The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes (16 page)

Up to this point Wallace’s version of how he had spent the evening could only be corroborated intermittently by those strangers of whom he had happened to ask the way but from now on his story has the staunch backing of the Johnstons. He asked them if they had heard anything unusual, saying he could not understand why both doors seemed to be locked against him and he was unable to get any response to his knocking. Mr Johnston said “No” but suggested that Wallace should have another try at the back while he waited. At the door Wallace called back on a note of surprise: “It opens now” and went in to the scullery and through the kitchen where he had left Julia mending his clothes and nursing her cold by the fire. He continued straight upstairs, the Johnstons patiently and anxiously watching his movements by the lights he turned on for there had been a few burglaries recently. There was no sign of his wife so he retreated down the staircase and peeped into the front parlour which was only dimly lighted from the kitchen. He struck a match. Now indeed a shocking sight met his eyes and, his heart thumping, he lit the gas. Mrs Wallace was lying in a pool of blood. Blood had spurted on to the furniture and on to the walls. Her head was most brutally battered in and bone and brain were exposed. She was lying huddled up in front of the gas fire; it was now turned out but her skirt was scorched. Her shoulder rested against his own rolled-up raincoat which was partly burned and copiously stained with blood—as indeed was the whole room including those spurts which can only be arterial. After a few seconds of stunned horror, in the greatest agitation Wallace rushed to the back, calling and signalling to the Johnstons who followed him into the house. He showed them the pitiful body of his wife; then he showed them the kitchen-cabinet with its door wrenched off and his Insurance Company’s cashbox from which a few pounds were missing. Without touching anything in the front room they all looked distractedly for some explanation of the calamity but there was nothing to help them, not even a weapon. While Mr Johnston hastened off for the police Wallace broke down and wept, but he pulled himself together before their arrival and remained very calm through the further ordeal of replying to questions; smoking rather heavily and, it has even been said, stroking the cat upon his knee. His statement to the police was clear for he was a clearheaded man; the Johnstons supported him in everything that concerned them. There was no sign of a forced entry; both back and front doors were apt to stick it is true but Wallace said he was almost certain he had unbolted the front door in order to let the police in. He explained that normally when he went out leaving his wife alone in the house she would accompany him to the back door so that she could bolt it behind him and he would return the front way using his key. On this occasion she had said goodbye to him at the back door but he had no means of knowing whether or not she had bolted it; he only knew of his fruitless efforts with the front-door key and his eventual success soon after meeting the Johnstons at eight forty-five in pushing open the door at the back. He explained also that when he and his wife went out together they always took the contents of the cashbox with them and any personal money too but if one of them was in they did not bother. He said that he usually banked his takings for the Insurance Company on a Wednesday and that Tuesday would therefore be the most tempting day for somebody who happened to know this habit, but on this particular week, owing to the payment of benefits, he had much less in the house than other weeks so it was a very small sum that was missing. Since there would surely be some sign of breaking in had the intruder been an ordinary burglar, he could only suppose that somebody, desperate for money, knowing his habits and having watched him leave the house, had presented himself at the door as a client, and that Mrs Wallace had trustingly let him in; that she had taken him to the parlour and had prepared to light the gas fire when he struck her. There were eleven deep wounds in the skull, of which the first smashing blow alone would have caused her death; the other ten had been added with frenzied ferocity when her head was already on the floor. Wallace could then make no suggestion that might point to anyone of his acquaintance who might have conceived this project. After the statements had been taken and he had been searched and closely examined without a trace of blood being found on his person, the weary and heartbroken man was sent off in a car to spend the night at his brother’s house some distance away.

Every endeavour to find the weapon proved futile and in fact no weapon was ever found, though a poker and an iron bar which was kept in the parlour grate to clean under the gas fire were missing from the house. Outside the room in which the poor woman lay there was hardly a trace of blood; only a small clot which proved to be hers in the pan of the water-closet upstairs and a little stain on one of a sheaf of banknotes which were sticking up in a vase on the mantlepiece of the Wallace’s own bedroom. There was no blood on the staircase and none in the kitchen. The towel in the bathroom was dry and there was nothing to indicate that someone had had a recent bath.

