Norwich Murders by Maurice Morson

Author:Maurice Morson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783408368
Publisher: Wharncliffe
Published: 2013-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.5. School Lane from Bedford Street in 2005. Last lived at the far end. The author

Tuesday was breakthrough day in Norwich. Edward Nelson, fearing for his future, especially if Harmer was arrested, went to the Guildhall Police Station and told as much as he thought he could afford to tell. His explanation for not going to the police on the Monday was that he didn’t believe Harmer had committed the murder; and the reason he did go on the Tuesday, he said, was that ‘innocent people were being taken’.

Tuesday was a vital day in other respects. Mrs Savage received a letter from Harmer requesting his box be forwarded to ‘George Smith’ at Wandsworth Street railway station, to be called for. For an unexplained reason she burnt the letter. Her husband bound the box and labelled it as instructed and with his wife took it to Norwich Thorpe Station. They returned home to find the police in Scoles Green.

At nine o‘clock that evening Detective Inspector Mason made haste to Norwich Thorpe Station to locate the box addressed: ‘Mr George Smith, Wandsworth Road railway station, Battersea, S.W.’ He immediately reported to the Chief Constable, Robert Hitchman, and was instructed to follow the box. It is interesting to note that Norwich now had a Chief Constable rank (from 1859) as opposed to a Superintendent carrying the honorary title, and that the Chief Constable was giving operational orders that in earlier years a Magistrate would have given. The box was placed on the night mail train under the eagle eye of Inspector Mason, and the Chief Constable telegraphed the Metropolitan Police with details of the impending arrival of both.

At three-twenty on the Wednesday morning the night mail pulled into Liverpool Street station with Inspector Mason and box on board, to be met by detectives of the Metropolitan Police. Mason remained in the station parcels’ office until the box was placed on a train to Wandsworth Road station, putting himself on the same train and following the box into the parcels’ office at that station. He remained there with a London detective until midnight, then leaving to go to Scotland Yard but, as policemen the world over will confirm, as soon as you leave a long and tedious observation something happens. Somebody came for the box – and it wasn’t Harmer.

On Tuesday evening, as Inspector Mason was speeding towards London on the night mail, Harmer was in lodgings in Clapham. He told his landlady, Mrs Rachel Dale, that he was from Southampton, which she immediately disbelieved on account of his strong Norfolk accent and a letter he produced postmarked ‘Norwich’. On the Wednesday morning, while the Inspector watched and waited in Wandsworth Road parcels’ office, Harmer confided to his landlady that he had a box ‘coming up from the country’ in the name of Smith. He then launched into a story of getting into a scrape by fighting and having to flee to London, none of which the woman believed. Despite this, when he asked her on the Thursday morning to collect his box she agreed.

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