The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

by Wilkes, Roger

  In her old age, she wore pince-nez, and truly with the years the mad light has departed from those eyes or else is deflected by her glasses—if, indeed, it was a mad light, in the first place, for don’t we all conceal somewhere photographs of ourselves that make us look like crazed assassins? And, in those early photographs of her young womanhood, she herself does not look so much like a crazed assassin as somebody in extreme solitude, oblivious of that camera in whose direction she obscurely smiles, so that it would not surprise you to learn that she is blind.

  There is a mirror on the dresser in which she sometimes looks at those times when time snaps in two and then she sees herself with blind, clairvoyant eyes, as though she were another person.

  “Lizzie is not herself, today.”

  At those times, those irremediable times, she could have raised her muzzle to some aching moon and howled.

  At other times, she watches herself doing her hair and trying her clothes on. The distorting mirror reflects her with the queasy fidelity of water. She puts on dresses and then she takes them off. She looks at herself in her corset. She pats her hair. She measures herself with the tape-measure. She pulls the measure tight. She pats her hair. She tries on a hat, a little hat, a chic little straw toque. She punctures it with a hatpin. She pulls the veil down. She pulls it up. She takes the hat off. She drives the hatpin into it with a strength she did not know she possessed.

  Time goes by and nothing happens.

  She traces the outlines of her face with an uncertain hand as if she were thinking of unfastening the bandages on her soul but it isn’t time to do that, yet: she isn’t ready to be seen, yet.

  She is a girl of Sargossa calm.

  She used to keep her pigeons in the loft above the disused stable and feed them grain out of the palms of her cupped hands. She liked to feel the soft scratch of their beaks. They murmured “vroo croo” with infinite tenderness. She changed their water every day and cleaned up their leprous messes but Old Borden took a dislike to their cooing, it got on his nerves, who’d have thought he had any nerves but he invented some, they got on them, one afternoon he took out the hatchet from the woodpile in the cellar and chopped those pigeons’ heads right off, he did.

  Abby fancied the slaughtered pigeons for a pie but Bridget the servant girl put her foot down, at that: what?!? Make a pie out of Miss Lizzie’s beloved turtledoves? Jesus, Mary and Joseph!!! she exclaimed with characteristic impetuousness, what can they be thinking of! Miss Lizzie so nervy with her funny turns and all! (The maid is the only one in the house with any sense and that’s the truth of it.) Lizzie came home from the Fruit and Flower Mission for whom she had been reading a tract to an old woman in a poorhouse: “God bless you, Miss Lizzie.” At home all was blood and feathers.

  She doesn’t weep, this one, it isn’t her nature, she is still waters, but, when moved, she changes colour, her face flushes, it goes dark, angry, mottled red. The old man loves his daughter this side of idolatry and pays for everything she wants, but all the same he killed her pigeons when his wife wanted to gobble them up.

  That is how she sees it. That is how she understands it. She cannot bear to watch her stepmother eat, now. Each bite the woman takes seems to go: “Vroo croo.”

  Old Borden cleaned off the hatchet and put it back in the cellar, next to the woodpile. The red receding from her face, Lizzie went down to inspect the instrument of destruction. She picked it up and weighed it in her hand.

  That was a few weeks before, at the beginning of the spring.

  Her hands and feet twitch in her sleep; the nerves and muscles of this complicated mechanism won’t relax, just won’t relax, she is all twang, all tension, she is taut as the strings of a wind-harp from which random currents of the air pluck out tunes that are not our tunes.

  At the first stroke of the City Hall clock, the first factory hooter blares, and then, on another note, another, and another, the Metacomet Mill, the American Mill, the Mechanics Mill … until every mill in the entire town sings out aloud in a common anthem of summoning and the hot alleys where the factory folk live blacken with the hurrying throng: hurry! scurry! to loom, to bobbin, to spindle, to dye-shop as to places of worship, men, and women, too, and children, the streets blacken, the sky darkens as the chimneys now belch forth, the clang, bang, clatter of the mills commences.

