The Search for Anne Perry

by Joanne Drayton

  The popularity of Anne’s books continued to soar. ‘I’m faxing herewith a page from yesterday’s USA Today, which has FARRIERS’ LANE at No. 32 in the top 50 of all books throughout the States,’ wrote Meg to Imogen Taylor in February.13 In March the reviews for Anne’s latest Pitt novel, The Hyde Park Headsman, began to come through. The slightly bizarre premise for the book — that a serial killer had begun a rampage of apparently random beheadings in Hyde Park — did not seem to dampen the ardour of critics, who were carried along by her convincing portrayals of character and brilliant evocation of place. The San Diego Union Tribune was full of praise. ‘Anne Perry is not the only mystery writer to choose Victorian England for her canvas; she is simply the best. This well-researched and cleverly plotted thriller should convince any remaining doubters.’14 The Toronto Sun wrote:

  This could be an unimposing little yarn in the hands of many writers, but Perry’s immense talents make The Hyde Park Headsman one of the best mysteries of the season and confirms her as the finest writer of historical mysteries around today. Fans who remember Perry’s early works will find The Hyde Park Headsman extremely entertaining reading.15

  The novel opens with two young lovers discovering Captain Oakley Winthrop’s decapitated body in a pleasure boat on the Serpentine in Hyde Park. As more headless corpses are found and the case drags on, there is a public outcry, and fear and consternation reverberate through the halls of power and authority — the House of Commons, the Home Secretary, even ‘Her Majesty has expressed her concern’. The person heading the inquiry is the newly promoted Superintendent Thomas Pitt.

  On the strength of his elevated status, Pitt has had a new business card printed and bought a substantially bigger home in Bloomsbury, which Charlotte is renovating. She and Emily are still watching with disapproval as their mother misbehaves with her young man. ‘It’s — it’s worse than romantic — it’s lush. Yes, that’s the word, lush,’ exclaims Emily. Anne offers some interesting commentary on the romantic life of a middle-aged woman. Emily thinks her mother is mad, and is risking social condemnation and ostracism. Charlotte, on the other hand, is becoming reconciled. ‘I think I would rather have a brief time of real happiness, and take the chance, than an age of gray respectability.’ Charlotte’s renovations also have a particular resonance for Anne.

  Every day it seemed to be some new disaster had been discovered or some major decision must be made. The builder wore a permanent expression of anxiety and shook his head in doubt, biting his lip, before she had even finished framing her questions to him.

  The one thing analogous to Anne’s experience that almost no one would have guessed when reading The Hyde Park Headsman was the method of murder. There was no blood in the boat and no apparent signs of struggle; Oakley Winthrop’s head had been severed with one blow. How could this happen? It is Pitt who comes up with a possible solution: could it be that the victim and his murderer were in the pleasure boat together? Perhaps the murderer dropped something into the water, pointed it out to Winthrop and waited for him to lean over the side of the boat to investigate. It is Charlotte who explains the finer details to Emily: ‘Well it’s not very difficult to hit someone on the head, if they trust you and are not expecting anything of the sort.’ The Hyde Park Headsman was dedicated to ‘Leona Nevler, with thanks’.

  Anne toured with The Hyde Park Headsman in the spring of 1994. As the local paper in Birmingham, Alabama, reported on 27 March, she was ‘on a grueling, month-long tour of the United States that has taken her from coast to coast and in between. After her last stop in Atlanta on Monday, Perry will have been in 21 cities in 25 days promoting her latest book.’16 The article went on to explain that she toured at least two months every year, and in between wrote a minimum of two books in longhand on a fine-line legal pad with a card file index for her notes. A positive USA Today review of The Hyde Park Headsman echoed many others: ‘Corpses pile up, secrets are uncovered, scandals averted or met head-on — it’s all very satisfying, a lovely way to spend a rainy spring weekend.’17

