Classic Scottish Murder Stories (5 page)

On February 10th, it was officially announced that arsenic had been found in the remains of the party coffee. It was not present in Mr Clapperton's stock in his shop, to which no suspicion was attached, nor in the portion of ground coffee left unused at the house. It was not present in either the milk or the sugar served with the coffee. In other words, arsenic was found in the coffee pot or pots, or in the discarded cups which had still contained coffee, or in both. Therefore, a hand must have doctored the pots, or slipped arsenic into each and every cup somewhere on its way from pot to recipient, which would seem to be a tricky manoeuvre to perform 15 times.

Shock and bewilderment informed Dalkeith. Some inexplicable accident was the subject of discussion. John Hutchison was not at first a suspect, although it was no secret that he had been the bearer of the poisoned coffee. He must have proffered an excuse for his own immunity. His person was not searched until it was too late. His concern for the victims was very convincing. The realisation that he had dispensed drugs from his uncle's shop did, however, eventually
concentrate the minds of the police investigators. Going over to Musselburgh, they found that a bottle of arsenic had disappeared from the shelves, with no record of sale in the poisons register.

Meanwhile, on February 14th, John Hutchison had left home to visit, he said, some friends in Newcastle, pleading the equivalent of our new-fangled post-traumatic stress syndrome. He was expected back on February 16th, but failed to return, whereupon it was announced that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. On Saturday the 18th, a notice was broadcast to all police offices:

The notice stated that he had with him £25, mostly in gold, and carried a new brown leather handbag. He might now be wearing a dark brown coat. It was thought that he might be making for London and was probably intending to go abroad. All shipping offices and hotels were to be alerted. The detailed description of the wanted man was effective, because he was seen and recognised in the Strand, and Detective Inspector Laing went to London to work with Scotland Yard. All the local hotels were trawled, and he was found to have spent the night of Wednesday the 15th, at a hotel in Craven Street, which runs down beside Charing Cross station. He had acquired two aliases, John Robertson or Paterson, and a new Wanted notice was circulated by Scotland Yard.

Hutchison had had time to take ship for anywhere in the world, but, rudderless, he had dithered, and then been too clever for his own good. To a native of Dalkeith, no doubt, the Channel Islands seemed safe and remote, a fine and private place to hide away, but he had not calculated that Guernsey was just too tiny for a stranger not to be noticed, and the Wanted notice was just too particular.

On the boat from Southampton to Jersey, after huddling in a corner on the boat train, pretending to be asleep, with the collar of his heavy brown motor coat turned up, this fleeing man, who should have stayed a loner, became friendly with a fellow traveller and bombarded him with bogus information about himself. ‘It looks like being a dirty passage,' was the remark with which he initiated their intercourse. JR Henderson was his latest name. He could not disguise his strong Scottish accent, but, he said, ‘It is a very funny thing that although I am Scottish bred I have never been to Scotland.' His new friend seems to have been quite gullible.

From the depths of his subconscious, or even his unconscious, he drew the name of his principal dwelling in Ilford, where, he said, he owned three houses. This plangent name was Meldrondene, somehow redolent of rhododendrons, Melrose, melons and honey, and the author invites readers to provide a key. It sounds like some haven of his childhood, some sandy seaside home. He had no future, his present was too horrible to contemplate, and only the past of his childhood was bearable to visit, and so, now, he gibbered and fantasised: his father was a very wealthy man, fond of old furniture, he himself was a medical man, living on his means, and the doctors had ordered him to the Channel Islands for his health.

Over a drink in the smoke-room on the boat he expatiated on motor-cars and said that he had made £20,000 out of rubber, on an investment of £350. His companion noticed that he was growing a beard. They went ashore at Jersey together, and booked in at the Star Hotel, St Heliers. It was 10.30am and Hutchison was not seen again until dinner. He was in good spirits and said that he had slept all day. He was going to get married in July. After dinner, the conversation turned to recent crimes. ‘What do you think of the Houndsditch and Clapham murders?' he asked. ‘It is strange that they can't catch Peter the Painter.' London was the best place in the world for a criminal to hide away.

