NO SUCH THING AS DELICACY: DAY THREE

On Saturday morning, well before the jury began to make its way from The Bull’s Head Hotel, where it had remained following a short, head-clearing walk around the town and a second night enjoying Mr Gargini’s hospitality under the careful supervision of the usher, a long queue was already forming outside the Courthouse.

‘It is doubtful if ever in the history of judicature in Bucks, a jury has ever been called upon to listen to a more gruesome story,’ drooled the local paper, and the public clearly couldn’t wait to hear it in all its prurient detail, especially ahead of a day which would probably go a long way towards finally settling the fate of the Musical Milkman.

But before Bailey was due to give his own account of the events at Barn Cottage, and try perhaps to persuade the jury that he was mad, rather than an arch villain, there was still the no small matter of more potentially damning evidence from two of his ‘Young Ladies’. Of those, the one who set most pulses racing was Miss Marks who, it may be recalled, had been named as the alleged victim in several grievous charges against Bailey on the original sheet when the Calendar of Prisoners was first published.

Winifred Field was, however, the day’s first witness and she effectively corroborated everything that Gladys Edwards had told the Court the previous evening, including being present at Barn Cottage the morning after the murder was said to have taken place.

Mr Young asked her, ‘How did he [Bailey] seem to be?’

‘Quite cheerful,’ replied the teenager, who still lived at home with her parents in Marlow.

‘He did not seem in any sort of distress, like a man who had lost his wife suddenly?’ Counsel continued.

‘No,’ said Miss Field.

The Judge asked her if she’d noticed ‘a plaster or anything on his neck’, and whether he had a cough.

‘No’ came her reply to both questions.

‘He seemed sound in mind?’ His Lordship then queried, curiously.

‘Yes,’ said Miss Field.

And so to Miss Marks.

‘I am enclosing particulars re myself, age 20, height about 5ft 7in, well built, fair complexion,’ was how Miss Lilian Pretoria Marks, a grocer’s assistant, who lived with her parents in High Wycombe, had described herself in reply to Bailey’s advertisement. After taking her place in the witness box, Miss Marks told Prosecuting Counsel and the Court about her first encounter with the prisoner at Millbrook on 6 September.

‘Well, he just laid out before me a music system, and told me he had several young ladies who were in communication with him over this musical notation. He did not give very full particulars that evening because I was hardly sure about the work, and said I would like to talk it over with my people.’

‘Did he do anything with your hands?’

‘He asked me to place my hands on the table.’

‘He examined them?’

‘Did he ask you to stand up, so that he might examine you?’

‘Yes, against the door.’

‘He put you against the door?’

‘Your hat was on, I think?’

‘Did he ask you to take it off?’

‘Did he make any remarks at all?’

‘He made a remark that I was a well-built girl, and did I think I was 5ft 7in.’

Miss Marks was given to understand that sleepovers for her and ‘other pupils’ would be part of the arrangement and, after subsequent correspondence between her and Bailey, a date was finally fixed for her to start on 29 September. When she arrived at Barn Cottage, the Misses Edwards and Field were already in situ and together they then had two hours’ instruction from Bailey. She heard the accused ask the other two girls to return the following morning, while she was requested to come back that same evening at 7.00pm. When she returned, Bailey greeted her and also explained that ‘two young ladies from Scotland had arrived’ and ‘that they were tired and had gone to bed’.

It was also shortly after 7.00pm she had heard, as prompted by Mr Young, a young child crying upstairs. Bailey told her that was little Hollie who was in the bedroom leading from hers, and he would attend to her. She then had supper alone with him after which he said he was going outside to await the arrival of another young lady from London. She went outside with him and they stood together for about three-quarters-of-an-hour on the lawn; it was a nice evening, but soon she made her excuses and said she wanted to go to bed. It was now around 9.00pm.

When she finally got into bed, she could hear Bailey walking up and down stairs and several times at the pump in the kitchen. He also called out to her that as the other expected pupil hadn’t yet arrived he would stay up until 11.00pm, and that if Hollie cried again he would have to go through her [Miss Marks’] room to deal with her.

‘What did you say to that?’