  Bridget’s clock leaps and shudders on its chair, about to sound its own alarm. Their day, the Bordens’ fatal day, trembles on the brink of beginning.

  Outside, above, in the already burning air, see! the angel of death roosts on the roof-tree.

  THE CAMDEN TOWN MURDER

  (Robert Wood, 1907)

  Nina Warner Hooke

  and Gil Thomas

  Sir Edward Marshall Hall rejoiced in the title The Great Defender. His full-blooded style was at its best in a case that touched his sympathies and emotions. The Camden Town murder case was one of these, but when he took it on, Marshall Hall’s career was in low water. The year before, in 1906, he’d been overwhelmed by a run of misfortune: his hopes of a political career had been dashed when he lost his seat in Parliament, and a series of clashes with various judges had temporarily shattered and almost destroyed his practice. He needed a big, high-profile case to restore his position at the Bar. In November 1907 it came. “This”, he exclaimed, hurrying into a colleague’s room and throwing a huge pile of documents on to his desk, “is the greatest case I’ve ever had in my life. If you have an idea, however remote or far-fetched, come in and tell me. The man’s innocent, and a chance idea may mean life or death to him.” The papers flung on to the desk were the depositions in the Camden Town murder case. The accused man was Robert Wood. “When the case was over,” reported one of Marshall Hall’s biographers, “the newspapers took the view that the result was a foregone conclusion, but this was far from being true. It was a great triumph for Marshall Hall and English justice.” Its low-life setting in the dingy hinterland of Euston station, a transient world of four-ale bars and seedy sex, offers a lurid, if slightly dog-eared, snapshot of Edwardian London.

  Prostitution is a dangerous trade in most western countries and will continue to be so until man throws off the shackles forged by centuries of religious discipline. Christian dogma teaches him to equate sex with sin and eternal punishment. He is taught to be ashamed of his body, not to glory in its beauty and potency; to despise it as the gross expendable husk of a spirit body which will survive it on another plane of existence. His sacred literature makes it clear that human reproductive processes are repugnant to his God who spurned them when He came to earth Himself in man’s shape. It is further impressed on him that, partly by virtue of this attitude, Christian and civilized nations are superior to unenlightened and less fortunate peoples. It is only the heathen who may regard sexual desire as an appetite like hunger and thirst, the satisfaction of which is natural, simple and enjoyable. It is only heathens who may recognize the fact that a man’s virility outlasts a woman’s and make due allowance for it. By a curious and unfair coincidence it is only in such heathen countries that sex crimes are uncommon.

  Civilized man’s distrust of the rational is only excelled by his fear of the pleasurable. He still lives in dread of hell fire. The flames have abated slightly but the embers are hot and the pit still yawns. Since he cannot eradicate the erotic impulses of his body and cannot gratify them extra-maritally without incurring moral censure, he drives them deep into hiding. Here, like healthy plants deprived of light, they wilt, become diseased and may mutate into monstrous forms.

  The woman who caters for these secret lusts is the easy prey of the pervert, the sadist and the obsessionist who sees in her an amalgam of Eve, the original temptress and the serpent, the devil’s emissary. Driven by remorse and terror he destroys her and is revenged for his banishment from Eden.

  The murder of Emily Dimmock, a Camden Town prostitute, in the autumn of 1907 is regarded by criminologists as a classic example of this type of sex crime. It had all the ingredients n
ecessary to titillate a sensation-loving public—a woman killed in her sleep, the discovery of her dead body with its throat cut, the long search for a murderer who had slipped away through the garden, the grief of the woman’s lover who discovered the crime and the eventual arrest of a young artist named Robert Wood who was charged with the murder.