The next morning, they left by boat for Guernsey, Hihfchison buying a single ticket. The friend made for the Queen's Hotel, but he chose a boarding-house. ‘To tell you the truth,' he said, ‘I am a little bit hard up, and had to find a cheaper place, otherwise I should have stayed with you. I usually take only a certain amount with me, as I am afraid of being robbed.' The friend swallowed all this. In the evening they walked about the little town of St Peter Port, and, Mr Toad asserting himself, they visited a skating-rink.

‘I am sorry I can't ask you to have a drink with me,' Hutchison confessed, ‘but when I come to London I hope to entertain you to dinner. I am afraid I shall have to pawn my rings as it is!' The good friend offered to lend him a sovereign. He accepted, saying he would give him a cheque for it.

After only a day, the good new friend who had given him some sense of reality, returned to London via Weymouth, and they said good-bye on the pier. He himself, he announced, was going to Monte Carlo. The last time he had been there, he had made enough money to pay all his expenses. He promised to write, from ‘Meldrondene'. Suddenly, as if he could not wait, he bought two London newspapers from a seller on the pier. The friend made to look at the pictures, but he brushed him aside and scanned the pages, seeming very agitated. Apologising for his haste, he departed. Always a gentleman, he waved from the end of the quay.

On the train to London, the friend read the
Evening Times,
in which there was a description of the wanted man. Light dawned, he went straight to the police, and was shown a photograph of Hutchison. Very soon, on Monday, February 20th, Sergeant Burley of the Yard, equipped with a warrant, was knocking at the door of the boarding-house on the sea-front at St Peter Port. The sparkling beauty of the scene will have been lost to him: he knew that he was close to a desperate man, whom he probably regarded as a dangerous lunatic.

George Wright, the proprietor, let him in. PC Roberts was
stationed outside, in case of an attempted escape. Inside, all was deceptively calm. By coincidence, George Wright was reading a London newspaper which contained a picture of his lodger, and he was becoming uneasy. He showed the policeman the front parlour, which, with a bedroom, the lodger had taken on the preceding Friday. Burley opened the door and went in. All was calm. It was a tableau quivering on the edge of tragedy.

‘I saw a young man sitting in an armchair,' he later deposed. ‘His back was towards the door. He had a book in his left hand, and his right hand was in his trouser-pocket. I walked up close alongside him. I asked him his name. He said; “My name is Henderson”. I said, “I have cause to believe your name is Hutchison”. He replied, “You are making a great mistake, and I will prove that I am Henderson”. I said, “Well, you come with me, please”.'

The young man stood up, still keeping his right hand in his pocket. Naturally, the policeman must have feared a weapon of some kind. When they got near to the door, Hutchison made a rush up the stairs, taking two steps at a time. Burley followed right at his heels. There were ten steps in the first flight, and four in the second. The door of his bedroom was open. Just as he entered, he drew his hand from his pocket and raised it to his mouth. Burley saw not a weapon, but a phial of liquid. He struck out and sent the bottle flying across the room. The two men struggled, but only for an instant. The young man failed suddenly, and was laid out insensible on the floor.

Constable Roberts ran for a doctor, and within six minutes from ingestion of the liquid, Dr Bindloss was in the room and applying a stomach-pump. There was a strong smell of prussic acid from the phial, and no time was to be lost – stomach lavage was the appropriate specific treatment at the scene. Four minutes after his arrival, apparently, the dying man stopped breathing. Ten minutes dying was more merciful than the ‘several hours' suffered by his father and the friendly grocer. The action of prussic acid, cyanide, is very rapid, as is well
known. He will have hoped for instantaneous deat, but he seems to have been unconscious anyway. The minimum fatal dose is about one grain (solid) and about 50 minims (liquid). It was said that the phial dashed away by Sergeant Burley would, if full, have contained enough to kill 16 people. A few drops were still left in it. We may well suspect that a bottle of prussic acid was missing from his uncle's shop in Musselburgh.

