Recalled to Life

‘All this had eaten deep into Sunday. One can imagine the damage-limitation efforts that were going on along the Westminster-Buckingham Palace axis. So far the media had been kept completely in the dark. The Sunday papers were of course full of Stephen Ward’s death and didn’t miss this chance to rehash the whole sorry story and its attendant rumours. The most sensational of these related to the identities of what had come to be known as The Man in the Mask and The Man with No Head. The former was a figure who, naked except for a leather mask, acted as a waiter at pre-orgiastic banquets and invited guests to punish him if his service didn’t come up to scratch. The latter referred to a photograph of a naked man from which the head had been deleted. Along with most of his colleagues, Thomas Partridge had been posited by the gutter press as a candidate for both roles, and he was very keen to distance himself from this new scandal as soon as possible. So when the police returned on Monday morning, the Partridge family were all packed up and ready to leave.

‘That would not be possible, Tallantire told him. Not until he had interviewed the children.

‘Partridge exploded. He was a formidable man when roused and his dressing-down of Tallantire was audible all over the Hall. But Tallantire was adamant. He, we now know, had been ordered to wrap this affair up before the Bank Holiday was over, and he wasn’t going to let it go till he was sure he’d covered every possible angle.

‘The row was at its height with the outcome still in doubt when one of Tallantire’s minions appeared and whispered something in his master’s ear that made the Superintendent leave the room with the scantiest of apologies.

‘His gut feeling that there was more here than met the eye had made Tallantire grasp at straws. Interviewing the children was one of these. Jenny Jones was another. Just in case there was more to her knowingness than the desire of drabness to be colourful, he had sent his most personable young officer to talk to her again.

‘He had struck gold. Resentment, envy, moral outrage, or just a desire to please, had made Jones reveal that her fellow maid, Elsbeth Lowrie, had had one of the guests in her room that night. Nor was this the first time such a thing had happened, and it wasn’t right that she, Jenny, had to do the brunt of the work while Elsbeth was in Mickledore’s employ simply because she was no better than she ought to be.

‘Elsbeth, a shapely blonde girl who looked like every wicked squire’s vision of a healthy young milkmaid, had seen no reason to tell the police the truth on Sunday, but she saw even less to keep on lying today. She freely admitted that from time to time she entertained some of Mickledore’s guests, but only those she fancied, and not for money, that wouldn’t be right, though she did acknowledge that her pay packet often contained what she ingenuously described as “a kind of Christmas bonus”, a phrase which won her the caption A Christmas Cracker in some tabloid photographs.

‘Her guest on Saturday night had been none other than the Right Honourable Thomas Partridge, MP. He had come to her just before midnight (that clock again) and left possibly an hour later, she couldn’t be certain.

‘Like a good politician, Partridge did not deny the undeniable, apologized sweetly for his recent ill temper, and offered full cooperation of himself and his family in return for the exercise of maximum discretion.

‘Tallantire like a good Yorkshireman said nowt, and instructed his officers to start interviewing the children.

‘We, as you may imagine, were fascinated by all these comings and goings. My sister Wendy and I had formed a close alliance with the two elder Partridge girls. Their brother, Tommy, newly entangled in the weeds of pubescence, regarded us scornfully as noisy kids, and the other children were of course not yet of an age to enjoy the delights of midnight feasts and doctors-and-nurses. But four children between seven and nine is the nucleus of an intelligence service far more efficient than MI5 and there was little that we missed, though much we couldn’t understand.

‘We four were interviewed by a male detective with a WPC by his side. She, I think, would have preferred to see us one at a time but he was the better psychologist and knew you were likely to get much more out of a relaxed and mutually disputatious group. Also the fact that there were four of us made it easier for him to shut our mothers out, though I doubt if he’d get away with that nowadays.

‘I can’t remember his name, but his face remains clear, broad and hard, with eyes like rifle sights and a mouth like Moby Dick’s. But when he spoke it was very gently. He pulled out a packet of cigarettes, reached them towards me and said, “Smoke?” and I was his forever. I wanted to take one but didn’t quite dare and he said, “Later, mebbe. I always fancy a bull’s-eye myself this time in the morning.” And he took out a huge bag of bull’s-eyes and passed these round instead.

