Classic Scottish Murder Stories (30 page)

Two constables hastened to the address and used the keys. There, gas was lit in the kitchen. The body was lying underneath the bedclothes, which were pulled up chest-high. The left arm lay stretched out across the bed, on top of the bedclothes. The right arm, beneath the clothes, was bent at the elbow and the hand lay against the right hip, with the fingers flexed. A piece of cord was tied very tightly around the neck with a half knot (i.e. the first loop of a reef-knot) in front of the throat, below the Adam's apple, nearly central, slightly
to the right of the middle line. The ends of the corCjwhich were of equal length, were
below
the bedclothes. Constable McGuffie undid the knot and loosened the cord, revealing a red mark round the neck.

Dr Christie, police surgeon, sent for at once, arrived at 5.00am, and his opinion was that death by strangulation had taken place about three hours previously – that is, about one hour before Queen had reported the death. The cord, which was three feet long, had been cut from the dangling loop used to hoist up and down the clothes pulley or airer, that contraption of long wooden slats slotted into metal brackets which was still in use far into the century and has recently been revived as an arty-crafty accessory. It was the same cord which, if it really happened, Chrissie had used
in situ
to hang herself behind the door. The cleat on which the loop was fastened was fixed actually on the door, which was only two feet from the foot of the bed.

Dr Christie found the face placid, with no expression of pain. The upper dentures were still in place. The tongue protruded half an inch from the mouth. Meanwhile, the constables had telephoned back what they had found and Peter Queen was brought to the bar, cautioned, and charged with murder. Why, it was afterwards well asked, would they have taken that swift action if the police had not been under the impression that he had confessed? ‘I have nothing to say' was his response. He nearly collapsed, asked for water, which was brought before removal to an observation cell. The two pathologists who performed a post-mortem at Partick mortuary the next day were responsible for a bad mistake by omission. There was some fluid in the stomach (which was intensely congested) and, without further enquiry, the doctors contented themselves with the finding that there was no smell of alcohol. A vital point, which required specificity, had not been cleared up. If Chrissie had been stupid with drink, it would have been easier to overpower her. In the alternative,
she would not have been in a fit state to kill herself.

The cricoid cartilage below the voice-box, not the hyoid bone which we usually hear about in these cases, was cracked or broken, depending on your terminology. The face was blotched and suffused. The absence of solid food in the stomach accords with the last meal of sandwiches at 9.00pm which would have been absorbed by 1.00am, one hour before the estimated time of death.

By the time that Peter Queen was brought to the High Court of Justiciary in Glasgow on January 5th, 1932, he had recovered himself and stood up straight to give evidence in his own defence. Sir Bernard Spilsbury and Dr Sidney Smith were engaged for him. He had plenty to say, but there were gaps and weaknesses. It was not a defence that was pat, streamlined. Going back to the Friday when she summoned him home, he found Chrissie leaning against the sink, crying, hysterical and under the influence of drink. He put her to bed, changed the linen, and gave her a hot-water bottle.

After their visitors had left, Chrissie seemed to want to talk, and they did so for an hour. She was worried about her family's new knowledge of her situation – if Robert divulged it – and she was worried about the holiday. She did not want to go away and had nothing packed. When he told her that the doctor would be calling, she asked him to look in the room for the best, embroidered pillow-slips, even though he had already changed the linen earlier in the afternoon. (I suppose it was verified that he did make the medical appointment?) This does seem to be a very understandable and feminine request which only a particularly cunning man could have made up. It is also, incidentally, not the request of a desperate woman planning suicide, or incubating that idea.

He went next door and searched for 15 minutes, but could not find the pillow-slips in the drawers. The room was dim because the gas in there gave a poor light – as verified by the police officers at the scene. He had to use matches. This part
of his evidence was scoffed at. However, ask most husbands to go and find something domestic in another room, and they will fail. I have tested this premise on my friends. He was not clear, quite vague, about where he had found the bed-linen for the total change in the afternoon: ‘As far as I know I would get them from the long drawer in the wardrobe...'

