The Wicked Mr Hall (15 page)

John Wooton arrived at the house the next day. Seeing the bruising on my face, he asked me what had happened. I told him of the situation and of my intention. First he tried to talk me out of it then, when that failed, he offered to help. John was my oldest and dearest friend. I could not let him be involved. When Dave appeared for breakfast, he was shamefaced and contrite. He apologised a couple of times. I told him: ‘Forget it. John and myself are going shooting. Why not join us?’ He agreed. From the gun rack, I selected the one that he’d used the previous night. Dave selected a shotgun, and took eight cartridges.

We walked up on to the moors, Tessa the Labrador joined us. John and Dave were both shooting. I bided my time. Each shot that Dave took, I counted. When his eighth cartridge was spent, I spoke. ‘Is your gun empty?’ He smiled and said, ‘Yes.’ I said: ‘Are you sure? I don’t want you trying to kill me again.’ He thought I was jokily chiding him. He gave me a rather coy expression: ‘Roy, I’ve explained. I was drunk and upset.’ ‘No Dave. You tried to kill me last night.’ Nervously he took out a cigarette and lit it: ‘I didn’t mean anything, you know that.’

When I spoke next, the fear that I’d experienced that previous night was now reflected in his face. I said: ‘I’m going to kill you.’ I thought he was going to start crying again. I aimed the rifle at his head, all the suppressed anger rose to the surface, ‘You robbed me of my percentage in Grimshaw Hall, you sponge money off me, I pay your debts. When I tell you not to steal anything just yet, you take a
diamond ring. I’m sick of your snide little comments about how her ladyship might discover my past. You try to blackmail me, and then you get drunk and try to kill me. Well, look where your pretty little face has got you now. You’ve ended up on the Scottish moors, and this is where you are going to die. The only use you ever had was to be fucked.’ Then I shot him in the head. For a moment he just stood there, staring. I thought: ‘I’ve missed the bastard.’ But then, slowly, a trickle of blood appeared at the left corner of his mouth. It trickled delicately down his chin. And then he fell. Walking over to him, I shot him in the chest. ‘See! See, what you’ve made me do. You stupid, stupid, greedy bastard.’ I shot him again. His eyes were still open. ‘It’s alright for you, your troubles are over, mine are just beginning.’ He made me rage. I shot him again.

I told John to leave immediately, which he did. I dragged the body into some bushes and then went back to the house and fetched a garden spade and fork. I’d just bury him. Neither Lady Hudson nor any of the household staff were there that weekend. When I started to dig, I found that the ground was so frozen it would have taken a pneumatic drill to break it. I went back to the house to think – should I chop him up and burn him in the furnace. But then what of the smell? What if I couldn’t get rid of it? Human flesh has a pungent aroma. I drank some brandies and rested for a short while. At 7.00pm I went back on to the moors and dragged his body to a small stream near to where I’d left him. When he had fallen, his arms had been outstretched and I hadn’t thought to close them. Now, as I pushed them into his sides, I heard the cracking of his bones. After
stripping him down to his underpants, I removed all means of identification then carefully laid him in the water.

I took heavy boulders from other parts of the stream and weighted down his body. Then I picked up whatever flower and fauna I could find and smothered his body in plants. In a daze I walked back to the house. I was exhausted, mentally as well as physically. I had never killed anyone before. Killing is very stressful, very tiring.

The next day I returned to the scene. It looked very artificial, so I went to work again. Using plants with their roots still intact, I planted more heather and ferns and whatever else I could use. A green slime was starting to form above the body, which I broke up with a stick. For the next week, I visited the watery grave every day constantly removing some things, then adding more suitable camouflage. As I worked, I talked to him. Mainly cursing him for his greed, for what he had made me do.

