The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (71 page)

Harsent covered his daughter’s body with a rug but otherwise moved nothing except the metal top portion of a broken lamp that was lying beside her. As he was doing so, Crisp’s brother came to the door followed by other villagers, for bad news never takes long to circulate. Someone sent for the village constable and this worthy, Eli Nunn, arrived at twenty minutes to nine. The briefest of conversations with the Crisps, the most cursory examination of the almost naked body, must have told him that Rose was well advanced in pregnancy. But, in the absence of bloody footprints, Nunn decided that this was a case of suicide. The local police have been rightly ridiculed for holding such an opinion, even momentarily, but it is quite wrong to suggest, as has been so often done, that the delay enabled the murderer to destroy incriminating evidence. Nunn did not know of the crime until just before nine o’clock and we shall see what Gardiner had been doing as early as eight o’clock that morning.

In any event, it is doubtful if the suicide theory was held for long. By the body was another source of paraffin in addition to the broken lamp, a smashed bottle that had recently held paraffin but which had once held medicine: nor was there any doubt as to its ownership as it still bore the label
For Mrs Gardiner’s chdn
. There was also a charred piece of newspaper, with which the fire had been started: it came from a 30 May copy of the
East Anglian Daily Times
, a paper not taken by the Crisps although delivered daily to Gardiner at the works, curiously enough by Rose’s fourteen-year-old brother. A search of her bedroom proved more interesting still, revealing as it did not only Gardiner’s two letters about the torrid interchange in the Doctor’s Chapel but also a third note in what looked remarkably like the same handwriting. With it was an envelope, postmarked 31 May: the letter was an assignation for midnight on the night of the murder and was couched in the following terms:

It was not signed, so it is evident that the writer knew that his hand would be recognized. It was equally clear that the writer lived in Peasenhall if he was able to see the warning signal. It was unfortunate for Gardiner that the similarity of writing was immediately detected and also that his home should be only 208 yards away from Providence House with a clear view of Rose’s bedroom from his front doorstep: he also not infrequently returned home at about ten o’clock and his route from the works passed Providence House. From the outset he was the obvious suspect, and such he has remained.

Since Gardiner had left his home at nine o’clock to take his children to Sunday school, it was some time before he was told of the violent death of his favourite chorister. He was told at eleven o’clock and evinced no surprise whatsoever: as he had known her since childhood and had been meeting her twice a week at least for choral reasons at Sibton chapel, it was felt that he should have been more shocked than he appeared to be. And it is hard to believe that a bearded elder would fail to expatiate on such a death unless he was singularly preoccupied.

The case was handed over to Superintendent Staunton who, on the Monday morning,
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called on Gardiner at the Drill Works and taxed him with writing the letter of assignation: Gardiner denied it, but conceded that the writing was remarkably like his own. During the lunch interval, Gardiner left the works and did not thereafter return: in modern parlance, he was assisting the police with their inquiries. Meanwhile a significant additional piece of information had come to light: Burgess, a bricklayer, remembered chatting with Gardiner outside his house for a quarter of an hour at about ten o’clock on the night of the murder, and also recalled noticing a light at the top of Providence House when he walked away. The inference that Gardiner was watching for the signal was almost irresistible. On the Tuesday evening, after the coroner had opened his investigation, William George Gardiner found himself taken into custody and formally charged with murder: for the purposes of completeness, it should be recorded that he denied the charge.

Subsequent to his arrest, further evidence came to light to suggest that no mistake had been made. A gamekeeper named James Morriss, whose detective instincts were acutely developed, said that he had been walking along Peasenhall’s main street at five o’clock in the morning and had seen a single set of footprints in the mud left by the rain leading from Gardiner’s house to Providence House and back again. Being aware of the Harsent scandal—his superior gamekeeper’s brother was Wright’s landlord—he was interested and mentioned the matter to his superior when he met him, about two and a half hours
before
the murder was even discovered: at half-past eleven, he heard of the murder and realized its importance. Before the coroner he stated that he would be able to describe the sole marks and, since he was a gamekeeper, his evidence should have been reliable: a juror drew a blank sole on a piece of paper and passed it to Morriss, who proceeded to draw two parallel bars across it. The evidence was not particularly helpful to the police at this stage: they had collected all of Gardiner’s known clothing from his wife in the hope of finding something incriminating but they had found no such shoes. But, on June 6th, a policeman called on Mrs Gardiner to ask if she had any India-rubber-soled shoes: she then produced a pair that she said had been given her by her brother when up in London during the week previous to the murder.
The markings coincided with Morriss’s drawing.

