Read Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller Online
Authors: Sean O'Connor
PROLOGUE
Mrs Brees
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FEBRUARY
1946
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n the early hours of Saturday morning on 23 February 1946, a guest on the fourth floor of the Strand Palace Hotel was disturbed by violent noises from the room directly above. Something fell on the floor, a woman screamed for help. The guest reported the commotion to the head porter, Thomas Paul. Paul was accustomed to the realities of hotel life during wartime and was used to turning a blind eye to the excesses of alcohol and sex, so he discreetly went up to the fifth floor to see if there was a problem. When he got to Room 506, he listened at the locked door and heard a woman screaming from inside.
‘Stop! Stop! For God’s sake, stop!’
Concerned by the severity of her cries, Paul ran down the stairs to get his colleague, Leonard William Luff, the assistant manager.
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The Strand Palace was (and remains) a large building on the north side of the Strand, parallel to the Thames. Its exterior was built in the grand Empire style in 1909, but the hotel had been expanded and refurbished during the 1920s and by the Second World War boasted 980 bedrooms. The famous foyer of the hotel was remodelled in 1930. Claridges, the Savoy and the newly constructed Dorchester all had sumptuous Art Deco foyers, but Oliver P. Bernard’s designs for the Strand Palace had made his creation one of the most celebrated hotel interiors in London.
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The foyer combined traditional and contemporary marbles and made innovative use of glass and lighting. The walls were clad in pink marble and the floor with limestone. The balustrades, columns and door surrounds were made of mirror, chromed steel and translucent moulded glass. The foyer became regarded as an iconic Art Deco masterpiece and, indeed, is now preserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum after its removal from the hotel in 1969. Back in 1946, the hotel seemed to represent the epitome of pre-war elegance, bringing a touch of Hollywood glamour to war-torn London.
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Conveniently located amongst the pubs, bars, nightclubs and restaurants of London’s West End, the Strand Palace had been popular with American forces during the war and had only recently been decommissioned as an official rest and recuperation residence for US servicemen. Now, with thousands of American troops awaiting shipment back home and huge numbers of British officers and service personnel newly repatriated to the UK, London was teeming with servicemen and the hotel was fully booked.
Ten months earlier, on VE Day, nearly 5 million Britons had been in uniform across the globe. The process of repatriation and demobilization was to take months, and in some cases, even years.
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The large West End hotels provided discreet but accessible havens of transition between the past dangers and thrills of service life and the post-war world of spouses, families and responsibility. For many, such hotels represented the last opportunity for illicit liaisons, as well as offering the possibility of sensual indulgence amongst the legion of prostitutes in central London – a profession that had boomed during the war years.
The occupant of Room 506 at the Strand Palace was known to be Captain James Robert Cadogan Armstrong of the South African Air Force. Armstrong had checked into the Strand Palace on the previous Saturday, 16 February. On his uniform he wore the ribbons of the Africa Star and the DFC (Distinguished Flying Cross). He seemed to be a regular hero.
In response to the woman’s screams, Thomas Paul and Leonard Luff headed upstairs to deal with the matter. When Luff opened the door with his pass-key, the two men were met by a shocking sight; a young woman lay face down on the bed, stripped naked and rendered helpless, with her hands tied behind her back. Standing over her, also naked, was Armstrong – tall, tanned, blue-eyed and handsome.
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The woman twisted her face to the intruders, exclaiming, ‘Thank God you came in.’
Armstrong turned to Paul and Luff in a fury.
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‘What the hell are you doing, breaking in here?’
Mr Luff explained who they were, but Armstrong made no answer. Luff asked what had been going on, but the girl asked to be untied first. Luff told Armstrong to do so and the girl was freed. He then adopted a nonchalant attitude and tried to bluster the matter out, demanding what right the staff had to enter his room, but when Luff mentioned that he would call the police, Armstrong became more reasonable.
