Classic Scottish Murder Stories

by Molly Whittington-Egan

  The dormitory was searched, and the boat-hook was found in the wardrobe, innocent of blood. Medical opinion was that it could have caused the wounds to the head. The sisal string could have pointed to Hay. On the Saturday, one of the two other boys had taught him a game with a piece of such string, called the ‘see-saw trick’. Apparently it required two people: a loop was passed round the wrists of one, and, after a few intermediate movements, it was taken in the teeth of both, and a strange see-saw effect was obtained. Hay had been obsessed with the game, like a child, and had kept the string in his pocket.

  Police officers were sent to interview Gordon Hay and bring him back to Lanarkshire. He was remarkably cool and detached. ‘I was never out of the school,’ he kept saying. There was no sign of an inclination to confess, although when, eventually, it was put to him that he should speak out if he had some illicit purpose for sneaking out of the school, not connected with the murder, and he was asked if he wished to change his statement, Muncie saw him wipe a tear from his eye as he said again, ‘I canna mind of being out of the school that night, sir.’

  The police found a two to three inch piece of charred dressing-gown cord in an old, broken-down, brick-built incinerator in the school grounds. The proposition was that this was the material used to strangle Linda Peacock, and again the disturbing question arises as to why Gordon Hay would have taken it with him to meet the girl. It surely cannot have been possible to identify it as belonging to him in particular. It must have been easy to confirm that waste of this kind was not routinely burnt in the incinerator, although it must be said that objects do migrate around in institutions.

  Asked about his dressing-gown, Hay claimed that he had not been wearing one at all on Sunday night, because they had not given him one on his return from leave on the Saturday. As a matter of fact, he said, he never wore a cord, and his had lain in a drawer in his dormitory until a fortnight before the murder, when he had thrown it into a wastepaper basket.

  A small spot of blood was found on one of his boots, and another on the leg of one pair of his trousers, but this was 1967, and nothing could be done with the traces, which were insufficient for the grouping techniques then available. The winder was missing from his wristwatch, and the glass was scratched. He claimed that he had damaged the watch recently while polishing a dormitory floor at his new school. The police went off to inspect the dormitory and were told that it had not been in use, and had been kept locked, since Hay had worked there, using only soft dusters. If Hay were telling the truth, the winder should have been, or could have been, on the floor, but it was not found. Then the cemetery was searched for the winder, but even four specially ‘souped-up’ vacuum cleaners contributed by a Hoover factory failed to syphon it out of the grass. Ten men vacuumed for hours and the contents were sifted on tables under imported lighting.

  The bite-mark left by the murderer was becoming the bright hope of the investigation, and, indeed, the scientific component of the case was to go on to establish absolutely the acceptance by the courts of the little-known discipline of forensic odontology. Photographs had been taken at the scene of crime and it was now a matter of comparing Gordon Hay’s dental characteristics. He agreed to have his dental impressions taken. A further 28 boys who had been resident at the school over the relevant weekend agreed to the same procedure, which was carried out at the Glasgow Dental Hospital by staff working through their lunch-hour. The intention was to prevent Dr Warren Harvey, an expert in the rare science, and Professor Keith Simpson, of Guy’s Hospital, who had been called in, from knowing the identity of the main suspect. Five boys were recalled for further impressions, but the resulls were unsatisfactory.

  The original photographs had shown five bruises or bite-marks, and the largest mark, a dark oval, had been looking the most promising. It seems curious to the layman that two of the five marks looked exceptional, being small, dark rings with pale centres, but that their importance was only now appreciated. The experts had not found a description of such pale-centred marks in the relevant literature, but, then, what was available for reference was mostly in foreign works, particularly Swedish or Japanese.

  Now, on re-examination of the whole range of casts taken, it was seen that the model which turned out to be that provided by Gordon Hay explained the phenomenon. The tip of the upper and lower right canines contained a distinctive small but definite pit. Canine teeth are not supposed to have pits. A third impression was taken of Hay’s teeth, after a sheriff’s warrant had been obtained, and the pits were minutely photographed. All oblivious of the significance of his dental abnormality, he was, in fact, extremely co-operative and also positively enjoyed having his prized tattoo mark photographed.

