Classic Scottish Murder Stories

by Molly Whittington-Egan

  At the end of the Wynd, there was a men’s public lavatory, totally roofless, entered through a narrow, two feet seven inch open gap in the continuous wall of the lane. Inside, there was a small yard with the urinal to the right, running parallel to the outside wall, and one doored cubicle, also open to the sky, to the back, on the left. It was most definitely not in a hidden or even secluded place, with East Wemyss school very close, on the opposite side of the thoroughfare. Mrs Warrender was unlucky enough to have a view of the public convenience from her window. She stopped watching Brown and Edmonstone when they were feet away from the ugly little building, but she had noticed that the boy was on the inside of the Wynd, nearest to the urinal.

  Those were unsuspicious days and there was no whisper of homosexuality attached to the proceedings at that time, as far as is known. This was scarcely an opportunity for an assignation, since Brown was due back at the factory with the wages at midday and was expected home for dinner at 12.30pm. He was always a good boy. Edmonstone could have calculated that the latrine was the last available place for him to make his strike, although he was taking the risk of being discovered in felonious act, or the gap in the wall suddenly presented itself as an unplanned expedient.

  There were no witnesses to what happened next. Most likely, Edmonstone pushed the boy through the entrance; or Brown wanted to use the lavatory and Edmonstone followed him in; or Brown went in of his own volition in the hope that Edmonstone would walk on and leave him alone; or both agreed to use the lavatory in a friendly, masculine manner. Once inside, the man attacked the boy fiercely, and he resisted, but had no chance. Edmonstone knew that he had been seen repeatedly with Brown that morning, and he battered him to death. It is most unsatisfactory that the weapon was never identified. It was thought that the boy’s head had been banged on the walls and the floors. Two separate methods of killing were undertaken: a grubby white handkerchief was tightly knotted around Brown’s neck and his cap was crammed into his mouth. It was difficult to stifle that young life.

  There was blood everywhere. A large pool lay just inside the entrance. Edmonstone was nearly caught; once he dragged his victim into the cubicle, and the second time, a man actually heard gurglings coming from the cubicle, but thought that it was the schoolboys, up to tricks.

  Alexander Edmonstone fled from the scene, with his booty. There was no point in going home. Following the course of a stream, Back Burn, (according to the map, as also in ‘Back Dykes’, but generally given more atmospherically as Black Burn) he escaped to the outskirts of the village, where he emptied the contents of the money bag into his pockets and hid it in some rocks between Court Cave and McDuff’s Castle.

  Meanwhile, after 15 minutes or thereabouts, a young lad was the first to set eyes on what remained of Michael Brown. Identification was not immediate. His employers did not realize that their clerk was missing until 1.30pm. William Johnston only recognized the body after being shown a pencil and the tram ticket, which was still in the hand. The news of the murder devastated the entire district. Work stopped and School Wynd was jammed with local people. If Spring-Heeled Jack had leapt into that wide-open building the panic could not have been more intense.

  Edmonstone was under suspicion, and he had vanished. A Wanted poster was distributed and it was seen that his appearance was almost comically distinctive. His hair was auburn, three teeth were missing from the front of his upper jaw, and AE was tattooed on his right forearm. Bloodhounds were brought to the scene, in a wry memory of Burgho and Barnaby, thwarted trackers of Jack the Ripper, but with no success, since the scent was cold. All the ships in dock locally were searched, but Edmonstone had had other plans. Fleeing towards Strathmiglo, he had borrowed a brush from a woman pulling hay from a stack, and coolly removed, as far as he could, dark stains from the knees of his trousers. After walking 12 miles north-west of East Wemyss, he entered the drapery at the village and bought a fine new stylish outfit. They were so pleased with the order that they threw in a free tie.

  Then on to Strathmiglo Station, splendidly attired, where he caught a train to Perth and spent the night at a Temperance Hotel. He required the maid to clean his very dirty boots. The next morning, after a sustaining breakfast of ham and eggs, he took a train to Glasgow. The police were getting closer all the time. He could not stay. Taking lodgings at 113 Renfield Street, he promptly went out, leaving two parcels on the bed. He had paid for his room. Moving on to Paisley, he planted a faked suicide note on the parapet of the bridge over the River Cart. Just like a false Jack the Ripper confessor, he wrote in red ink: I murdered Mickey Brown – AE. You will find my body at the foot of water near by. I filled my pockets with stones. I bid goodbye to mother. Goodbye – Alexander Edmonstone.

