Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller (37 page)

I met her along the promenade about 2.45 p.m. and after a short stroll we went to the Tollard Royal Hotel for tea. It was about 3.45 p.m. The conversation was fairly general. She said she had served in the WRNS and mentioned she had been ill and was in Bournemouth to recuperate.
¹⁵

Since the departure of Peggy Waring and Peter Rylatt, Brook had spent a considerable amount of time with some other guests at the Tollard Royal, Mr and Mrs Heinz Abisch, a German couple who lived on the Finchley Road in London. Brook would join them for drinks before lunch and dinner and for coffee after meals. That afternoon, Abisch and his wife returned to the hotel for tea where Brook was already sitting in the lounge with Doreen. Mr Abisch was amused to see Brook with yet another girl. He had had several mild flirtations with girls in the hotel – and Peggy Waring from whom Brook had seemed inseparable had only recently returned to London. Abisch smiled knowingly at him. At this point, Brook excused himself from Doreen and went over to buy a newspaper from the porter, passing Abisch. As he did so, he turned to Abisch and said ‘in quite a nasty tone’, ‘I’ll soon wipe that smile off your face.’
¹⁶
Brook then returned to tea with Doreen in the lounge and Mr and Mrs Abisch left the hotel. After tea, Brook suggested that they meet again that evening for dinner. With no other plans and nobody to answer to, Doreen said she’d be delighted. She left the Tollard Royal at 5.45 and returned to the Norfolk Hotel to dress for dinner.

Just before 7 p.m., Doreen went to the desk at the Norfolk Hotel and asked James Newland, the porter, to call her a taxi as she was going to the Tollard Royal for dinner. Newland rang Autax, a local cab firm. The car soon arrived and Newland saw Doreen into it.
¹⁷
After a few minutes, when the car arrived at the Tollard Royal, Doreen got out and paid the driver, Sydney Bush. He remembered a distinctive glass fob watch she wore on the lapel of her lemon-coloured coat. She gave him no instructions to be collected later.
¹⁸

The events of the evening preceding Doreen Marshall’s death read like the scenario for an Agatha Christie play; the lounge of a Bournemouth hotel, an assembly of witnesses, including a retired major and his refined lady wife (Mrs Gladys Davy Phillips). Even the weather was suitably dramatic, as the evening was dominated by a violent thunderstorm with vivid lightning and heavy rain. It began with Doreen’s arrival at the hotel, as she had arranged with Brook that afternoon. Brook recalled her entrance:

At appoximately 7.15, I was standing outside the hotel and saw her approaching on foot.
¹⁹
I entered the hotel, went to my room to get some tobacco and came downstairs again just as she was entering the lounge. We dined at 8.15, sat talking in the lounge afterwards and then moved into the writing room. The conversation was again general but she told me she was considering cutting short her holiday and returning home in a day or two. She mentioned an American staying in her hotel and told me he had taken her for car rides in the country. She also mentioned an invitation to go with him to Exeter but I gathered although she did not actually say so, she did not intend to go. Another American was mentioned – I believe his name was Pat – to whom I believe she had unofficially become engaged some while before.
²⁰

Brook deliberately suggested that Doreen may have had other boyfriends and that, as a single girl on holiday and away from home, she had made the most of her freedom. Though a plausible story – Bournemouth was still full of American servicemen waiting to be repatriated – there’s no evidence that Doreen had met any other men at all, let alone become engaged to one. Wisecarver, her American acquaintance, was a respectable antiques dealer and had already left the country. Doreen was also known by her family to be a ‘quiet girl who didn’t have boyfriends’.

Doreen had dressed smartly and stylishly for dinner. Under her distinctive fleecy lemon box coat she wore a plain black silk frock with matching black sandals. She was also wearing silk stockings and a pair of cultured pearl earrings matching her Ciro pearl necklace. On one of her fingers she had a three stone diamond ring, set in platinum, which was a twenty-first birthday present from her parents. Under her arm she carried her black suede handbag. She used her blue compact to powder her nose. As she did so, Brook noted that it was cracked. Doreen explained that she was clumsy: ‘I’m always breaking things.’

