The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes

CHECKMATE by F. Tennyson Jesse

The Wallace case of 1931 is regarded as the classic English whodunnit, a labyrinth of clues and false trails leading everywhere except, it seems, to the identity of the murderer. It remains, in many ways, a nightmare of a case: every shred of evidence seems to invite equal and opposite meaning, and critics have praised its chess-like qualities. The setting is wintrily provincial, the milieu lower middle-class, the style threadbare domestic. J B Priestley’s fog-filled Liverpool remembrance of“trams going whining down long sad roads” is the quintessence of it. Events turn tantalizingly on finical questions of time and distance; knuckle-headed police jostle with whistling street urchins for star billing, while at the centre of the drama stands the scrawny, inscrutable figure of the accused man, William Herbert Wallace, the Man From The Pru. Wallace’s wife Julia has been found murdered on her front parlour rug, and the killer has made a mysterious telephone call, but was it Wallace himself fashioning an alibi or an unknown man in the shadows?

F(ryniwyd) Tennyson Jesse (1888-1958), great niece of Tennyson, the Victorian Poet Laureate, was a novelist and criminologist who edited six volumes of Notable British Trials. Her best-known novel, A Pin To See The Peepshow (1934), is based on the Thompson-Bywaters murder case of 1922. Miss Jesse’s short essay on the Wallace case, written in 1953, appears here for the first time.

William Herbert Wallace was an insurance agent employed by the Prudential Insurance Company and he lived alone with his wife Julia in a small modest street of grey two-storey houses at Anfield, Liverpool. He was a quiet and studious man of rather frail appearance and he customarily wore steel-rimmed spectacles. He may have taken undue pride in his fine bushy mustache but that we shall never know. He was fond of intellectual pursuits and his behaviour was gentle, considerate and sweet-tempered. Julia was a delicate fluttery little woman of his own age-they were both fifty-two-who painted graceful water-colours and appears to have shared her husband’s intellectual pretensions. She took no part in the local activities, such as they may have been, but was content to listen to her husband’s views on the new atomic science and on his stoic philosophy, and pleased to give an accomplished if somewhat rusty accompaniment on the piano to her husband’s earnest efforts on the violin. He, on the other hand, was a chess-player of no mean order and several evenings a week he would set out for his Club at the City Café to join his fellow addicts. Monday was competition night so, whatever mutual arrangements he might make with Julia on other nights for music practice or reading aloud, on Mondays he invariably went to his Chess Club. For eighteen years he and his wife had lived amicably, even affectionately, together, with never a harsh word, and for the last sixteen years they had shared this humdrum routine under the humdrum roof of No. 29 Wolverton Street. They were childless but whether from choice or cruel chance is not known. No other man, no other woman, seems to have disturbed emotionally the domestic peace of this fond couple.

At about seven-fifteen on the evening of Monday 19 January 1931, a telephone message for Wallace was taken by Mr Beattie, the Captain of the Chess Club. Wallace was expected there for an important competition game but had not yet arrived, so Mr Beattie wrote the gist of the conversation down and passed it on to Wallace later in the evening when taking a look at the competition in progress. It was to the purport that a man of the name of Mr R.M. Qualtrough wanted to have a talk with Wallace “in the nature of your business”; he was in the throes of a twenty-first birthday party for his daughter and didn’t want the bother of ringing again but would Wallace be good enough to call at his house No. 25 Menlove Gardens East at half-past-seven the following evening. Wallace was playing an excellent game, which he won, but he allowed himself to be weaned from it long enough to make a careful note of the message and to murmur as he did so that he had never heard of the gentleman, nor of Menlove Gardens East, and wasn’t sure that he would go. After the match, pleased with his success and feeling expansive, he reverted to the subject of Qualtrough’s request and curious name and asked the advice of several members on how they would make the journey. Nobody had actually been there and after belabouring the question Wallace left the Club for home still dubious. However, business is business and on the next evening when the normal work of the day was over he must have decided to keep the appointment.

