A Tale of Two Murders by Laura Thompson

Author:Laura Thompson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Epub3
ISBN: 9781681779379
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Published: 2018-08-18T00:00:00+00:00

* At the trial, Mr Justice Shearman would suggest that this phrase referred to Percy Thompson; the implication being that ‘he’ would not be ‘well’ for much longer.

REX

‘Hangman, hangman, upon your face a smile And tell me that I’m free to ride Ride for many a mile.’

From ‘Gallows Pole’, traditional folk song

I

“‘And then’” whispered Magda Leonides, her eyes suddenly widening, her face stiffening, “just terror...”

“Don’t you think that would be the way to play Edith Thompson?”‘

From Crooked House by Agatha Christie

FROM THAT POINT, the story was written by other people. This, for instance, was The Times on the morning of 5 October. ‘A murder which presents several puzzling features occurred in the early hours of yesterday in Ilford. The victim is a shipping clerk named Percy Thompson... He was walking home with his wife between midnight and 1 a.m., when, within a hundred yards or so of his home, he was stabbed several times by someone unknown.’ The report was inaccurate in several respects, but it made the following salient point.

‘How he received his wounds is a mystery, and much may depend on any statement his wife can make.’

The police, who had taken Edith home with such care after Percy was taken to the mortuary, were back at her house a couple of hours later, their mood somewhat altered. In the interim she was placed, at first, in the care of her sitting tenant.

Mrs Lester had expected the Thompsons home late, as before leaving home on the 3rd Edith had told her that they were going to the theatre. ‘The following morning,’ she stated, ‘about 1.15 the police brought Mrs Thompson home. She appeared hysterical and almost in a state of collapse. She said, “They have taken him away from me, if they would only let me go to him I am sure I could make him better.”‘

Sergeant Mew and Constable Pearcey took Edith through to the morning-room, where Percy and Freddy had had their altercation some fourteen months earlier. She could, the constable later said, walk unassisted. There she was settled on a sofa. Mrs Lester asked her for the addresses of Mrs Graydon and Richard Thompson, then gave these to the police; Sergeant Mew went straight round to Mr Thompson’s house at Seymour Gardens and informed him that his brother had had a fatal seizure. Mrs Lester was told that Percy had suffered a haemorrhage and heart attack. Edith, she said, seemed unable to grasp that he had died.

‘As far as you could form an opinion,’ Sir Henry Curtis-Bennett asked at the Old Bailey, ‘did you come to the conclusion that she did not realize her husband was dead?’

‘Yes,’ said Mrs Lester, ‘she said so.’

‘It looked clearly as if she thought that he was still alive?’

‘Yes.’

Edith was saturated with blood. It was on her face, and particularly on her hands and clothes. She did not wash or remove her coat, and the furniture must have been similarly stained. She sat, prostrate.

Then Richard Thompson arrived. He had never got along with Edith but now, for a time, he comforted her.

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