W
hen Lady Hudson returned on the Monday, I told her that Wright had left to take a good job in Devon. I passed on his kind regards for the hospitality she’d shown him, and told her that he had promised to write in person, thanking her. She accepted this in good faith. On the weekend that followed, John returned. Taking a good bottle of Hock, we went back to the scene of the crime. John sat on the grass, sipping wine, and I asked him to guess where I had buried Dave. His eyes moved from bush to bush, to mounds of earth. He could see nothing unusual. I told him: ‘John, he’s about three feet away from you.’ He put his arm round my shoulder and said: ‘You’ve done it. You’ve committed the perfect murder.’ A petty thief with wanderlust. No one would ask any questions. No one would ever guess.

They say that there is nothing new under the sun.
Everything has happened before. Years before, when working for the Warren-Connells, I had picked up the phone and heard the police telling my employers of my past. It wasn’t the police this time. The voice had a Lancashire accent, it was a woman’s, and I had heard it many times before in heavily perfumed baths. Somehow, Hazel Paterson had managed to trace me. ‘He’s a jewel thief. He’s been to prison. He’s there to rob you.’ Bitch!

Half an hour later a police patrol car was escorting me off Kirkleton estate. Although she wanted me out of her house and off her property, Lady Hudson was quite magnanimous about the situation. She wrote me a cheque for three months’ salary and said: ‘No one will ever hear me say that you are not a fine butler.’ I explained to one of the police officers that I had no transport and nowhere to stay. Using their car radio they told a hotelier in Gretna Green that they had picked up someone who had been involved in a car crash, and wondered whether they had a spare room. The police drove me to the hotel. Once there, I called Wooton. Like so many previous times, he got in his car and drove out to get me.

Since the killing, a change had taken place in my personality. There seemed to be a distance between me and the rest of the world. I felt cold and aloof towards almost everything and everyone. I had always known that I had the capacity for murder, but the act itself had caused some change to happen. I had released all that was worst in me. And once it was out, there was no way to put it back in its box. I had crossed the line. I would never be, or feel, the same again. I would say to someone who is thinking of
killing: ‘Don’t. Whatever it is that’s released, you don’t want set free.’

I went to Paris for a month. I craved anonymity, I just wanted to be a face in the crowd. From France, I flew to London. I was searching for old feelings, I wanted my life to feel the way it used to. I booked into a hotel in Knightsbridge and started visiting old haunts. The places and the faces were the same, but now I was on the outside looking in. My life had numbed me.

I sought a sanctuary. I wanted somewhere to put all my things. I wanted somewhere quiet, where I could be alone with my thoughts.

Middle Farm cottage was in a small village called Newton Arlosh, a few miles outside Carlisle. I leased the cottage on a six-month holiday let, and told the locals that I was a recently divorced writer who now wanted some solitude. I don’t know what I expected to find in the quiet of the cottage, but whatever it was, it never came. I had some dark thoughts – a bottle of pills and some decent brandy would end it all for me and I could escape the cold numbness that enveloped me. But suicide is not for me – my survival instinct is too strong. I decided to return to London to noises, voices, traffic, life.

Walter Scott-Elliot was that rare breed of man who, although he had enormous inherited wealth, held socialist principles. He was the Labour MP for Accrington the year that World War II ended. He then moved on to become Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War. With the War at an end, they had the job of creating a peace with which we could all live. I met him in the late
summer of 1977. He was eighty-two, a frail, well-spoken gentleman, and I was his new butler.

Scott-Elliot’s wife, Dorothy, ran the household. Twenty years younger than her husband, she was Anglo-Indian and came from enormous wealth. She had the unpleasant habit of hitting her maids and kitchen staff. If irritated by their work, she would rap them round the legs using the walking stick that helped her mobility. Needless to say, there was a large turnover of staff. However, being a man, and being fastidious in my work and nature, as she was, we developed a friendship that went well beyond that of employer and employee. It was a shame I had to kill them.

I accompanied Mrs Scott-Elliot on all her shopping trips. Each day we would have lunch at a good hotel or restaurant. When introducing me to her friends or acquaintances, she would always say: ‘Have you met my friend Roy?’, never, ‘Have you met my butler?’

