The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

THE CASE OF THE SALMON SANDWICHES by Daniel Farson

Everything about Annie Hearn suggested a long, grey spinsterhood. Plain, slightly dowdy and prematurely middle-aged, she had spent much of her life nursing various ailing relatives in the north of England. In 1919, she claimed to have married a Dr Leonard Hearn in London, but this appears to be unsubstantiated. So is her claim to have been widowed within a week of the wedding. In the early twenties, Mrs Hearn moved south to Cornwall, nursing an elderly aunt and a sister, both of whom died under her care. A local farmer and his wife were in the habit of taking Annie Hearn with them on various outings. For one of these trips, she prepared tinned salmon sandwiches, dressed with her own homemade salad cream. Two weeks later, the farmer’s wife was dead from arsenical poisoning. Annie Hearn disappeared, apparently into thin air. When she was found, she was arrested and tried for murder, but the jury acquitted her and Mrs Hearn walked free. The mystery of what really happened to the poisoned neighbour was never solved. The case caught the attention of the writer and broadcaster Daniel Farson (1927-97). Farson was a rumbustious alcoholic who moved to the West Country in the 1960s from London, where he was a familiar figure in louche Soho circles. He wrote a book on Jack the Ripper, claiming the killer was M.J. Druitt, a barrister who, on 8 September 1888, played cricket for Blackheath less than six hours after Annie Chapman was hacked to death in Spitalfields.

It became one of the most mysterious cases of murder this century, but it had a jaunty beginning. On the afternoon of Saturday 18 October 1930, three people set out by motor car from the small Cornish village of Lewannick, near Launceston, for a trip to the nearby seaside resort of Bude. William Thomas, a farmer, and his wife Alice were taking their neighbour Annie Hearn on an outing. Annie had been on her own since the death of her elder sister Minnie in July and the Thomases had decided that a trip might cheer her up.

Annie Hearn was something of a mystery in the neighbourhood. She lived at Trenhorne House, just outside Lewannick, a hundred yards or so up the road from the Thomases at Trenhorne Farm. She was a “foreigner” from the north of England who had come to Cornwall in 1921. She was apparently a widow, probably in her mid forties, though no one was certain of her age-not even Annie herself. She had known bad luck: her husband had left her only a week after their marriage; her aunt had died at Trenhorne House after a long illness, and then tragedy had struck again with the painful death of her sister Minnie. It was only natural that William and Alice should feel sorry for the lonely woman who lived nearby. Alice made her junkets and clotted cream, which her husband took to Trenhorne House. He had shown sufficient trust in her to lend her thirty-eight pounds two years earlier when she was short of money.

The three left for Bude in William Thomas’s car at three p.m. One of the lesser resorts on the north Cornish coast, it was a drive of twenty miles (thirty kilometres). They went to Littlejohn’s Cafe (no longer in existence), where they ordered tea. When they were seated, Annie produced a packet of sandwiches, carefully prepared by herself with tinned salmon and her own salad cream, as her contribution to the treat. By today’s standards this seems an odd thing to do, but not then. “Remember,” says a relative of Jack Littlejohn today, “you’re in Cornwall now. That’s the way they did things here, saving the pennies.”

They ate most of the salmon sandwiches and afterwards the two women went for a stroll while William Thomas took a walk on his own. He stopped at the nearest inn, The Grove Hotel, for a couple of whiskies, with the excuse that he was feeling queasy. When he rejoined the ladies, his wife complained of “a sticky taste” in her mouth and asked if they could buy some fruit; her husband bought her some bananas.

They started the drive back to Trenhorne Farm at six forty-five p.m. but were forced to make a number of stops on the way because Mrs Thomas was suffering from vomiting and diarrhoea. On their return to the farm, they sent for Dr Graham Saunders, who arrived at nine thirty p.m. He found Mrs Thomas’s symptoms consistent with food poisoning, but did not think she was seriously ill and recommended a diet of whitebait and water.