‘I said, “Was it necessary?”’

About an hour-and-a-half after she’d gone to bed, she heard the latch move – there was no lock – and the door opened. In came Bailey, she said. He went straight through into the next bedroom before returning soon after. No, she hadn’t heard Hollie cry, Miss Marks told Bailey, who said he had, before he then sat down in an armchair by the adjoining door. After about half an hour, Bailey then spoke again. ‘He said,’ Miss Marks told the Court, ‘he had come with the intention of putting a question to me.’

‘Did he say anything to you about whether you had been to sleep?’

‘He asked me if I had been to sleep, and I said “No”.’

‘Did he say, “Why not?”’

‘I do not remember.’

‘What did he say next?’

‘He asked me if I liked the cottage, and I said it was all very well but I didn’t want to discuss it at that time of night.’

‘Did he say anything more about the cottage?’

‘He said, would I like to be mistress there?’

‘What did you say to that?’

‘I said I would rather not talk about it then.’

‘Was anything said about a licence?’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said, what would I say if he had already got a licence to be married on the following morning?’

‘I do not want to go into any further details, but did he then try and get into your bed?’

‘How long did he stay there? All night?’

‘He stayed in the bedroom until 8.00am the following morning.’

‘He tried to get into your bed from time to time?’

‘And you refused to allow him?’ the Judge interjected.

Compared with these incendiary exchanges, Mr Young’s next question seemed strangely anti-climactic. ‘Next morning, I think, you breakfasted, did you not, with him?’

In fact, this was merely a brief calm that continued with some comparatively gentle questioning from Mr Young before the storm finally began to break after Mr Johnston stood up to cross-examine. His intent – to try to undermine the weight, accuracy and gravity of her evidence – was obvious from the outset. Ominously, he opened with: ‘Miss Marks, I am afraid I shall have to ask a few questions, but I will make them as few as I can.’ Clearly implying he thought Miss Marks would surely have been out of the door at the first opportunity after her all-night tribulations, Counsel’s questions about their breakfasting together seemed weighted with incredulity. ‘Did you actually go downstairs and lay the breakfast?’

‘How long do you think you were downstairs before he came down?’

‘About half an hour.’

After breakfast, Miss Marks asked if she could go for a walk.

‘Did he raise any objection?’

‘No.’ In fact, she added, he asked if she could buy some lunch while she was out.

When the Misses Fields and Edwards returned to Barn Cottage that morning, Miss Marks finally made her ‘getaway’ and walked 40 minutes to Cores End, the other side of Bourne End, where she went to the home of the Reverend John Allen, a Congregational Minister and old friend of the Marks family, to whom she told her story.

If Miss Marks thought this was to be the full extent of Counsel’s ‘few questions’, she was sorely mistaken, for Mr Johnston was merely warming up as he now began to walk her minutely through the events of 29–30 September, from the moment she arrived back at Barn Cottage around 7.00pm. After a query about the time lapse between the events themselves and her official recollection of them in evidence given at the Magistrates’ Court last October, after they were put down in writing just two or three days before the hearing itself, he asked, ‘It is three-and-a-half months since this tragedy occurred?’

‘Could you at this time feel sure of the exact words that the prisoner used?’

‘I cannot say.’

‘What you do say honestly is that about 26 October, you put down what you could recollect and the impression the words had made on your mind?’

‘Naturally, you could conceive no motive but an improper motive for the prisoner coming in on you?’

‘No other reason.’

‘From his conversation with you, did it occur to you that the prisoner had a very good and reasonable motive for being in that room, and for preventing your calling the neighbours and making a disturbance?’

‘Perhaps any passionate desires that he had as regards yourself were shown to you, and caused you to form that impression by certain things he said?’

‘No, I do not know.’

‘Well, the prisoner has an explanation for his being in your room which is not the one which you most naturally thought.’

Then the Judge chipped in with: ‘You cannot say that truthfully,’ to which Mr Johnston replied, ‘Quite so, but the prisoner is going to give one.’

That wasn’t enough for His Lordship who asked Miss Marks, ‘How does it happen that he tried to get into your bed constantly during the night, half a dozen times or more?’

