Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century

by Peter Graham

  Next day Pauline finished Leander or Léandre and the family plus boarders at 31 Gloucester Street had a glass of wine to celebrate. On Friday she returned to Ilam to discover that Miss Stewart had tele­phoned Hilda Hulme, concerned to hear her daughter’s friend was leaving school. Hilda tried to talk her into staying on, which Pauline found “all very flattering … but nevertheless a bloody nuisance”. When Henry and Hilda went out, the girls strolled around in Hilda’s evening dresses.

  On Monday there was another angry scene between Pauline and her mother: “Mother and I had a long, loud disagreement and I got absolute hell from her. … She went into the usual … and brought up a new series of threats. One day she will carry out all her dire threatening and she will be left without a leg to stand on.” Next day Nora’s rage had passed. “I decided to use the sweet and loving tactics to help her get over it,” Pauline wrote in her diary. “She really is a bloody fool.”

  By now, Pauline and Juliet were rarely out of each other’s company and were seizing every chance to go to bed together. On Thursday Pauline was allowed to go to Ilam and stay until Sunday. She delightedly recorded that Mrs Hulme was pleased to see her. On Friday she and Juliet played recordings of Pagliacci, Cavalleria Rusticana and Tosca and, when Hilda, Henry and Bill Perry left to go to a film, shared a long bath. Afterwards they lay in Juliet’s bed in the dark, becoming “very skittish”, until the Hulmes’ car came up the drive and Pauline scuttled off to her own bed.

  Next day as the girls were having lunch “a rather extraordinary thing happened”. “Mrs Hulme,” Pauline recorded, “was standing near the door and suddenly Mr Perry half walked in and put his arm around her. She immediately said, ‘Not now, the children are here’ and he went bright pink and looked nervous. Deborah and I were amazed. We came to the conclusion that Mr Perry and Mrs Hulme were having an affair. All the facts tied up beautifully and his behaviour later was extremely guilty.

  “Under the circumstances we may be able to catch them red-handed some time and blackmail them. This idea appeals to both of us greatly, and we spent the rest of the day discussing it. If everything goes as we hope, it should solve all our troubles.”

  CHAPTER 16

  Serious Trouble

  It seemed to Juliet and Pauline they had hit on the perfect plan

  to raise the money, or a good bit of it, needed for the great quest. It remained only to catch Hilda doing it with Bill Perry and the rest would fall into place. On Thursday Pauline went with her mother to the Civic Theatre for the Christchurch Harmonic Society’s per­formance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah, in which Nana Parker was singing. Next day at Ilam she and Juliet excitedly revisited their travel plans. Loath to return home, Pauline let the air out of one of her bike tyres and phoned her mother, claiming to have a puncture that would keep her there overnight. She and Juliet then went to bed together andlay talking in the dark until they heard everyone turn in; they had taken the precaution of putting a dummy in Pauline’s usual bed in case anyone checked.

  At one-thirty in the morning they went down to the kitchen and took a tin of spaghetti, which they ate cold in bed. They talked until five then slept for two hours, dreaming of Him. “No one suspected our midnight happenings,” Pauline gloated. On Saturday she was back home when Juliet phoned to say Bill Perry had given her £50 for her horse, and could sell Omar for Pauline for £20 and get her a position for £5 a week. “We should have money coming in from all directions,” Pauline wrote excitedly. She was working hard, aiming to complete her third book, The Queen of Hearts, before Easter.

  Next day Nana Parker brought her the words of Tosti’s Good-Bye! “They are really beautiful,” Pauline wrote, “and I intend to use them in my book as much as possible.” Francesco Paolo Tosti was an Italian-born composer who moved to England, was appointed singing teacher to the royal family by Queen Victoria, and knighted in 1908. His famous ballad, with febrile lyrics by George Whyte-Melville, was once a favourite drawing-room piece:

  “What are we waiting for? Oh, my heart!

  Kiss me straight on the brows! And part!

  Again! Again! My heart! My heart!

  What are we waiting for, you and I?

  A pleading look—a stifled cry.

  Goodbye, forever! Goodbye, forever!

  Goodbye! Goodbye! Goodbye!”