  Oakley Winthrop’s demise in The Hyde Park Headsman has eerie similarities to the murder of Honorah Parker, but almost no one would have been any the wiser had it not been for a new wave of publicity generated by the launch of Heavenly Creatures, the 1994 Peter Jackson film based on the Parker–Hulme murder case. Jackson’s choice of subject was understandable. The case, a sobering, seminal event in New Zealand’s criminal history, led to instant and ongoing international interest and media coverage. Jackson’s previous sci-fi splatter movies — Bad Taste (1987), Meet the Feebles (1989) and Brain Dead (1992) — had a cult following but were an acquired taste, as indicated by the Daily Mail’s Christopher Tookey’s description of them as ‘three of the most … revolting films of all time’.18

  Heavenly Creatures was Peter Jackson’s first mainstream movie, and a film with a mission. His intention was not to unravel a murder, but to disentangle and understand the fascinating but ultimately dangerous teenage friendship that had created a sensation in its day. This event had profoundly influenced the childhoods of young New Zealanders like Fran Walsh, who originally suggested the idea of the film. ‘I first came across it [the Parker–Hulme case] in the late sixties when I was ten years old. The Sunday Times devoted two whole pages to the story with an accompanying illustration of the two girls. I was struck by the description of the dark and mysterious friendship that existed between them — by the uniqueness of the world the two girls had created for themselves.’19

  Peter Jackson and wife and co-producer Fran Walsh intended to take a more humane approach than that of the tabloid newspapers in the 1950s, which had branded Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme ‘dirty minded’ and ‘monstrous’. As Peter Jackson said:

  Innocence. Imagination. Obsession — three words that go a long way toward summing up everything that made this film such a fascinating story. A murder story about love, a murder story with no villains.20

  However, the Parker–Hulme story also provided Jackson with a perfect platform from which to direct his previous ‘splatter talents’ to a new audience and to a more sophisticated end. He had the aptitude and experience to bring to life the childish rapture, the innocent homoerotic intensity, and the girls’ imaginative fairytale worlds of courtly love, intrigue and violence. The best and worst moments of their teenage years became his stage. ‘You can almost detect relief in the director’s voice as he recalls learning that Juliet used to make plasticine models — thereby granting him poetic license to recreate her stories with sophisticated digital animation effects,’ wrote a reviewer for Time Out.21

  But it was never Peter Jackson or Fran Walsh’s aim to expose the new identities of either Pauline Parker or Juliet Hulme. In the swirl of public events around first a play by Michelanne Forster about the pair, called Daughters of Heaven, which was staged in Christchurch and Wellington, and then Jackson’s film, the inevitable happened. At the party after the première, an old acquaintance of Juliet Hulme’s, who was still writing to her, said just a little too much: ‘she let something slip — from then on it was a ticking clock’.22 It had been something of an open secret in New Zealand literary circles that the detective fiction writer Anne Perry might be Juliet Hulme, but that information had never fallen into the hands of anyone motivated to expose it publicly. After picking up the connection in conversation, Lin Ferguson rang Peter Jackson, who spent an hour on the phone trying to persuade her not to run the story. ‘[Jackson] said, “They’re not Nazi war criminals. They don’t deserve to be hunted down.” I was appalled. It made me feel incredibly guilty,’ Ferguson recalled.23

  There was a profound sensitivity in Christchurch about the Parker–Hulme story, and many people felt uncomfortable about the event being revisited. When Julie Glamuzina and Alison Laurie published Parker and Hulme: A Lesbian View in 1991, they experienced a great deal of resistance. In their preface to the book they record a long list of mixed reactions to their proposal. Their book, which looked once more at the ev
ent and its impact on New Zealand society, offered an unprecedented examination of ‘the social context in which the murder had occurred’ and its consequences.24 The lesbian view announced in the title gave the book a special significance to this community, but many of the points it raised were pertinent to all New Zealanders.

  If Julie Glamuzina and Alison Laurie sparked a new interpretation of the Parker–Hulme murder, then Peter Jackson’s film made it popular. And he was not the only film director interested in the story — so were English writer Angela Carter, Australian playwright Louis Nowra, film-maker Jane Campion and Dustin Hoffman’s production company.25 Christchurch Girls’ High School’s decision not to lend Peter Jackson and his production company school uniforms for the filming was a small gesture of defiance in the face of the inevitable. A film on the subject would be made; the only unknowns were when and by whom.