Now it was Annie’s turn to play the good neighbour and she rallied nobly, staying at the farm to nurse Alice Thomas who improved steadily. Oddly, it was eleven days before Alice’s mother, Mrs Parsons, heard of her daughter’s illness, although she lived only five miles (eight kilometres) away-apparently Alice did not want her mother to be alarmed. Once she knew, she came over to nurse her daughter herself; Annie continued to run the house and do the household cooking. The doctor was sufficiently reassured to stop calling every day, and the following Sunday Alice Thomas was able to come down for lunch-a traditional meal of roast mutton, sprouts and potatoes, prepared by Annie. Alice ate hers in the dining room while the others stayed in the kitchen. At nine p.m. Thomas carried his wife upstairs, giving her an aspirin from a bottle that Annie had supplied.

During the night, Alice became ill again. In the morning Thomas sent for the doctor, who was so shocked by the change that had taken place in his patient that he called in a consultant. Alice was now delirious, partly paralysed and unable to use her legs-and the consultant agreed with Dr Saunders’ suspicion that she had arsenical poisoning. They transferred the patient immediately to Plymouth City Hospital where she was admitted just before midnight on Monday 3 November. By nine thirty-five the next morning, she was dead.

Because of the doctor’s report about possible poisoning, a post mortem was held. The organs sent to the Exeter city analyst were found to contain 0.85 grains (56 mg) of arsenic. This finding should have remained confidential, but William Thomas somehow got to hear of it. He warned Annie that there might be inquiries by the police and possibly an inquest. The rumours spread, and festered in the retelling, so that the funeral of Alice Thomas on Saturday 8 November took place in an atmosphere of high tension. Subjected to stares, whispers and innuendos, Annie Hearn braved it out until the accusations against her were finally voiced the following day in the Thomases’ dining room at Trenhorne Farm. Percy Parsons, the dead woman’s brother, said to Annie Hearn: “We haven’t met, but I’ve heard about you and them tinned sandwiches you was responsible for. What d’you put in them? That’s what I’d like to know. Something wrong from all accounts. This needs clearing up, ’tis not the end of it, no way.”

Understandably distressed, Annie confided to her neighbour Mrs Spears, who lived in the other wing of Trenhorne House, “They seem to think I have poisoned Mrs Thomas with the sandwiches. They think down there all tinned food is poisoned!”

Meanwhile, the behaviour of William Thomas struck some people as peculiar, too. Far from accusing Annie, he asked her to stay on at the farm, but demanded some form of receipt for the thirty-eight pounds she had borrowed two years before. Distraught, she refused to sit down and eat with him, and burst out, “I’ll never forget that horrid man Parsons and the things he said. I’ve lost my appetite… life isn’t worth living.” She ran off up the lane and, when she failed to return, Thomas called at her house. There was no answer.

On 11 November Thomas received a poignant letter from Annie, posted the previous afternoon from nearby Congdon’s Corner, in which she insisted on her innocence but clearly threatened suicide. Or was the letter a bluff? The “awful man” was Percy Parsons, the dead woman’s brother.

Dear Mr Thomas,

Goodbye. I am going out if I can. I cannot forget that awful man and the things he said. I am innocent, innocent. She is dead and it was my lunch she ate. I cannot bear it. When I am dead they will be sure I am guilty, and you at least will be clear. May your dear wife’s presence guard and comfort you still. Yours, A.H. My life is not a great thing anyhow, now dear Minnie’s gone. I should be glad if you send my love to Bessie and tell her not to worry about me. I will be all right. My conscience is clear, so I am not afraid of the afterwards. I am giving instructions to Webb about selling the things, and hope you will be paid in full. It is all I can do now.

Thomas immediately fetched a police officer and together they broke into Trenhorne House to find it empty. Annie Hearn had disappeared.

Was the letter an implicit admission of guilt despite her claim to innocence? Or was it the final testament of a woman weighed down by local gossip, attempting to do the honourable thing by saving the reputation of her friend William Thomas by destroying her own? Or could it have been a charade-a calculated deception by one guilty of murder? If that was the case, then Annie Hearn was a monster.

To start with, her movements were easy to trace. She had hired Hector Ollett, an ex-army man who ran the shop at Congdon’s Corner where she had posted the letter, to drive her down to Looe about twenty miles (thirty kilometres) away on the south coast. She paid him eighteen shillings, and he dropped her off at the bridge. After that the scent went cold, until the police found her check coat several days later, near the edge of the cliff. The conclusion was obvious: Annie Hearn had killed herself by jumping from the clifftop.

