The Acid Bath Murders E-Book

Gordon Lowe

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 337

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

John George Haigh committed five perfect murders – by dissolving his wealthy victims in sulphuric acid. Then he tipped away the resultant soup to avoid detection on a 'no body, no murder' principle and used his victims' property to fund his luxury lifestyle of silk ties and flashy cars. Murder number six was less than perfect. When a guest in Haigh's hotel disappeared, the police found half-dissolved body parts carelessly thrown into the yard outside his secluded workshop. But was the urbane Mr Haigh, the man brought up by strict Plymouth Brethren parents in Yorkshire and dressed like a city stockbroker, really the monster he said he was? Did he really kill six innocent people just so he could drink their blood? Using unpublished archive papers, including recently released letters Haigh wrote from prison while awaiting execution, author Gordon Lowe sheds light on whether Haigh's claims were a cynical ploy for a ticket into Broadmoor Hospital, or if he was a psychopathic vampire with a penchant for disposing of his victims in acid.

Leseprobe

To June Hyde, with gratitude

‘When you meet a man who talks like that you should run for your life.’

Fifth victim’s brother

‘He is our dearest treasure on earth and we commit him to the God of all Graces.’

John Haigh’s parents

John George Haigh. (Dunboyne, Lord (ed.), Trial of John George Haigh)

Contents

Title

Dedication

Chapter   1

Chapter   2

Chapter   3

Chapter   4

Chapter   5

Chapter   6

Chapter   7

Chapter   8

Chapter   9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

1

On what was to be her last day on earth, Mrs Olive Durand-Deacon sat down for breakfast as usual at eight o’clock at the Onslow Court Hotel, South Kensington. It was Friday, 18 February 1949 and the widowed Olive, who would have been 70 the following year, had been living at the Onslow Court, a residential hotel for the wealthy retired, for the last six years. The loneliness and shock of finding herself a widow at the age of 54 was partly tempered by her holding stocks and shares worth £36,000 (nearly £900,000 today). The companionship of her new friends and fellow residents at the hotel, particularly Mrs Constance Lane, who sat at the table in the dining room to her left, and Mr John Haigh, who sat at the table to her right – a comparative newcomer as he’d only lived at the hotel for the last four years – was also a comfort.

The only thing unusual today was John Haigh’s empty table. Admittedly, he had to come down from his room on the fourth floor but as a rule he was there before Olive, ready to do ‘his rounds’, as he called his business trips. She was concerned about this and hoped he hadn’t been taken ill in the night. Although he was a young man of 40 she thought he overdid it, careering around the country in his lovely Alvis motor car, and he sometimes looked quite worn out in the evenings when they sat down to dinner.

But, however tired John might be, there was always a smile on his face and time to exchange pleasantries about the day. Olive was surprised that a catch like him hadn’t been snatched up years ago by some lucky girl and spirited off to a leafy suburb in the home counties. He did occasionally bring in a girl, whom he called Barbara, for afternoon tea, but as nice as she was she seemed young enough to be his daughter. He hinted to Olive over coffee one evening at the hotel that there had been a wife at some stage but never said more than that.

Sometimes there’d even be a little ‘prize’ for Olive or one of the other good ladies in the form of a piece of jewellery or bottle of perfume, something they couldn’t get with rationing still in force after the war. They came at a price, of course, like the lovely crocodile handbag he’d brought her a year ago, charging only a modest £10 when in the shops it would be a lot more, if you could get something of such quality at all. And there was the exquisite blue sapphire and diamond ring she wore without ever telling a soul how much she paid John for it.

Then, to her relief, she spotted him on the other side of the dining room, stopping at a table and pulling out a long box with a watch or necklace wrapped in tissue. The expression of sheer delight on the face of the lady on the receiving end said it all, and she was gazing up at him and mouthing a question at which John was shrugging his shoulders and smiling his usual wonderful smile.