As I settled into my new job, I started censoring all their mail. Each letter would be steamed open and inspected by me first. I knew of all their different bank accounts and all their bank account numbers. I became proficient at forging both their signatures. All phonecalls first came through me – if I didn’t want them to have an awkward conversation with a stockbroker, I would give a feasible excuse. In effect, within a few short weeks, I had taken control of their lives. It was my plan to drain their worldwide bank accounts until they were empty. Then I would go abroad, to the sunshine, and retirement.

I was fifty-four years old, and overweight. Which was why, when I thought of robbing a wealthy neighbour’s flat,
I needed a younger, more athletic accomplice. His job would be to climb out of my bedroom window, scale a short wall, crawl over a flat roof and gain entry. Once he was in, I would buzz the intercom and walk in through the front door.

Mary Coggles, my former ‘go between’ and occasional fuck, was now working as a barmaid in the Lancelot pub on the Brompton Road. She supplemented her income by indulging in part-time prostitution in the Kings Cross area. She socialised in a run-down pub called the Scottish Stores, and it was there that I resumed contact with her. I told her of my plan, and she said that a friend of hers fitted the bill perfectly. She would arrange a meeting. Two days later, I shook the hand of Michael Kitto – the worst day’s work I have ever done.

Kitto was thirty-nine, smart enough in his dress and habits but a born loser. He had been dishonourably discharged from the Army and lost his wife and child. He was now little more than an itinerant. He was, however, criminally inclined and reasonably fit. He carried out the climbing I required of him, and I robbed the neighbours. Thus far I was pleased with his actions and his manner. He was quite agreeable, and sometimes I would have a few drinks with him. He slept with Mary. Sexually, he didn’t interest me.

The Scott-Elliots and I were due to spend part of that summer in their house in Italy. We would leave at the weekend. Bankers, stockbrokers, and all pertinent people were informed of their arrangements. Three days before our flight date, I visited the Lancelot pub in the Brompton
Road. Mary was serving behind the bar, and I sat and chatted with Kitto. He was fascinated by my life of crime and my knowledge of jewels and antiques. He asked me whether he might take a look around the Scott-Elliots. I couldn’t see a problem – the old man was on prescribed sleeping pills and would be sound asleep; Mrs Scott-Elliot wasn’t due back from a private nursing home till the next afternoon. At closing time, we left for the house.

I showed Kitto what true wealth was like. Taking him from room to room, I showed him a fortune – coin collections, antiques, paintings. I suppose there was an element of ‘showing off’ involved, as I knew that Kitto was only a small time thief. I told him that I would steal all of it in due course. For his part, he had never worked with a thief of my stature or experience before. I could tell that he would like to be my partner, would like to impress me. Maybe that was the motivation behind the action that changed both our lives.

We were just about to enter the mistress’ bedroom, when the door was opened for us. Mrs Scott-Elliot, who was supposed to be in a private clinic, was standing right in front of us. Her face displayed a mixture of shock and anger. She looked at Kitto, her voice rising: ‘Roy, what is this man doing in my house at this time of the night?’ Before I had chance to answer, Kitto sprang at her. Grabbing her, he smothered her mouth with his hand. His hand must also have covered her nostrils, cutting off her breath entirely. Mrs Scott-Elliot did not enjoy robust health. Having a strange man gag her with his hand, late at night in her own home, must have terrified her. To our
surprise she slumped to the ground. Picking her up, we laid her on the bed. I felt for a pulse at her wrist and neck. There was none. She was dead.

I don’t know what a pathologist would have discovered, and I didn’t want to find out. If her death was reported, there would be a police investigation. My past would be uncovered and eventually so, too, would the missing money from their bank accounts. Even if it was decreed that my employer had innocently died of a heart attack, I would be charged with fraud and most likely the robbery of the neighbours. With my track record, I would be back in prison straight away. It would also mean the end of my little plans at the Scott-Elliots and, subsequently, no island in the sun. I needed time to think things through.

I heard Mr Scott-Elliot’s footsteps in the hallway. Closing the bedroom door on Kitto and my dead mistress, I assured him that everything was OK: ‘Madam awoke and wanted a drink. She has now gone back to sleep’. Only half awake, he thanked me and returned to his bed. We wrapped up my old friend in a silk bedspread. I phoned John and, in guarded language, told him what had happened. He started the drive south immediately.

