Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller (34 page)

The Tollard Royal Hotel was also situated on Bournemouth’s West Cliff, just west of the pier and up an inclined slope from the promenade and the town’s central gardens that lead down to the beach. The building remains – inevitably seaside apartments now – still commanding forty miles of uninterrupted views across the Channel. Slightly removed from the entertainments of central Bournemouth, the building continues to feel select, a little superior, perched above the town and facing the sea. Built in 1901, the Tollard Royal remained in use as an hotel until 1956 when it was divided into flats. But even today many of the original hotel features survive – the Art Deco fireplaces, mahogany doors with cut-glass panels, the grand internal staircase and even the revolving doors in the lobby.

The hotel had been requisitioned during the war as a leave centre for US service personnel but had been vacated in November 1945. After a period of refurbishment, it had reopened for guests in June and was keen to take advantage of the first post-war holiday season. It had been repainted inside and maintenance work that had been curtailed during the war had now begun again – some particularly urgent work being carried out on the roof that had been going on since March. The Tollard Royal was a smart hotel with 100 guest rooms, each having either a private bathroom or a sink with hot and cold running water. A Vita Glass Sun Lounge was ‘flooded every evening and on dull days with health-giving Ultra Violet Rays’.
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The hotel boasted two lifts, billiards, an American Bar and dances twice a week. Terms for the cheapest rooms were 5½ guineas a week – the tariff in guineas rather than pounds suggesting that the Tollard Royal was a select establishment, a cut above the rest, for the most discerning clientele.

On Sunday 23 June, a tall, bronzed South African with a military gait arrived as a chance visitor at the hotel. Violet Lay the receptionist signed him in at about 3 p.m.
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He told her he would like accommodation for a week. His arrival was noteworthy only in that he was the sole guest to check in that day. He was allotted Room 71 on the first floor and gave his name as Group Captain Rupert Robert Brook.

The name might have raised a certain curiosity at the hotel. Rupert Brooke was the celebrated soldier poet who had died in 1915 on his way to Gallipoli. A classically educated Rugby and Cambridge man, he was distinguished by heart-stoppingly handsome features that had almost eclipsed his poetry in the mythology that developed after his death. W. B. Yeats thought him ‘the handsomest young man in England’.
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Brooke’s poems were heartfelt, sentimental and patriotic. He effectively wrote his own epitaph with his most famous poem,
The Soldier
, which articulated patriotic sentiments that had become fashionable again in the war that had just ended.

Brooke had been a frequent visitor to Bournemouth before the Great War and a plaque on a house in Littledown Road commemorated the fact: ‘Here Rupert Brooke 1888–1915 discovered poetry.’ What a coincidence that the newly arrived group captain – as heroic and handsome as the poet – should also share his name.

Brook carried with him a single suitcase so was apparently not intending to stay in Bournemouth very long. Though he signed the hotel register, he failed to add the date of his arrival, nor did he surrender his ration book.

Like so many women before her, Miss Lay the receptionist had been seduced by the charms of the handsome group captain. He was quite the ladykiller.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Miss Waring

23–29 JUNE 1946

VERDICT ON BOURNEMOUTH

Two girls both of Birmingham commented: ‘Been here a fortnight, nice for a rest, too little to do, queues for everything, should be more attractions on the beach and more to do on rainy nights, doubt whether local paper will print our views.’ Four girls between 20 and 22 . . . None had been here before. All commented: ‘Days very full, nights very dull.’ Thought Pavilion booking system ‘rotten’.

Considered there should be more amusements on the beach and said: ‘Bournemouth is too classy for a really good time.’

