During the early part of December I was in Paris, attending the annual conference of the NATO Council. It was there, in the office of the Daily Mail, that I heard the result of the Montagu trial. The jury had acquitted Edward on the more serious charge, but had failed to agree on a lesser charge which the Director of Public Prosecutions had chosen to bring in at the last moment, without informing Edward, his Counsel or solicitors. There would therefore be a retrial on this count alone, presumably after a delay of several more months.
This seemed to me a cruel and ludicrous result. The acquittal on the graver charge showed that the jury had decided that the boy scout was lying, and the logical course would therefore have been to reject his evidence altogether. The justice of these re-trials, which have become such a feature of English judicial procedure, seems to me in any case to be open to doubt. In any trial, the onus of proof is on the prosecution; if, therefore, the prosecution fails to convince a majority of the jury that its version of the facts is correct, the benefit of the doubt should surely be given to the accused man. It seems grossly unfair that jury after jury should be empanelled until a set of twelve men is at last found who are prepared to believe the accusations brought by the Crown. This is particularly true in a case like Edward’s, in which the enormous amount of publicity makes it impossible for any jury to listen to the evidence with an open mind.
In spite of this, I believed that Edward would be acquitted. After the first trial had ended, some new evidence came to light which would, I think, have exposed the whole series of accusations against him as a lie.
There was one feature of this case which did not, perhaps, attract as much attention from the Press as it deserved. This was the matter of Edward’s passport, which he had surrendered to the police on his return to England to stand trial, and which had been in their possession ever since.
In the witness-box, Edward said that he had flown to France on August 24th, and from there to New York on September 25th. He had returned to London by air on November 7th. When he was cross-examined by Mr. Fox-Andrews, QC, the counsel for the prosecution, it was put to him that he had in fact secretly returned to this country during September and had failed to give himself up to the police.
‘You say that you left Paris for the United States on September 25th?’ asked Mr. Fox-Andrews.
Edward replied that he had.
‘Did you ever go back to England between the time you went to Paris on the 24th of August and the date you left for New York on the 25th of September?’
‘I did not.’
‘You did not?’
‘No.’
‘Look at page seven of your passport.... Can you explain that entry in that passport which indicates that you left Boulogne on the 23rd of September?’
‘Only the French Customs could explain that.’
‘You see the entry, don’t you, and the date?’
‘Yes.’
‘That indicates an exit from Boulogne on the 23rd September, does it not?’
‘All I can say is that I was in Paris at that time, that I went direct to America from Paris, and that I have not been in Boulogne since 1948’, said Edward.
‘And you can give no explanation of that entry about Boulogne in your passport?’
‘None whatever.’
‘May I,’ asked Mr. Fox-Andrews, ‘make a suggestion? Is it possible that you may have forgotten, and that you may have flown to England—and that you may have flown to America from England on the 25th of September?’
‘I did not; I flew from France.’
Mr. Fox-Andrews continued to suggest that Edward was not telling the truth; Edward continued to insist that he had been nowhere near Boulogne on the date shown on the passport. The Judge, looking at the passport, asked him: ‘When did you go to Boulogne?’ Edward replied that it was in 1948 or 1949.
After carefully examining the entry, the Judge, Mr. Justice Lynskey, remarked: ‘This entry in this passport has obviously been altered, Mr. Fox-Andrews.’
The judge then directed that the passport should be shown to the jury, while the matter was fresh in their minds. ‘You will see “Boulogne”, members of the jury,’ he said, ‘in the left hand corner. You may think that the “5” looks as if it had been “4”. You will each form your own view about that.’ He turned to Edward and said: ‘That passport has not been in your hands since it was taken I from you on your arrival in this country?’
‘That is so, my Lord. I can prove exactly what I did on the 23rd of September.’
I have quoted this dialogue at some length, because it seems to me to disclose a very singular state of affairs. An important piece of Crown evidence had been exposed as a forgery. The passport had been altered, quite obviously, in order to prove that Edward Montagu was a liar. If the jury could be convinced that he was lying about his movements, they might naturally conclude that his other evidence could not be believed. The forged passport was thus a powerful weapon in the hands of the Crown.
The matter of the passport was brought up again during the second case, in which I was involved myself. No attempt was ever made by the prosecution to explain it. It was apparently accepted as normal that the police should produce forged documents as evidence, in the same way that it was accepted that they should search a house without a warrant, re-arrest a man while he was on bail on another charge, terrorise McNally and Reynolds by repeated questionings and promise them immunity from prosecution if they would give evidence against their former friends.
I did not believe that such things could happen in England, until they happened to me.
Part Two
Between Edward’s arrest and the opening of his trial I wrote to him, wishing him luck—a letter which was subsequently produced by the prosecution during my own trial. I had not seen McNally for some time, but one evening in a public-house in Bloomsbury I happened to meet Reynolds.
He left the group with whom he had been drinking and came over to speak to me. He was very agitated about the arrest and said that when he and McNally had read the news they had been very upset, fearing that I was ‘the friend of Lord Montagu’ who had been charged at the same time. I told him that I was in no way implicated in the case.
