by Roy Vickers
We imagine that George put to sea with a certain confidence. He had found a method of murder that was clue-proof. But on this occasion he was very nearly tripped by the element of time. For artificial respiration was applied in the boat that picked them up, and the heart was actually re-started, though it beat for a few seconds only.
But this was the only little contretemps – except that George caught a very bad cold. The inquest went off without a hitch. For neither the Coroner nor the local police kept indexed news cuttings of other boating and bathing fatalities in other years and other places.
But Dead Ends, which kept a large number of more or less useless records, used to file a cross-index of every death by violence in any form. They found that, within the space of two years, George Carshaw had lost two wives in precisely the same circumstances, detail for detail. In each case the boat had capsized about the same distance from shore. In each case he had prevented the body from sinking but not from drowning.
Then there was the cross-index (‘Fatality – Sea – Boat’). In ten minutes a clerk had found that a similar accident, detail for detail, had happened at Ilfracombe in 1903 with Elsie Natley and George Macartney.
Detective-Sergeant Martleplug, an energetic officer attached to Dead Ends, dug out the Deed Poll and identified George Carshaw with George Macartney. He found that the two wives had been insured, that Elsie Natley was not his wife and was not insured – which puzzled him.
He found George arranging for a sale of his furniture and effects in Harringay. This was a fortnight later. George had drawn the insurance, and their few sticks were not worth preserving. The only joint possession of any value was the ruby bracelet, which he had again recovered.
The detective opened in a friendly manner and George responded. Martleplug revealed his knowledge of Violet, but was keeping Elsie up his sleeve.
‘It fairly beats me, Mr Martleplug, and that’s a fact!’ said George. ‘You’d think that when a thing like that’s happened once, it couldn’t possibly happen again. It used to haunt me – and that’s why poor Madge persuaded me to go out again. And that – but why talk about it?’
‘I’ve come here to talk about it,’ said Martleplug. ‘And I want to ask you a few questions.’
‘I am sorry,’ said George, who did not make the ignorant mistake of confusing a detective with a judge, ‘but the subject is very painful to me and I cannot discuss it. If you don’t like that, why don’t you arrest me for murder? I’ll tell you why you don’t – because you haven’t got any evidence and can’t get it.’
George, as you will know, was quite right. The Public Prosecutor informed Martleplug that he quite agreed with George.
Of course, as far as commonsense goes, they were quite sure that George had murdered Madge. But George was saved by a very simple point in legal procedure. The only ground for assuming that he had forcibly drowned Madge was that he had taken part in two exactly similar ‘accidents’ before. Neither of these two earlier accidents could be put in as evidence in regard to the third accident, since there was no connexion between them except the assumed connexion in George’s mind.
Chapter Six
Ten thousand pounds enabled George to throw up his employment and start an independent agency once again himself. This time he could do it in style. He was able to buy two cars for demonstration purposes. He had a decent showroom with a well-equipped workshop in Tottenham Court Road.
One of his first customers was little Polly Flinders who came in on the arm of a prosperous broker from Newcastle. She was astonished to see him and rather pleased. In the course of the trial run he persuaded her to drop the broker. It meant losing a customer, but Polly was worth it, and he had more than half the ten thousand in reserve.
They took a flat on the unfashionable side of Regent’s Park, which was conveniently near the office. This time Polly was determined to be good for him. She put her foot very firmly down on horse-racing, and after the first week or two refused to let him give her expensive dresses – except just a few, which, she said, would be economical in the end. He must, she said, learn to be sensible with his money. He must not speculate – he must invest. And if you invested money sensibly you could get as big a return as if you had speculated with it. There was, for example, The Theatre, of which George already had too much practical knowledge to be fooled, as he had been fooled by racing tipsters.
She had, it transpired, heard of a play only the other day which contained great possibilities of profit. By the instrumentality of one of the economical-expensive frocks she obtained the script from the author. When she read the part which she would play if George should decide to go into production as a side-line, he agreed that it sounded fine.
George paid for the play to be put on and, by running a small mortgage on the agency, managed to prop it up for six weeks at one of the minor West End theatres. He had just enough left to send it on tour in the provinces – with Polly in her part. So he lost both his money and his girl – though she continued to write him most affectionate letters from the provinces until the tour collapsed.
George did quite well with the agency. He had a liking for motor-cars and put in plenty of work. But he was handling one of the smaller makes that has since perished. There was the slack first quarter of the new year in which the rent and wages of the workshop staff became a problem. He pulled up a bit in the summer but not quite enough. If the agency were to live it must have new capital.
He found May Toler outside a servants’ registry office in Piccadilly. She was thirty-two and the only one of his wives who was definitely pretty, with beautiful long hands, which she had been able to preserve; for it was more than ten years since she had been anything but a very good-class parlourmaid.
With her he had to exert all his resources and his rather crude charm. And there were several set-backs. Her family, who lived at Willesden, did not like him at first. But their hostility was killed by his gift of the ruby bracelet which they recognized to be valuable.
