The Anatomy of Murder, page 33
Perhaps the statute-book is best after all. But what, in that case, is one to make of the condemnation of Mrs. Thompson? We should really make up our minds which variety of justice it is that we are going to administer.
POSTSCRIPTUM
Since the preceding was written, there has been published a full transcript of the trial of Mrs. Rattenbury and Stoner, edited by Miss Tennyson Jesse,1 in the Notable British Trials series. When I undertook to write this account, I understood that this book would be published before the semi-official volume, but owing to certain delays that was not possible, and I am therefore taking the opportunity to add this postscript.
I feel it the more advisable to emphasize that this story of the case was written before Miss Tennyson Jesse’s volume appeared, since I find to my mingled pleasure and dismay that in her brilliant introduction not only has Miss Jesse arrived at certain conclusions which are the same as my own and laid emphasis on identical points, but that we seem sometimes to have hit upon identical phrases for doing so. (For instance, we both remark on Mrs. Rattenbury’s ‘bad taste’ in receiving her lover in a room where her small son was sleeping.) So, as the second arrival on the scene, I must defend myself against any possible suspicion of too obvious an inspiration.
It would be as well perhaps to explain at the same time that my account of the case was based entirely on the newspaper reports, which, of course, are not full, and was written without reference to any of those who played a part in the proceedings. Miss Tennyson Jesse, on the other hand, has consulted and talked with many of those who were called as witnesses, and she has therefore a great deal more information than ever appeared in the newspapers. Some of this information that she publishes clears up certain questions which were bothering me.
After consideration I have decided to leave my account of the case exactly as I wrote it, and just deal here with a few of the doubtful points.
For instance, with the full report of the trial before me I see that certain questions were asked about the possible erection of a tent or shelter in the garden for which Stoner might have wished to use a mallet, but the main conclusion is not altered, for it was made obvious that no such tent or shelter was to have been put up. The period of premeditation is therefore only confirmed.
From Miss Tennyson Jesse’s inquiries certain interesting items emerge. Mrs. Rattenbury, for example, was the daughter of a printer living, in a poor way, in British Columbia. Mr. Rattenbury was married when he first met her, and she was cited in a divorce case which his wife brought against him. He was then sixty years old and Mrs. Rattenbury thirty-one. It was owing to this scandal that they left Canada for England when they married.
The occasion on which Mr. Rattenbury gave his wife the famous black eye was the only time they had a serious quarrel, and when he left the house Mrs. Rattenbury really feared that he had gone out to kill himself, which was largely why she sent for her doctor. It was the opinion of Miss Riggs and others that Mr. Rattenbury really did not know that Stoner was his wife’s lover, although she believed that she had told him so more or less straightly; but Miss Jesse, after seeing the Villa Madeira itself, finds this hard to credit.
Stoner always told his counsel that it was he who had killed Mr. Rattenbury, but for weeks after her arrest Mrs. Rattenbury was anxious to take the full blame, in spite of the urgings of her solicitor and counsel. It was only when her elder son was sent expressly to beg her to tell the truth in court that she agreed to do so. Miss Tennyson Jesse makes the interesting point that this is perhaps the only occasion, when two persons were tried together for one murder, that “neither of the accused have abandoned the other in a scramble for safety.”
I was not surprised to see that Miss Jesse makes hay of the ridiculous assumption, made by the judge and both counsel at the trial, that because of her greater age Mrs. Rattenbury dominated her young lover. And she quotes a most interesting and unexpectedly up-to-date letter written by Benjamin Franklin to show that in such cases enlightened opinion will be more ready to believe that it is the young man who dominates the older woman. She makes the further point that it is absurd to pretend, as a court of law always does in this sort of case, that sexual relations are actually physically harmful to a lad of eighteen. Anyone who has been a lad of eighteen once, as presumably even learned judges themselves have, know that this ingenuous theory bears no relation to fact. (The passages concerning this point were not reported in the newspapers.)
Another small point which was not clear to me was that the Central Police Station in Bournemouth took no less than half an hour to send a police-officer after the doctors had reported foul play, which is certainly very different from what we are led to believe in detective stories. Also the situation which seemed so dramatic of Miss Riggs and Stoner left alone together at the Villa Madeira after Mrs. Rattenbury’s arrest, was actually made a good deal more prosaic by the presence of Miss Riggs’ mother and brother, who moved in to stay with her there on the day of Mrs. Rattenbury’s arrest until after that of Stoner. Miss Jesse also clears up the rather confused account of the events which led up to Stoner’s arrest. Miss Riggs, it seems, had a talk with the doctor, in which she averred that, although Stoner had confessed his guilt to her, she could not bring herself to divulge to the officials the secret of Mrs. Rattenbury’s liaison with Stoner. The doctor, however, persuaded her that, when a life is at stake, a matter of moral reputation is rather small beer, and Miss Riggs thereupon consented to make her statement to the police during the afternoon while Stoner was in London. Stoner was then arrested on his return to Bournemouth the same evening.