Bournemouth Times
, 16 August 1946

T
he newly arrived ‘Bobbie’ Brook was popular with the guests at the hotel, many of whom had recently been demobilized and were taking their first family holiday since being called up. He was equally popular with the hotel staff and spent much of his time ingratiating himself with them, talking about their mutual wartime experiences and about his career as a pilot. Ivor Relf had only recently been appointed as joint manager of the Tollard Royal and had been a former RAF officer himself.
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Brook’s engaging RAF manner, knowledge of aircraft and acquaintanceship with mutual air force colleagues convinced Relf that Brook was ‘very definitely what he purported to be, that is a retired group captain in the Royal Air Force’.
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Brook claimed he was to fly in a forthcoming air exhibition at Shoreham, but this was dependent on the weather. He obtained up-to-date weather reports with ease from various aerodromes including the meteorological station at Dunstable. Whenever he phoned for these reports, Brook used either the telephone in the dining room or the one at the reception desk. Consequently these conversations could always be (and may have been intended to be) overheard. So convincing was Brook in playing the role of the clubbable RAF gent that the staff trusted him absolutely. He was never given a bill for the full fourteen days he stayed at the hotel.

Arthur White, the head night porter, was charmed by the affable group captain, who often chatted to him about flying. White gathered that Brook was from Johannesburg and was now employed in Britain by the Auster Aircraft Company in Leicester. He thought that Brook had a ‘wonderful personality and was a great hit with the ladies’.
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Throughout Brook’s stay at the hotel, White and another night porter, Frederick Wilkinson, noted that beyond several sports shirts and two or three pullovers, Brook had few clothes – no hat and no coat. He always wore the same pair of grey striped flannel trousers, a brown sports jacket and the same pair of brown shoes. On about 1 July, Brook asked Wilkinson to press his trousers, as they were the only pair he had.
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Peter Rylatt from Haywards Heath was an army captain who had served in South East Asia Command and had also arrived in Bournemouth on demobilization leave on 22 June, staying at the Burley Court Hotel.
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He was thirty-one years old, 5 feet 10 inches, clean-shaven and had a complexion which a fellow guest observed had ‘a yellowish tinge about it consistent with prolonged service in the Far East’.
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He had mousey, brilliantined hair slightly receding at the temples and always wore dark horn-rimmed spectacles. His speech was ‘rather quiet and low’, the very opposite of the good-looking and gregarious Group Captain Brook, and yet the two men very quickly became firm friends.

Rylatt met Brook at lunchtime on Monday 24 June at the Royal Bath Hotel, which was still being used by the WAAF as an officers’ mess. Brook explained that he was the chief test pilot for Auster’s in Leicestershire and was down in Bournemouth to take part in the aerial exhibition at Shoreham. This was to take place on Saturday 29 June, but Brook claimed that he had come down a week earlier than he ought to have done, leaving him at a loose end.

Brook got on with Rylatt famously, to such an extent that he invited his new friend to lunch that day at the Tollard Royal. Rylatt gathered that this was Brook’s first trip to Bournemouth, so together, they agreed to do some exploring. After lunch the two men walked along the cliff top to the right of the hotel and then went down the zigzag path to the promenade. The freshly sanded beach and newly reinstated beach huts were full of families taking advantage of the good weather. The pair walked towards Poole, passing Bournemouth’s famous chines to their right. ‘Chines’ are deep, narrow, wooded ravines descending down to the sea. The word is peculiar to Dorset and the Isle of Wight, chines being very much a feature of this stretch of the English coast. Walking west from the hotel towards Poole, there was Durley Chine, Middle Chine and Alum Chine – all in the Bournemouth area. At the head of Alum Chine were the ruins of Stevenson’s house, ‘Skerryvore’. Brook and Rylatt walked across the boundary into Poole and stopped by Branksome Towers’ private beach and threw stones into the sea. Behind them was the most secluded of the chines, Branksome Dene Chine, known locally as a place for lovers’ meetings. The two men then headed back towards Bournemouth Pier, the excursion to the chines and back having taken about an hour.

Over the six days that they were acquainted, Rylatt and Brook chatted about many subjects. Brook often told stories about his time as a pilot during the war. Rylatt commented on the unusual scarf that Brook wore around his neck. It was made of silk with a map of France and Germany printed on it. Brook explained that it was an ‘escape map’ carried on RAF operations and sewn into the shoulder of flying kit. During their various talks, Rylatt expressed great interest in the national hunt for Neville Heath, the man who was wanted in connection with the murder in Notting Hill. The case was in the papers every day – leads, sightings and speculation about his whereabouts. Brook told Rylatt that he actually knew Heath quite well and that he ‘wasn’t a bad sort of chap’. Rylatt later remembered that they discussed the case every day that they were together.

