A Passion for Poison

by Carol Ann Lee

  Dorothy returned to the hospital to visit her husband that evening, accompanied by their very concerned daughter, who had never seen her father incapacitated before. He was too tired to speak to them and they left after a few minutes at his bedside. Dorothy spent a restless night herself at home, then headed back to the hospital when visiting hours began the next day, Thursday 1 July. She was appalled by the deterioration in his condition, which the doctors were unable to explain: ‘His eyes were partially closed, he was very slurred in his speech and when I tried to give him a drink, he bit the top off the plastic drinking mug, not realising that he was biting so hard.’445 Dr Solomon examined Bob again and found that he had reduced sensation in his limbs, muscular pains, bilateral facial weakness and struggled to swallow. Suspecting that he might require a respirator, she arranged for him to be transferred to the intensive care unit of St Albans city hospital.

  Once more, Dorothy sat beside her husband in the ambulance and remained at the hospital until late that night. When she arrived at the ICU again the following morning, she burst into tears at the sight of her husband, who could no longer speak and was unable to open his eyes. ‘His condition deteriorated fairly rapidly after that,’ she quietly confirmed to detectives five months later. ‘He was unable to speak to me again. I do not think he even knew I was there. From then on, my husband was being treated constantly and I stayed with him when possible.’446

  The news of Bob Egle’s sudden illness caused shockwaves at Hadlands, where he was a popular member of staff. Company secretary Mrs Mary Berrow visited different areas of the site during the course of her day and received numerous enquiries from colleagues regarding Bob’s progress. She recalled:

  Among those making enquiries was Graham Young, which was quite natural as he worked with Mr Egle. His enquiries were fairly frequent. As a rule he would stay and chat a few minutes and pressed for all available information. At one stage Mrs Egle mentioned that the illness her husband was suffering from was polyneuritis. This meant nothing to me and I think I told Graham and he explained this illness to me, saying that it was a virus which caused inflammation of the nerve ends. His usual questions were: How was Mr Egle? Do they know what it is? Is he any better? What were the symptoms? I always gave him as much information as I could. On one occasion he mentioned that he would like to visit Mr Egle in hospital but I don’t think he actually went as Mr Egle was too ill to receive visitors.447

  The next time Graham visited his sister, he brought up the matter with her. ‘Graham said to me, “The storeman at our place is ill.” I said, “What’s the matter with him?” Graham said, “Some virus or other, it’s a virus that’s affecting his nervous system.”’448 Winifred murmured that it was awful and she hoped he made a good recovery. But at St Albans hospital, Dr Roger Gulin had already begun to fear the worst:

  Mr Egle continued to deteriorate. Muscle weakness in the face and throat became apparent which made swallowing difficult. Shortly afterwards the muscles affecting breathing became weak and at this stage an operation was performed on his windpipe through which a small tube was inserted and connected to a breathing-assisting machine. However, his condition continued to get worse with a fall in blood pressure and an increase in his heartbeat. Mr Egle then developed pneumonia, which added to his other complications.449

  Shortly after 10:15pm on Wednesday, 7 July 1971, the formerly vigorously healthy veteran of Dunkirk, Bob Egle, passed away.

  His wife received a telephone call from the hospital informing her that her husband of almost 40 years had died. She in turn had to pass that news on to their devastated daughter, who had looked forward to her parents living with her after their imminent retirement.

  Bob’s cause of death was recorded as ‘Broncho Pneumonia secondary to Guillain-Barré Polyneuritis’ and certified by Dr Michael Smith, casualty officer at St Thomas’ hospital, London and house physician at St Albans city hospital.450 On Friday, 9 July, Dr Smith attended a post-mortem examination conducted by Dr John Pugh at St Albans city hospital mortuary. It was deemed necessary to determine the cause of Bob’s paralysis. Dr Smith recalled that ‘this it failed to do because no anatomical or histological abnormalities were found in the brain, spinal cord and peripheral nerves. The examination failed to throw any light on the cause of the paralysis.’451 The resultant mortuary report did reveal other elements that led to Bob’s death, however. The ‘well-nourished, elderly man’ was found to have a largely normal heart, but his main air passages were ‘full of pus’ with both lungs ‘solid from pneumonia throughout’. His spleen was ‘red, septic’ and visceral changes within his body included considerable ‘circulatory disturbance in liver and kidney and hypostatic bronchopneumonia’.452 In addition to the clinical diagnosis of Landry’s paralysis, Dr Pugh’s central anatomical finding was bronchopneumonia.