When the old gent arose the next morning, I told him Madam had gone to visit friends, and she wished him to dine at his club. This pleased him very much and he didn’t bother to question it.

John arrived and we discussed our options. We thought we’d have two or three days before any enquiries would be made. We would have to act quickly. We would take as much as possible, and then vanish. We summoned Mary
Coggles to the house. She was the same size as Mrs Scott-Elliot and, after putting a grey wig on her, she dressed in the Madam’s clothes. I furnished her with various bank books and took her from bank to bank, where we made medium-sized withdrawals from each branch. I forged the signatures, as Coggles was barely literate, although she proved to be a more than competent actress. If Kitto had proved to be a liability, at this stage Mary was proving to be an asset. John and Kitto carried Dorothy Scott-Elliot’s body, still wrapped in the bedspread, down to John’s car and locked it in the boot.

It was early evening before Mr Scott-Elliot returned from dining at the Reform Club. I served him his usual whisky, which contained a crushed sleeping pill. I told him that his wife had gone to Scotland to visit friends, and he was to meet her up there. I had arranged for a car and chauffeur, and told him that I would accompany him. I then gave him another mix of sedative and alcohol, which would keep him drugged and in a state of confusion for the short time that he had left to live.

The journey north was bizarre. We drove in John Wooton’s car. We sat the old man in the back seat with Mary beside him, wearing a grey wig and his wife’s clothes. I told him that Mary was a friend of mine, and had been invited to join us on the trip. Kitto acted as chauffeur, and Wooton sat up front with him. I sat on the other side of my ex-master, and continued to give him shots of whisky and sleeping pills as often as I could manage. Mary talked for the entire journey. I watched the watery eyes of the old man looking at Coggles. Staring at her. He probably partially
recognised the clothes and, almost certainly, his wife’s wig. But in his bemused state, he was incapable of rational thought. This was just as well, because inches behind him, separated only by the moulded metal of the car boot, lay the body of his dead wife.

We stayed the night at Middle Farm, my cottage in Newton Arlosh. The next morning, before the others were awake, Wooton and I drove into Carlisle and hired a car. After transferring the dead body from his car to mine, I told him to go home to Lytham. Any more involvement could prove dangerous for him. I put a garden fork and spade into the car boot with Mrs Scott-Elliot. Kitto and I would bury her in some remote place. We drove north over the border into Scotland and stopped for lunch in the small town of Crieff in Tayside. From there we drove on to the minor desolate roads. We were about fifteen miles from Braco, when we found a likely spot. The snow-covered roads were deserted. The old man was asleep again. With Kitto taking her legs and me her arms we lifted Mrs Scott-Elliot over a dry stone wall, and dug a shallow grave in the field that lay on the other side. We covered the freshly turned soil with heather and ferns. Now that we were rid of her, the sense of relief was enormous. We drove back to Newton Arlosh, put the old man to bed, and talked.

What of him? If I was to release him and take him to relatives in Aberdeenshire, suspicions would soon be aroused – if not by him, then by others. We would need more than a few days to get at their money – forged letters from stockbrokers, forged bankers’ drafts, forged letters of
power of enactment would all be necessary to drain their worldwide bank accounts.

Then there were the antiques and valuables in their Sloane Street home. I had buyers, but it would take some time. I couldn’t trust the old man to stay doddery and confused if I let him go. If he had a day clear of sleeping pills and whisky, he’d soon realise something was amiss. Old or not, he was still a man of some intellect. We decided to kill him. This time, we’d drive up to the Highlands. The next morning we started another journey that would end with another burial.

We stopped overnight at a hotel in Blair Athol, Tayside. We booked into the best rooms they had, and arranged for Mr Scott-Elliot to have his dinner alone in his room. The three of us drank and ate in the dining room. Mary was enjoying herself and playing the rich man’s wife to the hilt. She was the coolest of all of us. In the morning we breakfasted with the man we were soon to murder. Mr Scott-Elliot paid the hotel bill by cheque. That would prove to be a mistake.