‘I want to give myself up. I have disposed of my wife’.1
On 31 October, the firm of Messrs Larter and Sons, builders, began work on repairs to 10 Rillington Place. Initially they worked on the outside of the house, at the front of the premises. On 3 November, they started work on the wash house and water closet at the rear of the house. The old roofs were removed and new ones laid on the following days. Kitchener was in hospital at this time, as his eyesight was bad.2
Tuesday 8 November 1949 was to be a crucial day in the lives of all those dwelling within 10 Rillington Place. Christie was off work for the first two weeks of November and regularly saw his doctor, who was convinced he was genuinely ill with enteritis and fibrositis. He attended the surgery on 29 October, 1, 4, 8, 12 and 15 November. Christie recalled:
On the Tuesday [8 November] I was in bed a lot of the time with the illness I had, which is enteritis and fibrositis in my back. I was in a great deal of pain and I rested as much as possible under doctor’s instructions with a fire in my room day and night, and on Tuesday evening at about twenty past five I went up to the doctor, and my wife suggested going up later to the library.3
Christie claimed that when he had been at home, he was:
In my pyjamas, and other times with the pain being so bad I was unable to lie down for any length of time, and I had to keep getting up, and I used to sit in front of the fire and try to get it to my back to get some relief, and then I would go back and lie down again in bed.
Whilst at home, Christie claimed to have seen no one apart from the workmen and his wife, although he caught a glimpse of Beryl leaving the house. He claimed his health was so bad that he had to go down on all fours to pick up a pin.4
It seems certain that Tuesday 8 November was the last day of Beryl’s life. No one ever saw her alive after that day. She spent part of that day outside the house, as noted by three witnesses. A crucial statement came from Frederick James Jones, a builder’s labourer, who recalled:
At about 10.00am on Wednesday 9th November [later amended to 8th November] 1949, whilst I was mixing up materials outside 10 Rillington Place, W11. With the front door open, I saw a young woman come downstairs with a baby in her arms and she was accompanied by another young woman. She put the baby in a pram, which was already outside the front door and I said to her, ‘Mind how you go when you come back as I am going to lay a ladder up the stairs’. She replied, ‘I’ll get by that alright’. I did not pay any particular attention to this woman or her companion, and I could not recognise them again. Apart from saying the woman with the baby was small and thin, I cannot further describe her. This was the first and last time I saw these people.5
Ethel also made a statement about Beryl’s movements that morning:
I saw Mrs Evans the following morning and she looked terribly ill, she did mention that a friend of hers called Joan who had made trouble between her and her husband, and that Joan was coming round that morning, and that she (Mrs Evans) did not want to see her. After Mrs Evans told me this she went back upstairs, and shortly after Joan came but Mrs Evans locked herself in her kitchen and refused to see her.6
Joan Vincent, an old school friend of Beryl’s, was uncertain on which day she actually went to number 10, as she gave different dates (5, 7 and 8 November on different occasions), and had been to St Bernard’s Hospital for her memory. She said:
I went to see Beryl Evans during a lunch hour. I reached the top of the stairs . . . I called her name and tried to turn the handle of the door and I felt that somebody was pressing the door and holding it against me. I then remember thinking it must have been Beryl herself at the time, that perhaps she didn’t want me in the flat at the moment, and I said, ‘Well, if you don’t want me to come in, I’ll go’. But I had a nervous and uneasy feeling and felt very frightened at the time and hurried away from the house. I didn’t meet anyone else in the house on that day.
