by Peter Graham
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.”
James Elroy Flecker was one of her favourite poets, along with Rupert Brooke, Byron, Shelley, and Edward FitzGerald, translator of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám.
Hilda slept with Juliet that night. Her daughter seemed elated, Hilda would say. She was still reciting poetry as she eventually fell asleep, her mind far distant from Victoria Park.
CHAPTER 4
Taking the Blame
Central Police Station, a large grey stone building, occupied most of the south side of Hereford Street between Cambridge Terrace and Montreal Street. Two-storey and bay-fronted, with Romanesque windows and entranceway, it dated from 1897. Surprisingly harmonious red brick wings had been added in 1906, giving the whole thing the look of a large gloomy house sequestered behind heavy railings.
Behind the station a spacious yard backed on to King Edward Barracks, a large structure used for military drills. Black police cars came and went from the yard: Chevrolets, Plymouth Specials, Ford Consuls, Wolseleys, and four Humber Super Snipes that had been especially bought for the visit of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh five months earlier. The yard also contained the lock-up, a squat stone building with two cells reserved for female prisoners, in one of which Pauline Rieper would spend her first night in police custody. As a prisoner charged with murder, she would be under suicide watch, observed throughout the night—as regulations required in the case of female prisoners—by two constables, one male and one female.
First, though, she had to be formally charged with the murder of her mother. While Detective Sergeant Tate was fiddling about with the paper work, Senior Detective Brown was interviewing poor Bert Rieper. The Riepers’ house was only a few hundred yards from the police station and Bert had walked over at Brown’s invitation. In the course of the interview, Bert delivered some unexpected news: he and Honorah—the deceased—had lived together as man and wife for twenty-five years but never married. He knew he had to tell them, painful as it was to do so: they would find out anyway, sooner or later. The only other living soul who knew was Nora’s mother Amy Parker, who lived at 13 Churchill Street, off Bealey Avenue. Their daughters had no idea in the world.
This was something of a bombshell. Brown called Tate into his office to discuss the matter. If Honorah Rieper had not been lawfully married to Herbert Rieper, legally speaking her name was Honorah Mary Parker and the girl—the illegitimate girl—they were about to charge was Pauline Yvonne Parker. Nora Rieper was there and then expelled from the league of decent married women. Archie Tate later recalled that Pauline was “genuinely astonished to learn her surname was not Rieper”.
While Pauline was in Tate’s office, Tate noticed her scribbling on a piece of scrap paper. She was writing her diary entry for June 22, 1954. She recorded that she had successfully committed her “moider” but “found herself in an unexpected place”. To call it “moider”, like a Brooklyn gangster, was one of the girls’ private jokes.
Pauline was delighted with the attention she had been receiving. “All the Hulmes have been wonderfully kind and sympathetic. Anyone would think I’d been good. I’ve had a pleasant time with the police talking nineteen to the dozen and behaving as though I hadn’t a care in the world.” She ended, “I haven’t had a chance to talk to Deborah properly but I am taking the blame for everything.”
When she finished, Tate seized the piece of paper and read it with disgust. “I am taking the blame for everything”: clearly he and Brown had been taken for a ride. They had been completely sucked in by Juliet Hulme’s tearful insistence she had not been there when Pauline Rieper killed her mother. On that little piece of paper Pauline had made it clear that both girls had been in it together.
More than that, Archie Tate was alerted to the fact the Rieper girl may have kept a diary. Obviously such a diary would be of the greatest interest. Tate asked Bert Rieper, who was still at the station, if he knew whether Pauline kept a diary. She did: he had given her a diary himself for Christmas 1953. And Christmas the year before. He had never looked at her diary: that wouldn’t be honourable.
Tate pointed out that things were different now. The diary might contain evidence pertinent to a murder investigation. Bert said if they came over to the house they would probably find it. Tate and Brown went with him to search his daughter’s bedroom. Pauline had made no attempt to hide her diaries. The current one was in full view on her dressing table. They took them away, together with fourteen exercise books filled with writing, and two scrapbooks containing photographs of film actresses.
