The Monocled Mutineer

by John Fairley

  The inquest was the first in modern times to declare a man guilty of murder in his absence. At this distance it seems by no means certain that Toplis really was the killer. The case was far from conclusive, based, as it was, largely on a man who had turned King’s Evidence, Private Fallows.

  There had been no sign of blood on Toplis. His revolver was still fully loaded when Fallows found it. Toplis was apparently in two places at once, twenty-five miles apart, at 2.30 on the day of the murder. The motive of murdering to joy-ride in a car is a thin one indeed. But, from that moment, Toplis stood no chance. He was a condemned and convicted murderer who would never have been able to prove his innocence. He had been publicly branded as an outlaw.

  The hue and cry was now in earnest. The discrepancies, along with the unchallenged assertion of the inquest, were swept aside in the frenetic hunt for ‘The Most Dangerous Man in Britain’. Five days before, at the magistrates’ court, Private Fallows had been cleared completely of the charges against him.

  Meanwhile the local police in Toplis’s home territory in Derbyshire were having a frustrating time. They knew Toplis had quite enough nerve to come back and see his mother or his old – and not so old – flames. ‘Just a week or two before the murder, Percy had been back buying us all a pint in the Hay Inn at Shirland,’ said Charles Buggins who now lives at the Lord Nelson in Bullsbridge. ‘His mother was living just at the back of the Hay Inn. Percy came quite often. Even then, a couple of years after the war, he was never out of uniform – officers’ of course – swagger stick and all. We lads thought he was tremendous, and you can imagine the effect he had on the lasses of a pit village.’

  The first tip that reached the constabulary came from the Ashover Registrar, Chesterfield, a few days after the shooting. A baby boy had been registered giving the father’s name as Percy Toplis. A flying squad descended on the unfortunate Mary Jane Nutting at Clay Cross. It took an hour to persuade the officers that her husband was a hewer at the local pit and that she had never met the monocled swell from down the road at Shirland.

  A week later Shirland itself had a taste of just how fearfully the law regarded the fugitive Percy Toplis. Just as the morning shift was going to the pit, a bus came tearing through the village and disgorged two dozen policemen who immediately surrounded the Toplis house. ‘We couldn’t believe our eyes,’ said Charles Buggins. ‘We’d never seen more than two policemen at one time in our lives – and that was when the village bobby brought his mate over for a drink. Now here we had bobbies flashing guns and acting like there was a war on. The sergeant in charge had a gun. He hammered on the door and eventually poor old Ma Toplis came down in her nightgown. They were in there for ages, but of course there wasn’t a hide nor hair of Percy.’

  Indeed, at that precise moment in time Toplis was fleeing across a ploughed field on the other side of the country near Chepstow, pursued by a breathless policeman, Constable Charles Davies of the Monmouthshire Constabulary.

  Davies, in plain clothes, had come across Toplis, also out of uniform, and two sailors sleeping in a car in a country lane two miles from Caerwent Police Station. The sailors admitted they were ‘adrift’, but Toplis who was in the driving seat, maintained that he was an ex-officer on important government work. Constable Davies got into the front passenger seat and ordered Toplis to drive to the police station, issuing directions en route, instructions which Toplis ignored as he crashed along the lanes at full speed. As they roared through the village of Crick, Davies made a grab for the steering wheel and the car overturned into a hedge. Toplis extricated himself first and in a cross-country dash for freedom soon outstripped the policeman, who, on his return to the police station, identified the escapee as Toplis from a photograph.

  On the strength of having nearly caught the country’s most wanted man PC No. 122 was made a sergeant and with his promotion he received a threatening letter from Toplis still on the run. It read: ‘Beware, you bastard. In range of my revolver you are a dead man … Make your will. It is a pity I was not armed, otherwise I would have shot you dead, but I could land you yet. I have read all accounts and also notice your promotion in the “Police Gazette”, so watch yourself.’

