The Wicked Boy (5 page)

‘She is out,' replied Fox.

Emily pressed him: ‘I am her sister-in-law and I want to know where she has gone to.'

Fox replied that Mrs Coombes had gone to her sister's in Liverpool, for a holiday.

Emily observed that it was funny that her sister-in-law had not mentioned this to her, at which Fox pushed the door shut. She and Mrs Burrage were turning away to leave when they saw Robert and Nattie running towards them. The boys had been playing in the park. Nattie stopped at the gate but Robert came forward to greet his aunt. Emily asked him where his Ma was.

‘She has gone to Liverpool, auntie,' he replied. ‘A rich aunt has died and left us a lot of money and all that I know is that we are rich.' Then Robert started back towards the recreation ground.

Aunt Emily remarked to Mrs Burrage that it was unkind of her sister-in-law to go away without mentioning it to her. Robert reappeared with some other boys and called to Nattie, who ran after him. Aunt Emily and Mrs Burrage gave up and made their way home.

That evening, a girl from Cave Road called on Aunt Emily at her house in Boleyn Road, East Ham. The girl said that she had been sent by her mother, who had noticed an unpleasant smell at number 35 and did not think that all was right.

There was no running water
when Robert and Nattie got home from the park. At 5 p.m. the East London Water Company had shut off West Ham's supply without warning; the reserves were so low that the company had decided to open its taps for only two and a half hours a day. East London slowly became suffused with the smell of unflushed drains.

As the polling deadline of 8 p.m.
approached, boisterous crowds assembled near the public hall at the southern end of the Barking Road, hooting and cheering the last men to cast their votes for West Ham South's MP. In the course of the evening the crowd moved north to Stratford to hear the borough's results,
along roads lit by gas lamps
, past the glowing lanterns of the pubs and the wild flares of the oil lamps on the costermongers' stalls. By 11 p.m. about 20,000 people had congregated outside the ornate town hall on Stratford Broadway, bringing the traffic to a standstill. When a tram tried to drive through, the crowd scattered, some people running into the front line of constables who had been sent to keep order. The policemen retaliated with punches, while the mounted patrols rode their horses into the mass of men and women. Rather than fight back, the residents of West Ham launched into a rendition of ‘Rule Britannia', singing out that ‘Britons never, never, never shall be slaves'.

At midnight, the candidates for West Ham South and West Ham North appeared on the balcony of the town hall for the reading of the results. It was announced that the Tory contender for West Ham South, Major Banes, had secured 4,750 votes to Labour's 3,975: he had beaten Keir Hardie, the dockers' champion. The Liberal incumbent for West Ham North had also been ousted from his seat by the Conservative challenger.

Keir Hardie made his way back to Canning Town to thank his supporters, thousands of whom had gathered outside the Labour Party's central committee room in the Barking Road. ‘Tomorrow,' he told them, ‘when the news reaches a hundred thousand workmen's homes, there will be a feeling as if something has gone out of their lives.' Yet he urged his supporters not to lose heart: they would win through one day. ‘Good night, lads!' he said. Many of the men in the street broke down in tears.

The local publicans celebrated the Tory win with a triumphant display of fireworks and coloured lights.

3

I WILL TELL YOU THE TRUTH

As the milkman left his delivery on the doorstep of 35 Cave Road early in the morning of Wednesday 17 July, he noticed a particularly horrid smell emanating from the building. He informed the neighbours, who again sent word to the boys' aunt in Boleyn Road.

Aunt Emily turned up at 35 Cave Road at 9 a.m. No one answered when she knocked, so she collected Mary Jane Burrage from her home in New City Road, on the other side of the Barking Road, and at 10 a.m. they once more tried Emily Coombes's front door. Since there was still no reply, the two women decided to call on Robert and Nattie's grandmother in Bow, west of Plaistow, to see if she knew what was going on.

The seventy-four-year-old Mary Coombes lived on the edge of Bow Cemetery in a two-up, two-down terraced house almost identical to the homes of her elder sons in Plaistow. She shared the house with her unmarried son, Frederick, and her widowed daughter, Ann. She also owned several properties in Limehouse that had been left to her by her husband upon his death in 1882. Aunt Emily asked her if she knew the whereabouts of her other daughter-in-law Emily, whom they had ‘lost'. The older Mrs Coombes said that she had no idea where she was. Emily assured her that they would find the missing woman that day.

