29
JACK, YOU’RE DEAD

Tuesday, 21 April 1942

“RIPPER” TRIAL DRAMA read the front page of the Herald. Parnell examined the photograph of a rotund, middle-aged woman with what looked like almost an entire pheasant sitting on her head, being barrelled by four uniforms through a seething mass of people down the steps of the Old Bailey.

As record crowds gathered around the Central Criminal Court yesterday morning, Miss Olive Bracewell, leader of the Campaign Against Capital Punishment, was arrested for obstruction. Miss Bracewell has for years protested against the death penalty outside the trials of Britain’s most notorious murderers, but has upped the ante in the case of Gordon Cummins by alleging wrongful arrest and police brutality. See our profile, by Hannen Swaffer, on page 3.

With proceedings off to a dramatic start, the trial was halted and the jury dismissed following a procedural error. Judge Justice Asquith appealed for press discretion over the matter and in the interests of fairness and justice we are happy to comply with his request. “The full truth will be published later,” Judge Asquith directed, “but not until this trial is over.”

A new jury will be sworn in and the trial reopened today. Our man-on-the-spot will be there to bring you all the facts – and any further mishaps – on this most controversial of cases.

“You intend paying for that?” the newsagent’s voice cut through Parnell’s perusal. “This ain’t a bleeding library, you know.”

Parnell flashed him a smile. “I’ll take a copy of The Stage as well,” he said, handing over a pound note.

“Ain’t you got nothing smaller?” The vendor’s scowl deepened as Parnell shook his head. “I won’t ask where the likes of you got money like that to flash about, but I can take a good guess,” he went on, handing him his change and his papers. “Bloody iron hoof,” Parnell heard as he got to the door.

He turned on the step, about to give the old bastard a piece of his mind, when a man making his way into the shop cannoned into him. As Parnell’s arms went out to grab the door-frame and stop himself from falling, he let his cargo drop.

“Oh, I am sorry, sir,” said the man with whom he had collided. “Please, let me.”

Winded, Parnell watched the man scoop down to retrieve his papers from the pavement. He wasn’t anyone he recognised, he didn’t think.

“There you go, sir,” the man placed the bundle of papers back into Parnell’s arms, patted him on the shoulder. Parnell registered a moth-eaten trilby and gaberdine mac. Then he looked at his papers and saw something else there.

“You ain’t the only one who can make things appear out of thin air,” said the man in the mac with a smile. Parnell stepped away from him onto the pavement. The man winked and walked swiftly away.

Parnell looked down at the court summons he had just been served.

– . –

Duchess sat in the public gallery, the theatre of the Old Bailey spread out before her. Mr Justice Asquith presiding at the centre, the barristers in their wigs at either side. Mr Christmas Humphreys and Mr G. B. McClure for the Crown, Mr Harold Flowers and Mr Victor Durand for the defence. The accused, all shaved and shined and dressed in an immaculately tailored dark-blue suit, looking even more pleased with himself than he had the day before. Things appeared to be going his way.

Cummins’s defence had taken a line similar to Miss Bracewell’s – the Metropolitan Police were a bumbling load of crooks and bullies who had framed the wrong man for expediency’s sake. An impression that was only reinforced when Fred Cherrill took the stand to explain the points of similarity between crime scene fingerprints and those taken from Cummins at his arraignment. Even from the distance between them, he could see the jury had been handed the wrong photographic enlargements to study. No wonder his Lordship had appealed for press silence over that little matter.

It now fell upon Humphreys to outline the case for the Crown to the new jury. In compliance with standard practice in cases of multiple killings, Cummins was being charged on only one count of murder, that of Evelyn Bettencourt. The evidence they had heard from Sir Bernard Spilsbury the day before had been strong enough to see off Madame Arcana and Daphne, who had begun the day at Duch’s side. But it hadn’t had the same impact on Cummins’s wife Majorie, who sat at the other end of the front row, shielded from her neighbours by the stalwart bulk of her sister.

As Humphreys spoke, the accused looked up to the gallery to smile and wave. Duch watched willowy Marjorie return his gesture with a flickering ripple of her gloved hand and the faintest ghost of a smile. The gesture wasn’t lost on Humphreys. Having summarised the finding of Mrs Bettencourt’s body by the meter readers on the morning of the tenth of February, he took Cummins squarely in his sights as he launched into the details.

“She had her throat cut – a deep cut right across the side of her neck, causing tremendous loss of blood and shortly after, death. Just before she died, the person who had done this had also inflicted a series of jagged stab wounds in the pubic hair and around the entrance to the vagina.”

