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Originally posted by caz
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Hi AS,
There may be an intriguing parallel here with the case of Christie and Evans, a couple of decades later. Christie was able to murder Evans's wife Beryl and get away with it for so long because Evans made such an obvious suspect and was all too easy to set up. Who else, after all, was there to suspect at the time?
If Wallace killed his wife, he knew when he first had the idea that he would be the first person under the spotlight - the obvious, and indeed only suspect unless or until the police were given a reason to look closely at someone else. So before he came up with his Qualtrough plan he'd have been on the lookout for someone to fit that bill as closely as possible. Now if I had been in a guilty Wallace's shoes, Parry would have seemed like a gift from heaven. Just as Evans was a gift for Christie.
In both the Christie and Wallace cases, it was the husband who was initially suspected and convicted of his wife's murder. So Wallace was always going to have the tougher job of steering the police towards the other man in the story - in his case, Parry. But although Wallace was rightly set free on appeal, for lack of hard evidence, the police didn't go on to obtain any hard evidence against Parry either.
I was a little taken aback by Wallace's 'thoughts and suspicions' as set out in his life story, serialised in 1932 in John Bull magazine and quoted from in Roger Wilkes's hardback of 1984 [pages 224-7]. While I can understand an innocent man's bitterness and motivation for going into print about the man he believes killed his wife and almost got him hanged for it (without actually naming him), Wallace seems to overdo it with the kind of extraordinary detail that makes it hard to see why he would not have connected all the dots a lot sooner and let the police have chapter and verse about Parry (for Parry it clearly is) and his apparently unique suitability for the task of getting Wallace out of the way with the phone call, getting himself invited into the house by Julia and helping himself to the cash box he knows precisely where to find.
One could almost read it like Wallace is taking us through what he knows about Parry before the murder is committed that will make him such a good bet as a suspect afterwards. Why ever did Wallace trust the man with his wife and his valuables - unless he didn't, and that suited him down to the ground?
Love,
Caz
X
There may be an intriguing parallel here with the case of Christie and Evans, a couple of decades later. Christie was able to murder Evans's wife Beryl and get away with it for so long because Evans made such an obvious suspect and was all too easy to set up. Who else, after all, was there to suspect at the time?
If Wallace killed his wife, he knew when he first had the idea that he would be the first person under the spotlight - the obvious, and indeed only suspect unless or until the police were given a reason to look closely at someone else. So before he came up with his Qualtrough plan he'd have been on the lookout for someone to fit that bill as closely as possible. Now if I had been in a guilty Wallace's shoes, Parry would have seemed like a gift from heaven. Just as Evans was a gift for Christie.
In both the Christie and Wallace cases, it was the husband who was initially suspected and convicted of his wife's murder. So Wallace was always going to have the tougher job of steering the police towards the other man in the story - in his case, Parry. But although Wallace was rightly set free on appeal, for lack of hard evidence, the police didn't go on to obtain any hard evidence against Parry either.
I was a little taken aback by Wallace's 'thoughts and suspicions' as set out in his life story, serialised in 1932 in John Bull magazine and quoted from in Roger Wilkes's hardback of 1984 [pages 224-7]. While I can understand an innocent man's bitterness and motivation for going into print about the man he believes killed his wife and almost got him hanged for it (without actually naming him), Wallace seems to overdo it with the kind of extraordinary detail that makes it hard to see why he would not have connected all the dots a lot sooner and let the police have chapter and verse about Parry (for Parry it clearly is) and his apparently unique suitability for the task of getting Wallace out of the way with the phone call, getting himself invited into the house by Julia and helping himself to the cash box he knows precisely where to find.
One could almost read it like Wallace is taking us through what he knows about Parry before the murder is committed that will make him such a good bet as a suspect afterwards. Why ever did Wallace trust the man with his wife and his valuables - unless he didn't, and that suited him down to the ground?
Love,
Caz
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