Mary Jane Burrage sent a telegram to Mary Macy, the older sister of Robert and Nattie's mother, and that same morning received in reply a telegram from Liverpool stating that Emily was not there. Robert and Nattie's uncle Nathaniel tried the Cave Road house himself, then went to look for the boys in the recreation ground. He could not find them.

At 1.20 p.m., Aunt Emily and Mary Jane Burrage banged again at the door of 35 Cave Road. Mrs Burrage had brought along her youngest son, James, a boy of Robert's age. At first there was no reply, but at their second knock Robert opened the door. Emily pushed past him, followed by the Burrages, and marched through to the back of the house. Robert, Nattie and Fox had been playing cards – Nattie scrambled them up when he saw his aunt. He rose to his feet but Fox stayed in his chair, smoking a pipe. A strong smell of tobacco permeated the room.

Emily asked Robert where his Ma was.

‘She is with Mrs Cooper,' Robert said. ‘I will take you to see her.'

‘No,' said Emily. ‘Your Ma is in this house, and I won't go away until a policeman comes.'

‘All right,' said Robert.

On hearing his aunt's warning, Nattie climbed out of the back parlour window and ran for the market gardens beyond the yard.

Emily asked Robert whether she could go into his mother's room.

‘No,' he said. ‘It is locked.'

She asked him where the key was, and he replied that he did not know.

‘All right,' she said. ‘I will burst open the door.'

Mrs Burrage said to Robert: ‘Your mother is lying dead in that room upstairs.'

‘No, she isn't, Mrs Burrage,' said Robert. ‘She's in Liverpool.'

‘I don't believe it,' said Mrs Burrage.

She and Aunt Emily went upstairs, but when they tried to force the door found that it would not give. They sent someone to fetch a spare key from the landlady. The key was brought, and Aunt Emily opened the door to the bedroom. There she saw the form of a woman, lying on the bed, the face covered by a sheet and a pillow. Overcome by the smell of rotting flesh, she drew back and sent Mary Jane Burrage and her son to find a policeman.

Now that the bedroom door was open, the stench spread swiftly through the house. At 1.30 p.m. Harriet Hayward, of 39 Cave Road, approached the front door and bent to peer through the frosted glass panels to see if she could spy the boys in the passage. She was startled by the smell issuing from the letter box. The day was becoming intensely hot. A black cloud of blowflies hovered at the upstairs windows. Mrs Hayward hurried away to fetch Mrs Robertson from number 37. ‘Come and have a smell,' she urged her.

The Burrages found Constable Robert Twort in Greengate Street, a block away from Cave Road. A single man of twenty-four, Twort lived as well as worked at the Barking Road police depot. He was dressed in a high-collared dark navy woollen tunic with his number on the collar (686K), high-waisted fishtail trousers and a domed helmet. He carried a truncheon, a pen and notebook and a whistle. Twort went straight to the house with the Burrages. Aunt Emily showed him upstairs.

In the front bedroom, PC Twort turned down the sheet and lifted the pillow to reveal a woman's body, severely decomposed and swarming with maggots. He saw a knife on the bed and a truncheon on the floor. He sent word to the police station, asking for an inspector and the divisional surgeon to come to the house at once.

Aunt Emily approached the bed and looked at her sister-in-law's body, but the face was so disfigured that she could not recognise her. She returned to the back parlour, where Robert was standing by the window. Fox was sitting on a chair between the door and the dresser.

‘You are a bad, wicked boy,' she told Robert. ‘You knew your Ma was dead in the room and you ought to have told me.'

‘Auntie,' he replied. ‘Come to me and I will tell you the truth and tell you all about it.'

His aunt went towards him.

‘Ma gave Nattie a hiding on Saturday for stealing some food,' said Robert, ‘and she said, “I will give you one too.” Nattie said: “I will stab her. No, I can't do it, Bob, but will you do it? When I cough twice, you do it.” I did do it.'

Emily asked him if his mother was awake at the time.

‘Yes,' he said. ‘She was lying with a hand over her face.'

‘Did your Ma cry?'

‘She did not cry nor speak. I covered her up and afterwards went away to Lord's cricket ground.'

Emily asked at what time he had killed his mother.

