The Second-last Woman in England (44 page)

‘Nonsense. We’ve made adequate provision. Even for your extensive appetite, Uncle Leo.’ The words seemed to echo around her head long after they had been spoken.
We’ve made adequate provision.
Adequate provision.

‘And where the devil is Harriet? She’s been gone an absolute age!’

This wasn’t Cecil either.
Had
she been gone an age? It seemed like only minutes ago that Anne had announced the policemen were at the door. Harriet had run down to answer it—it had been important to answer the door before Cecil—and she had left the two police officers, an inspector and a young WPC, standing in the doorway as she went back upstairs to explain that the police had come to the wrong house. No one had thought it odd. No one had noticed her grab her coat and leave with the police in their car.

And out of nowhere Mrs Thompson loomed, her face red and shiny and floating like a party balloon just a few inches from Harriet’s eyes.

‘Oh, Mrs Wallis!’ she announced and it sounded like an accusation. ‘That soufflé’s ruined. I told them it had to be served at once.
I told
them
!’

The red and shiny face swam before her eyes. Harriet turned away from it, towards the stairs, but a sense of something urgent, something horribly wrong, crept over her. The soufflé was ruined. It was ruined. Had
she
ruined it?

It was an effort to climb the stairs and it was somehow necessary to hold onto the banisters on both sides and heave oneself up bodily one step at a time. The landing got further and further away the higher and the further one climbed.

‘I’m sorry, so very sorry!’
said a voice, very stark and clear, but not from the drawing room. From only a few feet away.

Cecil’s voice. He was in his study. The door was closed. In a moment, just as though they had been waiting for her, the door was flung open and a girl burst out. It was the nanny and her face was stricken and tearful, her eyes wild. She ran towards the stairs; yes, one could see that she was running and yet it was as though the girl moved in slow motion. She saw Mrs Wallis and veered towards the stairs and away, but her presence, her stricken face, remained long after she had gone.

What did it mean? Why was the girl running? And the soufflé was ruined. Mrs Thompson had said so.

A cheer erupted from the drawing room, but seemed to come from far, far away, down the end of a tunnel.

‘I wish we were there! Look at that crowd!’

‘When are they going to come onto the balcony? It’s taking ages!’

‘Because it’s official, dunderhead. These things are meant to take ages.’

‘Where is Cecil with that champers? He’s been a devil of a long time.’

Harriet flattened herself against the wall. The wall would hold her up. It would stop the world from spinning so fast.

We’ve made adequate provision.

What had the girl been doing in Cecil’s study? Where
was
Cecil?

Cecil emerged from the study, but he was not carrying the champagne. He stood in the doorway, his face quite pale, his fingers fiddling nervously with his tie, his eyes going to the drawing room, to the stairs that led up to the nanny’s room. He did not look down to where his wife stood, pressed against the wall of the stairs. He took a step and paused outside the door, appearing to think, then he ran his hands over his face, straightened his shoulders and entered the drawing room.

Behind him, the study door stood wide open. The room looked different somehow—the desk chair was on its side. Some papers were scattered across the floor. And on the top of the desk was Cecil’s revolver.

Why it was there and who had put it there seemed irrelevant. It was there on the desk top and now it was in Harriet’s hand. Was it loaded? Surely Cecil did not keep the thing loaded? It would be irresponsible.

The gun was in her hand. It ought to feel heavy, cold and unnatural in one’s hand. And yet it felt like nothing. Was she holding the gun? She stood before the mirror that hung above the bookcase and watched as the gun pointed at the reflection of the woman in the mirror. Yes, she was indeed holding it. Or at least the woman in the mirror was.

The letter had said certain information had come to light. They had made adequate provision, yet the soufflé was ruined.

It was a double-action revolver. That meant one did not have to cock it each time one fired. How did one know such things?

‘About time, old man. What the
devil
have you been doing in there? Having it away with the servants?’

‘I thought it was all over, Harriet,’ Freddie had said not so long ago in this very house. ‘I really thought: this is it, I’ve done my time.’