But what the police proved incapable of discovering was the time at which Rose had been killed. The doctor judged, from the state of
rigor mortis
, that she had died between half-past twelve and half-past six, with the probabilities in favour of half-past four. The police preferred to link the crime with the time given in the assignation, i.e., midnight. The Crisps admitted to having been awakened by the storm, whereupon Mrs Crisp had come downstairs to make sure the rain was not coming in: they were later reawakened by a scream and a thud which the Deacon refused to permit his consort to investigate, pointing out that Rose had been told that, if ever she was nervous, she could come to their bedroom. Mrs Crisp told the coroner on 3 June, and again on 16 June, that the scream had occurred between one and two o’clock, but it later transpired that she had not looked at a clock in making this guess. All that can be said for certain about the time factor is this: the girl expected a caller at midnight, by which time a storm was raging and continued to rage for at least an hour and a half longer. The rain had ceased by four o’clock. We know that Rose expected him to come, as her bed had not been slept in: presumably she did not wish to fall asleep as she had to let him in when he arrived. She would not have expected him until the storm had died down: the nature of the visit was presumably intended, at least by her, to discuss her future, now that her mistress’s suspicions were aroused, rather than for further trysting.

On other aspects of the case, the police had some tenuous technical evidence available. A handwriting expert’s conclusions were damning to Gardiner. And, although no blood-stains were to be found on any of his clothes, a penknife of his which, in the view of a medical expert, could have inflicted the fatal injuries, proved to have been newly sharpened and had been scraped inside, but even so there was some blood inside the hinge. Gardiner explained this by saying that he had been hulking (vernacular for disembowelling) a rabbit and since the expert was able to say no more than that the blood was not more than a month old and mammalian, his explanation was not wholly unsatisfactory.
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There was also a small piece of woollen material found by Rose’s body which, it was assumed, might have been torn off in the fatal scuffle, but hopes of matching it with the arrested man’s clothing had failed. On the other hand, the envelope containing the assignation note proved to be identical with those used at Gardiner’s place of employment. Though not an especially strong chain of circumstantial evidence, it was thought sufficient to justify sending him for trial. It is worth noting that, at this stage of the case, that over-observant elder, Henry Rouse, had not given evidence, either before the coroner or before the bench, and that there was no evidence of any association between the accused and his alleged victim during the year that followed the episode in the Doctor’s Chapel.

Since the strength of the prosecution’s case would lie in Gardiner’s motive, it had become essential to show that Wright and Skinner were witnesses of truth. And so, on 28 July, Constable Nunn went to the chapel with Burgess and the two youths and re-enacted the amatory vignette that they claimed to have overheard: acoustically speaking, it was not impossible. And shortly before the opening of the Ipswich Assizes, the police became aware of an important witness who had not so far seen fit to reveal himself. This person was Herbert Stammers and his house overlooked the yard at the back of Gardiner’s home: he claimed that, at half-past seven on the Sunday morning, over an hour before the murder had been discovered, Gardiner had gone to the wash-house and lit a large fire. The inference was that he had been burning incriminating clothing, since it was not the practice to light fires of that size on a Sunday morning: I should add that, oddly enough, Gardiner claimed to be in possession of only two shirts at the time of the crime.