On 24 November, little more than a month since that outing to Bude, the inquest into the death of Alice Thomas began in Plymouth. The coroner asked William Thomas these vital questions:

“Had you any rat poison?”-Thomas replied that he had, “locked in my desk”.

“Did your wife ever object to Mrs Hearn coming to the house?”-“Never.”

“You and Mrs Thomas were friendly with Mrs Hearn’s sister?”-“Yes.”

“Did you ever give your wife any cause to be jealous of Mrs Hearn?”-“Never.”

A chemist from Launceston confirmed that he had supplied weedkiller for Mrs Hearn’s garden four years earlier. The powder, he said, was practically “all arsenic”. The verdict of the inquest was given on 26 November: “Murder by arsenical poisoning by some person or persons unknown.”

The original assumption of the police that Annie Hearn had jumped to her death had changed dramatically after the local fishermen pointed out that, if she had fallen from the spot near where her coat was found, her body would have struck the rocks and remained on the beach. If she had been swept out, she would have been washed up almost at once because of the home winds that had been prevalent for the previous ten days. Two people had drowned in the area recently, and both were washed ashore within two days. Had she faked her suicide?

The police issued the following description, together with a photograph:

Mrs Hearn is aged forty-five, 5ft 2ins or 3ins [1.57 or 1.60 metres] in height, with grey eyes, brown shingled hair, of sallow complexion, and medium build. There is a noticeable defect in one of the front teeth. She walks briskly, carries her head slightly to the left, and when in conversation she has the habit of looking away from the person she is addressing. She is well-spoken but has a north country accent. She is of rather reserved disposition.

The police now began to take an interest in the death of Annie’s sister Minnie (Lydia) who had joined her at Trenhorne House in 1925. The sisters lived there with two other shadowy figures: an old Cornish woman called Mrs Aunger, who had since died; and Annie’s aunt, Miss Mary Everard, who had fallen ill and died in September 1926 after being nursed devotedly by her niece. Now people remembered that the aunt had left everything she possessed “to my dear niece Sarah Ann Hearn, except my mother’s picture.” The deaths of her aunt, who was seventy-six, and her sister, who was only fifty-two but who had suffered from chronic gastric catarrh and colitis, had seemed natural at the time. Now, however, the Home Office announced a decision to exhume the bodies, because the symptoms of their illnesses were also consistent with arsenical poisoning.

In Lewannick they still remember that macabre exhumation, which took place on Tuesday 9 December 1930 in a storm of snow and sleet. Mrs White, who was a girl at the time and still lives in Lewannick today, recalled the two policemen who guarded the gates of the churchyard and the trouble they took in erecting a screen of tarpaulins to prevent the public looking on. But since they completely forgot the houses at the back that overlooked the churchyard, she had a good view: “We could see all their pots and a box on the grave. They had the coffins taken up and we could see them with their tongs dropping things into jars.” These “things” were forwarded to Dr Roche Lynch, the Home Office analyst. In the remains of both bodies he found “distinct quantities of arsenic”.

And, on the same day that the exhumations took place, the DailyMail brought the sensational case to a head with the spectacular offer of a reward of £500, a very great deal of money in those days, “for the discovery of Mrs Annie Hearn, the missing witness”. WHERE IS MRS HEARN? asked the headline, IS SHE STILL ALIVE?

Now Annie Hearn had been revealed in a more sinister light as the possible murderer of three women. What had happened to her? The answer was that she had indeed faked her suicide. She had calculated her movements from the moment she arrived in Looe with a wicker basket as her only luggage. Half an hour later she bought an attaché case for three shillings and eleven pence. By ten p.m. she had arrived in Torquay by train, and signed the register at St Leonard’s Hotel as Mrs Ferguson of Heavitree, Exeter. The next day she moved to simpler lodgings in Ellacombe Church Road, using yet another name, Mrs Faithful, with the explanation that her husband was ill in the local hospital.