  The landlady in Glasgow became suspicious and opened the parcels. They contained bloodstained clothing. The River Cart was carefully dragged. A second Wanted poster was issued, offering a reward of £100. One month passed since the crime, and Edmonstone had, in fact, escaped to England, but the posters followed him, and he looked much the same. He was now calling himself Albert Edwards, to chime with his tattoo, and living in a boarding-house at 12 Brunswick Street, Chorlton-cum-Hardy, a suburb of Manchester. He could not disguise his Scottish accent, and he lived on lies. It was noticed that he had difficulty in sleeping and eating. He bought rounds for everyone as if he had money to burn, and kept his valuables in a locked Gladstone bag.

  A new lodger, a young hawker named John Atherton, came to live at the boarding-house. On March 21st, while at Whitworth police station in connection with his application for a hawker’s licence, he happened to be studying the £100 reward poster, and thought that he recognized the photographs. He had a drink with ‘Albert Edwards’ and casually asked him for the right time, whereupon Edmonstone produced a silver watch. Just such a watch had been described on the poster as having been stolen from Michael Brown. On March 22nd, the police went in force to Brunswick Street. When he was challenged – ‘What do you know of the murder of a young boy in Fifeshire, Scotland?’ – Edmonstone closed his eyes and blocked out the moment that he had been dreading. ‘It’s all right,’ he said and raised his hands in submission. As they led him away, he told his landlady, Mrs Bridgewood, ‘Don’t worry about me, Ma, I’ll be all right.’

  But of course he was not going to be all right. Goodness knows what he imagined was going to help him, but his plea of insanity was never going to be effective. That plea was still frowned on in the Scottish and English courts and Lord Guthrie was not the judge to protect him. It was put for him that the substantial illness of epilepsy lay behind the headaches, and that his grandfather had died a lunatic in Morningside Asylum. He himself had been treated in hospital for ‘sunstroke’, and, as it happens, we now know that so-called sunstroke could be schizophrenia – as in the case of the famous insane artist, Richard Dadd. But Edmonstone was not mad enough for mercy and he was executed at Perth on July 6th, 1909.

  CHAPTER 35

  THE TOOTH-FIEND

  Biggar, in Lanarkshire, was a nice quiet little town in 1967. Nimbyism must have afflicted some of the inhabitants in 1962, when Loaningdale Approved School was planted in their midst. It was hard on parents of teenage girls in the locality, because warning them to stay away from slick youths, often from the city, and emboldened by their peers, was bound to be counter-productive. The Gordon Hay case well illustrates the difficulty of predicting which young male will turn out to be a serious sexual murderer. A 17-year-old, he had been sent to Loaningdale for the offence of breaking into a factory, but his propensity for extreme violence had not become overt, although other boys were somewhat afraid of him.

  There was a progressive element abroad in the school, a hint of a therapeutic community, with all, staff and inmates, committed to the common good and the improvement of the individual. Discipline had to be in place but it was not oppressive: doors were not kept locked and inmates were allowed out in the town during daylight hours. The Deputy Headmaster, Clifford Lloyd Davis, ad
mitted that boys occasionally sneaked out to meet girls without permission. Interesting details of the rules and routines were to emerge. After the worst had happened, there was a curtailment of humane freedoms, as there had to be when mutual trust had broken down.

  On the evening of Saturday, August 5th, 1967, a group of boys had been allowed out to the cinema and then to a visiting fair, supervised by a master. Gordon Hay was there, bored and ripe for mischief, until he saw Linda Peacock approaching with a friend. He had already spoken to Linda three weeks previously, and was interested in her. The other girl, obeying the usual parental warning, walked on, but Linda had a few words with Hay. This was, it was thought, the opportunity for a secret tryst to be arranged for the following evening. As he slipped proudly back to his friends, Hay informed them – and this is a euphemism – that he would like to have sexual congress with the girl. It was men’s talk.