Apparently she returned on the next day and saw Christie, who seemed ‘aggressive and rude’. She noticed Beryl’s pram in the Christies’ living room. Christie told her, ‘She isn’t there. She has gone away. I expect she will write’.7
However, assuming the builder’s statement is correct, Beryl may have returned at about noon, having avoided Joan, only to leave again later, though the second time she may have been alone. Mothers with small children usually want to spend time outside the home for the sake of variety. According to Christie, ‘I last saw Mrs Evans about 8th November, 1949, when she was going out into the street. I took no special notice of this’, but four days later he amended the statement to read, ‘I last saw Mrs Beryl Evans round about 1pm on 8th November 1949, when she left our address with her daughter Geraldine. I was in our front room’. Ethel’s recollection, made independently, is similar, but with one major difference: ‘That afternoon Mrs Evans went out and asked me to keep an eye on her baby daughter who was in bed. She said she would not be out for long. However, she had not returned at 5.30pm’.8
Basil Thorley stated that his sister was expected at 4.30pm by their grandmother, Mrs Barnett, of 13 Bonchurch Road. She never kept that appointment. The question, of course, is why–and this we can never know. However, Evans said his wife was meant to visit her grandmother on the previous day, so it seems probable she did so on that day instead of the 8th and Thorley confused the two dates.9
We do not know when Beryl returned home; none of the workmen, nor the Christies saw her, so it was probably after the Christies had gone out that evening. Ethel Christie went to the public library on Ladbroke Grove and Christie himself went to the doctors at Colville Square (in order to extend his sick leave). Odess opened his surgery at 6.00pm. Christie was also a user of the library, as attested by his library card. Evans later gave the police at Notting Hill police station this account on 2 December:
I come home at night about 6.30pm my wife started to argue again, so I hit across her face with my flat hand. She then hit me back with her hand. In a fit of temper I grabbed a piece of rope from a chair which I had brought home off my van and strangled her with it. I then took her into the bedroom and laid her on the bed with the rope still tied round her neck. Before 10.00pm that night I carried my wife’s body downstairs to the kitchen of Mr Kitchener’s flat as I knew he was away in hospital.
He then fed Geraldine, put her to bed and had a smoke. He went out that night and returned late.
I then went downstairs when everything was quiet, to Mr Kitchener’s kitchen. I wrapped my wife’s body up in a blanket and a green tablecloth from off my kitchen table. I then tied it up with a piece of cord from out of my kitchen cupboard. I then slipped downstairs and opened the back door, then went up and carried my wife’s body down to the wash-house and placed it under the sink. I then blocked the front of the sink up with pieces of wood so that the body wouldn’t be seen. I locked the wash house door, I come in and shut the back door behind me. I then slipped back upstairs. The Christies who live on the ground floor were in bed.
Evans went to work next day, after feeding and changing Geraldine. Evans visited his mother at 5.30pm, as he usually did on Wednesdays (his mother usually babysat for them on this night as they went to the cinema). He told her, ‘Mam, you won’t see Beryl or the baby for a week or two. She has gone to Brighton to her dad’s’, and he said that Beryl would write to her from there. Three days later he called around again, between 10.00 and 10.30am. ‘Are you ok?’ asked his mother. ‘Yes, I am going to Brighton tomorrow to see Beryl and the baby’, Evans replied. Mrs Probert recalled that he ‘seemed alright’ but also ‘quiet and moody’. Evans then ‘looked straight at me’ and said he might not be going to Brighton because he didn’t have the money. Clearly he was lying, for Beryl was already dead.
Evans lied about his wife’s whereabouts again on 10 November, when he quit his job, receiving his wages owing and telling his boss that his wife had gone to Bristol. On returning home:
I then went home picked up my baby from her cot in the bedroom, picked up my tie and strangled her with it. I then put the baby back in the cot and sat down in the kitchen and waited for the Christies downstairs to go to bed. At about twelve o’clock that night I took the baby downstairs to the wash-house and hid her body behind some wood. I then locked the wash-house door behind me. I then slipped back upstairs and laid on the bed all night, fully clothed.10
This was his fourth and final statement of what happened on that day. There has been much debate over this issue; with the majority view being that Christie killed the Evanses. Yet the above explanation meets the known facts (for instance, Evans could not have known where the corpses were and how they were concealed if he had not put them there himself) and the story Evans’s defence rested upon does not. The quarrels and violence also tie in with what else we know about them (Lucy referred to Evans hitting his wife in the face). We shall examine Evans’s other versions later in the chapter and see why they are implausible. Yet there are two odd points about the version above. Firstly, it seems unlikely that Beryl’s corpse was in the wash house on the day of the murder; however, it could have been placed there later, as the workmen finished with the wash house before Evans left for Wales. Secondly, it must be questionable whether Geraldine was killed two days after her mother, because no one heard her cry out. It seems likely that she was killed on the same evening as her mother. Neither of these points of detail, though, detracts from Evans’s guilt.