‘He tried to keep you from going where you could call the neighbours?’

Possibly rattled by the Judge’s intervention, which seemed merely to abet Miss Marks’ unswerving account, Mr Johnston tried a new tack as he turned again to the witness. ‘I am not going to take you through everything that occurred that night. I prefer not to, as there are ladies on the jury.’

This cut absolutely no ice with the Judge who swiftly countered, ‘Now that women have to take their share on a jury with men, they must take their share in a Court of Justice where there is no such thing as delicacy, if it interferes with the arrival at the truth. I am therefore quite sure that the ladies on the jury will understand that it is most important when they take their places on a jury … the only duty of a jury is to arrive at the truth and give a proper verdict.’

According to the Daily Express, the three women jurors ‘nodded their acquiescence’.

That, at least, was the green light for Mr Johnston to cast off any earlier notions of ‘delicacy’ as he now tried to rattle Miss Marks, old beyond her years, with a series of more probing questions.

‘Did he say something about how he was going to carry out his purpose?’

‘What did he say about that purpose?’

There was no answer from Miss Marks, so the Judge nudged her with: ‘Just tell us what he said,’ as Mr Johnston repeated, ‘What did he say?’

‘I cannot remember the exact words.’

‘Just tell us the substance of what he said.’

‘He said he had come with the intention of asking me to become his wife and, if not, pushing me into it.’

‘He asked you some questions before then as to what you thought of the house?’

‘I put it to you that what he really said in the course of the conversation was this: “How would you like to be mistress of a house like this some day?”’

‘Might he not have said something like this: “You will be married yourself one day, and live in a house like this”?’

‘He might have said this.’

Miss Marks said that whenever she tried to get out of the bed to go to the window and, indeed leave the room, he prevented her, pushing her back on to the bed; he did not leave her until daylight, she told the Court.

‘Were these the only times he touched you?’ the Judge asked.

‘When he tried to get into my bed.’

‘Do you say that when he tried to get into your bed you struggled hard to get to the window?’

‘You tried hard to get away?’

‘You gave a good account of yourself?’ Mr Johnston asked.

‘The prisoner is not such a powerful man?’

‘As you struggled, naturally you were exhausted?’

‘You were exhausted two or three times during the night?’

Now Mr Johnston played what might have seemed to be a crucial card. ‘I am sorry to have to put to you one question … You have been examined by your family doctor?’

‘Your family doctor has told you that you are as pure a girl as you were when you went to this house?’

‘The prisoner did not have connection [an old-fashioned term for ‘intercourse’] with you?’

‘You have already told me that you were lying exhausted on that bed so that you could hardly move three or four times?’

‘Was there anything to prevent this man from having connection with you if he wanted, when you were in that state?’

‘He did not have connection with you, and did not take advantage of you on that particular night. Is it not a curious thing that he did not?’

‘No, he did not.’

‘Do you not think you have made a mistake in what you have said to me about this?’

But, before Miss Marks could answer, His Lordship replied, apparently on her behalf, ‘A young woman is not likely to forget what takes place on a night of this sort.’

It was a powerful, not to say deeply significant, intervention. It was the perfect opportunity for Mr Young now to grasp the nettle and exploit it. ‘Fortunately, he did not have connection with you that night?’

‘Was that his fault, or was it your resistance that prevented it?’

‘I fought hard all night.’

‘Did you say he tried all he could to have connection with you?’

‘In the course of what he said to you that night, did he say anything about somebody being the mother of his children?’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said he wanted me to be there, and make me the mother of his children.’

‘Did he say something to you in the morning about suggesting you might not marry some other man?’

‘What did he say?’

‘He said, did I think I was free to marry any other man, and I said, “Yes”.’

‘Did he mean after what happened in the room?’ the Judge asked.

‘What did he say in answer to that?’

‘He said I must know I was not, because something had passed from him to me which made it impossible for me to marry.’

‘That was the view he took of what he had done that night?’ Mr Young asked.

Perhaps perceiving he was now on something of a losing wicket, Mr Johnston sought clarification. ‘As regards this conversation when he wished to make you the mother of his children, is it not your recollection of it that he said he wanted you to be mother to his child?’