  The public analyst was consulted on the fluorine content of the water which Hay had drunk as a boy. Dr Harvey established that the little craters were caused by hypocalcination, i.e. this was a developmental fault, not caused by caries or wear. With the remarkable attention to detail which characterized the case, Harvey examined 1,000 canines in 342 boys aged 16 to 17, and isolated only two with pits, and none with pits in the same mouth.

  Gordon Hay was arrested on a warrant for murder. A special defence of alibi was lodged: other boys were to swear that he was inside the school premises between 9.00pm and midnight on Sunday, August 6th. The trial began at the High Court in Edinburgh on February 26th, 1968. It was a fierce fight with the bite-mark at the core of the case. The Crown cited 105 witnesses. The defence, naturally, picked away at the newness of forensic odontology, but, as the judge commented in his summing up, ‘There must, of course, always be a first time for everything.’

  There was a weak area in the Crown case: Gösta Gustavson, who had written what was then the only full textbook on the discipline, had suggested that a minimum of four or five adjacent teeth corresponding with bite-marks were desirable for a positive identification, and here there were only three, and they were not adjacent. The defence made full use of this point, but the rare canine pits were to win the day. The Solicitor-General said that there would be few if any people with a similar dental structure to Hay’s in Britain, or indeed anywhere in the world. Dr Harvey used a ballpoint pen with the ball retracted to demonstrate on the fine skin below his thumbnail how, on pressure, a mark was produced that was pale in the centre.

  Gordon Hay spoke up boldly in the witness box, and denied everything. He still denied having been out of the school on the Sunday, although he did admit to illicit absences on other occasions to meet girls in Biggar. It was another Loaningdale boy who had talked to Linda at the fairground, and he did not even know who she was. It was another boy who had fancied the boat-hook as a good weapon, and he himself had public-spiritedly taken it away from him and thrown it on top of a cupboard.

  The young alibi witnesses did not quite come up to proof. Two boys admitted that there had been a discussion in the witness room about their evidence, and one boy revealed that they had been talking about getting their times right. After two and a half hours of consideration, the jury found Gordon Hay Guilty of murder, although their verdict was not unanimous. Because he had been under 18 at the time of the murder, he was ordered to be detained during Her Majesty’s pleasure. An appeal failed. Now Biggar was safe, gossip and suspicion had faded away, boy could meet girl, and the merry-go-round could turn again.

  CHAPTER 36

  THE ICING ON THE SHORTBREAD

  Ask most husbands how to ice a cake, and they will be mystified. My own husband is no exception. Imagine a middle-aged man in 1906, classic male chauvinist, retired managing director, not well, not calm, an epileptic liable to have a fit at any moment, especially under stress, and aware of that omnipresent possibility, his mind hot and sizzling with mad fancies. Imagine this unsteady figure closeted in a strange bathroom, away from home, struggling to complete an unfamiliar culinary task within the time it would have taken to undress from winter clothing, have a bath, and then re-dress.

  With him that morning, concealed about his person, stuf
fed in the pockets of his overcoat and carried macintosh, there would have been a collection of unwieldy impedimenta: a tin of shortbread, a bag of icing sugar previously or even there and then pounded with crystals of strychnine, a bowl of adequate size, a mixing implement, a spreading implement (perhaps one and the same), brown paper, a gummed label, a card, string and scissors. What finicky foresight would have been required.

  At some time, in order to perform the complicated operation of icing the shortbread, he would have had to steal a look at a cookery book. How else could he have possibly known that warm water is the requisite commodity to turn sugar into a runny paste, and that the ratio is half a pound of icing sugar to one to two tablespoons of water? The finished result had to be attractive, appetizing, the lack of commercial smoothness compensated for by the impression that it was home-made, and all the better for it.

