Following the central literary canon – that is: Roughead’s Trial, 1910; Doyle’s The Case of Oscar Slater, 1912; and Park’s The Truth About Oscar Slater, 1927 – the first book to appear, nearly a quarter of a century later, was Peter Hunt’s Oscar Slater: The Great Suspect, in 1951.

This book was written under Willie Roughead’s close aegis, was indeed dedicated to him, and reflected, so far as the laws of libel permitted, for Dr Charteris was still very much alive and Emeritus Professor of Materia Medica in the University of St Andrews, Roughead’s particular prejudices. Certainly, Hunt will have been privy to the ‘open secret’ that Dr Charteris did it. Indeed, on page 15 of the Introduction to the American edition of his book, published in August 1962, he writes:

When this book first appeared some critics were tantalized because I hinted at the name of the man I believed to be guilty, without naming him. I make no apologies for that. It is one thing to believe that a man is guilty of murder and quite another to know that he is. If I had the necessary evidence I would present it to the authorities. As it is I have a name and a credible motive – beyond that I may not go. At the time of the murder the police satisfied themselves that this man’s alibi was in order. That is what they said.

Yet, on page 173 of the English edition, he writes, circa 1951, of A.B.: ‘From what I have heard since, he had a cast-iron alibi.’ But we know, from Charteris himself,1 that his alibi was the exact opposite of cast-iron. He had, actually, no alibi at all. A canard has circulated that he was delivering a baby boy at the time of the commission of the crime. The story has its origin, so I have been told, in a scribbling which some person unknown pencilled in the margin of a copy of one of the newspapers preserved in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow.²

What, then, was Hunt’s final conclusion? He writes³:

My own studies also convince me that two men were involved. Whether they were complete strangers to Miss Gilchrist or well known to her, I am not prepared to say. Consideration of the first hypothesis … does not account for the box of scattered documents, the failure to pick up so many jewels which were lying about, the failure to pick the safe and Miss Gilchrist’s known fear of intruders. The second hypothesis admits no consideration whatever at this stage. Perhaps fifty years hence, when all the gentlemen who may have been involved in the West Princes Street mystery are explaining themselves to a higher authority, there may then be cause for some more enterprising criminologist than I to plumb the almost unfathomable depths of the story. I can only say that, if he sets about it the right way, he will find some startling documentary evidence on which to base his case … There are still wise ones who say that Slater was guilty, and they are not confined to the readers of Sunday sensations. I have not come across one particle of fresh evidence which links him in any way with the case. I believe that the man who murdered Miss Gilchrist was – but that is another story.

I believe that those closing words of Peter Hunt’s book are no more than a literary device. In a presentation copy of the volume which I possess he has written on the title-page:

He was innocent.

Peter Hunt.

The real murderer was a man whose initials are R.B..

That seems to make it clear that, howsoever Roughead may have brainwashed him, Hunt did not subscribe to the belief in Charteris’ blood-guilt.

But who is R.B.? B. for Birrell? Perhaps. But R.? The only person that I can call to mind connected with the case and bearing those initials was Robert Bryson, and I am confident that by no stretch of the imagination could he be transformed into Miss Gilchrist’s killer. Sadly, Peter Hunt died young. I spoke with him on only one occasion and never found the chance to question him as to his true belief.

In a letter addressed to George Jacobs,4 dated 1 April 1949, Hunt writes:

I do not think there is any evidence for saying that A.B. was the murderer. Of course A.B. was mentioned by Lambie on the night, but I think two men were involved. One of them may have been him, but I have the clearest evidence to show, in private, that another person very close to the murderee might well have been involved. Nothing can be said along these lines at the moment, or for some years to come.

The innominate quarry of Hunt’s chase remains, nearly fifty years on, mysterious, and, after as long a period of wide-ranging and in-depths research of my own, I am tempted to say apocryphal.

On the other hand, Hunt’s view, which was also that of Roughead, David Cook and E Clephan Palmer, that two men were involved, I think is likely to be correct. I do not, however, share the additional gloss that it was most probably Dr Charteris who made a dignified exit through the lobby after the arrival of Lambie and Adams put an end to his foraging, and that the actual murderer made his escape by some other avenue. It was suggested that this second man might have hidden on the upper landing, outside the empty flat upstairs, or contrived to skulk inside that upper flat until the coast was clear for a rapid getaway down the main stairs. As a matter of fact, the police, alive to both these possibilities, made a thorough examination which disclosed no evidence of any such thing having happened.