  When Lin Ferguson rang Meg Davis in London she was aware of the impact her news would have: ‘I knew I was going to blow up this woman’s life.’26 Meg, ‘absolutely gob-smacked’ by the news,27 rang Diana Tyler, who was on holiday, and said: ‘I hope you’re sitting down, because there’s something we didn’t know about Anne.’28 While Meg was in Wales, her colleagues at MBA were bombarded with telephone calls and requests to interview and film Anne. During Meg’s absence the article on Anne for the Daily Telegraph appeared on 5 August 1994. It was a choreographed event. Working under the guidance of publicity agent Lynne Kirwin, MBA, on Anne’s behalf, had commissioned their own piece from journalist Sarah Gristwood. The agreement between her and MBA was subject to a number of restrictions.

  When Lynne Kirwin faxed the copy for the article to the Daily Telegraph’s Veronica Wadley, she explained the arrangement: ‘For Anne’s protection Sarah has assigned copyright in the piece to Anne herself.’ This meant the article was unchangeable and unusable without Anne’s permission. She concluded by saying:

  Anne has nothing more she feels she can say, and is adamant that she will not be photographed which she believes looks as though she is exploiting the situation in some way. She is a gentle, good, intensely moral person and her concern is to tell the truth and try to protect the friends and family who have given her such love and support.29

  To write the article Sarah Gristwood had flown from London to Inverness, and from there was driven to Portmahomack. Her plane was delayed by fog and she arrived very late. As a consequence she spent less than an hour interviewing Anne. Under the circumstances this may have been a good thing, because the woman she met in Portmahomack was in clinical shock. ‘Literally half-fainting from distress. A tall, auburn-haired, conservatively dressed woman, slumping sideways in her chair,’ Sarah recorded in an article published in the Guardian in January 1995. The impact on Sarah was considerable: ‘You don’t turn sceptical, or size up the ethics of media manipulation. You become, quite simply, partisan.’30

  That night, Sarah Gristwood flew back to London and wrote her 2,000-word piece which was to be with Lynne Kirwin by early the next morning. Considering the time constraints and the length of the interview, her article gave a remarkably accurate snapshot of events from Anne’s perspective. The piece was commissioned and Sarah Gristwood was paid £500 for it, so it was neither free of obligation nor objective, but it was the first time Anne’s own interpretation of the case had been communicated publicly, without the previous filters of the medical, legal and penal systems, her parents, tabloid journalists and the media.

  Anne said that the disclosure of her identity had been a bombshell. After talking about her childhood and the disorientating effects of illness and separation from her family, and the anguish that created, especially for her mother, she came quickly and inevitably to the murder. Pauline Parker was desperate, even suicidal. ‘She felt her mother was the only thing stopping her from leaving a situation she felt was intolerable. I believed at the time her survival depended on her coming with us. Crazy as this sounds I thought it was one life or the other.’31 She decided to help her friend.

  Anne discussed the drugs she took for tuberculosis, which she believed were mind-altering after prolonged use. There was no personal gain for her in killing Honorah Parker, and her judgement had been impaired. But this was not an excuse: she was quite clear about responsibility. ‘Once you have admitted that you are at fault, have said “I’m sorry, I’m utterly, totally sorry” without excuse and paid your price then you have to put it behind you. You’ve got to let go.’32

  Anne apologized for the murder, but at the same time expressed some of the misery and anger she felt over the way her family had been treated in New Zealand. ‘They were just delighted to rip my family down because they were middle class and foreigners. The worst thing was the dirt they put in.’ She was especially disturbed by the way her mother had been represented. ‘One of the things that hurt me most was the way they painted her.’ Not only did Anne carry the guilt of murder; she also felt responsible for the agony it had caused her family. The experience had been profound and life-changing. ‘[It] makes you try doubly hard all the rest of your life to be as good as you can. It makes you far more careful of mistakes … because you know the price of doing something that you’ll regret ever afterwards.’33

  When Anne had her interview with Sarah Gristwood she was still waiting for a reaction from the people of Portmahomack. She could not predict what that would be, or how it would affect her mother, who had ‘just made herself a decent home in the village and earned love and respect’.34 But by the time the article came back to MBA for approval before being republished in the Daily Mirror, there had been developments. Ruth Needham notified Richard Holledge, executive editor of the Daily Mirror, of a change:

  The paragraph that ‘she is still waiting for the reaction in her 500-strong Scottish village …’ shall be changed to reflect the fact that all the village know the situation and have stood by her.35

  The reaction from the village took Anne completely by surprise. There were journalists everywhere, and journalists would make the long journey to the village for months afterwards. In the local Caledonian Hotel bar, David Wilson, solicitor and self-proclaimed ‘village worthy’, was interviewed about the people’s general mood.

