Classic Scottish Murder Stories (12 page)

Inspectors called. The Yale lock on the front door was intact. Asked if there were a ‘likely' weapon in the house, Bertie ingenuously mentioned a heavy coal hammer, and it was found in a kitchen cupboard, clean and dry, when it would have been expected to be covered in coal dust – unless Bertie were an exceptionally obsessional housekeeper. It was a 2lb engineer's hammer with a short wooden shaft and a double metal head.

Bertie's shoes, very wet, were found on the cross-bars below the table. He was now wearing boots, a waterproof, and a cap. It was a very rainy night, and the day could have been just as wet. The assumption was that the shoes, like the hammer, had been washed. His suit was discordant; he was wearing his black jacket and his brown trousers, but he could have been in the habit of mixing his clothes for variety of effect.

His neighbour, Mrs Watt, corroborated Bertie's account that Robert Willox had come home at 6.00pm. It appeared that he had been attacked very soon after entering the apartment, because he had not taken off his boots, and two daily papers, both unopened, and his spectacles, were still in the pockets of his overcoat, which was hanging up in the lobby. Only 2 ½d. was found on the corpse, and the lining of both trouser-pockets was bloodstained as if entered by an incarnadined hand. Blood had spattered all over the lobby and kitchen. The fire had gone out,
but the grate was still warm. The sink looked clean. A damp towel hung from a nail, and a very wet dishcloth was folded up on the side of the sink.

A leaf torn from a scribbling-pad on the dresser bore confirmation of the ingredients of supper (and a general Monday replenishment): ‘Monday. Bone, Vegetables, ¼ stone potatoes, 1½ pints milk, ½ dozen eggs, 1lb. b.b. [boiling beef]'.

Professor Glaister, who held the chair of Forensic Medicine at Glasgow University, and Dr Campbell, casualty surgeon, arrived at midnight and examined the body and surroundings by the light of torches. At a subsequent post-mortem, the most important findings were that the hammer fitted the wounds, and that the stomach was entirely empty. No supper. There was no rigor mortis (but there had been a fire in the kitchen).

Bertie's several statements to the police were, in composite, that when he left home between 6.30 and 6.45pm, his father was sitting down polishing the buttons on his uniform tunic (which he was wearing when found). Bertie had had supper waiting for him – soup, rice-pudding, and a drink of milk, not tea, which he did not take in the evening, even on Sundays. There was no sign of rice-pudding, nor a glass of milk on the table, the lack of which would support his first story that, he Bertie, had washed up the supper things. If Dada had consumed only soup, not beef, that would nicely explain the uncut ‘joint', even smaller after cooking, which, theoretically, could have been intended for a later occasion, and had been left out to cool. He could have taken only a little soup, because the pot was full up to 1¼ inches from the top.

When his father came in that evening, he took off his coat and cap and himself hung them on the peg in the lobby. It was his habit to leave his keys dangling from his pocket-chain until he had hung up his coat, and then he put them in his pocket. (Significantly, however, the bunch of keys was found still attached to a trouser-button by a chain, lying on the floor behind the body – as if death had pre-empted the set routine.)
Bertie
did not know
who set the table as it was found (lame, this): probably it was his father, whose nightly custom it was to do so for the early breakfast next morning. (But he had already said that he, Bertie, had laid the table.)

Once out of the house and into the cooling rain, Bertie's movements round and about the neighbourhood were multiple and were well attested to by direct evidence. Accompanied by a ‘pal', James Turner, aged 19, whom he had known since their schooldays, met by chance in Grove Street at, said Turner, 6.30pm, he played billiards at Sinclair's rooms at St George's Cross. Angus Duff, the manager, said that Bertie Willox played there nearly every night. (So Dada did not impose a curfew on Cinderella once duty had been done.) Bertie Willox and James Turner played there that night from 6.35 to 7.05pm and those precise times were marked out on the play sheet for Monday, November 4th. Bertie played under a strong light and was perfectly composed, with a steady hand and unwavering eye.

Further information which narrowed down the crucial times, lasting from 6.00pm until Bertie left the house, was provided by Isabella McKinney, who said that he was in the shop in Grove Street at which she worked, buying a packet of cigarettes at 6.25pm. Several other people encountered the two pals on their way to billiards. They tried, but did not succeed, to get free passes to the Empress Picture House, and Turner said that they had no money. He denied asking one Felix Carey to change him a pound, which Carey said that he saw – a green £1 note.