Duch watched the jury wince and shift uncomfortably in their seats. She looked back towards Marjorie Cummins and caught instead her sister’s despairing gaze.

– . –

Parnell read the document one more time before folding it inside The Stage and then both inside the Herald, tucking the paper under his arm before he came into view of Soapy’s. Bear was staring out of the window like a dog without his master.

Bluebell was cooling his heels in Wandsworth, facing two years or worse, considering his previous. Parnell had no idea what had been going on at Waterloo Bridge; the news had come as yet another nasty surprise. But when the knowledge that Bluebell and Bear had not, in fact, severed their connections with Muldoon did sink in, so, too, did the enormity of the situation he faced. Now that Bear would be taking an interest in Muldoon’s trial, there was no way he could hope to get away with appearing unnoticed as a witness next Monday, as the Summons demanded. That bastard Greenaway had him over a barrel and the only option that seemed open to him now was to go back on the lam, as far away from Bethnal Green as possible.

While he considered how best to go about that, it was essential to keep up appearances – despite the fact that nothing was now the same. Inside Soapy’s, the wireless continued to play, but there were no chattering voices to compete with the good-time sounds, just the steady scraping of razor against chin.

“Morning,” Parnell nodded to the barber. Bear didn’t have any coffee or beigels to offer the Maestro today, just the glint of his eyes as they ran him up and down, the expression behind them opaque. Parnell put his carefully folded papers into his coat pocket and hung it up on the peg, extracted his cards from inside his jacket.

“How’s tricks?” he said, taking a seat next to the brooding form in brown and starting to shuffle the pack. Bear grunted non-committally, turned his gaze back to the street.

Parnell flicked over the top card. The Jack of Spades: the card that Bobby had chosen when he’d showed him his first trick. Another thing that had changed, he realised. There was no sign of the kid about the place any more. He looked up, frowning.

“Where’s your apprentice got to?” he asked Soapy. “I’ve not seen him for a while.”

“No, well you wouldn’t have,” the barber replied, not taking his eyes off the chin he was shaving. “His old man come round to see me. Said Bobby’s Mum’s gone back to Ireland, sort out a problem in her family or something, and he wants the kid at home while she’s away.” Soapy flicked foam into the basin, wiped the edge of his razor on his apron. “Well, you know what an impressionable boy he is.” The barber’s eyes finally rose to meet Parnell’s. “His old man ain’t stupid.”

Parnell swallowed. “When was this?” he asked.

Soapy looked at Bear. “Day after you got nicked,” he said.

“Oh,” said Parnell, his stomach hollowing out.

“Yeah,” said Bear, slowly turning his head. “About that. You and me need to have a little chat.”

“Wh-what? Why, what’s up?”

Bear gave Parnell a smile that didn’t reach his amber eyes. “Not here,” he said, scooping up Parnell’s cards and putting them in his inside pocket, opening his jacket far enough to let Parnell see the gun in its holster. “We’re going to take a drive, you and me. A nice, long one.”

– . –

On the witness stand, Fred Cherrill faced Harold Flowers for the second time.

“My learned colleague Mr Humphreys described you as one of the greatest experts in the country upon fingerprints,” the defence barrister began, in unctuous tones. “I suppose it is difficult for anybody, in a way, to challenge your specific knowledge of this branch of science, is it not? Have other people quite the same knowledge of fingerprints as you, or are you alone in the country on this?”

“Oh no.” Cherrill wore his customary expression of a downcast bloodhound.

“It is limited, I suppose, to the police force?”

“I think there are a few amateurs about.”

“I suppose you would not put the opinion of an amateur as being anywhere near as worthy of credence as yours?” Flowers raised a quizzical eyebrow.

Cherrill shook his head. “Hardly, sir,” he said.

“I must challenge you a little with regard to this matter,” Flowers went on. “This fingerprint you lifted from the handle of the tin opener. It’s a very imperfect mark.”

“Not for a mark that’s been put on metal,” Cherrill said.

“But it’s very faint,” Flowers’s smile was that of an adult indulging a daydreaming child. “Would you, with regard to that mark, stake your reputation, knowing that a man is being tried for his life?”

Cherrill did not hesitate. “Yes,” he said.

– . –

From the press gallery, Swaffer rapidly constructed a pen-portrait of Cherrill’s unflappable professional demeanour. It would be followed by the report of Sir Bernard Spilsbury, next up for cross-examination, who had to face Flowers’s inference that he had mucked up the victim’s time of death as thoroughly as Cherrill had his prints. Aided by the testimony of Cummins’s comrade in carnal activities, Felix Simpson, he sought to prove the story that Cummins had been weaving from his jail cell – he could not have been at the scene of the crime at the time the Crown said he was.