She ordered some calling cards in the new name, and answered an advertisement for a cook – housekeeper. A week later she was employed by an architect, Cecil Powell. He was impressed by his new servant, who went to church on Sundays and seemed of above-average education, though he thought that at times she seemed preoccupied. This was hardly surprising-when she was alone in her room she was busy cutting out the pictures of herself in the national newspapers. One of these photographs, accompanying the DailyMail’s reward announcement, had seemed familiar to Powell “in a vague sort of way”. Though he saw a similarity, he was reluctant to act because of his wife’s delicate health and his own aversion to publicity. It was Annie’s own furtive behaviour that caught her out.

On 1 January 1931 she set out for the new year sales and chose a coat at Williams & Cox in the Strand, Torquay, presumably to replace the one she had abandoned at Looe. She needed to have it shortened, and left it in the shop with a deposit in the name of Mrs Dennis. When the errand boy delivered the coat a few days later, the door was opened by Powell’s son, who said that there must be some mistake because no one of the name of Dennis lived there. Annie’s subsequent attempt at explanation was so suspicious that the architect consulted his friend the mayor, who informed the police in Launceston.

In the fading light of the afternoon of 12 January, Powell asked his housekeeper to go on an errand, knowing that she was to be watched and followed by a police sergeant. As she passed him under the lamplight, the constable stepped forward. “Mrs Hearn?” “Yes?” “I believe I know you. I think you know Lewannick.” “Yes, I have been there.” “Then I must ask you to come to the police station.”

There she was charged “that between 18 October and 3 November 1930 at the parish of Lewannick, you did kill and murder one Alice Maud Thomas”.

On 11 March Annie made her twelfth appearance before the Launceston magistrates, standing in an easy attitude with her hands clasped in front of her, wearing a long, claret-coloured coat with fur collar and cuffs. Percy Parsons told the court about the day of his sister’s funeral: “Some lady met us at the door. I didn’t know who she was.” But he identified her now as “the lady sitting over there”. He agreed that he had never visited the farm before in order to see his sister. “Was that on account of a family feud?” he was asked. “I can’t say. I was never invited.”

Superintendent Pill read the statement made to him by Annie shortly after midnight on the day of her arrest:

On the Sunday before Mrs Thomas was taken away, I prepared roast mutton for dinner. I have read in the newspapers that I might have carved Mrs Thomas’s portion. I did not carve it, and I did not help with the gravy or anything. I remember Mrs Thomas complaining that a junket that Mrs Parsons [her mother] made was too sweet. She did not complain of the meals I prepared. Mr Thomas appeared to be very grateful to me for my help up to the time when he returned from Plymouth after Mrs Thomas’s death. He then appeared more abrupt in his manner towards me. On one occasion he said to me, “They are going to send some organs to be analysed. They will find out what it is. They will blame one of us. The blame will come heavier on you than on me…” It appeared as if somebody was going to be charged with murder… sooner than that I thought I would go my own way and take my life. I did go to Looe with that intention but later found that I could not do what I thought of doing.

Large crowds watched Annie Hearn’s exit from Launceston Court, for this was market day and the farming families took a personal interest in the accused. Local opinion was completely against her, but at this low moment in a life that seems to have been dogged by misfortune, Annie’s luck took a turn for the better. Her former employer, Cecil Powell, who had informed on his housekeeper and claimed his reward from the Daily Mail, behaved impeccably. He donated the £500 towards her defence, which is how she was able to afford the services of Norman Birkett, the most brilliant barrister of his time.

Birkett’s first and shrewdest move was to send all the available evidence to the eminent forensic science expert Sydney Smith in Scotland. Smith told Annie Hearn’s solicitor, Walter West of Grimsby, that there was no doubt about arsenical poisoning, though how and when it was administered was another matter. All the doctors agreed that genuine food poisoning could have accounted for Alice’s illness after the tea in Bude, and that there was no evidence that she had taken arsenic then. But there was indisputable evidence that she had taken arsenic much nearer to the date of her death. Smith found the case of Minnie Everard, Annie’s sister, much less conclusive and returned the documents with his opinion that Mrs Hearn was “probably innocent”. He regretted, however, that his university classes prevented him from attending the trial.

