The Ability to Kill (3 page)

Is the ability to kill, then, only an extension of the ability to steal? In a sense, it would seem to be; but only in a very special sense. By no means all premeditated murders of the kind we are discussing are committed by persons with criminal histories. Before he became a murderer, Seddon was a hardworking insurance manager; Armstrong was a solicitor, Vaquier a skilled mechanic. Yet, between the mind of the murderer and the mind of the thief there is a discernible relationship. With all of us, death, money and aggression begin as
elements of the same oral-anal fantasy system. Sometimes, however, the primitive, infantile valencies persist, more or less unmodified, as part of the adult ego-formation. Generally, given even a small measure of adjustment, the resultant conflicts constitute no more than a misfortune, in terms of neurosis, for the person concerned; but, in some cases, neurotic solutions will not answer, and some infantile components are accommodated without modification.

The danger inherent in such a personality structure is that of regression. Whether that process begins or not is decided by time and circumstances; but if it does begin it almost always continues. Murder is not the inevitable outcome; it may never be necessary; but it becomes, in the end, within the bounds of possibility. An American psychiatrist, Paul Schilder, has written: ‘The child’s idea of death is essentially deprivation. It is ready to believe that this deprivation, like any other, is reversible.’ And of those who kill, he says: ‘They are not more concerned about their own death than children are. It almost seems that these “normal murderers,” who are not otherwise so badly adapted to their reality, show particular infantile trends in their reaction to life and death. One may say that they kill because they do not appreciate the deprivation they inflict upon others.’

Steal or be stolen from; kill or be killed.

To apply, as lawyers and prison governors so often do in their memoirs, the words ‘callous’ and ‘cold-blooded’ to men like Smith and Haigh and Seddon, is as absurd as to complain that a youth with an intelligence quotient of fifty is unable to grasp the principles of the calculus. Their kind of emotional incapacity cannot be related to any normal feeling situation.

Not many murderers make full and frank written confessions. Haigh’s were certainly full, but they were made in order to lay the groundwork for a plea of insanity. Although they tell
us a lot about what he did, or wanted us to believe he did, they tell us almost nothing of his thought processes. For anyone who wishes to catch a glimpse of what it is like to have the ability to kill, the confession of Alfred Arthur Rouse, written when he had resigned himself to death on the gallows
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is more revealing.

He was born in London in 1894. His father kept a hosiery shop in Herne Hill; his mother was Irish. When he was six the parents’ marriage broke up and thereafter he was raised by an aunt. There is evidence to suggest that the separation from his mother had a profound effect on his development. However, that did not become apparent until much later. He did well at the council school, and after he left to take a job as an office boy, he attended evening classes. When war broke out in 1914, he immediately enlisted in the army. The following March he was sent to France. Two months later, at Givenchy, he was wounded by a shell-burst in the head and leg. After a year in various hospitals, he was invalided out of the army with a disability pension which continued until 1920. At the periodical medical inspections which he underwent over that period, he complained of dizziness and loss of memory arising from the head wound, and insomnia due to the constant reliving of the horror of a bayonet charge in which he had been involved. He also had difficulty in flexing the leg. The latter disability persisted and the medical report of 1919 attributed it to neurosis, at that time an imprecise term the meaning of which depended on the doctor who employed it. It could have been used to convey a sour hint that ex-Private Rouse might be malingering in order to retain his pension. There was no suggestion then, nor later, that the head wound had caused any organic damage to the brain.

In retrospect, and with some knowledge of his social behaviour from then on as a guide, it seems likely that the process of regression had already begun.

Before going to France he had married a St Albans girl. Nevertheless, during the few weeks he was overseas he managed to seduce a French girl of respectable family and make her pregnant. The child was born and he was later obliged to contribute to its upkeep. It was to be the first of many. Mrs Rouse proved to be an amazingly good-natured woman. No doubt her own inability to have children contributed to her tolerance of her husband’s ceaseless efforts to get them by other women; but it was still remarkable. Of course, she could not have known all that went on; but she certainly knew more than enough. She must have loved him very much.

After his discharge from the army he went to work as a commercial traveller. He was a good-looking man and a persuasive talker. Soon, he was doing well and his earnings rose rapidly. Before long he was able to buy a car in which to cover his sales territory in the south of England. In the course of his work he would spend several days at a time away from his London home. He wasted not a moment of them. In her introduction to the Rouse volume in the ‘Notable British Trials’ series, Miss Helena Normanton said that the seductions of nearly eighty women were attributed to him. Most of them were chambermaids or shop assistants or waitresses—those who would be accessible to a smart chap with an officer-like toothbrush moustache (he claimed to have been a major) and a car. He used to tell them, smiling into their eyes, about his beautiful Irish mother. For the most part, however, these were not casual, one-evening relationships. There was nothing ordinary about Rouse’s promiscuity.

In 1920 he seduced a fifteen-year-old servant girl, and a child was later born in a home for unmarried mothers. After a
few weeks it died. Rouse tried again, and again the girl became pregnant; whereupon he insisted on marrying her (bigamously, of course, although she did not know that at the time) and setting up house in Islington. The second child, a son, lived. Rouse was a doting father. Unfortunately, he accumulated so many other paternal responsibilities over the years that eventually the boy’s mother was obliged to sue for maintenance. That was in 1929. The long-suffering Mrs Rouse had a meeting with the mother and offered to take the boy to live with her. Rouse approved warmly and the offer was accepted. The bigamous marriage was forgotten.

No doubt Mrs Rouse believed that the new arrangement would have a stabilising effect on her husband. After all, this—
his
child in
their
home—was what he had always said he wanted. She did not realise that she was no longer dealing with a reclaimable man; nor did she know the extent of his difficulties. By this time, he had made at least two more bigamous marriages, and had, besides, so many illegitimate children scattered about the country that his income, substantial though it was, was insufficient even to meet the maintenance obligations he had incurred by court orders. He had never disputed paternity, and had always tried to do his best for both women and children. There were just too many of them.