Now, according to Wallace, just after six o’clock on Tuesday 20 January he had tea with his wife in the kitchen-living-room as usual-they only used the front-parlour for music or for their rare guests-and at six forty-five he left the little grey house to embark on the complicated series of trams which should bring him to the district where he hoped to find Menlove Gardens East. It cannot have been much later than six-fifty for at seven-ten he was on a tram quarter of an hour’s journey from Wolverton Street asking his way of the tram conductor with fussy insistence. It is a curious fact that although there is a Menlove Avenue, a Menlove Gardens South, a Menlove Gardens North and a Menlove Gardens West, there is no Menlove Gardens East. It is not surprising then that nobody could help him, but Wallace was a conscientious man to whom insurance commission was important and having come so far he wanted to make very sure. He questioned the conductor of his second tram also and was put down amiably at Menlove Gardens West where he quartered the area without success, asking an occasional passer-by and presenting himself hopefully to the lady of No. 25 Menlove Gardens West. Crestfallen he then inquired of a policeman who told him firmly there was no street of that name, but Wallace, remarking that it was still only quarter-to-eight, asked him if there was a post office or newsagent open nearby where he might look up a directory. There he was finally convinced that the place did not exist, and he said so to the manageress who had helped him. As it was now after eight o’clock he hurried home, fitting in his trams like a jigsaw puzzle, feeling foolish, frustrated and vaguely uneasy. On reaching home he tried his key in the front door as he normally did but for once it seemed to be bolted. There is an alleyway running parallel to the street at the back of this row of houses leading to each of the back entries and very frequently used by all the occupiers, so he went round to the back which has a solid dark-green painted door giving on a little yard. He could not open that either and, more uneasy now since he could see no slit of light issuing from the back kitchen through the scullery window, he began to knock. Then he thought perhaps his wife, who had a bad cold, must have gone to bed, so he went round and tried the front again as he knew it had a troublesome lock that was apt to stick. Here he had no better success and he was returning to the back entry for a further onslaught when he met his next door neighbours Mr and Mrs Johnston coming out of their own back entry into the alley-way.

Up to this point Wallace’s version of how he had spent the evening could only be corroborated intermittently by those strangers of whom he had happened to ask the way but from now on his story has the staunch backing of the Johnstons. He asked them if they had heard anything unusual, saying he could not understand why both doors seemed to be locked against him and he was unable to get any response to his knocking. Mr Johnston said “No” but suggested that Wallace should have another try at the back while he waited. At the door Wallace called back on a note of surprise: “It opens now” and went in to the scullery and through the kitchen where he had left Julia mending his clothes and nursing her cold by the fire. He continued straight upstairs, the Johnstons patiently and anxiously watching his movements by the lights he turned on for there had been a few burglaries recently. There was no sign of his wife so he retreated down the staircase and peeped into the front parlour which was only dimly lighted from the kitchen. He struck a match. Now indeed a shocking sight met his eyes and, his heart thumping, he lit the gas. Mrs Wallace was lying in a pool of blood. Blood had spurted on to the furniture and on to the walls. Her head was most brutally battered in and bone and brain were exposed. She was lying huddled up in front of the gas fire; it was now turned out but her skirt was scorched. Her shoulder rested against his own rolled-up raincoat which was partly burned and copiously stained with blood-as indeed was the whole room including those spurts which can only be arterial. After a few seconds of stunned horror, in the greatest agitation Wallace rushed to the back, calling and signalling to the Johnstons who followed him into the house. He showed them the pitiful body of his wife; then he showed them the kitchen-cabinet with its door wrenched off and his Insurance Company’s cashbox from which a few pounds were missing. Without touching anything in the front room they all looked distractedly for some explanation of the calamity but there was nothing to help them, not even a weapon. While Mr Johnston hastened off for the police Wallace broke down and wept, but he pulled himself together before their arrival and remained very calm through the further ordeal of replying to questions; smoking rather heavily and, it has even been said, stroking the cat upon his knee. His statement to the police was clear for he was a clearheaded man; the Johnstons supported him in everything that concerned them. There was no sign of a forced entry; both back and front doors were apt to stick it is true but Wallace said he was almost certain he had unbolted the front door in order to let the police in. He explained that normally when he went out leaving his wife alone in the house she would accompany him to the back door so that she could bolt it behind him and he would return the front way using his key. On this occasion she had said goodbye to him at the back door but he had no means of knowing whether or not she had bolted it; he only knew of his fruitless efforts with the front-door key and his eventual success soon after meeting the Johnstons at eight forty-five in pushing open the door at the back. He explained also that when he and his wife went out together they always took the contents of the cashbox with them and any personal money too but if one of them was in they did not bother. He said that he usually banked his takings for the Insurance Company on a Wednesday and that Tuesday would therefore be the most tempting day for somebody who happened to know this habit, but on this particular week, owing to the payment of benefits, he had much less in the house than other weeks so it was a very small sum that was missing. Since there would surely be some sign of breaking in had the intruder been an ordinary burglar, he could only suppose that somebody, desperate for money, knowing his habits and having watched him leave the house, had presented himself at the door as a client, and that Mrs Wallace had trustingly let him in; that she had taken him to the parlour and had prepared to light the gas fire when he struck her. There were eleven deep wounds in the skull, of which the first smashing blow alone would have caused her death; the other ten had been added with frenzied ferocity when her head was already on the floor. Wallace could then make no suggestion that might point to anyone of his acquaintance who might have conceived this project. After the statements had been taken and he had been searched and closely examined without a trace of blood being found on his person, the weary and heartbroken man was sent off in a car to spend the night at his brother’s house some distance away.

