The Wicked Mr Hall by Roy Archibald Hall

Author:Roy Archibald Hall [Roy Archibald Hall]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784183134
Publisher: John Blake Publishing
Published: 2015-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

13

ALMOST A FAMILY MAN

In London I remembered that Turkish baths were preferable to walking, stiff joints or no stiff joints. Besides the baths, I ate in nice restaurants and stayed in a decent hotel. I deserved a rest. Margaret was a lovely young girl. She was Irish, from Dublin, and twenty years my junior. I met her at the Connaught. In my life, I have been a bastard. I have killed for money or self-preservation, but there is a bit of good in the worst of us, and a bit of bad in the best.

With Margaret, I gave my best. She was a sweet, lost soul who appealed to my better instincts. I loved her, but was never ‘in love’ with her. She sat alone in the bar, nursing a martini. I have known loneliness, and that is what I sensed in her. I asked the waiter to invite her over for a drink and she accepted. We got on immediately. The next day we arranged to meet.

Her father was a headmaster, her brother a sergeant in the Irish police. This was her first time away from home and it seemed as though she had had a strict, claustrophobic upbringing. She had come to London to start a new life and had some savings, but not much. I suggested that we book into another hotel, this time with her as my guest.

That night we went to bed. It was a few days later when she told me that she was two months pregnant. She had run from shame. I have never lived by society’s rules and when I see rules and misguided beliefs that force a young girl to run from her home and community for the sin of making love, I’m glad that I don’t. When she asked me what I did for a living, I told her that I was a businessman. It was nice to have female company. I dared not think too far into the future, but if I was still around when the baby was born, I would look after it. We rented a flat off Regent Street. I was almost a family man.

When Margaret asked questions about what I was doing, where I was going, I would just say ‘business’. She would kiss me goodbye, satisfied with the explanation. I got in contact with some old friends and we robbed Gerrards, the Regent Street jewellers.

Thieves need inside information, inside help. Plenty of people have criminal tendencies if not criminal aptitude. With these people, if you pay them, you’ll get them. Cash is a great lure. If they thought for any length of time about what they were doing, they would back out in fear of court or prison. But if you say, here’s so much, just do this one thing, no one will ever know, the chances are, they’ll do it.

Two such people came to my attention in that autumn of 1964. Both were corruptible and both were employed in pertinent jobs. I’ll call them ‘X’ and ‘Y’.

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