A Capital Crime

by Laura Wilson

  Opening his notebook in case he needed a prompt, he said, ‘At nine thirty p.m. yesterday I found the body of your wife, Muriel Davies, concealed behind timber in a washhouse at ten Paradise Street, also the body of your baby daughter Judy concealed in the same outbuilding, and this clothing was found on them. Later I was at the Middlesex Hospital mortuary, when it was established that the cause of death was strangulation in both cases. I have reason to believe that you were responsible for their deaths.’

  Davies stared at him, jaw hanging slack. Then he reached forward, picked up the tie, then dropped it back onto the pile of baby clothes. When he looked up, Stratton saw that his eyes were wet with tears. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, and then again, more loudly, ‘Yes.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  ‘John Wilfred Davies, I am arresting you for the murder of your wife, Muriel Davies, and your daughter, Judy Davies. You are not obliged to say anything, but I must warn you that anything you do say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence against you.’

  Stratton stared across the desk at the tiny man who sat beneath the naked light bulb in the interview room. There were deep troughs of exhaustion under his eyes. His coat removed, his over-large jacket stood proud of his shoulders as if there were a hanger still inside, and his grubby white shirt stood a quarter of an inch clear either side of the skinny column of his neck. Whatever else he looked like, Stratton thought, it wasn’t a monster. ‘Do you understand what I am saying to you?’ he asked.

  The man’s prominent Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed, working saliva into his mouth. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Please sign here.’ Stratton pushed a pen and the paper with the caution statement across the scarred wooden table. Davies glanced at it, then looked up, bewildered.

  ‘Sign?’

  ‘Your name.’ Stratton tapped the bottom of the paper. Davies picked up the pen awkwardly, as if he wasn’t used to handling such an object, and turned it round in his fingers several times before writing his name in a series of cramped, upward-sloping loops.

  ‘Thank you.’ Stratton nodded to Ballard, who sat beside him, pen poised, and, turning back to Davies, said, ‘Why did you strangle your wife and child, Mr Davies?’

  ‘Why?’ echoed Davies. Eyes narrowed, he peered intently round the room as if hoping to find an answer there.

  ‘You killed them,’ said Stratton, flatly. ‘You’ve just told us that. Now we want to know why you did it.’

  ‘I …’ Davies didn’t look directly at Stratton. His gaze hovered somewhere between the two policemen’s shoulders. ‘I done nothing wrong.’ The Welsh melodiousness in his voice was discernable for the first time.

  ‘Mr Davies.’ Stratton’s voice was deliberately loud. ‘So far, you have given us a cock and bull story about putting your wife’s body down a drain. You told us that your baby daughter was being looked after by people who turn out not to exist. You told your mother that your wife and child were in Brighton. You told your neighbours, the Backhouses, that they were in Bristol. Then you told us that Backhouse was responsible for your wife’s death and that he told you he was going to put her body in the drain. Now you’re telling us that you had nothing to do with any of it. It’s been a tissue of lies from start to finish, hasn’t it?’

  ‘I done nothing,’ repeated Davies, sullen now, like a schoolboy caught out in a falsehood.

  ‘What you have certainly done – consistently, I grant you – is to tell lies. We know that you killed your wife and child. You’ve just told us that yourself. Now,’ Stratton, resting his palms on the desk, pushed himself upwards and forwards across the table so that his face was barely six inches from Davies’s, ‘I suggest that you start telling the truth.’

  Davies shrank in his chair, his white, creased brow beaded with sweat. ‘But I didn’t … I never …’

  ‘Mr Davies.’ Stratton leant backwards and folded his arms. ‘You have no choice but to co-operate with us. If you don’t …’ He left the implied threat hanging in the air between them for a full thirty seconds, then uncrossed his arms and continued, in an eminently reasonable tone, ‘Fortunately for you, we’re patient men, and of course we have plenty of time. And I imagine,’ he said in a kinder tone, ‘that it will be quite a relief to get it off your chest. That’s what you told the policeman in Wales, isn’t it? You told him you couldn’t sleep for worrying. If you tell us all about it, we can help you. If not …’ Stratton sighed, sorrowfully, ‘then – much as we’d like to help you – we can’t.’

