Classic Scottish Murder Stories (11 page)

Lauchlan McIntosh, servant of the sergeant's landlord, was there to contribute to matters against Alexander Macdonald: two years after the disappearance, he had seen him with a penknife very like the sergeant's, and, when challenged,
Macdonald had said that there were many ‘sic-likes' around. Isobel McHardie, who had hidden her head under the bedclothes in the sheiling, corroborated, as it were, the naked ghost. The morning after the haunting, she had spoken to the shepherd, who had assured her that it would not trouble them again.

John Grant, of Altalaat, testified that the two accused men lodged at his house the night before the disappearance, in readiness for a deer-hunting expedition the next day. He saw them set out, after sunrise, Clerk's gun illegal, Macdonald's warranted. He himself was then away for four days at a fair in Kirkmichael, but his son spotted them going up the water to the Hill of Gleney – which was where the accused had declared that they had stayed – about a mile and a half from the Hill of Christie.

Angus Cameron, an unhappy witness, lonely without his fellow watcher in the heather, Duncan Cameron, who had since died from undisclosed causes, perhaps natural, claimed that it was not until the following summer that he had heard by chance about the demise of Sergeant Davies and realised what he had witnessed. He had consulted two Cameron friends who had advised him to say nothing as it might bring him trouble and cause reprisals against the Highlanders.

Evidence for the defence was negligible. Reoch, who should have been there to say that Elizabeth Downie had given him an embossed copper ring failed to turn up, and was fined 100 Scots merks. Heaven knows what happened to him, a herdsman, if he could not find the money.

‘All in one voice' the jury found the two accused Not Guilty, a verdict entirely against the weight of the evidence. It was suggested that the jury refused to convict because they were of Jacobite persuasion and would not have mourned the passing of a member of the English force. Against this theory, however, was the thought that those in trade were not in general of rebellious disposition, because they had come to benefit from
the Act of Union of 1707. There must be an explanation for the verdict – probably the whole of Scotland knew what it was at the time – but it is now obscure. Sheer patriotism after Culloden may have been the reason for sparing a pair of robbers, the particular subsumed in the larger statement. As for the ghost, Isobel McHardie did see something. It was the opinion of Sir Walter Scott that the shepherd had learnt of the identity of the murderers by ordinary means (and indeed in that close-knit community there seems to have been little privacy) and invented the entire ghost story so that he would not appear as an informer. In that case, he would have had to persuade a man to appear in a state of nakedness, when at least most persons in the sheiling were asleep (for there were a number) and then he would have had to wake up the woman to witness to the ghost. If all had woken they would have challenged or recognised the naked imposter.

On balance, there probably was a ‘ghost' and the shepherd was picked for his credulity and trusting nature, intended to broadcast the truth. There is no evidence that he was simple. He did say that his first impression was that the spectre was a ‘real living man', namely one of the Farquharsons, who has not previously appeared in the story, and who was the brother of that Donald Farquharson to whom the shepherd had appealed for help. This was curious and would indicate a public-spirited collusion between the two brothers, with the shepherd as their puppet. The difficulty here is that Donald Farquharson at first refused to believe the shepherd's story and only reluctantly was dragged to the Hill of Christie which in his own words, ‘he did the rather that he thought it might possibly be true, and if it was, he did not know but that the apparition might trouble himself.' Considerable cunning would attach to such an attitude, but then, unless naked ghosts caper freely through Scottish folklore the effrontery of the vision stands out and betrays an original mind.

T
he radix of Bertie Willox's crime – parricide, the unnatural act, against nature,
à rebours
– surely lay in the oppressive domestic circumstances which trapped the boy without future prospects in a situation which reversed his gender-identity. Pushed too hard, the case tells us, Cinderella might turn ugly! So complicated were the Oedipal possibilities of the set-up at No 79 Grove Street, that some kind of psycho-dynamic explosion would appear to have been inevitable.