It is also significant that on 9 November Evans asked Mr Willis when the building work in the house would be completed and he told him it would be in two days’ time. Evans saw Robert Hookway, a dealer in second-hand furniture of 319 Portobello Road, about selling the furniture in his rooms, which was not his because the hire purchase money had not all been paid. Hookway came to 10 Rillington Place, saw the furniture and offered £40, which Evans accepted. The furniture could not be collected until Monday 14 November. Hookway was impressed by Christie, with whom he occasionally had a drink, saying that he was ‘a marvellous sort of bloke, sort of parsonical, full of scientific knowledge, that enormous dome and penetrating eyes, a very good mind, very refined and nice to talk to’. Evans met Basil Thorley and told him that Beryl was going to Bristol. He spent the weekend at various pubs, including the Kensington Park Hotel. He also went to the cinema. On 12 November, Christie went to the doctor, still suffering from fibrositis.11
On 14 November the furniture van came round and collected the goods at 3.00pm, and Evans received £40. Earlier that day, Albert Rollings, a rag dealer from Ladbroke Grove, whom Evans had met on the previous day, collected various clothing belonging to Beryl that Evans had ripped up, but when he found a rattle, Evans said he would need to keep that for Geraldine. All that remained in the house was some crockery, Geraldine’s pram, her small chair and a few baby clothes. Later that day Evans took his suitcase, went to the cinema and the pub, met Basil at the Royalty Cinema, Ladbroke Road and told him he had had a telegram from Beryl asking him to meet her in Bristol, then caught the 12.55 train from Paddington to Swansea, changing for Merthyr Vale. He arrived at about 6.40am and went to his uncle and aunt’s house at 93 Mount Pleasant.12
Evans told the Lynches that he had been with his boss, but that the latter’s car had broken down in Cardiff and so he might be with them for a few days. He told them that Beryl and Geraldine were in Brighton. Some of his evenings there were spent with his uncle in the pub, and he also saw William Costigan, an old friend. Evans gave Costigan’s wife a necklace which belonged to his wife, and he was cagey about its source. He told them Geraldine was staying with friends in London. They all thought that Evans seemed relaxed and cheerful. On 28 November, Evans sold his wife’s wedding ring at the branch of Messrs H. Samuel and Sons at 119 Merthyr Tydfil High Street. Mrs Violet Gwendoline Lynch later recalled, ‘I asked him where his wife and baby were, and he said they were gone to Brighton for a holiday till Christmas’.13
Evans interrupted his sojourn on 21 November by returning briefly to London (about three or four days after Kitchener returned home). He called at 10 Rillington Place. This was probably on the next day. It was about 5.20 to 5.30pm and Christie was about to visit Dr Odess. The doorbell rang and he answered it. He later stated:
Mr Evans was stood in the doorway. He said, ‘I’ve just come straight down from Wales; I’ve come from Paddington Station. I’ve not seen anybody; I’ve come straight here’. I asked him in and I said, ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ He said, ‘Beryl has walked out on me and I couldn’t find a job, so I’ve been to Bristol, Cardiff, Birmingham and Coventry and back to Cardiff and couldn’t find a job’. I said, ‘Well, what you should have done was settled down somewhere, paid for rooms, accommodation, for a period of time and the money you had, the £60, would have kept you going until you got a job’. He said, ‘Well, I’ve had to spend a lot on travel’. I said, ‘How much have you got left?’ He said, ‘About a couple of pounds’.