‘No, he did not,’ replied Miss Marks, still unfazed. ‘He said he wanted me there to make me the mother of his children.’

‘To be the mother?’

‘Did you regard it as looking after his child, or producing others?’ said Mr Young.

‘Producing others.’

And that was her final word on the matter.

If the public in Court had been electrified by Miss Marks’ evidence, they must have been bordering on hysteria when they heard that the famous Dr Spilsbury was to be recalled next. In fact, the star scientist would be detained for just the briefest time as he explained about the application and effects of chloroform.

Then the recall of Inspector West, too, was merely to establish the discovery of a ‘little green book’ in a bedroom drawer – a book that would be ‘put in’ during the prisoner’s evidence. This did lead, though, to a rather bizarre exchange at the conclusion of the police officer’s stint after Mr Johnston had asked for ‘articles of female apparel’, under which the little book had been found, to be produced in Court. Inspector West did as requested, to which Mr Johnston declared, ‘I put it to you that these are men’s running shorts.’

The inspector replied, ‘I should say they are a pair of women’s bloomers.’

His Lordship ordered they be handed to the jury.

There was nothing so enigmatic about the evidence next of the Reverend Allen who, questioned by Mr O’Sullivan, told the Court that after he’d seen Lily Marks he visited Barn Cottage where he tried to get some answers out of Bailey.

‘He asked me if I’d come specially to enquire about any special case as I’d mentioned young ladies to him. I said, “Yes, you had Miss Marks staying here the other night.”’

‘Did he seem to remember the name of Miss Marks?’

‘He seemed to know nothing of her?’

‘No. He said, “Marks … Marks?”’

‘What did you say then?’

‘I said, “You must know the name very well … you have a list of the pupils you have been receiving.” I suggested he might consult that, but he did not do so.’

‘Did he say how many pupils he had?’

‘I think he mentioned about 30.’

‘Then what did you say to him?’

‘As he persisted in feigning no knowledge of Miss Marks, I said, “We are only wasting time; perhaps you will be more ready to answer questions put to you by the police,” and upon that I made to go.’

‘What did he do then?’

‘He then assumed a readiness to discuss things, and said, “Oh, Lily Marks.” I said, “Don’t be silly, how can you remember Lily Marks if you cannot remember the name of Marks at all?”’

‘Then I think you left after making some remarks about Lily Marks?’

‘I said, “Oh, well, any information you have had better be kept for those who will ask with more authority than I have.”’

‘Did the prisoner seem a little flurried?’

‘He might have been.’

Apart from the recall of Zimmerman and Co’s Mr Hancock who was required to confirm some detail about the dates of correspondence with the prisoner, the last major witness for the Prosecution was PC John Gray, based in Bourne End. He explained to the Court how, on instructions, he had kept an eye first on Millbrook then on Barn Cottage because of the frequency of young ladies visiting those premises. Two days before Kate’s death, he said he’d seen Bailey and his wife walking together along Little Marlow Road.

‘How did they seem?’ Mr Young asked.

‘They appeared to be very happy together,’ PC Gray replied.

Just five days later, PC Gray found himself in charge of the prisoner at Marlow after Bailey had been arrested.

‘Did he speak to you?’

‘Did you ask him any questions?’

‘Did you make a note of what he said within a minute or two afterwards?’

‘Will you tell me what he said?’

So PC Gray repeated to the Court what Bailey had told him in outline about the events of 29–30 September and which Gray had first told Magistrates back in October. Bailey’s own official statement to the Magistrates was then read out by the Clerk for the record. That concluded the case for the Prosecution.

Because there is no proper record of Mr Johnston’s opening remarks before presenting the case for the Defence, this, instead, is the Bucks Free Press’s account of Counsel’s introduction; even in third-person reportage, it is clearly a thing of desperation, grasping at straws.

Immediately, Mr Johnston rose to address the Jury for the defence. He made a few remarks on behalf of the friendless man who had for nearly three days been sitting in the dock. He asked the Jury not to picture him as he now was – unshaven and bearing the stress and strain of his long wait in prison – but to picture him as the smart man he was known to be while in the Bourne End district discharging his duties.