Despite Flowers’s needling, Spilsbury’s distinguished bearing, his long and brilliant career and his personal knowledge of the man, all helped the words to flow easily from Swaffer’s pen. The only problem the Herald ’s man-on-the-spot was going to have in convincing his readers of the infallibility of the Crown’s case was, he considered, with Greenaway.

As the DCI had feared, plenty of mischief had been made during the past month by Miss Bracewell and her supporters with this pair of defence barristers who had, naturally, made the short journey from Brixton Prison to the Effra Arms in the course of their evidence-gathering. Now knowing that part of the case against Cummins revolved around the identification of his gas mask, Miss Bracewell was convinced that the hapless drunkard with whom Cummins had attempted to pull the switch on was the real Blackout Ripper, but that brutal, vindictive Greenaway had refused to consider questioning him.

It was the image of the DCI as a truncheon-wielding Neanderthal that swirled most darkly around these proceedings and one that Swaffer feared Greenaway could not easily shake off. Especially not if any other reporters picked up on rumours that, buckling under the strain of his two consecutive murder cases, Greenaway had taken his frustrations out on a suspect in a fraud case, a gangland enemy of old, who was currently eating through a straw at Wandsworth Prison hospital. Nor that this incident had taken place on Waterloo Bridge, mere steps away from the scene of the murder Greenaway had just been investigating.

Cigarette ash cascading down the front of his jacket, Swaffer’s pen hovered nervously over his notepad as Greenaway’s name was called.

– . –

“Do you remember,” said Flowers, “just before your interview with the accused on the fourteenth of February, that you told him he could not consider you to be a gentleman?”

Greenaway stared back at the barrister. “Does the record show me saying that?” he asked. Flowers smiled. “I was asking you if you remembered saying that,” he said.

Greenaway’s face remained blank. “No,” he said. “Sir.”

“Well,” Flowers went on, “do you remember that the accused volunteered to you the information that he had been in a flat in Wardour Street with a blonde woman on the night of Monday the ninth of February?”

“Yes.” Greenaway knew he could recall every word of Cummins’s statement. He also knew Cummins had worked hard on his lines as he lay in his cell, utilising all his aptitude for twisting the truth with fiction. But he could disprove every lie that fell from the airman’s lips. He only had to keep his cool while doing it.

“I put it to you that when he said he had gone off with a woman, you thought that you had got an admission from him that he had gone off with Evelyn Bettencourt.”

“I thought no such thing.” Greenaway’s tone was perfectly calm.

“But did you not say to him at this point, ‘Now I’ve got my rope around your neck,’ or words to that effect?”

“Certainly not,” said Greenaway, allowing a trace of indignation to surface. He didn’t quite know how Cummins had drawn down his thoughts at the time so accurately, but as he had never actually said them aloud, the words did not appear in the statement.

Nonetheless, Flowers clearly felt he was on a roll. “I put it to you that you frightened the life out of him after he told you about going off with this woman,” he persisted.

“I did no such thing,” Greenaway flattened his voice out again. “No such thing.”

Swaffer scribbled: Stoic in the face of the defence’s barrage of insinuation, Edward Greenaway proved to the jury the qualities that have earned him the rank of Detective Chief Inspector. He is the tower of strength we require to uphold the truth.

– . –

Flowers called Cummins himself to the dock next. During Greenaway’s testimony, the airman had assumed an air of nervous bewilderment, which he persisted with in the witness box, his hands clasped tremulously together in front of him.

“Would you tell My Lord and the jury, what, if anything, had been said to you by Mr Greenaway just before you made your statement?” Flowers asked.

Casting a brief look of terror in the DCI’s direction, Cummins proceeded in his best King’s English. “I told him I was very glad to see him, because I had every confidence we could sort out this misunderstanding he had of me like gentlemen. To which Inspector Greenaway replied that I had him at a disadvantage for he was no gentleman.”

“And then, what did Mr Greenaway say to you when you told him you had been with a woman in Wardour Street on the night of the ninth of February?”

“That it gave him rope enough to hang me with,” said Cummins. “Or words to that effect.”

“Did that frighten you?” his barrister asked him.

Cummins nodded, loosening his tie for emphasis. “It did,” he said.

“Remembering where you stand and the oath you have taken, did you have anything to do with the murder of that unfortunate woman, Mrs Bettencourt?” Flowers said.