At the end of November McNally came to see me at Canonbury, bringing two long-playing gramophone records as a present. I think we both realised that we should not be seeing each other any more; we had quarrelled several times and I had been somewhat disturbed to hear from him that his family had been going through his pockets and had discovered one of my letters. He told me that he was due to leave the RAF in a few months’ time and suggested that I might employ him as a man-servant. I turned down this idea, partly because I already had a man-servant and partly because there was something about McNally’s appearance and behaviour which made me uneasy. He repeated the story about the letter, saying that his father still had it. Previously, he had assured me that it had been destroyed. I decided that the wisest course would be to see no more of him.
I returned to London and resumed my work. The Editor told me that now, after a six-month trial period, my appointment as Diplomatic Correspondent was definitely confirmed. I celebrated this event by inviting my mother and father to spend Christmas with me in my new house. I put up a Christmas tree and paper chains, and a holly-wreath in the window, immensely proud to be entertaining my parents in a house which I had bought and furnished entirely out of my own earnings. That Christmas, I was completely happy.
I was due to go to Berlin for the four-Power conference of Foreign Ministers on January the 14th. On Friday, January the 8th, I visited the Foreign Office as usual, went to the Daily Mail office and returned to my home at about 11 p.m. My man-servant, whose room was in the basement, had been ill for a few days and the doctor had been to see him. I said good-night to him and went upstairs to bed.
At 8 o’clock the next morning there was a thunderous knocking at the door. I ran downstairs in pyjamas and dressing-gown and opened it. Three men were standing outside,
wearing mackintoshes and trilby hats. One of them said: ‘Are you Mr. Wildeblood?’ I told him that I was. He said: ‘We are police officers from the Hampshire Constabulary and from New Scotland Yard. We have come to arrest you, Wildeblood, for offences arising out of your association with Edward McNally and John Reynolds in the summer of 1952.’
It was a bitterly cold morning, and when I heard these words, so incongruous in their stilted language, I felt as though I was drowning in an icy sea. I could not speak. I was shaking violently as they pushed past me into the hall. The one who had spoken before asked: ‘Where do you sleep?’ I told him that my bedroom was on the second floor.
‘Anybody up there with you?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘Anyone else in the house?’
I told him that the man-servant, who had been ill for several days, was in the basement, asleep. One of the detectives detached himself from the group and went downstairs. The other two, it appeared, were Detective Superintendent Jones, of the Hampshire Police, and Detective Superintendent Smith, of Scotland Yard’s Special Branch. I had already heard of Superintendent Jones.
He had been in charge of the first Montagu Case.
‘We are going to search the house,’ said Superintendent Jones. He did not, however, produce a warrant. I tried to remember—were the police allowed to search a house without a warrant? My numb and frozen mind refused to give me an answer.
‘I must get in touch with my solicitor,’ I said.
‘That can wait. We’ve got plenty of time.’
Then they began to ask questions. Had I spent a holiday at Beaulieu and in Dorset in 1952? Had I been to see Dial M for Murder? Did I have the programme? Or the ticket stubs? Or the envelope in which they had been sent from the ticket agency?
I said, again, that I wanted to telephone my solicitor.
‘He won’t be at his office yet,’ said Superintendent Jones. He was a big swarthy Welshman, running to fat but with the remains of a flashy handsomeness.
‘He doesn’t go to his office on Saturday mornings,’ I said. ‘But there’s a Christmas card from him in my desk, with his home number on it.’
‘Well, you can’t touch anything on the desk until we’ve finished going through it. Have you any photographs of McNally?’
I took some from a drawer. They were mixed up with other photographs of my mother and father, and of their cottage in Sussex.
With a flourish, Superintendent Jones produced a bundle of letters from his briefcase. ‘Is this your handwriting?’ he asked.
I looked at the top letter. It was one which I had written to McNally; a poor, trusting, foolish letter born of loneliness and a craving for affection. It lay between the detective’s plump hands lightly, like a grenade.
‘Yes, I wrote them,’ I said.
There was a long silence, while the two men, still wearing their mackintoshes, bustled about the house, opening cupboards and chests of drawers, methodically sifting everything I possessed, going through the pockets of my suits and looking under the mattress and reading every letter that they found.
‘Who’s this from?’
‘My mother.’
‘And this? Someone in the Navy, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
He put it in his pocket. ‘You’re in a pretty bad position, you know,’ said Superintendent Jones. ‘It’s a pity you ever got mixed up with that crowd. Look here, don’t you think you would feel better if you made a clean breast of it?’
‘I think I ought to see my solicitor first.’
‘Well, it’s up to you to decide, not him.’
Eventually—after they had spent an hour and a half searching the house—I was allowed to telephone my solicitor. He said that he did not feel qualified to deal with the matter, but that he would ring up his father (the senior partner in his firm) and ask him to recommend someone.
The questions went on.
Although I did not yet know the gravity of the charges against me, I realised that the whole of my relationship with McNally was going to be dragged out into the light. My letters to him would be read in public. I could imagine the effect on my parents. I should lose everything for which I had worked: my job, my home, my friends. I thought of killing myself.