If found guilty, it would be for the Jury to send him to his death, or to what might be described as a living death in a Criminal Asylum. It was abundantly clear that the prisoner had lived happily with his wife. He had a little daughter unprovided for, an aged mother, and brothers and sisters, who, if he were convicted, would be branded in a sense with the shame. He wanted them to remember that Bailey was a milk roundsman, with something like 300 customers. He was a man highly respected by those customers. He had striven hard to improve his position; of that there was no doubt. He implored the Jury that instead of coming to the conclusion that he was the greatest villain they had ever heard or seen, to decide that he was mad, and it was clear that he was mad in a sense.

The defence to the charge, he would at once say, was that the prisoner’s was not the hand that administered the poison to his wife; that his was not the brain that conceived the idea of poisoning her; but that she committed suicide, as she had every temptation so to do, and they would hear that she had every possible motive. He would go further and say there was no evidence of any criminal assault on Miss Marks. Bailey went into her bedroom for a special purpose, for which the Jury would no doubt have an inkling. With regard to Miss Marks’ evidence, Bailey would explain to them all the circumstances.

And so to the main event. Amid a flutter of excitement, Bailey, looking even smaller than his 5ft 4½in, made his way slowly from the dock to the witness box where he sat down and gripped the side of the box in preparation for the inevitable barrage of questions from Counsel. From one of them, he faced the immensely experienced veteran for the Prosecution; his interests would be protected by a rather more callow Defence barrister. Both of these men were now about to be more focused than at any other time of the trial as, over the next five hours, they would effectively juggle with his life.

‘Answer these questions quietly, and take your time about them,’ Mr Johnston began sympathetically as he let his client fill in some of the – admittedly selective – history about his early life and times, including his father’s premature death from acute melancholia and, more especially, his own medical misfortunes. These included sunstroke, ruptured knee ligaments (at a cider mill) and, later, another knee, together with a head injury (sustained while cleaning windows), not to mention mental breakdowns, attempts at suicide and a three-month stay in an asylum. In between all these ills, there was employment in farming, as a dairyman (in Cornwall) and as a milk roundsman in London for the Express Dairy Company.

This took us up to 1915 when Bailey was 27 and the Great War had been raging for more than a year. Bailey told the Court he had submitted two inventions to the War Office including one for sight-reading for aeroplanes. He said he made two attempts to enlist in the Army and was taken eventually ‘but on the training ground my knees gave way’. After moving to London and marrying Kate on 12 August 1916, he toyed with various business opportunities before ‘I broke down again’. Eventually, he and Kate, now parents of Hollie, moved to Millbrook in Bourne End where, when he wasn’t working as a milk roundsman, he was trying to develop his musical notation.

‘Things were going very well for you, then?’ Mr Johnston asked.

‘Very well indeed.’

‘In every respect?’

‘I was flourishing.’

‘How were you as regards your wife?’

‘On good terms, very good.’

‘Did you love each other?’

‘There was no cause of disagreement between you?’

‘Only the music.’

‘There was the music?’

‘I must ask you to explain. Did you believe in it?’

‘Absolutely.’

‘Was it the enthusiasm of your life?’

‘What was your idea of getting it known? Did it seem so very difficult?’

‘It was as simple as ABC.’

The only way to spread the word about the system, he said, when prompted by Counsel, was to have it copied and as widely disseminated as possible. He asserted that the advertisements were not part of some plan ‘simply to lure young girls’ to his house.

‘What was the future prospect of the scheme?’

‘It was assured.’

‘What was assured?’

‘The thing itself … the money part of it. It was bound to be a success.’

‘You thought eventually it would bring you money?’

‘Absolutely.’

Mr Johnston then returned in some detail to the matter, which had been alluded to in just one brief exchange earlier – that of the serious divergence of opinion between husband and wife about the music.

‘What did she think of your new idea? Did she persuade you to drop it at once?’

‘Yes, she was afraid of it because of my health and the general foolishness of what I was doing.’

‘Anything about your time?’

‘Of course she complained I was not paying the attention to her I had previously been doing.’