‘About a quarter to four on the Monday morning,' said Robert, ‘a week ago. I slept with Ma that night and I kicked about a great deal, and she punched me. Nattie was in his room. I did it by myself.'

She asked how he had killed her.

‘I got out of bed and I stabbed her,' said Robert. ‘Nattie was in the back room, and coughed twice, and that was when I done it, when Nattie coughed. I did it with a knife, and it is on the bed.'

Mrs Hayward of 39 Cave Road had by now come in to number 35, taken a quick look at the corpse on the bed upstairs and then joined the party in the back parlour. She addressed John Fox.

‘What, you John!' Mrs Hayward said. ‘You have been here all this time. Didn't you know what was going on?'

‘No, missus,' he replied. ‘I know nothing about it. The boys fetched me from the ship.'

Robert said: ‘No, Mrs Hayward. John knows nothing about it. I did it.'

‘You bad boy,' said Harriet Hayward.

Aunt Emily asked him the whereabouts of his father's gold watch.

‘I have pawned it,' said Robert. ‘I got Fox to do it. I'll give you the ticket.' He took the pawn tickets from a bookshelf on the parlour wall and was about to hand them to her when Twort came into the room. On discovering a murder, a policeman was meant to keep close watch on the body until relieved by another officer, but Twort had found the smell so overpowering that he had remained upstairs for only five minutes.

Aunt Emily told the constable that her nephew had been making a confession to her. Twort cautioned Robert and then asked him to repeat what he had told his aunt. As Robert spoke, Twort took notes in his book.

‘I did it,' Robert began. ‘My brother Nattie got a hiding for stealing some food, and Ma was going to give me one. So Nattie said that he would stab her, but as he could not do it himself he asked me to do it. He said, “When I cough twice, you do it.” He coughed twice, and I did it. I am sorry that I did it. I did it with a knife, which I left on the bed. I covered her up and left her.'

Twort asked where Nattie was. ‘I think he has gone to Woolwich,' said Robert, ‘as we were going there this afternoon.' Woolwich was across the Thames from the Victoria and Albert docks, a short ride on a free ferry.

Twort turned to John Fox and asked what he was doing in the house. Fox said that he had been there since Wednesday. He added: ‘I do not know nothing what has taken place.'

At 2 p.m., Police Sergeant Henry Baulch, a married man of thirty, also from the Barking Road station, knocked at the door of 35 Cave Road. Mrs Hayward let him in as she left the house. Aunt Emily and Twort met him in the passage and took him through to the back parlour.

Robert repeated his confession to the sergeant: ‘My brother, Nattie, said he would kill mother, as she had given him a hiding for stealing food. He then asked me to do it. Nattie then said, “When I cough twice, you stab mother with the knife”, which I did. We then went to a cricket match at Lord's and have slept in the house ever since.' Robert gave Baulch four pawnbrokers' duplicates: those for the watches and the mandolin, and another for an item that his mother had pawned before her death.

‘I took the property,' Robert told him, ‘and gave it to Fox to pledge.'

‘Yes,' Fox said, ‘Robert gave it to me and I pawned it.' Twort told Fox that he must accompany him to the station. He led him away.

Baulch stayed in the house with Robert until the police surgeon, Alfred Kennedy, showed up at about 3 p.m. When Dr Kennedy went upstairs to examine the body, Baulch took Robert to the police station at 386 Barking Road.

Meanwhile, other constables were hunting for Nattie. At five o'clock he was found on Tunmarsh Lane, a route to the Plaistow marshes only minutes from his home. PC George Hardy asked him: ‘Is your name Coombes?'

‘Yes,' said Nattie. ‘I didn't kill my mother. It was my brother who did it when I was in bed.'

‘You will have to come with me to the station,' said Hardy.

At the police station, Detective Inspector George Mellish charged Robert Allen Coombes and Nathaniel George Coombes with murder, and John Fox with being an accessory after the fact. Fox was very nervous, jerking his head, looking round him wildly. The boys were calm and said nothing. They were all locked in cells.

Mellish, forty-five, was a member of Scotland Yard's Criminal Investigation Department, and had worked for fifteen years for the K division, which covered West Ham and Limehouse. He lived north of Plaistow with his wife and eight children. At 5.15 p.m., he left the police station with Inspector George Gilbert, of the Barking Road branch, to survey the crime scene at 35 Cave Road.