Back in 1955, in his Preface to his book Background to Murder, my friend the late Nigel Morland wrote:

Another case I have often been asked to re-present is that of Oscar Slater. I shall oblige in my next book in this series … because it would not be possible to exclude certain statements made to me some 17 or 18 years ago by the late Ivor Back, a great surgeon and a remarkably kind man. What he told me named by clear inference the instigator of the murder of Miss Marion Gilchrist, a man who died some years ago in a notable odour of sanctity.

Morland cannot, then, have had Dr Charteris in mind, for he was still very much alive in 1955. He continues:

One further thought: the late William Roughead wrote that: ‘And if as I believe – and I am by no means singular in that persuasion – Helen Lambie holds the key to the mystery, her refusal to “face the music” is, in the interests of justice, the most regrettable feature of the late proceedings.’ In this I heartily concur with Roughead but not in his belief that two men were concerned in the affair. There were three – the instigator (who could walk in and out of Miss Gilchrist’s, recognised but unchallenged and erased from mind when questions were asked), the ‘middleman’, and the killer.

It was not until 11 years later that the ‘next book in this series’, Pattern of Murder, came out, in 1966, but, as promised, it contained a chapter on ‘The Great Suspect’. What it did not contain was any reference to Mr Ivor Back and his confidences.

Morland’s own view, as here expressed, coincided with Edgar Wallace’s conclusion regarding the stranger in Miss Gilchrist’s apartment; namely that: ‘Obviously Nellie Lambie knew him.’ And, Morland added, ‘As obviously to my mind, the murderer was in the house when she left to buy a newspaper.’

Early in 1956, Morland had received a letter, which he subsequently passed on to me.

9 Romney Court,

Jameson Road,

Bexhill-on-Sea.

10/1/56

Dear Mr Morland

I have read Background to Murder with interest and am encouraged by the Preface to pass on to you a sidelight on the Oscar Slater case.

At the time when it was clear that he would soon be released I was living in a small country town near Glasgow where two rather flustered old ladies, sisters, kept a confectionery shop.

Probably because I was a J.P. one of them came to me in great distress to see if I could do anything to ensure that Slater was kept in prison. I replied that I could not, as even if he were guilty, which I did not believe, he had served more than the usual ‘Life’ sentence, and anyway my influence was nil. She then murmured that he would be sure to kill her and her sister as her brother was the Adams who was a witness. I assured her that the one thing he would not do would be to risk being arrested again.

Then she said ‘We never told about the man who came over the window.’ It seemed that while her brother was trying to get into Miss Gilchrist’s flat the two sisters saw a young man come down the pipe past their sitting-room window. She said this was the son of a prominent businessman and that he (the son) committed suicide shortly afterwards.

Oscar Slater was released shortly afterwards and did not attack the old ladies so there was no need for me to do anything but I thought this might be of interest to you.

Yours sincerely,

(Mrs) Agnes C. Findlay Wilson.

Research has shown that the lady who wrote this letter, Agnes Cameron Findlay Wilson, was the daughter of Alex Findlay, the grand old man of bridge-building, world-famous and responsible for all the bridges on the West Highland Railway, and she was the widow of William Scott Branks Wilson, a solicitor. She died in February 1972, aged 87.

The ‘small country town near Glasgow’ was Lanark, where the Adams family’s unmarried womenfolk, having quit West Princes Street by 1915 – although their brother continued to live in the old home, and was found dead there in 1942 – had settled. They set up house at Roselands, No. 16 Hyndford Road. Laura and her younger sister, Octavia, kept a sweet shop in the High Street.

A careful search has failed to disclose either the existence or identity of any young man of the type described by the Ladies of Lanark who committed suicide in Glasgow around the material time.

What is of especial interest about the foregoing narrative is that it disposes of the ‘locked room’ type murder, to which some people have believed the West Princes Street crime to have belonged. It is true that all the doors and windows of Miss Gilchrist’s apartment were found secured – with the single exception of the kitchen window, which was discovered open some two or three inches at the top. That means that someone could have raised the sash, clambered out of the lower part of the window, pulled the window down behind him, and descended by the adjacent rone pipe, passing over the Adams’ back sitting-room window en route, as described.

