The Anatomy of Murder, page 19
Now this argument is curiously contradictory. At one point, counsel asks, “If the man had important business, would he not have done so-and-so?” But in the next breath he admits that the man had no important business, except crime; therefore it is clear that whatever his actions might be, they could not be such as one would expect of an innocent man making a business appointment. The question that counsel was really trying to ask was not: “Can we now believe the message genuine?” but: “Could Wallace at that time have innocently believed the message genuine?” But let us examine the whole business of the telephone call carefully, point by point; for it is the very centre of the problem.
First of all: Is it true that nobody but Wallace could possibly have known that he was going to the City Café on January 19th? It is not true. Wallace was scheduled to play a championship game that night, and the list of fixtures was openly displayed in the café where anybody might see it. The meetings of the chess club always began at about the same time—roughly 7.45. Wallace was a fairly regular attendant, and we know that he was definitely expected on the Monday, because Mr. Beattie said as much to “Qualtrough”. Therefore, any frequenter of the café might reasonably have looked to find him there.
Secondly: Where was the famous telephone kiosk, and what was it like? The Wallaces’ house was one of a row, all having their front doors upon Wolverton Street and their back doors upon a lane running roughly parallel to the street. At a point some four hundred yards from No. 29 street and lane converged, and at this strategic point stood the kiosk—a dim little erection, lit only by the reflected rays of a street-lamp. Whether Wallace left his house by the front or the back door, he was bound to pass the kiosk on the way to the Central Café. Equally, anybody who wanted to know whether he was going to the Central Café that night had only to stand at the corner of the two streets and see whether he passed the kiosk. Thus counsel’s “coincidence” turns out to be no coincidence at all, for if “Qualtrough” was not Wallace, then he must have been watching in or near the kiosk to make sure that Wallace went to the café, and, having made sure, he telephoned.
Is there anything that might indicate whether “Qualtrough” was Wallace or somebody else? There is the curious evidence of the girl at the telephone exchange. She was spoken to by the caller, who said: “Operator, I have pressed button A, but have not had my correspondent yet.” She then connected him and thought no more about it. Now, counsel drew attention to the fact that Wallace often spoke from that call-box; he should, therefore, have known how to use it. But the whole point of button A’s existence is that you should not press button A until you have heard your “correspondent” speak. Either, then, “Qualtrough” was unfamiliar with a public call-box, or he was too much agitated to remember the procedure. Whoever he was, he may well have been agitated: but the more usual mistake with button A is to forget to press it at all. The point is a trifling one; but, such as it is, it tells, perhaps, slightly in Wallace’s favour.
Now comes the question why “Qualtrough “rang up when he did. If he was Wallace, then 7.18 was obviously the only time at which he could ring up. If not, then why did he not wait till Wallace had reached the café, or deliver a note or message at the house? There can be only one answer to this: that his face, voice and handwriting were known to the Wallaces and that he did not dare to risk recognition. Still less could he ring again later in the evening. The voice might have been disguised; Mr. Beattie said that at the time it did not seem to him to be anything but a natural one, and that it “would be a great stretch of imagination” to say that it was anything like Wallace’s. But supposing it was not Wallace, how could “Qualtrough” venture, in his own voice or a disguised one, on a prolonged conversation with Wallace? He would have had to answer every kind of inconvenient question: details about himself, details about “Menlove Gardens East”, details about the mysterious “business”, and he would have had to be an uncommonly skilful liar to get through without letting Wallace smell a rat. The tale of the birthday party was a little fishy; but the vague message sent through Mr. Beattie had its merits, for it held out a bait of indeterminate size and splendour.
Seeing the name and the daughter coming of age had been suggested [said Wallace in court] I considered it might result in a policy of something like £100 endowment, or something of that nature. I did not expect it would be less than that.
To a man in Wallace’s position, that would have been business worth getting. Besides, if the name was not to be found in the directory, or the address was discovered to be non-existent, how easy to suppose that Mr. Beattie had heard wrongly or noted the details carelessly.
All through this case one has to remember that Wallace lived in a small way and worked for very small profits. Nobody is more pertinacious than your small insurance agent. He will go miles to secure a few shillings. He would not be disconcerted by failing to find “R. M. Qualtrough” in a list of householders; the man might be a lodger, a domestic servant, a newcomer to the district. Wallace said afterwards that he had not thought to look up the address in the directory; but in any case, new streets and houses were being run up all over the place at a great rate, and it might have been one of those. It was nearly as certain as death and taxation that Wallace would never rest content till he had investigated the whole matter personally and on the spot.
And finally, did “Qualtrough” take no steps to ascertain that his message had “gone home”? We cannot say that. He had only to follow Wallace to the café. Whoever he was, he must have been a habitué of the place to have known of Wallace’s engagement to play there that night. It is possible that he actually arrived in time to hear the message delivered. Once we admit that he must have known Wallace and the café, all the rest follows. Any explanation that fits Wallace as the murderer also fits any murderer we may like to postulate.
The stage being now set, the curtain goes up on Act II. It is preceded by a curious little interlude. At 3.30 on the following afternoon, James Edward Rothwell, a police constable, was bicycling along a street called Maiden Lane, and saw Wallace walking on the pavement.