  Davies cowered, seeming to collapse from within; hunched over in his chair he looked even smaller than before. Stratton could almost smell his fear, and with it the scent of victory. He leant forward, elbows on the table. ‘Well?’

  Once more, Davies’s eyes darted about the room, frantic this time. Watching him twist uncertainly in his chair, Stratton thought, there’s no escape, chum – just get on with it. ‘Well?’ he barked.

  ‘I’ll tell you about it.’ Eyes flitting from Stratton’s face to Ballard’s and back again, he was speaking fast, with terrified eagerness. ‘It was the money, see? Muriel took the money off me, from my job, and she kept spending it, and she was always asking me for more, so I killed her.’

  That’s more like it, thought Stratton. Now we’re getting somewhere. ‘How did you kill her?’ he asked.

  ‘I strangled her, see?’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘What …?’ Davies looked momentarily confused, then said, ‘A rope, wasn’t it?’

  The way he said this gave Stratton the impression that it was something he’d learnt, or tried to learn, by heart and was now repeating. ‘Was it?’ he asked.

  Davies screwed up his face, as if trying to remember something, and Stratton felt an odd and wholly unexpected twinge of uncertainty.

  Davies’s eyes half closed, so that his pupils were partly hidden beneath his eyelids, and Stratton had a sudden image of a lift stopped between two floors which, for some reason he was unable to pinpoint, increased his uncertain feeling. For Christ’s sake, he told himself, the man’s told so many lies that he’s probably having trouble remembering the real version of events.

  Davies’s eyes popped open again, and, as if satisfied by some inner voice of confirmation, he said firmly, ‘Yes. A rope.’

  ‘Where did you get the rope?’

  Davies stared at him as if this were not a question to which he could reasonably be expected to know the answer. ‘I … I don’t know. I think I had it off my van.’

  ‘So you brought it in with you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He sounded more confident this time, and looked at Stratton expectantly.

  Feeling that some sort of encouragement was due, Stratton said, ‘Good … You brought it in with the intention of murdering your wife, did you?’

  ‘I …’ Davies’s tentative smile of acknowledgement changed to a frown. ‘No … No!’ He was irritated now, his voice a peevish semitone higher. ‘It was a row, see? Like I told you.’

  ‘So why did you bring the rope up to your flat?’

  ‘I … Well, I was tidying up, wasn’t I? Tidying the van.’

  ‘Tidying the van,’ Stratton repeated in tones of disbelief. ‘I see. And what did you do then – after you’d strangled her?’

  ‘I took her down to the flat below.’ The reply came quickly this time, without any doubt.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well … Because it was empty, see? Mr Gardiner was in hospital.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘I waited a bit, and took her down to the washhouse when Mr and Mrs Backhouse were asleep.’

  ‘And this was when?’

  ‘The start of November.’

  ‘Can you remember the date?’ asked Stratton, leafing through his pocket diary.

  ‘No.’

  ‘The seventh?’ asked Stratton, remembering Backhouse’s words about the workmen. ‘That was what you told the police at Merthyr Tydfil.’

  ‘It must have been the
seventh, then.’

  ‘Fair enough. What did you do afterwards?’

  Davies blinked in bewilderment. Thinking he hadn’t understood the question, Stratton clarified it. ‘I’m asking what you did after you’d taken the body downstairs.’

  ‘Well, then … Then I went to sleep.’

  ‘And when you woke up?’

  ‘I fed my baby and went to work.’

  ‘When did you strangle the baby?’

  ‘Later. Two days. When I came home from my work. I strangled her with my tie. I took her downstairs at night.’

  ‘And you put her in the washhouse?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Who was looking after the baby when you were at work?’