Perhaps if Olive were thirty years younger she might have designs on John herself, but at the age of 69 all that was over now and so what was the point; John Haigh, with his slightly high voice and petit bourgeois manners, would not be suitable for Olive Durand-Deacon, the widow of an army officer, in any case. But whatever you said about John, he did bring a lot of happiness to everyone at the hotel, and she for one wouldn’t hear a word against him.

‘Ah, Olive, good morning,’ he greeted her as he passed her table, almost as if he were surprised to see her despite going through this ceremony every morning.

‘Good morning, John, looking after us all as usual I see,’ she replied with a regal nod of the head. People said she looked like Queen Elizabeth, who with her husband King George had looked after them so well during the war. Although not a vain woman, Olive liked to think she at least dressed like the queen and, while twenty years older, agreed that, well, there was something a little royal about her.

John hesitated before sitting down at his table. ‘We must talk about your nails today, Olive,’ he said.

‘It would be a pleasure,’ she replied, beaming.

She looked back at him as he poured his coffee and spread a piece of toast. Her examination of him was no intrusion because the single tables in the dining room at the Onslow Court were arranged and angled each on four tiles of floor space, like pieces on a chessboard, to maintain at least the pretence of privacy. The hotel was perfect for them, near the Science Museums and the Victoria and Albert, Harrods and the shops, and of course the Royal Albert Hall at the top of Queen’s Gate for concerts.

Olive still worried about John even though he was now safely eating his breakfast. Despite wearing his usual immaculate suit, white shirt and silk tie, he looked weary and a little beaten. The hair was oiled and carefully brushed back and he was clean-shaven apart from his small moustache – the waft of Brylcreem and aftershave hit you as he passed. But there were bags under the piercing blue eyes and his effusive manner had gone over the last week – it was Friday and she hoped he would be more himself over the weekend.

Whatever was on his mind that morning, John was deep in thought until he’d finished his second piece of toast and drunk his second cup of coffee. Then he came over to Olive’s table and pulled up a chair to sit beside her. He put his hand over hers on the pristine white tablecloth and patted her ringed fingers, something he’d never done in all the time they’d known each other. ‘Now Olive,’ he crooned, ‘we have business to do and I have everything planned for you.’

But if she’d had an inkling of what John was planning for her that Friday afternoon, Olive would have run for her life.

2

John really had arranged everything, down to the last nail. The business they were discussing was the manufacture of artificial fingernails. Olive Durand-Deacon had a box full of them in her room, and when she heard that John was an inventor and the director of a light engineering company, she asked if he might be interested in a little business venture: he could manufacture the nails and she could design and market them.

He’d told her about the machine he wanted to market that threaded cotton through needles and a wonderful toy fort where all the soldiers moved around on a pulley system. She’d bought a couple of his handheld electric fans, but these had gone wrong rather soon, which embarrassed her because she’d bought two more and given them to friends going to Australia on a new ship, and she hoped these hadn’t suffered the same fate.

But the fingernails were all her idea after she’d cut out pieces of newspaper and laid them to be painted on her own nails. While her marriage to a war hero with the Military Cross had been varied and fulfilling, she always harboured the idea that at heart she was a businesswoman. With the Second World War now four years behind them, women were starting to think how they looked again, about luxuries like decent hair and nails.

And John Haigh, despite the expensive cars, the suits and the silk ties, and despite, as he told her, being a solicitor specialising in probate matters in a past life, could himself do with a new business venture right now. Because, not for the first time in his life, he was financially embarrassed or, to put it less kindly, flat broke, down on his uppers, skint – however you wanted to describe it.

No one in the hotel knew about this, except the manageress, Mrs Alicia Robbie. She’d had to remind him no less than twice in the last week that he owed the hotel nearly £50 in bills and that if he didn’t find the money within another week then he would have to leave. She was sorry to tell him this but it was hotel policy and this was not the first time she had had to speak to him and, after all, his room, a single on the fourth floor, was cheaper than the doubles on the lower floors like Mrs Durand-Deacon’s. Mrs Robbie even had to send her head cashier up to his room to ask for the money, but John said he was unwell and would have to let them have it in a few days. To make matters worse, he’d earlier written the hotel a cheque that had been returned marked ‘refer to drawer’ by the bank.