Every endeavour to find the weapon proved futile and in fact no weapon was ever found, though a poker and an iron bar which was kept in the parlour grate to clean under the gas fire were missing from the house. Outside the room in which the poor woman lay there was hardly a trace of blood; only a small clot which proved to be hers in the pan of the water-closet upstairs and a little stain on one of a sheaf of banknotes which were sticking up in a vase on the mantlepiece of the Wallace’s own bedroom. There was no blood on the staircase and none in the kitchen. The towel in the bathroom was dry and there was nothing to indicate that someone had had a recent bath.

Further investigations showed that Wallace had something over £150 in his personal Bank account and there was no confusion whatever in his accounts with the Prudential. Julia’s life had been insured, but for the trifling sum of £20, so plainly Wallace did not stand to gain financially by his wife’s death. Mrs Wallace was last seen alive at about six-thirty on the evening of Tuesday 20 January by the milk-boy making his late delivery; she had spoken to him at the front door. But milk-boys are not prone to wear wrist-watches, they go upon their whistling way taking little heed of the passing hours; some confirmation had to be sought for this testimony. A teenage girl, delivering newspapers at No. 27, estimated that it was nearer twenty-to-seven than half-past-six that she had seen the milkboy at the adjoining house. When the police surgeon examined the body of Mrs Wallace at ten o’clock that night he judged the time of death to have been approximately four hours earlier. This could not be so, as she had been seen alive at or after six-thirty but it did establish that her death must have taken place either immediately before or immediately after Wallace set off on his expedition to Menlove Gardens East. The telephone call of the Monday evening taken by Mr Beattie the captain of the Chess Club, which decoyed Wallace from his house on the night of the attack, was traced to a public call-box a bare four hundred yards from the house in the direction of the City Café for which he was bound. Mr Qualtrough could not be found, but the telephone operator and the chess captain were unanimous in that the caller had a strong gruff voice, and Mr Beattie asserted that with no stretch of the imagination could he say that it was like that of Wallace whose voice he knew well. True, Wallace could have made the call at that time and place on his way to the Club-but so could someone watching to see him go out, someone who particularly did not want to speak to him directly in case his voice were recognized. Such a person could have watched again the next night till he saw that Wallace had taken the bait and was safely out of the way on his wild goose chase; he could have knocked at the door, and obtained entry under pretence of business, and been taken to the parlour to await Wallace’s return without arousing any suspicion. Perhaps he had no intention of anything beyond rifling the cashbox. Why then did he do murder? And if he did, how did he first contrive to get into Wallace’s mackintosh which ordinarily hung in the little hall and which had obviously received a drenching spray of blood from the first blow? And why should he take away the weapon and embarrass himself with the disposal of it when he had only to wipe it off on the mackintosh and leave it where he had found it? If he were desperate for money and the yield had been so disappointingly small, why did he not take the bank-notes from the bedroom mantelpiece?-he must have known they were there for her blood was on one of them. Though he could not expect that Wallace would be away the whole of two hours, from six forty-five to eight forty-five, he would have known that he had ample time to do what had to be done, especially if robbery alone was his intention. Even if he had meant to kill there was time for everything, for he had at least an hour to devote to it before his host could make the return journey. When Mrs Wallace fell against the gas-fire, as seems probable, and her clothing caught fire, he could have slipped the mackintosh off and drawn her clear with it and beaten out the flames, before with mounting urgency he bolted the front door, broke open the cashbox, and made his way out through the back entry. The great question was, who could this hypothetical assailant be? The game did not appear to be worth the candle for any common burglar, who could just as easily have overpowered the frail little woman and got away with clean hands. Wallace was doing everything he could to help the police but nothing in his or his wife’s history accounted for an implacable enemy who might wish to bring utter desolation on them. He had originally given no indication of any personal or mutual acquaintance who might have been admitted by Mrs Wallace in all good faith, but a day or two later he produced quite a list of people, for the most part employees or ex-employees of the Prudential whom he knew to be in financial difficulties with the Company and who might have thought of this desperate way of putting their affairs in order. Somehow it was not convincing that anybody in that position should go to such lengths. Wallace also interrogated the captain of the Chess Club minutely on the matter of the telephone message, saying: “The police have cleared me”. As he had not been treated in any way as a suspect the police thought this odd of him.