  Linda Peacock was still at school, aged 15, horse-mad, at an era when showjumping was all the rage and repeatedly shown on television. She was a competent rider, winning rosettes at local shows, and could well have gone on to a career in horses. An only child, she lived with her parents, who apparently were not at all young, in a picturesque cottage at Carwood, about one and a half miles from Biggar. She had a boyfriend, although that does not necessarily have its present meaning. As was to become known to the whole country, sexual congress was not a part of her short experience of life. It was said that she had been out with another youth from the school, but no harm had been done.

  Sunday at Loaningdale, far from home, if that mattered, and without the milestones of lessons, must have dragged and made worse the pubescent frustrations of the 30 or so pent up youths. There was some relaxation of the rules. In the evening, there were games, and the boys could watch television until 9.00pm, when they had to go to their dormitories, clean their boots, wash, and put on their pyjamas and dressing-gowns, which they wore to supper at 9.15pm. Then they could go back to their dormitories or sit around until 10.00pm, which was bedtime. A housemaster patrolled the dormitories from about 10.30 to 10.45, to check that all the boys were safely in bed, and turn off the lights.

  Gordon Hay had other ideas. On Sunday, August 6th, he had played football and then, according to his own Account, after the whist drive, in the evening, he had changed from his day clothes into pyjama trousers, a white casual shirt, and boots. He had supper at about 9.30pm before watching The Untouchables in the television room. That programme, one would have thought, with its emphasis on power and violence, could have been a potent trigger for emotional eruption in an unstable individual. Just before 10.00pm, he happened to be in the dining-room, watching three boys playing cards, and talking to them until 10.25. He was in bed by 10.30. However, according to an unnamed 15-year-old boy, one of Hay’s dormitory mates, Hay was missing from the school between about 9.55 and 10.45pm. Hay’s dressing-gown was seen lying on his bed, with his pyjamas in his locker at 10.15.

  What is horrible about his movements is what he carried with him. It was thought that he took his dressing-gown cord to the meeting with Linda Peacock, and strong circumstantial evidence indicated that he arrived at the rendezvous equipped with a ghastly weapon – a boat-hook brought back from summer camp by the 15-year-old, which had fascinated Hay. He could have intended merely to show it to Linda, to impress her, or he could have planned to threaten her with it, to get his way. Or he could have carried it like a totem, to feel empowered. He could have been totally sexually inexperienced.

  He moved fast, to be at the gates of St Mary’s Cemetery by about 10.00pm. Linda Peacock was still, riskily, in town. She had spent the day at stables, and had left home at 8.00pm, when a young male lodger had given her a lift into the centre of Biggar. He offered to pick her up later and drive her home, but this was not what she wanted, and she refused, saying rather tartly that he need not bother as he had let her down previously that week over such an arrangement. He watched as she left him, joined another girl, and walked up the main street with her. He never saw her again, but an elderly man, who knew Linda, had a long conversation with her about horses at the door of his house in Carwood Road. They talked for 20 minutes, and he had the impression that she was killing time. She had left her girl companion at 9.30.

  Linda Peacock was last seen alive walking alone along Carwood Road, where the cemetery wall skirted the road. The gate lay ahead, and, if she continued, Loaningdale School gate. Home, if that were her objective, was a lonely mile ahead. At times between 10.02 and 10.08pm, witnesses saw ‘a couple’ in the area. One driver noticed in the half-light a young man facing towards Biggar and a young woman who looked if she had been, or was, walking away from Biggar. A female passenger in another passing car thought that she saw a young man with his back to her and his left shoulder forward as though he were leaning against a tombstone. ‘Well,’ she said to her husband and son, ‘I’ve seen many a thing, but never a couple courting in a graveyard!’ Screams were heard from the direction of the cemetery at 10.20pm.

