CHAPTER 13

Murder in the Park (1)
1927

You are the last person she was supposed to meet and its funny she hasn’t been home.

Constance Gertrude Oliver was in love. She had confided in Mildred Lee, a friend, that, ‘I like him very much, I have been out with him several times.’ Mildred later said, ‘She thought this was Mr Right who had come along. She told me Bernard had promised to marry her and that they were to be engaged on her birthday next February and would get married at Christmas.’ This was all very sudden. Constance and Bernard had met in September 1927, probably at the coffee stall in Falcon Grove, Battersea. Bernard worked there, and Constance lived with her family in the same street. They had seen quite a lot of each other in the two weeks that they had known each other, going to the cinema or for walks. It had been a very innocent romance on her part; although he had wanted ‘to go through her’ (ie have sex), she was ‘not that sort of girl’.

It is unlikely that Constance knew much about her new young man. If she had, she might have been a little less enthusiastic about him. Not that Sydney Bernard Goulter, to give him his full name, was all bad. He came from a reasonably respectable background. Born on 18 September 1902, he was one of six children and his father was a police inspector, based at Kingston and residing at Bockhampton Road from 1915–40. Some of his employers spoke highly of him. When he worked at The Blue Anchor, Weybridge, as a barman, in 1921, it was said he was ‘a hard working and intelligent lad’. Another employer said he was ‘willing and intelligent’ and another thought he was a good worker when he was actually at work.