But on 11 June he received this desperate telegram from West: “Birkett thinks it vital you should be at Bodmin on Sunday for consultation about six evening. I think so too and most earnestly beseech you to come. Wire reply at once.” Smith felt that his students came first, but then he reconsidered: “I thought it would be the negation of all my teaching if it meant that an innocent woman might be convicted and hanged. So I went.”

The trial of Annie Hearn opened on Monday 15 June 1931. From the outset, the prosecution made a mistake in including the death of her sister, because the medical evidence to support such a charge was shaky. Birkett extracted the admission from witnesses for the Crown that Minnie’s death could have been due to natural causes. Sydney Smith had already fastened on a vulnerable point in the prosecution’s case. He had no doubt that arsenic had been traced in the muscles, hair and nails of Minnie’s corpse, but pointed out to West that, though this would have indicated poisoning if she had been buried in almost any other county in England, it did not lead to the same conclusion in Cornwall. Cornwall is famous for its tin-and and tin contains a high degree of arsenic. In other words, the soil in the graveyard where Minnie had been buried was impregnated with traces of arsenic.

Birkett exposed the ignorance of the Crown’s chief witness, the Home Office analyst Dr Roche Lynch, with his very first question: “Have you ever examined a living patient suffering from arsenical poisoning?” Lynch had to admit he had not. Neither had he ever been involved in an exhumation in soil where the level of arsenic was as high as 125 parts in a million. Turning to another Crown witness, Birkett asked: “Am I right in saying that a piece of soil so small that you could hold it between your fingers dropped onto this body would make every single calculation wrong?” The expert had to answer yes to this question.

Birkett’s next move was then inevitable: to prove how easily such a speck of soil, containing arsenic, could have inadvertently contaminated the organs during the exhumation, which had taken place under considerable difficulties on a windy, snowy day. “There was no expert to assist,” he told the jury, “merely the police sergeant, the carpenter, and the sexton, the sergeant perhaps holding the corks of the jars with an ungloved hand.” In other words, or so he implied, it was a botched-up analysis, which proved nothing except that a piece of arsenical dust on the instruments used in the exhumation might have accounted for all the arsenic found in Minnie Everard’s body.

Norman Birkett had scored his first and vital point-he had discredited the claim that Annie had murdered her sister and therefore put doubt in the jury’s mind regarding the other charge. Now the Crown turned to the alleged murder of Mrs Thomas, with Lynch’s conclusion that “a dose of possibly ten grains [600 mg] of arsenic” had been administered to Mrs Thomas on the day of the outing to Bude. But Sydney Smith had conducted an interesting experiment. It was the obvious thing to do, but the police had failed to do it, and the result was devastating. He had prepared some salmon sandwiches, exactly as Annie Hearn had done, but mixing enough weed-killer to contain ten grains (600 mg) of arsenic with the tinned salmon. Half an hour later the sandwiches were stained heavily with the bluish-purple dye used in the weed-killer.

The conclusion was obvious-no one would have touched the sandwiches. Even if Annie had carefully poisoned one sandwich only, handing it directly to Mrs Thomas, the stain of Prussian blue would easily have been noticed; the risk would have been far too great. This dramatic deduction impressed the jury, who were able to imagine those alarming blue sandwiches. Furthermore, Lynch was forced to admit that he had not made the experiment himself. “You have not tried it!” Birkett exclaimed, outraged. “On the theory of the prosecution, surely that was the most terrible risk to run?”

Cleverly, Birkett did not call Sydney Smith for the defence; his invaluable guidance was conducted behind the scenes. Birkett called no witnesses other than the accused herself, a move that gave him the right to make the vital closing speech just before the judge’s summing-up. Though by now he had scored two important victories, he knew that the case against his client remained serious and that a number of awkward points still had to be overcome.

There was the mystery over Annie’s mysterious “husband”-who seemed never to have existed-which suggested that she was capable of lying. Then there were damaging remarks that had been made by her neighbour, Mrs Spears. She used to visit Minnie Everard during her illness, in order to pray and read the Bible to her. Minnie told Mrs Spears that Annie’s medicine was too strong: it was “going into her hands and legs. When I called on Mrs Thomas, she complained that she had lost the use of her legs, and I thought it was very much the same as in the case of Miss Everard.”