‘After that we were old friends. The girls clearly thought he was wonderful, but it was me he spoke to mainly, very man to man, always glancing at me to confirm anything they said. It was easy to tell him that we hadn’t been sleeping as we should have been, but instead had gathered in the room Wendy and I shared for a midnight feast. “And did you hear or see owt?” he asked. By this time I’d have gladly made something up to please him, but as it turned out, the truth was enough. Yes, we’d heard a noise and I’d peeped out through the door, fearing that one of the two nannies was on to us, and at first I thought that my fears were right for I saw Cecily Kohler hurrying down the corridor towards me, but she went right past, presumably to her own room, for I heard a door open and shut. Which end of the corridor was she coming from? he wanted to know. The end where the side stairway was, I told him. And how did she look? “Sort of pale and sea-sick,” I remember saying. “Oh, and she had blood on her hands.”

‘I tossed that in almost casually. To an eight-year-old, all adult behaviour is in a sense incomprehensible. What are we to make of people who have the power to do anything, yet who spend so little time eating ice-cream and going on the Big Dipper? Also nannies were, in our privileged echelon of society, the great clearer-uppers. You wet your bed, you brought up your supper, you grazed your knee, nanny would sort it out. Even I knew this, though presently nannyless because of my father’s constitutional inability to keep servants.

‘So a bloodstained nanny was not necessarily remarkable.

‘None of the girls had seen her – they’d been cowering out of sight. But I stuck to my story and when they went to Cecily Kohler’s room they found confirmation of it in traces of blood in her washbasin and on a towel, blood which was of the same group as Pamela Westropp’s.

‘But of Kohler herself and her young charges, there was no sign.

‘You should recall that this was still not a murder inquiry. The room had been locked and there was plenty of evidence to support suicide. But up till now, if there had been a crime, no one had an alibi except for Partridge and Mickledore; and now with Elsbeth’s testimony that had vanished also. One has the feeling that Tallantire, like some intuitive scientist, had made a mighty leap forward to his results and was now faced with the tedious task of filling in the necessary logical process between.

‘The Superintendent delayed talking to Mickledore till the interviews with the children were done. Then he bluntly accused Sir Ralph of acting as Partridge’s pimp, a word I had to look up later in the big dictionary. Mickledore smiled and said that in civilized circles, people were mature enough to make their own decisions and he had merely acted out of loyalty to a friend, a concept he did not expect a policeman to be familiar with.

‘Tallantire asked him how he spent this time of loyalty while his friend was copulating with the servants (the big dictionary really got some use that day!) and Mickledore replied that he had gone to the library, fetched a book and sat and read in the billiard room till Partridge reappeared.

‘It was in the library that Tallantire had established his unofficial HQ, which is why I can be so precise about this and other conversations. The deep-bayed windows with the full-length velvet curtains provided an ideal hiding-place for an inquisitive child, though at this remove I can no longer be sure what I heard then and what I have learned subsequently, but in a short space that Monday morning there were several phone calls, which produced a variety of reaction in Tallantire from anger to exultation. Presumably among them were the two technical reports which were so fiercely contested during the trial. In the opinion of one pathologist, the path of the wound was slightly downwards, not, as would be expected from such a form of suicide, horizontal or slightly upward. And experiments at the police lab suggested that after the first barrel was fired, the shock to the victim plus the gun’s recoil would make it unlikely that enough pressure could be maintained to fire the second.

‘Now at last Tallantire had cause beyond gut-feeling to treat this as a murder inquiry.

‘“I want Kohler!” he snarled at the hard-faced man. “Why the hell is it taking so long to find her?”

‘They left the library. Fearful of missing something, Wendy and I followed. Outside we could see policemen everywhere. Tallantire started to talk to a uniformed inspector while our friend with the bull’s-eyes walked out to the end of the rickety old jetty projecting into the lake. He seemed to be staring out at the little island in the middle of the water. It was covered with willows whose trailing branches formed a natural screen around its banks. Cissy Kohler had called it Treasure Island and we had enjoyed a marvellous game out there with her on Saturday while Miss Marsh had sat in a chair on the lawn and looked after the younger kids.