Then there was the matter of his bank overdraft that came to £83 5s 10d, which was why they were refusing his cheques and, as the debt was unsecured, becoming more strident in their demands for repayment. His gambling had left him with a total of £352 (£8,700 today) owed to five different commission agencies.

And so at the beginning of the week, on Monday, 14 February 1949, Valentine’s Day, John Haigh started to put his plan into place. Olive had Mrs Birin, Assistant Secretary of the Francis Bacon Society of which Olive was a member and who accompanied Olive to meetings at the Society and Foyle’s literary luncheons, as her regular Monday lunch guest at the hotel. Among other things, the society supported the idea that Francis Bacon wrote Shakespeare’s works for him, as Olive would remind John when they had a literary chat.

But the conversation today was more prosaic as Olive produced her box of plastic fingernails and, excusing herself to her guest, turned to John at the next table to show him.

John was sifting through the box like a pirate with a chest full of silver. ‘Now, Olive,’ he said to her. ‘I’ve told them down at the factory about the plans and they can’t wait to meet you. I shall whisk you down to Sussex later in the week for a look at some prototypes.’

Olive peered into the box. ‘I’ve more upstairs. But I thought if I helped with the designs, then you could make them. I’ve even a few thoughts as to where we sell them. Oh, John, do you think this could really work?’

John sat back in his chair and raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Work? I’ll say this could work. We’re tapping a market, Olive, and this is what it’s all about,’ he replied, tapping the side of his nose in what Olive thought rather a vulgar gesture.

She looked over her shoulder to see if her guest was listening, but she was busy tackling her chop.

‘In fact,’ added John, putting his head nearer hers, ‘we are so impressed with the project we have decided that we should go halves with you on the funding. Only, my dear Olive, this is all between us and to go no further.’

‘Of course, mum’s the word,’ said Olive, before he could tap his nose again.

The factory that John referred to was that of Hurstlea Products Ltd in West Street, Crawley. This light engineering business had been built up by his friend, Edward Jones, from humbler beginnings not far away in a one-up, one-down building in Leopold Road, which had been kept on as a storehouse since the move in 1947. In the same year, John was doing some experimental work with Edward on the gadget for threading needles, and John had even put up £200 towards the expenses of the project. He saw the invention as a real help to the blind but didn’t say how this would help with the rest of their sewing. But John was exaggerating when he called himself a co-director of the firm; in fact, Edward had only offered him a directorship as a security against the money John had put down. Nothing had come of it and the matter had been forgotten, as presumably had the gadget for threading needles.

Nevertheless, John kept on a loose business relationship with Edward in acting as the firm’s representative outside Crawley and in London generally. This was unpaid, but in return John had use of the storeroom in Leopold Road as a workshop more or less when he wanted to use it.

It was also an exaggeration that Edward Jones was relishing the prospect of manufacturing fingernails. John, who’d only seriously considered pressing ahead with the idea that morning – as he got out of bed, to be precise – had not even mentioned it to Edward yet.

On the following morning, Tuesday 15 February, Haigh motored down from Kensington to Crawley in the Alvis to the West Street factory before lunch. He parked the car, donned his long winter coat and marched into the factory looking more like a city stockbroker than an engineer.

By contrast Jones was sitting in his small office at his desk, dressed in a beige lab coat, with his head in his hands.

John put his head round the office door. ‘Just popped in for the Leopold Road keys, Edward. Time for a quick chat?’ he asked.

‘Not really, John. I’m having a bloody awful day,’ Jones replied.

John took no notice and sat himself down at the desk facing his colleague. ‘Anything I can do?’ he asked breezily.

‘Got to lay off a few of the lads. I should have done it before Christmas.’