Moving on, Bertie had some debts to pay. He was still accompanied by Turner, who later denied it. Rain-drenched, he called on Mrs Margaret Duffy at No. 532 St George's Road, and gave her three £1 notes, a half-crown and one shilling. She gave him back sixpence for himself. The sum represented loans for shifty transactions such as redeeming a pledge on his father's war medals. Next, at about 7.15pm, he called on Denis Daly, of No. 91 Hopehill Road, salesman with the Household Supplies
Company, and squared an old account for £2. 14s. lld., tendering and receiving change for a £5 note. He claimed that Dada had provided the cash that evening, specifying that Bertie was to pay the two creditors forthwith and ‘get them off the map'. If the money was earmarked, then the two pals footloose in the street really did have no money to speak of. Bertie said that after paying the debts he was left with a few shillings for food shopping.

The wet, dismal evening was still not over, and at 7.30pm Bertie called at No. 490 St George's Road, where there lived a very good friend, Alfonso Jacovelli, who possessed the additional attraction of a real, working gramophone, which they played with for a time. Alfonso, aged 21, was married – Bertie had been his best man – and had known Bertie intimately for eight years. He knew all about Bertie's chronic impecuniosity since his mother's death, and his habit of pledging even Mother's rings, the aforesaid war medals, and the very bed sheets of the household. Sometimes he loaned him small sums.

It so happened that on the actual day of the murder, Alfonso had called on Cinderella at No. 79 Grove Street, between 1.00 and 2.00pm and, out of kindness, had invited him to spend the evening with him at St George's Road, to arrive at 7.30pm. Alfonso noticed that the Willox' table was set as for a meal. He was not an expected visitor, and this was no
mise-en-scène
for his benefit. There were two plates with a small piece of (unspecified) pudding on them, and some cold meat ‘on the bunker' (the slab beside the sink). There was a pot on the gas range. Roughead wonders
en passant
why the table was ‘thus spread and furnished between 1 and 2pm for a meal to be consumed at 6?' We can but surmise. The cold meat could have been Bertie's lunch. Roughead would not have known that boiling beef is notoriously tough and has to be simmered for hours. Most people prefer rice-pudding, hot, but it is not obligatory! A ‘piece' does not sound like rice-pudding, but if
stodgy enough it might qualify. A quantity might have been left over from Sunday. We cannot expect perfect culinary standards or timing from a boy of 20. He could well have made advance preparations on the principle of getting hated chores done. Two puddings would certainly indicate that Bertie was expecting to feed his father and was not premeditating an act which would deprive Dada of his pudding. It seems most unlikely that he was going to offer the pudding as a delicacy to another pal. Bertie complained to Alfonso that he was hard-up.

That evening at Alfonso's, Bertie said that he would not stay too long because he was tired and wanted to go to bed. (And tired he looks, in the
Weekly News
photograph taken the day after the murder.) ‘He was quite cheery; some moments he was quiet' – as Alfonso had seen him often enough before.
He was wearing his brown trousers with his black jacket but between 1pm and 2pm he had been wearing his full brown suit.
Alfonso saw a small leather ‘case' sticking out of Bertie's waistcoat pocket, and made a grab for it, just for fun, but was foiled. After a couple of hours, Alfonso accompanied his friend home as far as the corner of Grove and Scotia Streets, where they parted, said Alfonso, at 9.30pm. It was never seriously mooted that Bertie committed the murder and cleared up in the spare ten minutes before he alerted the neighbours, but, as if he wished to block any such potential suggestion, Bertie said that he looked into Meehan's shop before going home and spoke to Margaret Maguire (the assistant) who smiled but made no reply. She herself denied this incident. Up the stairs, then, he went, Bertie's statements concluded, to make the ghastly discovery.

