Classic Scottish Murder Stories

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My special thanks to Hilary Bailey, Glenn Chandler,
Stewart Evans, Max Falconer, Robert Gilbert,
Melvin Harris, Dr Marc Hinchliffe, Carole Hopkins,
John Linklater, Lewis MacDonald, Andy Melbourne,
Jerry Mullaney and Richard Whittington-Egan

CONTENTS

T
he essence of the Arran murder lies (to invoke in one breath the song and Wordsworth's poem) in the conundrum that two men went to climb, went to climb a mountain, one came down and the other stayed up, ‘rolled round in earth's diurnal course with rocks, and stones, and trees'.

An act of murder committed high up in the mists so that the island is, as it were, crowned with the old burst of devilry, does produce a special atmosphere. These perceptions are always subjective, but the Isle of Skye, however grand the Cuillins, with their well-remembered peaky silhouette and torrents of scree, seems a kindlier place than the Isle of Arran. Imagine a murder staged under the Cioch, that fine bossed rock, and the whole spirit of the locus would be changed.

Before it happened, just before it happened, an expedition to Arran was, in 1889, the year after Jack the Ripper, a real adventure for a clerkly person from Tooting. Edwin Robert Rose was normally resident in the very stronghold of Pooterdom, deep in the suburbs of south-west London, with their wooded commons and grids of speculative villas.

Here, at Wisset Lodge, Hendham Road, Upper Tooting, with its inspiring view of the red Tudor-style battlements of Springfield, the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum, at the top of the street, Rose lived in comfort and harmony with his father, four sisters and one brother. The mother was missing, presumably dead. Still a bachelor, at 32, he was employed as clerk in the office of James Goodman, builder, of Mostyn Road, Brixton.

He was not at all bad-looking, slight, dark, with deep-set, soulful eyes and a dense moustache. He could have been a doomed young poet of the 1890s, or even, perhaps, the loved special friend of some great Poet Laureate. There was no hint of a girl-friend, and his hobbies were of a manly nature – tennis and cricket, walking and running.

That July, at the start of his fortnight's summer holiday, he booked in first at the Glenburn Hydropathic, in Rothesay, where, by previous arrangement, he joined his friend, the Reverend Gustavus James Goodman, Minister of the Presbyterian Church at Walker-on-Tyne. The cleric was the son of Rose's employer, who, incidentally, knew nothing of the holiday plan. Rose soon made friends with other young men, and, on July 12 th, having joined up with a picnic-party from the Hydro, he took the Clyde steamer
Ivanhoe
bound for Arran. He was excited, chatty, approachable, released from the office in Brixton, and stimulated by the sky, and the sea and the impact of the scenery.

The conjuncture of killer with victim is always interesting and sometimes instructive. In this case, the life of the clerk should have been safe enough when he struck up a spontaneous holiday acquaintance with a person of lower social class – a skilled artisan. Victim approached killer on the
Ivanhoe,
mistaking him, it was said, for a member of the picnic-party.

John Watson Laurie – for that was his real name, although he was going under the alias of John Annandale and had a visiting card to prove it – was slightly disreputable, with a touch of ‘form' for theft, but not for violence, and his respectable family in Coatbridge were not at all proud of him. On holiday, he was secretive, elusive, determined to conceal the fact that he was a pattern-maker, working at the Atlas Locomotive Works in Springburn, and lodging at 106 North Frederick Street, Glasgow. Snobbery was the background to the unfolding events.

The basically ill-assorted pair got along famously. Rose did most of the talking. Laurie, at 26 somewhat younger than Rose,
was fair against the older man's darkness. In physiognomy, he was less refined. Perhaps Rose was drawn to his air of worldliness, a whiff of raffishness, and Laurie appreciated the clerk's touch of class. Rose was a natty dresser, always well turned out for the occasion, and his clothes are a part of the picture. His holiday apparel included a chocolate-brown and white striped tennis jacket, and a white serge yachting cap, rakish beyond the general. Laurie, who could not compete with Rose's finery, was notoriously vain, and the contrast is thought to have irked him. His best effort was a brown knickerbocker suit and stylish stockings.