Then, he said, he went back into the kitchen and told Chrissie that he could not find the slips. There was no reply and he thought that she must be asleep. The defence case was that Chrissie Gall had employed that quarter of an hour while she was on her own to cut the cord, get back into bed and finish herself off. I suppose it could be suggested that she did not guess that it would take Peter so long to find the slips, and that she hoped to be saved, as she had been before. Or she could have sent him off on a fool's errand, knowing that the slips were not there, in order to give herself time.

After smoking a cigarette by the fire, he approached the bed and pulled the curtains to see if she was sleeping soundly so that he could get in without annoying her. It was then that he saw the rope round her neck and her face swollen. ‘Chris! Chris! Chris!' he shouted, and he shook her. How can we be sure that Queen did not tamper with the body, the bedclothes or the cord? He did not seem to know what he did, being ‘so shocked and absolutely knocked out'. He never improved upon the missing period of shock and collapse. Would he not, if full of guile and intent upon perjury, have invented any number of reasons for his delay in seeking help? Nor does he seem to realize that the one hour's conversation with Chrissie and the 15-minute search and the one cigarette bring him only to about midnight which is two whole hours before she died.

We may well imagine that his lawyers in preparation for trial pressed him hard to account for the missing periods. Is it possible that his epilepsy came over him and he was clinically confused, slumped in a chair in the room without full cognizance of time? Finding the body would have further
confused him, which could explain his failure to remove the cord, his going to the police as if with guilty mind, afraid, as he said, of being blamed, and there giving an inappropriate account of himself.

The medical evidence was fiercely fought but, as was acknowledged, inconclusive. For the Crown, it was put that fracture of the cricoid had been recorded in only one case, and that was homicide, not suicide. The position of the dead woman's hands showed that she had not held the cord. However, it was conceded that a double knot would have been expected if murder had been committed. There should have been some defensive marks, unless the victim had been asleep. Unconsciousness would have supervened, in a suicide, before sufficient force had been exerted to break the cricoid and produce the deep indentation.

Said Professor Allison, ‘I cannot conceive of a woman strangling herself and then placing her right arm underneath the bedclothes, arranging the bedclothes in an orderly fashion over her body, and leaving the ends of the cord tucked under the top of the bedclothes.' Dr Glaister said that unless the cord was held by another, the violent effort to breathe would tend to loosen the twist for it was not a complete knot, and the cord was relatively not hard.

For the defence, Sir Bernard Spilsbury had a peculiar theory about the half knot, which his colleague, Professor Sidney Smith, felt unable to go along with: it was to the effect that, as confirmed under the microscope, the fibres tended to bite into one another where they crossed and would hold the knot tight enough after Chrissie Gall's grip had relaxed. The actual position of the knot was one natural for suicide. There was an absence of haemorrhage and bruising in the deeper tissues of the neck and thyroid which indicated a lesser degree of force. Spilsbury admitted that he personally knew of no case of suicidal strangulation in a woman, or of a recorded instance of fracture of the cricoid in suicidal strangulation.

It might be of interest to cite the comment in Tayl or's
Medical Jurisprudence,
revised by Sir Sidney Smith in 1956, on simulated suicidal strangulation: it would ‘require great skill and premeditation on the part of a murderer so to dispose of the body of his victim, or to place it in such a relation to surrounding objects, as to cause real suspicion of suicide.' Peter Queen hardly fits this picture of cool cunning.

The suggestion that it was a kind of mercy-killing murder was not formally promulgated, although it was felt by commentators that Queen could realistically have feared that the doctor's visit could have led to admission to an asylum. Long-suffering as he was, he must have fought against the increasing possibility that a second woman connected to him was to be put away. He must have felt guilt, blamed himself: it would have been abnormal not to do so.

The bread knife is a serious flaw in the suicide argument. Johnston used it to cut the sandwiches. Queen said in cross-examination that he never touched it that night. So who put it back where it was found by the investigators in the drawer of the dresser, near the sink, at the far end of the kitchen, 8 feet from the bed? No one completely tidied up or washed the dishes that night, as we can see from the photograph, although Mrs Johnston could have put some things away before she left. Theoretically, Queen could have put it out of Chrissie's temptation, fearing that she might cut her throat, especially since it had been brought to her attention.

