A Capital Crime (51 page)

‘Surprised?’ Diana grinned.

‘Yes, frankly.’

‘I like doing things like that – and I’m quite good at them, believe it or not. I only discovered I could do that sort of thing quite recently. After I married James, actually – I wanted to get our flat decorated and I couldn’t find anyone to do it, so I decided I’d set to and do it myself.’ Stratton was relieved that she said this quite neutrally – imparting information rather than painfully reliving a memory of happier times. But then, he thought, she’d hardly do that in front of him, would she?

‘I didn’t think,’ Diana continued, ‘that I’d be able to get another job like the one I had before, so I’ve been taking a course in shorthand. We had to do an examination, to test our speeds.’

‘Did you pass?’

‘Yes! Believe it or not, I’d never taken an examination before. I haven’t had much in the way of … well, formal education, I suppose you’d call it, and I was terribly nervous, but I practised like anything and it all went swimmingly.’

‘Well, congratulations,’ said Stratton, raising his glass once more.

‘They’re taking me back at Ashwood,’ said Diana. ‘The design department, so I shan’t need the shorthand after all, but I’m glad I did it because you never know about the future … I’m starting on Monday. Oh, I’m sorry, I meant to ask – how’s Monica?’

‘Fine,’ said Stratton. ‘She lost the baby, but she’s fully recovered. I’m sure you’ll bump into her at the studio.’

‘Oh, good. I mean, about seeing Monica again, not about … But as long as she’s not hurt, physically … It’s always so … I mean, I’ve been in that situation – losing a baby.’ Diana looked down at her feet. ‘Several times, in fact. It was pretty horrible, but,’ looking up, she gave him an encouraging smile, ‘one does get over these things, you know.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Stratton, surprised by this intimacy and hoping he wasn’t blushing. ‘It can’t have been easy for you. Any of it, I mean.’

Diana acknowledged this with a nod, then, after a second, carried
on in a normal voice. ‘Well, there has been one piece of luck. An aunt of James’s died several weeks ago. He’d never spoken of her – in fact, I didn’t even know she existed – so they obviously weren’t close, but she left him some money. Her death was sudden – a heart attack – so I suppose she hadn’t got round to changing her will … Anyway, it comes to me. It’s enough for a small house or a flat somewhere. Lally’s going to help me look. Oh, dear. You’re looking at me as if I’m mad, and I don’t blame you, but—’

‘No,’ Stratton protested. ‘I wasn’t. I’m sorry if that’s how it seemed. I just …’ He stopped, swallowed hard, and feeling that there was nothing, at this point, to lose, ploughed on. ‘I just like looking at you.’

‘Oh …’ Diana gave a little laugh and turned away slightly. The redness of her cheeks seemed to have intensified. She took another sip of her sherry – quite a large one this time – and said, ‘I wanted to tell you. I suppose I want you to know that I’m not completely useless. I don’t really expect you to understand or anything, but I just …’ Shaking her head, she looked miserably down at her glass.

‘I’ve never thought you were useless,’ said Stratton, bewildered. ‘Just … different, that’s all.’

‘That’s it, isn’t it? Different.’

‘Well, you are. I mean, we are. Oh, dear. I’m not doing very well, am I?’

‘Neither am I. It’s just, when I saw you again, I was so glad, and … Well, I was glad, that’s all. And,’ she continued fiercely, ‘I want to stand on my own two feet, and I wanted you to know that.’ Her eyes blazed for a moment, as if she thought he was about to contradict her or laugh at her.

‘I understand,’ said Stratton, staring at her. Suddenly, the room, and all it implied, seemed to fall away and Diana herself was all he could see. ‘Perhaps,’ he said cautiously, ‘if you can find a free evening in your new schedule, you might like to come out to dinner. Nowhere fancy, I’m afraid, but I’d like to hear how you’re doing.’

Diana’s eyes widened, and Stratton took an involuntary step
backwards. Was she going to raise her chin and coldly ask him to leave? Scream? Slap his face?

She didn’t do any of those things. Instead, she smiled, a wide, genuine smile. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’d like that. I’d like that … very much. Thank you, Edward.’

