The first of the three trials was held in late September at Kingston Crown Court.
Thomas Hendry was indicted on one count of arson at 27 Tavona Street, Chelsea on Sunday the twenty-eighth of July, and pleaded not guilty. As Jock Ferguson had predicted, the Crown Prosecution Service had decided not to proceed with the dangerous driving charge for the time being. Consequently, it had been left on file pending the outcome of the arson trial.
I gave evidence of my interview with Hendry, and produced a copy of his signed confession.
Following a brief conversation with Hendry, his barrister, a young white-wig, rose and changed Hendry’s plea to one of guilty.
‘It’s a pity he didn’t plead guilty in the first place,’ said the judge. ‘That would have saved the time and expense of empanelling a jury.’ And with that acid comment, he sentenced Hendry to ten years’ imprisonment.
‘The nearest our ex-steward will get to any seafaring for a while, guv,’ said Dave as we left the court, ‘is a trip across the Solent to Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight.’
The trial of Elizabeth Horton began in court thirteen at the Central Criminal Court a month later. The Australian Government had made a few token noises about the warrant for her arrest and return, but they realized that it would not be acted upon until Beth’s trial for the murder of Bruce Metcalfe had been dealt with. And if she were convicted of that murder, the Australians accepted that a very long time would elapse before they would have the opportunity of trying her for her husband’s murder.
Probate of the Bartons’ wills was being handled in London, while that of Gregory Horton’s will would be dealt with in Australia in due course. I understood from Steve Granger that the authorities there had wisely put it on hold pending her return. As Granger had told them, it could well be some time before they were able to interview her.
Nevertheless, despite being apparently penniless, Elizabeth Horton had still managed to acquire an expensive barrister to defend her. Dave cynically pointed out that the British taxpayer was probably footing the bill.
Elizabeth Horton was arraigned and pleaded not guilty. Counsel for the Crown, an eminent silk, immediately rose to his feet. As was customary, he first introduced himself and counsel for the defence.
‘However, My Lord,’ he continued, ‘there is a matter that should be raised before the jury is sworn. My Lord, I am in some difficulty here. As Your Lordship is aware, an Australian warrant is in existence for the arrest of the accused on a charge of a murder unrelated to the case before this court. However, it will be necessary for me to make reference to it in the course of this trial. Nevertheless, I shall attempt to limit such reference in an attempt not to prejudice the jury.’
The judge glanced at defence counsel. ‘Do you wish to make an application?’
‘No, My Lord. I quite understand my learned friend’s difficulties.’
‘Very well,’ said the judge. ‘The jury may be brought in.’
After the jury had been accepted by both leading counsel and sworn-in, and all the other panoply and flummery of getting the proceedings under way had been completed, the trial began in earnest.
Prosecuting counsel’s opening address began with a description of Diana Barton’s ‘kitchen’ party, finished with Beth Horton’s arrest at her Clarges Street apartment, and her virtual admission of guilt following the discovery of the humane killer.
‘I shall prove, My Lord and members of the jury, that Elizabeth Horton’s murder of Bruce Metcalfe was premeditated and prompted by avarice. Her perpetration of this foul crime was motivated by greed and greed alone. It was a murder that she imagined would make her richer by some eighteen million pounds.’
There were a few gasps from the jury at the enormity of the sum involved.
I was the first witness. I started my evidence by repeating what Crown counsel had said about the party at Diana Barton’s house. But that was as far as I got.
Although it had been mentioned in prosecuting counsel’s opening address, by convention not challenged, defence counsel immediately objected on the grounds that details of the party were irrelevant and prejudicial. But he was overruled by the judge who said that what had occurred at Tavona Street was an integral part of the chain that culminated in Metcalfe’s murder.
I was allowed to continue uninterrupted to the point where I gave evidence of Elizabeth Horton’s arrest at her Clarges Street apartment, and produced a transcript of her recorded interrogation.
