murder

THREE WEEKS-BLACK CAP-ROPE-HANGED BY THE NECK-FINISHED . . . The murder of Annie Coulbeck, Caistor 1919 (2)

SO FAR: Caistor, North Lincolnshire, October 1919. William Wright (39), a former soldier, is now working in a sawmill in nearby Moortown. He has a reputation as a ne’er-do-well and sometime vagrant, with a long criminal record. He has been in a relationship with Annie Coulbeck, (34). She is carrying his child.

Annie, who lives in a cottage at Pigeon Spring on Horsemarket. has been working as a nanny, looking after the children of Mrs Plummer. On the morning of Wednesday 29th October, Annie has not turned up for work, so Mrs Plummer sends one of her children to Annie’s cottage to see if she was unwell.

Annie Coulbeck had been strangled, and had been dead for some hours, and it goes without saying that her unborn child – some seven months in her womb – had shared its mother’s fate. At the coroner’s inquest, the doctor gave his report:

It was no secret that Annie Coulbeck and William Wright were lovers, and when police visited him at his home in South Dale, Caistor, his admission was astonishingly matter-of-fact:

“Last night, a little after 10 o’clock, I left the Talbot public house. I had a lot of drink and went down to Annie Coulbecks house. I asked her where she had got the brooch from which she was wearing. She said it was her mothers. I told her I did not think it was. I told her I thought it was one of her fancy men’s. She said, “I’m sure it is not, Bill.” I told her I would finish her if she did not tell me whose it was. I strangled her with my hands and left her dead. I put the lamp out and went home.”

The Talbot in Caistor (above) is no longer a pub, but if its walls could talk, they might bear witness to a chilling conversation William Wright had with a fellow drinker, a local chimney sweep.

The umbilical cord is often used as a metaphor for two things being inextricably joined, but it also has a presence in the British legal system, particularly in the case of murdered babies. Criminal history, particularly back in the day, is full of young women being tried for murder after they have killed an unwanted new-born baby. For it to be murder, it has to be established that the infant had an independent existence, and it is clear that the child Annie Coulbeck was carrying had no such thing. However, in my book, William Wright was as guilty of murdering that child – his child – as he was of killing its mother.

Wright, in his drunken estimation that it would take just three weeks from the death of Annie Coulbeck to his appointment on the gallows, was as ignorant of the legal system as he was of the way decent human beings should behave. The law took its rather ponderous course, and after the Coroner’s Inquest and then Magistrate Court, William Wright finally appeared at Lincoln Assizes, before Mr Justice Horridge (left) on Monday 2nd February 1920. It was a perfunctory affair. Wright’s defence lawyers, as they were bound to do, came up with the only possible plea – that Wright was insane. They cited his war experience, and the fact that members of his family had been committed to institutions. Neither judge nor jury were impressed and, as Wright had predicted, hunched over his beer in The Talbot, the judge donned the Black Cap. An appeal was lodged, but failed.

Throughout the legal process, Wright had shown not one iota of remorse, nor did he betray any concern about what awaited him.

Wright was executed at Lincoln Castle on 10th March 1920. He had refused the ministrations of the prison chaplain, and the last face he would have focused on before the hood was placed over his head and he dropped to his death was the grim visage of executioner Thomas Pierrepoint (right), uncle of the more celebrated hangman Albert Pierrepoint, subject of the excellent film (2005) featuring Timothy Spall as the man who hanged, among others, Ruth Ellis and dozens of Nazi war criminals. The corpses of executed criminals at Lincoln Castle were interred in a little graveyard situated on the Lucy Tower. If ever a soul deserved to rot in hell, it is that of William Wright.

FOR MORE HISTORIC MURDERS IN LINCOLNSHIRE
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November 27, 2023 0

THREE WEEKS-BLACK CAP-ROPE-HANGED BY THE NECK-FINISHED . . . The murder of Annie Coulbeck, Caistor 1919 (1)

There is an aphorism attributed to George Orwell which goes:

“We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.“

It echoes Rudyard Kipling’s famous poem, ‘Tommy”, where he says:

“For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an` Chuck him out, the brute! ”
But it’s ” Saviour of ‘is country ” when the guns begin to shoot”

In a nutshell, we want our soldiers to be savages when they face the enemy, but except them to revert to civilised and urbane when they walk our peaceful streets, far away from conflict.