  The communication, without explanation as to how the outlaw had contrived to make the Police Gazette priority reading while fleeing for his life, was placed in the Davies family Bible, together with the envelope in which it was delivered. A further puzzle is how Toplis managed to lay his hands on notepaper carrying a War Office imprint.

  On Police Sergeant Davies’s death in the late 1930s the envelope and its contents passed into the hands of his policeman son, also named Charles, now of Barnt Green, near Birmingham.

  During the six weeks he was on the run, sightings of Toplis were reported from 107 different places throughout Britain. Every newspaper and every police station carried photographs and descriptions of the murderer with the monocle. Almost each day there were spurious sightings and false arrests. In the Welsh mountains, children joined police in the search. In Wiltshire, a man who looked like Toplis was beaten up by villagers before he could be rescued by police. One story ended in tragedy: a sad epitaph on the England of 1920 and the excited passions that the hunt for Toplis aroused. It concerned another man whom the public had mistaken for Toplis and enthusiastically hunted down. Alongside a report headlined ‘Toplis Still at Large’, the Andover Advertiser carried this account of the affair on 14 May 1920:

  The astounding story of Private Coop of the 9th Lancers had a dramatic ending on Friday morning when Coop was found dead in a cell at the Lancers guardroom at Tidworth, having hung himself with a strip of canvas torn from the top of his trousers.

  A hardened deserter, Coop escaped from the guardroom two days before the tragedy. He reached a cottage at Collingbourne and asked for some clothes. But the people at the cottage thought he was Toplis and chased him off. He seized a bike and made towards Burbage. By now a crowd were chasing him, but he kept them off with vicious cuts from a stick until he lost control on a steep hill and police who were following in a car grabbed him. When the regimental police came to get him, he assaulted his escort, seized the district nurse’s bike, and set off again. There was a chase over fields until police finally surrounded him.

  At the inquest at Tidworth Major Kemble O.B.E. said Coop had been in the Lancers since 1908 and had gone right through the war. Private Wild said he had seen Coop trying to hang himself in the cell with a scarf. He cut him down. He had to go in five times to take stuff from him. Coop had then asked to see the MO saying he was suffering from VD. Captain Rupert Hicks RAMC said he had found no evidence of VD and sent him back to the guardroom.

  Recalled, Private Wild spoke of the following curiously worded message written on the wall of the dead man’s cell in letters a foot high: Dear Jess and wife and mother and dad, I am being murdered. Jess take my body home. Goodbye all.

  Major Kemple intimated that although the deceased was probably under the delusion he would be shot for desertion, the adjutant had personally assured him that this was not to be so.

  This news story was not untypical of its time. Justice was a haphazard commodity, and the story bears out de Courcy Parry’s observations about the widespread untreated madness caused by the war.

  Meanwhile Toplis, more rational, was keeping a terse diary.

  April 19: Bulford.

  April 25: Entry erased.

  May 21: [the day of Fallows’ acquittal on the charge of harbouring Toplis] Harry released.

  May 26: [The day he read about the Spicer inquest verdict of his own guilt] La verdict. Rotten.

  There was only one personal note. It was back on 4 April ‘Freshford with Dorothy.’ In all the lurid speculation which was to follow, Toplis’s favourite lover and their illegitimate son would escape the attention of the Press.

  15

  When ‘General’ Toplis reached the remote Banffshire Highlands in Scotland on Tuesday, 1 June 1920, the strong probability is that he felt his road was windin
g uphill all the way, and certainly, in a strictly physical sense, he was right. Toplis was now in the area of the superlative: the highest, the loneliest and the loveliest. The sight that greeted him was not all that much different from the one that had so impressed another general, George Wade, when he first arrived to civilize the Highlanders after the Jacobite Rebellion of 1715.

  One of General Wade’s main tasks two hundred years previously had been to provide adequate roads but, although it was named the Old Military Road, Wade had not given overmuch attention to the one on which Toplis walked, and sometimes cycled, towards Upper Donside on that hot summer day. He was travelling in a south-easterly direction from Grantown-on-Spey, and just south of Tomintoul the road became a rough, narrow track over moors and mountains, and occasionally, wide expanses of desolation, but the overall impression was one of wild, intense beauty.