Gardiner’s trial took place on 6, 7, 9 and 10 November 1902: the intervening day was a Sunday and the jury protested at the proposal to keep them cooped up in Ipswich, pointing out that it would be more pleasant to spend the weekend at Felixstowe, even though out of the season; the judge arranged for them to spend the day at the seaside under supervision, but they had to return to Ipswich for the night. The judge was Mr Justice Grantham, a popular foxhunting squire but an indifferent lawyer and all too liable to make up his mind at an early stage of the proceedings that he was called upon to try: as he was not particularly adept in concealing his prejudices, he was not the most suitable judge for a case where the balance of evidence was so evenly poised. The prosecution was in the hands of Mr H. F. (later Sir Henry) Dickens, a son of the novelist and a conspicuously fair man: the defence was led by Mr E. E. (later Sir Ernest) Wild who established his reputation by his conduct of the case. Both were to end their days as contemporary Old Bailey judges, the one as Common Serjeant and the other as Recorder. That Wild’s efforts on behalf of his client were magnificent cannot be gainsaid, but he showed unwarranted irascibility with witnesses, with Dickens (even descending to personalities), and, in the subsequent trial, with the judge: he drew inferences against witnesses that lacked justification: with greater justification he muddled the jury with several choice red herrings.

As the first trial proved abortive, we need not be much concerned with it, save to note certain differences between it and the repeat performance some ten or eleven weeks later. Rouse was not subjected to much cross-examination and Mrs Gardiner suggested that he was lying because he was jealous of her husband’s superior position in the chapel hierarchy. There was an unfortunate misunderstanding with the judge when Skinner was telling of his interview with Gardiner: it appears that the accused man told Skinner that the tale was “made up out of old stuff” which Grantham took to mean that there had been previous talk of the association, although Dickens conceded that the phrase, in the vernacular, meant no more than rubbish, without reference to its age. Wild also elicited from the police superintendent that a newspaper reporter had been present at the post-mortem: as this produced an indignant outburst from the judge, Wild took the opportunity to comment on the prejudice shown against Gardiner in the local press, although it elsewhere appears that the
East Anglian Daily Times
had largely contributed to the defence funds.

The first suggestion made by the defence was that Rose’s neighbour and purveyor of pornography was at least as good a suspect as Gardiner himself: a certain amount of prejudice had already been imported into this side of the case by having this meretricious literature read to the jurors in private rather than have it recited in open court. The writer, Frederick James Davis, admitted to knowing Rose, though he denied ever having intercourse with her or even going out with her. As a grocer’s assistant, it was his duty to call at her kitchen several times a week and it was at her request that he had supplied her with sundry salacious ballads and selected excerpts of Holy Writ. He had also written her a torrid love-letter, but he again denied being her lover. He had begun this course of conduct in September 1901 and on a date not later than December of that year (at which time she will have been one month pregnant) he had supplied her with a book which discussed abortion: she had asked him for it and he had supplied her with it in the hope, vainly, that she would yield to his amatory overtures. The book also mentioned a remedy for sore feet, from which he suffered: after Davis had agreed that he owned a pair of India rubber-soled shoes, Dickens interrupted to say that he would call Davis’s father to give the unhappy youth an alibi for the whole of the evening. Wild explained that this was not necessary, as all that the defence alleged against Davis was that he was responsible for her condition. After the judge had told him that his “abominable conduct” was a disgrace to humanity, the witness withdrew.

Opening for the defence, Wild once more complained of local prejudice and said that Gardiner had been portrayed in a waxwork exhibition in the very act of killing the girl. The allegations of immorality against the accused remained unproved and Gardiner had therefore no motive to kill her. Nor did the time factor help the prosecution as it had been suggested that the murder had taken place at about half-past one, although at that time Gardiner and his wife were with a friend who was terrified of thunder: Mrs Gardiner could say that she had gone to bed with her husband at two o’clock and that he had not left their bedroom until eight o’clock the next morning. He would also call evidence that the footprints seen by Morriss, if indeed they had ever existed, were certainly not in evidence at four o’clock that morning and, in those circumstances, can hardly have been made by Gardiner. The label on the bottle had led the police astray: the real assassin possessed a suit of clothes like the fragment of cloth that had been found, but Gardiner possessed no such suit.
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