Read Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller Online
Authors: Sean O'Connor
In 1960, Melody was sixteen years old. One weekend she was staying with a school friend in Sussex and the two young women decided to go to London to see the sights. Arriving at Victoria Station, Melody happened to be browsing the railway bookstall and picked up a book with a garish cover,
London After Dark
by Fabian of the Yard, full of salacious crimes of sex and murder. Flicking through the book, she read, for the first time, the story of her mother’s death in graphic details gleaned from police gossip and tabloid newspapers, much of it inaccurate:
It was known to police observers on the West End scene that Marjorie [
sic
] Gardner was by no means unacquainted with such brutal and humiliating activities. Something went amiss, and Heath carried his indulgences too far. Marjorie Gardner died of haemorrhage, stabbed internally with the haft of a hunting whip.
3
The girl was devastated. Not just by the extraordinary brutality of her mother’s death, but to read of her in this context stunned her to the very core. This was not the image of her dearly missed mother that she had imagined so often. Still in shock, her friend suggested that they carry on and look at the sights – Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Harrods, Madame Tussaud’s. It might take Melody’s mind off things.
At Madame Tussaud’s, the girls entered the Chamber of Horrors, and whether she knew she was actively seeking him out there or not, Melody came face to face with the wax figure of Neville Heath, the man who had murdered her mother. She stared into his blank blue eyes. For Melody, the whole experience was deeply traumatic and one from which it would take her years to recover.
Returning home from the weekend, Melody went upstairs alone and locked herself in the bathroom. She filled the bath, feeling that all she wanted to do was slip under the water, relieve herself of this extraordinary, heart-aching pain and die.
4
After Doreen Marshall’s death, relations between her family were never the same again. Grace Marshall couldn’t forgive her surviving daughter Joan for not accompanying Doreen down to Bournemouth that summer. Worse still, Joan couldn’t forgive herself. She divorced her husband Charles in 1947 but went on to marry again in 1948 to a divorcé from Harrow, Reginald Adams, the father of three young sons. In 1954, she was delighted to have a child of her own, a girl she named Julia. But now a frail and nervous woman, Joan suffered from anxiety for the rest of her life. Throughout Julia’s childhood, Joan stifled her daughter – always checking on her, making sure she was safe. As Julia grew into her teens during the sixties, her mother’s controlling behaviour seemed suffocating. The world was rapidly changing and yet her mother wanted to keep her cossetted from it, wrapped in maternal cotton wool. It was only in her twenties that Joan revealed to Julia that the reason that she worried about her so intensely was that her sister had been murdered years before.
5
Charles and Grace Marshall moved out of Woodhall Road, with all its terrible memories, to a house in Stanmore. Grace died in 1967 and her husband in 1973. They were both cremated at Breakspear Crematorium in Ruislip. Tragically, Joan lived with the self-imposed burden of responsibility for Doreen’s death for the rest of her life, over half a century. She died in Wycombe General Hospital on 14 August 1998.
Doreen is the only member of the family to rest in Pinner Cemetery. The grave, no longer tended, has weathered and declined over the decades. At the head of the grave there is a small bird-bath with a little stone bird, set there to encourage sparrows to drink from it, chosen perhaps by Doreen’s parents wishing their daughter some company. At the foot of the grave, an inscription quotes the American poet, James Whitcomb Riley, from a poem perhaps read at Doreen’s funeral, ‘She Is Just Away’.
In 2012, the grave was registered by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission and will be tended by them if it falls further into disrepair.
In 1954, Reg Spooner had served thirty years in the police force with a series of celebrated convictions behind him, but none better remembered than his arrest of Neville Heath. That year he was appointed head of the Flying Squad and became one of the most recognized officers in the force. In 1958 he was appointed deputy commander. But after years of chain smoking, he was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1962. Knowing he was dying, Spooner carried on working as best he could. A former Scotland Yard colleague of Spooner’s said that ‘everyone knew that his work was his whole life. He had no other real interests. Retiring him because of ill health would have hastened his end.’
6
Spooner finally died at St Thomas’ Hospital just before midnight on 18 September 1963. When the night sister telephoned his wife to give her the news, she gently asked if they might have the cornea of his eyes to give sight to a blind person. ‘Oh, yes,’ said Myra, ‘Reg would have liked that.’ More than one thousand police officers of all ranks attended his funeral.
7
According to his wife, Spooner always talked with great sympathy about the ordeal that Heath’s family had experienced during and after the trial. As his brother had wished, Mick Heath joined the RAF in January 1947 but found his time in the service uncomfortable as corporals in primary training would ask, ‘Any relation to Neville?’ as soon as they heard his name. On a trip to Blackpool, he also went to a wax museum and found himself staring at a figure of his brother standing amongst a collection of ghouls in the Chamber of Horrors. At night, when his RAF colleagues went off to meet girls, Mick stayed behind in the barracks, worried that he too might have inherited some element of madness that had affected his brother.
8
He was discharged from the RAF in 1949. In 1955, he married Irene Lovejoy, a widow, some years older than him. William Heath died of heart disease in 1956. Subsequently, Mick, his wife and his mother moved back to Ilford together where Mick worked as a telecommunications engineer. In 1982 Bessie Heath died at the Mayflower Hospital in Billericay at the age of ninety-one. Mick died of cancer two years later at St Bart’s Hospital in Smithfield.