  At first there was an overwhelming feeling of astonishment — that someone among us, someone so welcomed, a devout Mormon who gave out hampers to old people at Christmas, could be guilty of matricide. But then almost as quickly folk began saying, ‘Och, it was 40 years ago in another hemisphere. The lassie had been in prison and has had to move from place to place. She fits in here. What business is it of ours, what good could be achieved by raking up the past?’36

  The sensational headlines quickly fell out of pub and local conversation. Most people felt she had ‘more than made up for the violent murder of her best pal’s mother by her jail sentence and rebuilding her life’.37 She should be left alone. People rallied around, making quiet gestures of affirmation. There were young people who ‘stopped to offer words of comfort’ and many messages of support.38 As Meg Davis recalls, Anne would ‘find a little gift of shortbread left on her doorstep from one of the neighbours — very understated, very Scottish … [But an] absolute vote of confidence in her as a person.’39

  Among the telephone calls Anne made was one to Kim Hovey, her publicist friend at Ballantine in New York. Kim was sitting at her desk at the end of a long day in the office. She was exhausted. It was around 7pm, everyone had gone home, and she was finishing off a few things before she left. The telephone rang and it was a reporter from New Zealand who wanted to talk about Anne Perry, ‘and did I know about her past’. The journalist explained about the murder and the movie, then asked Kim to comment. Caught completely off-guard and in a state of disbelief, Kim said, ‘No. There’s no way it’s the Anne Perry I know. It can’t be, you have your facts wrong … No, there’s no way this is Anne.’ It was a quick conversation: there was nothing more to say so far as Kim was concerned. Then, about 15 minutes later, the telephone rang again, and it was Anne.
/>
  ‘Kim, I need to talk to you about something.’ Then she proceeded to tell her everything. ‘I practically fell off my chair, because the Anne Perry who I know and love was nothing like what she was telling me she did in her past.’40 When the call ended, Kim gathered herself together, then rang her boss, Leona Nevler, to talk about how they would ‘address the issues’ with media in the United States and with Anne’s forthcoming tour promoting Traitor’s Gate.

  Don Maass was in a Chicago hotel room when he received a message to call Meg Davis. Not realizing she was still in Wales, he spoke to a colleague at MBA, who told him what had happened. ‘Oh, come on!’ he said. ‘You’re joking!’ But the person at the other end replied, very seriously, ‘Unfortunately, I have to tell you that it is true.’ As Don recalls, ‘I was sitting on the edge of the hotel bed and in an instant it all made sense — so many things fell into place in like ten seconds: William Monk, Charlotte Pitt, no wonder, no wonder. Oh! My gosh!’ He thought about the Anne he had known now for six years, and about the life he now realized she had ‘remade’, and rang her straight away.

  ‘Anne, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry for what happened and that this has come forward and that you are going to have to deal with this.’

  Anne’s voice at the other end was filled with relief.

  ‘Oh, thank God! I was worried that I would have lost you, too.’

  ‘Of course not. Of course not,’ he said. ‘Anne, I know you. I am here to support you and help you through this.’41 They discussed the fact that Heavenly Creatures was going to be released in the United States and that they would have to make a concerted effort to deal with the consequences.

  For the first time in 40 years Anne was finding out what people really thought of her. Not just the dependable adult Anne, a notable crime writer of growing fame, but the whole person — the child and the adult. It was both a nightmare experience and a moment of liberation. She used to think: ‘Well, this person likes me — but would they if they really knew? When someone has said “I think you’re marvelous” or anything, it’s always been at the back of my mind.’42 Now they knew about her past, and judged her according to the quality of the life she had lived since the murder, and not on the basis of a teenage act of insanity. But these were her familiars — friends, neighbours, colleagues and associates. How would the rest of the world handle the outing of Anne Perry as Juliet Hulme?