  Meanwhile, back at Loaningdale, the two other occupants of Hay’s dormitory, after realizing that he was missing at 9.55 actually searched the school for him, without telling a master or being seen by one. The reason for their concern is not entirely clear but the fact that the fisherman’s hook was no longer in the wardrobe, where it should have been, could have contributed to their feeling that something untoward was up. They scrambled into their beds at 10.30, expecting the housemaster to appear at any moment. One boy went to sleep immediately. The other – the 15-year-old – was still awake when Gordon Hay burst in 10 to 15 minutes later, wearing his outdoor clothing. He seemed excited, his hair was dishevelled, his face dirty, and the knees of his jeans looked as if he had been working in the garden and had been kneeling down. He washed as fast as he could and jumped into bed just in time before lights out.

  Linda’s parents, waiting in their cottage, were getting worried. At 11.00pm, the lodger came home and was surprised to hear that she was not safely back. He drove straight out again and called at various relatives’ houses in Biggar. They searched the quiet, dark, lamp-lit streets, but it was no good, and soon the police had to be told that Linda Peacock was missing.

  The next day, early, at 6.40am, two constables discovered her body in St Mary’s Cemetery, lying beside a gravestone and almost concealed by an overhanging yew tree. Shreds of foliage had fluttered down on to the stricken girl. Two open wounds of different length had been inflicted on the crown of her head and she had been strangled afterwards by a ligature, which was not still present. There was a mark of another ligature, also absent, on the left wrist, and a burn made after death indicated that it had been burnt off, not cut. It looked as if a petrol-fuelled cigarette lighter had been used and caused a coating of black carbon over the burn. Gordon Hay had a lighter of that type, and no knife. Perhaps penknives were forbidden.

  The clothing on the upper part of the body only had been pulled about, and there was a severe bite-mark on the right breast. The girl had strong nails and a short fibre from sisal string, bloody, was lodged in the left forefinger nail. A piece of sisal string, knotted at both ends, and a slipknot, were found hanging in the yew tree. Two three-inch-round bloodstains situated 10 yards away suggested that Linda had received the two blows to the head but had even so, been able to run, being fit and athletic, before being strangled. Coins, a comb and a purse plotted her flight.

  Chief Superintendent Muncie directed an investigation which revealed the multiplicity of activity associated with such an apparently peaceful little town. The fact that it was high summer did not help. By sheer bad luck, the travelling fair had moved on, and all the showmen had to be located. As if that were not enough, there was a popular caravan site, packed with regular, weekend, and casual visitors. Many youths from surrounding villages had been drawn into Biggar. Four young men had come from Edinburgh by car and had roared round the streets and accosted several girls. An itinerant knife-grinder had to be carefully eliminated, since he w
as known actually to have called at the Peacocks’ cottage on the Sunday afternoon, spoken to Linda in person, and asked for a place to sleep. He had been directed to a nearby derelict house. He had in his possession quantities of sisal string, but he was not the one. A certain farm labourer who had a local reputation for interfering with girls had been seen walking along Carwood Road on Sunday evening, and he had to be rigorously questioned. The Peacocks’ lodger was in an uncomfortable position, but he was soon beyond suspicion, as was Linda’s boyfriend, who lived in a nearby town. Promising, but quickly discarded, was one of the travelling showmen: a constable recognized his name as that of a man who had attacked a young girl in a park near the cemetery, with intent to ravish.

  The proximity of Loaningdale Approved School to the scene of crime was not lost on Superintendent Muncie. It was established that a running boy could get from the yew tree to the rear door of the school in one minute and 43 seconds. A large team of five detective officers headed by a detective inspector was sent in. They were not pleased to learn that some of Sunday’s clothing had already been put in the wash, and that included the boys’ jeans. Every boy was accounted for at the relevant time by his dormitory mates and teachers. The police also worked on a roster of all inmates since the opening of the school five years previously, since, pleasantly to relate, many of them came back to Biggar. Other police forces painstakingly checked their movements.

  The enquiry narrowed by Wednesday 9th, when the team concentrating on the school ‘broke’ the 15-year-old boy, who now admitted that he had lied about Gordon Hay. There was a strong culture of not ‘grassing’ at Loaningdale, and he and the other boy had been afraid of Hay, but felt able to talk because he had just been transferred to a new school, 250 miles away, that Wednesday morning. The reason for the transfer was not disclosed, but it must have been looked into by the police. Both the boys said that Hay had approached them on the Monday, when the detectives arrived, and told them to say that they were all in bed at 10.00pm.