Dorset Murders

by Sly, Nicola;

  Before finally retiring for the night, Alma slipped into Irene Riggs’ bedroom for a ten-minute chat about arrangements for the following day before returning to her own room, where she was shortly joined by Stoner. Noticing that Stoner seemed agitated, Alma asked him what the matter was. Stoner confessed that he was in trouble, but refused to tell her in what way. Alma pressed him for an answer and continued to do so until he reluctantly told her that she would not be going to Bridport in the morning because he had hurt ‘Ratz’.

  At this point, Alma heard a groan from downstairs and rushed down to discover her husband sitting in his chair, bleeding profusely from wounds to his head.

  Once Irene Riggs was assured that Dr O’Donnell knew all about Alma’s illicit affair with Stoner, she reluctantly told the doctor that Stoner had confessed to her that he, not Alma, had been the one to murder Francis Rattenbury. Armed with this knowledge, Dr O’Donnell felt he had no choice but to inform the police, and Stoner was arrested at Bournemouth station as he returned from what had proved to be a wasted attempt to visit his mistress in prison. When apprehended he was carrying a letter from Alma, two photographs of her and a gold watch that she given him, which he told the arresting officers was worth £20.

  Detained at the police station overnight, the following morning he asked to talk with an officer. He opened the conversation with a question, asking the officer, ‘You know Mrs Rattenbury, don’t you?’ When the policeman confirmed that he did, Stoner continued ‘Do you know that she had nothing to do with this affair?’ Stoner was immediately cautioned but nevertheless went on to confess that it was he who had killed Francis Rattenbury. He had been watching from the garden through the French windows and had seen Alma kissing her husband goodnight. Consumed with jealousy, he had crept in through the unlocked windows and hit Rattenbury three times over the head with a mallet. The elderly gentleman had been dozing in his chair and had no time to defend himself, said Stoner.

  He ended his confession by suggesting that a doctor was present when the news of his arrest was broken to Alma Rattenbury, predicting that she would ‘go out of her mind’.

  Stoner and Alma next met when they appeared together at Dorchester Assizes, the charges against Alma having been elevated to murder after the death of her husband. The hearing lasted for three days before both defendants were committed for trial at the Old Bailey.

  Confined in Holloway Prison, awaiting the start of her trial, Alma continued to try and protect Stoner, insisting that she alone was responsible for the murder of her husband. Her lawyers continually tried to persuade her to tell the truth, as did Dr Morton, the then governor of Holloway, who was convinced that she was innocent. In the end, it took a visit from Alma’s young son, Christopher, to change her mind.

  Christopher was being cared for by his aunt, Daphne Kingham, the sister of Alma’s second husband, Compton Pakenham. Mrs Kingham visited Alma regularly in prison and, having previously failed to get Alma to admit the truth about Rattenbury’s murder, decided to pile on the pressure by taking the boy with her on one of her visits.

  Alma was a conscientious mother, who adored her children and, after Mrs Kingham pointed out that the boys would be forever afterwards known as the sons of a woman hanged for murder, she began to have second thoughts about shielding her lover. In a letter to Irene Riggs, she wrote of her love for her boys and hinted for the first time that she might be having a change of heart. By the time the trial opened at The Old Bailey on 27 May, it appeared she had finally made up her mind. Both defendants entered pleas of ‘Not Guilty’, at which point Alma’s counsel, Terence O’Connor, leaned across and whispered to J.D. Casswell, who was acting for Stoner, ‘Mrs Rattenbury is going to give evidence against your boy.’

  This information came as a complete surprise to Casswell. He was aware that Stoner was still insisting that he alone was responsible for Rattnbury’s murder and that he was more interested in ensuring that Alma was not convicted than he was in establishing his own innocence. Now, with the news that Alma was going to testify against his client, Casswell began to realise the hopelessness of his task. He had been instructed to say in Stoner’s defence that the young man had been under the influence of cocaine at the time of the murder and therefore could not be held responsible for his actions. (This was in spite of the fact that Stoner was unable even to describe the appearance of cocaine when questioned about his use of the drug, insisting that it was brown with black flecks.)