‘Now I walked a little way along the jetty and stared out towards the island too. I saw it first. Under the screen of willows was the shallow crescent of a canoe. I hurried forward eager to gain kudos from my new friend, but he must have spotted it himself.

‘He put his hands to his mouth to form a megaphone and in the loudest voice I ever heard issue from human lips he bellowed, “MISS KOHLER!”

‘At that cry every bird within half a mile seemed to rise squawking into the air. Then just as quickly everything went still. All the human figures round the margin of the lake froze. Even the very wind in the trees died away. And slowly, as if summoned by the call rather than propelled by human hand, the prow of the canoe swung out from under the willows. We could see quite clearly the outline of the woman though the children were not visible.

‘Then the hard-faced man shouted again.

‘“Come in! Your time is up!”

‘I began to laugh because that was what the man called at the boating pond in the park near where we lived. But what happened next wasn’t funny, though no two witnesses seemed to see the same thing. Some said Cissy Kohler tried to swing back under the willows. Others said she drove the paddle into the water in an effort at flight to the further bank. Still others claimed that she deliberately flipped the canoe over as if opting for death by water rather than the risk of it by rope. To my young eyes she just seemed to get entangled in the trailing branches, then capsized.

‘The man at the end of the jetty let out a very rude word my mother would not let me say, kicked off his shoes, hurled himself into the water, and headed out to the island at a tremendous crawl. Out by the canoe we could see only one head, Kohler’s. Then it vanished as she dived. Up she came with something in her arms. She tried to right the canoe with one hand but couldn’t manage it, and when the policeman reached her, he found her clinging to the hull with what turned out to be the child, Philip, in her arms. Now the policeman dived and dived, while his colleagues ran to the boathouse and launched the other canoe and an old duck punt. By the time they got to the island, he’d brought up the little girl, Emily. But it was too late.

‘They were all rushed to the nearest hospital some fifteen miles away. There it was confirmed. The little boy would be all right. But Emily was dead.

‘At the trial the defence lawyer tried to suggest that Superintendent Tallantire acted with brutal insensitivity in forcing Cissy Kohler to leave hospital and return to Mickledore Hall to be interrogated, but there were plenty of witnesses to prove that the young American refused to let herself be hospitalized, and this left only a choice of the Hall or a police interview room. And as in the public’s eyes the question was simply whether Cissy Kohler had killed the child by selfish carelessness or incidentally in an attempt at self-destruction, there was little sympathy to be whipped up for her.

‘She was driven back to Mickledore Hall early that Bank Holiday afternoon, allowed time to change from the hospital robe into clothes of her own, then Tallantire, despite some protests from my mother, went to start the interrogation.

‘From start to finish, it took the best part of five hours. Soon that room became the atmospheric centre of the house. A woman police officer was summoned, but for long periods she stood on duty at the door while Tallantire remained alone with the woman. Food was sent in, but came out untouched. From time to time the Superintendent emerged, but Kohler never. The first time he appeared he looked exultant, as if he were making rapid progress, but thereafter his mood changed. Sometimes his voice would be heard raised in anger and sometimes a woman’s sobbing was clearly audible through the closed door. At no time did Kohler have a solicitor present, though the woman officer confirmed that she was given the opportunity. Tallantire spent most of his time out of the room making or taking telephone calls. Alas, despite my best endeavours, I couldn’t get in a position to overhear any of these, but after his final conversation, about five o’clock, he looked as if a great load had been lifted from his mind. He went back into the bedroom and finally emerged about fifty minutes later looking weary but triumphant, like a man who has brought his argosy through heavy seas into a safe haven.

‘His relief made him for once ignore my lurking presence.

‘“That’s it,” he said to the hard-faced man. “She’s coughed. We’re home and dry.”

‘We can only guess at what stage all the detailed information which provided Mickledore’s motive came into Tallantire’s possession, but I suspect much of it must have been confirmed during that last phone call. The details, of course, provided the Press with enough columns to refurbish the Parthenon, but briefly the facts were these.