Once I had finished, the other police officers involved followed. After a break for lunch, Henry Mortlock, Linda Mitchell and two forensic scientists, trooped into the witness box to give their damning evidence.
Once the prosecution’s case had been concluded, Elizabeth Horton’s counsel, an eminent QC, attempted in his opening address to justify his client’s actions by claiming that she was strongly under the influence of Bruce Metcalfe, and he likened their relationship to that of Svengali and Trilby. But judging from the blank expressions on the faces of the jurors, it appeared that they were unfamiliar with the plot of George du Maurier’s novel about an artist’s model and a musician.
Elizabeth Horton’s counsel had wisely decided not to call his client to give evidence in her own defence. The only witness he produced was a forensic scientist who unsuccessfully attempted to dispute the evidence regarding the humane killer. It was to no avail; the telling scientific details of Beth’s fingerprints and Metcalfe’s DNA found on the humane killer were overwhelming. After that, the case was as good as over, and her counsel found that there was little he could do to prevent the inevitable outcome.
After retiring for just two hours, the jury found Beth Horton guilty. With an expression of cynicism, the stony-faced judge listened to the eloquent plea in mitigation by her counsel, but there was little that the latter could do in the face of the armoury of evidence that had been adduced, and to which no real defence could have been mounted. There was little doubt in my mind that the account of the lewd goings-on at the Barton house on the night of Diana’s murder, even though they had played no part in proving the murder of Metcalfe, had swayed the jury in favour of a guilty verdict. Yes, it is unfair, but that’s the way the English trial system works.
Years ago it was the practice that sentence was imposed at the close of a trial, but these days we have to wait several weeks to learn the penalty that follows a conviction. All manner of reports have to be prepared regarding the convicted person’s state of mind, her social standing and income, and her family background. Believe me, there aren’t many cases that come before the courts nowadays without some contribution from psychiatrists, the social services and the probation service. Most of it, I have to say, of little value.
Six weeks later, we returned to the Old Bailey to hear the sentence. After dismissing the psychiatric and other reports, and delivering a lengthy little homily about avarice and immorality, His Lordship sentenced Elizabeth Horton to life imprisonment. After a short pause, during which he appeared to be considering the matter, he imposed a tariff of twenty years before she could apply for parole. I thought that was a tad on the lenient side.
‘You were right, Harry,’ said Steve Granger, who had been sitting in on the sentencing hearing at his high commissioner’s behest. ‘It looks as though we’ll have to wait to get her back.’
‘Don’t hold your breath, sir,’ said Dave to Granger. ‘O what a tangled web we weave, when first we practise to deceive!’ he added.
‘Who said that?’ I asked.
‘I did, guv,’ said Dave.
‘But Sir Walter Scott wrote it,’ said Granger.
‘Two of you,’ I muttered. ‘That’s all I need.’
Shortly after Beth Horton had been sentenced, an arrangement was arrived at between the British and Australian governments to allow Beth Horton to serve the balance of her sentence in her own country. On arrival, she was tried for the murder of her husband, and found guilty. She was sentenced to twenty-five years, to run concurrent with the sentence imposed at the Old Bailey.
But she never laid hands on the eighteen million pounds. The law, both here and down under, does not allow a murderess to profit by her crimes.
‘I reckon it’ll be forfeit to the Australian government, Harry,’ said Steve Granger, when we met for a drink a few days later. ‘All thirty million dollars of it.’
‘That’ll make the Hortons’ day for them,’ commented Dave.
A week later we were back at the Old Bailey for the trial of Faye Horton. By some bizarre coincidence it was in the same court thirteen that had seen Beth Horton tried, and before the same judge.
Faye had surrendered to bail earlier that morning, and appeared in the dock soberly dressed in a navy blue jacket and skirt. She wore a plain white, high-necked blouse, but had decided against wearing any jewellery. I found it significant that her husband was not in court.
Faye pleaded not guilty to the single indictment of assisting an offender, and the trial began.
