He went on to say he stayed with Smith “for about ten minutes,” trying to bring him around. He then covered up the entrance to the thicket with the branch of a tree and a screen of willow herb. He took up Smith’s jacket, hat, and shoes—these last had come off as the body was dragged to the bushes. From the pocket of the jacket fell the photograph of a girl. “I just tore it up and threw it back on the grass near the bush where Bob was lying.”
Gribble, as he walked back to the entrance of the Ballast Hole, discarded the shoes, the jacket, and the hat. From the jacket pocket he took Smith’s wallet, which he burned when he got home, without having examined its contents.
Gribble was charged with murder and appeared for trial at Leicester Assizes. The case for murder was, of course, that he had attacked an unarmed opponent with a heavy weapon with far more force than was necessary for self-protection and had, what was much worse, struck this opponent two violent blows after he, the opponent, was lying unconscious on the ground. The case for a reduced verdict of manslaughter was Gribble’s own account of the quarrel, whereby he insisted that Smith had attacked him and continued to attack him in spite of being injured. This evidence of Gribble’s, combined perhaps with his youth, persuaded the jury to find a verdict of manslaughter.
This then was the final chapter in a sordid little story, sordid from every angle. Yet, as a case, it provides an excellent example of typical detective work. Sordid details, dirty scraps of old newspaper and torn odds and ends, a drain to be delved into, a patch of wasteland to be searched again and again under a grueling sun, much questioning, the wearisome taking of repetitive statements, discreet inquiries from all and sundry, more searching of the wasteland, more inquiries, a long and patient watch kept on a suspect, finally the closing of the trap, painful scenes, tears, admission.
All part of the day’s work. All part of a detective’s job. Not in the least glamorous. Not, really, all that much exciting. Indeed often just a grind of a job, requiring immense patience and determined application.
Most criminal investigations consist largely of such grind and dogged sweat. These two unspectacular ingredients are the cornerstones of a successful detective’s career. Most murder investigations are sordid and mucky. A detective needs strong nerves and a steady stomach.
Shortly after this case at Kempston, Mr. Beveridge became an area superintendent, and he is now Chief Superintendent Peter Beveridge, a very high high-up, indeed. As for my old friend Detective Sergeant Hannam, at the time I am typing this he is a mere few miles away from me, down the river at Richmond; Superintendent Hannam, conducting inquiries into the double murder of two young girls on the towpath there. He and his detectives have been dragging the river, searching through undergrowth for a weapon, combing London for a maroon-colored bicycle. With Mr. Hannam is some detective sergeant—I don’t know his name—who is wallowing in the Thames mud, sweating and searching through the dusty summer grass, muttering a few unholy somethings under his breath, no doubt, and learning in the course of it all how to be a chief superintendent himself some fine day.
CHAPTER 21
Private Diary
I am one of those tiresome people who keep diaries, pages and pages of scribble on my daily doings and daily thoughts. From time to time I read over what I have written and am overcome with shame. What an obnoxious and stupid person I find myself to be! And I stoke up the boiler and burn the diary, vigorously stirring it into the flames.
But even so, not all the diaries have been burned. Quite a lot of them lie at the bottom of an old cupboard. I never got around to burning every one of my blush-making volumes; just shoved them into the cupboard and shut the door on them.
Recently I lugged them out and looked at them to see if they contained anything interesting to include in this book. Some of the entries gave quite a good idea of what life was like with Dr. Simpson. Let me quote a little:
August 24, 1944.
Yesterday Paris was liberated. I’ve always vowed that when Paris became freed from the Nazis I’d celebrate wildly, but of course I did nothing of the sort. The day simply didn’t pan out that way. On August 23, Day of Liberation, CKS and I traveled down to Ashford in Kent on a murder job. The morning was an awful rush and lunch for me consisted of two sardine sandwiches eaten in a cloakroom at Guy’s. We just managed to catch our train.