In South Africa, Elizabeth Armstrong rebuilt her life, taking a job as a dentist’s receptionist and planning her marriage to her fiancé. Following Heath’s execution, she expressed no bitterness towards him for she felt that ‘there [was] so much good in him’.
9
He came into my life and went out again, leaving me slightly bewildered. It seems like a beautiful dream that turned suddenly into a ghastly nightmare. I loved him desperately when I ran away and married him against my parents’ wishes. But at all costs little Robert must never know the truth. Every photograph I had of Neville I have destroyed. Every letter I have burned . . . I pray that all the tragedy of the past may be buried in the passing of time.
10
In 1947, Elizabeth married a young widower with two young children of his own. He had a distinguished war service and had spent three years in a prison camp in Germany having been captured at Tobruk. Together he and Elizabeth put the past behind them and never discussed her former husband. They enjoyed a long and happy marriage until Elizabeth’s death in 1990. Her son by Heath went on to have a successful career and a happy marriage with children and grandchildren of his own, the horrors of 1946 a dim, distant memory; a world away in a different country, another century.
In 1939, when Gilbert Wheat was going off to war, he discussed with his mother all his hopes for the future if he were fortunate enough to return: to marry, to settle down and (he was very specific about this) to have four children.
After the end of the war and the subsequent loss of his sister, Gilbert committed himself to life as a schoolmaster and went on to run his own school. He was a kindly, inspirational figure who combined an irreverent disrespect for petty rules with strong, traditional values. His mother, Mrs Wheat, died in 1963 and his niece Melody married an army officer some years later. With no wife or children of his own, when she was later widowed, Gilbert took Melody and her children into his home and they remained a close-knit family for many years. In the absence of his sister Margery, Gilbert selflessly committed himself to help raise Melody’s four children, fulfilling his own prophecy of a generation before. He died in 2010 at the age of ninety-three.
Despite the brutality and violence that dominates the story of Neville Heath, it is the seemingly insignificant details that seem most profoundly to articulate the sense of loss, that break through the patina of sixty-odd years to pierce our hearts: a leopardette coat, a powder compact with a cracked mirror, a caterpillar badge.
Fragile, precious and fraught with danger, ‘life depends on a silken thread’.
Sean O’Connor
London, 2013
APPENDIX
Heath’s Last Letters
Pentonville Prison
Tuesday, 15th October 1946
My dear Dad,
Very many thanks indeed for your letter.
I saw Near yesterday afternoon and understand that he told you the news
[about the failure of the medical review].
He also tried very hard to persuade me to see you. With regard to this, I know you’ll understand how I feel about it and I think it far better if we just make a clean break without farewells etc. I’ve always hated being seen off on journeys and this I regard as just another journey, to somewhere I don’t know and by a method of transport that I don’t understand. To my very limited intelligence it is nothing more than that – just another ‘op’ – and like all ‘ops’ it may prove to be quite exciting.
I’m taking with me many pleasant memories of a very crowded thirty years. Into my crowded hours I have crammed much. A lot I regret bitterly and a lot I am thankful for – but probably the outstanding thing of all is the unselfish love and loyalty of my parents. You, who have both suffered so much, have been splendid and I can only say – thanks!
I have instructed Near to send you £60 which is for Mick. You know what I want him to do with it if it is possible. The thought that I can make that possible and the knowledge that you will carry out my wishes will make me very happy and satisfied.
I have made a new will today leaving everything to Mick with you as Trustee. This is just in case any one decides to prove an old will of mine in South Africa.
Near has my instructions and a note of authority as well, so he will not prove this will unless the other one is produced.
Any money that mother has of mine will of course, go to Mick, and my personal effects from here will be sent to you and you will hand them to him. There should be about £10 from here. I think mother has about £30 so he should have a little more than £100. I don’t know much about law, but I’ve instructed Near to send that money off now, before my death, as a gift.
One other thing, and this I am most sincere and firm about. I was painted as black as the Ace of Spades in court and you will possibly get several accounts rendered you by smart Alecs who hope to get them paid by your kind-heartedness.
You are not, in any way, and have never been responsible for any of my debts. Apart from this money which I am giving away now, I shall not leave a halfpenny. You will please not pay any outstanding accounts of mine. Once again – you are not responsible for my debts.
Well, I think that is about all, except to thank you both from the very bottom of my heart for all you’ve done for me and to thank you for giving me all the golden opportunities that I have so shamelessly wasted.
The very best of luck to you always, and don’t let Mick make my mistakes. Goodbye and bless you both.
Always yours,
Neville
Pentonville Prison
Tuesday, 15th October 1946
My dearest Mother,
You now know the news so there is very little for me to say. One thing I feel certain of is that Near did all in his power to get the verdict altered. The sentence, I don’t give a damn about. I’ve written to Dad and shall write to Mick. Everything has been said, but I’d like you to know how terribly grateful I am for your never-failing love, loyalty and devotion. It has always been of such a quality that no other parents could hope to equal.
Both you and Dad are unique in the way of parents and to me your honesty, simplicity, faith and sheer guts stand out like a brilliant star. My only regret at leaving this world is that I have been so damned unworthy of you both.
I’m not religious – I never have been and I’m not going to start now (at least I’m no hypocrite) – but if there is any God, and I know you believe in that sort of thing, you both deserve all the love He can bestow on you.
Let Mick profit by my mistakes. Help him to get airborne and make a success of it. If there is anything he wants to know Ralph will help him. His address is First Officer Fisher, BOAC, Central Flying School, Aldermaston, Nr Reading, Wilts.