This prelude is in no way an excuse for the murder of a woman in the Lincolnshire village of Caistor in the autumn of 1919, but it points to the problems that some former soldiers have when they leave the world of government-endorsed killing, and walk again down peacetime streets.

William Wright was certainly not from an impoverished or brutal background. He was born in 1880, and the 1881 census shows that he was the youngest of three children to Charles Wright, a tailor, and his wife Jamima. He worked for his father for a while in his teens but it is recorded that he joined the army in 1898, and fought in the Boer War. Peacetime clearly didn’t suit him, as between 1907 to 1914 he received 32 convictions, mostly for theft, vagrancy and drunkenness.

1914 came, and with it the chance to turn whatever demons plagued him in the direction of the Boche. His military record was to be no better than his civilian one, however, as In 1916 he was sentenced to death for striking his superior officer. The sentence was commuted to one of five years penal servitude and then further reduced to two years hard labour.

The army was clearly glad to be rid of Wright, and when he returned to Caistor in 1918, he struck up a relationship with Annie Coulbeck. We know relatively little of Annie. We know that she was 34 at the time of her death, was probably born in the nearby village of Stallingborough, and some sources suggest that she was simple minded. More pertinent to this story is that she had the misfortune to meet William Wright, and was pregnant with his child. In October 1919, her daily employment was to look after the children of a Mrs Plummer at her cottage near Pigeon Spring on Caistor’s Horsemarket. The picture below dates from 1908.

This is an extract from a short video about the Horsemarket, and is well worth watching, as it places Pigeon Spring on the photograph.

On the afternoon of 28th October 1919, William Wright came to visit Annie Coulbeck at Pigeon Spring. On the morning of the 29th, Annie Coulbeck had not arrived to look after the children, so Mrs Plumer sent one of her daughters to see if Annie had slept in. What the child found sent shock waves through the peaceful rural community.

TO FOLLOW
A DREADFUL DISCOVERY
AN INNOCENT BROOCH
A SMILING PRISONER
MORE WORK FOR MR PIERREPOINT

November 26, 2023 0

THE MURDER OF ROSA ARMSTRONG . . . Sutton in Ashfield 1924 (1)

Rosa Armstrong was born in 1915, the daughter of Frederick Armstrong and his wife Maria. Her father died just three years later, but her mother remarried – to Edward Buttery – in 1920. June 1924 saw them living at 78 Alfreton Road, Sutton in Ashfield. Nine year-old Rosa attended the Huthwaite Road Council School, just ten minutes’ walk away along Douglas Road. Rosa’s older sister, Ethel (31), had not been lucky in her marriages. She had married William Parnham in August 1912, but on 18th June 1916, he died of wounds in France. Ethel married again, to Edward Mordan, a year later. An Edward Mordan is recorded as being killed in September 1918. At some point after the war, Ethel married again, to Arthur Simms, a miner, and in 1924 they were living in Phoenix Street, Sutton in Ashfield.

At this point, it is worth mentioning that Arthur Simms was reported as having served in the army – in both India and France – during the Great War, and that he had been taken prisoner by the Germans. He was born in 1899, so – unless he had lied about his age – the earliest he could have entered the war was 1917. Keep this in the back of your mind, because I will return to it later.

I am fairly ancient, and when I was at school, lunchtimes were long enough to allow children to go home for lunch. In the 1950s and 1960s, with just a few exceptions, I always walked or cycled home for lunch. Rosa Armstrong’s journey was less than a mile, and on Friday 27th June, she came home for lunch as usual, and as she prepared to go back to school, she asked her mother for sixpence to pay for her school photograph. Her mother, Maria, said that she would come to the school herself and pay for the photograph. Rosa never made it back to school for the afternoon’s lessons.

Fulwood no longer exists as a separate place, but back in the day it had its own identity as a small community south-west of Sutton and south of what is now the A38. In 1924, there was a sweet shop. Its owner was later to testify.

When Rosa didn’t return home at the end of the afternoon, her mother was horrified to learn that Rosa hadn’t said “Yes, Sir” at afternoon registration. Deeply worried, she tried asking everywhere, even making it to the home of her daughter Ethel, but she drew blanks everywhere.