He was dressed in a tweed suit and a light fawn raincoat. His face was haggard and drawn, and he seemed very distressed. He was dabbing his eye with his coat-sleeve, and he appeared to me as if he had been crying.
It was suggested to P.C. Rothwell that Wallace’s eyes might have been merely watering from the cold, but the constable stuck to his opinion. On the other hand, we have the evidence of three women upon whom Wallace called between 3.30 and 5.45 to collect their insurance, that he seemed “calm” and “just as usual”, that he cracked jokes with one and enjoyed a cup of tea with another. Whether the constable or the ladies were the better qualified to detect signs of emotion in an insurance agent is a question. Women are said to be observant by nature, and policemen should be observant by profession. The one certain fact is that, on that morning and afternoon of Tuesday, January 29th, Wallace transacted all his business in his ordinary accurate manner.
He stopped collecting, by his own account, at a few minutes to six and then went home for his tea. And it is now that we come to the one serious conflict of evidence in the whole case. Some time between 6.30 and 6.45 the milk-boy called with the milk; Mrs. Wallace took it in, and that is the last occasion on which she was seen alive by any disinterested person. The milk-boy, Alan Croxton Close, was 14 years old, and in his evidence he said he knew he delivered the milk at 6.30, because when he passed Holy Trinity Church it was 6.25, and it took him five minutes to get from there to 29 Wolverton Street.
On the other hand, Allison Wildman, aged 16, who was delivering a newspaper at No. 27, next door, said she got there at 6.43, and that when she had delivered her paper and gone, Close was still standing at the door of No. 29. She, too, relied on Holy Trinity Church clock. Moreover, she was seen by some boys leaving Wolverton Street some minutes after 6.40. Further doubt was thrown on Close’s evidence by a number of other little boys who maintained that on the day after the murder he had told them, “I saw Mrs. Wallace at a quarter to seven”; and it was rather suggested that young Close had altered his opinion to fit the police case against Wallace. It is a close thing—a matter of five or eight minutes—the kind of point on which nobody but the characters in a detective novel can reasonably be expected to be accurate; its importance (just as in a detective story) lies in the fact that, if Mrs. Wallace was alive at 6.45 it was almost impossible that Wallace could have murdered her; for at 7.10 at the very latest he was changing trams at the junction of Smithdown Road and Lodge Lane, a good twenty minutes’ ride from his home. To commit the murder between 6.30 and 6.50 would have been pretty quick work; to commit it between 6.45 and 6.50 would have been something like a conjuring trick.
Wallace stated that he left the house that evening by the back door. This, he explained, was his usual custom in the early part of the evening.
If I was going out after six, and I knew I was going to be out an hour or two, I might go out by the back door and ask my wife to come down and bolt it after me, and on my return come in by the front door, because I would have my key.
This seems reasonable; we get the picture of the front door with its patent lock and the backyard door with its builder’s lock and iron bolts, which (and this must be borne in mind) the householder would expect to find bolted against him on his return. Mrs. Wallace, on this occasion, accompanied her husband—or so he said—by way of the back as far as the backyard gate and there he left her, with instructions to bolt the door after him.
Now, if “Qualtrough” was lurking about the telephone kiosk at ten minutes to seven on that dark January night, what might he have seen? In the light of the adjacent street-lamp he would have seen Wallace’s slight figure, dressed, not in the fawn raincoat (for the weather had cleared), but in an overcoat, come briskly up from the back lane towards the tramway stop. That would have been his cue that the coast was clear at No. 29, and that his dupe was out of the way for a good hour at least. Now would be his moment for going to the house. If, by any chance, Mrs. Wallace had somebody with her, he could still make some excuse and withdraw; but if she was alone, the path to crime lay open.
Nobody (except the not impossible “Qualtrough”) seems to have seen Wallace at this stage of his journey. He is next heard of some time between 7.6 and 7.10, at the tram-junction at Smithdown Road, asking the conductor, one Thomas Charles Phillips, whether the tram went from there to Menlove Gardens East. Phillips replied, “No, you can get on No. 5, 5A, 5W or a No. 7 car.” There was nothing in this to suggest to Wallace that Menlove Gardens East might not exist, so he got on, observing that he was a stranger in the district and had important business at Menlove Gardens East. Later, while paying his fare, he reminded the conductor that he wanted to be put off at Menlove Gardens East, and a little later mentioned his destination for the third time and was told to change at Penny Lane. When they got there, Phillips shouted “Menlove Gardens, change here,” and saw his fussy passenger sprinting to catch the No. 7 car, which went to Calderstone. The time was then 7.15.
On the Calderstone car, Wallace again anxiously asked the conductor to put him off at Menlove Gardens East. Accordingly, he was put off at Menlove Gardens West, the conductor saying to him, “You will probably find Menlove Gardens East in that direction.” Wallace replied, “Thank you; I am a complete stranger round here.”