And Mother had said, ‘You’ll look after Freddie, dear, won’t you? He is in your care.’

The woman in the mirror lowered the gun from her reflection and turned smartly on her heel, crossed the hallway and opened the door to the drawing room.

‘And here she is at last! The new Queen, along with the entire Royal Family, stepping onto the balcony at Buckingham Palace.’

There were a dozen people gathered around the television, some standing, some sitting, some of them familiar, others strangers.

‘The crowds have waited a long time for this. And what a marvellous sight it is!’

Cecil had found a vacant chair just inside the doorway and was reaching for a glass of champagne. He turned his head slightly towards her and his eyes began to widen, but by then she had pulled the trigger and fired one, two, three, four, five, six times.

It was loaded, then; the gun was loaded.

He was in my care, thought Harriet. Freddie was in my care.

Epilogue

The summer of ’53 went on forever. It seemed like autumn would never come. In the end you wanted it to come. Prayed for it like you prayed for peace. Or for absolution.

Mrs Wallis appeared the following day at Bow Street Magistrates Court and was remanded in custody at Holloway Prison until her trial and, but for the presence of a single, disgruntled court reporter from the
Evening Standard
, her appearance might have gone unremarked. Instead, it was a bald and uncompromising headline that met Londoners as they left their offices and made their way home on that hot Wednesday afternoon in early June: ‘Society Wife Arrested in Shocking Coronation Day Slaying!’

The Coronation Day slaying. It was like the title of some lurid paperback. After that, Athelstan Gardens was under siege. Crowds waited outside the house for a glimpse of the Wallises, for a comment from the police, for a chance to see inside the house. For a scent of blood. Would they have stared so much had the slaying taken place in a mean laneway in Limehouse or Shadwell? If the wife had been married to a coal man?

A lone police constable was stationed outside the front door.

The facts—and many facts that weren’t facts at all—quickly came out: Mrs Wallis was a wealthy heiress; her husband was a wealthy shipping magnate; Mrs Wallis’s brother worked at the Palace; Mrs Wallis had shot her husband during the Coronation in a bizarre revolutionary—possibly Communist!—act; Mr Wallis had been having an affair—two affairs; he had been pushing for a divorce; he had dealings in shady off-shore companies; he had an impeccable war record; he had no war record at all; he was a millionaire; he was secretly bankrupt; he was an American; he was a Communist.

There was an inquest, and at the inquest the police evidence showed that Mr Wallis had been struck four times by bullets fired by a single gun. His own gun. And the gun had been held by his wife. Of that fact there appeared little dispute. The headlines became more lurid: ‘Society Slaying Latest! Husband Shot With Own Gun! Wife In Custody!’

It was a sensation. The people of Britain were agog.

You couldn’t escape it that summer. Harriet Wallis: so stylish, so wealthy, so glamorous, such lovely children, such an attentive and successful husband. The woman who had it all. What could Mr Wallis have done, they wondered, to warrant this execution-style murder? Was Mrs Wallis to be pitied or hated?

The newspapers reported that Mrs Wallis had been wearing a Norman Hartnell dress on the day of the Coronation.

The trial commenced on the 22nd of September at the Old Bailey’s Number Three Court before Mr Justice Winthrop. Mrs Wallis, according to
The Times
, wore a smart suit in charcoal grey, her hair was neatly arranged, she wore little make-up and she appeared calm and expressionless as the charge of murder was read out. She entered a plea of not guilty. Yet there was little doubt who had pulled the trigger—ten witnesses gave testimony—but the reasons behind the act, the events leading up to it, were in dispute. If it could be shown that she had been driven to it, had acted in a fit of temporary insanity, it was the defence’s duty to show it. A woman’s life was at stake.

Counsel for the defence, Mr Wellesley Hammond QC, asserted that Mrs Wallis had been greatly upset by the death of her younger brother on the morning of the murder. The brother had killed himself. A police inspector and a WPC from Paddington Green police station were called to the stand and related in detail the actions of Mrs Wallis on the morning of the murder.