Police Constable Cheeseman was bored, tired and foot-sore, as he did his nocturnal rounds in Mansfield, four miles or so up the road from Rosa’s home. At 2.00 am, the early hours of 29th June, he was leaning against a wall in the Market Place, thinking about bed, supper, and sleep, when he was startled to see a young man, apparently sober, making his way towards him. The newspapers later carried this report:

PC Cheeseman recounted the story of how Simms gave himself up to him in Mansfield Market Place in the early hours of the morning. As he was standing at the bottom of Stockwell Gate, he said he saw the prisoner approaching from the direction of Sutton The man came up to him and said,
“Policeman, I want to give myself up.” He asked what for and Simms replied,
“For murder. It’s my wife’s little sister at Sutton. I have done it at Sutton this afternoon.”
The constable took him to the police station and there said,
“Do you realise the seriousness of your statement?” Simms replied,
“Yes, I do.”
“When I next cautioned him that anything he said would be used as evidence against him,” continued PC Cheeseman. Simms said,
“You will find her under the hedge in the second field of mowing grass near Saint Marks Church Fulwood. I strangled her with my hands. I will put it on paper if you like.”

IN PART TWO

A HORRIFYING DISCOVERY
A FUNERAL
RETRIBUTION
AN UNSOLVED MYSTERY

November 18, 2023 0

MURDER ON THE CHRISTMAS EXPRESS . . . Between the covers

Alexandra Benedict (left) has confected a seasonal version of the traditional locked room mystery. Our locked room is actually a train, heading from Euston to Fort William just a few hours before the big day, but forced to stop in the middle of nowhere because of deep snow. Former Metropolitan Police copper Roz Parker is heading north on the train, not particularly for Christmas, but to be with her daughter who is about to give birth.

Her immediate fellow passengers are not people she would have chosen to be her traveling companions. There is Meg, a brittle, vacuous, Instagram-joined-at-birth, reality TV star and ‘influencer’, who live streams every moment of her life to her adoring followers. She was my odds on favourite to be bumped off, even before the Amazon publicity page for the book confirmed that it was she whose demise Roz would be investigating. Her boyfriend, Grant, is what they used to call ‘a nasty piece of work.’ By complete contrast we have Sally and Phil. Sally is stressed, jealous, and the mum-of-four, while husband Phil is a devoted dad and former teacher of Meg, the soon-to-be victim of the unknown killer.

Benedict sets out her list of suspects in the traditional way. Beck is a rather self-obsessed student and a passionate pub quizzer, while red parka-wearing Ember is an unhappy woman in her thirties with a dark past. A train steward, nicknamed ‘Beefy’, appears avuncular and honest, but it turns out he had a fixation with Meg – as did the mysterious Iain, who has no ticket for the the journey, therefore is keen not to be discovered by Beefy. He has gone one further than Beefy’s doe-eyed worship of Meg, and has stalked her to the extent of having a restraining order slapped on him. How about Craig, who Roz has taken a shine to? But he works for the Crown Prosecution Service so, surely, it can’t be him, can it?

The mechanics of ‘whodunnits’ are not particularly complex for writers, but for readers (who don’t cheat and skip to the last chapter) things can be be more complex. In this case, do we say that it couldn’t be Grant, because that would be too obvious? Or, do we think that the author is double bluffing us, and that it is the self-centred narcissist after all? It couldn’t be Phil, could it? Or did something happen back in the day when Meg was his pupil?

Needless to say, Roz Parker has to put aside her anxieties about her soon-to-be grandchild, and find out who killed Meg, a woman who may have been the most insubstantial of role-models, but was still a human being who deserves justice. Murder on the Christmas Express casts a sardonic eye over the way we live now, throwing in a conception-by-sperm donor for Roz’s daughter, and a sapiosexual love affair (look it up – I had to) while retaining its connection to the skillfully plotted murder mysteries of The Golden Age. For good measure, the author throws in some additional quiz attractions such as embedding the titles of Kate Bush songs in the narrative, and sprinkling some anagrams of her favourite poems and stories within the text. This entertaining novel is published by Simon and Schuster and is available now.

November 9, 2023 0

THE CHRISTMAS APPEAL . . . Between the covers

Janice Hallett (left) invites us to return to the idyllic village of Lower Lockwood, where her book The Appeal (2021) was set. Then, law students Charlotte Holroyd and Femi Hassan solved a particularly nasty murder but, goodness me, murder seems to haunt Lower Lockwood rather as it does the unfortunate community of Midsomer, and so they are back again when another corpse is found, threatening the production of the annual village panto. Was ever a production of Jack and The Beanstalk so fraught with difficulties?