  The news of Bob Egle’s death was met with mostly shocked silence at Hadlands, where his former colleagues had been gathered together to be told of his passing. An over-used phrase, but in this case accurate, was heard repeatedly by those who knew Bob well or as an acquaintance: no one had a bad word to say about him. There were tears and disbelief among the staff. Graham’s immediate response was not recorded, but Diana Smart remembered a short discussion with him about the funeral: ‘He asked me if I was going. I said, “No, but I’m sure someone from the offices will be going to represent the firm.” He said, “Yes, but I think I’d like to go.”’453

  Ron Hewitt was saddened, and more than a little worried, when he heard of Bob’s death. His efforts to find work as a full-time driver had paid off, and his last day at Hadlands was Friday, 9 July. Despite liking everyone with whom he had worked, Ron was relieved to be leaving the company, and more so after being told that Bob had died, because he, too, had been intermittently ill in recent weeks. ‘When it first started, I was at work in the stores,’ he recalled. ‘It was just after tea break, because we thought it might have been something in the tea. It started as a burning feeling in the back of my throat and about five or ten minutes later, I had stomach pains as if someone had got hold of my stomach and twisted it.’454

  He felt better after vomiting and carried on with his work. ‘But during the afternoon I had pain again and felt sick, and somebody brought me home and I left my car at work,’ he stated. ‘I couldn’t eat anything for two or three days. Every time I tried to eat, I would vomit.’455 He made an appointment with his doctor in Hemel Hempstead, who told him he had probably picked up a bug and gave him kaolin and morphine linctus. He took regular doses during a week’s sick leave and returned to Hadlands feeling better, if somewhat fragile. Mid-week, however, he had another attack of stomach pains and sickness, but not so bad as before and was able to clear it with the medicine and some antibiotics. He left Hadlands feeling certain that he had contracted something from the premises, possibly even the same virus that killed Bob Egle. There had long been talk of the ‘Bovingdon Bug’, which was peculiar to the area around the old aerodrome and documented in medical books as similar to gastroenteritis – several schoolchildren had suffered from it. For the time being at least, Ron Hewitt was simply grateful to think he had survived the strange and arcane virus.

  Graham visited his sister on Saturday, 10 July. He told her, ‘The storeman has died.’ When she asked him what had caused Bob’s death, he replied, ‘It was a rare virus.’456 He seemed unperturbed by the loss of his colleague and said no more about it.

  That same day, the body of Bob Egle was collected from the mortuary at St Albans city hospital by Idris Arnold, manager of Cooks Funeral Services. He conveyed the body to their Chapel of Rest in Chesham, where it was laid out in an open coffin. On Sunday, Dorothy Egle visited her husband for the final time.

  On the morning of Monday, 12 July 1971, Bob Egle’s coffin was closed and sealed in preparation for his funeral that afternoon at Whelpley Hill, a hamlet behind the old airfield. The service at the small Victorian church of St Michael’s and All Angels was short but moving. Graham had managed t
o wangle himself an invitation, sitting stiffly but alert on a pew alongside Geoffrey Foster, who was both a friend of the deceased and there to represent the firm of Hadlands. The funeral was held immediately after the service, at Chiltern crematorium.

  Foster drove, with Graham fidgeting in the passenger seat; he was talkative during the 20-minute journey. It was a hot, dry afternoon. ‘Do we know from what illness Bob Egle has died?’ Graham enquired.457

  Foster nodded. ‘I got a copy of the death certificate that morning. It said “polyneuritis”.’

  Graham frowned. ‘Did the certificate qualify this in any way, as polyneuritis is only a general term?’

  ‘There was some specific name, but it was in French – I can’t recall,’ said Foster.

  ‘Oh, that sounds like the Guillain-Barré syndrome,’ said the younger man.

  Feeling a jolt of surprise, Foster glanced at him. ‘Yes, that’s it.’

  ‘Guillain-Barré syndrome had only recently been identified.’