This train was a hoppers’ train from London Bridge and it was chock-a-block with fat old mother hoppers from Lambeth, Southwark, Bermondsey, loaded with bundles and folding prams and bulging bags, and each one accompanied by cohorts of yelling children, who all passed the journey by scuttling backward and forward to the lavatory.
Passing through South London was sad, although interesting. Heavens, the terrible damage done by the doodle-bombs! It was rather thrilling passing through the vast balloon barrage outside London, which extends coastward—that is, south as far as Maidstone—and which I have been told contains as many as ten thousand balloons. They all looked very beautiful, floating silver and serene in the blue sky over the low Kent hills. Others were on the ground, and they stood around the fields like monster silver cows.
While our train was waiting at Tonbridge station I heard a soldier on the platform remark to another that Paris had fallen. I felt an inclination to stand on my head on the carriage seat and sing the “Marseillaise,” but refrained because of Keith Simpson. Felt certain he would not approve of upended secretary publicly singing French National Anthem. So squelched down my excitement and tried to continue looking cool, efficient, secretarial.
Poor Keith Simpson! Becoming distinctly peeved with the hoppers! At each station the good old hoppers had terrific struggles with their baggage; mainly goods wrapped up in tablecloths. These unwieldy bales would be finally packed into a pram, along with antique trunks dating back to the days of Pickwick, together with loose saucepans, kettles, frying pans, canvas bags, string holdalls, etc., and each adult accompanied by swarms of children, mostly little girls, all eating sandwiches, shrieking and yelling with their mouths full, and enjoying themselves hugely. And of course each family had its respective dog or cat.
Most of these people seemed to quit the train via our carriage. It was quite an experience.
So, as a result of all this chaos at each station, by the time we arrived at Ashford our train was half an hour late. CKS all worked up, kept taking out his watch and muttering, like the White Rabbit.
The murder was not very interesting; a girl of fifteen and a half who had already given much trouble by running around with men. Postmortem showed her to be—even at that tender age—well accustomed to sexual intercourse. She had been found at seven o’clock that morning lying strangled on a cricket ground near the railway. She had been strangled during intercourse.
Such a case is, really, more a matter of sordid accident rather than murder. There seemed to be no murderous intention behind it. It seems to me a bit much to hang a man under such circumstances.
All the time we were at Ashford fighter planes were cruising overhead, ready to chase and shoot down doodle-bombs.
A great many people are now saying the war will be over in two weeks. I just don’t think so. The Germans are fighting frantically. At one place in France, the news says, a German Youth Unit fought tanks at a twenty-five-yard range with rifles and, refusing to surrender, was simply slaughtered. It will take more than two weeks to vanquish people like that.
The Maquis are going great guns all over France. Our old house painter has a lovely one. He said to Mother the other day, “I’ve just had a good read of the papers and it’s all most interesting news, but this here Marquis who’s fighting in France, he seems to be everywhere at once and I’d like to know, is he an individual fellow?”
Two American soldiers were arrested for the Ashford murder. They were identified by hairs they had left on the girl’s body.
Sunday, October 1.
Last Friday, alas, I lost my little scarlet tartan umbrella of which I was very fond. Lost it strugg
ling in a crowd of homecoming hoppers at London Bridge. The Station Approach was thronged with little coster carts and costermongers come to collect the returning families and the baggage; the eternal large mammas with their screaming, excited children, ranging from little devils of twelve or so to babies in arms. They all piled onto the carts, on top of their luggage, and then Father drove them home. The fathers don’t go hopping. Reckon they’re sorry when the hopping season is over.
Most of the women hoppers wore fur coats.
When I got on a bus, my, that was crowded with hoppers, too! One large lady had a bottle she took constant swigs from and she kept singing, “Take me back to dear old Blighty.”
