Murder on the Home Front

by Molly Lefebure

  The jury took only twenty minutes to find a verdict. The court was packed to its limit with people waiting with truly bated breath for the coup de grâce, the descabello. And then word went around that the jurymen were coming back. Dobkin was brought up into the dock again; he stood there, very pale, poking his big, anxious nose into the air, as if trying to smell the verdict in advance, as the jurymen, never looking at Dobkin (a bad sign, this), filed into the court.

  “Members of the jury,” cried the clerk of the court, “are you agreed upon your verdict?”

  The foreman of the jury replied, in a low voice, “We are.”

  “Do you find the prisoner, Harry Dobkin, guilty or not guilty of murder?”

  “Guilty, my lord.”

  “You find him guilty of murder, and that is the verdict of you all?”

  “That is the verdict of us all.”

  All eyes were fixed on Dobkin’s face. When he heard the word “Guilty,” falling heavily as a black stone into the solemnity of the courtroom, he turned green, a vomiting green of the sea.

  The clerk of the court resumed, after a short pause, “Prisoner at the bar, you stand convicted of murder. Have you anything to say why the Court should not give you judgment of death according to the law?”

  Dobkin was always ready to say something, and even at this dire moment he produced a sheet of paper and began reading one of his long rigmaroles from it, accusing the police of having fabricated the case against him and asserting that not all the witnesses had been called. He had witnesses who could prove, he said, who could prove who could prove…but his speech became more and more disjointed, we could not understand what his witnesses could prove, for his words stuck like a cracked record and then gradually whittled away, leaving him lamely and huskily concluding, “I hope I have not said too much.”

  Mr. Justice Wrottesley put on his black cap, and Dobkin stared at it helplessly as the judge began to speak, very slowly, very clearly.

  “Harry Dobkin, after a patient hearing the jury have come to what I think is the right conclusion on this matter. The sentence is the sentence laid down by law for the offense which you have committed, and it is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution, and that you be there hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that your body be afterward buried within the precincts of the prison in which you shall have been confined before your execution. And may the Lord have mercy on your soul.”

  “Amen,” said the chaplain.

  There was a moment of utter silence. Then Dobkin turned and walked down from the dock to the cells below, very pale, with a sudden strange vagueness about him, as though his strength and bulk had been driven from him at one blow.

  That was the last time I saw Harry Dobkin, alive, though his face as he stood there in the dock listening to the death sentence still haunts me, as no other condemned man’s face has. I wonder if those other people who were there watching also find it so impossible to forget.

  The next and last time I saw Harry Dobkin was shortly after he had been hanged.

  It was a foggy, cold morning when Mr. Wyatt the coroner, Dr. Simpson, Mr. Rawlings, Mr. Hatton, Mr. Keeling, and myself met in the outer yard of Wandsworth prison. After tolling the dismal doorbell we were admitted within the chilling, escapeless walls, and made our way to the prison mortuary, a small building among coal dumps and outhouses. It was clammy in there, and we stamped our feet and shivered as we waited. Then there was the sound of cartwheels rumbling and clattering (the noise, I imagine, the tumbrils of Paris must have made; creak, clank, and rattle) up to the mortuary door. The mortuary assistant opened the door and there, on a rough handcart, lay the body of Harry Dobkin, clad in vest, trousers, and socks, with the deep mark of the noose around his thick, muscular neck.

  They lifted him into the mortuary and placed him on the p.m. table. He looked very peaceful. His debts were settled at last.

  The assistant stripped him. Mr. Keeling murmured, contemplating those brawny shoulders and muscled arms, “It couldn’t have taken much of his strength to kill that poor little woman.”

  We were told Dobkin had died quietly and bravely, praying ardently.

  And that was the end of Harry Dobkin, and the epilogue to the famous Baptist Chapel Cellar Murder, which made medico­legal and CID history, brought promotions to several detectives, set the Guy’s Hospital Department of Forensic Medicine off to a flying start, and added one more great murder story to the list of great murder stories marching gruesomely, but with horrible fascination, down the weirdly echoing corridors of time.