Our two sleuths (now fully qualified) spend little time on their hands and knees with magnifying glasses looking for minute physical traces which may betray the assailant; rather, they sit in front of their smartphones, perusing emails, WhatsApp messages, texts and other communications floating around in the digital ether. The clues are all there and, unlike the ancient trope of detectives trying to read messages from letters hastily burnt in fireplaces, these words can never be totally erased.

This novella is inventively set up with little or no conventional narrative and makes extensive use of graphics representing WhatsApp messages (above) and emails which are now known as ’round-robins’. Being an old pedant, I have to say that this is a misuse of the expression, as the dictionary says:

The term has come to be used to describe emails cc-d to multiple recipients, and those awful little printed slips inside Christmas cards telling friends (not for much longer, if I get them) all the wonderful things that have been happening to the sender’s family since the last Christmas card. Janice Hallett, by the way, makes fun of these dreadful things from the word go.

But I digress. You will either love the set up of the story, or hate it. I enjoyed it while it lasted – just 187 pages – but I suspect it wouldn’t work in a longer book.

The story begins when Charlotte and Femi receive a massive folder (all digital of course) of evidence from their former mentor, Roderick Tanner KC. The folder contains transcriptions of police interviews and copies of all communications between those involved when a long-dead body in a Santa Suit was found hidden in a giant beanstalk prop – made mostly of wood, papier–mâché and, heaven forfend, possible traces of asbestos. The beanstalk was constructed years previously for a production of the play, and so this is the coldest of cold cases. The mystery is solved as Charlotte and Femi pick up the hints from the emails, texts and messages, but along the way, Janice Hallett takes the you-know-what out of some of the more insufferable pretensions in modern society (below).

The Christmas Appeal initially deceives as it seems to wear a cloak embroidered with ‘Cosy Crime’, but this is soon shed in favour of some rather sharp satire. It has wit, charm and flair and is published by Viper. It is available now.

November 9, 2023 0

BRAT FARRAR . . . Between the covers

I imagine that anyone who calls themselves a crime fiction fan will have read Josephine Tey’s The Daughter of Time (1951) which, justifiably, regularly takes its place in the charts whenever anyone produces a list of the top crime novels ever written. I had vaguely heard of her earlier novel Brat Farrar (1949), but until I was sent a copy – by Penguin – as one of their reissued ‘Green’ classics, I had never got round to reading it. Within the first few ages I knew I was in for a treat, at least in terms of style and humour, when I read these lines:

“At this same table had eaten Ashbys who had died of fever in India, of wounds in the Crimea, of starvation in Queensland, of typhoid at the Cape, and of cirrhosis of the liver in the Straits settlements.”

“‘What became of cousin Walter?
‘Oh, he died.’
‘In an odour of sanctity?’
‘No. Carbolic. A workhouse ward, I think.'”

Rather like TDOT, the plot idea of Brat Farrar is very clever, if rather more complex. In the un-named English county where Tey sets the story, there are two neighbouring families, both formerly rather grand. In Clare House the Ledinghams “had been prodigal of their talents and their riches”. Now, the family has more or less destroyed itself and Clare is now a boarding school. The Ashbys still live at Latchetts. The male heir (the parents had been killed in an air crash) was Patrick, but he mysteriously disappeared, believed to have committed suicide by drowning, and now his marginally younger twin brother Simon stands to inherit the family fortunes when he comes of age. A member of the Ledingham family, a struggling actor called Alec Loding, has fortuitously spotted a young man – Brat Farrar – who is the living image of the late Patrick Ashby. He grooms him, and persuades him to assume Patrick’s persona, and reappear on the scene (with a plausible explanation for the false suicide) and claim the Ashby inheritance. Loding’s terms are simple:

“All I want is a cosy little weekly allowance for the rest of my life, so that I can thumb my nose at Equity, and management, and producers who say that I’m always late for rehearsal. And landladies.”