Mr Simon Paget, Mrs Wallis’s brother, was asked to testify on her behalf. According to Mr Paget, Mrs Wallis had been devoted to her younger brother. His death, he explained, would have upset her greatly.

But to the point that she was driven to murder her husband?

This Mr Paget was at a loss to explain.

Could the deceased be held accountable in any way for the demise of Mrs Wallis’s brother?

Again, Mr Paget was at a loss.

It had been alleged, said Mr Hammond, that the murdered man, Mr Cecil Wallis, was having an affair with the nanny. Could the discovery of her husband’s infidelity account for it?

Mr Paget could not imagine his brother-in-law forming such an attachment, but if it were proved to be so, well then, yes, it was possible that this accounted in part for what had happened.

Mr and Mrs Leo Mumford, the murdered man’s sister and brother-in-law, were called to testify, as were Mr Archibald Longhurst, Mr Mumford’s nephew, and a Miss Mavis Dinsley of Coventry; so, too, Mr and Mrs Vincento and Mr and Mrs Paxton, neighbours of the Wallises, and the celebrated industrialist Mr David Swanbridge and his wife, all of whom had been present at the shooting. Six bullets had been fired. Mrs Wallis had fired them.

The housekeeper, Mrs Thompson, along with Mr Oleksiy Gregorov and Mr Stanley Ferris, both employees of a small Chelsea catering establishment who had been on duty at the Wallis household that day, were also called to the witness box. Mr Gregorov and Mr Ferris claimed to have been in the rear of the house taking a cigarette break at the time of the shooting. Mrs Thompson had been serving a crab soufflé in the kitchen. When questioned, Mrs Thompson stated that Mr Wallis, who had left his guests to request more champagne be brought up from the cellar, had not, in fact, spoken to her at all.

What had Mr Wallis done in the crucial ten minutes before his murder?

The nanny, Miss Jean Corbett, was called to the stand. She had not been present at the shooting and could not account for her actions immediately prior to the arrival of Mrs Wallis.

This, declared Mr Hammond QC, was significant. What had the nanny been doing? Why couldn’t the nanny account for her movements? ‘Wallis Nanny Implicated! Why Won’t She Tell All?’ screamed the headlines in the newspapers but the nanny remained silent.

The trial took three days. The jury retired on the afternoon of the third day to deliberate its decision, and ordered a large plate of sandwiches from the hotel next door. It took them just 45 minutes to find Mrs Wallis guilty of murder, and much of that time was taken up with the eating of the sandwiches.

Mr Justice Winthrop passed a sentence of death by hanging at Holloway Prison.

The summer finally drew to a close. An armistice was signed in Korea. The Russians tested another hydrogen bomb. A British man, one-time employee of a well-known shipping firm, was arrested and extradited from South Africa on charges of theft and embezzlement. And after fourteen years sugar was de-rationed.

On the day before the execution the Home Secretary dismissed any final appeals for a reprieve.

At a few minutes to seven on the morning of Monday the 9th of November, Harriet Wallis was taken the short distance from the condemned cell to the execution room. The execution took place at precisely seven o’clock. At four minutes past seven, the execution notice was posted outside the prison gates. After death, the corpse was inspected by the prison doctor. It was then left to hang for an hour, as was the custom. There was no room for error in a judiciary hanging.

Dawn came and the day began. It was a cold Monday morning in November and people went to work by bus and by train as normal. Yes, a woman had died, but sugar had been de-rationed. Mrs Wallis was buried the following day in an unmarked grave in West London. No members of the family were present.

The children did not attend the trial, nor the execution. They were taken abroad to Canada, it was reported, by their uncle and aunt. What happened to them after that, whether they ever returned to England, was unknown. Mr Simon Paget left the Palace soon after his sister’s arrest and, according to the newspapers, took up an advisory position in the Middle East with a civil aviation firm. The house in Athelstan Gardens was vacated soon after the murder, and boarded up. It was sold a year or so later; purchased, like most of the houses in the street, by the Royal Brompton Hospital and turned into flats for the nurses, which was just as well, for who wanted to buy a house where a murder had been committed?