A Capital Crime

by Laura Wilson

  ‘Probably wandering about trying to pick up women,’ said Stratton. ‘What else?’

  ‘Rent book for Paradise Street, marriage certificate, three pawn tickets, St John’s Ambulance badge, two first aid certificates, gloves, scarf, handkerchief – all the usual men’s clothes, and there’s women’s stuff here, too. Nightdress, petticoat, necklace, lipstick …

  ‘Mrs Carleton said he’d offered her some clothes. Said they’d belonged to his wife.’

  ‘Charming. There’s a whole list of medicines, too.’

  ‘There would be.’

  Ballard leafed through the pages. ‘Lab report’s right at the end, sir. Blimey …’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘“I have examined package no. 4,’ read Ballard ‘and found on the trousers an area of seminal staining containing spermatozoa on the inside of the right fly opening near the bottom … spot of seminal staining on the lining of the left pocket … On the front flap of the shirt there are extensive areas of staining, semen containing spermatozoa was identified … On the vest there was an area of old staining with semen, the other vest shows comparatively extensive areas of staining … On another pair of trousers … On the plimsolls there were found some spots and smears of seminal staining …”’

  ‘All right,’ said Stratton, utterly revolted. ‘I’ve got the picture. Is there anything else?’

  ‘“Awaiting the clothes worn by Backhouse on arrest …”’

  ‘They’ll probably be covered in wank-stains as well.’

  ‘. . . and the comparisons with the samples found in the women show that it’s possible they could be from the same source.’

  ‘Anything on the pubic hair?’

  ‘It’s a bit inconclusive, sir. It says here, “It should be pointed out that while it is possible to say that two samples of hair are dissimilar, it is not possible to say that a sample of normal hair must have come from the same source, since the range of structural and colour variations of human hair is limited and there are millions of people having hair within this range of variation.’”

  Stratton sighed. ‘Tell us something we don’t know. Any similarities, then?’

  Ballard frowned. ‘It says that one of them might be from Mrs Backhouse, but there are no matches with the women in the alcove. So, if two of the samples turn out to be from the women in the garden – assuming the stuff they picked out of the earth isn’t too far gone to test – that still leaves one unaccounted for …’

  ‘Muriel Davies.’

  ‘That’s what I was thinking, sir. Are we going after an exhumation order?’

  ‘Let’s see what Backhouse says about her first. Then I’ll talk to Lamb.’

  When they returned to the interview room, Backhouse had straightened up, and looked at them with something like defiance on his face. Stratton knew immediately that they’d missed their chance.

  ‘Muriel Davies,’ he said, firmly. ‘Tell me.’

  There were no ticks of the mouth now, no fussing with his glasses, no blinking. Backhouse looked him squarely in the eye and said, in a clear voice, ‘If you can prove it, Inspector, I’ll admit it.’

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  Two days later, shivering in the chilly dawn air amongst Kensal Rise cemetery’s thickets of marble and stone, surrounded on all sides by crosses and angels sprouting at awkward angles from the earth, Stratton and Ballard stood beside McNally and another, older, pathologist, Dr Tindall – who was to perform the second postmortem – and watched the men digging.

  It was five a.m., but despite the closed cemetery gates and the barricades and constables outside, there were dozens of reporters and photographers with stepladders lining the road. At least – apart from the odd curious early riser – the public weren’t there, thought Stratton, wondering, not for the first time, why on earth people came to gawp at this sort of thing. The idea of being part of something, perhaps, in the sense of bearing witness, or hoping, misguidedly, for a glimpse of the killer – although they must, having followed the case in the papers, already know what he looked like.

  Stratton saw that the newest graves were blanketed with bunches of flowers. The older ones had only a single bunch, wilting and apologetic, and the oldest of all had ivy and ragged grass. There hadn’t been anything in front of the plain stone slab that marked Muriel and Judy’s grave, now removed: too painful, perhaps, for the family to visit. Or maybe, like him, they didn’t see the point. He’d never visited the plot where Jenny’s ashes were scattered and nor, as far as he knew, had Monica or Pete. It was just a place: Jenny wasn’t there.