The crisis came the following year.

In the spring, he seduced a young Welsh nurse, a probationer in a London hospital. This was a mistake. Hitherto, he had had no trouble dealing with outraged fathers or avenging brothers; it is not hard to elude the economically impotent. He now discovered, however, that this girl’s father was a colliery owner of some importance. When she became pregnant, it seemed prudent to let her write to her father and tell him that she had also become Mrs Rouse. The pair then went to Wales so that Rouse could meet the family. The family
accepted philosophically what they thought to be the situation, and it was arranged that the daughter should stay with them until the new house, which Rouse said he had just bought for her, was ready for occupation. That would be early in November.

It was then June. He returned to London a worried man. He had managed to lie his way out of an awkward situation; but he knew that the relief was only temporary. To add to his troubles, another of his women, who had already borne him one child, was expecting again. That would mean more maintenance to pay. And then there was the one in Southampton, the one in Birmingham, the one in Leicester—the list was endless. If he did not keep the promises he had made in Wales and the angry colliery owner started an investigation, anything might happen.

He had been jolted, probably for the first time, into some sort of recognition of his total predicament. As he began to cast about for ways of getting out of it, the regressive process accelerated.

That same month he read in a newspaper of an unsolved murder case. It set him thinking—from now on we can use some of his own words—’It showed that it was possible to beat the police if you were careful enough.’

He goes on: ‘Since I read about that case I kept thinking of various plans. I tried to hit on something new. I did not want to do murder just for the sake of it.’

Naturally not; but what murder had he in mind at that point? He was, as he explained, ‘in a tangle’; and, ‘there were other difficulties … I was fed up. I wanted to start afresh.’ Then, why did he not do as so many others have done; simply run away from the whole mess; just go abroad and disappear?

His confession gives no coherent answer, only the glassy stare of a decision made. In order to be re-born he had to die;
or, rather, someone else had to die in his place. He had hit on something new. He would steal a life.

Early in November, he picked up an itinerant down-and-out in a public house near his home in Finchley.

‘He was the sort of man no one would miss, and I thought he would suit the plan I had in mind. I worked out the whole thing in my mind and … realised that I should do it on November 5th, which was Bonfire Night, when a fire could not be noticed so much.… When I said that I intended to go to Leicester on the Wednesday night he said he would be glad of a lift up there. This was what I thought he would say.’

On the Wednesday night, the two met at the public house as planned. Rouse bought the man a beer, and a bottle of whisky for the journey. He himself drank only lemonade. They set out.

‘During the journey the man drank the whisky neat from the bottle, and was getting quite fuzzled.’

By two in the morning they were on the outskirts of Northampton.

‘I turned into the Hardingstone Lane because it was quiet and near a main road, where I could get a lift from a lorry afterwards. I pulled the car up. The man was half-dozing—the effect of the whisky. I looked at him and then gripped him by the throat with my right hand. I pressed his head against the back of the seat. He slid down, his hat falling off. I saw he had a bald patch on the crown of his head. He just gurgled. I pressed his throat hard. My grip is very strong … people have always said that I have a terrific grip. He did not resist. It was all very sudden. The man did not realise what was happening. I pushed his face back. After making a peculiar noise, the man was silent and I thought he was dead or unconscious.’ Rouse then got out of the car, poured a can of petrol over the man, loosened a petrol pipe, took the top off the carburettor and put a match to the whole thing. As the flames roared up, he ran.

Two young men returning home from a dance saw him a moment or two later on the road. One of them asked him what the blaze was. ‘It looks as if somebody has got a bonfire up there,’ was the reply.

But the unexpected encounter had disconcerted him. After it, he seemed to lose his head. Instead of going into hiding for a time, and then ‘starting afresh’ as he had planned, he went to visit the colliery owner’s daughter in Wales. To her, of course, he was known by his real name. When he saw it published in the newspapers in connection with the burning car case—the car registration plates had not burned—he left hastily for London and a hiding place. But it was too late. He was known to be alive. Within twenty-four hours he was trying to explain to the police that it had all been an accident. He did not convince them. Four months later he was hanged.

The identity of the dead man was never established. Rouse, so fond of his many children, was not even mildly interested in the person he had murdered. His confession ends with a paragraph which reads like an afterthought prompted by a question.

‘I am not able to give any more help regarding the man who was burnt in the car. I never asked him his name. There was no reason why I should do so.’

There is a petulant note to it. It recalls G. J. Smith’s surly observation on being reproached for a similar want of feeling: ‘When they’re dead, they’re done with.’

A Wimpole Street doctor tells me that a strikingly high proportion of his Rolls-Royce-owning patients are privately convinced that if ever they were to lose all their money and be compelled to work with their hands, they could immediately become perfect butlers. He calls it the ‘Crichton’ fantasy.

Most of us, of course, enjoy Mitty-like moments in which we see ourselves triumphantly employing skills—conducting symphony orchestras, cooking cheese soufflés—which we do not in fact possess. Usually, as with the Rolls-Royce owner, the skill in question is safely divorced from the dreamer’s true abilities. There may be, and probably is, an underlying psychological relationship between the two; but it is unlikely that the dream of glory is ever going to be challenged by the reality of a practical test.

In the case of some writers, however, that danger does exist. Most susceptible are those with no experience of newspaper work. They are prone to special fantasies. Of these, the ‘W. H. Russell,’ which takes the dreamer off as a war correspondent, is currently dangerous only if the dreamer speaks an African or South East Asian language. The ‘Rebecca West,’ however, is a different matter.