  Four days later Pauline went back to Ilam. She and Juliet had

  the house to themselves apart from Bill Perry’s house­keeper. They wandered around talking about sex, the Saints, and “the matter in hand”—the quest for Him—listened to some new records of Juliet’s, read Rupert Brooke poems, and after a long bath went to bed. “I pretended to go to my own room,” Pauline wrote, “but of course did not. We spent most of our time in the dark making up dirty little jingles … talking most of the night, mainly about the old subject.”

  In the morning they took each other’s photographs. For some they wore Hilda Hulme’s evening dresses; for others they posed naked. Pauline had an inspiration: they would send the photographs to Hollywood and try to get into films that way! That night, after another long bath together, they went to bed early, again putting a dummy in Pauline’s bed. Next day they spent hours together in Henry Hulme’s bed.

  They had somehow learned that the housekeeper was known to be light-fingered. “This pleased us enormously … we now shall be able to take various articles and people will naturally conclude that she is responsible. In fact she is going to be an extremely useful scapegoat.” Nothing came of this as the woman was ordered to leave a few days later, although the suspicion against her was probably groundless.

  On Sunday evening, back at Gloucester Street, Pauline was in a cheerful mood. The Queen of Hearts was going well and Juliet’s and her plans for the future were progressing wonderfully. “I feel very pleased with myself on the whole … and also [about] the future. We are Anne Perry and the Murder!”

  The ebullient mood continued. Pauline spent Easter at Ilam and on Good Friday she and Juliet practised singing. They had decided that, of the arts in which they were interested, singing was the only one they had not mastered. “We were both astoundingly good,” Pauline wrote.

  Juliet would go further. “Caruso … goes from bass to second highest tenor … We neither of us aspire to that range but Pauline to his lowest, being a contralto, and I to his highest, being a coloratura soprano. Amazing to state, we reached them! We spent at least two hours a day practising for power to hold his longest notes and keep in tune without breaks, cracks or undue sound of effort—which believe me was hard. … For a long time I could not go through O Paradiso, which soars around for an age on top C and one or two lower. But after many failures I succeeded. …

  “My favourites, needless to say the ones I found easiest, were Caruso—anything—Gigli, “O Soave Fanciulla” and “Celeste Aida” … Tito Schipa—anything—Gigli—anything … Richard Tauber—anything —Schipa—a bit—Björling—rather too high usually. He is incredibly high you know. We both tried Lanza but he’s awfully hard without alot of practice. It’s ridiculous I know but I can’t hit a note lower than soprano or high mezzo. I just don’t sound it all or go off key. Oh we try Melba, Callas or Gladys Moncrieff too but we don’t like their songs so much.”

  On Easter Saturday Juliet had an altercation with her mother after Hilda found she had taken one of her records from Bill Perry’s flat. Furious at the telling-off, the girls sat on a log in a nearby field shouting nasty remarks at passers-by on horseback. Returning home, they wrote out the Ten Commandments so they could make a point of breaking them. For the next three nights, Pauline slept in her assigned bed in the verandah room. The following Tuesday the girls went to nearby Fendalton to collect the photographs they had put in for developing. Jonty tagged along and the girls were “thoroughly rude to him … called him all sorts of horrid things … made an utter fool of him”, Pauline boasted in her diary.

  *

  Pauline’s plans to become, Charlotte Brontë-like, a governess in the co
untry had come to nothing. Instead, at Nora’s instigation she enrolled at Mrs Hilda Digby’s Commercial School to learn shorthand typing. Nana Parker may have wished something better for her intelligent granddaughter but Nora merely wanted a child able to earn her bread and butter. Pauline herself was not averse to the idea: typing would be a useful skill for the literary career that—along with Hollywood stardom and marriage to James Mason—lay before her.

  On April 23, there was a dramatic new development. After returning home from Digby’s and playing her record of Tosca, she phoned Juliet to learn some stupendous news. The previous night Juliet had woken at two in the morning. She had gone into her mother’s bedroom, and finding it empty gone downstairs to look for her. When she couldn’t find her, she had crept as stealthily as she could into Bill Perry’s flat. She had heard voices coming from his bedroom, crept up the stairs and waited for a little while. Then she had flung open the door and switched on the light.