Heinz Abisch and his wife returned to the hotel and went in to dinner at about 7.30 p.m. Shortly afterwards, Brook came into the dining room with Doreen and they sat two tables away. The dinner menu that evening offered a choice of two soups, trout or roast duck, cauliflower and cream sauce with boiled new potatoes. This was followed by raspberry ice or pear trifle. Brook ordered a magnum of champagne, though Doreen drank little.
²¹

After dinner, he escorted Doreen into the lounge, where the Abisches were already settled. He took one of the armchairs and Doreen sat opposite on a sofa. Winifred Parfitt came into the lounge at about 8.30 p.m. to take her coffee after dinner and Brook introduced her to Doreen. He explained that Doreen was an old friend and that he had not seen her for some time, but had bumped into her on the sea front that morning. Doreen didn’t contradict this statement, and she may well have felt it was less awkward to comply with Brook’s social white lie. Brook also told Mrs Parfitt that Doreen had served in the WRNS. Mrs Parfitt had also been in service in the admiralty during the war so she and Doreen had a great deal in common to chat about.

Sitting only three or four yards away from them, Abisch overheard Brook call Doreen ‘darling’, and watched as she was introduced to Mrs Parfitt. Eavesdropping, he heard that Doreen was staying at the Norfolk Hotel, she was from Pinner and ‘would be going home the next day’. Mrs Abisch was sitting on a sofa to the right of Brook, when he suddenly turned to her and said, ‘Pull that skirt down. It makes me mad.’ Both Mr and Mrs Abisch were puzzled by Brook’s remark, as Mrs Abisch’s skirt had not ridden up sufficiently to justify it.
²²
Brook and Doreen were served glasses of port on the house by Wilkinson the night porter, but Doreen refused hers, saying she had had enough to drink. Brook drank both glasses. Mrs Parfitt noticed that Doreen had only one drink – a gin and orange – during the whole evening, but Brook had had several, mostly beer in pints. To Mrs Parfitt, Brook seemed ‘in a very cheery mood – not drunk – just cheery.’ According to the hotel rules, drinks served outside the dining room should be paid for when ordered, but Mr Parfitt recalled that Brook told the waiter, ‘I haven’t got a bean on me today. I meant to go to the bank this morning. Put it down, old chap, on my crime sheet.’
²³

As the summer evening turned to night, the weather began to change. After the intense heat of the day, a storm was on its way, rumbling from a distance at first, but by 10.45 it had developed into a dramatic electrical storm, with lightning cracking across the vast dark sky in front of the hotel.
²⁴

Brook then suggested that they might listen to some dance music, so he, Doreen and Mrs Parfitt moved from the lounge to the writing room where there was a portable radio. That night John Reynders and his orchestra were broadcasting on the BBC Light Programme from 10.30 p.m. As the wireless played dance music, Doreen chatted some more with Mrs Parfitt, telling her that she had been ill and had come to Bournemouth to recuperate. Mrs Parfitt did think that Doreen looked rather pale. Finding her sympathetic, Doreen confided that she had been rather lonely in Bournemouth and her stay had not been particularly happy. She complained that she was not feeling well and that she felt dizzy. She supposed it was because she was feeling very tired. She may actually have been feeling unwell as her sister later confirmed that Doreen was expecting her period. She asked Mrs Parfitt to persuade Brook to take her back to the Norfolk Hotel.
²⁵

At about 10.45 p.m., Doreen visited the ladies’ cloakroom. While she was out of the room, Mrs Parfitt told Brook that she thought Doreen wanted to go home, but he was flippant – it was far too early. Mrs Parfitt then followed Doreen to the ladies’ as she thought she might be ill. When she got to the cloakroom, Mrs Parfitt wasn’t sure if Doreen had been sick in the lavatory, but she was powdering her nose from her blue compact and refreshing her lips with her American lipstick. She seemed to be getting a little brighter after they went back to the writing room. The wireless was now playing music by Billy Ternent and his dance orchestra, accompanied by Ruth Howard and Gerry Fitzgerald.
²⁶

Between 11.15 and 11.45 p.m., the party listening to the radio were joined by Major and Mrs Phillips, who had been out for the evening. Brook introduced them both to Doreen. Mrs Phillips felt that Brook seemed rather the worse for drink as when she refused to have a drink with him, he became annoyed with her.
²⁷
She noted that Doreen seemed sober and looked pale. Mrs Parfitt left to go to bed shortly after the Phillips’ came in. Before retiring she asked Mrs Phillips if she would see about getting Doreen home, as she was clearly tired. Mrs Parfitt wished everybody ‘goodnight’ and told Doreen that she hoped they would meet again. Outside, it had started to rain. For some reason, Mrs Parfitt slept badly that night. When she woke abruptly from a fitful sleep, she could still hear the rain.

