Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller (19 page)

Heath’s word as a gentleman proved to be worth very little and in the early hours of 22 July, he further exacerbated his situation by running away again. He stuffed some pillows on top of his bed under a blanket, stole a car belonging to another officer and drove to London, abandoning the car in Waterloo Road. He had decided on a ‘party in London’ – threatening his whole career with the RAF for a night on the town. He was later arrested and on 20 August 1937 attended his court martial hearing at Debden. He was defended by H. L. B. Milmo, a civilian barrister who argued that Heath was guilty of escaping and stealing the car but not desertion. Heath made a rather disingenuous statement:

Having sent in my resignation, I expected an answer, but I received no intimation that the resignation had not been accepted. Had I been notified, I would have returned to the squadron or communicated with the Air Ministry.
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Milmo reminded the court that this was Heath’s first offence and that he should be treated leniently. His reasons for leaving RAF Mildenhall were ‘due to a sudden impulse after experiencing financial difficulties’. He was a decent young man who had got into a scrape simply because of inexperience. He had admitted his mistakes and was both sorry and ashamed, as was indicated by his chivalrous letter sent to his squadron leader. As to the charge of desertion, Milmo was appalled at the thought. ‘The charge is repulsive to an officer and a soldier. This “mere boy” has been a foolish fellow, but did not intend to desert,’
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he claimed.

Heath was acquitted on the charge of desertion but was found guilty of the lesser offence of going absent without leave. He was also found guilty of escaping whilst under arrest and of stealing a superior officer’s car without permission. The charges of fraud regarding the mess funds were dismissed when Heath’s bank confirmed their loan. The court martial marked his first appearance in the pages of both the London and the national press: ‘RAF Officer Not Guilty of Desertion’ (
Evening Standard
),
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‘Officer of 20 Did Not Desert from RAF’ (
Daily Mirror
).
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Heath was dismissed from the service with effect from 20 September 1937. He had been an officer in the RAF for less than a year.

In 1946, when recalling this period ‘when [he] really began to go astray’, Heath remembered the events rather differently. He claimed that he had been arrested for ‘a flying offence’. This incident he mentioned throughout his career and even to his defence counsel during his trial – that he had flown an aircraft, without permission, under a bridge, threatening his own life, public property and an expensive aircraft. There is no evidence that this incident took place. It might well be an early example of Heath’s boastful and flamboyant deceit. But it’s also exactly the kind of needlessly dangerous, devil-may-care prank that was typical of him. It’s also true that young pilots were encouraged to take out planes on jaunts, as it gave them extra flying practice. Certainly, being arrested and dismissed from the RAF for such an act of daring makes a much better story than being arrested for signing a dodgy cheque. Already, Heath was altering the facts, heightening reality, embroidering his own myth.

After his dismissal from the RAF, Heath returned home to Wimbledon. He hired a car from a local garage and on 5 October he travelled by road to the Midlands, looking for a job. He also borrowed £18 from his fiancée, Arlene. This was the last time she would actually see him – or her money. On hearing that he had been dismissed from the RAF and with his name all over the papers, she broke off the engagement and despite his attempts to phone her, refused to take his calls.
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He first went to Cambridge, well known to him from his time at Duxford, and stayed at the Lion Hotel. He then travelled on to Nottingham and booked into the Victoria Station Hotel. On both occasions he left without paying the bill. From 15 October to 6 November, he continued to tender worthless cheques to shopkeepers and bought expensive clothes costing £47 8s. He then tried to buy a car worth £175 from the landlord of the Sherwood Inn, Nottingham, promising that he’d send a cheque in the post. Throughout this spree in the Midlands, the identity Heath used most frequently was that of ‘Lord Dudley’.

Heath’s adoption of this aristocratic identity is one of the more audacious fictions that he was to present. The Earl of Dudley had been a friend and confidante of the Duke of Windsor when he was Prince of Wales, so his name would certainly have had currency with the people that Heath met at this time, the abdication having only taken place in December of the preceding year. But there may be a more prosaic reason for Heath using Dudley as a pseudonym. Throughout his career he would use genuine names and addresses that would quickly come to mind, in order to give his stories a sense of authenticity. These names and addresses frequently did exist, as if he was keen to stay as close to the truth as possible; Dudley Road was the name of the street where Heath was born.