There were some chilling entries in the 1954 diary, such as the one for the previous day, Monday, June 21: “I rose late and helped Mother vigorously this morning. Deborah rang and we decided to use a rock in a stocking rather than a sandbag.” The whole thing had obviously been planned and carried out by the pair of them. They would visit Miss Hulme again in the morning.
Bert Rieper was now left with the task of telling Nana Parker that her beloved and only daughter had been bashed to death by one of her granddaughters. How, too, would he break it to Rosemary, the mongoloid child at Templeton Farm, that neither her mother nor her sister Yvonne would ever be visiting her again?
The city’s crime reporters closely followed the comings and goingsat Central Police Station. In the morning a brief item appeared in The Press: “The body of a middle-aged woman was found in a hollow in Victoria Park below the tearooms about four p.m. yesterday. An arrest has been made and a charge of murder will be preferred in the magistrates’ court this morning. The woman was Honora Mary Parker, aged forty-five, of 31 Gloucester Street. Her body was found by the caretaker…” Like the police, and the Crown when it launched the prosecution for her murder, The Press omitted the final “h” from the dead woman’s name.
In the same edition of the newspaper, the celebrated oboist Léon Goossens was awarded plaudits for his “stupendous technical mastery and … flawless musicianship”. The perfect timbre of his “great crescendi and diminuendi” put him “among the immortals”. Juliet was unfortunate to have missed this musical treat.
That same morning Nancy Sutherland was preparing breakfast for her family at their house in Ashgrove Terrace. She and the twins, Diony and Jan, were listening to the news on the wireless. Some woman’s body had been found at Victoria Park. It was murder and an arrest had been made. Jan, who sometimes experienced flashes of prescience, said, “It’s the girls. I bet it’s the girls.”
“Girls?” her mother inquired.
“Juliet. Julie Hulme and Pauline, her friend. I’m certain. She couldn’t go to the recital because there was an accident in Victoria Park. Remember?”
Nancy told Jan in no uncertain terms how ridiculous she was being. She was shocked a daughter of hers could say such a dreadful, silly thing.
At ten o’clock Pauline Yvonne Parker appeared before a magistrate, Rex Abernethy S.M., charged with murder and was remanded in police custody. Nancy, by now put in the picture by a distraughtHilda, drove to Christchurch Girls’ High to tell Jan she had been right. Juliet was involved in the death of the woman in Victoria Park. Pauline Rieper had been arrested. She and Diony were not to discuss it with anyone.
Also that morning, Bert Rieper was escorted by Detective G.F. Gillies to the morgue at Christchurch Public Hospital. He had an unpleasant duty to perform: the dead woman had to be formally identified before Dr Pearson could get started on his post-mortem.
Honorah’s body was a sickening sight. People who saw the police photographs, too disturbing to be produced in court, would still remember that battered head more than fifty years later. The hair was shorn to the scalp, the better to examine numerous head wounds. The woman was unrecognisable from her pallid face, disfigured by hideous bruises and deep gashes around the eyes, ears, forehead and scalp, a good many down to the bone, exposing the smashed skull. Her jaw lay at a crooked angle, obviously broken. In A
rchie Tate’s words, “her head had literally been battered to pieces”.
With the head and face in that condition you couldn’t in all honesty say who she was. But the sturdy, womanly body, the strapping legs—Bert was sure. He had fallen in love with her when she was a twenty-two year old, not long arrived from England with her mother. He had been thirty-six and trapped in a miserable marriage. A formulaic statement was signed for the coroner: “It is the body of Honora Mary Parker. … I last saw [the] deceased at about one p.m. yesterday when I left home after lunch. She was then in good health.”
Further indignities awaited the remains of Nora—now, for official purposes, Honora Mary Parker—at the scalpel of Dr Pearson. After removing and examining her heart, lungs, stomach, kidneys and the rest of her innards, he felt confident to pronounce that the cause of death was shock associated with the multiple wounds of the head and fractures of the skull. In his professional opinion these wounds were inflicted by a blunt instrument applied with considerable force.