John unbuttoned his coat and put his hands on his hips. ‘Well, times are tough for us all. In fact I was going to touch you for a little subbie, Edward.’

‘How little?’ Jones asked suspiciously. ‘Not a good time of the year, John.’

‘No, I know all that. But the fact is I’ve got caught short with hotel bills and the bank and that sort of thing,’ replied John.

‘I can’t understand why you have to live in a posh London hotel and drive that car when most us mortals live down here and ride a bike.’

‘Ah, but remember I’m the one who gets around town flying the flag, Edward. Customers expect it, you know. The car, the suit and tie, I’m worth a few orders to Hurstlea.’

‘I know, I know. Anyway, how much do you want?’

‘Fifty quid would do nicely. I can pay the hotel and give the bank something to keep them happy.’

Jones went over to an ancient safe in the corner and proceeded to open it with a key on the end of a chain. ‘Alright, but I need it back by the end of the week. That’s all the time I can give you, John, it’s money I’ve put aside for a policy. I need it back Friday at the latest.’

‘You’re a scholar and a gentleman, Edward,’ said John, taking the wad of notes and shoving it in his pocket. ‘Now, there’s another thing.’

‘Quickly, John, please. I’m hungry and still putting off seeing these people.’

‘No, this is a good one. This could make us a decent bit of money.’

‘Like the needle threader?’

‘That could still work to my mind, but after a war nobody wants to shell out money for a gadget on a job they can do themselves. No, what they want, what the ladies want, is a bit of luxury, especially when they’ve been breaking their nails in factories and farms, bless them. So we make them for them,’ said John, pulling his chair up nearer the desk.

‘Make what exactly?’ asked Jones doubtfully.

‘Fingernails. We make plastic fingernails to fit over the broken ones.’

Jones shook his head. ‘Too costly, I’d say.’

‘But we sell them for whatever we want to ask. I’ve a client lined up to come in on the scheme, loaded with money and raring to go,’ said John, his blue eyes lighting up like Father Christmas producing a toy from his sack.

Jones sat back in his chair, opened a drawer and produced a sandwich in greaseproof paper. ‘Sorry, John, not interested,’ he said, unwrapping the sandwich.

‘Well, I said I’d bring them down to the factory later in the week. They might put up some money.’

Jones bit off the end of his sandwich and threw it back down on the wrapper. ‘Not here, I’m afraid, I’ve got enough troubles to have to worry about fingernails.’

The breath ran out of John in a long sigh. He shook his head but accepted the offer of sharing his colleague’s lunch, and so over spam sandwiches with mustard, and a thermos flask of weak tea, both made earlier that morning by Mrs Jones for her husband while John Haigh slept in silk pyjamas in the Onslow Court Hotel, Olive Durand-Deacon’s fate was sealed.

3

Next morning a smiling and more assured John Haigh phoned down from his room in the hotel to the manageress to say he was now in a position to deal with his bill if she would care to come up to discuss the matter. In fact, she said didn’t care to go up to his room to discuss this or anything else as she felt she’d chased around after him enough as it was. She sent her cashier, Mrs Kirkwood, up instead, expecting more excuses and delays about payment.

Mrs Kirkwood found him sitting in his armchair, doing the crossword.

‘My word, Mrs Kirkwood, you look terrific this morning,’ he greeted her.

‘Does that mean you can’t pay?’ she asked.

‘Not a bit of it, not a bit,’ he said, standing up and throwing the newspaper down on the unmade bed. ‘It was a complete error by my bank to return my cheque the other day. I can tell you I’ve given them a piece of my mind and been assured heads will roll. Now, I can give you the choice, cash or a cheque?’

‘Cash, please, Mr Haigh,’ said Mrs Kirkwood, still waiting for the catch.

‘Very well,’ he said and walked over to his desk. He opened the drawer and produced the borrowed wad of notes, which he placed disdainfully on the bed like dirty linen for the laundry. ‘Take what you need from that,’ he added and went back to his crossword.