It is a sad reflection on marriage that where a wife has been violently killed her husband is ordinarily the first to be suspected, but in this case there was no discoverable motive of any kind and such an act was entirely contrary to his nature and interests. Moreover, if Wallace were the murderer he must have acted with astonishing speed to achieve it between the milk-boy’s visit and his own departure. The gap was narrow and he must have struck with frantic eagerness almost before the milk-boy’s footsteps had receded along the pavement so as to get everything done and be on his way. From seven ten when he boarded the tram till eight forty-five when he met the Johnstons at the back entry every moment was vouched for, and not alone by casual passers-by who might not be reliable even if found, but by officials whose evidence could be checked and counter-checked by time-tables all along his route. Even his half-reluctant purpose to go across Liverpool discussed the night before could be vouched for, and by nearly every member of the Club who attended on the Monday. If Wallace were the murderer then this elaborate excursion of his must be nothing but a prefabricated smokescreen to hide the preceding mauvais quart d’heure; he must have known exactly what he meant to do all the time he sat winning his competition game of chess. If Wallace was the murderer then Wallace was Qualtrough. It remained to be seen whether the reverse could be proved, but on 2 February Wallace was arrested and charged with the murder of his wife. He denied it then and always. He was eventually committed to take his trial at the Liverpool Assizes and the trial took place on Wednesday 22 April 1931 and occupied the three succeeding days.

The little grey house in Wolverton Street may have been dull enough but at the Liverpool Assizes there was a panoply of grandeur. That excellent judge Mr Justice Wright, later Lord Justice Wright, presided. Mr E.G. Hemmerde, K C, Recorder of Liverpool and as deadly a man as the Crown could have, took charge of the prosecution. Mr Roland Oliver, K C, then a very able Counsel and now an extremely good judge, threw himself heart and soul into the defence.

Witness followed witness. The Johnstons, simple, honest people, described Mr and Mrs Wallace as a happy and very loving couple; they had never heard any quarrelling from the house next door-but then there are people who never make a noise in any circumstances. The captain of the Chess Club, no doubt occupied by more complicated things such as the Knight’s move, was unable to be more precise about the time of the telephone call but testified that the voice speaking in the name of Mr Qualtrough and the voice of Wallace were not in the least similar-but naturally Wallace would not have been such a fool as to speak in his normal voice. According to the prosecution witnesses Wallace had from half-past-six until nearly seven o’clock in which to accomplish the work-the defence narrowed it to a little over five minutes. The tram-conductors, the policeman, the lady at No. 25 Menlove Gardens West, the manageress of the newsagent, all confirmed the peregrinations that had occupied two full hours of Wallace’s time-but while this was in complete accordance with the defence it also supported the theory that it was all part of a deep-laid scheme to establish an alibi. Gradually the case began to assume the unique character for which it is famous; it was not so much that the weight of the evidence swung evenly from one side to the other, it was that the entire evidence pointed equally convincingly in both directions. The police surgeon who was called for the prosecution, an experienced witness, transparently honest and objective, was finally driven by Mr Oliver to give evidence which directly supported the defence; he was compelled to agree that he would expect the assailant of Mrs Wallace to have been saturated with blood to an extent that would make it necessary for him to take a bath or such a thorough wash as Wallace had not time for. His contention too that the blows were struck in a state of maniacal frenzy, while it accounted for the lack of motive, was hard to correlate with the premeditated strategy employed. A woman who from time to time acted as a cleaner in the Wallace’s house, and was asked by the prosecution to see if there was anything missing from there, reported that the kitchen poker and the iron bar that had been kept under the gas fire in the front room had both disappeared-whoever the murderer might be this unaccountable removal would have caused him unnecessary risk.