Here, in the poor tenement district of Cowcaddens, Glasgow, Robert Swift Willox lived in isolation with his father, also Robert. An only child (as far as we know) Bertie was born on May 15th 1909, at 122 Cambridge Street. He attended four schools in succession, two Catholic and two Protestant, before starting work at the age of 14. His jobs indicate a desire and aptitude to make a career for himself. Beginning as a message-boy, he was an apprenticed engineer with Messrs A & J Inglis, the firm of shipbuilders for whom his father worked, and then he moved on to Simpson, Lawrence & Co, yacht outfitters, and they paid him the good wage (for his age) of 16 shillings per week.

Robert Willox,
père,
known to Bertie rather pathetically as Dada, was a dark figure, antisocial, unapproachable, but it is possible that his so-called moroseness was a legacy of his war experiences. He was a survivor of Mons and lucky to reach the age of 55. A native of Aberdeen, he was employed there as a
young man in some capacity on the staff of a local newspaper until he left in a hurry, and his creditors and his family heard no more of him. He joined the army in 1898 at the age of 24 and served throughout the Boer War in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, was mentioned in despatches, and won the Queen's and King's medals.

In 1906, transferred to the reserve, he put on another uniform – that of the peaked cap and leather cross-belt of the Corps of Commissionaires. He lived a quiet life in Glasgow, where, in 1908, he married Margaret Swift, who was a stenographer with the Corps. He was called up during World War I and wounded at Mons in 1914. After demobilisation, he joined (or returned to) the proud firm of Inglis, which was sold to the Harland and Wolff group in 1919 and continued to build ships until 1962. They built many steamers for the British India Steam Navigation Company and also a succession of Clyde steamers such as the famous paddle-steamer, the
Waverley.
Robert Willox held the responsible, if unskilled, post of gatekeeper, earning 50s. 3d. per week, supplemented, if you could so term it, by his war pension of 2s. 6d. For ten years Robert had lived next door at No 79 Grove Street to a fellow worker at the firm, named William Watts, but they were only on nodding terms, which was how, by choice, he conducted any relationships which were forced upon him.

On January 23rd 1929, Robert's wife, Margaret, died, but his temperamental oddity was already determined; bereavement was not the precipitating factor. The author understands that the novel
No Mean City
by Alexander McArthur and H Kingsley Long, published in 1935, was resented in Glasgow, seen as too violent and sensational, but it is, in fact, a moral tale with a deep layer of valuable social commentary. Set in the Gorbals, it seems, even so, to have application to Robert Willox's character: ‘An understanding and reasoned contempt for one's neighbours, together with a fiercely unreasoning conviction of personal superiority, is not
an uncommon phenomenon of the slum mind. Perhaps there is, all the time, a subconscious rebellion against conditions which are outwardly taken for granted. In face of all evidence to the contrary, he is still confident that the day will come when his superiority will compel recognition.'

In the matter of housing, ‘It follows that society in the tenements is graded far more narrowly than in the outside world. One street may be definitely “better class” than another and not such good class as a third. Families that have two rooms look down upon those that live in a “single end”.' The small Willox family, with both males in full employment, will have been regarded as highly respectable in their ‘room-and-kitchen' apartment on the third floor or ‘flat' with three other similar dwellings on the same level. All had been improved by the addition of an individual lavatory. That comfort aside, these were bleak times; there were no bathrooms, and there was only one cold-water tap in the kitchen sink. Sacks of coal were carried up the stairways by strong carters and stored in the lobbies or kitchen jawbox. The Willox family had a gas range and gas lighting. Water was heated on the range and there was a grate for a coal fire.

The kitchen could be kept warm, and there was nothing strange about the fact that Bertie and his father both slept in the kitchen, which measured 10 by 13 feet, one on a bedstead and the other probably in the typical bed-recess or ‘cavity bed'. What does seem unusual is the state of the prized ‘room' which was completely devoid of furniture. Another family would have let it, even if, like Robert Willox, they were admirably solvent. The furniture had not been pawned.