As Mrs Kirkwood carefully counted out the first £32 10s to cover the returned cheque, John looked up from his crossword. ‘Rubbish in the Far East,’ he announced.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Rubbish in the Far East. Four letters.’

Mrs Kirkwood ignored the question and finished her counting. ‘Then there’s another seventeen pounds and ten shillings to bring us up to date, if you please.’

‘That’ll have to be a cheque in another week.’

‘No, the arrangement is that you pay up the full amount, Mr Haigh, and I will not take a cheque,’ said Mrs Kirkwood firmly.

This time it was Mrs Kirkwood who didn’t wait for a reply, and she went on counting the notes to the full £50.

‘Now, I have a present for you to make up for all the inconvenience,’ said John with a change of tone, reaching under his bed and producing a bottle of sherry when the counting ended.

‘Thank you, Mr Haigh, but I don’t drink.’

‘For Mr Kirkwood, then,’

She hesitated for a moment, looking at the label on the bottle. ‘Well, it is his favourite, as a matter of fact.’

‘I thought it might be.’

‘Who told you?’

‘You, Mrs Kirkwood, on several occasions, before times were so choppy, when the seas ran calmer between us. Now please take it and I can do my rounds.’

John saw her to the door, which he opened for her. ‘Junk,’ he said as she passed him.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Rubbish in the Far East – junk,’ he repeated and gave her a thumbs up before closing the door after her.

John Haigh’s rounds that morning once again centred on Crawley, with a visit first to Northgate Road where he collected Tom Davies, a welding engineer who did occasional jobs for him, and took him over to the Leopold Road workshop. ‘I want you to pick up some acid for me,’ John explained on the way over. ‘You’ll need an empty carboy.’

Inside the workshop were three carboys – large glass containers capable of holding 10gal of corrosive liquid – each containing different levels of concentrated acid. With an effort, the two men emptied the contents of one carboy into the other two.

‘You’ll also need this,’ said John, handing Tom a printed order for the supply of one container of commercial sulphuric acid from the technical liaison officer of Onslow Court, SW7.

Tom looked at the order and turned it over in his hand. ‘Who’s this technical liaison officer, then?’ he asked.

‘Me, old chap,’ replied John, slapping him on the back, flashing a smile and pushing a couple of pound notes into his hand. ‘See you tomorrow, and don’t drink any of it on the way.’

With the full carboy safely delivered the next day, which was Thursday, John ordered and collected a black drum from a firm of chemical merchants in Barking. However, on getting it back to the Leopold Road workshop he decided it was not corrosive resistant and so drove back to Barking to exchange it for a green one specially prepared to resist acids. In fact the suppliers of the drum said the lining was of such a quality you could keep your soup or beer in it.

This extra and unforeseen trip to Barking only just gave John time to get back to the West Street factory before five o’clock. Having at last got round to telling his workers the bad news about redundancies, Edward Jones was in no mood for conversation.

John could see the mood he was in the moment he entered the building. ‘Sorry, Edward, but it’s one more quick favour I need,’ he said and produced a brand new stirrup pump, which he placed on the bench in front of them.

‘I don’t want to buy it, if that’s what you’re asking,’ said Jones, picking it up and inspecting it cautiously.

‘No, I wondered if you could saw the foot off it for me.’

Jones, aware of John’s inability to handle tools, offered to do the job by removing two rivets to allow the metal stirrup to come off.

The foot fell on to the floor with a clatter and Jones picked it up and gave it to John. ‘If that’s all you want, John, then good afternoon, but I’d appreciate some help shifting some metal sheets out of Leopold Road tomorrow morning,’ said Jones brusquely.

John gave him the foot back. ‘You can have that for doing it,’ he replied.

Jones threw the part under the bench and went back to work.

John left the building satisfied everything was now ready for tomorrow’s meeting, supposedly to discuss the manufacture and marketing of plastic fingernails, with Olive Durand-Deacon.