  The coffin being raised, the earth was brushed away to reveal the brass plaque. The original undertaker, McLeavy, stepped forward and nodded. ‘That’s the one.’ The dark boards – elm, Stratton guessed – looked in good condition, with the lid only slightly warped. ‘We’ll need to raise the lid a little,’ said Tindall. ‘For the release of gases.’

  The diggers unscrewed the lid and pushed it to one side. There was no smell, at least not from where he was standing, and Stratton could see nothing but darkness within. There was a short, solemn pause, as though an invisible vicar had requested a silent commemoration, and then Tindall nodded, satisfied. The lid was screwed back into place, the coffin lifted up, and the cortège, led with sombre authority by McLeavy, moved off in a hail of clicking camera shutters to the waiting van.

  At the mortuary Higgs removed the coffin lid, revealing stalactites of white mould hanging down from the inside. The same white mould covered the shroud, through which the outlines of the two bodies – Muriel and the baby, Judy, who lay on her stomach – were clearly visible. Stratton, who’d placed his handkerchief over his nose in readiness, was surprised at how little they added to the usual mortuary smell of decay and disinfectant. Nevertheless, he was aware of a heaviness in the air, as though a thick cloth had been pulled around him, close and stifling. He stared down at the runnels in the concrete floor until a sudden, vivid memory of the country abattoir where his father had occasionally taken him as a boy when they were delivering stock, with its sluiced tides of blood and offal, jabbed him, making him blink and jerk his head up again.

  He withdrew a little as Higgs and the other assistants began to remove the bodies from the coffin. Ballard, who’d done likewise, murmured, ‘Are you all right, sir?’

  ‘Not really,’ muttered Stratton, grimly. ‘It was bad enough the first time. But I’ll manage.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’ From this simple exchange Stratton knew that the sergeant was remembering it, too – the horror of seeing the baby’s little clothes taken off, one by one, and the toy duck, just like the one he’d said his daughter had to have in her cot or she couldn’t sleep, and then sitting up late in the office afterwards, when he’d told the sergeant about Jenny being pregnant when she died and how determined they’d been to see Davies swing … He shuffled further away, towards the door.

  Ballard followed. ‘Do you suppose he ever thinks of them, sir?’ he asked quietly. ‘Backhouse, I mean.’

  Stratton shook his head. ‘Or about Davies, either. I’d like to think they all bloody haunt him, but I doubt it – I mean, you’d need to have a conscience, wouldn’t you? Christ, I hope this works.’

  Hearing Tindall’s voice, ‘Very well preserved,’ they turned back to see him bending over the dun-coloured shape on the slab. ‘A sample of the outer shroud, if you would, Mr Higgs … thank you.’ They kept their distance, and Stratton glanced into the coffin, now empty save a bed of sawdust, stained brown, then watched as Tindall, bald head shining waxily beneath the electric bulb, lifted Judy, who was clad in her own separate shroud, away from her mother. The little bundle lay in his arms as he held her secure against his white rubber apron, carrying her across the room and gently laying her down.

  The shroud being now removed from Muriel, Stratton could see that her face was, incredibly, almost recognisable. He nodded when Tindall looked to him for confirmation, then focused his attention on the rough line of McNally’
s sutures down the stomach that disappeared into the dark mound of pubic hair. The organs detached from Muriel the first time would have been crammed back inside her, he knew, like so many parcels in a bag of skin and bones … These were things one shouldn’t have to think about, never mind see. She – it – is here because of me, he thought. I must watch, and I must not be sick. It occurred to him then that Jenny would have looked like this now, had she been buried and not cremated. The doctors of death had performed a post-mortem on her, laying claim to her flesh by cutting, removing, replacing and stitching, with others standing by, watching while she lay there, wounded, naked and forlorn …

  At the time she’d died, he hadn’t thought about those things. The heavy pall of grief had dulled him, blunting his mind, so that the post-mortem had been simply another fact, a stage in the process, not something actively imagined.

