The Case Of Mary Bell: A Portrait of a Child Who Murdered

by Gitta Sereny

  (Nobody claimed they had written the notes in the bedroom; this was one of her impulsive and, as happened often, momentarily successful red herrings.)

  “Do you remember how many notes altogether you wrote in the bedroom?” asked Harvey Robson.

  “We never wrote notes at all in the bedroom,” she repeated patiently. “We only wrote them in the scullery because you cannot do none in the bedroom because if you rest it on the bed the pen would go straight through it because the bed is soft, and there is like a sideboard thing and it has got a round thing which has a frilly thing on it.”

  “You did not make any of the notes in the bedroom. How many notes did you make in the scullery? . . .”

  “. . . Two.”

  “And when you had made the notes, did you stay in or did you go somewhere?”

  “We went—er—Norma says, ‘Are you coming to the Nursery?” I said ‘Yes, howay then,’ because we had broken into it before.”

  “Yes?”

  “We had been in a week and all—the week before that.”

  “And how did you get into the Nursery?”

  “Well, I was going to climb up first, but there was barbed wire right round the pipe, so I says, ‘Norma, I cannot get up.’ She says, ‘Mind, I will get up’ and she went up first, but there was a piece of barbed wire stuck onto her cardigan so I got up and I was pulling it off her and I got back down again and when she got up, there was like an aluminium roof or something. It is bumpy . . .”

  “. . . Yes.” Harvey Robson continued, “And what was done about the roof?”

  “Well, after that I got up and I had got up, there was some slates and it was a Sunday this I think, because there was a man working in the garden on overtime. Norma pulled a slate up which made a noise and she always lay down on the bumpy part of the roof, and so did I in case the man would see us.”

  “You lay down, too?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “And under the slates—do you know—in an attic the long bit of wood between every slate? Well, it was . . . it went fat and then it went thin in the middle and we just stood on it at this end that was barbed wire and all, because it had been broken into before, and we got through it and there is a trap door.”

  “And you went through the trap door?”

  “. . . Yes.”

  “And went down?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where did you go down below?”

  “We got out of the lavatory room and we went, er—up the passage. All the doors were locked excepting the swinging doors off the passage and there is this cupboard and it had like an aluminium tub in it, there was keys on top and Norma got up and got them.”

  “What did the two of you do with the keys?”

  “We got a bunch each.”

  “Yes?”

  “And we were opening the doors and we were being destructful.”

  “You were what?”

  “Being destructful.”

  “Destructful,” Mr. Justice Cusack repeated.

  “What did you actually do?” asked Mr. Robson.

  “Well, with them it was the Head’s office we went in and we pulled some papers out and there was this bag and it had like a pinned note, signed on it, and we opened it, and we got the little—there was nothing inside except for little domino things, tiddlywinks.”

  “Was there a telephone?”

  “Yes, that was upstairs.”

  “Was that in the Head’s office, or where?”

  “No, there was telephones all over the place but we went upstairs. We were going to see the other rooms and we went upstairs and there is a telephone and it has got like a little box thing on the bottom and you pull out, and it has got something like a mousetrap or something, not a mousetrap, but like an iron thing that keeps the papers flat.”

  “And did you pull off, or pull out any of those pieces of paper?”

  “Norma put the piece of paper what she had wrote on in that—in that thing. I don’t know if it was my bit of paper or not, or I’m not sure whose bit of paper it was.”

  “Were there any more notes made in the Nursery?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am not quite sure what happened to the other piece of paper,” the Judge interposed. “Norma put the piece of paper that she had written on, in the spring thing in the telephone?”

  “Yes, but I’m not sure if it was. . . .”

  “. . . May,” Mr. Robson suggested, “I think you were going on to say something about more notes written in the Nursery?”

  “Yes, sir. We wrote some more because there was like a little ball-bearing thing—like a little ball-bearing thing attached to the telephone. I’m not sure if it was a spring or something. And we wrote on that because there was a notebook, a little book in.”

  “And can you remember exactly how many notes were written at the Nursery?”

  “About four or five, or something like that, sir.”

  “And what happened to those notes?”

  “Er—we, I think we just left them by the telephone or they were scattered around or something. I can’t remember.”

  “Now, will you tell all of us, May, what was the object of writing the notes and leaving them in the Nursery?”

  “That is two questions in one,” said the Judge, “let us take it one by one.”

  “What was the object of writing the notes?” Mr. Robson repeated.”

  “For a giggle.”

  “Yes, and what was the object of leaving them in the Nursery?”

  “I don’t—I don’t know. We just left them. We thought it would be a great big joke.”

  At the end of that morning’s exhausting session—after two and a half hours of continuous questioning (the first time that no mid-morning adjournment had been called)—R. P. Smith cross-examined Mary.

  “. . . It was on a Sunday, was it, when the notes were written?”

  “Er—yes . . .”