  Graham then described in great detail the various treatments that were being tried for it. Foster could not understand much of what he was saying, given how technical some of the terms were. There was a moment’s silence, then Graham looked out of the window at the summer hedgerows flashing by in green and white, before remarking, ‘It’s terribly sad that a man like Bob Egle should survive the dangers of Dunkirk only to fall victim to a strange virus at this time.’ He sighed heavily and leant against the glass. Foster said nothing, but was amazed by his medical knowledge, which Graham demonstrated again on their journey back to Bovingdon when he began another discourse with the opening, ‘When people suffer from nervous diseases, it very often turns to bronchopneumonia which is the actual cause of death . . . ’458

  At the crematorium, staff dealt with the final stages of the funeral, which was the only one held there that day. Bob Egle’s ashes were placed in an oak casket on which an inscription plate bore the words: ‘Robert Edward Egle (60 years), died 7.7.71. At Rest’.

  Although no one knew it then, the cremation of this kindly, active man would lead to an important advance in British forensic history; it would also help secure Graham’s conviction years after he had suggested cremating his first victim in the belief that the process would ensure he was never found out.

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE DARK ANGEL OF DEATH

  T

  HERE WERE MANY aspects of Bob Egle’s death that pleased Graham, including his promotion to laboratory storeman. Winifred recalled that Graham mentioned it when he visited her shortly after the funeral. He told her that it meant an increase in his wages, then added, ‘But it’s sad the way it happened.’459 Reflecting on the conversation in the light of later knowledge, she admitted, ‘I had no doubt that he sincerely meant that it was a pity a man had to die to bring about such a promotion. Yet I now realise that his conversation about Bob Egle and his death surely had a much more chilling and macabre aspect.’460 She felt then that he was acting out as he so often did – sailing close to the wind by talking and behaving in a way that could only draw attention to matters he should really have kept secret.

  Soon after his promotion, Graham visited his sister again. This time he was annoyed, telling her, ‘An older man in the stores keeps interfering in what I am doing. I’ve told him that I’m either running the stores or not. I’ll speak to John Hadland about it.’ Winifred shrugged, ‘He’s probably just trying to be helpful.’ Graham shook his head, scowling, ‘No, he’s not. He’s just interfering.’461 Although Winifred came to believe the man who had irritated him was Fred Biggs, one of Graham’s other colleagues – student Martin Hancock – explained that she was mistaken: ‘I recall him saying that he didn’t like working in the stores and that people were getting on his back.’ Hancock remembered that the only person Graham ever mentioned by name in regard to this was George Janouch: ‘He never said why this was. It may have been because George was running the store at the time and may have been getting on to him.’462

  Martin had learned of Bob’s death only after returning to work following his own bout of illness:

  I went into the stores on a number of occasions and noticed that Bob Egle was not at his bench. I think I asked Fred Biggs where he was and he said that he had died. I then spoke to Graham about Bob’s death and he said that he had died of a nervous disease. He told me in detail all about it and said that towards the end Bob was in a great deal of pain. I got the impression that he was either there at the time Bob died or that he knew exactly what would happen to him.463

  In response to a question from Graham, Martin told him that he had been ill with glandular fever. Graham then described what the illness entailed using all the relevant medical terms. ‘He was obviously well read on medicine,’ Martin mused. ‘He had all this on tap, so to speak, and had not been able to read up about my illness.’464

  There were other changes following the death of Bob Egle, one of which involved Fred Biggs being asked to work extra hours. This took him up to four full days a week with one half day. His wife Annie, who worked the same hours as before at Hadlands, recalled that her husband ‘still did his job as storekeeper in the work-in-progress section of stores and also helped Graham Young in the main stores department’.465 The older man and the younger got on well together, and had several conversations that summer about insecticides and pesticides. That summer the store was plagued by wasps; Diana Smart remembered how Graham detested them, along with flies and spiders, and would leap about the place swatting madly, then collect the insects on pieces of paper to watch their death throes. She once told him off for repeatedly poking a dying spider with a pencil but he just smiled until one of the other men working nearby told him sharply to put the creature out of its misery. The wasps annoyed everyone, however, and Fred tried an old method of dealing with them: sugared water left in a bowl outside the doors to attract the wasps to the water instead of the stores. Discussing the problem, Fred mentioned that bugs of some sort were decimating the plants in his garden and Graham suggested that nicotine was an effective means of dealing with them. A couple of days later, Graham brought a tin of nicotine dust and offered it to Fred, who politely declined to try it in his garden. Graham then proposed another method: a gallon of water with 10 grams – approximately 150 grains – of thallium. He offered to provide the thallium and brought in 15 grams, warning Fred not to handle it without gloves.