4

The next day was Friday, 18 February and the morning on which John Haigh had arrived late for breakfast, stopping afterwards at Olive Durand-Deacon’s table to confirm he hadn’t forgotten their business meeting.

In fact, he’d thought about little else for the past few days as the debts swam in like ducks in a row. The reason he was late for breakfast was that he’d been sitting in his armchair up in his room, wondering if the better option still wouldn’t be to ask Olive to fund the project with cash up front. She was a wealthy woman and this would put him in immediate funds to pay his debts, but without the support of Edward and the factory she would soon twig nothing further was happening and start asking questions.

Before he left her after breakfast, John suggested they meet at the hotel reception after lunch, say at 2.15 if that suited her, and they could drive down to Crawley to look at the specimen plastic sheets he’d got that might act as a prototype for the project. That was the word, prototype.

First John drove alone down to Crawley to help Edward move the metal sheets out of Leopold Street over to the West Street factory. He would let it drop that he might be bringing someone down to discuss the fingernails in the afternoon, but he wouldn’t say much more. This would just about give him time to get back to Kensington for lunch and pick up Olive for the return trip back to Crawley in the afternoon.

But just as he’d left the dining room after breakfast, Mrs Constance Lane leant over from her table to ask Olive if she might be interested in shopping and lunch that morning in Kensington. Olive gracefully declined the invitation, explaining she was going down to see John Haigh’s factory. Mrs Lane had always kept her distance from Mr Haigh, whom she thought too young and too smooth – and to be honest, too sharp – to be living in a residential hotel like the Onslow with a lot of women twice his age. On more than one occasion she’d said to Olive that if you opened Mr Haigh’s coat you would probably find it lined with watches and the other jewellery he brought into the hotel. For Constance it was the height of vulgarity that a resident should be selling what must be black market goods actually in the hotel; if Haigh wasn’t so thick with Olive, she would have had a word with Mrs Robbie, the manageress, by now. Olive thought this very amusing and told Constance she was jealous.

However, there wasn’t a lot left in Olive’s day that Friday to be jealous about.

The two-hour drive to Crawley left Olive wanting to spend a penny, and John suggested they use the cloakroom at the George Hotel in the High Street as there weren’t any facilities in the workshop, as he now started to call it instead of ‘the factory’. When they reached the building in Leopold Road Olive was taken aback at how modest it was: it was hardly a factory by any stretch of the imagination. However, John was now explaining that this was the workroom that he used to design and build prototypes and that the main factory was over in West Street.

John parked the car in the yard outside, near the door to the building, and unloaded a black hatbox and briefcase from the boot. The yard was full of debris and lumber was propped up against the side of the building as Olive, dressed in her black Persian lamb coat, red handbag and jewellery more suitable for an evening at the theatre, followed him to the door.

Inside the building the scene wasn’t much more reassuring. It was cold and damp. A large workbench with a clutter of tools lay under the front window and along one wall. A rubber apron hung neatly on the back wall, and on the floor were arranged a large green drum and carboys packed in straw. An acrid smell filled the place. Olive couldn’t quite say what it was, but it reminded her of cleaning kitchens and bathrooms in the days when she had to clean kitchens and bathrooms.

John put the hatbox on the floor and left it there, open, near the bench. He took off his camelhair coat and hung it carefully behind the door. ‘I’ll keep mine on, if you don’t mind,’ said Olive, starting to shiver.

‘We’ll soon have things warmed up for you,’ John replied, blowing into his hands and rubbing them together. ‘Now, to business. I want first to show you the prototype for the nails and see what you think of the colours.’

With this he produced two red cellophane sheets from the briefcase and placed them in front of Olive on the bench. As she bent down to look at them, he reached into the hat box and pulled out a revolver. As Olive was about to say she thought the colour was alright but the sheets looked a little insubstantial, John brought the revolver up behind her neck and shot her with a single shot through the back of the head.