  Davies looked indignant. ‘I fed her all right. I done it when I come in.’

  ‘Yes …’ Wondering about this – surely any infant left alone and unfed for so long would have bawled its head off? – he said, ‘Why did you kill her?’

  Davies stared at him for a moment, his face a mask of stupid incomprehension, before tears came into his eyes and, closing them, he lowered his head, shaking it slowly from side to side. When he opened his eyes, his expression was one of utter defeat. His mouth worked for a moment, apparently trying – if his blank look was anything to go by – to frame words independently of his mind. Then he said, in a whisper, ‘I don’t know,’ and, putting his head in his hands, began to sob.

  At least, thought Stratton, he’s got enough decency left to feel remorse. After a moment he said, ‘I think we’ll leave it there,’ and nodded at Ballard, who finished writing and slid the statement towards him.

  ‘Would you like to read it?’ Stratton asked Davies, who looked up, wiping his eyes and nose on his sleeve.

  ‘You read it to me,’ he said, sniffing. ‘I’m not very educated, see?’

  ‘Very well.’ Stratton picked up the paper. ‘Muriel was incurring one debt after another and I could not stand it any longer, so I strangled her with a piece of rope …’

  Davies’s blank look whilst listening to the statement caused Stratton to wonder how much he’d actually understood of the proceedings, but he concluded that it was because the words were not actually his, and, the language being rather more sophisticated than his own, he may not have understood it all. However, he felt satisfied that it was as good a summary of what Davies had said as any, and Davies seemed to feel the same way because he made no comment, but picked up the pen once more and signed his name carefully in the place Ballard had indicated.

  ‘Now,’ said Stratton. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea, shall we? Smoke?’ He fished his cigarettes out of his pocket and nudged the packet over to Davies. Ballard went to the door to request tea from the policeman standing outside. Reaching over to give Davies a light, Stratton said, ‘That’s better, isn’t it?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ Davies inhaled greedily. ‘It’s quite a relief, I can tell you.’

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘Something’s puzzling me.’ Having left Davies in the interview room under the eye of PC Arliss, Stratton and Ballard were finishing their tea in the office.

  ‘What’s that, sir?’

  ‘The Backhouses said that Muriel and the baby went away on the seventh of November – to Bristol, as they thought – when the workmen were in the house, didn’t they?’

  Ballard consulted his notebook. ‘Yes, sir. And that Davies left about a week later.’

  ‘Well, if the workmen were using the washhouse for storage, how was it that they didn’t notice the bodies?’

  ‘They were behind the floorboards, sir.’

  ‘Nevertheless … And we need to find out when those floor-boards were taken up, too.’

  ‘The thing that’s bothering me, sir, is the baby. If she was left alone for the best part of two days while Davies was at work, she must have howled a bit, and that’s a small house …’

  ‘Yes, I was thinking about that.’

  ‘The Backhouses didn’t hear anything – well, they thought she’d gone with the mother, didn’t they? So if they had heard a baby crying you’d think they’d have gone to investigate.’

  ‘Unless they thought it was coming from next door. I can’t believe the walls are very thick.’

  ‘That’s true, sir.’

  ‘Or the baby didn’t make any noise. I suppose that’s possible.’ Ballard – the memory of interrupted nights evidently still fresh in his mind – looked dubious. ‘And,’ Stratton continued, ‘I still can’t understand about that bloody dog … Even if it’s not allowed into the garden, the workmen must have left doors open, bringing things in and out, so why the hell didn’t it start sniffing around?’

  ‘Perhaps it did and nobody noticed, sir. Or Davies got the dates wrong. It was a few weeks ago, and it’s hard to remember … And it’s obvious he’s not too bright.’

  ‘You can say that again. I found myself feeling a bit sorry for the poor little sod, actually.’

  Ballard nodded. ‘So did I, sir. He seems so … well, harmless.’

  ‘Probably is, when he’s not strangling his family. Obviously lived in a bit of a fantasy world, and now it’s all coming home to him.’