Now, it was said afterwards that these persistent inquiries and repeated asseverations that he was a stranger in the district and had important business there, were unnatural, and showed that Wallace was eager to impress his personality upon the tram-conductors in order to establish his alibi. This may be so—though, if fussy inquiries and irrelevant personal confidences are a proof of criminal intent, then the proportion of criminals engaged daily in establishing alibis on public vehicles must be a shockingly high one.
It is interesting that he did not succeed in impressing himself upon the conductor of the first tram—the one nearest home. The early part of the alibi is obviously the most important; did he, being guilty, think it dangerous to attract attention to himself at that stage in the proceedings? Or did he, being innocent, make no inquiry, merely because he knew the way as far as Smithdown Road? We may note at this point that Wallace appears never to have tried to establish an alibi in the strict sense of the word. He never suggested, for instance, that he was already out of the house by the time the milk-boy came. A villain in a book would, one feels, not have neglected this important point; but the argument cuts both ways, since a definite statement about times may be challenged; a mere vagueness leaves the onus of proof upon the prosecution.
Next comes the evidence of Sydney Herbert Green, a clerk, who found Wallace wandering about Menlove Gardens West and looking in vain for Menlove Gardens East. Green informed him that there was no such place. Wallace then said he would try 25 Menlove Gardens West. This he did, asking the wife of the occupier whether anybody called “Qualtrough” lived there. She said no, and he went away.
Then came a complication which was very damaging to Wallace, for when he had inspected Menlove Gardens North and South he roamed along Menlove Avenue and then found himself (by his own account unexpectedly) in a road which he did know. Between Menlove Avenue and Allerton Road runs Green Lane, and in Green Lane lived a Mr. Crewe, who was a superintendent of the Prudential Assurance Company and whom Wallace had visited on five occasions to take violin lessons. This, said the prosecution, proved that Wallace was lying when he said he did not know the district. Mr. Crewe said in cross-examination that the violin lessons had been given two years ago and always on winter evenings after dark. There are, of course, some people who, after passing half a dozen times along a tram-route by night are familiar with every crossing and turning to left and right of the route, and who never visit a house without making themselves acquainted with all the surrounding streets. Others (of whom the present writer is one) allow themselves to be carted incuriously from point to point, remaining in the end as ignorant of the general topography of the district as when they started. Wallace, if one may trust to his evidence, was of the latter sort. “How used you to go to Woolton Woods with your wife?”— “I probably inquired of some driver of a car, which car would take us there and got on that car.” A statement which, if untrue, was well invented to square with his known behaviour on the night of the crime. As for knowing the lay-out of Menlove Gardens, Mr. Crewe, who had lived just round the corner for three and a half years, said definitely in evidence that, previously to the trial, he himself had not had any idea whether there was a Menlove Gardens East or not.
At any rate, suggested counsel, when Wallace found himself in Green Lane, why did he not call at Mr. Crewe’s house and ask his assistance in finding “Qualtrough’s” address? Wallace replied that he did; he knocked at the door but could get no answer. Mr. Crewe was, in fact, out that night; so that the statement was not capable of disproof.
Having failed here, Wallace met a policeman and again inquired for Menlove Gardens East. The constable said, categorically, that there was no such place: there was Menlove Gardens, North, South and West, and Menlove Avenue, but no Menlove Gardens East. He suggested that Wallace should try 25 Menlove Avenue (which he pointed out); Wallace thanked him and then asked where he could find a directory. The constable said he could see one at the newsagent’s in Allerton Road, or at the police station or post office. Wallace then explained, “I am an insurance agent looking for a Mr. Qualtrough who rang up the club and left a message for me with my colleague to ring up [? visit] Mr. Qualtrough at 25 Menlove Gardens East.” Whether this outburst of confidence was a necessary part of alibi-faking, or was merely the ordinary citizen’s apologetic anxiety to justify his existence in the eyes of the police, is again a matter of interpretation. Wallace then said, “It is not 8 o’clock yet?” and the constable agreed that it was only a quarter to. The alibi again? or only a reasonable desire to know whether the newspaper shop would still be open? However that may be, it is in the shop that we next find Wallace at 8.10, searching the directory for Menlove Gardens East. In the meantime, he had apparently been looking for the post office, but could not find it. He hunted the directory for some time, and then said, “Do you know what I am looking for?” The manageress said (not unnaturally) that she did not, he then told her that he was looking for 25 Menlove Gardens East. She then assured him that there was no such place. Curiously enough, he does not seem to have mentioned the name of Qualtrough in the shop; he said that he looked for the name in the book and could not find it; and by this time he was probably convinced that, whoever Qualtrough was, he was not a householder.
It was now about 8.20, and according to Wallace himself, he was beginning to get a little alarmed. If he was innocent, this was perhaps not unnatural. There did seem to be something rather queer about “Qualtrough”, and he could not but remember that there had been one or two recent burglaries in the neighbourhood of Wolverton Street, and that it was a well-known trick of burglars to lure away householders with bogus telephone messages. Further, this was a Tuesday night—the night when, as a rule, he had a good deal of the insurance money in the house. So, giving up the vain search for Qualtrough, he walked to the nearest tram-stop to begin the journey home.