Pauline was escorted to and from her first appearance in the magistrates’ court by Margaret Felton, the police matron. Afterwards, Mrs Felton returned her to Tate’s office. The morning was frosty and she and Pauline sat chatting by the coal fire. Tate entered the room with an envelope in his hand. He removed from the envelope the piece of paper taken from Pauline the previous night. “I am taking the blame for everything,” he read to her. That meant, did it not, that Juliet Hulme was as much involved in the attack on her mother as she was?
Pauline asked if she could she talk to Juliet. “Let Deborah and me get together and have a discussion. I am sure Deborah will say whatever I say. She will think it’s right, whatever I say.”
Absolutely not, Tate thought. The girl was dippy, seemed to think it was a game. But thanks to her they would now arrest Juliet Hulme as well. He and Brown departed for Ilam.
Pauline realised perfectly well what Detective Sergeant Tate was getting at. “I am taking the blame for everything” of course implied Deborah was in on it. She had written it realising that impulsively accepting sole responsibility for her mother’s death had been a mistake. That was what she needed to talk to Deborah about. She would end up stuck in New Zealand, in borstal or jail or something, while Deborah went tootling off to South Africa. That wasn’t theidea at all. She intended that Tate would read what she had written. Her plan had succeeded brilliantly. But now they were off to arrest Deborah, Pauline wasn’t sure she wanted her to see the scrap of paper.
Tate’s desk was on the other side of the room from the fireplace where Pauline and the police matron were keeping themselves warm. About ten minutes after the two officers left, Pauline got up and wandered over to it. The hawk-eyed Mrs Felton growled that there was nothing there to interest her. On the desk Pauline spotted the envelope containing her diary entry. She snatched it and threw it into the fire. It started to burn but the matron swiftly rescued it. It was only a little damaged. Pauline went back to the cells in disgrace.
At Ilam, Hilda and Henry Hulme had risen early from their respective beds. As soon as the gardener turned up for work, at Hilda’s instruction Henry gave him some household bits and pieces, among which was the lethal diary. He was to burn the lot in the incinerator. There was nothing odd about that as far as Merv was concerned. The Hulmes were leaving New Zealand any time and it was hardly surprising they should have a clean-out. Having got the gardener, via Henry, to do the dirty work, if Hilda were ever asked whether
she had destroyed Juliet’s diary she could totally deny it—on oath, if necessary.
Henry Hulme and Bill Perry were on hand to meet Brown and Tate when they arrived at Ilam, but not Hilda, who was at the hairdresser’s. Although her daughter had eluded arrest, she knew that, as the mother, she was bound to come in for attention. Her hair required regular styling; there was no reason for her to go about looking like the wreck of the Hesperus. Good grooming was part of the armour with which Hilda would confront the unfriendly citizens of Christchurch in the cruel months ahead. Later she would be criticised for it. One of the university wives called her “hard as nails”.
The two detectives talked to Henry Hulme and Bill Perry. Perry took Brown up to Juliet’s bedroom. She was in bed, calm and composed. Brown told her they had reason to believe her written statement taken the night before was incorrect. She had been present when the assault took place. He formally cautioned her: “You are suspected of murdering Mrs Rieper. You are not obliged to say anything. Anything you say may be taken down in writing and used in evidence.”
Juliet was full of questions. She wanted to know what Gina had told them. Brown told her he wasn’t prepared to say anything, other than that they had reason to believe she was present when Mrs Rieper was killed, and Pauline had said that if she and Deborah had a discussion she was sure Deborah would agree with whatever she said. Was she willing to give some explanation? She was not, just at that moment.
Brown and Perry left the room. After talking to Henry Hulme, they decided to wait until Mrs Hulme returned. A short time after she appeared, Perry told the detectives Juliet would like to see them. She had come to the conclusion that the present situation—Gina under arrest for murder and herself off scot-free—was intolerable. Tate went up to her bedroom first. Juliet sweetly apologised, saying the statement she had signed the previous night was untrue. Now she wanted to tell the truth and was sorry for misleading him before. He cautioned her and she confirmed her willingness to make a further statement. Tate took it down in longhand.