  ‘He does seem to be having a job disentangling fact from fiction, sir.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed that. And there’s something else that’s bothering me a bit – the way he didn’t seem to know why he’d done things. Apart from strangling Muriel because of the row over money, I mean … He was pretty quick to agree with the things we put to him, but that business about the rope, and why he killed the baby … It was as if he genuinely didn’t know what to answer.’

  ‘Well, he’s got a fair old temper, hasn’t he? Even his mother said that. I can’t imagine he thinks too much before he acts.’

  ‘Loses his head, you mean. Actually, I don’t suppose he thinks much at all, apart from making up stories.’

  ‘That’s his problem, sir – he’s fine when he’s making things up, but as to reality …’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stratton thoughtfully. ‘That makes sense – in as much as anything does.’ He read through the statement once more, looking for inconsistencies. ‘The timing’s the real bugger, with the baby alone for two days, but I’m sure we can sort it out when we interview the witnesses. Still …’ he swilled down the rest of his tea and stood up, stretching, ‘so far so good, eh? Come on, let’s get back downstairs.’

  They found Davies sitting quite still, head in hands. Arliss, standing behind him, hastily levered himself away from the wall and adopted what Stratton assumed was supposed to be an expression of observant obsequiousness, which merely succeeded in rendering him even more of an eyesore than usual.

  Davies turned to look at him and Stratton saw that he had been crying. He bent down and put an arm around Davies’s thin shoulders. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, benevolently. ‘You’re doing well.’

  Davies made noisy gulping sounds, then looked up at Stratton with eyes full of hope. You pathetic, inadequate little bastard, thought Stratton. He’d seen this look before – bloody awkward it was, too, when you were busy putting a noose round a man’s neck and he started regarding you as some sort of saviour because you hadn’t knocked him about … In his mind’s eye, Stratton saw once more the tiny, crinkled-up soles of the baby’s feet, heels resting on the cold mortuary slab, so utterly defenceless. The man was as guilty as hell, simple as that. And, Stratton reminded himself, he was doing his job and if that meant getting murderers to regard him as a guardian angel, then so be it. Abruptly, he took his hand off Davies’s shoulders, marched round the table, and took his seat.

  ‘Now, let’s start from the beginning.’

  Davies wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and blurted out, ‘The money was the cause of it. I was working driving a van for Murchison’s, off the Euston Road. Muriel kept asking for more money, so I borrowed twenty quid from the guv’nor. She had it off me, and I told the guv’nor to take it from my wages. She never told me who she owed the money
to, see? Started a row whenever I asked about it. I borrowed off all different people to get more for her, but she never let up … We had a letter from the furniture people about money owing, and Muriel told me she never paid it. I went round there and gave them thirty bob, and then I told her she must pay every week what we owed …’

  ‘That’s the hire purchase?’

  ‘Yes. Benfleet’s, it is. After I done that I found she was behind with the rent, and that’s when I blew up – she was wasting the money going to the pictures all the time, leaving the baby, and saying I never gave her enough. I wasn’t going to stand for that.’

  ‘When was this?’

  ‘It was a Sunday. November, I think, early on. I had a row with her and then I went to the pub dinner time, and then the pictures. I come back about seven o’clock. I was listening to the wireless, but Muriel wouldn’t stop about the money and the rent, and when we got up next morning she started arguing again. She told me she was going to Brighton with Judy, but she never, she was there when I come home from work. She said something about how she never went there because I’d have a good time while she was gone. I lost my temper and told her if she didn’t pack it up I’d slap her face. She picked up a milk bottle – she was going to throw it at me – so I grabbed the bottle off her. I’d had enough of it, so I washed and went off to the pub.’

  ‘Which pub?’

  ‘The Horse and Groom in Great Portland Street. I stopped there till about ten o’clock, I think, and then I come home. Muriel started a row again, so I told her, “I’m going to bed.” When I got up in the morning—’