A constable took him to an old friend, Mrs Smith, at No. 5 Canal Street, to spend the first night after the murder. The next day, Detective Inspector Stewart sat him down in the police office and asked him to show what money he had. Bertie produced 2s. 11d. He said that he absolutely did not know what money his father had had, because (a telling detail) he always doled it out to him in a secretive way, turning his back on his
son. The Inspector then noticed – for yet again there was no attempt at concealment – a small leather wallet sticking out of the lad's waistcoat, which, on examination, revealed four £1 notes and four pawn-tickets. Bertie's explanation was that the £4 was payment from the
Weekly News
for an interview earlier that day, for a photograph of his father, and for allowing himself to be photographed (in preparation for which occasion he had gone to Thomas Duff, a barber, for a haircut, shampoo and shave). And, sure enough, J R M Christie, a staff reporter was able to confirm that he
had
paid over £3, not £4, and he actually identified those three notes found in the wallet. The spare £1 was suspiciously unaccounted for, and another small matter troubled the Inspector: Bertie was denying that he had paid Daly the debt owing with a £5 note even when Daly was brought to confront him. ‘No,' said Bertie, ‘I paid him three single pound notes.'

There were too many discrepancies and a dreadful deed seemed to dwell behind his candid, worried eyes. They arrested Bertie Willox and confiscated all his clothing for blood testing. The results were not strongly evidential of his guilt, considering that Professor Glaister counted 29 bloodstains upon the kitchen door alone. He found three small blood spots on the shirt worn presumably at the relevant time but he later admitted that they were probably ‘exaggerated flea-bites'. On the brown jacket, brown waistcoat and brown trousers there were a few stains ‘faintly positive of mammalian blood', and signs of washing by rubbing with a wet cloth. The wallet and all four £1 notes were completely free from bloodstains. The hammer, however, did show traces of mammalian blood. The damp towel and dishcloth were not tested.

At the fiercely contested five-day trial begun on December 16th 1929, and held in the North Court, Glasgow, Bertie Willox did not give evidence on his own behalf, which was, no doubt, a wise decision, since he had already shown a tendency to weakness. A previously mooted plea of insanity had been
abandoned after an examination by a team of alienists. A great deal of importance was attached to the evidence of Mrs Florence Watt, the next-door neighbour, supported by her husband, William, and a caller named Harrington (a witness later claimed by the defence). By unfortunate design, her lavatory was so positioned that it projected like a tongue into the kitchen and lobby area of the Willox' premises, in such a way that there were three partitioning walls, which provided the opportunity for embarrassing overhearing.

On the evening in question, Mrs Watt swore that, (although of course she could have been mistaken) at the vital time of 6.40pm ‘or a little after half-past six', she let in William Harrington, who had called to see her husband. Harrington said the time was about 6.37pm. She then went into the lavatory for a couple of minutes and while she was thus engaged, she swore that she heard an altercation between Robert and Bertie Willox. It was not the first time; there had been similar trouble on the preceding Friday and Saturday. ‘You won't get a penny from me!' she heard the father say. He was ‘going for' the boy. For the Crown, this was strong evidence of imminent violence, but for the dogged defence, this was equally strong evidence that there had been a dispute with another person, far too late for Bertie to be present, proved, as he was, to have been at the billiards rooms at 6.35pm. It must be said that the Court of Criminal Appeal was to be sympathetic to the latter view, but not that sympathetic...

It transpired that Alfonso had not been Bertie's only visitor. An agent, Henry Cox, called at one o'clock for a life insurance premium but was fobbed off: Bertie said that his father would be out at the doctor's that night. Nor had Bertie stayed in all day; for quite apart from the heavy load of food shopping, he had also, between 1.00 and 2.00pm, tried to pledge those shoes later found very wet under the table, with Alexander McLeod, a pawnbroker, who declined them, as too worn. On the timing of the attack, Hector Kennedy, a canvasser for the municipal
elections failed to get a reply at the Willox' apartment at 8.30pm On a nasty point for the Crown, the shop assistant, Isabella McKinney said that, the morning after the crime, Bertie had told her that he had been through a ‘terrible ordeal' and that he had made ‘one slip'.

The jury convicted by a majority of nine to six. Roughhead would have preferred Not Proven. The Appeal Court thought that Not Proven would not have been unreasonable, but, even so, would not overturn the verdict. The capital sentence was commuted to penal servitude for life, which, come to think of it, was merely a continuation of the life of drudgery in the tenement in Glasgow.