Yes, of course the plot is breathtaking in its implausibility, but that it its design – to make us gasp, and also entertain us with dazzling use of language and sharp social observation. It is also escapist in the best possible way, and for readers in the impoverished and dour times of post-war Britain, a glimpse of a different world. Perhaps a world that, even then, no longer existed, but a world away from austerity flavoured with NHS orange juice and dried milk.

Brat Farrar is an ingenious invention. He is an orphan, and even his name is the result of administrative errors and poor spelling. He has been around the world trying to earn a living in such exotic locations as New Mexico, but has ended up in London, virtually penniless and becomes an easy mark for a chancer like Alec Loding. He is initially reluctant to take art in the scheme, but with Loding’s meticulous coaching – and his own uncanny resemblance to the late Patrick – he convinces the Ashbys that he is the real thing. But – and it is a very large ‘but’ – Brat senses that Simon Ashby has his doubts, and they soon reach a disturbing kind of equanimity. Each knows the truth about the other, but dare not say. The author’s solution to the conundrum is elegant, and the endgame is both gripping and has a sense of natural justice about it.

Josephine Tey was one of the pseudonyms of Elizabeth MacKintosh (1896-1952) Her play, Richard of Bordeaux (written as Gordon Daviot) was celebrated in its day, and was produced by – and starred – John Gielgud. She never married, but a dear friend – perhaps an early romantic attachment – was killed on the Somme in 1916. She remained an enigma – even to friends who thought themselves close – throughout her life. Her funeral was reported thus:

“A small party of mourners, including Gielgud and the actress Dame Edith Evans, gathered at Streatham crematorium in South London on a cold, dreary day to say their farewells. “We talked to Gordon’s sister, whom we were all meeting for the first time,” *Caroline Ramsden recorded, “and she told us that Gordon had only come south from Scotland about a fortnight before, when she had stayed at her Club in Cavendish Square, on her way through London. What she did or thought about during that period was her own affair, never to be shared with anyone…. All her close friends were within easy reach, but she made no contacts—left no messages.”

*Writer, sculptor and racehorse owner, Caroline Ramsden was one of the oldest residents of London’s Primrose Hill ‘village’. Her abiding passions were horse racing and the theatre. Her memoirs encompass over 60 years of English social and cultural life, being a font of pleasure and information not only for racing and theatre enthusiasts, but for anyone who simply enjoys a glimpse of the past.

Brat Farrar is a wonderful book which simply does not date, despite the very different world in which we live. Tey’s prose is often sublime:

“She turned in at on the south porch of the church and found the great oak door still unlocked. The light of the sunset flooded the grey vault with warmth and the whole building held peace as a cup holds water.”

This edition is part of Penguin’s reissue of their ‘Green’ Modern Classics and is available now.

October 26, 2023 0

DEATH AT HOLMES FARM . . . A double murder in 1931 (2)

SO FAR: On the morning of 3rd October 1931, in their isolated farmhouse near Waddingham, Annie Priscilla Jackling (left) is found dead in her bed, while on the floor nearby is her husband Robert, grievously wounded. Both have been shot at close range with a twelve bore shotgun. Their child Maurice is unharmed, but standing in in his cot, crying for his mother. The couple’s nephew, sixteen year-old Harold Smith, who lived and worked on the farm, is missing.

Harold Smith’s escape from the scene was hardly a thing of drama. Taking Robert Jackling’s bicycle, he had made it as far as Wrawby, just north of Brigg, when he was arrested, just hours after the grim discovery at Holmes Farm. Superintendent Dolby from Brigg knew that the case, which became a double murder when Robert Jackling died in Lincoln Hospital, offered only three sensible scenarios. First, that this was a murder suicide, Jackling having shot his wife and then turned the gun on himself. Second, that the pair had been shot by an unknown assailant and, third, that the killer was Harold Smith.

Smith made a detailed statement quite soon after his arrest. It implied that he had been brooding for some time over his treatment by Robert Jackling, and had been contemplating taking action. At Smith’s trial at Lincoln Assizes in November, this was reported:

At his trial, Smith resolutely denied having anything at all to do with the murders, and only admitted to hearing gunshots in the night, and subsequently removing the shotgun from the bedroom, and placing it downstairs. He said that he fled the scene, fearing that he would be blamed. Neither Mr Justice Mackinnon (right) nor the jury were having any of this, and he was found guilty and sentenced to death, although the jury made a recommendation that mercy be shown. Invariably, judges had little option but to don the black cap when the charge remained as murder, with no suggestion of the defendant being insane. As there had been no-one hanged at the age of sixteen for decades, it was almost inevitable that the Home Secretary would order a reprieve, and Harold Smith was spared the attentions of the hangman. To me, from a distance of over ninety years, it seems that Harold Smith was guilty of cold blooded murder. The words in his original statement are chilling:

“I stood by the doorway of the bedroom for some minutes, deciding whether to do it or not. At last I touched the trigger.”