  He dismounted and walked beside his bicycle, wearying feet negotiating the steep slopes of the mountainous area known as the Lecht. Its highest point, 3,843 feet up, looked down on the Rivers Don and Dee, the Gairn and the Avon, all in close proximity, each competing with the other in sheer magnificence and a wealth of boundless mountain scenery.

  In a hollow to the south side of the Don was Gorgarff Castle, a former stronghold of the English in the far, upland country where countless pure, white streams cascaded down the mountain-sides to the rivers below. This castle had been acquired by the government after the Jacobite risings, and it was from here that government troops had continued attempting to cow the proud Highlanders into subjection long after the main battles had ceased.

  That afternoon the outlawed Toplis acquired his own little piece of mountain property: the Lecht Shooting Lodge. By midnight, it was to prove an appropriate name. The bicycle which he propped against the timbered wall of the shooting lodge was to figure in subsequent police descriptions thus:

  Twenty six inch black enamelled frame with red and yellow lines (faint) 28 inch wheels, two lever brakes, rims and handlebars plated but rusty, black celluloid handle grips, left one minus end, small sized saddle marked C83. Manufactured by Lycett Saddle Co. Ltd., Birmingham, carrier attached with screw driver, ‘Edinburgh’ tyre on front wheel, well worn. Rear tyre recently repaired. Tool bag with celluloid name plate, but no name.

  [The rider of the bicycle] Gave the name, George Williams, and his age as 30 years (looks younger) said he was American and that he was demobilized from Army some time ago, had American accent, about 5 feet 8 inches in height, slender built, small eyes, ‘hair variously described as sandy, reddish fair, auburn, clean shaven, ruddy complexion, longish thin face.

  Dressed in khaki trousers, puttees, light grey jacket and greenish or greyish felt Trilby type hat, carried white canvas bag, probably a kit bag.

  Toplis, now alias Williams, had exercised his considerable charm effectively when pedalling pennilessly through Tomintoul at 4 p.m. that afternoon. He had the punctured rear tyre repaired at a cycle shop, and when charged 2s., agitatedly searched through his pockets before announcing that he had lost £1. He then persuaded the repair man to lend him 5s., promising that he would pay the fee and repay the loan next day. With the 5s. he bought some bread and some milk which he stuffed into his kitbag.

  The three-roomed, partially furnished shooting lodge was unoccupied, and Toplis entered by forcing open a window catch with his pocket knife. His luck was still holding. Across the length of Britain a string of witnesses were recalling more or less ruefully encounters with the country’s ‘most wanted man’. Back in Blaina, a mountainous district in Monmouthshire, police were assisting villagers in remembering a night three weeks before.

  On 12 May, 1920, a prayer meeting was in progress at the tiny Salem Baptist Chapel, Blaina, when a light-haired stranger, wearing a muffler and carrying a trilby hat, tip-toed into the back pew and sat himself down between two deacons. He was handed a hymn book and got to his feet to join enthusiastically in the chorus:

  ‘Bread of heaven,

  Bread of heaven,

  Feed me till I want no more.’

  The timbre of his voice rang out above, but did not drown, the practised tones of the twenty worshippers in front of him, and they kept stealing backward glances to catch a glimpse of the new man in their midst. When the service finished fifteen minutes later, most of the congregation gathered round the dirty-faced young visitor, who apologetically explained that he was destitute and that he had walked from London where he frequently attended mission services in the Whitechapel area.

  He was on his way to Scotland where he had been promised paid work in a Glasgow mission hall. Touched by his diffident tale, the worshippers volunteered a collection to help him on his way. Coins to the value of 7s. went into the upturned hat. When the police called at the chapel later, a member of the congregation remembered, ‘Now you come to mention it, I thought the dirt on his face was faked. He must have fairly plastered it on. But the strangest thing I noticed was that as he was leaving he took a monocle from his pocket and put it to his eye.’