Macdonald Brown, Hilda Hulme and Bill Perry were all present when he read the statement back and Juliet signed it. She hadn’t exactly made a clean breast of it but had said more than enough. Hilda’s thoughts as her daughter confessed to her part in the killing of Honorah Rieper can scarcely be imagined. Henry absented himself. He could not bear to listen.
“Pauline wanted to come with me to South Africa,” Juliet stated. “I wanted her to come too. My father and I were booked to go on 3 July next. Pauline and I had discussed this matter. We both thought Mrs Rieper might object. We decided to go with Mrs Rieper to Victoria Park. We decided that it would be a suitable place to discuss the matter and have it out. I know that it was proposed we should take a brick in a stocking to the park with us. … I left my home with my father about 10.30 yesterday. I had part of a brick which I wrapped in a newspaper. I had got it from near the garage. My father left me near Beaths. I made some personal purchases and walked to the Riepers’ house. I arrived there still carrying the brick. I gave it to Pauline. I know the brick was put in the stocking at the Riepers’ house. I did not put it there. Mrs Rieper, Pauline and I left their place after lunch to go to Victoria Park. Pauline carried the brick and stocking in her shoulder bag. … After the first blow was struck I knew it would be necessary for us to kill her…”
Underneath Archie Tate’s fluent scrawl, Juliet had signed ‘J.M. Hulme’ in a scratchy schoolgirl hand. She was arrested and later that afternoon taken to Central Police Station where she Pauline were reunited. The first chance they had for a proper talk was at nine-thirty in the evening, when they were taken to the old stone lock-up for the night. P.C. Wallace Colville was watch-house constable on duty. He and a female police constable were posted to suicide watch over the two prisoners. Pauline and Juliet, in their pyjamas, were in one cell while Colville and the other constable sat in the other, separated by a narrow passageway.
The two constables were absolutely dumbfounded. Suicide was far from the girls’ minds. One in the top bunk, one below, they chatted to each other as though they hadn’t the slightest concern about anything. They weren’t talking about the murder, just this and that—two normal girls having a good gossip session. At one stage the Hulme girl got out of her bunk and in a cheeky sort of way called out through the bars, “Can I have a cup of tea?” “No. Get back to bed,” Colville said firmly.
The girls talked for about an hour and then went to sleep. They slept sound as a bell. Wally Co
lville couldn’t believe it. He would later hear they were “sort of involved with each other a bit”. There were rumours about things that went on between them when they were in police custody, like fondling each other in a sexual way. Well nothing like that happened on P.C. Colville’s watch—for absolute certain.
Deborah and Gina were happy. Together again. Whatever happened next, one thing was sure: Deborah would not be going to South Africa, leaving Gina behind. In April, when they had first heard Deborah’s parents were leaving New Zealand, were probably going to divorce, and South Africa was mentioned, the two girls had made a pact: they would sink or swim together. Even if they were now sinking, they were still together and would remain together. Nothing else mattered.
The following morning, Thursday, June 24, Juliet Marion Hulme, four months short of her sixteenth birthday, stood before Raymond Ferner S.M., jointly charged with the murder of Honora Mary Parker. She was represented by Mr T.A. Gresson. Henry and Hilda Hulme sat to the left of the dock. By then the whole of Christchurch had got wind of it. All the public seats in the No. 1 Courtroom were taken and a capacity crowd craned their necks at the back. The Christchurch Star-Sun reported that the prisoner looked pale but showed no sign of emotion. Nora Rieper was cremated that same morning at the Bromley Cemetery, after a funeral as miserable as they come.
CHAPTER 5
A Suitable Man
When Dr Henry Hulme applied for the position of rector of Canterbury University College, Lord Snow—the great C.P. Snow, scientist, novelist and Whitehall mandarin—informed the selection panel he “knew few men more suitable for the position of principal of a university college”. Another of Hulme’s supporters declared him “really too good for such an intellectually isolated country”. His wife Hilda, the panel was assured, showed loyal devotion to her husband and family; she would “grace any function she attended, whether in a public or private capacity”. Her “good appearance … charm, presence and dignity, fitted her perfectly for a principal’s wife”. Even little Juliet fitted the bill: Dr and Mrs Hulme had a “charming daughter (nine in October) who inherits her mother’s good looks”.