Prosecuting counsel led me through my evidence in great detail, and inevitably Faye’s barrister decided that he would cross-examine me.
‘Mr Brock,’ said the silk, rising to his feet with a contrived expression of perplexity on his face. ‘Do you not think that my client should have been offered the services of a solicitor during your interrogation of her?’ It was a blatant attempt to render my evidence inadmissible.
But before I had a chance to reply, the judge interrupted. ‘I’m sure that in your brief you have a transcript of the recording made during that interrogation,’ he said to Faye’s counsel. ‘Unless it differs from mine, it is apparent that Detective Chief Inspector Brock told Mrs Horton that she was entitled to the services of a legal advisor, but she refused.’
‘Ah, quite so, My Lord,’ said counsel. ‘I do apologize. I’d confused that with another interview.’ Like hell, he had. He turned back to me. ‘Let me now turn to the interview you conducted with Mrs Horton in her husband’s study on the evening of Friday the twenty-third of August, Inspector. Do I have the date right?’
‘Yes, sir,’ I said. ‘You have the date right, but you have my rank wrong. I’m a chief inspector.’
‘Ah, quite so. My apologies.’ That momentarily derailed counsel, and he consulted his brief again. ‘Yes, Chief Inspector, I understand that a solicitor friend of the Hortons – Mr Maurice Horton’s own solicitor, in fact – was in the house at the time. Is that so?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you not think that she should have been given the opportunity of consulting him before you began questioning her?’
‘No, sir, I don’t.’
‘Oh? And why not?’ Counsel shot an appealing glance at the jury.
‘Mrs Horton was not under arrest at that time, and I didn’t make the decision to arrest her until later. I was not, therefore, obliged to offer her the services of a solicitor. However, had she sought to have her husband’s solicitor present, I would have raised no objection.’
‘Ah, quite so.’ Faye’s counsel had tried to muddy the waters, but had failed. ‘I have no further questions, My Lord.’
‘Good,’ said the judge.
Defence counsel then went on to make an impassioned closing address larded with appeals for clemency. ‘Despite the fact that Elizabeth Horton was but a step-daughter-in-law,’ he said, ‘the assistance that Mrs Horton afforded to her, although unlawful, was nonetheless prompted by a misplaced family loyalty, and led her to take a course of action which she now bitterly regrets.’
It was to no avail. After the judge’s summing-up, the jury took less than an hour to find her guilty.
Weeks later, we were back at the Old Bailey yet again, this time to hear the sentence. The fact that she had assisted Elizabeth Horton to evade arrest for profit decided the judge that the appropriate sentence would be five years’ imprisonment.
‘Of course, we now know why she did it,’ said Kate Ebdon when we were on the way back to Curtis Green. ‘The Hortons hadn’t got any money after all.’ She laughed. ‘Amazing, isn’t it? When you looked at the house she shared with her husband, and the cars, including the Lexus,’ she added with a hint of envy, ‘you’d’ve thought they were rolling in it.’
‘It was all show, Kate,’ I said. ‘They were in debt up to the hilt.’
‘Incidentally, guv,’ continued Kate, ‘I ran a check on the cars that were parked outside on the night we nicked Faye. One of them went out to a Russian millionaire. I reckon that Maurice Horton was trying to tap him for an investment in one of his shaky enterprises.’
‘Yes, but Russian millionaires are like all millionaires, Kate,’ I said. ‘When they’ve got it, they know how to hang on to it. But it’s a pity that the CPS didn’t bring a charge against Maurice Horton for assisting an offender. And I thought that Faye was the hard one of the two. But when it came to it, he just let her go without a backward glance.’
‘I wonder what he’s going to do now that his wife’s banged up.’
‘He’ll divorce her, Kate,’ I said, ‘and go in search of a rich widow who’ll bail him out, I expect.’
But it was Dave who had the last word. ‘And to think that on the night of Diana Barton’s murder, PC Watson put “All quiet on arrival” in the logbook,’ he said. ‘Funny old world, isn’t it?’