Shortly before midnight, Doreen asked Major Phillips if he would order a taxi for her as she wanted to go home. Mrs Phillips noticed that Doreen made this request ‘in a rather appealing kind of way, touching his hand when he was about to depart for the taxi’. Major Phillips ordered a taxi from the night porter and then he and his wife retired to bed. Doreen would be back at her hotel within five minutes.

At some point during the evening Brook had said, done or suggested something that unsettled Doreen. Several witnesses commented on how pale and tired she looked, to such an extent that she was keen to go back to her hotel. Had he pressurized her to come up to his room, as he had done with Peggy Waring? Or had he gone even further? Brook had already been very open with Peter Rylatt about his acquaintanceship with the murderer, Neville Heath. Had Brook said something to frighten Doreen?

A minute or two after Major and Mrs Phillips retired to bed, Brook came out of the writing room and asked Arthur White, the night porter, if he had ordered a taxi.

‘No, sir. I was just going to order it,’ said White.

‘Cancel it,’ Brook told him. ‘The young lady will order it later.’
²⁸

Brook went back into the writing room to join Doreen. The midnight chimes of Big Ben played on the wireless, followed by the national anthem. There would be no more dance music that night. Brook and Doreen left the writing room and went towards the doors that opened onto West Hill Road. Doreen collected her lemon-coloured coat from Arthur White’s porter’s box. He noticed that the coat had a label with a foreign name on the inside. The door had been locked, as usual, at 11 p.m., so Frederick Wilkinson unlocked it to let them out.

‘I’ll be back in half an hour,’ Brook said to Wilkinson.

Doreen stopped to correct him. ‘No – he’ll be back in a
quarter
of an hour.’
²⁹

She didn’t want the night porter – or indeed Brook – to get the wrong idea. Wilkinson let the couple out. As he closed the door on them, he noticed that Doreen put her arm around Brook’s waist – comfortable, romantic, trusting.
³⁰
They went out of the front door and turned left, walking towards the cliff top. The storm had ended and the rain had stopped. But it would not be the last of the bad weather that night.

They disappeared from view, walking into the dark.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The Tollard Royal Hotel

4–6 JULY 1946

LIGHTNING – THUNDER – HAIL – RAGING WIND

‘Mixed-Grill’ Tempest Over Wide English Area

One of the worst storms for many years – with terrific thunderclaps, brilliant lightning flashes, hail, rain and wind that sometimes reached hurricane force – swept South-East England in the night as a climax to the heat wave of the past few days . . . almost tropical violence and the lightning continued for hours . . . The Air Ministry described the wind which rose at 1 a.m. as a freak one. It went from calm to 38 mph and gradually died down to calm again. Tremendous squalls of hail lashed Hastings. Many holidaymakers and residents were awakened and remained up. After dying away, the storm returned with increased violence and remained until nearly dawn.

Bournemouth Echo
, 4 July 1946

B
etween 4 and 4.30 a.m. on the morning of Thursday 4 July, Frederick Wilkinson the night porter was doing his rounds at the Tollard Royal Hotel. He had noticed that Group Captain Brook hadn’t returned from escorting his guest back to her hotel and assumed that he had succeeded in romancing her, either at the Norfolk Hotel or on the way to it.
¹

During his stay at the hotel, Wilkinson felt he had got to know Group Captain Brook very well. Every night Brook would chat to him before he went to bed. The previous night was the first time during Brook’s stay that they hadn’t had their usual talk. Wilkinson quietly opened the door of Room 81 to find that it was already daylight, though the curtains were drawn. Brook was sound asleep in bed. He noticed that Brook had not left his shoes to be cleaned. As a rule, if he didn’t leave his shoes downstairs to be cleaned he would leave them outside the door. Again, this was the first night that Captain Brook had not done so.
²