But local police soon tracked Heath down to an hotel. Detective Inspector Hickman of Nottingham CID approached him at the bar, where Heath was drinking, pipe in hand.

‘Are you Lord Dudley?’

‘Yes I am, old man.’

‘Well, I am Detective Inspector Hickman of the CID.’

‘Then, in that case, I am
not
Lord Dudley.’
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Heath was arrested and appeared at Nottingham Petty Sessions on 11 November 1937.

As well as attempting to obtain the car and money by false pretences, he was charged with eight other offences in Cambridge, Stafford and Peterborough. All these petty crimes had taken place in the three months since he had been dismissed from the RAF. He justified his actions at Nottingham by saying that he had been on a mad spree after the disgrace of his dismissal from the RAF. They were boyish pranks for which he was heartily sorry, particularly for the shame that it would bring on his family. Effectively he adopted the defence that he was to use throughout the rest of his life – that he was a good lad, high-spirited and foolish but not a felon: ‘My parents want me home. I have learned my lesson.’
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This tactic certainly worked at Nottingham; Heath was placed on probation – bound over on remand for two years and placed under the supervision of Mr F. V. Dale, a probation officer in Wimbledon. Again, Heath’s misdemeanours were reported in the national press (‘Ex RAF Man: “I’m Lord Dudley” – But Not If You’re A Detective, Old Man’). Bessie Heath, interviewed by the
Daily Mirror
, was supportive, but weary of her son’s behaviour:

I am afraid that Neville has been spoiled. By his last escapade he has ruined his father’s business.
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He is not a criminal. He is a really clean-living decent young fellow – a good sportsman. This will be a severe lesson to him and now he will have to find a job. His father and I are waiting for him to come back so that we can do our utmost to help him.
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He was lucky; this time he had got away with it. This sense of inviolability was to develop over the years – and with good reason – as Heath became more adept at side-stepping his way out of trouble. Despite his record of persistent offending, various authorities seduced by his ‘hail fellow, well met’ manner would continue to give this charming young man the benefit of the doubt, which can only have fuelled his confidence that he could get away with anything.

As he observed Heath’s progress over the Christmas of 1937 and the New Year of 1938, Heath’s probation officer noted the good relations he had with his parents, but was also concerned that Bessie Heath seemed to shield her son and excuse his conduct when he misbehaved. Mr Dale felt that this sort of indulgence was exactly the wrong way to force Heath to face his responsibilities.
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Even by the beginning of 1938, Dale felt that young Heath was drifting into a ‘slack and irresponsible mode of living’.
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He reported regularly to the Court House in Queens Road in Wimbledon and he certainly gave Mr Dale the impression that he was settling down and making an effort to find work. He was always full of wonderful offers and opportunities that had come his way, but none of these ever materialized. And in February, Heath suddenly stopped reporting to Mr Dale and began a spree of petty theft and swindling, unprecedented in his career to date.

On 24 February, Mrs Maud Archdall of Woburn Sands, Buckinghamshire was rushing for the 4.10 p.m. train from Euston to Bletchley. Thinking she might miss her train, she flagged down a taxi to take her to the station. She made the train, but soon realized that she had left her handbag in the cab. In the bag were many personal items, some money and seven blank cheques. The next person to pick up the cab was Neville Heath. Broke, unemployed and desperate – this was too good an opportunity for him to pass up. He spent Mrs Archdall’s cash and when that was all gone, he used the cheques to fund a swindling holiday across the country – from Sussex to Somerset, from Leicestershire to London.
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From 22 February, Heath had been lodging at 15 Oxford Terrace in Paddington under the name A. J. Banham. The day he moved in, he paid a visit to the gentleman’s outfitters, Moss Bros in Covent Garden, announcing himself as Pilot Officer Banham. He walked out of the shop with £27 1s. 8d.-worth of new clothes; if he was really going to succeed in his latter-day Rake’s Progress, he would need to dress the part. The real Officer Banham was later traced and the forgery detected. But by now Heath’s deceptions had developed into an easy skill and, as well as his way with women, he was now practised at exploiting the deferential trust that lower-class shop workers placed in the officer class to which he confidently appeared to belong.