After the death of his wife, Robert took Bertie out of work to keep house for him, and paid him 2s. 6d. to 4s. 6d. a week, at the father's discretion. Outrageous as this seems to us – and Roughead considered the domestic conditions ‘at once unnecessary and discomfortable' – it may have been a mere cultural expedient. The main breadwinner in an arduous job
(Robert left home at 4.45am for the Pointhouse Shipyard and returned at 6.00pm) expected someone resident in the apartment to prepare meals, buy in food, clean and wash. Gender was not always an important determinant. If the woman of the household was in employment and the man not so, the man would shop and cook. Robert did not, perhaps, intend Bertie's demotion to last forever and may have calculated that his own greater earning capacity was to be preserved at all costs. The Depression of 1930 was imminent, but, as it happened, A & J Inglis
did
survive.

Although Bertie accepted his new status with apparent resignation, inwardly a fierce resentment burned. He was generally regarded as a good boy. It was a miserable, reduced, existence for a 21-year-old lad who had recently lost his mother. There were many idle, aimless hours to fill and he used to wander round the streets with his friends, play billiards, and go to the cinema. His father was not good company. Dancing was all the rage, the dance-halls thronged, but he did not seek out girlfriends in any context.

There is a special edge to Roughead's commentary in a case where he had sat in court like a murderer's albatross in the seat specially reserved for his plumpish frame. Some there were (not Roughead) who saw Madeleine Smith plain. Roughead, who obviously rather liked, or felt much sympathy for, the fair-haired boy, managed to have a word with Bertie Willox at his appeal hearing, outside the court. It must have been an ordeal for Roughead, a most retiring person, to have pushed himself forward when he saw the opportunity, but a sense of duty will have impelled him. What he observed was interestingly to the point: ‘a well-spoken, pleasant-mannered lad of rather effeminate type – most unsuitably cast, one should think, for the role of First Murderer.'

Bertie's drastically reduced circumstances left him short of the readies for cigarettes, his small amusements, and clothing, which was important to him. Roughead says that he ‘had but
two suits' – one was brown, the other black, yet, in fact, to have two ‘whole suits' with waistcoats was an achievement in itself. He developed the habit of falsifying the household accounts to his own advantage, but was in continual fear of being found out. He was obviously afraid of Dada and the menace of the uniformed petty tyrant still perfuses the story of the crime.

It was a dark Monday, November 4th 1929, at 9.20 in the evening, and all was as quiet as it might be in that tall, gloomy building. In their three separate ‘houses' on the third floor or flat, neighbours (Mrs G McKenzie, William Dale, and Mr and Mrs William Watt) were minding their own business. Then their ordinary lives suddenly moved into another dimension when young Bertie Willox, usually so well-behaved, began to bang on their respective doors and emit a kind of ‘wailing howl'. They crowded on to the landing. The lad was extremely agitated and almost incoherent. ‘Look! Look! Look!' was all they could make out.

He pointed to the open door of his apartment, which was illuminated by gaslight, and in its yellow glare they saw the body of Robert Willox in his commissionaire's uniform stretched in the lobby on the threshold of the kitchen, the head surrounded by a big blob of blood. No-one cared to enter in upon the lurid scene which lay within like an illustration from Thomas Burke's
Limehouse Nights.
There was of course no telephone available, and they sent Bertie off at a run to fetch the police. He arrived at the Northern Police Office at 9.30pm, in an exhausted condition and quite beside himself. ‘Send an ambulance! Send an ambulance! My father is bleeding!' he informed the duty officer. Three times he ‘swooned' and may genuinely have fainted. When they asked him what had happened, he made oblique answer that, ‘My mother died some time ago'.

A pair of constables walked him back to Grove Street, and, on the way, he made the first of a series of discrepant, improvising remarks. There was no real guile in him, only horror and despair. He and his father, he said, had had their
supper that evening, and he had then washed the dishes and set the table for breakfast before going out at 6.30pm. His father, he thought, must have fainted and cut his head against the iron bed. At the house, Robert Willox was obviously dead, with severe head injuries. The meal laid on the table in the kitchen spoke of supper, not breakfast, and supper prepared and not touched at that. A piece of boiled beef had been fished out, apparently in readiness for carving, from a pot of broth which rested on the range. Some vegetables from the broth lay on top of the beef. Crockery and cutlery were all clean. One report said that marmalade, sugar bowl, and teacups were all present, but that may not be accurate.