Hardcastle's Obsession (28 page)

‘What d’you mean by that?’

‘She reckons that it was you who murdered Lady Sarah.’

‘That’s preposterous,’ exclaimed Naylor. ‘Why would I do such a thing?’

‘To avoid an unsavoury court case. Major Millard was going to divorce his wife and cite you as a co-respondent. And that would’ve put paid to any ideas you had about becoming Lord Naylor of Kingsley.’

‘That’s absurd,’ protested Naylor.

Marriott, sitting beside Hardcastle, thought it absurd also, but he was no longer surprised when the DDI made outrageous allegations. It so often achieved the desired result.

Hardcastle nodded sagely. ‘Yes, I thought so too, Sir Royston. It seemed to me that Lady Naylor wanted to see you dressed up in ermine more than you did.’

‘I had nothing to do with it.’ Naylor remained silent for a few moments. ‘That bloody woman has been nothing but trouble to me. I don’t know why the hell I married her.’

‘I suppose it’s the old, old story: you mistook lust for love,’ said Hardcastle, with a flash of earthy wisdom as he stood up. He turned to Marriott. ‘Put him down.’

‘Are you keeping me here, Inspector?’ asked Naylor, a note of incredulity in his voice.

‘Most certainly,’ said Hardcastle. ‘You might not have done the deed, but I’m far from convinced that you’re totally innocent in this affair.’

It was not until three o’clock that same afternoon that Detective Inspector Collins was able to give Hardcastle the result of his fingerprint comparison.

‘I’ve got good news for you, Ernie.’

‘It’s about time I had some,’ muttered Hardcastle.

‘I’ve compared the fingerprint impressions I took from Lady Naylor with those I found in Lady Sarah Millard’s flat at Artillery Mansions.’

‘Well, don’t keep me in suspense, Charlie.’

‘They’re a match.’

‘With the dabs you found on the bedside locker?’

‘The very same,’ said Collins.

‘Good work, Charlie,’ said Hardcastle. ‘You’d better get the mothballs out of your Old Bailey suit because we’re going to trial.’

‘When am I going to be released?’ demanded Hilda Naylor haughtily. ‘I’ve been here for nearly twenty-four hours, and I can assure you that Sir Royston will be taking legal action regarding this matter. It’s an outrage.’

‘As I told you earlier,’ began Hardcastle, ‘a key to Lady Sarah Millard’s apartment at Artillery Mansions was found in your handbag—’

‘And I told you that I—’

‘Just be quiet and listen,’ snapped Hardcastle. ‘The key was found in your handbag, and I have just received confirmation that your fingerprints were found on a bedside locker in the same apartment next to the bed where Lady Sarah’s body was found. But first, I shall deal with the murder of Annie Kelly . . .’ The DDI held out his hand for the file that Marriott was holding, not that he needed it. ‘A platinum and diamond necklet that has been positively identified as your property was found close to the body of the Kelly woman. I shall shortly charge you with both those murders.’

‘It’s a lie, a bloody filthy lie. You bastards are stitching me up. I never had nothing to do with those murders. I never had no key, and I’ve never seen that bloody necklace before.’ Lady Naylor’s hitherto cultivated control over her speech finally vanished, and her factory-girl persona came to the surface. ‘It was Royston, he done for ’em.’

Hardcastle turned to his sergeant. ‘I suppose you’d better write that down, Marriott,’ he said mildly.

‘You can’t prove any of this,’ protested Hilda Naylor.

‘That remains to be seen,’ said Hardcastle mildly. ‘However, I shall produce witnesses at your trial who’ll testify to your possession of the key, and your ownership of the necklace.’ But then Hardcastle adopted an avuncular tone that Marriott did not hear too often. ‘I’ve a feeling there’s something you want to tell me, Lady Naylor.’

‘Does either of you have a cigarette?’

Marriott produced his packet of Gold Flake and offered it.

‘Thank you.’ Hilda Naylor smiled as Marriott struck a match and leaned forward to light her cigarette. She had suddenly become much less hostile than previously.

‘I’m surprised you smoke,’ said Hardcastle, maintaining his kindly tone of voice, ‘seeing as how you’re a strong swimmer, and a very good horsewoman.’

‘I used to swim a lot as a girl, in the sea at Brighton, but not any more,’ said Hilda Naylor. ‘I had high hopes of swimming the Channel one day, but then I married Sir Royston and he bought me a fine stallion. He’s been very good to me, and I’d do anything for him.’