Christie gave the young man his opinion about how he had used his money (unstated). Evans seemed keen to travel back to Wales, and as Christie was travelling partially in the same direction, they both got on the 7a bus from Cambridge Gardens; Christie alighting at Portobello Road, Evans heading to Paddington Station. Apparently Christie paid both fares.14
Evans gave a different account of this episode. He said he returned to ask after Geraldine. ‘He asked me what I was doing back in London, and I told him I had come up to find out about my daughter; and he told me my daughter was perfectly all right . . . That was the only reason why I came to London’.15
Evans returned to his aunt and uncle’s house on 23 November. His aunt recalled, ‘I asked him did he see his wife and baby. He said, “Yes” and that his wife had walked out of the flat and left the baby in the cot in the bedroom. He did not say why. I asked him what he had done with the baby, and he said he gave it to some people from Newport to look after’.16
Christie was now a very ill man. The Registrar of St Thomas’ Hospital wrote to Dr Odess on 19 November to state, ‘I saw this patient . . . He was complaining of pain in the right side of his back for the last three days. On examination I found he was in agony whenever he tried to bend down or bring the left lumbar muscles into use. There was extreme tenderness in the left lumbar region over the muscles. This is a case of muscular pain and I was able to give him considerable relief by an injection of local anaesthetic. I have referred him to the psychotherapy department’.17
Meanwhile, in Notting Hill, Mary Probert was worried about her half-brother and his family, whom she had not seen for some time. She went to number 10 on 29 November, but on knocking at the door received no answer. Yet she could see Ethel peering around the curtain. She came to the door and told Mary that she had last seen Beryl leaving the house on 8 November. She added, ‘Beryl was not as nice as we thought she was’, and went on to relate that she had once left Geraldine in the house alone and returned smelling of gin. Ethel had told her not to repeat such behaviour. She said that Beryl and Geraldine had gone to Brighton. Mary did not believe her. Christie then came on the scene and said, ‘I [Mary] did not know what Timothy got up to’ and she defended her brother by calling Christie a liar. Christie prevented his wife from saying something about Beryl, ‘you shut your mouth’ and claimed he knew Evans from his days in the police, which Mary denied. He also stopped her from entering the house.18
Evans’s mother was confronted with the furniture company wanting its money from her as guarantor of her son’s repayments, so she wrote to Mrs Lynch whilst not in the best of tempers, on 29 November. She reported that she had been told that Beryl and Geraldine were in Brighton with her father. She wrote that her son:
is like his father no good to himself or anyone else so if you are mug enough to keep him for nothing that will be your fault I don’t intend to keep him any more I have done my best for him & Beryl what thanks did I get his name stinks up here everywhere I go people asking for him for money he owes them I am ashamed to say he is my son.
Whether this was wholly written in the heat of the moment or whether this contained an insight into Evans’s true character is a moot point. On 30 November, Mrs Lynch read the letter to Evans, who denied the allegations contained therein, but was visibly agitated and did not finish breakfast. He had another cup of tea and took the bus to Merthyr Tydfil with his aunt.19
That afternoon, Evans went to the police station there. He was seen by DC Gwynfyrn Howell Evans. Evans then dropped his bombshell:
‘I want to give myself up. I have disposed of my wife’.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I put her down the drain’.
Evans was told to think before he continued, but he said ‘I know what I am saying, I cannot sleep and want to get it off my chest’. Evans was then cautioned and asked if he wanted to make a written statement. He replied, ‘I will tell you all about it and you can write it down. I am not very well educated and cannot read or write’.