  And at London’s Victoria station, a railway detective had spotted the ubiquitous monocle adorning a young gentleman about to go through the barrier for the night Newhaven-Dieppe boat-train. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he had accosted him. The man had pocketed the monocle and fled out through the station, dodging the taxi-cabs and away up towards Parliament Square. As an aid to bicycle riding in Scotland, however, Toplis had deemed monocle-wearing a little excessive.

  And in the privacy of the shooting lodge from which the rich set forth in season to comb the near-by grouse moors and deerland, such affectations were superfluous. Toplis settled down to sleep away the rest of the first day of June. The chill of the Highland night awakened him at about 9 in the evening in a small room dominated by a large, open fireplace. He had been sleeping on a large, thick tartan rug in front of the empty fire, because, as he had found, the lodge did not have a bed.

  The furniture, though sparse, was of grand design, including three George II walnut armchairs and a Louis XVI giltwood writing table. Toplis smashed the chairs on the stone floor, threw the pieces into the fireplace, and followed them up with the writing-table drawer. He then lit his distinguished wood fire and, undressing to his khaki trousers and puttees, flopped down again on the hearth rug. The expensive wood smoke gave off a luxurious aroma as it drifted up the wide chimney into the cold night mountain air.

  A Badnafrave farmer, John Grant, saw that column of smoke as he walked home after a hard day shearing sheep on Upper Donside. Grant knew the lodge was supposed to be unoccupied in the laird’s absence. The smoke meant only one thing – trespass on the master’s property. Without hesitation he walked past his house and two miles along the mountain road to the Altachbeg home of the laird’s gamekeeper, John Mackenzie. The two men then walked a further two miles to fetch the only policeman in this entire Highland area, Constable George Greig of Tomintoul. All three then walked back to the shooting lodge, arriving there in the dark at midnight. They found the door locked and the gamekeeper let them in with his key.

  The partly dressed Toplis slept on before his expensive fire, a candle fluttering fitfully beside him on the floor. Constable Greig prodded him awake with his boot. Toplis, flat on his back and snoring loudly, was shaken and startled when he looked up at the three figures towering above him. But, with supreme mental effort, he concealed his sense of shock and went on the attack.

  ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he demanded.

  Greig, a solid, slow-thinking Highland bobby, was thrown by the audacity of the question. It did not occur to him to retort that that was precisely what he wanted to know about Toplis.

  ‘I apologize for disturbing you, sir. But you’ll understand the laird’s away. And you appear to be an unauthorized visitor. Can I ask you for your name and address?’

  Immediately Toplis realized that his questioner had to be one of the few policemen left in Britain unable to recognize him from the photographs and detailed descriptions litter
ing the land. Or maybe he had reached this remote part ahead of the hue and cry. Or again, maybe it was simply that the candlelight was too meagre for features to be distinguished.

  Whatever the reason or reasons, Toplis blessed his luck and decided to go on bluffing. He got up and started to dress. As he put on his shirt, jacket and hat, he assumed an American accent to reply, ‘My name is Williams, George Williams.’ Then he saw Greig looking at his khaki trousers and puttees and explained, ‘I’ve just come out of the army and I’m in the middle of a hitchhiking holiday, so if you don’t mind I’ll be on my way now.’

  Mackenzie, who had been looking round the room, suddenly whispered to Greig, ‘The furniture. He’s burned the furniture.’

  At last the ponderous Greig had something hard to go on. The visitor had committed a crime, a recognizable, positive crime, Meanwhile Toplis had been manoeuvring himself between the three men and the open door as he stuffed his shaving gear into his kitbag. He pulled the trilby hard down over his eyes and started to back towards the door. Greig moved in his direction, and began to say, ‘I’ll have to ask you to accompany me …’

  He did not finish the sentence. The hand which had been depositing the shaving gear swiftly re-emerged from the kitbag clasping a gun. His first shot got the policeman in the neck, and he fell to the floor on top of the candle, blood from the wound trickling on to the rug. But before Greig’s falling body had snuffed out the candle, Toplis had shot Grant in the belly.