A NOTE ON
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

Part of the storyline of this book is based on a pair of true cases: that of Timothy John Evans, who was hanged in 1950 for the murder of his fourteen-month-old daughter, Geraldine, and that of John Reginald Halliday Christie, who was hanged in 1953 for the murder of his wife, Ethel. Both resided at the same address, 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill Gate, London W11. Although names and places have been changed and there has been some tinkering with dates, I have stuck as closely as possible to the known facts in both cases in the writing of this book. However, it should be noted that I have treated them as a novelist, rather than as a historian. Some of the characters are, of course, based on real people, but others are entirely made up and have no resemblance to anyone either living or dead.

I first heard of these cases in the mid-seventies, from my mother. At the time, I was attending a school situated close to the street that had been Rillington Place (the area immediately surrounding it has now been redeveloped and the roads renamed). I cannot now remember how the subject came up, but my mother, a doctor, had studied the medical aspects of the cases when she trained at St Andrew’s and she told me what had happened. It was the story rather than the forensic details that drew my attention, and I remember feeling desperately sorry for Timothy Evans and his family.

Many years later, considering the cases as potential material for
a novel, I began to wonder about the feelings of the detectives in the Evans case. In 1950, when Evans was hanged, everybody was sure that justice had been done – there seemed no doubt at all that he had killed not only his daughter, but also his wife, Beryl. What must those policeman have felt when, in 1953, six bodies, two of them skeletons, were discovered at the same property, in Christie’s flat and in the garden of which he had sole use?

When it emerged that Evans’s conviction had been, in large part, secured on the evidence of a serial killer, doubt was cast on the fairness of his trial. With a growing number of people feeling that two stranglers of women living in the same house was too great a coincidence, there were demands for an enquiry. On 6 July, a fortnight after Christie was sentenced, the then Home Secretary, Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, announced to the House of Commons that he had instructed Sir John Scott-Henderson QC to hold an inquiry which would determine whether a miscarriage of justice had occurred in the case of Evans. Scott-Henderson interviewed not only Christie (who was hanged on 15 July), but also twenty witnesses who had been involved in one, or both, of the investigations. In his report, he concluded that Evans was guilty of both murders and that Christie’s confession to the murder of Beryl Evans was not reliable. He wrote:
I am satisfied that Christie gradually came to the conclusion that it would be helpful in his defence if he confessed to the murder of Mrs Evans.

As Scott-Henderson had accepted, apparently without question, not only Christie’s confessions relating to the other murders but also the evidence he had given at Evans’s trial, many people felt that the report was flawed and the controversy over the case continued. Besides numerous articles in newspapers and magazines, several books were written on the subject. The most famous of these is
10 Rillington Place
by Ludovic Kennedy (1961), which began with an open letter to R. A. Butler (known as Rab), who was Home Secretary at the time, requesting an urgent review of the case. In this letter, he quoted a statement from the Rt. Hon. James Chuter
Ede, the Home Secretary who had sanctioned Evans’s execution, saying that he felt a mistake had been made.

A second inquiry, chaired by the High Court judge Sir Daniel Brabin, was held at the end of 1965. This was a longer and altogether more thorough investigation than the Scott-Henderson inquiry, which had been criticised, by Kennedy and others, for its haste and lack of proper analysis. The Brabin report included information about an apparently spontaneous confession by Evans that he’d killed the baby because ‘he had to strangle it as he could not put up with the crying’. This was made to Sergeant Trevallian of the uniformed branch while the Welshman was in custody at Notting Hill police station in 1949. It is on this that I based Davies’s confession to PC Arliss, although, unlike Arliss, Sergeant Trevallian mentioned the confession to a senior officer immediately but was told that ‘they knew all about it as Evans had made a statement’.

Neither of the reports reached the conclusion that the police in the Evans case had acted improperly. After examining the evidence, Brabin made the following statement about the murders of Beryl and Geraldine Evans:

… it would now be impossible for me to come to a conclusion in respect of the guilt of Evans beyond reasonable doubt.