Evans told his story to DC Evans and DS Gough, beginning at 3.20pm. He told them that his wife desired to abort her baby, then that he had met a man in a transport cafeéé, who gave him pills which would abort Beryl’s unborn baby, but instead they killed her. He then claimed he put her corpse into the drain in the street, told lies about where his family was, and escaped to Wales. DC Evans thought that Evans took a long time over his statement, which was concluded at 5.10pm, and also believed that Evans was a ‘terrible liar’ who had been ‘telling a cock and bull story’. It is worth noting that Evans’s mother said he spoke quickly when he was being truthful and slowly when he lied. DC Evans was also concerned that Evans said little about Geraldine’s whereabouts.20
Evans was arrested on suspicion of murder. He was then penniless and did not have the teddy bear he later claimed he had bought for Geraldine. The police telephoned Scotland Yard, who in turn sent a message to the Notting Hill police station. Much was the same message as already noted, but with an addition, ‘He [Evans] handed his fourteen month [actually thirteen months] old child to a man called Reginald Christie at the same address who stated he could have the child taken care of’. This was the first time that Christie was linked in public to the tragedy at Rillington Place. Meanwhile, in London, three officers tried to lift the manhole cover on the drain, but could not do so. The noise they made brought Christie to the door, and they asked him about the whereabouts of Beryl and Geraldine. Christie told them that they had left some time ago, and gave them the Proberts’ address. They told this to their colleagues at Merthyr Tydfil, and Evans was duly informed. Eventually, using levers, the manhole cover was lifted, but nothing was there.21
At 9.00pm Evans stated that he had lied. ‘I said that to protect a man called Christie. It’s not true about the man in the cafe either. I will tell you the truth now’. Then there was another statement, made by Evans, and again before DC Evans and DS Gough, which began just before 10.00pm and took two hours:
As I was coming home from work one night, that would be a week before my wife died, Reg Christie who lived on the ground floor below us approached me and said, ‘I’d like to have a chat with you about your wife taking these tablets. I know what she’s taking them for she’s trying to get rid of the baby. If you or your wife had come to me in the first place I could have done it for you without any risk’. I turned around and said ‘Well, I didn’t think you knew anything about medical stuff’. So he told me that he was training to be a doctor before the war. Then he started showing me books and things on medical. I was just as wise because I couldn’t understand one word of it because I couldn’t read. Then he told me that the stuff he used one out of every ten would die with it. I told him that I wasn’t interested so I said goodnight to him and I went upstairs. When I got in my wife started talking to me about it. She said that she had been speaking to Mr Christie and asked me if he had spoken to me. I said ‘Yes’ and told her what he had spoke to me about. I turned round and told her that I told him I didn’t want nothing to do with it and I told her she wasn’t to have anything to do with it either. She turned around and told me to mind my own business and that she intended to get rid of it and that she trusted Mr Christie. She said he could do the job without any trouble at all.
On the Monday evening, that was the seventh of November when I came home from work my wife said that Mr Christie had made the arrangements for first thing Tuesday morning. I didn’t argue with her, I just washed and changed and went to the K.P.H. until 10 o’clock. I came home and had supper and went to bed. She wanted to start an argument but I just took no notice. Just after six I got up the following morning to go to work. My wife got up with me. I had a cup of tea and a smoke and she told me, ‘On your way down tell Mr Christie that everything is alright. If you don’t tell him I’ll go down and tell him myself’. So as I went down the stairs he came out to meet me and I said, ‘Everything is alright’. Then I went to work. When I came home in the evening he was waiting for me at the bottom of the staircase. He said, ‘Go on upstairs I’ll come behind you’. When I lit the gas in the kitchen he said, ‘It’s bad news. It didn’t work’. I asked him where was she. He said, ‘Laying on the bed in the bedroom’. Then I asked him where was the baby. So he said, ‘The baby’s in the cot’. So I went in the bedroom I lit the gas then I saw the curtains had been drawn. I looked at my wife and saw that she was covered over with the eiderdown back to have a look at her. I could see that she was dead and that she had been bleeding from the mouth and nose and that she had been bleeding from the bottom part. She had a black skirt on and a check blouse and kind of a light blue jacket on. Christie was in the kitchen. I went over and picked my baby up. I wrapped the baby in a blanket and took her in the kitchen. In the meanwhile Mr Christie had lit the fire in the kitchen.