That Monday afternoon, after sitting in deck chairs in the sun for a while, Brook and Rylatt went to the Bournemouth Pavilion – an entertainment complex at the heart of the town, opposite the pier. When it had opened in 1929 the Pavilion was heralded as the ‘biggest municipal enterprise ever created for the entertainment of the public’. It had a theatre, a concert hall and dining rooms such as the Lucullus Restaurant offering a bargain 3s. theatre supper. The ballroom was decorated in the Art Deco style and every day hosted tea dances between 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. for 1s. (tea included). Though Brook and Rylatt danced with various young women, neither took interest in any one girl in particular. The two men didn’t join anybody’s table, nor did they invite any ladies to join theirs. Rylatt had an engagement that evening, so they left the Pavilion at about 5.30 p.m. Knowing Brook was staying in Bournemouth alone, Rylatt asked if he would like to come on a trip to Wimborne the following evening. He had been invited to a cocktail party and was sure his hostess wouldn’t mind if he brought a friend along. Brook said he’d be delighted to join him. Rylatt went back to his hotel and Brook returned to the Tollard Royal.

The next day, Brook met several other guests who were staying at the hotel, including Mrs Winifred Parfitt and her husband who were visiting for the week from Castle Cary. Brook introduced himself, telling the Parfitts that he was the nephew of Sir Alexander Cadogan, the permanent undersecretary at the Foreign Office. He also made the acquaintance of Major Phillips and his wife Gladys who were visiting from Llandaff in Wales. Chatting to Mrs Phillips, Brook mentioned that he had left the RAF in December and was now working for Auster’s.

About midday on Tuesday 25 June, Brook met Peter Rylatt at the Tollard Royal. They went next door to the Highcliff Hotel where they had a drink in the cocktail bar. Here they met four ‘rather working-class’ girls from Wolverhampton and arranged to meet two of them after lunch at the tea dance down at the Pavilion. The two men lunched together at the Tollard Royal and then Rylatt waited in the lounge whilst Brook changed from his sports jacket and flannels into a double-breasted, pin-striped suit ready for their trip to Wimborne that evening. Rylatt was the only person to see Brook wear this suit and despite efforts by the police to trace it later, it disappeared. At some point between 26 June and 3 July, Brook must have sold or pawned it. The two men then went down to the Pavilion and met the girls they had seen earlier. Rylatt made a date to meet one of them the next day. Brook wasn’t interested in either of them.
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At about 4.55 p.m., they then went back to the Burley Court Hotel, so that Rylatt could change for the party in Wimborne and then took a taxi to ‘Moorings’, the country home of a Mrs Comyns who was entertaining about twenty people for cocktails and dinner. Again the topic of the hunt for the Notting Hill murderer was hotly discussed over the martinis and gin slings. Rylatt got on particularly well with a Major Holford of the 12th Hussars and his wife, so he and Brook arranged to meet the Holfords for dinner in Bournemouth later that week. They took a taxi back to the Tollard Royal at about a quarter to midnight – Rylatt kept the taxi waiting as he had a nightcap with Brook before he took the taxi on to his own hotel, running up a fare of £2.

Earlier that day another new guest had arrived at the Tollard Royal. Peggy Waring was an attractive 37-year-old divorcée from London, a student of psychology and philosophy. She had come to the Tollard Royal to stay with a friend of hers, Anouska Symon. Peggy had only intended to stay for a couple of days but found herself staying much longer. That night, in the bar at the Tollard Royal Hotel, she met Group Captain Rupert Brook. He was to have a profound effect on her – and she on him.
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He told me his name was Rupert Robert Cadogan Brook. I was introduced to Brook by some acquaintances of Mrs Symon, Wing Commander and Mrs Wilkes. Wing Commander Wilkes said he had known Brook in the RAF where Brook had been a group captain. Brook himself told me that he had been demobilized from the RAF and was then a test pilot at the Auster Aeroplane Company.
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