Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller (53 page)

Worthing
, Ward Lock Red Guide, Eighth Edition (Revised), 1939–40

Young, Filson (ed.),
The Trial of Frederick Bywaters and Edith Thompson
, Notable British Trials, second edition 1951

Studies in Psychopathy:

Baron-Cohen, Simon,
Zero Degrees of Empathy: A New Theory of Human Cruelty
, Allen Lane, 2011

Cleckley, Hervey M.,
The Mask of Sanity
, Plume Books, 1982

Hare, Robert D.,
Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Amongst Us
, The Guildford Press, 1993

Hibbert, Christopher,
The Roots of Evil: A Social History of Crime and Punishment
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1963

Ronson, Jon,
The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
, Picador, 2011

Storr, Anthony,
Human Aggression
, Pelican Books, 1970

Fiction inspired by Heath:

Hamilton, Patrick,
Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse
, Constable, 1953

Hamilton, Patrick,
Unknown Assailant
, Constable, 1955

Hamilton, Patrick,
The West Pier
, Constable, 1951

La Berne, Arthur,
Goodbye Piccadilly, Farwell Leicester Square
, W. H. Allen, 1966

Mallanson, Todd,
Ladykiller
, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1980

Taylor, Elizabeth,
A Wreath of Roses
, Peter Davies, 1949

ENDNOTES

Foreword

1
.
Daily Mail
, 28 September 1946.

2
.
News of the World,
29 September 1946.

3
. From Detective Inspector George Henry Gates’ statement quoted in Critchley (ed.), op. cit., p. 106.

4
.
People,
15 September 1946. The paper also added that the interest of the international press ‘pales into insignificance before the morbid curiosity of women’.

5
.
Daily Express,
27 September 1945.

6
.
News Chronicle,
10 July 1945, p. 2.

7
. In his Victory broadcast on 13 May 1945, Churchill thanked all the services for the part they had played in securing victory. There was, however, no mention of Bomber Command. Bomber Harris campaigned for the rest of his life to have their achievements and sacrifices recognized. Harris commented that ‘the bomber drops things on people and people don’t like things being dropped on them, and the fighter shoots at the bomber who drops things. Therefore he is popular whereas the bomber is unpopular. It’s as easy as that’ (Bishop,
Fighter Boys,
p. xxxii). Only after years of campaigning has a monument to Bomber Command been unveiled in London in 2012, but the controversy continues.

8
. Martin,
The Flyer
, p. 152.

9
.
Holiday Camp
(1947) directed by Ken Annakin, produced by Sydney Box.

10
. The
New Statesman and Nation
expressed little surprise at the increase in violent crimes perpetrated by ex-servicemen: ‘They’ve been trained in lawlessness, ordered to behave like thugs and decorated for doing it . . . what do you expect?’, 12 January 1946.

11
. Byrne,
Borstal Boy.

12
. Brock,
The Life and Death of Neville Heath
.

13
. Letter from James Hodge to Sir Theobald Mathew, Director of Public Prosecutions, 18 May 1951, TNA DPP 2/1522.

14
. Taylor,
A Wreath of Roses
, 1949.

15
. Early in
The West Pier
, the young psychopath Ralph Gorse ties a schoolgirl to a garden roller on a cricket pitch with a skipping rope, a reference perhaps to the incident reported in the press that Heath had beaten a girl so violently with a ruler that she had to be sent home. Gorse’s malevolent adventures continue in
Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse
. The last book,
Unknown Assailant
, ends with Gorse terrorizing a young woman and tying her up: ‘He liked to tie women up in order to get the impression that they were at his mercy, and he also liked to be tied up by women and to feel that he was at theirs’ (
Unknown Assailant
, Chapter 15, p. 130).

16
. Morland, op. cit., p. 17.

17
. Aulier,
Hitchcock’s Secret Notebooks
, p. 544.

18
. Spoto,
The Dark Side of Genius: The Life of Alfred Hitchcock
, p. 496. In Hitchcock’s version Heath would be gay, obsessed with muscle magazines and, at one point, caught masturbating in bed by his mother – a classic Hitchcock anti-hero cut from the same cloth as Norman Bates.

19
. According to Fast, Hitchcock said, ‘I’ve just seen Antonioni’s
Blow Up!
These Italian directors are a century ahead of me in terms of technique! What have I been doing all this time?’ (Spoto, op. cit., p. 496).

20
. The 1971
Frenzy
was based on Arthur La Bern’s
Goodbye Piccadilly, Farewell Leicester Square
. The novel is suffused with references to Heath. Though set in the 1960s, it focuses on a penniless, divorced and disillusioned pilot, Dick Blamey DSO, DFC and Bar, falsely accused of murder in an alien London – cleaner but duller than its heyday in the war years. ‘This, he thought, is not the heart of London. It’s the anus’ (p. 27). Hitchcock goes even further in emphasizing the references to Heath in the script. At one point Hetty Porter (Billie Whitelaw) directly quotes a line that Heath had mentioned to Yvonne Symonds: ‘He must have been a sexual maniac.’