Miss Jesse animadverts, as any humane person must, upon the dreadful smugness with which an adulterous woman is always treated in an Anglo-Saxon court, and I notice that we picked out the same sentence of the judge’s for comment. As she very truly says, “There are some of us … who are so constituted that we cannot see a fellow-human in the extreme of remorse, shame and despair, without feeling pity as well as disgust.” One cannot emphasize this too much. As I ventured to hint myself, there was One who did not feel even disgust. As for what Mr. Justice Humphreys said of this wretched, silly woman, “more,” comments Miss Jesse drily, “could hardly be said of George Joseph Smith, or of a systematic poisoner, or a baby-farmer.” This is sadly true, but our judges must, presumably, suit their official remarks to the public, and it is the public who must take the blame. As Mrs. Rattenbury’s own counsel repeated: “Let him that is without sin cast the first stone.” And yet there are many, many who have that stone in their hands, ready for casting. Ready? Who have already cast it! One envies them their self-satisfied rectitude.
Are they perhaps those same persons on whose behalf the gentlemen of the Press are forced to go to such repulsive lengths? Was it to satisfy the beastly curiosity of these very stone-throwers, wallowing in the slough of their own smugness, that Mrs. Rattenbury was, to all practical purposes, hounded to her death by reporters? Every decent citizen should be grateful to Miss Jesse for printing the story. It cannot be repeated too often, so that the readers of the lower Press may learn what is being done, advisedly or not, on their behalf.
After her acquittal these carrion-crows gave Mrs. Rattenbury no quarter. They besieged the flat where she was trying to hide. When she was taken to a nursing-home by a doctor they pursued her, shouting, “If you take her to Bournemouth, we’ll follow you.” There can be little doubt that they finally unhinged an already loosened mind. In the pathetic fragments of notes that she left behind her, Mrs. Rattenbury referred to their persecution of her. And if this persecution had been questioned, the reply would have been: “Our readers demand it.” One day, perhaps, a reporter of the gutter-Press, in a fit of decent feeling will murder the proprietor who gives him his orders, and then we shall have a trial worth hearing.
On one point only, I think, do I find myself at variance with Miss Jesse. She plainly finds it difficult to account for Stoner’s crime, and possibly she avoids the issue when she sets it down to “infantilism … an adolescent urge to heroics . . a gesture conceived in an unreal world”. It may be true that “our prisons are full of sufferers from infantilism, and what goes on in their heads bears no relation at all to real life”, but I cannot feel that Stoner’s action is to be explained quite so easily. Where personal advantage looms so large if a certain person can only be knocked out of the path, the consequent knocking-out bears a very solid relation to real life.
Those who wish to study this extremely interesting case at first hand and form their own opinions thereon, will be well advised to peruse the trial itself. It makes absorbing reading, and it is not too much to say that Miss Tennyson Jesse’s penetrating and succinct essay which prefaces it may well become a criminological classic.
F.I.
PART VII
A NEW ZEALAND TRAGEDY
by Freeman Wills Crofts
A NEW ZEALAND TRAGEDY
TO all students of criminology the Lakey Murder Case in the North Island of New Zealand must ever remain one of the most notable on record. It had all the qualities to make it so. A brutal double murder by a clever but callous criminal; a plausible theory set forth by the murderer to account naturally for the facts and so avoid the arousing of suspicion; detective work of an extremely high order, involving persevering research, precise observation and deduction, magnificent team work and the use of the latest scientific methods; and finally a trial at which an overwhelming case was presented, though with the utmost fairness to the accused.
Ruawaro, the region in which took place this terrible crime, is situated some 75 miles south of Auckland and 14 from Huntly. It is in the base of that long peninsula which stretches from the square block of the island for some 250 miles towards the northwest. It is a remote area of rolling hills and valleys, of ridges and gulleys, and of lakes and swamps. Farming is the only industry, though there are allied factories, such as creameries. Life as judged by English standards is hard and somewhat primitive, but the settlers are gradually improving their holdings and making them more comfortable and homelike.
Previous to the tragedy relations between the various inhabitants were on the whole excellent, though there naturally occurred those occasional bickerings inevitable in all such small communities.
Samuel Pender Lakey and his wife, Ghristobel Lakey, the victims of this abominable murder, were a middle-aged couple living alone and supporting themselves by running a small dairy farm. This meant grinding hard work and but little profit, but the Lakeys made the best of things and were a happy and contented couple. They were good neighbours and were generally liked and respected in the district. It is true they had had some disagreements with their neighbour, William Alfred Bayly, but these were of a minor type and there seemed nothing to suggest that the peace of the neighbourhood was about to be broken.
Events, however, proved that this was a superficial view. Though to all outward observation everything was moving normally, beneath the surface evil passions were alive. These grew till they blossomed into action. On Sunday, October 15, 1933, occurred the horrible crime which became known as the Lakey Murder Case.
In order better to understand what took place, it may be well to consider certain aspects of the work of a normal day in the Lakey household. As has been said, the couple lived alone and did all the work of their farm themselves.