Luff asked the woman, Pauline Brees, if she knew the man and she said she did. She claimed that he had knocked her out and then undressed her. She turned to Armstrong and asked if he had raped her. This question he avoided at first, but finally denied. Asked by Luff if they should call the police, Pauline insisted that they shouldn’t. She just wanted to leave the hotel and didn’t want any publicity.
Despite Pauline’s story, Luff didn’t believe her. There were no marks of violence on her, her clothing was on a chair by the bed – undamaged – and there were no signs of a struggle having taken place. Luff thought that Pauline ‘looked to me like a prostitute’.
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He told Pauline and Armstrong to collect their things and leave. They got dressed and Armstrong took Pauline home in a taxi to her lodgings. He then checked out of the hotel himself that Sunday morning. Though the incident had raised alarm, it was regarded as embarrassing rather than serious.
Pauline, who had been widowed just six months earlier, had been introduced to Armstrong about a week before by a mutual friend at Oddenino’s – a restaurant in Regent Street much frequented by RAF officers. When they met, Armstrong was wearing the khaki uniform of a lieutenant colonel in the South African Air Force. On the following Wednesday (20 February), Armstrong telephoned Pauline at her home in Maida Vale and invited her to lunch the next day. So, on Thursday, they lunched together at the Berkeley Restaurant in Knightsbridge. Afterwards they parted company in good spirits.
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On Friday, Pauline and Armstrong met again by appointment at Oddenino’s and from there went to the Berkeley again for a drink. This initiated something of an all-day pub-crawl that took them from the Falstaff in Fleet Street where they had lunch and then to Shepherd’s pub in Shepherd Market followed by the Brevet Club in Mayfair, which were both popular drinking venues with the Royal Air Force. They left the Brevet Club at about 10 p.m. as the club had run out of beer. This was a common occurrence throughout London at the time as publicans dealt with reduced supplies of beer as well as the increased demand for it since the outbreak of war.
Armstrong suggested that they go back to his room for a nightcap. Pauline agreed to accompany him to the Strand Palace where she knew he was staying but told him that she had to be home by 11.30 p.m. as she had an awkward landlady. The pair went up to the fifth floor to a double room overlooking the Strand and opposite the Art Deco entrance to the Savoy Hotel and the Savoy Theatre.
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In Room 506, Pauline sat on the bed while Armstrong poured himself a drink. Pauline refused to join him as she didn’t like whisky. He went over to the bed and kissed her. As he became more persistent, Pauline told him that she had to be going.
‘Oh no, you’re not,’ said Armstrong. ‘You’re staying the night with me.’
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At this point, events took a darker turn. Pauline got up, telling him not to be ridiculous as she headed for the door. But he had locked it. Grabbing her, he seized her arm and twisted it behind her back. Though she realized that she was in some danger, she claimed she didn’t scream because she didn’t want to embarrass him by getting him turned out of the hotel.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she asked him.
‘I hate women,’ said Armstrong.
He pulled off her coat and ordered her to strip. When she refused, they started to struggle. At 5 feet 11 inches, powerfully built and an accomplished rugby player, Armstrong threw her against the wall with such force that she lost consciousness. When she came to, Pauline realized that she had been stripped naked. Half conscious, she rushed for the door, but Armstrong grabbed her again.
‘Oh, no you don’t,’ he said. ‘We’ll soon fix this.’
He took a handkerchief and tied her hands behind her back, pushing her on to the bed. He then took off his own clothes. At this point, Pauline claimed that she didn’t scream because she was ‘only half conscious and paralysed with fright’. Armstrong then tried to turn her over, so that her face was in the pillow. But Pauline couldn’t breathe and struggled to free herself again. He now threatened her.
‘I’ll make you do exactly what I want you to do.’
Forcing himself on to her prostrate body, he attempted to rape her ‘in an un-natural way’ but she struggled so intensely that they fell off the bed. He then put his hands around her throat. Now terrified for her life, Pauline screamed.
‘Stop! Stop! For God’s sake. Stop!’