Birkett tried to soften this impression by suggesting that Minnie was “rather hysterical” at the time, but without success. She was “not hysterical,” insisted Mrs Spears, “but frightened of being poisoned.” The suspicion was left that Minnie believed she was being poisoned by her niece.

Then there was a diary kept by Minnie that Birkett succeeded in keeping out of court. The question remained and still remains: what was in it?

But perhaps most important of all, there was the crucial question of motive. Why should Annie Hearn have wished to kill Mrs Thomas, let alone her sister or her aunt? There seemed to be only one possibility as far as Mrs Thomas was concerned: Annie was in love with the farmer and wanted his wife out of the way. A whispered remark to Sergeant Trebilcock on the night of her arrest was an important factor in the evidence. It was alleged that Annie stated: “Mr Thomas used to come to our house every day with a paper. Of course, that was only a blind.” Norman Birkett tried to call the policeman’s bluff: “Listen to this. ‘Mr Thomas used to bring a paper. He was very kind’. Don’t you think you could have made a mistake?” “No,” said the policeman emphatically, “I made no mistake.”

What about the farmer himself? William Thomas was a key figure in the mystery, but had remained an enigma. He had not accused Annie, but neither had he sprung to her defence. In the circumstances this seems hard to explain, unless it was due to his awareness that his own position was becoming increasingly suspect. He admitted giving his wife medicine but denied he had ever given her arsenic. “I have never had arsenic in my possession,” he told the court, adding, “except sheep dip and tablets which are things any farmer might have.”

It was left to Annie to deny any sexual relationship between them when she finally stood in the dock to be questioned by Norman Birkett. “Was there at any time in your mind the thought that you might marry Mr Thomas?” he asked her. “Never.” “Did you ever conceive a passion, guilty or otherwise, for Mr Thomas?” “No.” “It is suggested that on 18 October you gave Mrs Thomas a poisoned sandwich in order to marry Mr Thomas. Is there a shadow of truth in that?” “Not a shadow of truth.” “From first to last in this matter, have you administered or given in any shape or form arsenic, either to Mrs Thomas or your sister?” “I have not.” “That”, concluded Birkett, “is the case for the defence.”

But there was still a sensation to come, though not one relevant to the evidence. The counsel for the prosecution, Herbert du Parcq, collapsed in the middle of his final address. Norman Birkett was at his side in a moment with a bottle of smelling salts. Clutching Birkett, who was supporting him, du Parcq managed to stumble from the court into the anteroom where he collapsed again.

When he finally returned to the courtroom, the judge insisted: “I don’t think there ought to be any mystery about this. The fact is that after a meal one is apt to have a little pressure on the heart which causes faintness.” When du Parcq wanted to continue standing “if I can”, the judge ordered him to sit. “This has occurred to me once or twice since I began my professional career,” he explained, “and here I am older than Mr du Parcq.” His announcement was greeted by the usual outburst of laughter accorded to any attempt at levity by a judge, and the tension was broken. But the tension of the Crown’s address had been broken, too. Du Parcq’s collapse at such a critical moment was highly damaging for the prosecution, and the judge’s comment that one often feels faint after a little food might well have reminded the jury of Mrs Thomas’s illness after the sandwiches in Bude. If the members of the jury were at all superstitious, they might even have regarded the collapse of the prosecutor as a direct sign that the accused was innocent!

In fact the jury was not particularly prone to considering the role of divine providence, as Birkett discovered when he discussed his summing-up with Sydney Smith and Walter West as they strolled outside the court. “The Cornish are very religious people,” he informed them, “and I intend in my speech to draw the attention of the jury to the difficulty of reconciling the loving care which the accused lavished on her sister with the fiendish project of slowly poisoning her with arsenic. I will read the fourteenth chapter of St John, her sister Minnie’s favourite. Don’t you think that will be effective, Mr West? You look doubtful?”

But West revealed that the jury had been asked the previous Sunday if they wanted to go to divine service or drive to the coast. They chose the seaside. “Oh lord!” exclaimed Birkett, “there go My Father’s Mansions!”

