August 1889. Stratford-on-Avon was not crowded with jostling tourists from all over the world, nor was there a Midlands coach tour tick-list including Oxford, Bourton on the Water and Warwick Castle. It was altogether a much quieter town than it is today, but awareness of its greatest son had yet to draw in visitors from America, Japan and countless other countries determined to “do” Shakespeare. Elizabeth Freeman was a widow, and she offered rooms to rent in her riverside cottage on the Tiddington Road. When, on the afternoon of Thursday 15th August, an impeccably dressed foreign gentleman, accompanied by his wife and daughter, asked for rooms, she was only too pleased to oblige. A newspaper, retrospectively, described the visitors:
“It would seem that on Thursday last a German gentleman who gave his name as J. Lachmann von Gamsenfels arrived from London and engaged lodgings at a small cottage occupied by a widow named Freeman overlooking the river Avon river on the Tiddington road.
The gentleman who, it has transpired, was the editor of a German newspaper published in London as the Londoner Journal was accompanied by a lady, whom he said was his wife and by their child, a little girl of four or five years of age. Apparently he was a man in a good position and well dressed, wearing a black frock coat and a silk hat. His wife and child were also tastefully dressed, the lady being a particularly fine handsome woman
They appeared to be on the best of terms with each other and were quite cheerful in disposition. Mrs Gamsenfels looked like an actress or professional singer and subsequently in conversation Mrs Gamsenfels herself confirmed that surmise, stating that she was connected with the stage and had last year “got up” concerts in the Isle of Man and other places.”
On Friday morning, Mr Gamsenfels and his companion and child went out for a walk, but before doing so he paid Mrs Freeman’s bill, as he said he was not quite sure whether they would return. However, they did return in the evening, and Mr Gamsenfels announced that they had determined to stay in Stratford a few days longer. There were then no signs of any quarrel having taken place, and they were quite cheerful and talkative, the two conversing chiefly in German. Mrs Freeman observed that the lady was much more sociable than her husband, who appeared to be somewhat reserved.
That the party were short of money, however, had become apparent. Mrs Freeman had remarked upon the small quantity of provisions consumed, and further proof was given on Saturday night by the fact, that when Mrs Freeman fetched a loaf at the request of Mrs Gamsenfels, the latter had no money to pay for it, and they wanted nothing for tea beyond a few biscuits and some Hungarian wine, two bottles of which they had brought with them.
On Sunday again they went out, morning and afternoon, and on returning in the evening, they all had nothing for tea except some Hungarian wine, and after a light supper they retired bed, apparently in good spirits and temper. On Monday morning, however, about half-past eight o’clock, while Mrs Freeman was preparing breakfast, she was startled by hearing two gun shots fired in rapid succession in the bed room occupied by her lodgers She went to the foot the staircase and called out,
” What’s the matter ; what are you doing ?”
Receiving no reply, she became alarmed, and ran to the neighbour next door, a Mr Jones, who was sitting at breakfast with his family. It was probably while she was out that the third shot was fired. the one which killed the man himself – but Mrs Freeman only heard two. She told Mr Jones what she feared, and he immediately ran for the police, whilst his son was despatched for a doctor. Police Sergeant Northam and Police-Constable Price were quickly on the spot, and receiving no response to their inquiries at the bed room door they forced an entrance.
IN PART TWO:
‘A FEARFUL TRAGEDY PRESENTED ITSELF”
ALVESTON CHURCHYARD
AN ENDURING MYSTERY
SO FAR: On the evening of 10th/11th May 1902, Foxlydiate couple Samuel and Hannah Middleton had been having a protracted and violent argument. At 3.30 am the alarm was given that their cottage was on fire. When the police were eventually able to enter what was left of the cottage there was little left of Hannah Middleton (left, in a newspaper likeness) but a charred corpse. Samuel Middleton was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife. The coroner’s inquest heard that one of the technical problems was that Hannah Middleton’s body had been so destroyed by the fire that a proper examination was impossible.
Samuel Middleton was sent for trial at the summer assizes in Worcester. Assize courts were normally held three or four times a year in the county towns around the country, and were presided over by a senior judge. These courts were were for the more serious crimes which could not be dealt with my local magistrate courts. At the end of June, Samuel Middleton stood before Mr Justice Wright (left) and the proceedings were relatively short. The only fragile straw Middleton’s defence barristers could cling to was the lesser charge of manslaughter. Middleton had repeatedly said, in various versions, that his wife had clung to him with the intention of doing him harm – “She would have bit me to pieces, so I had to finish her.” It was clear to both judge and jury, however, that Middleton had battered his wife over the head with a poker, and then set fire to the cottage in an attempt to hide the evidence. Mr Justice Wright delivered the inevitable verdict with due solemnity.
In Simon Mason’s A Killing In November we met Oxford DI Ryan Wilkins, and the book ended with his dismissal from the force for disciplinary reasons. In this book he is still in Oxford, but working as a security guard/general dogsbody at a van hire firm. His former partner, also named Wilkins, but Ray of that ilk, is now heading up the team that was once Ryan’s responsibility, and it is they who are tasked with investigating the abduction of a little girl from her nursery school.
I am sorry, but that is not how I see this book. Yes, it is set in and around Oxford, but apart from The Broken Afternoon being every bit as good a read as, say, The Silence of Nicholas Quinn or The Remorseful Day, that’s where the resemblance ends. Mason’s book, while perhaps not being Noir in a Derek Raymond or Ted Lewis way, is full of dark undertones, bleak litter strewn public spaces, and the very real capacity for the police to get things badly, badly wrong. Simon Mason (right) has created coppers who certainly don’t spend melancholy evenings gazing into pints of real ale and then sit home alone listening to Mozart while sipping a decent single malt.
Dr Augusta Bloom is a psychologist who specialises in the criminal mind. Her business partner is Marcus Jameson, a former British intelligence agent. Bloom is often employed by the police as a consultant when a particular case demands her particular skill-set. The killers Bloom is requested to track down have struck twice, leaving only burnt matches as a clue. I use the plural ‘killers’ advisedly, as we know they are a team, but Bloom and the police have yet to discover this.
Augusta Bloom is an interesting creation. She is a loner, and not someone who finds personal relationships easy, not with Marcus Jameson nor with her notional boss, DCI Mirza, who is deeply sceptical about Bloom’s insights. When the police finally join all the dots, they realise that rather than two killings, there have probably been as many as eleven, which ramps up the pressure on Bloom and Jameson. Leona Deakin, (right) as one might expect from a professional psychologist, has constructed an complex relationship between Bloom, Walker and Jameson. As readers, we are not spoon-fed any moral certainties about the trio. Rather, we infer that their boundaries are, perhaps, elastic. As John Huston (as Noah Cross) said in Chinatown:
fullybooked2017 