Wallace elected to go into the box where his manner was mild and composed and his replies reasonable and lucid during the three hours of the ordeal. Mr Qualtrough was the only important character apparently who remained as invisible in the box as he had been throughout the drama in which he played a leading part. All the evidence was circumstantial and on certain vital issues there was no evidence at all; whoever had used the call-box on Monday evening had not been seen by anybody; neither did anybody come forward who had observed Wallace leaving his home on Tuesday. And at the end of it all only one thing was conclusive, either Wallace had done it or he had not.

The judge summed up for an acquittal. He left no doubt that he thought it would be improper to convict. Just over an hour later the jury brought in their verdict of Guilty. I had just come back from foreign parts, where I had been reading the trial, and saw the verdict with astonishment. “But it’s against the weight of the evidence” I said. I was soon to realize why. Factually Wallace had been able to stand up to the prosecution’s allegations and produce reasonable explanations to refute them; humanly he had not. With the strictly fair judge, the deadly Counsel for the Crown, and the brilliance of Mr Oliver’s defence, there was not enough to secure a conviction if Wallace had not gone into the box. People of unpleasing personality, especially if they are guilty, should be advised never to go into the witness box. The jury did not like the man, or his manner which could have been either stoicism or callousness. They did not understand his lack of expression of any kind and they knew that it hid something. It could have hidden sorrow or guilt and they made their choice.

Mr Oliver brought an appeal and won it for his client. The verdict of the jury was set aside as being not in accordance with the evidence. The Prudential Assurance Company magnanimously took him back but he was looked at askance wherever he went. Though he was considerately reinstated in an indoor capacity the suspicion and distrust of neighbours and business associates soon showed him it was hopeless to attempt to continue to earn a living in Liverpool. He was driven to retire to a cottage in the country before the middle of the year, where he died at the beginning of 1933 of what had been for a long time an incurable cancer of the kidneys.

It will be observed that I consider Wallace guilty. I do, for when I read the case I recalled the words of the great Lord Chief Justice, Lord Reading, who was unendingly good to me when I was a young girl in pointing out matters of law. There had been an unimportant murder, in some little suburban house, for no imaginable reason, and I said: “Lord Reading, but why do people like that kill each other, for nothing at all?” and he answered me in what I shall always consider these memorable words: “My child, it is impossible to tell how hardly the presence of one person in a house may bear upon another.” For eighteen years Wallace had borne the presence of this little undistinguished water-colourist and accompanist, always there in the only place he had to go to at night except when he went to his Chess Club. Men marry when they are very young for various reasons, and they find themselves tied for life to a person who gets on their nerves. A kind of affection may still exist, but it is difficult to gauge what affection means in someone conceited and pretentious; and Wallace was both. Wishing ardently for respectability, this vain man had had to remain by the side of a woman he considered his inferior in every way, and when at last he broke out it was with extravagant violence. One, two, three… how many blows? It does not matter. It is my belief that Wallace came downstairs naked under his mackintosh, murdered his wife with this urgency upon him, tucked his mackintosh under her shoulder, washed himself in the kitchen, and set off into the dark January evening methodically to execute the remainder of what I hope chess players will forgive me for calling essentially a chess-player’s crime. Every move and its consequences were planned in advance. He was a punctual man of precise habits and every action was timed. As to the weapon used neither poker nor iron bar was ever found, though all drain-pipes and gratings had been diligently searched by the police. Later, when I had the pleasure of meeting Mr Hemmerde and the disposal of the weapon was discussed he smiled a little grimly and without a word picked up a ruler which lay upon his desk and slipped it up his sleeve. Perhaps early in the grey Liverpool dawn, before any suspicion rested on him, Wallace took a long walk by the river bank-but that is only supposition. If Wallace and Qualtrough were one and the same, ringing up the Chess Club the night before because he had reached a point when he could not support the pressure of a delicate inadequate wife any longer, then there is no doubt he was guilty. The only other possibility is that there was an airy-fairy Qualtrough whom nobody has ever seen. It is a name that comes from the Isle of Man. Did Wallace and his Julia once remark upon the oddness of that name while on a holiday on the island? Who can tell? When he died Wallace left behind him in the cottage a private diary containing a great many very highfalutin’ remarks about his beloved Julia… “If only she were still with me how lovingly she would have tended the garden…”, but this of course proves nothing. They were in execrable literary taste but to write badly is not enough, unfortunately, to prove a man a murderer.