Fourteen stone of Mrs Durand-Deacon crashed to the ground in a black ball of Persian lamb and lay there motionless. John knelt to extract a wad of cotton wool from his black case with the professionalism of a doctor treating a casualty, and held it to the wound in her head to staunch the flow of blood. Death had been instantaneous, and he was glad of this because he didn’t like hurting anyone.

Then he took off his victim’s fur coat, in case it got any blood on it, and hung it over his on the back of the door. He’d get the coat cleaned and in a good state to sell.

Next he bent down to unscrew Olive’s earrings, pulled the rings off her fingers and dropped them all into his jacket pocket. Then it was the turn of bracelets, the crucifix around her neck and finally the watch from the still warm wrist. All this jewellery would raise some immediate cash, and the rest of it, her properties and various capital assets, he would transfer later into his own name. Her red handbag didn’t have much to offer except for 30s in notes and some loose change, and all this he stuffed into his pocket, keeping a mental note of what the tally might be. A few bits and pieces he thought he might keep, like her pen now he could start writing cheques again. Finally he threw the empty handbag into the green drum.

Then, without returning to the body, John put his coat back on and drove over to the West Street factory where he found an exhausted Edward Jones doing some paperwork at his desk. One or two workers were whistling and clearing up their benches. ‘Glad it’s the weekend, eh, Edward?’ asked John, without a hint of anything else on his mind.

Jones looked up. ‘Oh, it’s you, John. Yes, very glad as a matter of fact. What a week,’ he said and immediately looked down again at his desk, making it clear he didn’t want a conversation.

‘Just thought I’d tell you they didn’t turn up,’ said John.

‘Who didn’t turn up?’

‘The people interested in the fingernails. They didn’t show,’ said John.

‘Well, the end to a perfect bloody week, then,’ said Jones, without the energy to even remind John about the money he’d lent him.

For John it was the end to a perfect bloody week. It was perfect, it was bloody and it was the answer to his problems. Now he could deal with Olive’s body in his own time, and arriving back at the storehouse he took off his coat and jacket and, with several pieces of electric flex that had been hanging untidily on the wall for too long, strapped the arms up tight against Olive’s sides and then the knees up to her chest, like a turkey ready for the oven. As he did so her skirt fell immodestly down to her thighs and he pulled it back up and tucked it under her knees, thankful he was not the type of person who might have taken advantage of a woman in a vulnerable position. He’d had a strict Plymouth Brethren upbringing to thank for that and parents who showed him the difference between right and wrong. He hadn’t even touched his young friend Barbara inappropriately in the five years he’d known her for the same reason, not a finger.

Next he lay the green drum on its side on the floor with the open end facing the body, and with a lot of difficulty pushed and shoved the 14-stone deadweight head first into the drum, which was only just wide enough to take the body. With a final heave he pulled the drum upright.

Sweating and short of breath, he decided he needed fortifying with a bit of tea before he finished the job. It was about six o’clock and he could hear someone outside draw up at the gates of the yard and open a vehicle door. Time to get the equipment off and put away and put some of these things back into the boot of the car. As John put his jacket and coat back on he could see the removal van belonging to the firm they shared the yard with coming in to park for the night. He carried on and put the hatbox and briefcase, together with the jewellery and Persian lamb coat, back in the car.

His feeling of relief now turning to exultation, he drove to Ye Olde Priors Restaurant in The Square, Crawley, for an egg on toast with a cup of tea.

The proprietor, Mr Outram, knew him by sight. ‘Glad it’s the end of the week?’ he asked.

‘I’ve got a long drive yet up to Kensington,’ replied John.

‘Well, that’s alright for a youngster like you,’ said Mr Outram, serving the egg on toast.

John laughed for the first time that afternoon. ‘I like the youngster bit – I’m thirty-eight, you know.’

‘Then you can’t be married,’ said Mr Outram, and as he said it John remembered he was still married, even though he hadn’t seen his wife for ten years. He’d mentioned this to Barbara now she was twenty and starting to talk about marriage and she for her part didn’t seem very concerned about it. She trusted him to get a divorce when the time came.