  It is a curious feature of the case that widespread sympathy was extended to the accused young man and very little was felt for the victim of the crime. It could be argued that a girl who deliberately leads an immoral life, according to the tenets of our moral code, has abandoned any claim to sympathetic consideration. It is not generally accepted, at any rate in this country, that the prostitute fulfils a useful function without which the incidence of rape and violence towards women would be even worse than it is. Whatever view one takes of this trade no one but a fool would argue that its practitioners are all good or all bad. There are among them harpies in the true classical sense, both vicious and dishonest, who prey on the weakness of men and will cheat them if they can. Emily Dimmock was not one of these. In her own way she did at least give value for money.

  Though her Christian names were Emily Elizabeth she was known in the area where she lived and worked as Phyllis. The dreary tenements of Walworth where she was born have produced a genius in the form of Charles Chaplin; but for one Chaplin there are ten thousand Emilys.

  She was the youngest of a family of fifteen. When she was still a girl her father removed his brood to Northamptonshire where most of them, including Emily, went to work in a factory. This phase did not last long in her case. Returning to London she went into domestic service at East Finchley, but found the hours too long and the work too hard and before long had taken to the streets. Her new occupation had probably been described to her as offering an easy living. In fact it was not only strenuous but carried with it an occupational hazard which was to cost her her life at the age of twenty-three.

  Readers of Patrick Hamilton’s trilogy of novels about the London underworld will recognize in the second volume an almost exact description of Emily and her feckless way of life.40 It is more than likely that her story formed the inspiration for the character of Jenny Maple. Emily, like Jenny, was neat, slim and attractive, dressed well and had pleasant manners.

  She lived in two rooms in St Paul’s Road, Camden Town, an area which had passed through many vicissitudes. Even in the street guides of twenty-five years ago there was no mention either of St Paul’s Road or of near-by Liverpool Street. St Paul’s Road was a thoroughfare running parallel to the main railway line from St Pancras to the north. Within a short walking distance was the Caledonian Road and the old Caledonian Market. Emily was thus well situated for the transaction of her business. She could take a bus from Camden Road to the West End or she could find her clients in the numerous local public houses.

  In 1907 the area around St Paul’s Road was a shabby-genteel backwater where rooms were cheap and no questions were asked as long as the rent was promptly paid. The lusty life of the Caledonian Market engulfed it on Tuesdays and Fridays but for most of the week only the clip-clop of horses’ hooves, the cries of children and street traders and the sound of passing trains disturbed the quiet. Prostitutes are not early risers and they prefer quiet neighbourhoods.

  Emily shared her home with a man named Bertram Shaw and passed as his wife. Shortly after eleven o’clock on the morning of 12 September an elderly lady called at the house in St Paul’s Road. This was Mrs Shaw. She had travelled from the Midlands to visit her son who, she understood, had recently married. Mrs Stocks, the landlady, told her that her son’s wife was still in bed. They talked together in the hallway for about fifteen minutes until Bertram Shaw returned from work. He was employed as a dining-car attendant on the Midland Railway whose main lines ran to Leicester, Nottingham and Sheffield. His hours of work enabled him to catch the seven-twenty a.m. train from Sheffield to St Pancras and to reach his home shortly before eleven-thirty.

  After exchanging a few words with his mother and the landlady Shaw went to call Emily. Receiving no answer when he knocked at the door he tried to open it and found that it was locked. He went to the kitchen and borrowed a duplicate key from Mrs Stocks who followed him into the parlour. Evidence of an intruder was all over the room. Drawers had been ransacked and their contents strewn over the floor. The folding doors leading to the bedroom were also locked and the key was missing. Again Shaw knocked and, receiving no answer, broke into the room. The blankets were in a heap on the floor. The sheets covered something on the bed from which a pool of blood had trickled down on to the floor. The room was dimly lighted through half-opened shutters.

  Shaw, thoroughly alarmed, rushed to the bed and dragged aside the sheets. To his horror he discovered the nude body of Emily Dimmock lying face downwards. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear.

  A search of the room disclosed that some of her personal belongings were missing. A gold watch had gone together with a silver cigarette case bearing Shaw’s initials, a silver chain and a purse. On top of the sewing-machine lay a postcard album from which some of the contents had been torn out and scattered around.