  What he would not have known was that icing takes an indeterminate time to dry and set, depending upon variables such as the temperature and humidity of the room. A bathroom was the worst place for a quick result. We may fairly expect it to have been hot and steamy. He would have felt impelled to run a bath to sustain the pretence that he was bathing. Since the shortbread tin had to be secreted again for several hours, in the same fashion, the only way to carry it was on its side. If not set, the icing would have run all over the inside of the lid. If he had supported the tin in a horizontal position, at least one of a succession of people who afterwards spent time with him would have noticed the awkward parcel which Mr Brown was clutching so carefully.

  Thomas Mathieson Brown, said to be the author of this tricky wizardry, was a pillar of the community, a member of the local school board and a parish councillor, and not at all reclusive, in spite of his disability. He was a chatterbox, even, at times, a windbag. He had views, and he liked to express them. In fact, he should have been admired for his resolve to lead a full life. However, his denial of his illness had, of late, been merging into a lack of insight, an inability to see himself as others saw him. He opened up to people unwisely, and the local sergeant of police, a recipient of his off-beat confidences, had been feeling uneasy about him for quite some time.

  Once managing director of the Lanemark Coal Company, until his worsening epilepsy had compelled him to take early retirement in May, 1905, he was, in November, 1906, living in quiet comfort at Ardnith House, New Cumnock, Ayrshire. Although his doctor had advised against wedlock, he had taken a loyal wife 13 years previously, and the marriage, by all accounts, had been happy. There were no children. His best friend was William Lennox – ‘Uncle William’ – his wife’s uncle (she was his favourite niece), who lived at Woodside Cottage, Old Cumnock, five miles away. He was a widower, and kept two servants.

  Brown’s affliction was no secret: it was impossible to conceal his bizarre symptomatology from the small community. He was widely regarded as weird and unpredictable. Nine years before, when he was working, he had stripped off all his clothes in his office and knelt down at a stool as if to pray. Poor man, the gossip afterwards must have been terrible, although the incident was harmless post-epileptic behaviour about which he would probably have had total amnesia. The epilepsy which had come to dominate his life had been with him for 40 years, since boyhood. The diagnosis was petit mal, not the gross convulsions of grand mal, but the attacks must have been severe of their kind because Sergeant Harper (the one who kept an eye on him) had twice seen him fall to the ground in a fit.

  His GP, Dr Herbertson, had been trying to alleviate his symptoms with bromide since 1880, but the fits had been increasing in intensity and his general mental state was deteriorating. He was usually rational in ordinary conversation, but became boastful and hyperbolic when certain buttons were pushed. His business acumen had deserted him. A number of incorrigible delusions had flowered, so that Brown was by now substantially a chronic insane epileptic. Eagerly he confided to his doctor his conviction that the directors of the railway company were ‘on their knees’ before him, and that he owned half of Airdrie. A paranoid attitude was beginning to show up: no one in the district knew what was what, except he himself, and he had the power to send one particular man to the gallows and others to prison. Dr Herbertson later said that he would willingly have certified him, if asked to do so, from 1904 onwards. He would have taken action if there had been any complaint that Brown was becoming ‘dangerous to the lieges’.

  At home, however, unless all his intimates spoke cautiously, the illness was sufficiently masked for those around him to lead reasonably normal lives. His wife found him always kind and quite rational except when the epilepsy came over him. Her sister, Mrs Innes, was happy to visit and stay at Ardnith House with her children. Violet Lambie, the Browns’ maid (shades of Helen Lambie, maid to murdered Miss Gilchrist in the Oscar Slater case) had seen some things when her master was ill with the fits: he chased the hens and put them under a box, and pulled up newly-planted flowers by the roots. Mild aberrations these, and, above all, everyone knew that his regard for Uncle William was absolute.

  On Monday, November 19th, 1906, Thomas Mathieson Brown rose early, full of plans. The day before, he had told his wife that he would be making one of his trips to Glasgow, to order some goods from Cooper’s. As a retired man, it was, no doubt, a struggle to fill in the vacant hours, although his mind was spinning with business notions, which, for some unfathomable reason, were not appreciated by his circle of acquaintances. He had not had a fit for some time and he was in good form as he left for the station, wearing a great-coat and carrying a waterproof – nothing else.