She married him, against her better judgement, in February 1908. He had persuaded her to cut out the still querulous family and more or less make an elopement of it. For the ceremony was performed with paid witnesses before the registrar at Camden Town.
Possibly he thought that in this way he was preventing the police from learning of his marriage. On the other hand we can be quite certain that, at this stage, his attitude to the police was one of open defiance. He was aware that they believed him to be a murderer. Well, he had invented the perfect murder that could even, as it were, be performed in public. And here we must reluctantly concede a small point to the fanatics of heredity – for his father had behaved just like this, faking his balance sheet with a system of his own when he knew the police accountants were looking for the fake.
They took out a joint-life assurance for £500. The joint-life element can hardly have been a serious attempt to throw dust into anyone’s eyes, for he used it subsequently as a means of raising a small loan for his business. They made wills in each other’s favour – and he sent her on her own to take out an Accident Policy with a different company for £10,000 against death by accident.
Their circumstances during the summer were easy enough, but the winter was a bit of a pinch. They had taken a small, noisy flat off Theobald’s Road. The very superior parlourmaid proved a very indifferent cook and a hopeless manager. Personally, too, she went to pieces very soon after the wedding. He seems to have been kind enough to her and she herself was not quarrelsome. But she missed her occupation and she would whine a good deal and drop into melancholy and latterly there is evidence that she took to drink.
It became doubtful whether George would have enough capital to take full advantage of next summer’s business. So between Easter and Whitsun he took her to Colwyn Bay in North Wales.
This time the only variation in the programme was that he rowed her farther out from shore. There was no question of her being alive when they were picked up.
He got hi
s shock this time in the Coroner’s Court. He had just repeated his little speech as to how it had all happened when a barrister got up, representing the police.
Now the Rules of Evidence in a High Court are many and varied. But the rules of evidence in a Coroner’s Court are just exactly what the Coroner likes. It may be a legal anomaly that the man who is often an amateur is given more discretion than a judge – but there it is! And George had to make the best of it.
‘Was your wife insured, Mr Carshaw?’
‘We had a joint policy for five hundred pounds, in mortgage for my business.’
‘Any other insurance?’
‘I don’t know. She may have.’
‘You don’t know. Was your last wife insured against death by accident for ten thousand pounds?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did she on June 15th, 1906, meet with an exactly similar accident at Paignton? I mean, had you rowed her out and did the boat capsize in – er – the precise manner in which you have just described in respect of your – er – latest wife?’
Point by point he brought out the details of the drowning of Madge, then of the drowning of Violet and, point by point, matched them with the drowning of May.
Three was good enough. He could not make the insurance point in respect of Elsie, so he left it alone.
It is open to the critical to take the view that this cross-examination was a definite ‘wangle’ on the part of the police. They could bring the facts out in the Coroner’s Court, though not in the High Court. But by the time the Coroner’s case was reported, every man in the country who was likely to sit on the jury would have been certain to read the facts. So the jury would know.
But the Coroner’s Court carried them a bit further than they meant to go. The jury brought in a verdict of wilful murder against George Carshaw and he was committed for trial on the Coroner’s warrant.
The Crown felt that it must go on with the case. George was brought up for trial in the following June.
In the meantime, Martleplug had traced George back to the private school where he had been instrumental in winning a swimming-cup. They had got against him now that he was a powerful swimmer, and that his thrice-repeated tale of floundering about with an oar was all nonsense.
But even so George got away with it.
Chapter Seven
It was a rising young lawyer, now well known as Sir Ernest Quilter, K.C., who saved George Carshaw from his reasonably certain fate of being hanged as the murderer of his wife, May.
Counsel for the Prosecution opened by describing in minute detail the circumstances in which May had met her death. He then paused and looked at the judge – an action which was very close indeed to being a prearranged signal. But as this was done by arrangement with the defence there could be no objection. The judge promptly ordered the jury to retire and then listened to arguments on both sides as to the admissibility of evidence of the two previously drowned wives. Owing to the absence of the money-element the Crown had come to the conclusion that the first drowning, of Elsie Natley, was a genuine accident which had given George the idea for the subsequent murders.
The Prosecution claimed admissibility of the previous accidents and quoted precedent. But Quilter scotched him.
‘In all the precedents which my learned friend has quoted, there has invariably been the prima facie assumption of guilt. In this case I submit that there is no prima facie assumption of guilt whatever. There is the overwhelming assumption of an accident – which can only be upset by consideration of the previous cases.’
A bold line – for it admitted by implication that George was a murderer.
The judge agreed and ruled that the evidence of the previous drownings was inadmissible until the Prosecution had established a reasonably strong prima facie assumption of guilt in respect of May. Each counsel seemed extremely pleased with this ruling.
At an early stage the Treasury man called George’s old schoolmaster, together with one of the staff and two men who had been pupils with George. These men proved George’s swimming prowess. The Prosecution was triumphant.