He didn’t know what made him think of it, but John suddenly remembered Olive, who was a bit of a reader, telling him about a Russian novel where the murderer plans every detail of the murder and then forgets to lock the door. In the first fit of anything approaching panic that afternoon, John couldn’t now remember locking the workshop door when he left.

He paid his bill quickly and drove back to the yard, where sure enough he found the door to the workshop unlocked – but there wasn’t a soul around and his secret was safe.

He went to the back of the room, put on a raincoat and donned the rubber apron, tying it at the back like a housewife about to cook the Sunday roast. From the hatbox he produced a war surplus gas mask and placed it over his head, with the respirator in a bag hanging over his chest. Finally came long-sleeved industrial gloves and boots before he felt sufficiently protected to use the stirrup pump.

With the foot of the pump removed the previous day by Edward, the neck of the pump could now be inserted into the top of the first carboy to allow the sulphuric acid to be transferred into the drum. As the drum filled, the acid got to work on first the clothes, then the flesh and bones of the body until the whole mixture was starting to warm in a bubbling froth. Soon the drum would be too hot to touch, and with the contents of the carboy pumped into it John started to relax for the first time.

Everything in the drum was cooking nicely, and he used a wooden stick to give things a stir. Some fat bubbled to the surface of the stew and he reckoned the weekend would probably give it enough time to complete the job and reduce it all to a sludge that could be tipped out into the yard.

This time John remembered, when he finally left the building, to lock the door behind him, safe in the knowledge that no one else would get in over the weekend as he had the keys in his pocket.

Before driving back to London he thought he’d treat himself to a proper dinner at the George Hotel, where earlier he and Olive had stopped to use the cloakroom. He ordered chicken with a decent wine, but the wine was too acidic and the chicken too fleshy.

Poor Olive, he reflected over brandy and a cigar, it had felt like he was disposing of his own mother.

5

Next morning at breakfast at the Onslow Court Hotel Mrs Constance Lane was a troubled woman. She sat at her table having her breakfast as usual, and Mr Haigh sat at his table having his breakfast as usual, but between them Mrs Durand-Deacon’s table was conspicuously empty. This worried Mrs Lane all the more because last night Mrs Durand-Deacon’s table was empty at dinner, and while her friend might not keep her up to date on her every move, it was unusual, to say the least, for Olive not to tell her that she was intending to be away overnight.

Then she was just starting her second cup of coffee when that ghastly little man Mr Haigh got up and actually came over to her table. She had barely ever spoken to him and had never understood Olive’s friendship with a man who, with his rather overbearing optimism about everything and – let’s be frank about it – barely disguised lower-middle-class manners, had seemed lately to monopolise Olive’s time in the Tudor Room, discussing plans about manufacturing something as ridiculous as fingernails. Olive had been a force in her day with the suffragette movement, but with a services and professional background she was hardly schooled in the seedy world of business, and Constance just hoped it wasn’t all going to end in tears or, even worse, with that second-hand car salesman Mr Haigh getting his hands on her money.

Mr Haigh came up to her table and put both his hands palm down on the tablecloth in an entirely inappropriate way for someone who didn’t know her. He smelt of a dubious aftershave and his blue eyes reminded Constance of a Siamese cat she’d once owned that proved unreliable.

‘Do you know anything about Mrs Durand-Deacon; is she ill?’ he asked. ‘Do you know where she is?’

Constance wanted to reply that if she did know where her friend was she certainly wouldn’t tell him. ‘No, I do not know where she is,’ she replied.

Mr Haigh stood up and muttered something she couldn’t hear. ‘Well,’ she added, ‘do you not know where she is? I understood from her that you wanted to take her to your factory.’

For a moment Mr Haigh stopped smiling and the eyes lost their sparkle. Then the smile as quickly returned. ‘Yes, that’s right, but I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t had lunch and she said she wanted to go to the Army & Navy Stores, and she asked me to pick her up there.’

‘I see,’ said Constance.