  CHAPTER 11

  The Wigwam Murder

  We must now go back to the beginning of October and those days when DDI Hatton was in the throes of arresting Dobkin, and was receiving all those wordy notes: “Divisional Inspector, Dear Sir…”

  That was in Southwark, among sooty warehouses and gray old streets. In Surrey, against a background of autumn-tinted trees and windy heathland slopes, another outstanding murder drama came to light.

  On October 7, CKS got a call from the Surrey police, saying that a body had been found buried on Hankley Common, near Godalming, and they were anxious for Dr. Simpson to come at once. We canceled all other appointments, and by midday we were driving fast in the direction of Godalming.

  Hankley Common was a former beauty spot: all heathery slopes, broken with graceful spinneys of birch and oak, and surrounded by wide vistas of wooded countryside and windswept sky. The army, noting its loveliness, had of course taken it over as a battle-training ground. Camps had been built in the neighboring woods, and every day young men were taken out and toughened up amidst a welter of antitank obstacles, mortar ranges, field telephones, and trip wires.

  We arrived at Hankley Common to find a large party of policemen, headed by the Chief Constable of Surrey and Superintendent Roberts, and fortified by Dr. Eric Gardner, the pathologist, awaiting us in a muddy hollow. Greetings were exchanged, and then off we set to climb a windy ridge which reared itself, rain swept and dismal, ahead of us.

  (It is odd how it invariably begins to rain when one reaches the scene of a crime. Up till that time, for instance, it had been quite a bright sunny day.)

  As we struggled up the ridge, Superintendent Roberts told us how the body was found. The previous day two marines, busy training, had discovered an arm sticking out of a mound of earth on the top of the ridge and had immediately reported this to the police. The body had been left buried until the pathologists could arrive.

  The top of the ridge was gained, and there was the mound of earth with a withered arm sticking out from the side of it. Rats had gnawed away parts of the fingers. We stood contemplating it, shivering a little in the wet wind, and trying to warm ourselves with cigarettes, while the Chief Constable, Dr. Gardner, Dr. Simpson, and Superintendent Roberts held a quick consultation. Below us a party of soldiers were busy at mortar practice, their shells whirling and whining over our heads every few minutes.

  The two pathologists now took shovels and began very carefully uncovering the rest of the body. They had not been long at the job before a great stench of rotting flesh set everybody else busily judging the direction of the wind and then moving accordingly. The pathologists continued to dig, oblivious of everything but their task, and I was obliged to stay beside them, taking from them specimens of beetles, maggots, earth, and heather, which I placed in the famous buff envelopes. And so the work went slowly on, until there lay exposed the sprawling, badly decomposed body of a girl.

  The body was clothed in a green-and-white summer dress, light summer underwear, woolen ankle-socks, and a headscarf which lay loosely around the neck. The head had been battered in by some heavy, blunt implement.

  It was decided to move the body to Guy’s, and there was some discussion as to whether CKS and I should travel back to London in a van with the body or by police car. Much to my relief the police car was finally chosen.

  The body soon arrived at Guy’s, a
nd CKS had it placed in a large carbolic tank so that he might study it at his leisure, or, if you prefer it, in his “spare time.”

  “Spare time” mostly came at teatime, so, for the next few weeks, CKS arranged for us to take our tea beside the carbolic tank and its gruesome contents. This, I thought, was a very unattractive idea, for the smell of the body combined with the carbolic was enough to put the most insensitive off anchovy toast and tea cakes. However, it was not my place to complain, so there I sat with my tea tray and memo pad, jotting the notes which CKS dictated to me as he stooped, all concentration, over the body.

  Dr. Gardner frequently came up to Guy’s to assist with the examination of the body. The two pathologists discovered that the girl had received stabbing wounds to the left side of the top of the head, accompanied by similar wounds to the right arm and hand; these last resulting from the victim putting up her arm in an attempt to ward off the attack.