Glasgow researcher, Andy Melbourne, brought to my notice the theory propounded by Archie C. A. Ogg, like George Isidore Jacobs, a Glasgow businessman, and like him one of those dedicated amateurs who have left spoor marks splaying across the archives of the Slater case. He is of the opinion that two men were involved in Miss Gilchrist’s death, and that they escaped by the dunny.5

Ogg believes that, between Adams’ two visits, Man No. 1 sent his accomplice, Man No. 2 (the killer), down to the dunny to wait. When Man No. 1 dashed down the stairs, he did not go out of the front-door of the close, but scampered back up the close, down the few steps, and out of the back, where he found the waiting Man No. 2, and the pair of them ran across the back green and scrambled over the wall, out into Down Lane, which runs between Grant Street and West Princes Street. Emerging at the end of Down Lane into West Cumberland Street, they turned right and ran to the corner of West Cumberland Street and West Princes Street, stopping momentarily to look back towards No. 49, before resuming their running in a westerly direction.

They may well have been the two men seen by the teacher, Agnes Brown, who watched them turn to the left out of West Cumberland Street, run up West Princes Street, turn right into Rupert Street, and pelt through it to Great Western Road.

The schoolmistress’ report somewhat upset the police applecart, for it meant that if what she was saying was right, then their star witness, Mary Barrowman, was wrong. Thus it was that Item No. 1047 seems to have been quietly, almost surreptitiously, slipped into page 262 of the police Information Book⁶ and thereafter overlooked ‘by a mistake on purpose’, as it were. It is the record of a visit paid at half-past seven on the evening of Saturday, 26 December 1908, to the Northern Police Office.

Reported by Agnes Brown (24) a teacher residing c/o McGregor, 60 Grant Street, that about 7.10pm on Monday, 21 December 1908, while she was in West Princes Street, she saw two men running from the direction of 15 Queen’s Terrace.

Miss Brown subsequently enlarged upon her experience. The first words of her first fuller statement conflict with the personal details previously recorded. She now says: ‘I am thirty years of age and reside at 48 Grant Street, Glasgow.’ The discrepancy is puzzling. The revised statement continues:

At 7.08pm I left the house there to attend evening classes in Dunard Street School. I went along Grant Street and turned into West Cumberland Street. I then walked north along the east side of that street till I came to the corner of West Cumberland Street and West Princes Street. I was in the act of stepping off the foot pavement there to cross West Princes Street, at an angle towards Carrington Street (a north-westerly direction), when two men came running along from the direction of St George’s Road, and passed behind me. They were going very quickly. I stood for a moment at the corner of Carrington Street to see where they went. I remember that the time at which I saw them was about ten minutes past seven. I fix this time because I should have left the house at seven to be in time for my class, and was late that evening and was hurrying. In crossing Great Western Road I saw the time on a clock in a chemist’s shop – Wilson & Wood’s, 147 Great Western Road – and it was then 7.12pm.

The first I heard of the murder was when I returned home from my classes. I got back to the close leading to my house shortly after ten o’clock. I met my two sisters. They stated that they had heard that a murder had taken place in West Princes Street. I went round with them and saw a crowd and heard of the murder from the crowd. On the way home I mentioned to my sisters that I had seen two men running away. I also mentioned this at home. I did not at the time associate the two men with the murder, but next morning after reading a description in the Glasgow Herald of a man who was said to have left the deceased’s house, I thought he might be one of the two referred to.

It seems odd that, despite their alleged chiming presences in West Princes Street, Miss Brown caught no glimpse or echo of Mary Barrowman’s running man.

With this timetable in mind, one should recall PC Neill’s statement that at 7.15pm he ‘passed the house [No. 49] about 6-7 minutes before’. That would be between 7.08 to 7.09. Remember, Neill was coming from west to east, and therefore had at least 250 yards to go with a clear view of the street before him at pretty well exactly the time that Adams saw him ‘in the distance’. Mary Barrowman also, at this time, ought to have been seen running after her running man, who had pushed against her.

Obviously, we are entering here into territory of very considerable dubiety. Things are far from being as black and white, cut and dried, as they did at one time seem. In succeeding chapters it will be necessary, in pursuit of some measure of reasonable certainty, to call forth the witness of all the experts on the case who have materialised since the pioneers laid down their pens.

1 See page 255 – interview with Mowat Phillips.

2 Peter Costello provides Dr Charteris with his spurious alibi in The Real World of Sherlock Holmes, Page 121

3 See Oscar Slater: The Great Suspect, page 241

4 George Isidore Jacobs, a Glasgow businessman with a keen amateur interest in the Slater case.

5 The basement floor leading out on to the back green.

6 Lodged in the Strathclyde Regional Archives. Item SR 22/63/10 is described as ‘Information Book 1908-1909’. It is inscribed upon its spine ‘No. 475 Information Book Within Bounds. From 5th December, 1908: To 5th January, 1909.’