‘My lord, the deceased was drowned admittedly within a dozen or so yards of the upturned boat. Is it to be believed that the prisoner, who was a very able swimmer, was powerless to effect her rescue, as he stated? I submit that a prima facie case has been made out of the prisoner’s guilt. I shall therefore ask your lordship’s leave to introduce – other evidence.’
Mr Quilter had been waiting for this.
‘I object, my lord. It is no part of my case to deny that my client could have saved his wife from drowning had he wished to do so.’
Daring again! Sailing right into the wind! There was what the newspapers insist upon calling a sensation in Court. And Quilter went on:
‘My learned friend has forgotten more law than I ever knew, so he will not object to my reminding him of the principle enshrined in the doggerel:
Thou shalt not kill, but needst not strive
Officiously to keep alive.
‘I admit that Carshaw did not strive to keep his wife alive. I am not here to defend his moral character, nor his conscience. I am still waiting for my friend to show that any action of Carshaw’s betrays evidence of felonious intent.’
Quilter scored again.
Once those two persons were in the water, the most that could be proved against George was that he had deliberately refrained from rescuing his wife. Again, the law may be at variance with the public conscience, but the law remains. And the law lays it down that you need never rescue anybody from anything if you don’t want to.
That limited the Prosecution to proving that the boat had been feloniously capsized by George – which in the nature of things was unprovable. At the judge’s direction the jury found George Carshaw ‘not guilty’.
After escaping under police escort from the mob around the Court, George showed his gratitude to Mr Quilter by briefing him to recover the ten thousand pounds from the Accident Insurance Company in respect of May’s death. And again Quilter won.
Fortunately for George, he had given his agency a fancy name and was able to resume business, equipped now with ample capital. He got in touch with Polly Flinders, but this time she shrieked when he came near her and he had to run for it.
There was, it would be safe to say, no one in the country who doubted George’s guilt. He had to take an assumed name, without Deed Poll this time. But whatever inconvenience he may have suffered in this way was compensated for by his egomaniac delight in the fact that the police knew him to be a multiple murderer and could not touch him.
Chapter Eight
In the following October there arrived at a West End hotel a Mr and Mrs Huystefan. Mrs Huystefan was an Englishwoman who had married an American. One evening, while she was dressing for dinner, she was assaulted in her bedroom and robbed of her jewellery. She was too shaken to be of much use to the police that night. But her husband, who was a methodical man, gave them an old typewritten list of the items of his wife’s jewellery.
His name, he contrived to explain, was that of an old Southern family who had arrived before the Mayflower, and on all the gold pieces the family crest, a lion couchant, would be found.
The Yard had not very much hope. A hotel job would mean crooks in a good way of business. But they sent out the drag-net and were rather surprised to get a response from a pawnbroker in Holborn, who produced a ruby bracelet with the crest stamped inside the gold mount.
‘How long have you had this?’
‘Pawned with me last February by a Mrs Carshaw. There’s the address – Theobald’s Road –’
‘Then you’re all right, because it’s not what we want. But you might leave it with us for a couple of days.’
On account of the name and address, the bracelet went to Dead Ends as a matter of routine. No purely logical detective would have wasted a moment over that bracelet. Mrs Huystefan had been in England a week and this had been pawned in London last February. And it wasn’t
as though the crest were in any way an unusual design.
But a ruby bracelet was listed amongst the stolen jewellery. So Detective Inspector Rason requested Mrs Huystefan, now restored to health, to call at the Yard and identify it.
She identified it at once as her bracelet, and then became profusely apologetic.
‘I’m so sorry you’ve had this trouble with the bracelet,’ she said. ‘I forgot it was on that old list my husband gave you, or I would have notified you at once. I gave it away as a present when I was in England six years ago. I’m very sorry she had to pawn it. If you are in touch with her, I would be so glad if you would give me her address, as I would like to help her again.’
‘Help who, Mrs Huystefan?’
‘The girl I gave it to. Elsie Natley. She was one of my maids in Town here just after I married Mr Huystefan. We took a bungalow that year at Croyde, near Ilfracombe in North Devon, and she came with us as cook-general, for we were roughing it, you know. You don’t want the whole story, but I gave it to her because she saved my life. It wasn’t the sort of thing you could give a money tip for, was it? If she’s in trouble I would so like to know her address.’
‘Do you mind telling me how she saved your life, Mrs Huystefan?’
‘It was at bathing – yes, bathing! The currents round there are simply dreadful and I didn’t know it. I swam out and couldn’t get in again. It was a bit choppy and my strength was going. My husband rushed in after me, but he was a poor swimmer. Elsie spotted my trouble from the bungalow. She came rushing out, whipping off her skirt as she ran, then her shoes. She outstripped my husband and got to me just in time and brought me in. She was a magnificent swimmer – her father used to be a waterman on the River Lee.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Huystefan. You don’t think of leaving England for a few weeks?’
‘No, we’re over for six months.’