21
. UK Homicide Act (1957) Chapter 2, Part 1 (section 2: ‘Persons Suffering from Diminished Responsibility’). Quoted in Hollis,
The Homicide Act
.

22
. Orwell, ‘Decline of the English Murder’ in
Collected Essays Volume IV: In Front of Your Nose 1945–50
, p. 100, originally printed in
Tribune
, 15 February 1946.

23
. Later,
The Sunday Mirror.

24
. Orwell, ‘Raffles and Miss Blandish’,
Collected Essays
, p. 247.

25
.
Daily Mail,
28 September 1946.

26
. The National Archives of the UK (TNA): Detective Superintendent H. Lovell Dorset Constabulary, 18 July 1946, MEPO 3/2728.

27
. Byrne, op. cit., p. 144.

28
. Bixley,
The Guilty and the Innocent
, p. 112.

Prologue

1
. The outline of the events at the Strand Palace Hotel is taken from three witness statements opened to the public for the first time in 2011 in a file held at the National Archives (TNA), DPP 2/1522. These are the statements of William Luff (22 June 1946), Thomas Paul (24 June 1946) and Pauline Miriam Brees (27 July 1946). Significantly, Pauline Brees’ statement was taken a month after that of the two members of staff of the Strand Palace. Pauline was the widow of Squadron Leader Alec Brees, DFC, who had been killed in a flying accident on 23 August 1945.

2
. Benton, Benton and Wood (eds.),
Art Deco 1910–1939
, pp. 217, 239. Bernard had a huge influence on the ‘look’ of inter-war London in terms of interior design. Having originally worked as a stage designer in Britain and the United States, as well as designing the interiors for the Strand Palace Hotel, he also designed the Cumberland Hotel, the Regent Palace Hotel and the Lyons Corner Houses throughout the 1920s and thirties.

3
. Ibid., p. 238.

4
. See Allport,
Demobbed
.

5
. Thomas Paul says Armstrong was wearing underpants; Luff remembered him as being ‘completely nude’. In his subsequent attacks on women, Heath also seems to have been naked. Paul claimed that Pauline was tied with ‘a pair of braces or a tie’ and Luff remembered a belt. Pauline herself recalls a handkerchief being used to bind her, which is more consistent with Heath’s later behaviour.

6
. Many newspapers and books further embellished this moment, claiming that Heath was unable to stop beating Pauline when Luff and Paul entered the room. The
News of the World,
29 September 1946, stated: ‘Heath stood over her in maniacal frenzy and had to be forcibly restrained while [she] was set free.’ In
Crime, Punishment and Cure
, Giles Playfair and Derrick Sington suggest that ‘the hotel detectives . . . had to restrain Heath forcibly’ (p. 78). There is no evidence for this manic behaviour in Luff, Paul or Brees’ statements.

7
. In his statement on 19 July 1946, TNA HO 144/22871, having interviewed her personally, Spooner wrote that Miss Brees ‘appeared of the prostitute class’ but later revised his opinion in his overview of the case on 2 October referring to her as ‘a respectable young woman’.

8
. Pauline Brees, 27 July 1946, TNA DPP 2/1522.

9
. No professional production was playing at the theatre at the time as it played host to performances by students from RADA.

10
. Dialogue quoted from Pauline Brees, 27 July 1946, TNA DPP 2/1522.

11
. Critchley (ed.),
The Trial of Neville George Clevely Heath
, p. 169.

Chapter 1

1
. From Clement Attlee’s election victory speech 26 July 1945, quoted in Kynaston,
Austerity Britain 1945–51
, p. 76.

2
. Entry for Thursday 26 July 1945, Coward,
The Noël Coward Diaries
, p. 36.

3
. Kynaston, op. cit., p. 116.

4
.
Evening Standard,
7 June 1946.

5
. Ibid.

6
. All quotes
News of the World
, 9 June 1946.

7
. Imperial War Museum Film Archive, MGH 214, V Day, 8 June 1946.

8
. Mass Observation reports quoted in Kynaston, op. cit.,p. 115.

9
.
Bournemouth Daily Echo
, 19 June 1946.

10
. For details of the progress and challenges of rationing, see Calder,
The People’s War
, pp. 276–79 and 404–408, and Longmate,
How We Lived Then
, pp. 140–55.

11
. Quoted in Allport,
Demobbed
, p. 119.

12
. Frank Luff, Imperial War Museum Archive: No. 27267.

13
. Kynaston, op. cit., p. 118.

14
.
Daily Mail
, 1 June 1946.

15
.
Daily Express
, 24 June 1946.

Chapter 2

1
.
Daily Mirror
, 25 September 1946.