Further investigations showed that Wallace had something over
£
150 in his personal Bank account and there was no confusion whatever in his accounts with the Prudential. Julia’s life had been insured, but for the trifling sum of
£
20, so plainly Wallace did not stand to gain financially by his wife’s death. Mrs Wallace was last seen alive at about six-thirty on the evening of Tuesday 20 January by the milk-boy making his late delivery; she had spoken to him at the front door. But milk-boys are not prone to wear wrist-watches, they go upon their whistling way taking little heed of the passing hours; some confirmation had to be sought for this testimony. A teenage girl, delivering newspapers at No. 27, estimated that it was nearer twenty-to-seven than half-past-six that she had seen the milkboy at the adjoining house. When the police surgeon examined the body of Mrs Wallace at ten o’clock that night he judged the time of death to have been approximately four hours earlier. This could not be so, as she had been seen alive at or after six-thirty but it did establish that her death must have taken place either immediately before or immediately after Wallace set off on his expedition to Menlove Gardens East. The telephone call of the Monday evening taken by Mr Beattie the captain of the Chess Club, which decoyed Wallace from his house on the night of the attack, was traced to a public call-box a bare four hundred yards from the house in the direction of the City Café for which he was bound. Mr Qualtrough could not be found, but the telephone operator and the chess captain were unanimous in that the caller had a strong gruff voice, and Mr Beattie asserted that with no stretch of the imagination could he say that it was like that of Wallace whose voice he knew well. True, Wallace could have made the call at that time and place on his way to the Club—but so could someone watching to see him go out, someone who particularly did not want to speak to him directly in case his voice were recognized. Such a person could have watched again the next night till he saw that Wallace had taken the bait and was safely out of the way on his wild goose chase; he could have knocked at the door, and obtained entry under pretence of business, and been taken to the parlour to await Wallace’s return without arousing any suspicion. Perhaps he had no intention of anything beyond rifling the cashbox. Why then did he do murder? And if he did, how did he first contrive to get into Wallace’s mackintosh which ordinarily hung in the little hall and which had obviously received a drenching spray of blood from the first blow? And why should he take away the weapon and embarrass himself with the disposal of it when he had only to wipe it off on the mackintosh and leave it where he had found it? If he were desperate for money and the yield had been so disappointingly small, why did he not take the bank-notes from the bedroom mantelpiece?—he must have known they were there for her blood was on one of them. Though he could not expect that Wallace would be away the whole of two hours, from six forty-five to eight forty-five, he would have known that he had ample time to do what had to be done, especially if robbery alone was his intention. Even if he had meant to kill there was time for everything, for he had at least an hour to devote to it before his host could make the return journey. When Mrs Wallace fell against the gas-fire, as seems probable, and her clothing caught fire, he could have slipped the mackintosh off and drawn her clear with it and beaten out the flames, before with mounting urgency he bolted the front door, broke open the cashbox, and made his way out through the back entry. The great question was, who could this hypothetical assailant be? The game did not appear to be worth the candle for any common burglar, who could just as easily have overpowered the frail little woman and got away with clean hands. Wallace was doing everything he could to help the police but nothing in his or his wife’s history accounted for an implacable enemy who might wish to bring utter desolation on them. He had originally given no indication of any personal or mutual acquaintance who might have been admitted by Mrs Wallace in all good faith, but a day or two later he produced quite a list of people, for the most part employees or ex-employees of the Prudential whom he knew to be in financial difficulties with the Company and who might have thought of this desperate way of putting their affairs in order. Somehow it was not convincing that anybody in that position should go to such lengths. Wallace also interrogated the captain of the Chess Club minutely on the matter of the telephone message, saying: “The police have cleared me”. As he had not been treated in any way as a suspect the police thought this odd of him.

It is a sad reflection on marriage that where a wife has been violently killed her husband is ordinarily the first to be suspected, but in this case there was no discoverable motive of any kind and such an act was entirely contrary to his nature and interests. Moreover, if Wallace were the murderer he must have acted with astonishing speed to achieve it between the milk-boy’s visit and his own departure. The gap was narrow and he must have struck with frantic eagerness almost before the milk-boy’s footsteps had receded along the pavement so as to get everything done and be on his way. From seven ten when he boarded the tram till eight forty-five when he met the Johnstons at the back entry every moment was vouched for, and not alone by casual passers-by who might not be reliable even if found, but by officials whose evidence could be checked and counter-checked by time-tables all along his route. Even his half-reluctant purpose to go across Liverpool discussed the night before could be vouched for, and by nearly every member of the Club who attended on the Monday. If Wallace were the murderer then this elaborate excursion of his must be nothing but a prefabricated smokescreen to hide the preceding
mauvais quart d’heure
; he must have known exactly what he meant to do all the time he sat winning his competition game of chess. If Wallace was the murderer then Wallace was Qualtrough. It remained to be seen whether the reverse could be proved, but on 2 February Wallace was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. He denied it then and always. He was eventually committed to take his trial at the Liverpool Assizes and the trial took place on Wednesday 22 April 1931 and occupied the three succeeding days.

The little grey house in Wolverton Street may have been dull enough but at the Liverpool Assizes there was a panoply of grandeur. That excellent judge Mr Justice Wright, later Lord Justice Wright, presided. Mr E.G. Hemmerde, K C, Recorder of Liverpool and as deadly a man as the Crown could have, took charge of the prosecution. Mr Roland Oliver, K C, then a very able Counsel and now an extremely good judge, threw himself heart and soul into the defence.

Witness followed witness. The Johnstons, simple, honest people, described Mr and Mrs Wallace as a happy and very loving couple; they had never heard any quarrelling from the house next door—but then there are people who never make a noise in any circumstances. The captain of the Chess Club, no doubt occupied by more complicated things such as the Knight’s move, was unable to be more precise about the time of the telephone call but testified that the voice speaking in the name of Mr Qualtrough and the voice of Wallace were not in the least similar—but naturally Wallace would not have been such a fool as to speak in his normal voice. According to the prosecution witnesses Wallace had from half-past-six until nearly seven o’clock in which to accomplish the work—the defence narrowed it to a little over five minutes. The tram-conductors, the policeman, the lady at No. 25 Menlove Gardens West, the manageress of the newsagent, all confirmed the peregrinations that had occupied two full hours of Wallace’s time—but while this was in complete accordance with the defence it also supported the theory that it was all part of a deep-laid scheme to establish an alibi. Gradually the case began to assume the unique character for which it is famous; it was not so much that the weight of the evidence swung evenly from one side to the other, it was that the entire evidence pointed equally convincingly in both directions. The police surgeon who was called for the prosecution, an experienced witness, transparently honest and objective, was finally driven by Mr Oliver to give evidence which directly supported the defence; he was compelled to agree that he would expect the assailant of Mrs Wallace to have been saturated with blood to an extent that would make it necessary for him to take a bath or such a thorough wash as Wallace had not time for. His contention too that the blows were struck in a state of maniacal frenzy, while it accounted for the lack of motive, was hard to correlate with the premeditated strategy employed. A woman who from time to time acted as a cleaner in the Wallace’s house, and was asked by the prosecution to see if there was anything missing from there, reported that the kitchen poker and the iron bar that had been kept under the gas fire in the front room had both disappeared—whoever the murderer might be this unaccountable removal would have caused him unnecessary risk.