Just before the war, my husband and I went to Liverpool to stay with the architect Professor Holford, now Sir William Holford, and on the Sunday afternoon I proposed going to see the Wallace house. Needless to say the men slumbered, but we women set off in search of the little grey house. We found the mean street-and streets, though perfectly respectable and not slums, can be very mean and grey in Liverpool-we found the house. It was occupied, and evidently by people who were houseproud. The front windows were shrouded thickly in white Nottingham lace curtains; surely more thickly than the windows of any other house in the district. We went round to the back entry to see the door that Wallace professed to have found closed against him that night so many years ago. The door was neatly painted in dark green, but on it, crudely chalked in white and quite newly done, was the figure of a hanging man. The unfortunate tenants of the house may have spent the greater part of their days trying to keep the back door free of such disfigurement but the legend of Wallace had not died. It had torn Liverpool in two; half of the great town had been for him and half had been against him; passions had run high. Grown-ups talk in front of children and children sort out for themselves as best they can the truth of what those extraordinary beings say. For all I know, though there have been worse monsters since, a hanging man in chalk may still be decorating from time to time the back door of that little drab house in Liverpool. Children collect legends and keep them long.

Many modern theorists disagree with Miss Jesse’s conclusion that Wallace murdered his wife. Three years after starting to research the case, Jonathan Goodman published The Killing of Julia Wallace (Harrap, London 1969) which suggested that not only did Wallace not murder his wife, but that the real culprit got away with it. At the time,“Mr X ” (as Jonathan Goodman was legally obliged to call him) was living in south London. But in 1981, on the fiftieth anniversary of the killing, a Liverpool radio station, Radio City, broadcast a drama-documentary that unmasked “Mr X ” (who had died the year before), naming him as Richard Gordon Parry. Parry, a petty thief, had worked alongside Wallace in his insurance business. Gordon Parry had a grudge against Wallace for reporting various minor defalcations to the Prudential, and there was a hint of curious sexual shenanigans between Parry, twenty-two at the time of the murder, and Julia Wallace, a post-menopausal thirty years older. The radio researchers also discovered that Parry’s uncle, Liverpool’s city librarian, was uniquely placed to get his hands on the levers of the investigation; quite apart from his exalted position with the Corporation, Parry’s uncle employed a secretary whose father was the city’s top detective and the man in charge of the Wallace inquiry. Wallace had given Parry’s name to the police within thirty-six hours of the murder, but they had seemed satisfied with the young man’s alibi that he had spent the evening with his girlfriend. The radio team tracked down this woman, who disclosed that Parry was not, in fact, with her at the crucial hour of Mrs Wallace’s death.

A few weeks after the programme, an old man called John Parkes was interviewed. His extraordinary testimony (pooh-poohed by the anti-Wallace police in 1931) seemed to clinch the case against Parry. On the murder night, John Parkes was working as a car cleaner at a Liverpool garage. According to Parkes, Gordon Parry (whom he knew) turned up at the garage demanding to have his car washed, inside and out. Inside the car Parkes found a bloodstained glove. Parry snatched it from him, exclaiming:“If the police found that, it would hang me!”