  Swallowing hard, he felt Ballard’s hand, gentle, on his arm. ‘Sir?’

  ‘I’m all right,’ he said through clenched teeth, and moved away, keeping his eyes fixed on the corpse.

  Muriel’s skin was a dirty white, but there were two areas of pink on her thighs where the child had lain. ‘Cherry pink,’ said Tindall. ‘We’ll need specimens for carbon-monoxide analysis. McNally, if you would …’

  ‘Of course,’ said McNally, adding defensively, ‘It would have been evident the first time. I’d say that patch of colouring’s more likely to be post-mortem pink, but by all means …’

  ‘Best be on the safe side,’ said Tindall, a slight edge to his voice.

  ‘Is it likely to show up now?’ asked Stratton, mildly.

  ‘Pretty unlikely, I’d say,’ said McNally.

  ‘Must do the thing properly,’ said Tindall, in a manner which suggested it might not have been done properly before. Privately, Stratton doubted this – McNally was experienced and, from what he’d seen, painstaking and careful about his work. Besides which, even his untrained eye could see that the pink colour was slowly beginning to fade. ‘Let’s have a look at the pubic hair, shall we?’ continued Tindall, briskly. ‘Doesn’t look like anything’s been cut. We’ll need a sample of that, too, for the lab, so if you would … Now, let’s begin, shall we?’ He held out a gloved hand. ‘Scalpel, please, Mr Higgs.’

  Chapter Seventy-Three

  Stratton sat in the office, trying to ignore the thump and ping of a dozen typewriters from across the corridor. He was looking through the list of samples sent to the police laboratory – Jar labelled 15, both lungs of woman, Jar labelled 16, vagina and labia of woman, Jar labelled 17, sample of sawdust from coffin – and trying to get his thoughts into some sort of order, when a telephone call came through from Dr Sutherland at Pentonville Prison where Backhouse, like Davies before him, had been remanded in custody.

  ‘I’ve interviewed him twice,’ said Sutherland. ‘He was physically exhausted when he arrived, and underweight. He was complaining of fibrositis in his back and shoulder, but it proved pretty mild on examination … I’ve taken a medical history, and barring the incidents during the war, which I believe you know about – loss of voice and so on – he seems to have spent his life taking refuge in minor ailments, fibrositis, diarrhoea, sleep disturbance and so forth. Quite the hypochondriac, in fact, always in and out of the doctor’s surgery.’

  ‘Yes, the first thing he did when I arrested him was to tell me about his health,’ said Stratton.

  ‘Well, I can certainly give you some more information, if that would help. I believe you’re going to interview him again, about Muriel Davies.’

  ‘That’s right …’ With the receiver wedged uncomfortably between his chin and his ear, Stratton flicked through his old notes to find the details of their conversation about Davies. Coming to something heavily underlined, he said, ‘When we spoke about Davies, you were under the impression that he was telling the truth about killing his wife and child. Is that still your opinion?’

  There was silence – no radiating of quiet strength or square-jawed film-actor stuff this time, thought Stratton – just the hesitation of a confused human being.

  ‘It was my opinion, yes …’

  ‘And now?’ persisted Stratton.

  ‘It’s difficult to say. I’ve been looking at my notes, and I certainly was confident of it at the time. Backhouse hasn’t said or indicated to me that he killed Mrs Davies. The only time he spoke of it was when I was taking his medical history and he told me he’d given evidence at Davies’s trial and he’d been very much upset by it. Treated for chronic diarrhoea and insomnia afterwards, according to my notes. He was distressed that Davies had said he was an abortionist. Said Davies had mistaken his St John’s Ambulance first aid manuals for medical textbooks and jumped to the wrong conclusion. I have to say that did give me pause – judging from what I wrote down at the time, I wouldn’t have said that Davies possessed the mental agility to make such a leap. He was a liar, certainly, and imaginative, but it was more in the realm of storytelling than putting two and two together to make five, if you see what I mean.’