On Friday, too, we did a p.m. on the original Fat Boy of Peckham. His real name was Traddle, or Truddle, or somesuch. Afraid I’ve forgotten. He had a very dull face. When he was in his prime, the coroner’s officer told us, he weighed thirty-five stone [490 pounds] and at school he had to have a special desk made for him. He also had a special little donkey cart. But at the time of his death he only weighed a meager sixteen stone [224 pounds] or so. Poor man, he had tuberculosis, and he collapsed in the street. He was a watchmaker by trade. I felt sorry for him. What a weird life! To be a sensational Fat Boy of thirty-five stone, finally whittling away to a mere tuberculous sixteen stone.
I always remember my grandfather laughing and talking about the Fat Boy of Peckham. Funny to think I’ve at last seen him—on the p.m. table!
West was highly interested in this p.m. and so were all the coroner’s officers. They all came in to take a look at the unhappy celebrity. Poor old Fat Boy of Peckham!
The diary remarks rather nicely upon the newly arrived V-2s that “they aren’t so bad as the V-1s, because you don’t hear them coming and so you know nothing about them until you are actually being blown up.” I might add that I never got blown up, else I might not have thought so kindly of them.
On October 4 we went to Ashford on another murder, but this the diary didn’t comment upon, which was natural, as I remember the episode was a very muddy, chilling one, best quickly forgotten. The victim was a girl of thirteen who had been strangled in a ditch by a species of village idiot. We had to cross some very muddy fields to reach the scene of the crime and once again I found myself taking a dim view of Kent. The murderer was soon arrested and found guilty but insane.
Apart from this murder and the rocket-bombs life went on tranquilly, it would appear from the diary, with a great deal of ballet going and occasional entries such as:
I really must diet and give up alcohol, but every time I swear to devote myself to Health and Beauty and not to touch another drop for six months, I immediately receive an invitation to a party and find myself having some more.
Or:
My financial position is still worrying. I don’t save nearly enough. I go out and about far too often. I buy too many books. It is most distressing. I should check myself and live like a hermit.
It was at this moment that MacKay of Hammersmith lent me Thoreau’s Walden. I regret to say it bored me profoundly and left me with an utter distaste for hermits.
November 9.
Dr. Keith Simpson said he had some needlework for me to do in the Museum, so I went down there and found he had four little embryos, in varying sizes, which he wanted me to sew on a piece of mica to put in a pickle jar. They were fascinating little things, ugly, but beautifully made. I had a good opportunity to examine them as I stitched them on to the card. Both Dr. Simpson and Ireland complimented me on the neatness with which I did the job.
I had thought at first CKS wanted me to darn a sock or something.
November 11.
Last night CKS had a call to a murder, a country job, but as the weather was bad and I am down with a cold he went without me. The trip was to Beccles, in Suffolk, with Chief Inspector Greeno. This morning my boss tottered home, very pink in the nose and blue in the face, indeed looking thoroughly frozen, rather as if he had returned from the Russian Front. He assured me that I had missed nothing. Apparently he spent the midnight hours crouching in a ditch, in the snow, together with Mr. Greeno and the body of a murdered Waaf. This was followed by an autopsy on the said Waaf at two in the morning in Beccles mortuary.
He kept saying to me, “You didn’t miss a thing, Miss L., just a horrible night freezing in the snow.”
Apparently the wretched girl was murdered after a dance. It’ll be a job with a great deal of work in it for Mr. Greeno.”
This Beccles case proved to be a very interesting one indeed, and before it was over I had heard a great deal about it. The victim was a twenty-seven-year-old Waaf called Winifred Evans. She had been found lying in a ditch, as described, wearing a full outdoor Waaf uniform that was considerably disarranged.
Typing CKS’s postmortem report, I learned that she had been a respectable young woman, completely healthy. She had been knocked onto her face and dragged along the ground, had been rolled, or turned, onto her face, and thus heavily pinned down by somebody violently kneeling on her (with such violence indeed that her liver was ruptured), after which she had been subjected to a most savage sexual assault.
The effect of being knelt upon with the face pinned to the ground was suffocation. Her death, therefore, was due to asphyxia.