‘Pamela Westropp and Cecily Kohler, employer and employee, were equal in one respect. They both loved Mickledore with an obsessive passion, the former to the point where she would bear no rival near the throne, let alone on it, the latter to the point where she would do anything for him.

‘Mickledore in his man-about-town mode had run up huge gambling debts against the security of the estate. In his country squire mode, he had wooed and won the daughter of the Laird of Malstrath, a first-generation title purchased along with several thousand acres of grouse moor by George MacFee, a second-generation whisky millionaire. Mick’s motive was simple. He anticipated that her portion would pay off his debts and save the estate. But there was a problem. Despite George MacFee’s alcoholic background and social aspirations, he was a devout member of one of the stricter Scottish sects whose reaction to news of his prospective son-in-law’s sexual and economic excesses was as predeterminable as if it had been written in the Good Book.

‘The engagement was to be made public the following weekend at Malstrath Keep, the castle which went with the lairdship. Pamela had to be told. Presumably Mickledore hoped that he could persuade her that this marriage of convenience need not interfere with their affair. But he knew enough about women in general and Pam in particular to recognize that Pam had hopes that went deeper than this. True, the fact that the Westropps were Roman Catholic made divorce difficult, but she was working on it. So the ever practical Mickledore prepared a contingency plan.

‘Perhaps the pleasant atmosphere of that first day gave him hope that all might yet be well. At some point, probably just before they all went off to bed, he got Pam alone and broke the news.

‘I doubt if her immediate reaction was encouraging. But all hope vanished the next day when he got a note from her. We only know for certain the few words that survived, but Superintendent Tallantire’s reconstruction must surely be pretty close.

Mick, I’ve thought about it all night and it’s no good – I can’t take it – I’d rather destroy everything – if you go ahead with this I’ll make sure George MacFee knows all about us – and about your debts – believe me – I’ll do it – let’s talk again I beg you –

‘Her behaviour during the day got more and more eccentric. Mickledore knew he had no time to lose. And he also saw that with a little bit of editing, Pam had put a very useful suicide note into his hand.

‘But now, in the best Golden Age tradition, he made his one mistake. It is hard to understand why a man desperate to rid himself of one troublesome woman should do so by putting himself at the mercy of another. Perhaps he let himself be swayed by his certainty, confirmed by Cissy’s own admission, that she resented his affair with Pam far more than she did the prospect of his loveless marriage to the Scottish heiress.

‘Whatever the reason, he invoked her help, not foreseeing that the bloody reality of the deed, plus the drowning of Emily Westropp, would so demoralize her as to make her putty in the hands of a ruthless and determined man like Walter Tallantire.

‘“What now, sir?” said the hard-faced man. “Back to the station with both on ’em?”

‘But Tallantire smiled and said, “Not yet. He likes to play at being a real throwback, so let’s do things properly in the old style. Tell Sir Ralph and his guests that I’d like to see them all in the library in half an hour.”

‘So there it is. Because of Tallantire’s active dislike of Mickledore plus a mordant sense of irony, the last of the Golden Age murders was to end in proper Golden Age style, with the suspects assembled in the library for the final dénouement.

‘In fact there was no lengthy unknotting. Oh yes, I was there too. With such advance notice it was easy for me to collect Wendy and get ourselves well hidden in the folds of those musty-smelling velvet curtains across the deep bay.

‘Tallantire was straight to the point, speaking with the ponderous certainty of a man who has destroyed doubt.

‘“I regret to tell you that Mrs Westropp’s death was neither accident nor self-slaughter. I believe she was murdered.”

‘I heard the gasps. I could feel the shock. Then someone, I believe it was Partridge, said, “But the room was locked from the inside!”

‘“I don’t think so. True, a key was left on the inside, but not inserted so far that it interfered with the turning of a key on the outside.”

‘“But it wouldn’t turn,” I heard my father say. “I tried the thing myself. The keyhole was blocked till we shook the inside key loose.”

‘“I don’t think so,” repeated Tallantire. “I’ve tried to turn a key on the outside with the inner key fully inserted, and you’re right, sir, it won’t turn. On the other hand, I bounced myself as hard as I could against that door for a quarter of an hour and I never managed to shake the inside key loose. Conclusion? The inside key was never fully inserted.”