There was a long feature article in Thompson’s Weekly News after the reprieve, purportedly written by Smith’s mother. Thompson’s Weekly news was published in Dundee, and the parent company were also proud parents of The Beano. There is little to choose between Mrs Smith’s reported outpourings some of the more unlikely adventures of the Bash Street Kids and Dennis the Menace.

I don’t apportion any blame to Mrs Smith. She clearly was delighted that her son would not be hanged, and being a poor woman,the newspaper’s money would have been welcome, but the article is clearly the work of one of the newspaper’s more inventive hacks and, under the sub-heading reproduced above, contains such comments as:

“Harold was looking exceptionally well, but I noticed that the tears were not far from his eyes. Indeed, l am sure he would have broken down if we had not had our friend with us, Even then, if we had not turned the conversation round to the happy days he had spent on the farm after leaving school, he would not have managed to keep a stiff upper lip.”

“I could not take in what was happening. My poor boy sentenced to die by the hangman’s rope! Oh no! Surely there was some mistake.”

The 1939 register shows that Harold Smith was in Maidstone Prison. We also know that he was released on licence in June 1941, slightly less than ten years since the brutal killing for which was adjudged responsible. He was still younger than either of his victims. He died at the age of 78 in January 1998, in Crewe. The last surviving witness to the tragedy was the child who stood in his cot as the dreadful event took place. Maurice Jackling died in 2003, also at the age of 78.

We know that Holmes Farm was still occupied in 1939, because Harry Dickinson, who farmed there, was the victim of pig-rustling by a couple of his workers. The property was advertised as a vacant possession in April 1945, but I believe it was derelict and had been pulled down by 1950, as in 1952 a property known as New Holmes Farm, built just down the lane, was advertised as “an excellent modern farmhouse and range of buildings, both erected since the war.”

I would like to thank Mick Lake for help with researching this case.

I have been researching and writing about historic Lincolnshire murders for some years,and those wishing to find out more about our county’s macabre past should click this link.

October 22, 2023 0

DEATH AT HOLMES FARM . . . A double murder in 1931 (1)

Lincolnshire is England’s second largest county, and its landscape reflects that in its diversity. In the ‘Deep South’, fen and marsh prevail. Drive north from Boston on the A16, though, and as you near East Keal, the southern edge of the Wolds makes a dramatic appearance. From then on, until you reach Louth, the steep valleys and chalk hills provide some of the most dramatic scenery in England. Our story here, though, takes us to the north-west of the county where, in a pleasing symmetry, the land flattens out around Brigg and Gainsborough, and it is among these sometimes bleak fields that the story begins, near the village of Waddingham.

Nothing is visible of Holmes Farm today to anyone other than an archaeologist with ground penetrating radar. Holmes Farm is marked as Waddingham Holmes on old maps, and a visitor in 1931 would have found a lonely 19th century farmhouse. In October of that year, the residents were Robert James Jackling – a tenant farmer – his wife Annie (left), their infant son Maurice, and a sixteen year-old boy called Harold Smith, whose mother was Robert Jackling’s half-brother. Harold was born in 1915, in Scawby, just a couple of miles from Brigg. He was described as a big lad, perhaps not overly bright, and destined for the most laborious kind of farm work. It was later alleged that the relationship between Harold and Robert were strained due to Harold’s inability to complete jobs to his uncle’s satisfaction.

Families in the neighbourhood were very close-knit. William Jackling, Robert’s father, was another farmer, and on the morning of 3rd October he paid a visit to his son and daughter in law. The events of that day were to become national news. The Aberdeen Press and Journal reported:

“Mr Jacklin, senior, who lives at Waddingham, visited the farm early in the morning, and found the place locked up. Forcing an entrance to the kitchen, he saw apparent evidence of an attempt to set the house on fire. The room was full of smoke, and a rug and some straw were burning and smouldering on the floor. He rushed upstairs to his son’s bedroom, and found his daughter-in-law lying in bed shot through the mouth. His son had received a charge of shot in the side of the face, but was still alive. .Besides the bed was a cot containing the couple’s eighteen-month-old baby son, who was crying and calling for ‘Mamma’.”