‘And spending all your time on the music?’

‘In August, did you make her any presents?’

‘I was always buying her something.’

‘In August, did you make her any special present?’

‘I bought her a new costume.’

‘Did you tell her about it?’

‘Was it to be a surprise?’

‘One day, did you send her a message about anything?’

‘I asked her to come and meet me coming home from work, and she done so.’ ‘What was she wearing?’

‘An old costume.’

‘As she was not wearing the new costume, were you disappointed? Did you say anything about it?’

‘I was displeased.’

‘You told her so?’

‘Was this,’ the Judge asked, ‘after you gave her the new costume?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘What did you say?’

‘I said she made herself look common.’

‘Was that all you said?’

‘Well … I walked away.’

‘Why did she make herself look common?’

‘Wearing a dress she had worn some time.’

The Judge then asked if it was shortly after this that Bailey found something in his wife’s handwriting. Yes, he replied, the little green book that had been referred to by Inspector West earlier in the day, containing a purported note – the one first revealed at the inquest – from Kate to Bailey’s mother. After the accused confirmed it was Kate’s handwriting, the Clerk read it out to the Court with suitable gravity:

Mother, will you take care of little Hollie for me, or see she is taken care of: I can’t stand it any longer – stand what you will want to know. I am not going to say anything: George can tell you all. I don’t know if it is me to blame: It always is, so I expect it is me again. Never mind, it is nothing new: I wish my own mother were alive: it is a shame you are always called upon when anything goes wrong: it will be the last time where I am concerned. If I only knew Hollie would be looked after, I would not care a hang, and George would not mind if he never saw me again. I am all right to get his food for him, but otherwise I am common. Oh, mother, it hurts too much to be told that after what I have, what we both have, been through together. I am not so showy as I used to be: God knows I have had it all taken out of me: the shame, the disgrace of it all: can you wonder I feel quiet, want to dress quiet, want to keep away from everybody? I can’t always forget, if George can.

When Bailey found the note, he said that he’d asked Kate ‘what she meant by it’.

‘You did not want your wife to commit suicide?’ the Judge asked.

‘I did not. I told her to forget the incident. I was only angry for a moment.’ He added that she said, ‘It was to bring me to my senses.’

His Lordship clearly had some theory of his own that he wished to pursue so he continued, ‘This book has a considerable number of spare pages all blank right through?’

‘How came you to find this book? When did you find it?’

‘A few days after the costume incident.’

‘How came you to find it?’

‘One day when I was upstairs at Millbrook, I should say.’

‘Was it in a box?’

‘It was on the chest of drawers.’

‘Lying on the chest of drawers?’

‘Lying on the chest of drawers.’

‘In the room?’

‘Did you ask her to write anything of the sort?’

‘No, my lord.’

‘Did you ask her to write anything that might look dramatic in a play?’

‘Did you discuss plays with her?’

In an attempt to nip this diversion in the bud, Mr Johnston weighed in with: ‘How long is it since you wrote your last play?’

Bailey had mentioned he wrote poetry and plays when younger.

Bailey replied, ‘Ten years.’

With a luncheon adjournment beckoning, the Judge pressed the prisoner on the matter of his marriage. ‘No disputes at all?’

‘Quite happily down to the time when she died?’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I will not say “quite happily”, because of the business.’

‘Were you happy with her?’

‘I tried to make her happy.’

Anxious to try to clarify quickly the circumstances in which Bailey had discovered Kate’s little green book, Mr Johnston asked, ‘Did your wife say anything to you as to why she put the book on the chest of drawers, where you found it?’

‘Were you ever told why it was there?’

‘She left it there for me to see.’

‘How did you know she left it there for you to see?’

‘I presumed it … she did not tell me.’

Following a 45-minute break, the Court reconvened at 3.00pm with Bailey once again gripping the sides of the witness box while, for the time being at least, still ever gently being probed by his Counsel. He was asked to recall his homes in Bourne End and Little Marlow and address the matter of wasps and ants and by what means he had wished to rid himself of both. Mr Johnston drew his attention to the fact that in correspondence Bailey had appeared to muddle them in terms of their actual location. The prisoner admitted he had indeed mixed them up.