  Perry and her mother were in bed together drinking tea. Juliet had suppressed an hysterical urge to giggle: even though she had known what she would find, she was shaking with emotion and shock. “I suppose you want an explanation,” her mother said. “Well, you see, we are in love. Your father knows all about it.” They intended to live together as a threesome.

  If Pauline’s account of the incident is correct, Juliet had the presence of mind to remember that blackmail was the primary objective. She told her mother and Perry that she and Pauline were planning to go to America in six months. She would later say that Perry gave her £100 for entry permits. He flatly denied this but did acknowledge that Juliet “discussed the fact that she was going to blackmail me on the night she found Mrs Hulme giving me tea”.

  Hilda knew the situation was bad. Nancy Sutherland remembered her arriving at her house looking unusually serious. “I was busy in the kitchen but offered her a cup of tea. She leaned against the fridge and said, ‘Last night Juliet walked in on Bill and me in bed, Nancy … There’s going to be serious trouble.’”

  Pauline rode out to Ilam. It was bucketing with rain. Henry Hulme went up to Juliet’s bedroom and asked the two girls to come down for a chat. They must, he said, tell him everything about their plans for going to America. He was, Pauline wrote, both hope-giving and depressing. “We talked for a long time and Deborah and I were near tears by the time it was over. The outcome was somewhat vague. What is to be the future now? We may all be going to South Africa and Italy and dozens of other places or not at all. We none of us know where we are and a good deal depends on chance.

  “Dr and Mrs Hulme are going to divorce! The shock is too great to have penetrated in my mind yet. It is so incredible. Poor Father. Mrs Hulme was sweet and Dr Hulme was absolutely kind and understanding. Poor Jonty is ill. Deborah and I spent the day soaring between hell and heaven. … Such a huge amount has happened that we do not know where we are. Dr Hulme is the noblest and most wonderful person I have ever known of. But one thing—Deborah and I are sticking to[gether] through everything. (We sink or swim together.)”

  CHAPTER 17

  A Lovely Remark

  Henry Hulme was having a rough time. As well as his marriage being on the rocks, he was in strife at Canterbury College. Although the previous June he had resisted efforts by some members of the college council to force him to resign, dissatisfaction with his rectorship had not abated. The school of engineering debacle was to his opponents a prime example of what was wrong with him. The school was the pride of the college, respected the world over for its excellence. Hulme’s support for a rival engineering school to be developed at Auckland University was seen as an egregious betrayal of his own college. It was all too reminiscent of his treachery over the school of forestry. He had learnt nothing!

  From a broader perspective, Henry had right on his side. As a member of the senate of the University of New Zealand, he considered his primary duty was to do whatever he believed would best serve the national interest and not allow himself to be subverted by paro­chialism. But this stance won him no friends at Canterbury.

  In A History of the University of Canterbury, 1873–1973, an unnamed source describes Dr Hulme as “a charming conversation­alist, a man with profound appreciation of music, a person of intense outflowing sympathy, a man none could really dislike”. The truth was that many people disliked him greatly. He was frequently accused of running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Neville Phillips, a young history professor, thought him unreliable and dishonest. Others commented that he was “mad as a maggot” and “round the twist”. He was widely held to be a disaster as rector.

  On March 3, 1954 the professorial board passed a resolution that the rector no longer had its confidence. The reason given amounted to a technical impropriety: he had disclosed a board report to some members of the college council. It was not a hanging offence but enough of a pretext. Next day Hulme wrote to the council giving his resignation with effect from January 31, 1955; this was accepted by letter on March 15. When the drama ignited by Juliet’s discovery of Hilda and Bill in bed rattled the Hulme household, it had already been decided that Henry would leave New Zealand.

  According to Hilda, the initial arrangement with Henry was that he would return to England in January 1955 to secure another post, while she and the children remained in New Zealand during the summer to give Juliet time to fully recover her health. That decision, she would say, changed when they learned of the girls’ plan to run away together to America, where they hoped to have their books published and films made of their stories. She and her husband dis­cussed the situation and came up with a plan. Juliet would go to South Africa to stay with Henry’s sister, Ina Buyse, who ran a girls’ board­ing school in Johannesburg. The climate there would be beneficial. She could go on to England in early spring.