Annie was beyond help, but Robert was still alive, and it looked as if he had perhaps crawled to the window to shout for help. William Jackling raised the alarm, but with the farm being in such an isolated position, the emergency services took some time to arrive. While Robert was taken to Lincoln County hospital, Superintendent Dolby of Brigg took charge of the scene, and the first question raised by the distraught William Jackling was, “Where is Harold Smith?”

It can have been little comfort to anyone involved, but Annie had obviously died instantly, most likely without even waking up. Robert – who was to die two days later – had suffered grievously. The inquest reported:

TO FOLLOW
The search for Harold Smith
Trial
Was justice done?
Aftermath

October 21, 2023 0

CLASSICS REVISITED . . . Maigret’s Revolver

Perhaps there’s a PhD to be written on the character of Madame Maigret, and none of the TV or film versions have made much of her, but here, at least for a while, she takes centre stage, in rather an unfortunate fashion. A young man, terribly nervous and ill-at-ease, arrives at their apartment, 132 Boulevard Richard Lenoir, asking to speak to the great man. Perhaps because he seems shy and inoffensive, she lets him in to wait while she finishes cooking lunch. A little while later, she breaks with their normal convention and telephones her husband at work. Hesitantly, she explains what has happened and, shamefaced, saying that the young man has now left, but she believes he has taken a revolver – presented to Maigret by the FBI – some years earlier. The revolver may seem to be ceremonial, as it is engraved with Maigret’s name, but it is far from a museum piece. It is a Smith and Wesson .45 and a very powerful agent of death in the wrong hands.

In what appears to be a separate strand of the plot, we learn that the Maigrets have recently dined with a long-standing friend, Dr Pardon, and that another guest – Lagrange – who was apparently very anxious to meet the celebrated policeman, failed to show up. When they visit Lagrange at his home, they find a man who appears to be extremely ill. Pardon confides in Maigret that Lagrange is something of a problem patient. Bedridden though he may appear to be, it transpires that he had enough strength to hire a taxi late the previous evening and, with the driver’s help, convey a heavy trunk to the left luggage office of the Gare du Nord. There is a very satisfying ‘click-clunk’ when it emerges that the young man who took Maigret’s revolver is none other than Alain, the sick man’s son. And in the trunk? A dead body, naturally, and it is that of André Delteil, a prominent – and controversial – politician, shot dead with a small calibre handgun.

Lagrange, when questioned, descends into a state of paranoia and behaves like a feverish child. Maigret cannot decide if this is genuine, or an attempt to defer the inevitable investigation into the corpse in the trunk. Playing safe, he sends the man to hospital. But what links the murdered politician, the babbling Lagrange – and his fugitive son? Simenon comes up with a very elegant – and deadly – connection in the shape of a wealthy socialite called Jeanne Debul who collects rich men like some people collect stamps. He uncovers a deeply unpleasant melange of blackmail, obsession and greed and concludes that Alain Lagrange is convinced that his father’s downfall can be laid at the door of Madame Debul. And he is at large, with Maigret’s revolver and a box of recently bought ammunition.

Maigret is not best pleased to learn that Jeanne Debul has flown to London, followed – on the next flight – by Alain Lagrange. It’s a rotten job, but someone has to do it, and Maigret follows the socialite and her would-be assassin to London, where he books into the same hotel as Madame Debul – The Savoy, no less. Helped – and hindered – by his Scotland Yard counterparts, our man awaits the collision of hunter and hunted, and this section of the story is a delightful flourish by Simenon where, via his great creation, he describes every little irritation and frustration that an urbane Frenchman could possibly encounter in the buttoned-up world of 1950s London.

As ever with Simenon, this story is a masterpiece of brevity – just 150 pages – and where lesser writers might take a page or more to describe a person, an atmosphere or a situation, he does the job in a paragraph. This edition of Maigret’s Revolver (first published in 1952), translated by Siân Reynolds, is one of the new Penguin Modern Classics and will be available on 5^th October

October 3, 2023 0