The Cretingham Murder (11 page)

By April of the following year, the Revd Henry Brown had been appointed vicar and village life was presumed to be back to normal. However, over the intervening years, the murder has aroused sporadic interest and legends have flourished. Among these has been the occasional sighting of a ghostly figure wandering in the grounds of the vicarage in the early hours of the morning. Those who have seen it believe it to be the curate returning to the scene of his crime. Others say he is searching the grounds for that missing razor.

The house itself has spawned mysterious happenings. Inevitably, the story grew that the bloodstains remained on the bedroom floor, resisting all attempts at removal. There are tales of keys being suddenly dislodged from the locks on the doors of the two rooms involved in the case, unexplained noises and doors being opened and closed by unseen hands.

The great hurricane of October 15 1987, which caused havoc in much of Suffolk, has also added to the legends.A hundred years to the day (give or take a couple of weeks!) the fierce wind brought one of the trees in Cretingham churchyard crashing to the ground. Was it some kind of omen, it was asked, that a branch smashed off part of the Revd Farley’s headstone?

The question which is most asked is what became of Mrs Farley? As the vicar’s widow, she would have been required to vacate the vicarage, it being, as it were, a tied house that went with the job. It is doubtful she would have wished to remain in Cretingham anyway, given the circumstances, but where did she go?

In his will, made within days of his marriage to Harriet Louisa, the Revd Farley named her as his sole beneficiary: ‘To my dear wife Harriet Louisa the whole of my property household goods plate and life policies that I now have or may become entitled to for her own use and disposal. . .’ The only proviso was that the £100 he had borrowed from his son, Thomas’s Trust Fund be repaid from his estate. A codicil added to the will in 1884 stated that he had already repaid the loan with an additional £50 interest. This left Harriet Louisa beneficiary to his personal estate, which for probate purposes stood at £927 0
s
6
d
.

So, she had sufficient means to provide her with a small annuity. Where then, would a woman who had been through the horror of a murder and the ensuing legal proceedings go to recover and start a new life? In 1998 I was unable to answer that. Exhaustive enquiries had failed to find any trace of her following the trial in November 1887. There was no record of her embarking on a third marriage, so that raised the possibility that she had left the country and ended her days abroad. Widows often settled on the Continent in the late nineteenth century, the climate being more beneficial to the health and the cost of living substantially lower than in England. Could she have gone to America, Australia or perhaps returned to New Zealand? Even after all the drama in which she had been involved, one could not imagine her settling down to a mundane old age. My own theory was that she re-invented herself yet again with a new name, and in time, a new husband.

I was wrong on almost every count. According to the 1891 census, Harriet Louisa Farley was living in Kensington, London, acting as a companion to an elderly Canadian-born lady. How long she held that post is unknown but even more surprising was her location in 1901. On census day she was a ‘visitor’ in the Liverpool home of William Argent, a professor of music. So what was she doing there? Had her employer died and left her a legacy or even property in Canada? And was she ‘boarding’ with the Argents while she waited for a passage across the Atlantic? Unfortunately, her name does not appear on any shipping list of the period – not even on that of the Titanic, which would have been another dramatic event in her life. It looks as if the conclusion to Harriet Louisa’s story will continue to tantalize me.

In April 1927, the
Framlingham News
ran a short piece recalling the murder of forty years earlier as a way of announcing that Arthur Gilbert-Cooper had died in Broadmoor on the 19th of that month. Unfortunately, the Broadmoor records for that period still remain closed to public scrutiny, so we have no knowledge of his behaviour, or the deterioration or improvement of his mental state during the almost forty years that he remained in custody. Arthur’s father, who died in 1901, made reference to him in his will: ‘I bequeath to my trustees the sum of five hundred pounds in Consols upon trust to apply the income as they think fit for the benefit of my son Arthur Edward during his life.’ That Arthur’s needs were simple is shown by the fact that when he died, his brother was granted probate to his estate valued at £361 11
s
.