‘May I go up to the bathroom?’
Superintendent Smith, an avuncular man with smooth grey hair, said: ‘All right, but don’t go doing anything silly.’ He made me leave the bathroom door ajar, and stood outside while I shaved. In the cold, flat light of a January morning, my reflection in the mirror looked fantastically like a criminal’s identity photograph.
When I went downstairs again, I said: ‘What is going to happen to me?’
Superintendent Jones fixed his very pale blue eyes upon me and said: ‘Well, I make it a rule never to make promises; but as you haven’t been in trouble before I should think you’d probably get bound over. The best thing is for you to make a statement. You just clear yourself—don’t bother too much about the others.’
The telephone rang. It was my solicitor. He said that Mr. Harry Myers, who specialised in criminal cases, had agreed to take over. I asked him to tell Mr. Myers to come to the house as soon as he could. I told him not to worry too much, as I understood that I should probably get bound over. At this point Superintendent Smith tapped me on the arm and said: ‘Don’t discuss the case over the telephone. Tell him to get Myers to ring me at the Yard—we’ll be going there presently.’
I afterwards discovered that during the three and a half hours which the two Superintendents spent in searching the house, the Sergeant who accompanied them had been questioning my man-servant. This man was in no possible way connected with the case, not having been in my employment in 1952; but he was made to get out of bed, his room searched and his correspondence read.
While Superintendent Jones was going through the contents of my wallet he found a number of visiting cards and telephone numbers, mainly belonging to business ‘contacts’. Noticing one well-known name among them, he asked: ‘I suppose he’s queer too?’ I said that if they really wanted a list of homosexuals from me I would be happy to oblige, beginning with judges, policemen and members of the Government. I was beginning to feel slightly better. Very faintly, as though at the end of a tunnel, I could see what I must do. I would make a statement, but it would not be of the kind which Superintendent Jones was expecting. Far from incriminating Edward Montagu and Michael Pitt-Rivers, as he hoped, I would simply tell the truth about myself. I had no illusions about the amount of publicity which would be involved. I would be the first homosexual to tell what it felt like to be an exile in one’s own country. I might destroy myself, but perhaps I could help others.
At Scotland Yard, I was allowed to telephone to a friend and ask him to be at Lymington Police Station at 5.30 p.m., when I was to be charged, so that he could stand bail for me. At the same time, Superintendent Smith was apparently speaking to Mr. Myers on another extension; he came into the room where I was sitting and said: ‘Mr. Myers won’t be here for some time yet. Would you like to start writing your statement now?’ I said that I would, and Superintendent Jones produced from his briefcase a sheaf of Hampshire Constabulary statement forms which he had evidently brought with him for the purpose.
It is, I think, significant that Jones, the senior police officer in charge of the whole operation, should have come to arrest me, while the arrests of Montagu and Pitt-Rivers were carried out by subordinates. Possibly he hoped that I could be induced to make an incriminating statement which would implicate the others. I did not realise at this time, of course, that I was to be charged with conspiring with the other two to incite Reynolds and McNally to commit indecent acts. This was a clever legal move on the part of the Director of Public Prosecutions, so that my letters—regarded as strong corroborative evidence—could be used not only against me, but against Lord Montagu, who was of course the real quarry.
The statement which I made was never read out in court, because my counsel
successfully pleaded that it was not a voluntary statement and was therefore inadmissible as evidence. I should perhaps explain that it was in no sense a ‘confession’, although I admitted, as I did later in court, that I was a homosexual, and attempted to give some account of the difficulties inherent in my condition.
After I had made this statement I was allowed to see Mr. Myers. It was now five hours since I had first asked to get in touch with my solicitor. During the trial the police, when cross-examined about this delay, said that it had been made necessary by the large scale and complexity of the police operations that morning. Since all three of us had been arrested by 8.15 a.m. this was obviously untrue, but it was apparently accepted by the judge. Both Edward and Michael were prevented in the same way from seeing their solicitors. The police, in fact, were giving the news of our arrest to the Press several hours before we were allowed to seek the legal advice which was our right.
Before leaving Scotland Yard I telephoned the News Editor of the Daily Mail, Mr. Hardcastle, at his home. He had already heard the news of my arrest from a news agency message. This was three hours before I was charged. The evening papers were able to print eyewitness accounts of Lord Montagu’s arrest, apparently provided by the police, before he had been allowed to see a solicitor and before he had been charged.
I was taken by car to Winchester, where I was photographed and fingerprinted at the police station. Then we went on to Lymington, where Edward and Michael were already waiting. The place was besieged by reporters and photographers. We were brought up before the magistrate, charged and formally remanded. The charges, on this first hearing, were concerned only with things we were supposed to have done in Hampshire. The police had plenty of other charges up their sleeve, concerning incidents in London and Dorset, yet they were arranging for the second trial of Lord Montagu to take place in Hampshire, where local prejudice against him might be expected to be strongest. The Hampshire charge which they brought against me on this occasion was, in fact, subsequently dropped.
Against the Law Page 7