  Although evidence later showed that the older man had never used the substance, nor even opened the packet, it was around this time when he experienced his first serious bout of illness. In an eerie repeat of his remark about Bob Egle, managing director Geoffrey Foster described Fred as a ‘vigorous, healthy person until his illness’.466 Annie Biggs confirmed: ‘All his life Fred has been a very healthy man, never having had any serious illness.’467 At the age of 11, he had appendicitis and around 1965 he had a hernia operation, but those were his only hospital admissions. In spring 1971, he had a bit of trouble with indigestion but the tablets his doctor prescribed for him cleared the trouble quickly. Other than that, he enjoyed a very active life. His wife recalled: ‘He was very fond of gardening and ballroom dancing. We both attended ballroom-dancing classes, once or twice a week regularly at the Irene Smythe School of Dancing in Rickmansworth. We actually won three bronze and two silver medals for our dancing together.’468

  Annie was unable to remember the exact date when her husband fell ill, but it was probably towards the end of August. He had been at work that morning, having risen perfectly well as usual and eaten breakfast. She gave him his packed lunch and the two of them set out for Hadlands in their car. She was very surprised when, just after she finished her shift at 1pm, Fred appeared and told her that he had asked another colleague, Peter Buck, to drive them both home in his car because he was too ill to work or drive himself. She recalled: ‘When we got into our car, Fred told me he had been dreadfully sick and had some awful pains in his stomach. He was not sick on the journey and as soon as we
arrived home he went straight to bed and stayed there. He was not sick anymore and he slept for most of the afternoon until about 6pm or 7pm.’469

  Annie telephoned their dancing instructor to explain that they would not be along to train that night for their medal test, which was due in December. Shortly afterwards, Fred got up from bed and seemed much brighter, asking for a cup of Bovril. He then slept through the night and returned to work as normal the following morning. When he met her at lunchtime, he still seemed well, although he mentioned having had diarrhoea earlier. They went shopping together that afternoon and discussed their impending holiday. It would be their second that year; they had enjoyed a fortnight in the Spanish resort of Tossa de Mar shortly before Bob Egle fell ill.

  Graham had booked his own holidays for September but was going no further than Kent. He left to stay with his aunt, uncle and father in Sheerness on Saturday, 4 September. Win was surprised to find him less amiable than usual:

  During this holiday I found him to be extremely moody and bad-tempered. During these ten days I remember having a conversation with him in which he said, ‘The man I work with has died and I have got his job.’ I said, ‘What did he die with?’ and he said, ‘Some obscure virus. He told me once jokingly that he was dying from the fingers up because he had pins and needles.’ I immediately felt suspicious because it was the same as his stepmother Molly. I wanted to trust him and made the mistake of not listening to my instinct. If there wasn’t anything in it, I didn’t want to start things up.470

  Win was privately circumspect, however: ‘I was never keen to let him mess about in my kitchen. I would not let him brew a cup of tea if I could help it, but I tried not to show it. None of the family really trusted him.’471

  Apart from Graham’s poor temper, the visit passed without incident and he returned to work on 13 September. Fred and his wife had left the day before, to spend a week touring Devon and Cornwall. But Graham’s absence from Hadlands had shown that his promotion was premature: one of his colleagues in the store decided to clear out and burn all the empty boxes in the stores, which was among Graham’s duties. When Graham arrived at work and saw the space created by the clearance, he remarked on how great the place looked. Nor was Graham as careful as he should have been with property; while he had been away, Norman Smart doubled his efforts in maintenance and security. Graham was responsible for putting away the expensive cameras sent in by customers for repair, and one of Norman’s duties was to ensure they were locked up. He noticed that Graham had left one camera out in the stores, but when he spoke to him about it, Graham merely grinned and said that it was just a customer’s camera and hardly important. Norman also grew frustrated by Graham’s perpetual habit of misplacing his keys, which Norman usually found locked in the stores. When he spoke to his wife about the issues he had with Graham, Diana sympathised; among Graham’s quirks was preferring to work in semi-darkness, which she disliked. There was strong fluorescent lighting in the stores, but when the natural light faded, he was loath to switch them on and would turn them off if Diana or anyone else did. He told her that it was a good thing to train your eyes to seeing in the dark instead of relying on electricity. Norman once found his wife attempting to work in the WIP section in darkness and was astonished when she told him not to switch the light on or Graham would go mad. Norman replied that she was being ridiculous and put the light on for her. Graham arrived back a few moments later and asked her plaintively why she had gone against his wishes. On other occasions she found herself stumbling about the place in semi-darkness because Graham insisted that the lights should remain off.