To all intents, the story of the Cretingham murder was wound up with Arthur’s death. No doubt, the case originally captured the public interest through its unusual cast of players – two clergymen, one from a ‘good’ family, an attractive woman and the setting of a quiet country village. But why should we, in a more sophisticated age, give it a second thought?

It is that very sophistication that has made armchair detectives of us all. From television programmes we have become familiar with the great variety of police procedures. We also think we know all about forensic techniques, coroners’ duties and the legal proceedings of the courts. In addition, we believe ourselves to have a close understanding of the inner workings of the criminal mind!

In 1887 the
Oxford Times
wrote:

It seems next to incredible that the Vicar’s throat could have been cut whilst he was in bed and no blood stains to be found on the bed or the bed clothes. However, the whole matter has been passed into the hands of the Public Prosecutor and although there is much mystery surrounding the case, there can be no doubt that the facts will be thoroughly investigated and the public curiosity satisfied as far as judicial means can be employed.

The optimistic hope expressed in the second part of that last sentence was not fully realized and it is with hindsight that we now approach the questions which were not asked at the time and advance some possible answers.

It was obvious at the inquest that the villagers saw the murder as a crime of passion. They either knew or had concluded that ‘something was going on’ between Harriet Louisa and Arthur. Not content with references to their being openly seen walking together, they dragged out of poor Frank Bilney the gossip that the former maid had spread abroad, namely that Harriet Louisa was in the habit of visiting Arthur’s room in the early morning and had been seen kissing him. Harriet Louisa herself admitted that she might have kissed him but that there was nothing in that; she merely regarded Arthur as she would a younger brother. She boasted that she was quite used to looking after the young men in her former husband’s regiment in a maternal role. But was it? Had Lt-Col Moule appreciated his wife’s efforts to ‘play mother’ to his junior officers?

As we have already seen, the contents and tone of the colonel’s will suggest that the almost twenty-year-old marriage was not as happy as it should have been. Could it be that the colonel had become tired of her ‘maternal attentions’ to his ensigns and that they were in fact estranged?

If she was indeed disinherited by her husband, it is no wonder that when just a year into widowhood she met and married the elderly Revd Farley, she made sure that his will was entirely in her favour.

It is very tempting to paint Harriet as a manipulative schemer who was bored with life in the country, married to an old man whose health was deteriorating. She also had to endure his uncertain temper which, it was suggested, led to his striking her on occasions. She was tied with little sign of release in the immediate future. No wonder she grasped at the chance of some diversion with the attractive and sympathetic younger curate. Had she during her walks and talks with Arthur confided her problems to him? Had she unwittingly, or even deliberately, planted the idea of getting rid of Farley? Was hers one of the voices he later told the doctors he had heard? Was she one of the ‘two at Cretingham’ to whom he referred as guiding his actions?

In fact, it is possible to make out a good case that Harriet Louisa herself committed the murder. Let us suppose that she had indeed become fond of Arthur and that the village gossips were right, the relationship had gone further than was appropriate. During the five weeks that he was away, she had time to assess her situation and became depressed, seeing nothing for herself beyond the tedious routine of looking after her ailing husband. She was trapped in a marriage which was nothing more than a duty. Given her age at the time, she might well have been suffering from violent mood swings herself. Did she, during a black moment, conceive that the only way out was her husband’s death? If she had discussed Arthur’s mental health problems with him, did she suddenly see that she could use him to extricate herself from what had become an impossible situation?

Certainly something happened in the first days after Arthur’s return to change his calm holiday disposition to one of agitation. At the same time Harriet Louisa made sure that it was known that Arthur was ‘not himself’. Was she working towards the fruition of her plan?

Was it pure coincidence that on the morning of the murder she should arrange to have a sleeping couch placed in the Farleys’ bedroom? Had she suggested to Arthur that such a move from the marital bed would leave her free to slip out easily, perhaps to join him in his? Did he come knocking because the anticipation of her nocturnal visit had become too intense for him? That would certainly account for her alleged words to him ‘Are you mad?’ when she first opened the door.