Now it was up to the jury. The members had been chosen from outside the district, away from local prejudice. This was a relief for Birkett, who realized soon after his arrival that local people had already decided on their verdict-his client was as guilty as hell.

Norman Birkett’s final address to the jury lasted four hours. He started by scorning the inexperience of the Crown’s analyst: “Dr Lynch has never attended one person suffering from arsenical poisoning, yet he spoke of symptoms with exactly the same confidence as he spoke of other matters. Let the cobbler stick to his last. You are above all experts. The final word rests with you.”

Having scrapped his proposed biblical text, he seized his opportunity when he reached the end of his speech and needed something dramatic for his closing sentence. He found it in the summer sunlight streaming through the windows of the Bodmin courtroom:

For five months this woman has lived in Exeter jail during the darkness and dreariness of winter. She is now here before you in the sunshine of summer, but she is still walking in the valley of a great shadow. It is you, and you alone that can lead her back again to the road of sunshine, your voice alone that can speak the word of deliverance. I ask you to speak that word to her, to stretch forth that hand that will help her back into the sunlight away from the shadows which have haunted her so long. That is my last appeal to you all.

It was a stirring climax to a brilliant defence. The next day the jury returned after fifty-five minutes and gave their verdict-“Not guilty.” Women sobbed and the young nurse who had been Annie Hearn’s constant companion in prison seemed close to collapse.

The judge informed the jury: “You have another duty to perform, the case of Miss Everard.” Then he revealed that the Crown was not intending to proceed with this-“You will therefore”, he instructed, “return a second verdict of not guilty. Now, Sarah Ann Hearn, you are discharged and free.” More than 2,000 people had assembled outside, but Annie exchanged hats and coats with her married sister Bessie Poskitt and managed to escape unnoticed by most of the crowd. Later she was seen having a meal at the King’s Arms in Launceston. Then she went up to Yorkshire where she stayed with her sister.

Annie Hearn was acquitted, and it certainly looks as if she was innocent. Her brother-in-law told the YorkshirePost: “She is so kind and good and faithful”, and this is the impression conveyed by her fake suicide note and the letter of thanks she wrote to Sydney Smith, unless she was a woman of quite extraordinary guile.

But if Annie was innocent, who was guilty? Was William Thomas the murderer? The judge came straight to the point in his summing-up: “The issue is now down to two people-Mrs Hearn and Mr Thomas. It is no use beating about the bush.”

But then the judge made a curious comment: “If you supposed that Mr Thomas were the guilty person, what could his motive be-passion, love, malice or hatred? There may have been some other women who moved him to passion; there is no evidence that Mrs Hearn moved him to passion.” Some other women? This is a fascinating possibility-that farmer Thomas poisoned his wife and Annie Hearn bore the consequences, even at the risk of her life, so that he could further his relationship with another woman. But did such a woman exist? A lady in Lewannick today provides a possible clue-she remembers the postmistress gossiping after Alice Thomas’s death, “He’ll be able to have Mrs Tucker now.”

There is one piece of evidence that looks incriminating against him. Copper was found in his wife’s body as well as arsenic. The worm tablets in his possession contained copper, too. Had he given them to his wife as “medicine”, pretending that they were aspirin tablets? Sydney Smith certainly implied so, pointing out that, apart from Annie, he was the only person who had access to his wife during the whole course of her illness.

But if Thomas was guilty of his wife’s murder because of this other woman, then who killed Minnie Everard? Since he had no motive for that whatsoever, the theory is enhanced that in fact there was no other murder, and that Minnie died, as was thought by everyone at the time, of natural causes.

William Thomas died on 14 December 1949 on a remote farm at Broadoak, Cornwall, where he had lived a lonely existence as a recluse ever since the trial. The son of Annie Hearn’s old solicitor, Walter West, who has taken over his practice in Grimsby, cannot divulge any information about his father’s client, so that Annie Hearn’s life after the trial can only be guessed at. It is possible-even likely-that she changed her name to escape unwelcome publicity, and lived in the north of England near her family. Whatever did become of her, there is no doubt that she was a woman of extreme courage, who may have shielded a man she was fond of, even to the extent of risking her own life for him on the gallows.