It is obvious that Chrissie would not have placed the knife in the drawer after using it to cut the rope in preparation for a terrifying deed. It should have been lying on the floor, the bed, a chair, the table... The problem, however, with this kind of thinking is, as we have said, that we do not know if Queen tampered with the scene for whatever possibly muddled motivation. Nor is it certain that the bread knife was the relevant implement; it nowhere appears, for instance, that cord fibres were found on or near it, or that the saw-teeth
matched the cuts. Only half seriously, Sir Sidney Smith wondered if, goaded beyond endurance, Queen had cut the cord and thrown it to Chrissie as a challenge to do what she was threatening. That explanation could, indeed, account for his perplexity of mind and fear that he might be blamed.

The jury convicted by a majority of ten to five. The minority were all for Not Proven, none for Not Guilty. An appeal failed, but the capital sentence was respited. He was released years later, and worked again as a bookmaker's clerk in Glasgow, dying in May, 1958. He was said to have made friends and become well-liked in his circle, with his past not known.

Does this pattern of behaviour suggest a strong degree of fortitude and determination to make the best of his left-over life, or was he perhaps, in complete denial?

I
t was Saturday night in Edinburgh, and the party of young men swaying along Broughton Street in search of livelier entertainment had dined all too well. There were six of them, in variant degree intoxicated, and they came from respectable backgrounds. William Howat, soon to be no more, was clerk to Thomas Johnston, writer, (i.e. solicitor) and he shared lodgings at a house in Broughton Street with Henry Kerr, a land-surveyor.

That evening of February 8th, 1823, the two friends had put on a dinner party for four of their circle of acquaintances: Walter Grieve, a medical student, Alexander Welsh, a cattle-dealer at Balerno, James Johnston, whose occupation was not revealed, and John Wilkinson, who kept an inn at Bristo Street. Kerr was their spokesman, a man of the world: Johnston was an innocent and a spoilsport.

They sat down at the table at 5.00pm and rose at 9.00pm when the night was still young and tempting. Between them, they had consumed at least two and a half bottles of spirits, probably four, (naturally, accounts varied) and whisky toddy was downed after dinner as the next stage of the party was discussed. The initial plan was to walk Welsh and Johnston home to their lodgings at Wilkinson's establishment. They set off. Howat was ‘rather drunk, but walked well' and spoke ‘rather correctly'. Kerr is describing their progress. He himself was very little affected, but he would say that, wouldn't he? Johnston and Welsh were sober (a dubious proposition, in the light of later events) and Wilkinson, who
had joined the dinner party halfway through, ‘was not very much intoxicated and walked without any assistance' – a clear euphemism! In fact, he admitted afterwards that he had been ‘a good deal intoxicated'.

Someone of the company suggested that they should all go to Cooper's Brittania tavern, but Johnston objected that Cooper was a boxer. Irritated by his squeamishness, the others decided to play a joke on him, and heartily recommended Anderson's house on the east side of the South Bridge as a jolly good tavern. It was, in reality, a house of ill repute, but it turned out that all the apartments were occupied, and they could not gain admittance. Directly across the street at 82 South Bridge was Mrs Mary McKinnon's similar establishment. Henry Kerr had been there before, in 1817. Madame was out visiting, but some girls opened the door willingly enough and the tipsy, noisy party streamed into the dark, candle-lit rooms, rather overwhelming, swamping, the outnumbered occupants, all female. The attendant harpies were Mary Curly, Elizabeth MacDonald, a stout woman of uncertain temper, and Elizabeth Gray.

At first the mood was merry. A half-mutchkin of spirits (equal to half a pint) was ordered, and two shillings was paid out for it. The girls drank with them, and hoped for more. There was a bed in the room, and a sofa, and one of the men lay down on the bed. There was a spot of dalliance – Welsh saw Wilkinson with his hand around Elizabeth MacDonald – but I do not think that anything orgiastic was in view. Although some of the men were obviously comfortable in a brothel, this was just a kind of communal, naughty spree and they were quite drunk. Besides, wet blanket Johnston was still there, nurturing suspicions of the kind of house they had entered, but not seeming more anxious than the others to leave it.