  Casswell approached the trial judge, Mr Justice Humphreys, with an application for the two defendants to be tried separately. In separate trials, Alma’s letter to Irene Riggs, in which she intimated that she was intending to abandon Stoner and save herself, could not be admitted into evidence. The judge dismissed the motion for separate trials, stating that he would deal with the admissibility of the letter when the need arose.

  Although Stoner and Alma Rattenbury had not been charged with conspiracy to murder, which would have involved proving some collusion between them in the plan to kill Rattenbury, the prosecuting counsel, Mr R.C. Croom-Johnson KC, opened the proceedings with an eighty-minute speech designed to demonstrate to the jury that both had been equally responsible. His most important witness was Irene Riggs, who related the events on the night of the murder and told of Stoner’s confession to her of his guilt on the subsequent trip to Wimborne Minster.

  In the case against Alma, the statements that she made to the police in the hours immediately following the attack on her husband, which included her confessions, were crucial to the prosecution. However, whereas the police insisted that Alma had been perfectly fit to give a statement the morning afterwards, Dr O’Donnell strongly disagreed. He testified to the fact that Alma was very drunk and under the influence of morphine and that he would give little credence to any statement that she had given that morning. Dr O’Donnell’s testimony was supported by prison governor Mr Morton, who told the court that Alma had still been confused on her admission to prison.

  Finally, Alma herself took the stand. Described as a pretty woman, looking much younger than her thirty-eight years, she was smartly dressed in a dark blue coat with matching hat and gloves. Initially, her evidence was given so quietly that she had to be urged by her counsel to speak up. From then on, she gave her evidence in a firm, clear voice, appearing composed at all times.

  Having described her relationship with her husband and finding him dreadfully injured, she went on to state that she had absolutely no memory of the police attending immediately after the attack. Casswell, defending Stoner, found himself hampered by his inability to cross-examine Alma Rattenbury, so keen was his client to protect his mistress. Meanwhile, Stoner listened to the proceedings without emotion, only becoming slightly more animated when Alma Rattenbury recounted details of their passionate affair. When she acknowledged to the court, ‘I love him’, his eyes briefly filled with tears.

  Stoner was not called to give evidence since Casswell maintained that, as he was allegedly under the influence of cocaine at the time of the attack on Francis Rattenbury, his recollections of the offence would not be accurate.

  The jury retired on the fifth day of the trial, returning about three-quarters of an hour later with their verdicts. Alma Victoria Rattenbury was found not guilty of the murder of Francis Rattenbury. George Percy Stoner was pronounced guilty.

  As the verdict was announced, Alma took a step forward and reached out towards Stoner. She was heard to say, ‘Oh, no. Oh, no’, then was escorted from the dock by prison wardresses to hear the judge pronounce sentence of death on Stoner. Asked by the judge if he had anything to say as to why the death sentence should not be passed upon him, Stoner replied, ‘Nothing at all, sir’ – the only words he had spoken throughout the entire proceedings. As he was led from the court, Alma Rattenbury was brought back to the dock to face a second charge of being an accessory after the act of murder. Her composure now completely gone, she hung limp and weeping between the two wardresses, her pale face smudged with tears as t
he prosecution offered no evidence against her and the charge was dismissed. Moments later, as she was leaving the court, she came face to face with Stoner. She tried to speak but was so choked with emotion that she was unable to do so. Stoner merely smiled at her. He was later to tell his father that he was perfectly content. They had set Alma free and that was all that mattered to him.

  Alma was taken to the home of her late husband’s nephew but the house was besieged, both by reporters and by a hostile crowd who sympathised with Stoner, casting Alma as a wicked woman who had led an innocent boy astray. Eventually, she moved to a nursing home in Bayswater.

  While there, she gave instructions that no expense was to be spared in helping Stoner and made repeated unsuccessful efforts to gain permission to visit him in prison. She also announced her intention to commit suicide at the very moment that Stoner was executed.