There were no foreign hairs found upon the girl’s body. Indeed there were at first no clues at all to the identity of her killer.
Near the aerodrome where the girl was stationed there was an Italian POW camp, and Chief Inspector Greeno interviewed two hundred of the men there. But meanwhile one of the dead girl’s Waaf colleagues had come forward with some interesting and important information.
She said that on November 8 Winifred Evans went to a dance at Norwich. She returned at midnight. She was due to go on duty, and she changed from her dance things into working gear. Then the unlucky girl walked away to the working site where she was due to report. She was followed by a Leading Aircraftman Heys.
Heys, according to Evans’s colleague, had appeared on the scene shortly after midnight. He was drunk and asked to be directed to Number One site. The Waaf colleague directed him and he then said, “Can I thank you?” She replied briskly, “No. Get down the road.” He went away then, walking off along the road which Evans had just taken…
At 1:00 a.m. Heys returned to his billet. His shoes were noticed to be very muddy, and he had long scratches on his hands. No comment was made at the time.
When Mr. Greeno was told all this he went straight away to interview Heys. He found that Heys’s uniform jacket had very recently been sponged and brushed, but despite this it had several large, faded brown stains on it; they looked very much like bloodstains which somebody had unsuccessfully tried to remove. There were similar residual stains on Heys’s trousers, which had also been recently sponged and pressed. These clothes were sent to the police laboratory, and the stains were shown to be human bloodstains, but they were unfortunately too weak to give positive results for blood grouping.
Nevertheless, they showed, without any doubt, that Heys had recently got his uniform very heavily stained with human blood and that he had made energetic attempts to remove these stains from his clothes.
Chief Inspector Greeno charged Heys with the murder. Heys said, on being charged, “I didn’t do it…I can’t think what to say to my wife.”
It did not really matter very much what he said to his wife. He was found guilty in due course, and hanged. But it was a very interesting example of how a murderer leaves the scene of his crime with “Murder” written all over him and how, try as he might, he cannot efface this inscription, “Murder.”
CHAPTER 22
Boys of the New Brigade
Lunch hour in the city on December 8, 1944. A muddy, cold day, people hurrying everywhere, already thinking of Christmas, trying to do a little shopping in between snatching a jostling, crowded lunchtime snack and getting back to the office. Traffic teeming in the roadways, people teeming on the pavements. The usual, cho
ck-a-block, scampering, high-blood-pressure city lunch hour.
The usual? No, not quite the usual. For on this day a new page of London’s criminal history was commenced. The page which tells the story of her young postwar gangster boys: the Jenkinses, the Geraghtys, the Ginger Kings and Craigs and Colemans.
Even today the nation is still shocked and bewildered by the exploits of its youthful thugs, whose very youth seems to add to their complete callousness. But in December 1944 these monstrous little juveniles were an entirely new experience for London, and people were completely dazed by what happened in that city lunch hour…
It was just on two o’clock and the hordes of office workers were hurrying back to their offices. People going along Birchin Lane, one of those narrow city streets, saw a car draw up outside a jeweler’s. Nothing very unusual about that. In the car were two youths, one of whom leapt from the car carrying an ax, rushed to the shop window, smashed the glass with his ax, snatched a tray of rings and a pearl necklace, and then dashed back to the car, leapt into his seat, and slammed the door shut as the driver started the car. The many people who saw this smash-and-grab raid taking place so audaciously under their very noses were too astonished to do anything, all save one, a retired naval captain, fifty-six-year-old Ralph Douglas Binney. He, in true naval tradition, placed himself fair and square in the roadway before the accelerating car, his arms stretched out in a human barrier.
The driver drove straight into Captain Binney, knocking him down, then passing full over him, then passing back over him as the young brute at the wheel put the car into reverse and backed at rapid speed down the street for several yards until he gained Lombard Street and accelerated into a frenzied dash for freedom.
Murder on the Home Front Page 19