‘“But dammit, how do you explain that we couldn’t turn the key?” demanded my father.

‘“Simple,” said Tallantire. “It must have been the wrong key. One near enough the original to deceive the casual glance, but with a little bit filed off a couple of teeth perhaps, that’s all it would take.”

‘“But when Westropp tried it –”

‘“He was given the right key,” said Tallantire.

‘And now the full implication of what he was saying must have dawned. There was a moment of complete silence.

‘Then Tallantire said, “Perhaps I should tell you that this has gone beyond speculation. We have a full and detailed confession from one of the perpetrators of this terrible crime …”

‘He paused for breath or effect, then went on, “Miss Cecily Kohler. She has cooperated fully and we are now taking her into town for further questioning. Sir Ralph, I must ask you to accompany us as I believe you also may be able to help us in our inquiries.”

‘If it was Tallantire’s intention to provoke a guilty reaction in the best tradition, he must have been overwhelmed by his own success.

‘Mickledore said, “What? You say that Cissy …? But she … oh Christ, this is crazy!”

‘And then he was running.

‘There was so much noise and confusion that I risked a peep. Mickledore was through the library door, Tallantire was shouting, “Stop him!” The bull’s-eye policeman went in pursuit, there was the noise of receding footsteps, then some other kind of noise upstairs. Then silence.

‘Tallantire said, “Ladies, gentlemen, I assume you will be leaving the house shortly. Please make sure that you leave your contact address with one of my officers before you do so, as there may be other questions I need to put to you. Thank you for your cooperation. Good day.”

‘And so he left. Wendy and I were by this time both very excited and very frightened. Though not fully understanding everything, we knew that this had been one of those strange adult occasions at which our presence was strictly forbidden, so we did not dare move yet. There was utter silence in the library but it was the silence of shock, not the silence of emptiness. Through the window we could see three police cars parked before the house. At the rear window of the third car I spotted a pale, pale face which I thought I recognized as Miss Kohler’s. Then after a while Mickledore came out of the main door between two policemen who led him to the second car. He half-turned before he got in, as if to take a last look at the Hall. Then he was pushed into the car. Finally Tallantire appeared and got in the front passenger seat of the leading vehicle.

‘Now the grim procession set off. There was no obstacle they could have anticipated for several miles but, perhaps as a last gesture of triumph over a way of life and a set of people I’m sure he despised, Superintendent Tallantire switched on the flashing lights and warning bells. I watched them glide away down the long drive, lost sight but not sound of them as they dropped down to the tree-lined river, glimpsed the lights once more as they climbed the winding road up the far hillside. Then they passed over the crest and soon the bellnotes were buried deep in the next valley glades and it was as quiet outside the Hall as within.

‘Thus ended my direct involvement with the Mickledore Hall murder case. As I said at the beginning, it was the best of crimes, it was the worst of crimes; the best because, though perhaps Cissy Kohler wanted her rival out of the way, it was not this that made her join the murder plot but a deep, altruistic and ultimately destructive love for a worthless man; and the worst, because Mickledore’s only motive was cold, calculating, selfish greed. Perhaps you don’t think best is a superlative to apply to murder, whatever the motive. But remember this. Cissy Kohler was young and she was foolish and though she helped take a life, in a very real way she has given her own life in exchange. I only knew her briefly as a nanny before she turned into a murderess, but it was long enough to recognize that she loved us too, the children, and we all thought she was marvellous. That’s what I remember now – her love. Children need it in abundance, and where it is given abundantly, we never forget, and should always be ready to forgive.

‘Sir Ralph Mickledore was hanged on January the fourteenth, nineteen sixty-four. The following year the death penalty for murder was completely abolished, but even a few more months, with a Labour Government back in power, would probably have saved him. Cecily Kohler’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. In nineteen seventy-six, within sight of being released on parole, she killed a prison wardress with whom it was alleged she had been having a lesbian relationship. Once again found guilty of murder, she is still in prison, having served the longest continuous period of imprisonment recorded for a woman in the annals of British legal history.