The warrant under which I was appointed to hold this Inquiry does not call only for a conclusion reached with that degree of certainty, for I am called upon to report such conclusions as I may find it possible to form. If the evidence permits me to come to a conclusion on the balance of probability, I must do so.

I have come to the conclusion that it is more probable than not that Evans killed Beryl Evans. I have come to the conclusion that it is more probable than not that Evans did not kill Geraldine.

As Evans had been tried only for the murder of his daughter – the one crime, incidentally, to which Christie never confessed – the
then Home Secretary Roy Jenkins recommended a posthumous pardon for Evans, which was granted in October 1966.

Although Evans had been declared not guilty of the crime of which he was convicted, there was still the matter of Brabin’s refusal to accept Christie’s confession to the murder of Beryl and his decision that Evans was responsible for her death. Leading pathologist Professor Keith Simpson, who had assisted with the exhumation of Beryl Evans, agreed. In his book
Forty Years of Murder
(1978), he stated: . . .
the Brabin report upheld the coincidence [of there being two stranglers of women living in the same house], and it never seemed to me very far-fetched. Coincidences are far more common in life than in fiction
. Books by Rupert Furneaux (published in 1961) and John Eddowes (1994) also argued the case for Evans’s guilt. However, the version of events that has become generally accepted is Ludovic Kennedy’s. His book,
10 Rillington Place
, was made into a film of the same name in 1970. Directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Richard Attenborough, Judy Geeson, Pat Heywood and John Hurt, it gives a vivid and persuasive account of Evans’s innocence and wrongful conviction.

A pardon does not formally erase a conviction, and in 2003 Evans’s family applied to the Criminal Cases Review Commission for his conviction to be re-examined. The Commission decided that, although there was what it termed a ‘real possibility’ that the Court of Appeal would not uphold the conviction, it would not refer the case. The Commission’s report stated that the free pardon, with its attendant publicity, was sufficient to establish Evans’s innocence in the eyes of the public and that the formal quashing of the conviction would bring no tangible benefit to his family and was not in the public interest. An ex gratia payment was, however, made to the family by way of compensation for the miscarriage of justice.

In the months I spent researching this book, I read everything about both cases that I could lay my hands on, including the files
of the Metropolitan Police, the records of the Director of Public Prosecutions, the trial transcripts and correspondence, and the Prison Commission and Home Office files, all of which may be found in the National Archives. What do I think happened? The honest answer is that I just don’t know. The forensic evidence, such as it is, doesn’t point conclusively to either man. There is also the fact that, in the words of the Brabin report,
One fact which is not in dispute and which has hampered all efforts to find the truth is that both Evans and Christie were liars. They lied about each other, they lied about themselves
.

As Professor Simpson says, coincidences
are
far more common in life than in fiction. It seems to me to be pretty unlikely that Evans killed his wife and child, but it isn’t actually impossible. My heart doesn’t believe it, but in the course of writing this book, my head has told me time and again that one cannot entirely discount the possibility that that is, in fact, what happened. There are many things unaccounted for, such as the dog, the timing, and why, if Beryl Evans’s body was in the tiny washhouse for several days while the workmen were constantly in and out, they did not notice it. There is also the fact that baby Geraldine, unattended for two days in a very small house, wasn’t heard to cry – even, apparently, by Ethel Christie, who was used to listening out for her on the occasions when Beryl left her by herself. All these are mysteries that cannot now be unravelled.

It is, however, an extraordinary story, and it’s certainly true that controversy surrounding the Evans case and a number of others from the same period contributed to the abolition of capital punishment in Britain. That, I believe, can only be a good thing.

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Tim Donnelly, Claire Foster, Stephanie Glencross, Jane Gregory, Liz Hatherell, William Howells of Ceredigion Libraries, Trudy Howson, Maya Jacobs, Jemma McDonagh, Claire Morris, Lucy Ramsey, Manda Scott, June and William Wilson, Jane Wood, Sue and Alan Young, the staff at the National Archives and Florence Mabel Basset Hound for their enthusiasm, advice and support during the writing of this book.