  Hilda was almost certainly fudging the truth: as long as she had Juliet’s passport Juliet could not run away to America or anywhere else. It is more likely she did not want her devious daughter sabotaging her romance with Bill Perry. Hilda considered Juliet inconsiderate and highly egotistical. Things would be better with her out of the way.

  Pauline’s moods fluctuated. She continued her studies at Digby’s and in the last week of April went to King Of The Khyber Rifles with “absolutely joyous anticipation”; Guy Rolfe and Michael Rennie were “utterly divine” even if the heroine was “ghastly … no saving graces”. But soon afterwards, when she and Juliet had a bath together at the Riepers’ house, she was depressed and “quite seriously” considered committing suicide. Life seemed not worth living and death an easy way out. On April 28 she wrote: “Anger against mother boiled up inside me, as it is she who is one of the main obstacles in my path. Suddenly a means of ridding myself of this obstacle occurred to me. If she were to die…”

  The following day she and Juliet went to see Dangerous Crossing—advertised as “A World of Terror and Evil”—starring Jeanne Crain and the adored Michael Rennie. “I did not tell Deborah of my plan for removing Mother,” Pauline wrote. “I have made no definite plans yet as the last fate I wish to meet is one in Borstal. I am trying to think of some way. I do not [want] to go to too much trouble but I want it to appear either a natural or accidental death.”

  Next day she talked with Juliet on the telephone for two hours and told her of her intention to murder her mother. “She is rather worried,” Pauline wrote, “but does not disagree violently.”

  When she went to spend the weekend at Ilam more fuel was added to the fire. “Mrs Hulme came in and showed us a lovely ring Mr Perry had given her,” she noted in her diary. “She made a lovely remark. She said, ‘Won’t it be wonderful when we are all back in England? Do you think you will like England, Gina?’ I was delighted. … Deborah and I had a bath and came to bed quite early. … We did not sleep together as we were afraid Dr Hulme might come in.”

  On Sunday the girls had a heart-to-heart about whom they would allow to live if they could wipe out the rest of the world, made a list of their
names, and added four new characters to the Saints, who were now multiplying like bacteria. In addition to He, Him, It, This (Mel Ferrer), That, His, Who and Boinard, there were now Her (Ava Gardner­), Rico (Cornell Wilde), Yours (Michael Rennie), Mine, Which, Either, One, Neither, Other, Hollander, Else, Mora, Leso, He’s, Julius, Christopher Robin, Wain, Hugo Did, Geanne, Hildegard, Antoinette and Julian.

  A week later, on May 7, Pauline and Juliet’s ardour for James Mason was further fanned by The Man Between. Sporting a German accent, Mason played a shady ex-Nazi scratching a living trafficking people and other profitable cargo between the east and west sectors of post-war Berlin; Hildegard Knef, a statuesque blonde to whom the ex-Nazi turned out to be married, was also one of the Saints.

  Pauline raved. The film was “wonderful, beautiful, heavenly and Mine. Claire Bloom [Mason’s lover in the film and in real life] was horrid but Hildegard lovely. … Him was rather bitter but hard to describe. He was different to what he had ever been before but I love him more than ever now. (Oh Him! Him! Him!) Him means so much to us I could gladly watch him forever. I could do almost anything for him.” Over the next two weeks she and Juliet would go to the film four more times.

  On May 8 there was a mysterious entry in Pauline’s diary: “We are going to wangle it so that we can go to the Island soon. There I shall attempt to make Julian fall in love with me and persuade him to marry me. Of course his mind will have to be improved but that should not be too hard. Everything shall be wonderful.” There were no clues as to the identity of Julian.

  That night Juliet went to a dance given by Dr and Mrs Bennett in the Knox Church hall to celebrate the sixteenth birthday of their son, Colin. While Juliet was fox-trotting unenthusiastically with Colin Bennett and his friends, Pauline occupied herself writing letters to 20th Century Fox, James Mason, Guy Rolfe and Michael Rennie. Next day, though, in a surprising moment of realism, the girls decided their plans involving 20th Century Fox and Hollywood were too far-fetched. From that moment their main focus became to go to South Africa together, before moving to England and living with Juliet’s father as soon as he found a job. After all, James Mason and Guy Rolfe were English. They surely visited England from time to time. And England was far closer to Hollywood than New Zealand was.