  “Was it the day after Martin had died?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, was it your birthday?” (It was.)

  “No.”

  “What day is your birthday?”

  “The twenty-sixth of May.”

  “Was that a Sunday this year?”

  “I can’t remember.”

  “Would you remember that Martin Brown was found in the old house the day before your birthday?”

  “No.”

  “You don’t remember that. Whenever the notes were written, they were written first in your house, were they?”

  “Only two.”

  “Two. On paper which you got from your bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  “With a red Biro which you had got from your bedroom?”

  “Yes.” (For once forgetful she had forgotten that she had originally said Norma had found the pen in the pram.)

  “And it was your idea to write those notes?”

  “No, it was a joint idea.”

  “What do you mean by ‘a joint idea’?” (She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand.) “Are you all right, Mary?”

  “Yes.”

  “What do you mean, Mary, by a joint idea?”

  “Because it was.”

  Mr. Smith’s mild manner and quiet voice were deceptive: if he did not get the answer he required he had a particularly unnerving way of repeating it over and over, in that same quiet voice, the same inflection, always waiting for the reply in perfect silence until—it rarely failed—he finally got it.

  “What do you mean?” he said again. “What does a ‘joint idea’ mean?”

  “It was both of us.”

  “Both of you what?”

  “That wrote the notes.”

  “Yes, but who decided the notes should be written?”

  “Her.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She says ‘We will do it for a giggle.’”

  “I think I am rig
ht in saying, aren’t I, that this moment is the first time you have ever said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes . . .?”

  “I says it to Mr. Dobson and all, it was both of us.”

  “Would the shorthand writer read that answer, please?” said the Judge.

  “‘I says it to Mr. Dobson and all, it was both of us.’”

  “Robson,” Mary corrected.

  “I beg pardon?” Mr. Smith asked.

  “Mr. Robson,” Mary said, sounding tired and nettled.

  “You mean your barrister?”

  “Yes, it was both of us. The idea, she came out with it first.”

  “Did you ask why she thought this would be a giggle?”

  “She wanted to get put away,” Mary said, sounding very angry now. . . .

  “. . . Is this true, what you are telling the Court?”

  “Yes, because after that she asked me to run away with her.”

  “She asked you to run away with her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where to?”

  “She just says, ‘Run away with us.’”

  “Where to?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “What for?”

  “I don’t know. I have run away with her before.”

  “But did she say why she wanted to get put away?” asked the Judge.

  “Because she could kill the little ones, that’s why.”

  “Because what?” Mr. Justice Cusack asked and Mr. Smith—the words sounding all the more incongruous coming from him—dryly repeated Mary’s reply. “‘Because she could kill the little ones, that’s why.’”

  “And run away from the police,” Mary continued, unasked, her voice now shrill with suppressed hysteria. “She was going to go . . .”

  The Judge interrupted her, firmly shutting his notebook. “Yes,” he said and stood up, everyone immediately coming to their feet with him. “I think we will adjourn now until 2:15.”

  “I’ll kick her mouth in,” Mary shouted as, the policewoman’s hand restraining her, she was taken out of the witness box and led away.

  Everyone in the room had begun to talk as if to drown the sound and impression of her voice. Every time—the many times—Norma had broken down on the stand, there had been silence in the court and a strong feeling of sympathy for her distress. Now, when for the first time Mary behaved like a tired child of her age, we refused to accept it. We had allotted a certain part to her: it was out of character for her to have lost control. We looked away.

  The notes were a catharsis for both children. The trial certainly confirmed what the police already knew: that both girls had written them. But the hours that were spent on trying to penetrate the childish thinking process behind them to separate fact from fantasy, lies from truth, produced no greater understanding of these two children, their relationship, their motives, or their actions. It is relevant to point out here, where we are analyzing a total situation in retrospect, that these two girls and their actions (and later reactions) cannot be seen or judged in isolation from each other. We cannot say for certain what each of them might have done—or left undone—if the other had not been there. But basing our thoughts only on facts, we can say, although it was never said in Court, that Mary had never run away prior to meeting Norma: they ran away together once (4 June 1968); Norma ran away alone on 11 June and was gone two days. And, since the trial, repeated acts of absconding have been Norma’s pattern.

  Both girls were re-examined at length about various aspects of the notes by Mr. Lyons. “I want you to look at Note 1 please, Exhibit 12,” he continued with Norma after taking her through several of the details. “You wrote that, is that correct?”

  “Yes, she said that.” Judge Cusack was always very quickly aware of the limits of Norma’s endurance.

  “I said I wrote all of it; I don’t know . . .”

  “Do you know what it means?” Mr. Lyons asked.

  She repeated her answer, in her fatigue the words beginning to sound disconnected from each other—almost as if she was speaking in her sleep.

  “You don’t know what it means?”

  “Yes, I know what it means.”

  “What it says was, ‘I may come back.’ Does that mean to say ‘I may come back to the Nursery?’”