On that subject and with regards to what Bailey had hoped might also be future money-making opportunities in farriery and veterinary work – such as destroying cats and dogs – Bailey claimed that many of the customers on his milk round asked him about undertaking such a service. The continuing question-and-answer then centred briefly on the prisoner’s motives for the acquisition of drugs and dangerous poisons.

And so to the arrival of the various young ladies, but more specifically the events of the afternoon of 29 September after he’d asked them to leave before perhaps up to four might be returning later to sleep over that night. After lunch, he and Kate had spent some time together in the garden. When he came back into the house, into the dining room to be precise, Bailey said he could smell stramonia. How did he know the odour? his Counsel asked. Because of past experience, Bailey replied, when he had once ‘attempted suicide’. What did Kate say when he asked her what she’d done? ‘She said she had done it, or words to that effect.’ She’d taken, said Bailey, ‘roughly speaking, about a quarter of a bottleful’.

‘What crossed your mind when you looked at the bottle?’

‘The first thing that flashed across my mind was it was not sufficient to cause death.’

‘How did it appear compared with the dose from which you recovered?’

‘I could not tell you whether it was as much as I took.’

‘Did you form any opinion as to whether your wife was likely to die or not from the amount that was gone?’

‘I thought she would not die.’

With her legs, knees and arms shaking, Bailey told the Judge he took Kate out into the garden ‘to make her move about’.

‘Did she say she wanted to die?’

‘She did not. She simply said, “I have done it.”’

‘Did she want to die?’

‘I would not let her.’

‘How long did this walking backwards and forwards go on for?’

‘Some considerable time.’

Bailey then told the Court he decided to take her back in the house because he thought she was recovering, and he made her have some tea and made her eat.

‘What next?’ Counsel asked.

‘Then she complained of a nasty sensation at the back of her mouth, and I got her some lemonade.’ Her condition, he told the Court, ‘seemed to be improving’.

Once again, the Judge chipped in. ‘Did you and she agree to commit suicide?’

‘That was some time before.’

‘When did you agree to commit suicide?’

‘Three years before.’

‘Before your marriage?’

‘After our marriage.’

‘How long after marriage?’

‘Well, about 12 months.’

‘How did you agree to destroy yourselves then?’

‘By poison.’

‘What poison?’

‘There was nothing definitely settled on.’

‘Was that before your baby was born or afterwards?’

‘Before the baby was born.’

‘Did you do so?’

‘We did attempt to poison ourselves.’

‘What with?’

‘Opium and laudanum.’

‘Did you each take it?’

‘We did.’This attempt, said Bailey, took place at Winchester.

‘Why did you agree to commit suicide?’ was the Judge’s obvious if rather belated question in this exchange.

‘Everything seemed hopeless,’ the prisoner replied.

Bailey then explained that, after he’d urged Kate to go to bed at around 6.30pm, he suddenly noticed in the dining room a stick of red sealing wax and, in the fender, the cap and string off a bottle of prussic acid. He rushed upstairs and saw Kate with an eggcup to her lips and, beside the bed, on a chair, the bottle itself. He went to Kate and took the eggcup from her as she was drinking the contents. She vomited and turned her head on one side; some of the vomit went on to the back of his coat causing a stain, he said, adding that as she fell back she uttered ‘one or two words’ which, as far as he could understand them, were ‘Come too’.

Bailey was asked by the Judge to take his coat off and point to where the stain was so that the jury could also see it.

After hearing that his sister had drawn attention to the stain when Bailey had returned to Swindon and that he had succeeded in ‘scraping it off, or most of it’, Mr Johnston asked him, ‘How long have you been wearing that coat since?’

‘Only since I have been at these proceedings.’

‘Have you been wearing an overcoat over it?’

‘I have been wearing an overcoat.’

‘How came the stain to be on your coat tail at the back?’ the Judge enquired.

‘I was by the side of the bed. When she turned her head and vomited, some of the vomit went on the carpet behind and some went on my coat.’

‘If you were facing the bed I cannot understand how the vomit got on to the back of your coat?’

