The Girl at My Door: An utterly gripping mystery thriller based on a true crime
Page 31
‘Will we come again soon, Mummy?’
‘’Course we will, sweetheart.’ She forced a smile for Michael’s benefit. ‘After we’ve had our holiday with your Uncle Terry.’
‘And Malcolm and Peggy?’
‘Yes, and Malcolm and Peggy.’ She cuddled him close. At first Queenie struggled to understand why Terrence wanted to live in the place where Joy had ended her life, but supposed he had a long-standing connection with the town and although she still found it difficult to visit Smuggler’s Cove, she had to agree it was the most beautiful stretch of coastline. ‘They’ll be there too.’
‘The seaside.’ Still laughing, trying out his new words. ‘Bucket and spade. Bluebell… bluebell.’
‘That’s right, the Bluebell,’ Queenie congratulated him. ‘My clever little boy.’ Michael wriggled in her arms. ‘Do you want to walk?’ she asked him when the garden gate was closed.
‘No, Mummy. Carry… carry.’
The fog had cleared at last, and what remained of the evening was closing down over the city. They took a right and turned into Queensway, passed a street vendor selling newspapers from a little wooden booth. She stopped to read the headlines on the sandwich board. The headlines that had been sliced into diagonal chunks by the wire mesh:
‘NEWS EXTRA’
KILLER CHRISTIE
ARRESTED ON PUTNEY BRIDGE
They’ve got him. They’ve finally got him.
A cold feeling scuttled up between her shoulder blades and across her back. They had finally caught the monster who had raped and strangled those poor women… women like her, who had gone to him desperate for help. The monster who had been blackmailing Terrence and making life so miserable for him, he had been forced to up sticks to Dorset.
John Reginald Halliday Christie.
She shivered and squeezed Michael tight. Folded his little foot in her palm. ‘How close I came.’
Her memory dished up a chilling picture of that freezing November night when she had stood outside that shabby door in that filthy dead-end street. The hideous rise of the foundry chimney through the thick grey smog.
‘How close I came.’ The thought, a terrifying one, as she breathed her gratitude into Michael’s curls and nuzzled his baby cheek.
Postscript
By the spring of 1953, Christie realised the net was closing in. He had no wife, no job, no money, no furniture and had turned his ground-floor flat into a mortuary. On 20 March, he moved out of 10 Rillington Place after fraudulently subletting it, and four days later, the new occupant discovered the bodies of three women in the kitchen alcove. The subsequent police search uncovered another under the floorboards and two bodies buried in the back garden. The house had already been the scene of the double murder of Beryl Evans and her infant daughter, Geraldine, in November 1949 – crimes that Timothy Evans had been convicted of and hanged for in 1950.
The grisly discoveries triggered a nationwide manhunt for John Christie, who was eventually caught seven days later, on 31 March, on Putney Bridge Embankment, where he had been sleeping rough. Under questioning, Christie shared the details of his ten-year killing spree. He murdered his wife, Ethel, in December 1952, and in his final months of freedom claimed a further three victims: prostitutes Kathleen Maloney and Rita Nelson – each subjected to gassing treatment and their unconscious or lifeless bodies sexually assaulted then strangled – and Christie’s last victim, Hectorina Maclennan. They were added to the bodies of Ruth Fuerst and Muriel Eady, murdered in 1943 and 1944 and buried in the back garden of Rillington Place.
Immediately after Christie was sentenced to hang for the murder of his wife, Ethel, Timothy Evans’ mother called on the government to reopen her son’s case and demanded a public inquiry. Christie had said during his trial that he had strangled Timothy’s wife, Beryl, on 8 November 1949, but strenuously denied killing baby Geraldine. Timothy Evans’ mother lived in St Marks Road, a few hundred yards from 10 Rillington Place, where Timothy and Beryl rented the top-floor flat. She insisted her son had known nothing of his baby’s death until he’d arrived at the police station in Notting Hill. When the police had first searched the property at Rillington Place, they’d found baby Geraldine’s belongings hidden in a cupboard in Christie’s front room. Her clothes, her pram, even her feeding bottle half-filled with milk were there, but no one had mentioned these facts at Timothy Evans’ trial. A trial at which Christie had been a principal witness for the Crown, where he had given detailed evidence about the arguments between Evans and his wife and denied the accusations put forward by the defence.
The idea there could be two stranglers operating out of 10 Rillington Place in the autumn of 1949 stretched credulity to breaking point. But it was to be another twelve years before the government ordered a re-examination of the case, and a posthumous free pardon for Timothy Evans was not granted until October 1966. A pardon that exonerated Evans of the charge on which he had been convicted: that of killing his infant daughter. Timothy Evans’ remains were exhumed from Pentonville prison and reinterred in consecrated ground. The case was instrumental in the decision to abolish the death penalty in the UK.
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Books by Rebecca Griffiths
The Girl at My Door
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Sweet Sacrifice
Cry Baby
A Place to Lie
The Primrose Path
A Letter from Rebecca
Thank you for reading The Girl at My Door – I do hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. If you did and would like to be kept up to date with my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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Acknowledgements
Special thanks must go to my lovely agent Broo Doherty for her guidance and enthusiasm. There are many people at Bookouture for whose knowledge and dedication I am grateful, particularly Laura Deacon, my wonderful editor, for her expertise and valuable advice.
Thanks must also go to my two trusty readers and friends. The top book blogger and reviewer Jo Robertson, and her fabulous blog site: mychestnutreadingtree.wordpress.com; and the researcher, historian and folklorist Beverley Rogers, and her fascinating website: bevrogers.co.uk.
But most of all my thanks must go to my husband, Steven, to whom this book is dedicated, for his indomitable belief, love and creative inspiration.
Published by Bookouture in 2021
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An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
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www.bookouture.com
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Copyright © Rebecca Griffiths, 2021
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Rebecca Griffiths has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
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All rights reserved. No par
t of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-80019-891-3
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.