He said ‘I’ll speak to you after you feed the baby’. So I made the baby some tea and boiled an egg for her, then I changed the baby and put her to sit in front of the fire. Then I asked him how long my wife had been dead. He said, ‘Since about three o’clock’. Then he told me that my wife’s stomach was septic poisoned. He said, ‘Another day and she’d have to have gone to hospital’. I asked him what he had done, but he wouldn’t tell me. He then told me to stop in the kitchen and he closed the door and went out. He came back about a quarter of an hour later and told me he had forced the door of Mr Kitchener’s flat and had put my wife’s body in there. I asked him what he intended to do and he said ‘I’ll dispose of it down one of the drains’. He then said, ‘You’d better go to bed and leave the rest to me’. He said, ‘Get up and go to work in the morning as usual’ and that he’d see about getting someone to look after my baby. I told him it was foolish to try and dispose of the body and he said, ‘Well that’s the only thing I can do or otherwise I’ll get into trouble with the Police’.
Evans went to work whilst Christie looked after the baby. On Evans’s return, Christie told him that he had contacted a young couple in East Acton who would be happy to look after Geraldine. On Thursday morning, Evans was feeding Geraldine, when: ‘Christie came in. He said, “In the morning when you get up feed the baby and dress her then put her back in the cot, the people will be here just after nine in the morning to fetch her”. He said, “I’ve told them to knock three knocks and I’ll let them in.” ’
When Evans returned that evening, Christie told him that he had done as he planned, but the pram and Geraldine’s clothes in a case would be handed over later that week. Evans saw his mother that evening and when asked about Geraldine, said that she and Beryl had gone on holiday. Later that night, Christie gave him additional information, ‘Now the best thing you can do is to sell your furniture and get out of London somewhere’. Evans then related selling the furniture, leaving his job, and then going to Merthyr Vale.
He later said that he saw Christie, huffing and puffing, carrying Beryl’s body down the stairs and into Kitchener’s rooms.22
Those believing Evans to be innocent maintain this story to be true. Yet it does not appear to be a very intelligent method of shifting the blame from Evans to Christie, though Evans was not a very intelligent man. It would appear to be a tissue of lies for a number of reasons. Firstly, Christie was at the doctors when Evans claimed to have been having a meeting with him on 8 November. Secondly, Beryl was strangled and marks were clear around her neck. Evans gives lots of detail about his wife, but does not mention this. Thirdly, if Christie did kill Beryl, there would have been screams and other sounds heard by Ethel and the workmen. None were. Fourthly, how could Christie have moved the corpse? He dragged his other victims using a sheet–he was not a strong man. Fifthly, the above story suggests Evans was a weak man, easily malleable, but other evidence shows him to be manipulative, not vice versa. Sixthly, the dialogue and actions of Christie suggest him to have been simple-minded, yet we know he was not. Finally, can we believe that a loving father would have entrusted his daughter to a family of whom he had never heard and whose address he did not know? We should also note that the police thought Evans took a long time over this statement and his mother said that he usually took his time talking when he was lying.