  ‘I think so,’ said Stratton. ‘What did Backhouse say about the other women?’

  ‘Told me the wife was a mercy killing, and he showed some signs of emotion while talking about her, but I had the impression that it was more to impress me than from genuine feeling. He was very anxious to tell me how happy they’d been together. As far as the others were concerned, he tried to tell me that the women had died accidentally and then he said … wait a minute … Ah, here we are: “I must have done them, the police said I did.” Distancing himself … Yes, again, “If I did it, I must have dismissed it from my mind afterwards.”’

  ‘Very convenient,’ said Stratton, drily.

  ‘In my experience, it’s not uncommon in people accused of murder. There’s also the lack of remorse – but then one can hardly regret things that one can’t remember … That’s a protective mechanism of the mind, of course. He’s not going to remember something that might incriminate him. When I asked him about the evidence of the semen in the women he said, “It must have happened at the time of strangulation.” I asked him if he meant he’d had sexual intercourse with them, and he said he thought it had happened but he wasn’t clear about it. He didn’t say anything about gassing them. When I asked him he said he didn’t remember anything like that.’

  ‘Well, it’s a bit more than I got, I suppose … Do you have any idea why he did any of it?’

  ‘It’s always hard to say when these abnormal impulses begin. There doesn’t seem to be any history of sadism – torturing animals and so forth, and—’

  ‘Talking of animals, did he mention any pets?’

  ‘Yes, a dog and a cat. Seemed very fond of them … Wait a minute – the cat died a few years back and the dog was getting very old and blind so he took it to the vet and had it put to sleep before he left his flat. Got quite emotional telling me about it. Anyway, as far as his sexual history is concerned, nothing much seems to have happened – at least, not out of the ordinary – until an incident when he was sixteen or seventeen. He used to go to a local place – that was in Halifax – he described as being “frequented by girls of loose morals” – what one might call a “Lovers’ Lane”, I suppose, judging from what he said. There was an occasion when he was there with a couple of male friends and was unable to have intercourse with one of these girls. He was teased about it afterwards – by the boys as well as the girls, apparently. They called him “Norman No-Dick”.’

  ‘And you think that might …?’

  ‘It’s possible. Hatred of women, and so on. Of course, thousands of men might have had an experience like that in boyhood, but it wouldn’t affect their subsequent behaviour in such a way. He was very damning about anything to do with sex – masturbation, prostitutes et cetera. Tendency to moralise … Oh, yes, and there was an incident around the same time where a local girl became pregnant out of wedlock and he told me she’d thought a lot of herself before but … here we are: “That took her down a peg or tw
o, she couldn’t hold her head up after that, with everybody talking …” He seemed to take a good deal of pleasure in remembering that. And he said his sisters – four of them, and one brother – were always bossing him about and he didn’t like it … Afraid of his father, told me he had a violent temper, very critical, bullied him … He said he’d had recourse to prostitutes while he was in the forces … difficulty with intercourse during the first two or three years of marriage. Said they’d stopped having sexual relations by mutual consent about two and a half to three years ago—’

  ‘Around the time of Davies’s trial.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose that would be right. Both disappointed in not having children. He’s physically quite normal in terms of his development. He spoke about all this quite freely – unlike his discussion of the murders. However, I ought to point out that what he says seems to depend on who he’s talking to. I was told this morning that he’s been quite happy to talk about the case with the other prisoners. In fact, one of the warders overheard him boasting that he’d … where is it? Oh, yes, that he’d “done twelve of them”. Those are his words, of course.’

  ‘Twelve?’ echoed Stratton.

  ‘I shouldn’t read too much into that. Probably just an attempt to impress. He’s very conscious of his status – how other people view him. The other possibility, of course, is that he’s beginning to form the idea of a defence of insanity. So, the more the merrier, as they say – or madder, in this case. If that’s what he’s doing, it’s possible that he may confess to the murder of Muriel Davies in order to bolster it, although none of the staff or – so far as I’m aware – the other prisoners, have heard him mention her or the baby.’