  The pathologists came to a very interesting conclusion about these stab wounds. Because of certain characteristics it was clear they must have been inflicted with a hook-pointed knife. Neither Dr. Simpson nor Dr. Gardner had ever seen such a knife, but the nature of the wounds convinced them that such a knife must have been used.

  Secondly, there were injuries to the mouth in keeping with the girl having fallen heavily onto her face, knocking out her front teeth.

  Thirdly, there had been a single very heavy, blunt blow to the back of the head. Dr. Simpson and I spent a whole afternoon wiring together all the fragments of shattered skull; it was like doing an exceptionally thrilling and elaborate jigsaw puzzle. When we had finished we found there was a vast depressed fracture of the skull, five inches in length and one and three-quarters in breadth, across the back of the head, as from a blow with a stake, or bough, or rounded bar. Such a blow would have killed the girl immediately.

  A crush fracture of the right cheekbone showed that she had been lying facedown on the ground at the time she received this blow.

  Lastly there were dragging wounds to the right leg, which had occurred after death, and which indicated that her body had been dragged over rough, open ground before burial.

  So, from these teatime sessions beside the carbolic tank, CKS was able to tell the police that the girl had been stabbed at with a strange hook-pointed knife, had fallen on her face, knocking out three teeth, and while lying thus had been dealt a tremendously heavy murderous blow to the back of her head with a round, blunt instrument such as a bar or stake, and finally, being dead, had been dragged over rough ground to the top of the ridge.

  Meantime things had not been standing still in Surrey, either.

  The Surrey police had decided to call in Scotland Yard, and Mr. Greeno, now a chief inspector, had gone down to Godalming, on what was to prove one of his most exciting investigations.

  It did not take the police long to identify the dead girl, through the clothes she was wearing and a portion of scalp with bleached blonde hair. A blonde girl in her late teens, wearing a green-and-white frock and a head scarf, was already known to the local police; she had for sometime past caused them concern by her mode of life, for she lived rough like a tramp and consorted with soldiers. She was not, the police thought, a really bad girl, but she had run away from her home, and was in need of proper care and protection, or she would, they surmised, rapidly come to grief.

  Her name was Joan Pearl Wolfe, she was a Roman Catholic with a strong religious conviction, and, alas, poor girl, she surely came to grief.

  She had last been seen alive on September 13, which tallied with Dr. Simpson’s estimate of the time which must have elapsed since death.

  Mr. Greeno on his arrival set his men to searching the ground around Hankley Common ridge. Day in, day out, they searched.

  Bit by bit they collected clues. First they found the girl’s shoes, lying some distance apart from one another, and some way from the body’s burial place. Then a bag with a rosary in it was found near one of the shoes, close by a small stream where there was a military trip wire. Sixteen yards away was found a heavy birch stake. Clinging to this stake were a number of long blonde hairs.

  Later, in a small dell up the hillside above the stream, Joan Pearl Wolfe’s identity card was found, with a religious tract, and a document which was issued by the Canadian Army to men applying for permission to marry. There was also a green purse, an elephant charm, and a letter from Joan to a Canadian private called August Sangret, telling him she was pregnant by him and hoping he would marry her.

  Mr. Greeno learned that Joan, since July, had been living in the neighborhood in rough huts, or “wigwams,” which August Sangret had built for her, and where he had spent his leaves with her.

  A deserted cricket pavilion which had also been a favorite rendezvous for Joan and Sangret was visited by the detective. Inside, Joan had drawn and scribbled all over the walls. She had drawn a wild rose, writing under it, “Wild Rose of England for ever—September 1942.” And there was another sketch of a cabin, “My little gray home in the West.” And a prayer written in pencil:

  “O holy Virgin in the midst of all thy glory we implore thee not to forget the sorrows of this world…”

  There was also penciled the address of Private A. Sangret, of Canada, and the address of Joan’s mother in Kent.