This new information was passed to London, where a new investigation began, led by Detective Inspector James Neill Black, a police officer of twenty-two years’ experience. In the night time they looked down the drains again and examined the garden for signs of recently disturbed earth. Nothing untoward was found. Police officers were stationed in and around the house and the occupants were questioned. Evans’s rooms were also searched. Cuttings from four newspapers about the Donald Hume case were found in a cupboard–Hume was accused of murdering one Stanley Setty in October 1949, then scattering the latter’s chopped up corpse into the Essex marshes. These cuttings showed pictures of the bundle in which the corpse had been wrapped; Black later recalled, ‘he was very interested in the Setty case’. A briefcase which had been stolen in August from 164 Westbourne Park was also found. In the Christies’ rooms were Geraldine’s clothing, her pram and high chair. The Proberts were informed that morning that Evans had told them that they should ask Christie where Geraldine was.23
The police told the family that Evans was in custody in Wales and that he had made a statement about putting his wife down the drain. Both Christie and his wife were questioned separately by the police, with Christie accompanying them to Notting Hill Police Station from 11.00pm to 5.00am. A policeman was stationed at the house.24
Ethel explained about the troubles between Evans and his wife. She stated that Beryl had left the house at lunchtime on 8 November and that she saw Evans return late that same day (this is corroborated by Evans and Christie); Evans’s whereabouts that evening are unknown. When Evans returned to the house on 22 November, she said, ‘I was in the house but I did not go to the door’. She said, ‘I cannot think why Evans should suggest that she had [a miscarriage] and that my husband knew all about it. We were both on friendly terms with him . . . We have never had any friction with him’. The police were impressed by Ethel. ‘In my opinion Mrs Christie was by no means under the dominance of her husband’.25
Meanwhile Christie was interviewed at the police station, where he told them he had been a policeman during the war, then about the Evanses’ situation. He said his wife had spoken to Evans when he arrived on 22 November. He concluded, ‘At no time have I assisted or attempted to abort Mrs Evans or any other woman . . . I cannot understand why Evans should make any accusation against me as I have really been very good to him in lots of ways’. Christie also said a little about the washroom:
The wash room was a communal one, but actually it was only used for keeping rubbish and junk in. There was no key to it and the lock was rusted and broken and not usable. It could be open and shut by turning the handle but could not be locked. The wash house was only used for getting water to rinse out pails or put down the lavatory.26
It was later on that morning of 1 December that Chief Inspector George Jennings took charge of the case. A more thorough search of the house was made. In Christie’s rooms they found a syringe, but tests proved it had not been used recently. Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Barrett then ordered that Evans be recalled to London for questioning about the disappearance of his wife and child and Black and PS Corfield were accordingly despatched there.27
On 2 December the police made other discoveries. Christie later recalled, ‘They found something in the outhouse and asked my wife go to the outhouse (wash house). She told me afterwards that they pointed to a bundle and asked her if she knew anything about it. She said that she did not and they asked her to touch it to see if she knew what it was. She said she touched it but didn’t know what it was and she had never seen it before. An officer told us soon after that they had found a body’. Jennings stated:
I searched an outbuilding on the ground floor at the rear of 10 Rillington Place . . . when I found a large package wrapped in a green table cover and a blanket, and tied tightly with a sash cord, concealed by a quantity of timber under a sink. I removed the timber, pulled the package out into the back yard and discovered it contained the body of a woman doubled over with the head between the feet. Behind the door of this outbuilding concealed behind some timber, I found the body of a baby girl . . .28
About this time, evidence of Christie’s past misdeeds returned to haunt him. He recalled, ‘Several years afterwards [after 1943] I was digging the garden and came across a bone which was broken in half. I knocked one piece into the ground next to a post in the garden’. He also later made the further revelation about this time:
my dog had been digging in the garden and I found the skull from the body of the woman Eady that I had buried in the nearest corner of the garden. I just covered it up with earth and later in the evening, when it was dark, I put my raincoat on. I went into the garden and got the skull and put it under my raincoat. I went out and put it in a bombed house, the last standing bombed house next to the tennis courts on St Mark’s Road. There was a corrugated iron covering some bay windows and I dropped the skull through the window where the iron had been bent back. I heard it drop with a dull thud as though there were no floorboards. 29
It is likely that Christie was concerned that the police were on the premises and might find evidence of his two murders. Meanwhile, Evans was about to travel back to Notting Hill. Both men would be involved in the police investigations which ensued, as well as a trial for murder.