They owned some thirty cows, and the first job in the morning was their milking. This began at five or earlier, and occupied about three hours. During the morning, also, cream from the previous milking, which had been separated overnight, was filled into cream cans and taken by Lakey on a horse-sledge down to the road at the bottom of his ground, where it was called for by the dairy factory lorry. A point which became of importance later was the position in which Lakey left his cans. He always placed them on the edge of the bank at the side of the road, so that the lorry driver by drawing close in could swing them aboard without climbing down off the lorry.
The day was spent in work of various kinds until the afternoon. The couple then had tea and Mrs. Lakey prepared supper, the heavy meal of the twenty-four hours. Between tea and supper came the evening milking. The cows were brought in again to the shed by Lakey, while his wife got ready the various tins and pails required. Both the Lakeys milked, and when the work was done Mrs. Lakey returned to the house with some of the milk. Lakey then turned the cows out into a paddock and followed his wife to the house with the remainder of the milk. They then had supper.
Such was the Lakeys’ routine, and on that dreadful Sunday of the tragedy they carried it out normally until the afternoon. What then took place was only gradually learnt as a result of the police inquiry.
About 4.15 on that afternoon Mrs. Stevens, a neighbour of the Lakeys, noticed the husband and wife driving their cows towards their cowshed for milking, as they always did at that hour. She did not of course see the actual milking, but looking out again later she realized that it must have been completed, as the cows were then in the paddock in which they were usually kept during the night.
It was the Stevens’ as well as the Lakeys’ custom to milk their cows again in the early morning, and at about five o’clock, as Mr. and Mrs. Stevens milked theirs, they noticed that the Lakey cows were still in the paddock. The Stevens were surprised at this, as the Lakeys always carried out their work punctually. However, they supposed some trifling delay had taken place, and thought no more of the matter.
About 8.15 Mr. Stevens happened to look out again and saw the cows were still there. It was at once evident to him that something was wrong, so he called another neighbour, a Mr. Wright, and suggested going over to the Lakeys’ to investigate.
When the two men reached the house they shouted in through the door to know if anyone were there. Receiving no answer, they went on to the cowshed, where they supposed the Lakeys had gone about the milking. But this place also was deserted. It was obvious from the condition of the shed and cows that the milking on the previous evening had been completed normally, but that no milking had been done that morning.
Now really uneasy, Stevens and Wright returned to the house and entered. They found no trace of the Lakeys. They had evidently not been there since the previous evening as the bed had not been slept in and the fire had not been lighted. Afternoon tea had obviously been their last meal, as the remains of it still stood on the table, but they had not had supper, the food for which was standing in saucepans on the cold stove.
That something serious had taken place could no longer be doubted, and Wright went to the nearest telephone and reported the circumstances to the police at Huntly. He then returned to the Lakeys’ and began with Stevens to milk the cows.
In one way or another the tidings spread, and soon some half-dozen neighbours had assembled at the Lakeys’ and had started a search for the missing couple.
They were presently joined by two constables. When the details had been told to these officers a more systematic examination of the premises was undertaken. But nowhere was there a trace of either of the Lakeys.
Matters were in this state when there came a shout from another of the searchers, a man named Slater. Not far from the house was a duck-pond, and it was from there that Slater called. The others hurried down.
At the edge of the pond and protruding a short distance into the water was a heap of old manure bags or sacks. Slater had lifted one of these and beneath it had found a dead body.
The remaining sacks were quickly removed and it was seen that the body was that of Mrs. Lakey. She was lying face downwards with her head in the water and her legs on the bank. The sacks had evidently been arranged to hide the remains.
The body was lifted out. It immediately became clear that the unhappy woman had been dead for some time as the frame was stiff.
Here at last was justification of the neighbours’ fears. The arrangement of the sacks precluded the possibility of accident or suicide. With a case of murder to be dealt with the constables at once took more energetic measures. The body was carried into the house and a doctor and a force of detectives were sent for.
An examination of the remains revealed cuts on the chin, above the left eye and on the right elbow. Further medical investigation showed that death had occurred from drowning. The immediate suggestion was that Mrs. Lakey had been struck on the chin and knocked senseless, that her body had then been laid in the duck-pond with the face below the water, and that she had there died.
So much seemed clear, but it left the affair as a whole a greater mystery than ever. There remained the question of the whereabouts of Lakey, as well as the apparently insoluble problems of who had killed Mrs. Lakey and with what motive.
In the afternoon of that day Detectives Allsopp and Snedden arrived from Auckland and took charge of the investigation.
This was conducted on three main lines. First there was the search for Lakey, alive or dead; second, the taking of innumerable statements from neighbours and others who might have come in contact with the couple; and third, a detailed search of the premises and surroundings for physical clues.
In the first of these efforts, the hunt for Lakey, the neighbours turned out in strength to assist the police. The country was difficult. Surrounding the little settlement were lakes and swamps in which a body might lie hidden almost indefinitely. In circles of ever-growing radii, with the Lakey home as centre, the search proceeded.
The only place which was not thoroughly examined was the adjoining lake, and that because of the difficulty. It was large in size, and as the bottom was covered with weed, dragging on any scale would have been out of the question. The edge, however, was minutely inspected and no trace was discovered of anything having been thrown in.