This was an entirely different woman from the haughty chatelaine of Kingsley Hall who the two detectives had first encountered. But Hardcastle was cynical enough to conclude that it was a charade.

‘I heard a rumour that he’s being considered for a peerage,’ continued Hardcastle, as though he were carrying on a polite conversation rather than questioning a murder suspect. But the DDI was a skilled interrogator.

‘Oh yes,’ agreed Naylor’s wife. ‘No more than he deserves, of course. He’s worked very hard for the war effort. That’s what got him his knighthood in the first place, you know. He had to go to Buckingham Palace to be invested by the King.’

‘I suppose you knew about him meeting Annie Kelly, Lady Naylor,’ suggested Marriott. ‘And that he’d got her pregnant.’

‘Of course I did.’ Lady Naylor threw back her head and laughed. ‘He’s like all men,’ she said. ‘A pretty girl appears and he’s putty in her hands. Of course I knew.’

Which is how
you
trapped him
, thought Hardcastle. ‘And you didn’t mind?’

‘No. It’s what men do.’

‘And Lady Sarah Millard?’

‘Yes, I knew about her too. And that was stupid, especially when all that nonsense came out about her old man chasing him out into the street.’ Hilda Naylor laughed at the thought. ‘I’d loved to have see Royston running down the street holding up his trousers.’

‘It attracted some unwelcome publicity,’ continued Hardcastle. ‘Particularly when the court martial was held.’

‘I told Royston that he’d been a bloody fool.’ Lady Naylor stubbed out her half-smoked cigarette in the tin lid that did service as an ashtray. ‘And I told him that if anything was going to cast doubt on his getting a seat in the House of Lords that would.’

‘Major Millard’s intention of divorcing his wife would have brought more publicity, too,’ commented Hardcastle.

‘Of course it would,’ snapped Hilda Naylor. ‘But it didn’t stop him; he even carried on seeing her when she moved to Artillery Mansions.’

Hardcastle noted that Hilda Naylor had finally acknowledged knowing where Lady Sarah Millard was living after her husband Hugo had left her.

‘And you took the key to Lady Sarah’s flat from your husband, I suppose.’

‘No. Royston gave it to me.’

‘And he knew why you wanted it, I suppose?’

‘Of course he did,’ sneered Hilda Naylor.

‘And with Lady Sarah dead, all the obstacles to your husband’s chances of a peerage would have been removed,’ said Marriott.

‘And so you decided to do away with her,’ said Hardcastle quietly.

‘Yes, I . . . no, I didn’t mean to say that.’ For the first time since the interview had begun, Lady Naylor became flustered as she realized the damaging admission she had made.

‘And Sir Royston knew all about it, I suppose?’

‘Of course he did.’ It was a lame attempt to shift the blame on to her husband.

‘Which is why he told me that you’d been at Kingsley Hall when in fact you were in London murdering Annie Kelly and Lady Sarah.’

‘What do you think?’ asked Hilda Naylor listlessly; it seemed that she had finally tired of all the pretence.

‘How did you lure Annie Kelly to the Washbourne Street house where we found her body, Lady Naylor?’ asked Hardcastle.

‘Easy. I told her that I was going to give her a thousand pounds to disappear and keep quiet, and that that’s where the money was.’

‘But you had no intention of paying her anything, did you?’ asked Marriott.

‘Of course not, the slut. And when the house was bombed, I thought that she’d never be found.’

‘You’d better write all that down, Marriott,’ said Hardcastle mildly, ‘and then take Lady Naylor into the charge room. I’ll be there shortly.’

‘Very good, sir,’ said Marriott.

Hardcastle walked through to the front office. ‘Open up Sir Royston’s cell for me, Skipper.’

‘Yes, sir,’ said the station sergeant, and seized a large bunch of keys from a hook near the door to the cell passage.

Sir Royston Naylor stood up as the DDI entered his cell. ‘I hope you’ve come to tell me that I’m being released, Inspector.’

‘No, Sir Royston, I haven’t. I’m here to tell you that I will shortly charge your wife with two counts of murder.’

Naylor sank down on to the wooden plank that did service as a bed. ‘Well, that’ll put the kibosh on my peerage if nothing else does,’ he said, putting his head in his hands. ‘Can I go now?’

‘No,’ said Hardcastle. ‘I am about to charge you with being involved in this murder.’

‘
What
?’ Naylor leaped to his feet again. ‘On what grounds?’