  On 2 June, she left the nursing home and moved to another one in Devonshire Street. The following day, she quietly slipped away, catching a train for Bournemouth at Waterloo station. She eventually left the train at Christchurch, near to the location of Christopher’s boarding school, but rather than visiting him, found herself walking through the meadows towards Three Arches Bend on the River Avon.

  Sitting on the grass in the sunshine, she took a couple of old envelopes and a pencil from her handbag, lit a cigarette and began to write a note. She described how she had already tried to jump under a train, then a bus, but had been thwarted by the fact that there were too many people about. She asked God to bless her children and look after them, then ended the note, ‘Thank God for peace at last’.

  A little while later, a farm worker spotted a woman walking determinedly towards the riverbank. As he watched, the woman dropped into a squatting position and slowly toppled forwards head first into the water. Thinking that she had simply overbalanced while picking flowers, he rushed to her assistance, finding her floating face upwards about five yards from the bank. A non-swimmer, the man tried in vain to reach the woman, first with his foot, then by throwing her coat, which she had left on the bank. All the while, the woman watched him, her face blank, seemingly oblivious to his efforts to rescue her.

  As the farm worker watched in horror, the woman drifted out towards the centre of the river. Only then did he notice the blood oozing from her chest and tainting the water. Alma had stabbed herself six times in the chest, puncturing her left lung in four places and wounding her heart.

  Informed of her death, Stoner broke down and sobbed. Now he wrote to his defence counsel professing his innocence and stating that Alma’s death had freed him to give a true account of the murder. An appeal was held on 24 June, at which Casswell again argued that the two defendants should have been tried separately, and he complained that the trial judge had skipped over the evidence that Stoner was under the influence of cocaine at the time of the murder. Stoner, said Casswell, had not given evidence for fear of incriminating the woman he loved. Now that woman was dead, and Stoner should be given a fresh opportunity to state his case. However, the appeal judge, Lord Chief Justice Hewart, would have none of Casswell’s protestations, dismissing the appeal as ‘a waste of time’.

  Yet, the following day, Home Secretary Sir John Simon announced that he was commuting Stoner’s sentence to one of penal servitude for life. He had received a petition with 320,000 signatures appealing for clemency for the young man but had not wanted to make a decision while the appeal was pending.

  In the event, Stoner served just seven years of his sentence, being released from prison in 1942, aged twenty-six, having been a model prisoner. He immediately joined the Army and went on to take part in the D-Day landings. He returned from the war to live at Redhill, where he married and became a responsible member of the community until his death in Christchurch Hospital in 2000, aged eighty-three. Coincidentally, his death occurred on the 65th anniversary of the murder of Francis Rattenbury, only about half a mile from the spot on the River Avon where his beloved Alma had perished.

  Francis Rattenbury’s grave, 2008. (© N. Sly)

  Alma’s two boys both grew up to be successful professional men, John following in his father’s footsteps to become an architect, working in America. In a recent interview with The Times newspaper, given on the occasion of a revival of a play, Cause Celebre, written about the trial by Terence Rattigan, John mentions that he bears no ill will towards Stoner. Rather, he views him as a victim of circumstance, an impressionable young man who suddenly found himself the object of the affections of a beautiful older woman and was too immature to cope.

  It has since been suggested that the true motive for Francis Rattenbury’s murder was that Stoner overheard a suggestion made by him that Alma should have an affair with Mr Jenks in Bridport in order to encourage him to finance Rattenbury’s proposed business project. According to Alma’s former sister-in-law, Mrs Kingham, Stoner became so enraged at the thought of his mistress being prostituted by her husband for his financial gain that he was driven to murder him. As all of the participants in this tragedy are now deceased, it is unlikely that the full truth of the matter will ever come to light.

  19

  ‘I’VE BEEN A GOOD WIFE TO HIM AND NOBODY CAN SAY I HAVEN’T’

  Coombe, 1935

  Nineteen-year-old Charlotte McHugh, an illiterate Irish gypsy girl, once believed that she had found her prince charming in the form of an English soldier. Frederick John Bryant was a military policeman serving with the Dorset regiment and met Charlotte when he was sent to Londonderry, one of 60,000 English soldiers dispatched to assist in the repression of the Sinn Fein movement during the Irish troubles of 1917–22.