Armstrong punched Pauline in the face with his fist, rendering her unconscious again. The next thing she was aware of was the arrival in the room of the assistant manager and the head porter. ‘I was lying on the bed but I don’t know how I got there,’ she said later. Mr Luff told Armstrong and Pauline to get out, but he was, she remembered, ‘quite nice to [her]’.
Some months later, it was established that James Robert Cadogan Armstrong was actually Neville George Clevely Heath, by then standing trial for murder. Reginald Spooner of the Metropolitan Police questioned Pauline Brees and was clear in his interpretation of the incident at the Strand Palace Hotel; she did not want to prosecute Heath because she admitted she had gone knowingly with him to the bedroom to be stripped and beaten.
The matter was forgotten, at least for several months. It seemed to be an illicit liaison, a sexual adventure that had got out of hand – typical in this period of transition. Many people were tasting their last moments of freedom before settling down to post-war life. Maybe too much alcohol was consumed in the various pubs, clubs and restaurants that the couple had visited; both Heath and Pauline had drunk consistently throughout their time together. Perhaps both parties misinterpreted the desires of the other? Or Pauline hadn’t quite anticipated the intensity of ‘Armstrong’s’ intentions? But this incident – referred to only obliquely as ‘that incident at the London hotel’ or ‘a certain case not mentioned here’
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– was to take on a much darker significance at Heath’s trial. Had Pauline Brees chosen to prosecute Heath at the time, or had the hotel staff alerted the police to his behaviour, the whole series of tragic events that followed over the next six months might well have been prevented.
As it stood, by the end of the year, three young people would be dead, their families devastated and the nation appalled by the events of the summer of 1946.
PART ONE
London
CHAPTER ONE
Summer 1946
This is your victory! It is the victory of the cause of freedom in every land. In all our long history we have never seen a greater day than this. Everyone, man or woman, has done their best. Everyone has tried. Neither the long years, nor the dangers, nor the fierce attacks of the enemy have in any way weakened the independent resolve of the British nation. God bless you all.
Winston Churchill, VE Day, 8 May 1945
As the number of turkeys available this Christmas will not be sufficient to meet the demand, the Food Minister asks turkey retailers to spread the limited supplies among the largest number of families by cutting birds into two parts for sale. Half a turkey, he believes, will supply a good meal for most families.
The Times
, 15 December 1945
T
he summer of 1946 was one of extremes.
A national sigh of relief had punctuated the end of the war and a concerted effort was made to move on from the conflict and look towards the future. After the popular rejection of Churchill’s Conservative party in the 1945 election, Attlee’s reforming Labour government had put social welfare at the heart of their agenda. These new social policies – particularly those regarding health, housing, education and pensions – seemed to embody the hopes for a new era for Britain, with Attlee declaring, ‘We are on the eve of a great advance in the human race.’
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But not everybody was so optimistic. The ultra-conservative Noël Coward observed, ‘I always felt that England would be bloody uncomfortable during the immediate post-war period, and now it is almost a certainty that it will be so.’
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Balancing the government’s progressive new initiatives, from the beginning of 1946 there was a reassuring effort to re-establish the pre-war patterns of British life. The Grand National and the Derby ran for the first time since 1940 and both the Cup Final and the Boat Race reappeared in the sports calendar. Even tennis was played at Wimbledon, despite bomb damage to Centre Court. In February, it was announced that London would host the Olympic Games in 1948.
The focus for June was the Victory Day (or ‘V’ Day) Celebration held in London over the Whit weekend, which was to formally mark the end of the Second World War. This was an opportunity to salute the people who had helped win the war and to showcase victorious Britain to the world – and the great survivor, London. The occasion was also to mark the first major outing for television broadcasting – a service still in its infancy when it had been curtailed by the outbreak of hostilities. ‘Remember me?’ asked announcer Jasmine Bligh as she introduced the same Mickey Mouse cartoon that had been playing when television stopped in September 1939. The message was clear; normal service had been resumed.
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