  “Norma, listen to me,” the Judge said. “When you wrote that, on that piece of paper you have just been looking at, what did you mean?”

  “May has wrote on one of these here,” she answered, desperately.

  “Yes, but I am talking about the one you say you wrote. What did that mean? Are you able to tell me?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Did you think that Martin’s dying was a big joke?” Mr. Lyons asked.

  “No.”

  “Would you look at Note No. 2 please, Exhibit 13. Can you see the words in the middle, ‘we murder’?”

  “Not by me.”

  “Now just think. Isn’t that your writing, Norma?” (It had been established as being her writing.)

  “No.”

  “Look at Note No. 1, Exhibit 12.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Can you see the word ‘murder’ there?”

  Norma by now, painful to watch, was sobbing bitterly.

  “Well, Mr. Lyons,” said the Judge, “this gets increasingly difficult and I appreciate your difficulties, but it is obvious that this child shows great reluctance to deal with these notes at all and really doesn’t want to look at them. You must pursue the matter if you think right, but detailed examination, at any rate, may not achieve any purpose. You see, Mr. Lyons, you have your duty to discharge on behalf of the Crown. I, on the other hand, not only have to conduct the trial but to see that, in the case of a young child, not too much distress is caused.”

  “Yes, My Lord, I would be very grateful if Your Lordship would stop me at any time,” Mr. Lyons said stiffly. “My Lord, I do have a duty . . .”

  Mr. Lyons made one more try but when Norma again broke down, the Judge called a short recess. When he resumed, he addressed some of the most significant remarks of the trial to counsel and Jury:

  “Mr. Lyons, before you go on, I want to say this: I have been giving thought to this matter. You have your duty to cross-examine on behalf of the Crown . . . I will not, and I hope I have not done anything to impede the defense in any way. I am justified, I believe, perhaps in taking a slightly stricter view toward the Crown. You must put, and I hope you will put briefly those matters which you think it right to put to this child. But neither I, nor I think the Jury, would be willing to sit here and have a weeping child applied with questions. We may reach a stage when it would not be right to go on. The Jury, of course, are entitled to take into consideration not only the oral evidence, but the demeanor of any particular witness. And one of the matters which in due course I shall refer them to is that sometimes children break down because they are genuinely upset; sometimes they take refuge in weeping because they don’t want to face what is being put to them. That is essentially a matter for the Jury to consider and which they have to have in mind at this stage. But for whatever reason we reach that stage, if we do, I am afraid I shall not permit you to go on if I thought it was either too distressing to the child, or indeed too distressing for the Jury. Mr. Lyons, that does not involve the least personal criticism of you. Like everybody else in this case, you have a difficult duty to discharge, but it may be of some guidance to you if I tell you what I have in mind now.”

  By the time Mr. Lyons came to cross-examine Mary about the notes, one and a half days after Norma, she had entirely regained her composure. And her ingenious replies and behavior on this occasion were to have an equally decisive influence on the course of events.

  Mr. Lyons’ approach and attitude toward Mary was always exactly the same as toward Norma. “Would you look at the four notes, please, Exhibits 12 to 15. You say that these notes were your joint idea?” he asked.

  “Er—yes.”

  He held
up Note 1, the sense of which no one had ever understood. “Look at the first one which begins, ‘I murder so that I may come back.’ Have you got that one?”

  “This one?”

  “Yes, that’s right. Who wrote that one?”

  “I’m not sure, sir, I’m not sure who wrote any of them.”

  “Well, you told the police, didn’t you, that Norma wrote that one?”

  “I might have done, sir, but I cannot remember now. We wrote two in our scullery, sir.”

  “Do you know which the other one was? Is it there, the other one you wrote in the scullery?”

  “That’s the one, I think.”

  “That is one, I think. Do you know which the other one was?”

  “No, sir, it is not here.”

  “Do you know what that one means, ‘I murder so that I may come back’?”

  “In what way do you mean, sir?”

  “What does it mean?”

  “We may come back to the Nursery, which we did.”

  “May come back to the Nursery: Come back to the Nursery to do a murder?”

  “No.”

  “You see, it was at the Nursery, though outside in the grounds, [in the sandpit] that Pauline Watson’s throat was hurt?”

  “Er—yes.”

  “Yes, and this means ‘I murder.’ Does this mean this: ‘I murder so I may come back to the Nursery?’”

  “Yes, that’s one of the notes we wrote in our house.”

  “Does it mean this,” asked Mr. Lyons again, “‘so I may come back to the Nursery to do another murder’?”

  “No,” Mary replied, “as far as I am concerned it does not.”

  “Why did you pretend that you and Norma had murdered Martin Brown if it wasn’t true?”

  “For a giggle.”

  “What?”

  “For a giggle.”

  “Which one of you was supposed to be ‘Fanny’ and which of you was supposed to be ‘Faggot’?”

  “I was supposed to be ‘Faggot.’”