  Shaw had taken Emily from the streets to live with him. She had promised to abandon her way of life on the understanding that he would marry her. Why he had not done so was never explained. He had told his mother a lie. Mrs Stocks also was under the impression that the couple were married. It is possible that he never had any intention of keeping his word but had merely acquired cheaply an attractive bed-companion and housekeeper.

  Unluckily for Shaw he had provided an excellent cover for Emily to have the best of both worlds. By day she was Mrs Shaw, the respectable married woman. At night she reverted to the life of the streets. There is a supposition that Shaw knew she had returned to her former ways and that he was turning a blind eye while taking advantage of the additional comforts she provided. Shaw, of course, denied any knowledge of Emily’s duplicity and in the absence of evidence to the contrary this must be accepted. His position was both awkward and dangerous. Whatever happened he now had to disclose his real relationship with the murdered girl and could not escape suspicion.

  Events moved slower in those days than they do now. There were no police cars with two-way radios. The divisional police surgeon did not arrive at the house until after one o’clock. After examining the body he gave his opinion that the murder had been committed between four and six o’clock that morning. There were signs that the killer had washed himself before escaping through the french windows and across the garden.

  Once arrived on the scene the police lost no time in starting their inquiries. During the rest of the day they collected all available information about Emily’s movements on the day before her death. This was Wednesday, 11 September. She had spent much of it on household tasks such as washing and ironing. Presumably Shaw was with her since he left in the afternoon soon after four o’clock to catch his train to Sheffield as usual. Between then and eight-fifteen Emily was seen about the house, dressing herself and curling her hair. One of the garments she put on was a light-brown skirt. Nothing out of the ordinary was heard that night, either by Mrs Stocks or anyone else in the house.

  Mrs Stocks got up about five-thirty next morning, knocked on Emily’s door at nine o’clock and, getting no answer, concluded that her tenant was having what she called a “lie in”. Nothing further happened until the arrival of Shaw. Shaw’s movements were checked. His employers confirmed that he had been to Sheffield and could not possibly have got back to London until after Emily was dead.

  By the following day, Thursday, the police had an almost complete dossier on the dead woman. She had plenty of men friends apart from her clients, some of whom were regular and some casual. She was young enough and attractive enough to be sure of making a good living; but like so many of her type she was open-handed with her money and was more concerned to have a good time in the present than to save for the future. She was an amusing companion and could play the pian
o well which added to her popularity in public-house circles. She had once been an inmate of a brothel kept by a man named Crabtree and had lived at many addresses in the Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road area. She had a collection of postcards which had come from many parts of the world, most of them from clients who remembered her and no doubt intended to seek her out again when they returned to England.

  Under the name of Phyllis she was well-known at the Rising Sun public house in Camden Town. It was here that the police located their first important witness, a ship’s cook named Roberts. Having been paid off in the previous month he was now spending the last of his money before going back to sea. He had met Phyllis in the Rising Sun, taken a fancy to her and gone home with her on the Sunday night and on the next two nights preceding the one on which she was murdered—at a cost to himself of two pounds and a bottle of whisky. On Wednesday night he slept at a lodging-house since Phyllis said she had another engagement. Roberts’s story was suspicious but his alibi was confirmed by the proprietress of the lodging-house and a fellow boarder. Roberts was thus eliminated from the murder hunt. He was however able to give the police a piece of valuable information. On the Wednesday morning, while he was dressing, he said, two letters were pushed under the door which he picked up and handed to Phyllis. One was a circular, the other a private letter. After reading the letter she passed it to him. He remembered some of the contents, including the opening words:

  Dear Phillis [sic],

  Will you meet me at the Eagle, Camden Town, 8.30 tonight, Wednesday?

  The letter was signed “Bert”. There was a postscript but Roberts had not been allowed to read this. The girl then handed him a postcard which she had taken from a chest of drawers. On one side of it was a picture of a woman embracing a child. On the reverse side was a message:

  Phillis darling,

  If it please you meet me 8.15 p.m. at the—[here followed a sketch of a rising sun].