  Travelling first-class by the early train, he was soon, by 8.15, presenting himself at the Conservative Club, Bothwell Street and demanding a bath. The hall porter, David Laidlaw, who knew him, took his shilling, thinking that Mr Brown was in a thoughtful mood. He was not carrying anything. No one seems to have asked Laidlaw if Brown regularly took a bath at the club, an indulgence, to kill time. If not, an innocent explanation could be that the early start and the presence of visitors – Mrs Innes and her offspring – had rendered a bath at home inconvenient. No one seems to have asked Laidlaw if there were clear signs that Brown had actually taken a bath when he had vacated the bathroom.

  At 9.25am, he was half a mile away, at Cooper’s Stores, Howard Street, where again, he was known. The foreman, Henry Dougal, thought him quite normal as he chatted about the lack of crime in New Cumnock (soon to be remedied) which he attributed to the excellent education offered there. Having ordered some groceries to be sent to St Enoch’s Station for the 11.10 train to New Cumnock, he left and vanished from view until he caught the 11.00am express train to Kilmarnock from the same station. He had to be on that train, because, on the Sunday, by post, his wife had arranged a rendezvous for him there with her other sister, Mrs Jessie McCutcheon, who, she knew, was making the same journey. They found each other and chatted of this and that. She noticed that he was carrying a waterproof and a small packet of sweets for the children at home – nothing else.

  The train drew in at Kilmarnock at 11.35 and Brown said his goodbyes to his sister-in-law. James Borland, secretary of the Ayrshire Coal Owners’ Association, arrived at Kilmarnock Station by train at 11.43. As he left, he met Brown, strolling along from the street in which the post office was situated. He had the air of someone who was just passing the time until his train was due. Chief Constable McHardy later walked the distance at an ordinary pace from the centre of No.4 platform to the post office and it took no more than five minutes. Borland saw that Brown had a coat over his arm, and nothing else. After a few words and a joke – Brown groaned that he had been in the train since one o’clock that morning – he boarded the 11.57 train for New Cumnock, and it steamed out at 11.59. Yet again, he was recognized, this time by William Hastie, colliery manager, who had always found Mr Brown rather taciturn, but this time he could not stop talking. (As an epileptic might react to the stress of the break from routine, the early start, and the strain of having to hold so many conversation
s.) He even took Hastie back with him for tea at Ardnith House and they discussed business matters. Luncheon seems to have got lost somewhere along the line.

  That very Monday evening, crime came to Cumnock. The postman called at Woodside Cottage with a parcel for William Lennox, Esq – so addressed on the label gummed to the brown paper wrapping. Inside, there was a tin box containing a ‘cake’ of shortbread, rather amateurishly iced. There was an anonymous card, inscribed in pencil, With happy greetings from an old friend. The welcome gift was kept abstemiously for the right social occasion, although on the following Thursday the housekeeper, Miss Grace McKerrow, did offer a piece to the maid as a remedy for toothache, on the homeopathic principle, no doubt.

  The next evening, Woodside entertained, and the shortbread was triumphantly produced. Mrs Bain, a neighbour, had been invited in. Elizabeth Thorburn, the maid, was given a small piece of the delicacy, as befitted her station in life, and bore it off to gnaw in the kitchen. It was very bitter. She drank some water, but that only made it worse. When she went back to her duties in the parlour, she found the housekeeper white and ill and dizzy, with her body strangely rigid. She warned Elizabeth not to eat any more of the shortbread.

  Mrs Bain sent the maid to fetch Dr Robertson and the Murrays, who lived next door. When she returned, the housekeeper was worse, as stiff as a poker and crying out that she had been poisoned. Mrs Bain was feeling ill by now, and Elizabeth supported her home, but she herself was so stiff that she could hardly walk, and had to be helped back herself. William Lennox had been taken ill, but the housekeeper it was that died, not the, as it were, designated victim. Dr Robertson diagnosed that all those stricken were suffering from strychnine poisoning. The others recovered.