was given a locked Gladstone bag. Easing the sides apart, he was able to see what appeared to be bloodstained female underwear, and a knife. He returned the bag to the cloakroom and the ticket to Mrs Mahon, instructing her to put it back in her husband’s suit.

  On Thursday, 1 May, the ex-detective communicated what he had been told and seen for himself to the Chief Constable of the CID, Frederick Wensley. DCI Percy Savage was asked to investigate. He visited the south station cloakroom at Waterloo himself about 7.15 pm with DS Frew, and after undoing the straps of the bag he was able to peer into it from the side. From then on the bag was kept under direct observation by the police, who were ordered to detain and question whoever came to collect it. They did not have long to wait.

  About 6.30 pm the following day – 2 May – Patrick Mahon paid 5d to retrieve the Gladstone bag from the cloakroom, and as he walked towards the station’s York Road exit he was brought to a halt by DS Thompson. ‘Is that your bag?’ enquired Thompson. ‘I believe so,’ said Mahon. Thompson asked if he might have a look inside the bag. Mahon replied: ‘I haven’t got the key.’ Thompson said: ‘You’ll have to come with me to Kennington police station.’ ‘Rubbish!’ retorted Mahon. Thompson said it was not rubbish and that the other man would have to do as he was told. At the police station, Mahon was searched. Sets of keys, 1,805 francs and a post-office savings book were found on him. He was seen at about 8.30 pm by DCI Savage, who took both Mahon and the bag, still unopened, for examination to Scotland Yard, where they arrived about 9 pm. Mahon was offered a drink and some sandwiches but refused them. The interrogation began about forty-five minutes later in the Chief Inspector’s room.

  ‘Look at the bag carefully,’ said Savage. ‘Is it yours?’ Mahon said: ‘Yes.’ Savage opened the bag and took from it a torn and bloodstained pair of bloomers, two pieces of bloody white silk, a bloody scarf, a cook’s knife and a brown canvas racket bag initialled ‘EBK’. Everything had been liberally sprinkled with a disinfectant – Sanitas. ‘How do you account for the possession of these things?’ asked Savage. ‘I’m fond of dogs,’ replied Mahon – ‘I suppose I have carried home meat for dogs in it.’ ‘That explanation won’t do,’ said Savage. ‘I’ll have to detain you while we make further enquiries.’ Mahon said: ‘You seem to know all about it.’ To which Savage replied: ‘I cannot tell you what I know. It is for you to tell me what you know, and how these things came into your possession.’

  At this point Savage had absolutely no idea what crime, if any, had actually been committed. He waited. The two men sat in silence for fifteen minutes, Mahon with his head hidden in his hands.

  Then Mahon said: ‘I wonder if you can realise how terrible a thing it is for someone’s body to be active and one’s mind to fail to act.’ Savage said nothing. Mahon remained silent for another half-hour before speaking again. He remarked: ‘I’m considering my position.’ Fifteen minutes later he said: ‘I suppose you know everything. I’ll tell you the truth.’

  After being cautioned, he made the first of several detailed and voluntary statements to the police. His story was taken down by DI Hall, and took well over two hours to tell. About 1.30 am Mahon collapsed and had to be revived with some whisky before he could complete the statement, which he did by 2 am. Then he read through what Hall had written. He made some corrections to the statement, initialled each page and signed the last one.

  In this first long statement he revealed how he had quarrelled with Emily Kaye on 16 April in the bungalow, and that during a struggle she had hit her head on the coal scuttle and died. It was on the 17th, he said, that he bought a knife and saw in Victoria Street, and on the 18th that he began to dismember the body. He said he returned to London on Easter Monday. He made no mention of Miss Duncan. It was about 3.30 am before Savage left the room.

  The Chief Constable, Frederick Wensley was informed about Mahon’s statement straight away, and in the early hours of Saturday, 3 May he and Savage drove down to Sussex. After liaising with the East Sussex Constabulary they went to the Officer’s House, still with no sure idea of what they might find.

  The bungalow’s porch was overhung with rambling roses. Inside it stank. In a large locked trunk marked ‘EBK’ was the quartered limbless body of a woman. In a hatbox and a biscuit tin were the heart and other organs. In a saucepan were portions that had been boiled. There were charred remains in the dining-room and sitting-room grates, and a quantity of bone fragments on an ash-dump outside. There were bloodstains on the sitting-room floor and on the door frame. There was no mark, however, on or near the door to indicate that it had been struck with an axe. The axe-head itself was eventually discovered hidden under some coal in the coalhouse; its broken shaft was found in the scullery. A saw was found by a fireplace and the coal scuttle was in the dining room. Miss Kaye’s personal possessions and clothes, some of which had been torn up and wrapped around pieces of her flesh, had been stored in the same bedroom as the trunk.

  DCI Savage returned to London, where Mahon had in the meantime corrected and expanded on his first statement, now revealing details about Miss Duncan’s involvement.

  On Sunday morning, Sir Bernard Spilsbury, who had been knighted earlier that year, visited the bungalow, and out in the back garden began to piece together the remains of Emily Kaye on a table, protected from the eyes of the curious – hundreds of people had gathered at the scene – by a high wall. The police began digging up the garden, searching for the missing limbs and the head. These were never found, and it was thought that Mahon had, as he claimed, destroyed them in the sitting-room fire. Spilsbury was able to establish that Miss Kaye had been about two months pregnant.

  On the afternoon of Monday, 5 May, Patrick Mahon, in a grey suit, was taken to Hailsham in Sussex and charged with the murder of Emily Kaye. He replied: ‘I’ve already made a statement. It wasn’t murder, as my statement clearly shows.’ Police investigations later that month revealed that Emily Kaye had given him the four £100 notes, presumably to pay in part for their trip abroad and the setting up of a home in South Africa. He had cashed two of the notes at the Bank of England before her death, and one after. The fourt
h note was thought by the police to have been changed at Plumpton Races.

  A motive for murder now appeared. Having misled Miss Kaye into thinking that he would marry her, he acquired and spent most of her savings. When she became anxious about the non-realisation of his promises – and also became pregnant – he decided to kill her, for she had become a threat to his marriage, his financial solvency and was bound to be troublesome. He persuaded her to tell her friends that she was engaged to a man called Patterson and that they were going to South Africa to start a new life. She would then conveniently disappear. In his statements he said that she was the motivating force in their association, demanding that he leave his wife, that they get married and go abroad. He said that she bought the ‘engagement’ ring and that he never knew she was pregnant. Probably, if it had not been for Mrs Mahon’s discovery of the cloakroom ticket, Miss Kaye would in due course have vanished entirely from the bungalow on The Crumbles and nothing would have connected Mr Waller of Eastbourne with Mr Mahon.

  The trial of Patrick Mahon began at the Sussex Assizes in Lewes on Tuesday, 15 July 1924. Mr Justice Avory presided. Sir Henry Curtis Bennett, KC, led for the Crown, and the prisoner was defended by Mr JD Cassels, KC, MP. Thousands of people mobbed the courthouse and 200 were actually allowed inside.

  The correspondent from The Times wrote: ‘The accused appeared to be in much better health than when he appeared at the police court, although showing signs of weariness and fatigue.’ In fact, he was looking his best: his face bore an artificial tan created, it is said, by tobacco juice; his hair was immaculate, his hands manicured; and he wore a smart, blue, specially tailored seven-guinea suit. He carefully scrutinised the all-male jury as they were sworn in – three were challenged by Mr Cassels and asked to stand down.