  When Bryant left Ireland to return to civilian life and his job as a cowman in Dorset, Charlotte went with him. The couple married in March 1922 at Wells in Somerset, and settled in a tied cottage at Nether Compton, near Sherborne.

  However, life in rural Dorset wasn’t the idyll of Charlotte’s dreams. She had simply exchanged poverty and squalor in Ireland for the same in England. Frequently, she sought relief from her desperate circumstances by visiting the local pub, where she became known amongst the locals as ‘Compton Liz’, ‘Black Bess’ or ‘Killarney Kate’. As well as gaining several nicknames, Charlotte also gained a reputation for accepting drinks from strange men, many of whom were subsequently invited back to the cottage she shared with Frederick.

  Not only were these liaisons extremely pleasurable for Charlotte, but they were also a means of supplementing the meagre 38s her husband received as his weekly wage. Bryant was well aware of his wife’s extra-marital activities and even condoned them. ‘I don’t care what she does’, he told a neighbour who had informed him of Charlotte’s visitors. ‘Four pounds a week is better than thirty bob.’

  Charlotte had pretensions to an extravagant lifestyle. On occasions, she was known to buy luxury foodstuffs and she also sometimes hired a car and driver for a day, the cost of which was almost the equivalent of a week’s wage for her husband. To support her aspirations, Charlotte became adept at thinking of new ways to extract money from her gentleman callers. On one occasion, she managed to convince a Yeovil businessman that she was carrying his baby. The man – doubtless terrified of the likely scandal – quickly handed over £25 to pay for an abortion but, months later, Charlotte returned with a baby in her arms, demanding regular child support payments. In fact, the baby was fathered by neither the businessman nor Charlotte’s husband, but was the progeny of one of her most regular lovers, Leonard Parsons.

  Parsons – or Bill Moss as he was sometimes known – was a travelling salesman and horse dealer with a gypsy background and nomadic lifestyle similar to Charlotte’s own. Moss lived with Priscilla Loveridge on Huish gypsy camp at Weston-super-Mare. Together they had four illegitimate children. However, once he met Charlotte and became her lover in 1933, Parsons all but moved in with the Bryant family. Surprisingly under the circumstances, he and Frederick Bryant became good friends, often drinking together at the Crown public ho
use and even sharing a razor.

  It was while Parsons was staying at the cottage that Fred Bryant suffered the first episode of what was to become a prolonged illness. On 13 May Bryant went to work as usual, while Parsons left to conduct some business, taking with him Charlotte and Ernest, the Bryant’s oldest child. Fred ate the lunch of meat, potatoes and peas left for him by Charlotte and, shortly afterwards, became seriously ill with what looked like food poisoning.

  Weakened by severe vomiting and diarrhoea, all Fred could do was to call out for his next-door neighbour, Mrs Ethel Staunton. When Mrs Staunton heard his cries, she immediately went to see if she could help, finding Fred sitting on the stairs, groaning and shivering violently. Fred asked her to fetch a tin bath from the garden, which she did, making him a solution of salt water to induce vomiting. She then went off to fetch her husband, Bernard.

  By the time she came back, Frederick Bryant had managed to drag himself upstairs to bed. He had also vomited into the bath, bringing up a large quantity of what Mr Staunton described as ‘green frothy stuff’. Staunton sent someone to telephone for the doctor and, while waiting for him to arrive, made up several hot water bottles for his neighbour who was complaining of feeling bitterly cold.

  Dr McCarthy eventually arrived to find Frederick Bryant complaining of stomach pains and cramp in his legs and suffering from bouts of severe sickness and diarrhoea. Concluding that his patient had an attack of food poisoning, he gave him an injection and left him to rest. When he called back at the cottage the next day, he found Bryant’s condition to have greatly improved. Charlotte Bryant was attending to him and McCarthy questioned her about what her husband had eaten over the previous couple of days. Charlotte assured him that Fred had eaten exactly the same food as the rest of the family and that nobody else had suffered any ill effects, which appeared to rule out food poisoning as the cause of Fred’s illness.