At this stage, from any normal vantage point, Rose was at risk only of being a victim of theft. The two ‘chums' enjoyed their trip to Arran, and arranged to return the following day for a longer stay. It was the Glasgow Fair week and most rooms were taken, but lodgings of a sort had been found by Laurie at Mrs Esther Walker's, in the village of Invercloy, Brodick. A Mrs Shaw had brought him to her. She could offer them a wooden outhouse, a ‘lie-to' attached, but with no access to the main house, and with its own door. There was one bed. Very probably they were genuinely lucky to find this roof over their heads and there was no hidden agenda on either side.

Laurie booked to stay from Saturday July 13th, for one week, but Rose was to leave on the following Wednesday. In fact, Laurie sprang Rose on Mrs Walker when he turned up on the Saturday, but she agreed to the terms of 17 shillings for Laurie, and three shillings extra for his friend. Thus discriminated against, Rose was to eat out at Mrs Isabella Wooley's Tea Room, while Laurie was catered for in his own room.

Two other holiday acquaintances, met at the Hydro, and now sleeping,
faute de mieux,
on a friend's yacht in the bay, did not like what they saw of the misalliance. Francis Ord Mickel, a wood-merchant of Linlithgow, and William Thom, a commercial traveller, also of Linlithgow, being Scotsmen will have been
quicker to spot that Laurie was not quite the thing, while Rose will have been bamboozled by his accent. Unless, of course, he did not care or rather liked what he intuited.

Anyway, Mickel and Thom were thoroughly suspicious of ‘Annandale' and his closely-guarded origins, remarking on his habit of ‘coming and going' during a conversation, presumably when the topic was too close to home. Or perhaps he sensed their dislike, and resented their intrusion, and his restless behaviour mirrored his unease. Rose and Laurie announced their intention to climb Goatfell, the highest peak on the island, on Monday July 15th. Laurie had abrogated the role of ‘guide'.

Francis Mickel, whose prescience is a curiosity of the events, strongly advised Rose to get rid of his unsuitable companion, even if it meant leaving his lodgings, and he expressly urged him to abandon the plan to climb Goatfell with Laurie. Anxious to please, Rose promised to try, but he obviously did not try very hard, inhibited perhaps by good manners, kindness, or sheer enthusiasm for the project, because when, with Laurie, he saw Mickel and Thom at the pier, he was kitted out from head to foot as a gentleman climber, swathed like a toff in a tailor-made tweed suit with matching tweed cap, leather leggings and leather boots. Ancillary equipment was a waterproof which was black outside and white inside, and naturally he carried a walking-stick.

If Rose had known then that on the Sunday night before, his guide, Laurie, had been seen acting strangely in the lane behind Wooley's Tea Room, he might not have been so confident. The story is that an old Arran woman who lived in one of the cottages nearby watched Laurie walking up and down, talking to himself and looking very odd. ‘The De'il's busy with that young chap!' she thought.

Theoretically, this could have been agitation caused by something that had happened, or was about to happen, or it was the outward sign of the hatching of a terrible plan. There is also another factor to take into account: Laurie had toothache.

Unalleviated toothache can affect a man's judgement to a certain level, but not, surely, trigger a homicidal act. We do know that on the Monday, at lunch at 2pm, he complained that he could not eat for toothache. Earlier that morning, he had gone off to get quinine powder as a remedy, but evidently it had not worked.

Laurie was, therefore, a man with toothache as, rather late, soon after 3.30pm, he and Rose set off at a fair pace to climb their mountain. Laurie was the leader, silent with his pain, and, possibly, wicked thoughts. Rose must himself have been uncomfortable in his tweed outfit over brown merino drawers and socks, white linen shirt and white knitted semmit (vest).