It was a classic chemist's suicide. For weeks, at least, he had had poison on his mind. Since he must have taken the cyanide with him to Guernsey, suicide was a pondered option if he were caught. Since he did not hold a return ticket, it might be argued that it was always his intention if he could form the resolution, and stop skating. More likely, he planned to lie low and then move on; he was obviously worried that his funds might not last. In reality, it is pretty clear that he had no idea what to do or where to go.

An unusual procedural situation had been caused by the death in Guernsey, and the inquest was held, on February 22nd, in the Police Court at St Peter Port, conducted by the Procureur du Roi. Five witnesses were called. Constable Roberts attested that when he had removed the body to the mortuary, he found a purse in one of the pockets which contained 15 sovereigns, three half-sovereigns, 18s. 6d. in silver, and 1s. 4d. in coppers. This was enough for a short siege. The jury returned a verdict of suicide from prussic acid poisoning. Detective Inspector Laing, of Edinburgh, who had known the deceased for six years, had identified the dead man as Hutchison, not Henderson, and arrangements were made for burial under the real name at the local cemetery. There was no call for a return of the body to Dalkeith, and there were said to be no mourners at the graveside. The mother was in no fit state to attend, even if she had wanted to do so. We cannot presume to know what her wishes were.

Hutchison had committed a very serious crime, a hair's-breadth from a mass murder of 15 (could have been 18) people.
The motive was obscure. It looked like an insane act, but his cool demeanour bothered those who sought for a merciful explanation. It was said that his father's life was insured for £4,000, but the details have not survived. The wholesale nature of the poisoning might have been intended to disguise the specificity of the intended effect – death of Father. Everyone knows that wedding guests are sometimes stricken with food poisoning. It is just possible that he found a way to administer a larger, killing dose to his father. The grocer who died, and his mother, who very nearly died, might both have had little resistance to the smaller dose, for some reason relating to their health. Or, alternatively, three doses prepared and calculated to kill might have been administered. The information which has come down to us that the father and the grocer drank deeper may have been a mere rationalisation.

Even so, it is tempting to hazard that there were psycho-pathological reasons, not just financial stress, for feeding poison to a multitude, for laying low the small, satisfied world of Bridgend – family, intended family, Freemasons and burghers – which oppressed a troubled mind. Soon, someone else would drive away his fine motor-car, his lost love-object.

‘Poop! Poop!'

T
he composition of meals which figure in past murder trials has an interest all of its own. One thinks of the Bordens' breakfast at Fall River during a heat wave: warmed-up mutton broth, bread, bananas, johnnycake and coffee. Supper at 2 Wester Coates Terrace, Edinburgh, was a moveable feast before bedtime for the King family: bread and butter, cheese, jelly and coffee. An indigestible repast, one would have thought, and not even necessary, since steak or fish had already been consumed at tea-time.

The family of four that sat around the table in the parlour at about 9 o'clock on Friday evening, May 30th, 1924, presented a scene of unity: James Rae King, a chartered accountant, his wife, Agnes Scott King, and their two sons, William Laurie King, aged 22, and Alexis King, aged 16. The daily maid, Marion Armstrong, had gone home to 28 Wardlaw Place.

Behind the faÁade, however, there had been a brew of discontent which had simmered for years. It was to do with the frustration of a lad's true bent. Father wanted son to follow in his footsteps, but, since he was 12, William had yearned for a career in chemistry, for which he showed a natural aptitude. Indeed, a chemist friend, David Peebles, said that the boy knew more about chemistry than he did.

Tonight, there was in progress a resolution and conciliation. At last, Father had surrendered, a bitterly disappointed man. William was to read for a degree in chemistry at Edinburgh University. It was not too late for a change of direction. After attending Daniel Stewart's College, he had served two years of
his apprenticeship with an outside firm of chartered accountants, but had been so unhappy there that his father had transferred his indenture to his own firm. As a sop, and a handsome one, James King had had an outhouse built for him in the back garden where he could tinker with his experiments to his heart's content. Still he had pined, and, worse, had hesitated to tell Father that he had not even attempted his Intermediate Chartered Accountancy examination. Mother had found out.