Handsome Brute: The True Story of a Ladykiller (7 page)

Now properly engaged, the young couple left the golf club at about 1.30 p.m. to spend the afternoon together. Yvonne returned to her parents’ house at 6 p.m. to change for dinner. At 7 p.m., Heath arrived to take them to the dinner dance at Angmering. While Yvonne finished dressing, Major Symonds chatted with Heath downstairs. A military man himself, he noted that Heath was in British khaki battledress with a lieutenant colonel’s insignia with two rows of decorations, led by the DFC and Bar. He also wore pilot’s wings and had red ribbons on his epaulettes, denoting the SAAF.

Yvonne was finally ready, a taxi was ordered and the smart young couple were driven off to Angmering. To Jack and Gertrude Symonds, Yvonne’s fiancé seemed the ideal son-in-law – an educated gentleman; charming, well connected and a war hero to boot.

The Blue Peter Club was situated right on the pebble beach at Angmering, twenty minutes’ drive from Worthing.
³⁰
Heath and Yvonne arrived at about 8.15 p.m. The day had gone well and Yvonne’s parents had been impressed with her new beau. But one thing had been troubling Yvonne ever since Jimmy had mentioned it – the story of the murder at the Pembridge Court Hotel. At dinner, she took the opportunity to remind him that he was going to tell her about it. As the band played on in the background, Jimmy seemed only too keen to tell her everything, in all its shocking, graphic detail.

‘Jimmy, you were going to tell me about the murder? At the hotel?’ said Yvonne.
³¹

‘Yes. So I was. Well, after you left for Worthing on Monday, I stayed on at the Pembridge Court. On Thursday, I was at an hotel with a journalist friend and we got into conversation with a couple near us, so we all had a drink together. The girl was pretty well known as a prostitute. The man said he wanted to spend the night with her, but had nowhere to take her. So I said, why don’t you use my room?’

For the young girl from Worthing, this tale of Heath offering up his hotel room (indeed
their
hotel room where they had spent such a romantic weekend) for an acquaintance to spend the night with a prostitute must have seemed distasteful enough – certainly outside Yvonne’s experience. But having only recently lost her virginity to her fiancé, maybe this was another rite of passage, a swift education in the ways of the adult world where things were different and which she felt too inexperienced to question.

‘What about the landlady?’ she asked.

‘I told her that if anyone called for me, they could contact me in Hendon where I was going to stay the night. So I gave my room key to the man – in front of my reporter chum.’

‘I see,’ said Yvonne.

‘The next day,’ Heath continued, ‘on Friday morning, I was at Hendon and had a telephone call from an Inspector Barratt of the Metropolitan Police.
³²
He said he wanted to talk to me as soon as possible, so he’d send a car to bring me back to the hotel. He was keen to establish that I hadn’t slept in my hotel room, as a murder had been committed there. And he wanted me to identify the body. Obviously this was the woman I’d met in company with my friend the night before. So Barratt took me to Room 4 at the Pembridge Court.’

‘And?’

‘I saw the body of the woman. It was a gruesome sight. She’d been tied by her legs and thighs. Her body was very bruised. I’ve never seen so much blood in my life.’

‘What had happened to her?’

‘Inspector Barratt said that a poker had been stuck up her. That it was the poker that killed her. I’m not so sure. I think it’s more likely that she’d been suffocated. He asked me to stay in town so that I could assist in trying to identify the man I gave the key to.’

‘Who would do such a terrible thing?’

‘It can only have been done by a sexual maniac.’

‘Yes.’

‘And, of course, you know it wasn’t me.’

Here was Yvonne’s fiancé, sitting before her and telling her the truth. Of course it couldn’t have been him.

‘No.’

‘I’ve treated you kindly whenever we’ve been alone together, haven’t I?’

Whatever she felt about this extraordinary tale, Yvonne said nothing. Jimmy bumped into some RAF friends and as the evening wore on, it receded in her mind. She and Heath met Angus Bruce again, as he was working that night at the club. Heath wondered if they might pop in once more in the morning and Bruce said he’d be delighted to see them. The couple stayed at the club until midnight and Yvonne clearly felt safe enough with Heath to share a taxi with him to her parents’ house in Warren Road, where he dropped her off before going on to his hotel. It was the end of an eventful engagement day that Yvonne would never forget.

Back at home, Yvonne began to puzzle over the shocking story that Jimmy had told her. The more she turned it over in her mind, the more questions it raised. Jimmy had said at some point that he knew the woman had no money, but didn’t say how he knew this. He didn’t once mention the name of the mysterious man he had lent his key to and that the police were now looking for, nor the name of the woman who had been killed. And who was the journalist who had witnessed the transaction? Crucially, why had Jimmy come to Worthing? Hadn’t the police specifically asked him to stay in London?

The next morning – Sunday – Yvonne woke early and started ironing the shirts that Jimmy had asked her to launder, ready to return to him later in the day. Then, a weekly ritual: the Sunday newspapers arrived before breakfast. Glancing at the headlines, Yvonne’s parents were stunned; her fiancé was front-page news.

6ft MAN SOUGHT IN HOTEL CRIME

Scotland Yard detectives seeking a clue to the murder of Mrs. Margery Gardner, 33-year-old film extra, in an hotel in Pembridge Gardens, Notting Hill issued a description yesterday of a man they wish to interview. They appealed to anyone who sees a man answering this description to go at once to a police station. The man is described as Neville George Clevely Heath, aged 29.