In her narration of the events of the night she said that the Revd Farley had said, ‘See what the poor fellow wants’ which had obviously seemed quite rational, yet when a few minutes later her husband called out, ‘Louie, he’s cut my throat!’, she would have us believe that she thought he was delirious. By her own admission, she shrugged that off and followed Arthur to his room. If she thought Farley was delirious, why did she then ask Arthur what he had in his hand? Finding nothing, what made her then seize the razor case and run off to hide it in another room before returning to Farley who was then, according to her version, lying on the floor?

Is it not strange too, that when Bilney was brought in to see his master, he saw no sign of blood although according to medical evidence, bleeding would have been profuse a few minutes after the incision was made?

It strains our credulity, as it did that of the inquest jury that Harriet remained so calm initially. They found it hard to believe that having heard her husband utter the fatal words, that she should deliberately endanger her own life by following the killer into his room. She parried this with the assertion that Arthur had said he meant her no harm. Even so, this does seem extraordinarily rash behaviour on her part. And the question remains, why did she not tell Bilney what had happened; why did she send him for the doctor and make no mention of the need for the police?

Let us invent another scenario. Suppose that things were reversed and that it was Harriet who had made a visit to Arthur’s room sometime before midnight. Suppose that the vicar had awakened, called for her and finding her absent, had attempted to get out of bed and then fallen. The thud of his body hitting the floor must have been heard next door and when Harriet rushed back she found him lying unconscious. She called to Bilney to come and he saw his master before setting off for Dr Jones. Bilney stated in court that he saw Arthur in his room but that he did not speak to him and that Arthur was making moaning sounds. This was later taken as a sign of Arthur’s guilt but could it have been the guilt at being with the vicar’s wife that was troubling him at that point?

So now we have the unconscious vicar on the floor, the manservant out of the house and here is Harriet Louisa’s opportunity. Did she, like Lady Macbeth, take it and commit the deed herself? She was probably quite capable of handling a razor, and with Farley inert, it would have been possible. Certainly it was her clothing that was covered in blood though this was of course explained by her cradling her husband’s head as he died. Or did she persuade Arthur that now he could take revenge on the vicar for his mistreatment?

There is another alternative. Suppose that Arthur had rejected Harriet Louisa’s advances to him on his return from holiday and that hostility had grown between them. Harriet took her spite out on him by playing on his mental instability and threatening him with dismissal from his post. This possibility had preyed upon his mind, as we know from his letter to his father. During that Saturday his anxiety had grown to the extent that he felt he must discuss matters with the vicar himself. But Harriet denied him the opportunity. Such was the turmoil in Arthur’s mind that he did in fact attempt the midnight conversation with Farley. Suppose that heated words had passed between vicar and curate and that Farley had then fallen from his bed in the attempt to follow after Arthur. Harriet Louisa then followed Arthur, and borrowing his razor case, used one of the razors from it to finish off her husband, hoping to cast the blame on Arthur and thereby ridding herself of both men.

There is even a further possibility, one for which Harriet herself offered a clue. When asked at the inquest why she had removed the razor case from Arthur’s room, she replied that it was because she feared he might do himself harm. She had, she said, often had to remove her husband’s razor for the same reason. In suggesting that she thought Arthur might commit suicide, she implied that Farley too had had suicidal tendencies. Let us again suppose that she and Arthur had been together in the adjoining room and that on her return she found that Farley had cut his own throat! In fact, the coroner at the inquest asked Dr Jones if he thought the throat wound might have been self inflicted and the doctor had replied that it was not impossible. One might suppose that such an act would have brought Harriet Louisa relief from her tiresome marriage but there was a snag. In his will, Farley mentioned life insurance policies. If the vicar died by his own hand, would the insurance company pay out?