When he left Oxford Terrace on 7 March, he paid the landlady Mrs Bayley with one of the cheques that he had stolen from Mrs Archdall’s handbag. On 18 March, he bought a wireless at Deaford in Leicestershire with another of the cheques. The rest were cashed under a variety of pseudonyms: J. Donaldson, J. R. Denvers, Richard C. Jeffries and James R. Bulmar.

Out of the blue, on 22 March, Heath’s former fiancée Arlene Blakely received a letter from him with no address, enclosing a cheque for £20. She had never believed that she would see her money again. Surprised, but delighted, she paid the cheque into her account at Chancery Lane Post Office two days later. The cheque bounced. Given that she lived so close to his parents, it is understandable that Heath should want to repay the debt. But to make the grand gesture of sending a letter and cheque to dispatch it, knowing that it would bounce, seems perverse – particularly knowing how it would further embarrass his parents. But Heath seemed blind to the consequences.

At Deaford where he bought the wireless, Heath had accidentally left behind a sheet of paper with several names and addresses scribbled on it. These seemed to be leads that he was following up in pursuit of various jobs. One of the addresses was for the Hoover shop in Regent Street which trained vacuum-cleaner salesmen, hardly the obvious choice for this swaggering young man about town. Other names at Wardour Street and Gainsborough Studios suggested that he might have been looking for work much more suited to him as a film extra.
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He does seem to have considered some sort of film work, as when he arrived at borstal later that year, his father wrote that his son was ‘awaiting the results of these proceedings before signing a film contract’.
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This, of course, wasn’t true.

Another of the contacts from the Deaford list was particularly curious. Mrs Horace Ferguson of 31 Dover Street was the proprietress of the ‘SOS Agency’. The nature of her business was to ‘provide Guide Escorts to ladies who wish to have the company of a gentleman for dancing, dining, theatres, racing, motoring, etc. The guide escorts are men of title, ex-officers, public school and varsity men’.
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When later questioned, Mrs Ferguson was sure that Heath never actually contacted her about employment with the agency. But it is apparent that at this time he had decided to exploit, or at least explore, his greatest asset – his looks.

A photograph from 1935 shows a smart and fashion-conscious eighteen-year-old, pale-skinned, perhaps pretty rather than handsome, but it’s easy to see why magistrates were convinced by this respectable-looking young man and why women were also seduced by his sensitive features. His good looks in conjunction with his charm were a winning combination. Sydney Brock, one of Heath’s early biographers, felt that Heath’s growing awareness of these advantages resulted in a confidence that bordered on conceit: ‘He felt confident that his personality was so winning that he would be able to go on indefinitely making a mockery of the law.’
⁸⁴

Brock was clear what he felt was at the heart of this confidence and people’s willingness to be taken in by him. ‘If Neville Heath had been an ugly, unprepossessing fellow, would he have been treated so leniently? I think not.’

Having now evolved into a modern-day Macheath, the charming, audacious (but always gentlemanly) thief had developed a simple formula for personal advancement – robbing from the rich to give to himself. But at this point, with several constabularies on his tail, he made an effort to get back on the straight and narrow. He seems to have been encouraged by Mr Dale, his probation officer, ‘who helped him in every possible way to get a job’.

Consequently, Neville Heath – wanted man, fraudster and swindler – secured employment as a lowly assistant at the John Lewis department store in Oxford Street. In doing so, he realized that he would need to deal with the long list of petty offences he had been committing since he had appeared at Nottingham. Again, he relied on the strategy he had utilized in the RAF when faced with a situation that was threatening to spiral out of control – he wrote a letter to the chief superintendent of the CID at Scotland Yard.