He is 5 feet 11½ inches tall of medium build, fresh complexion, fair hair and eyebrows, blue eyes, broad nose, firm chin, square face with good teeth and he is probably wearing a double-breasted light grey suit with a thin stripe and a cream-coloured shirt with collar attached or a check sports jacket, flannel trousers, dark brown trilby and dark brown suede shoes. He walks with a military gait and is known to frequent good-class hotels and guest-houses.

Mrs. Gardner’s unclothed, bruised body was found in a first floor bedroom of the hotel on Friday afternoon with her legs and ankles bound. She is believed to have been suffocated.
³³

Major and Mrs Symonds were stunned. But when they showed her the paper, Yvonne did not seem at all surprised. She told her parents all about the conversation she had had with her fiancé the night before, outlining the details of the murder in Notting Hill. Yvonne’s father told her that she should telephone Jimmy at once. At 9.30 a.m., Yvonne phoned the Ocean Hotel, but was told by the receptionist that Jimmy couldn’t reply as he was sleeping in the annexe. Yvonne left her parents’ telephone number – even though she knew he had it – and a message for him to call her urgently on Swandean 906.
³⁴

Twenty minutes later, Heath telephoned her. Yvonne explained that she and her parents had read the newspapers and that they were very worried. ‘Yes,’ said Heath with extraordinary understatement, ‘I thought they would be.’
³⁵
He told her not to worry. He had a car and was going to drive up to Scotland Yard right away. He would return to Worthing that evening and would ring her later on. Yvonne felt calmer. He was going to sort everything out. It must be some sort of mistake.

All Sunday evening Yvonne waited for a call from Jimmy. But he didn’t ring her that evening. She hoped he might ring the next morning; he did not. She was never to speak to him again. The next time she would see him, she would be in the witness box and he would be in the dock in a police court. The story of her whirlwind romance and the intimate details of the loss of her virginity were to be crucial evidence in one of the most sensational murder trials of the century.

That Sunday night, Yvonne was left with her thoughts, stunned by the speed with which her romantic dream had mutated into a nightmare; her heroic pilot seemingly a devil; the fiancé she had fallen for, a sadistic killer. She was learning that the cinema-style romance she had imagined she was living was actually a very different sort of film. Like the picture where Ingrid Bergman seems to be losing her mind or the one where she falls in love with a man she suspects is a murderer (‘Will he kiss me or kill me?’).

Heath did not drive up to London that Sunday. He left Worthing in a hurry on Monday morning, leaving many of his possessions behind at the Ocean Hotel: his brown suede shoes, copies of the magazines
Flight
,
Aeroplane
and
Men Only
. Amongst the possessions he left were five newspapers: the
Daily Telegraph
,
Daily Mail
,
Daily Herald
,
Daily Mirror
and
Daily Express
. All were dated Saturday 22 June.
³⁶
Clearly, Heath had a very specific interest in the news of that particular day. Each newspaper contained an account of the murder of Margery Gardner and the news that the police were attempting to trace a man ‘Wanted for Interview’: Neville George Clevely Heath.

After the trial, Yvonne Symonds was thought to be the luckiest girl in England because of her narrow escape. Though Heath may have taken her virginity, he had not taken her life. Margery Gardner had not been so fortunate.

CHAPTER THREE

Mrs Gardner

16th June 1946

My Darling Mum,

Please excuse this paper, but I seem to have mislaid mine – and am too late to get any more. Very many thanks for the £3, it has been terribly axceptable as all this trouble has come back again – and I have to see Dr Kelly again on Monday.

I get so tired, so quickly that I still have to lie down every afternoon – but perhaps its just because I’m expecting the ‘curse’ this week-end, according to my reckoning – since it started on the 21st. ‘Iris Products’ have closed temporarily,
[because]
Charles has to be away so much but hope to re-open again – however I couldn’t go back to their work at present, as I think I tried to explain before, they have no work there which doesn’t require standing. I still have hopes of the toys, but have at the moment lost my only contact with the men as the boyfriend
¹
has gone away, but in any case don’t worry as I shall contact him and write again next week.

The grey suit has cleaned OK except that the skirt is lighter than the coat, it isn’t too good. Please send the black and blue dress as soon as possible.

Now must go to catch the post, all my love,

Margy

P.S. I would like very much to go home for a bit, but feel that it would be a mistake, as my nerves have gone to hell.

24 Bramham Gardens

S.W.5

20th June 1946

My Darling Mum,

Many thanks for your letter and enclosure – I’m always kept on tenterhooks until the last minute, in case it doesn’t arrive and today was a bit of a close shave. I have just ’phoned Dr Kelly again and hope to see her at the end of the week to get some more of a tonic she gave me which seems to have done me a lot of good.

The boy friend came back on Sunday and is seeing the man about the toys at the end of the week. Unfortunately I can’t be there myself. No you don’t have to be trained to make these toys apparently – all I would have to do would be to sew the skin together, which sounds very simple. As regards Iris Products there was nothing creative about the work there and even the nursery
[lamp]
shades, which I had looked forward to designing, were done by stencil, which is purely mechanical.

I may have to go into the hospital again, but I sincerely hope not, because it wouldn’t really be much of a rest, as I should be worrying the whole time. If only I had a tiny private income, no matter how small, with which I could buy myself a few necessary clothes and therefore gain confidence in myself, one of the first steps to a good job. Both our minds, I feel sure, would be easier, but as it is we have to make do with things that are really completely worn out, and which even the second hand dress shops wont take. Please send me the blue and black dress before you go away.

The weather here has been appalling, rained day after day but even the plastic macs are £5 upwards and cost 9 coupons.