  The girl, at one stage, it was discovered, had been admitted to a local hospital, where she kept a photograph of Sangret, her “fiancé,” on her bedside locker. From hospital she had written to tell him she was pregnant; pathetic letters explaining that the nuns at the convent where she had been brought up had taught her that an illegitimate baby was a terrible sin, but, she naïvely added, when she and Sangret were married and happy together with the baby everything would be all right.

  She bought layette patterns, and people who saw this girl-tramp in the woods in the weeks before she was murdered noticed she was knitting baby clothes…

  Chief Inspector Greeno now went to the nearby Canadian Army camp where Sangret was stationed. Sangret was a young man half French Canadian, half Cree Indian. He had recently asked his CO for a marriage application form, but had not returned it filled in. He admitted to Mr. Greeno that he had associated with Joan, but added he had not seen her since September 14, when she had failed to keep a date with him. He had reported her “disappearance” to his provost sergeant, saying, “If she should be found, and anything has happened to her, I don’t want to be mixed up in it.” He had told a friend that he had sent Joan home, as she had no clothes, and he told another friend that she was in hospital. These friends of Sangret admitted to Mr. Greeno that they thought Sangret’s behavior over Joan’s disappearance “very strange.” First he had said one thing, then he said another, and seemed very much on edge over the whole business.

  While Sangret was waiting in the guard room for this first interview with Mr. Greeno he excused himself and went to the washhouse. Nobody thought anything of it, at the time…

  Mr. Greeno, after this interview, came hurrying up to Guy’s. He arrived in a van, in the back of which he had what appeared to be a section of Hankley Common. There were furze and bracken, hummocks of grass, and a small tree. These were to be examined for bloodstains. There was, in addition, a Canadian Army blanket, and a battle dress, and the birch stake that had been found by the stream.

  Dr. Simpson and Mr. Greeno spread the blanket and battle dress out on a table in the lab and examined them. Both belonged to Sangret and both had recently, but not very effectively, been washed. (Sangret apparently could not, or would not, explain why he had washed them.) On the blanket, despite the washing, were faded bloodstains, distributed exactly in keeping with a person bleeding from the head and right hand that had been wrapped in the blanket. Dr. Simpson decided that the body, prior to burial, had been wrapped in this blanket—and probably concealed among bushes. This would explain the very heavy maggot infestation of the body, which had clearly not been buried immediately after death.

  The bloodstains on the battle dr
ess no doubt occurred during Sangret’s attack on the girl.

  The hairs on the birch stake were examined, compared with the hank of the dead girl’s hair already in our possession, and proved beyond doubt to be hairs from the head of Joan Pearl Wolfe. The birch stake, too, exactly fitted the huge fracture at the back of the reconstructed skull. This was certainly the weapon with which the girl had been murdered.

  “Now all we want is to find the knife,” said Mr. Greeno. And returned, accordingly, to searching the ground that had already been searched and searched. For it is infinite patience which so often wins the detective’s day. But the knife was not lying among the grass and bracken of Hankley Common. Very dramatically it turned up in quite a different place…

  In mid-November, long after all the leaves had blown down from the trees of Surrey, and Mr. Greeno’s investigations were plugging doggedly, but not very rapidly, along, up at the Canadian Army camp the waste pipe of one of the washhouse basins was cleared of an obstruction which had been blocking it for the past five weeks. This obstruction turned out to be a clasp knife—not a Canadian Army issue, but an unusual-looking knife with a hooked point; a point like a parrot’s beak. And it was immediately recalled that Sangret had excused himself and gone into the washhouse while waiting for that first interview with Mr. Greeno, five weeks previously. Was this Sangret’s knife, and had he dropped it down the pipe in an attempt to hide it from Mr. Greeno, knowing what a vital clue it would be to the detective?

  It was Sangret’s knife, all right. One of his fellow soldiers recognized it as such. This soldier had found the knife, he said, during the summer stuck in the trunk of a tree by one of the shacks Sangret had built for Joan. The soldier had pulled it out of the tree and shown it to Sangret, who had immediately claimed it as his own.