Cummins shook his head. “No, I did not.”

“Bastard,” hissed Duch from the public gallery. She turned her head again to look at Marjorie Cummins, who had leaned forwards to the very edge of her seat. Her sister, by comparison, had slumped back in hers, arms folded across her chest. She looked as if she believed Cummins could trick the jury the way he obviously had her sibling.

But now it was McClure’s turn to cross-examine the accused for the Crown.

“You were frightened by Mr Greenaway?” he asked with a doubtful frown.

Cummins nodded. “Yes,” he said.

“Will you tell the jury why you were frightened?”

“Quite naturally,” Cummins’s hand went up to his tie again. “I was frightened because Inspector Greenaway made that remark with reference to murder and hanging and well, he frightened me.” He cast another fretful glance in the DCI’s direction.

But McClure did not look convinced. “I want you to tell the jury more about why you were frightened,” he said. “Were you frightened because you told a lie?”

Cummins’s head jerked. It looked like a nod.

“Would you please speak so the jury can hear your response?”

“Yes, sir,” said Cummins.

“It is quite untrue that you met Simpson again that night,” McClure waved his copy of Simpson’s statement for emphasis. “We have his testimony that he left you at Piccadilly Circus at ten-thirty and did not see you again until the morning. You told him that you had arrived back at your barracks via the fire escape at the back of the building at three-thirty in the morning, while he was asleep. Between those hours, is there any living soul who knows what you did?”

Cummins moved from one leg to the other. A strand of hair broke loose from his carefully groomed forelock. “I saw no one else,” he said.

“The mistake you made – so you call it – was to say in your statement that you got back to Piccadilly Circus and met Simpson there at about ten pm,” McClure now read from Cummins’s statement. “A mistake that you made before you were, as you say, frightened?” The prosecutor’s eyes narrowed.

“Yes,” Cummins said. “I was very vague as to times. In my statement, all my times were probably wrong like that. It’s because of the blackout, you see, sir. I had not a watch myself, and of course, in the dark, one cannot see public clocks.”

McClure sighed. He and the jury, his expression suggested, had had enough of Cummins’s fabrications.

“Can you explain,” he stepped his questioning up a gear, “that if you had never been to Mrs Bettencourt’s flat in Wardour Street, why your fingerprints were found there? And how her neighbour, Mrs Poole, managed to identify you as the last man she saw go to Mrs Bettencourt’s room with her on that same evening?”

Cummins’s pale eyes, the mesmerist’s stare he had used so powerfully on his victims, seemed to fail him in the sepulchral Old Bailey. The expression they currently held, as they rolled around the courtroom, was that of a man going under a wave.

“I’m afraid I can’t recall,” he said. “I’d had rather a lot to drink at the time …”

Duch looked back at Marjorie Cummins’s sister. Freda Stevens stared down on her brother-in-law, a grim smile of triumph on her face.

– . –

“A sadistic sexual murder has been committed here of a ghoulish and horrible type,” Justice Asquith summed the case up for the jury while keeping his eyes on Cummins. “But of a type which is not at all uncommon. What you have to determine is whether, upon the evidence, it has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that the murderer is the man who stands in the dock. His life and liberty are in your hands. But in your hands are also the interests of society.”

– . –

The jury took only thirty-five minutes to make their deliberations. As they filed back into the courtroom, none of them looked towards the defendant.

“How do you find the accused?” asked the court clerk.

The foreman stood. “Guilty of murder,” he said.

Freda Stevens closed her eyes in relief.

The clerk turned to face Cummins. “Prisoner at the bar,” he said, “you stand convicted of murder. Have you anything to say why the court should not give you judgement of death according to the law?”

Cummins’s veneer was broken. He was ashen, shocked to the core. “I am completely innocent,” he said, struggling to keep his voice from breaking.

Freda Stevens put her arms around her sobbing sister as the court chaplain approached the Justice’s bench and placed the black cap on Asquith’s head.

“Gordon Frederick Cummins,” the Justice said, “after a fair trial, you have been found guilty, and on a charge of murder, as you know, there is only one sentence which the law permits me to pronounce, and that is that you be taken from this place to a lawful prison, and thence to a place of execution, and that you be there hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

Duch got to her feet and looked down on Greenaway’s head and the tangle of grey hairs that had sprouted on his crown since the last time they had met. She made one last scan of the rows around her, vainly searching out a cloud of white-blonde curls amid the throng. But it seemed Lil had not returned to see justice served today.

Duch sighed, cast her parting glance on Greenaway. “You done us a mitzvah, Ted,” she said.