‘She turned her head towards my shoulder.’

Bailey then rushed downstairs, he told Counsel, to get some chloroform because he thought it would ‘ease her pain’. He poured some on cotton wool and applied that to her nostrils for ‘just half a second’. Kate was still alive and breathing heavily when he applied the chloroform, he said, but then died almost immediately. When her breathing stopped, his immediate thought was ‘I was going myself’, but when he saw ‘the kiddie [Hollie] on the bed’ he changed his mind, concerned that she would be left unprovided for.

At that moment, he also said he felt the need ‘to conceal the fact’ that his wife was dead because it ‘flashed into my mind that everything seemed so against me’. This concealment continued with a vengeance when Lily Marks returned very soon after Kate had died. As they dined together downstairs, Kate was lying upstairs, her body covered apart from her face, with Hollie in bed next to her. That’s how it remained until the following morning, when he moved Kate’s body under the bed, covered with a sheet.

He admitted he’d told Miss Marks about the arrival earlier of two young ladies from Scotland ‘to keep up appearances and allay suspicious thought of any sort’. He’d said they were tired and had gone to bed, and were not to be disturbed because he wanted to prevent Miss Marks from going into the room where she would have seen Kate’s body. Yes, he’d gone to Miss Marks’ room after she went to bed using the pretext that Hollie had cried – which he now agreed she had not – so he could sit in a chair by the door to the room where Kate was lying. He did talk to her on and off during the night but had, he assured Counsel, never a notion of ‘injuring that girl morally’.

While contradicting her testimony about his supposed intentions towards her, Bailey did agree he had put his hand on her more than once to prevent her from getting out of bed and perhaps investigating the next-door room so causing ‘a disturbance’. To keep her from the room, he did ‘tell lies … all lies … just to conceal it’.

Changing tack dramatically, Mr Johnston next asked Bailey about the letter that was found in his pocket on Reading Station, which was addressed ‘To the Coroner only (via the Police)’. The defendant said he had written it while waiting for over three hours at Paddington Station on his way back to Swindon.

‘What did you write it for?’ asked the Judge.

‘Just to explain everything. Just to explain everything and take all the blame.’

‘What blame?’

‘As regards my wife’s death.’

Mr Johnston resumed his questioning. ‘In this document, you remember you said this: “I should like our three bodies laid together. That is why I came back to take one last look. Give one last kiss to my beloved. I gave her stramonia first, then hydrocyanic.” How did you come to write this?’

‘Well, I know I had broken my wife’s heart.’

‘By keeping on with the music.’

‘Broken her heart because of the music?’ the Judge reiterated.

‘You said you wanted to take the blame. The blame of what?’ asked Mr Johnston.

At this point, Bailey, who had been obviously tense in the witness box yet still sufficiently self-possessed to counter everything thrown at him ahead of the biggest test of all – the Prosecution’s cross-examination, which still lay ahead – completely broke down as he stuttered, ‘The blame of everything.’ This rare show of emotion had clearly ambushed his Counsel who hurriedly told the prisoner, ‘Pull yourself together. This is very important. You have told us what you wrote is not true?’

‘Yes,’ said Bailey, slowly recovering his composure.

‘Tell us why you wrote it?’

‘I did not want them to know she had committed suicide.’

There was, it was noted by a court reporter, ‘a deadly silence’ in Court when Mr Young rose to begin perhaps the most pivotal phase of the trial, and he started as he intended to go on, in full confrontational mode. ‘Now, Mr Bailey, you have given us a number of incidents in your life from the time you left school until the year 1920?’

‘You do not wish the jury to believe that this is a correct record of how you spent your life during that period. It is just a bare outline of certain incidents in your life?’ ‘Yes.’

‘It is not a full account of all that you did and all the places that you visited?’

While the jury at that moment had little opportunity to explore the details of Bailey’s upbringing, or begin to piece together for themselves some of the factors that may have contributed to the psyche of the man sitting before them in the dock, it is perhaps illuminating for us to do just that. So, as the trial is placed temporarily on hold, it’s worth examining the life and very peculiar times of George Arthur Bailey.