‘The alibi you gave Lady Naylor when you told me that she’d been at Kingsley Hall for the whole weekends of both the murders. You knew damned well where she was and what she was doing. What’s more, she told me that you gave her the key to Lady Sarah’s apartment at Artillery Mansions.’

‘You’ll have a job proving it,’ said Naylor.

Hardcastle just smiled, but said nothing. In the event, Naylor was proved right. The Director of Public Prosecutions pointed out that a husband and wife cannot conspire with each other; in law they are one.

Furthermore, he ruled that, in his view, the provision of an alibi did not amount to an offence in this case, unless it could be proved that Sir Royston Naylor
knew
that his wife was intent upon murder. The same went for Lady Naylor’s allegation that Sir Royston had
given
her the key to the Millard girl’s apartment at Artillery Mansions, rather than Hilda having
taken
it without her husband’s knowledge.

And proving any of that, Hardcastle surmised, would be very difficult, if not downright impossible.

On Friday the third of November 1916, Lady Naylor appeared in the dock at Bow Street police court. As the clerk of the court read out her name, there was an immediate hubbub of chatter in the public gallery, and a babble of renewed conversation in the press box.

Just over six years previously Hawley Harvey Crippen and Ethel le Neve had stood in that same dock charged with the murder of Crippen’s wife, Belle Elmore, at 39 Hilldrop Crescent, Camden Town in North London. They had been arrested in Halifax, Nova Scotia, following a dramatic dash across the Atlantic by Detective Chief Inspector Walter Dew of Scotland Yard. But there the similarity ended.

Hardcastle stepped into the witness box and gave brief details of Lady Naylor’s arrest and asked for a remand in custody.

‘Remanded in custody for eight days,’ said the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, ‘to reappear here on . . .’ He paused to examine his register. ‘Saturday the eleventh.’

‘I’m obliged to Your Worship,’ said Hardcastle.

‘When will you be in a position for depositions to be made, Mr Hardcastle?’

‘I would think in about two weeks’ time, Your Worship.’

‘At the second remand hearing, then.’

‘Yes, sir.’

On Saturday morning, a constable appeared in the detectives’ office, and crossed to where Marriott was seated at the far end.

‘A message for you, Sergeant.’

Marriott looked up. ‘Yes?’

‘A Mr Gilbert Parfitt telephoned, Sergeant,’ said the PC, reading from the message form he was holding. ‘He’s a jeweller in Victoria Street apparently, and he asked if you’d call on him. He has some information for you.’

‘Ah, Mr Marriott.’ Parfitt withdrew a sheet of paper from beneath his counter as Marriott entered his shop. ‘I circulated details of the platinum and diamond necklet you found, and a colleague of mine with premises in Bond Street has identified it.’

‘Has he? Does he know who bought it?’

‘Yes, at least he’s fairly certain. According to his records, it was purchased by Sir Royston Naylor as a gift for his wife on the twentieth of March this year. Is that of any assistance?’

‘Indeed it is, Mr Parfitt,’ said Marriott. ‘I’m much obliged to you.’

Back at the police station, Marriott told Hardcastle what he had learned from Parfitt.

‘And just to make sure, sir, I took the necklace to the Bond Street jeweller and he was adamant that it was the piece he sold to Sir Royston. Apparently Sir Royston mentioned that it was a gift for his wife.’

‘There’s no doubt whose necklace it was, then, Marriott,’ said Hardcastle. ‘Not that I thought there would be.’

A fortnight later the laborious business of taking depositions began before the Bow Street magistrate. Each prosecution witness testified to the evidence they would give at the Old Bailey trial and the clerk of the court painstakingly wrote it down in longhand.

Eventually a bill of indictment was placed before the 23 freeholders who constituted the grand jury. After a suitable period of deliberation they returned a true bill.

The trial of Hilda, Lady Naylor, opened at the Central Criminal Court in Old Bailey on Monday the fifth of February 1917.

The press box was full: it appeared that every national newspaper was represented along with reporters from the local press in Buckinghamshire and Westminster.

For the spectators the charge of murder against Lady Naylor was a
cause célèbre
not to be missed. The public gallery in number one court was thronged with men in morning dress, a couple of peers among them. There were even several army officers, and a commander in the Royal Navy. The ladies wore the sort of finery that befitted such an occasion: expensive fur-trimmed hats with eye-level veils and coats of either sealskin or musquash.