Amy Wallace, was she involved?

[moste]

Remember in those far off days , unlike say the last 50 years , and certainly more recently with the advent of the computer age; Much more planning about everything was the norm. For a thing like taking out an insurance plan for example, Wallace making contact with a prospective client would only be setting the wheels in motion . Filling out the forms with the signatures, discussing the various merits of the various plans , would be the first steps, Wallace would have to post forms off to head office or take them down himself , them make the return trip to the clients home to let him know his coverage had commenced on such a day . What I’m saying is the hustle bustle of this Qualtrough guys expectations, are , and would be to Wallace suspect in my opinion. An innocent Wallace would not have gone there.

[WallaceWackedHer]

I’m just looking at this journey dispassionately.

He walks the 500 yards to his first stop - 5 minutes.

He has to take three trams to get to Menlove Avenue - 30 minutes.

We know for a fact that he doesn't plan the journey using timetables because he’s reliant on conductors to tell him where to get on and off and which trams to use.

We know that Liverpool had a good tram service and that a passenger wouldn’t have expected to have waited longer than around 8 minutes for a tram (I recall either Antony or Rod posting something to this effect although I’m not 100% on 8 minutes but it was around that figure)

We know that when anyone takes this kind of journey (without checking timetables) you cannot bank on jumping from one tram and straight onto another. Luckily Wallace didn’t have to wait.

So if Wallace had just missed one tram he would have arrived 5, 6, 7 or even 8 minutes later.

This would have left him (a meticulous, well organised man going to a meeting for business which he expected to have been profitable) 5, 4, 3 or even just 2 minutes to search for an address which, for all he’d known, might have been a 20 minute walk from his final stop.

Whichever way you look at it this isn’t believable. He doesn’t even take the simple expedient of checking a directory or a map. He doesn’t even make a quick call to Crewe for a pointer or two.

~~~

Who are the three people telling us that there were more people involved?

~~~

This isn’t a complex plan for Wallace. It’s very simple and only one person could have been certain that Wallace would have done what he did. Wallace himself. He’s not banking on Close at all. Close was just incidental. If Wallace expected him at all he’d have expected him earlier because Close was late. If Wallace had decided not to bother going them Mr X’s plan falls. If Wallace had given up sooner and come back Mr X’s available window would have narrowed. If Wallace had decided not to go to chess Mr X’s plan would fall. If Julia had simply refused to let anyone in Mr X’s plan falls. None of these are an issue if it was Wallace.

There’s no evidence of any kind of conspiracy here apart from Lillian Hall and when we read her testimony we can see that she was pretty obviously mistaken. The only other thing is the idea that Parry was a likelier phone caller, but apart from the fact that we cannot prove that it wasn’t him then there’s nothing there.

~~~

You say that we only accuse him because we see him as some kind of chess wizard. That’s transparently not the case WWH. Come on, he was a second tier player in an average chess club. But what does the evidence point to with regard to the type of person William was. He was intelligent, not a genius of course, but an intelligent man. From his work record and his record keeping he was the kind of person that did things by the book. Not really the type of person to say “hey, who cares, I’ll just wing it and hope for a bit of luck.” Especially in matters of business like a meeting with a prospective client.

I genuinely believe that the reason many people don’t wish to accuse William because he looks the kindly, silver-haired old gent. Someone’s Uncle William.

~~~

All other theories require leaps of faith. To try and exonerate William we have to repeatedly come up with excuses for him. It’s a bit like playing twister. It’s like ‘everyone loves William’ and they’ll go to any lengths for him. I’m convinced that if a mock trial took place now, with what we know and the thinking that been done, Wallace would be found guilty. I’m even thinking of writing a piece called “the very obvious questions that Hemmerde missed.” Or alternatively, “was Hemmerde actually on Oliver’s side?” Virtually every time I read about the case, as I have been recently, I see something else that points to William and away from any other scenario. I’ve never been more convinced that Wallace was guilty.

It's not about his guilt it's about it being all him and him alone. You say he's a second rate chess player and then the next sentence say it shows what type of man he is and so would be the type to plan this.

That's what I mean like, it's SOOOOOO prejudicial. He's not even GOOD at chess but every publication shows him like, "playing chess with human pieces" etc. It's just because he's a chess player that it seems to make sense he'd do all this.

There have been highly premeditated murders, 100,000s of them, since the dawning of time. Find any that are as odd and complex as this. No other killer ever has done something soooo insanely obscure with all the fake names and addresses etc. People don't think this way. Even actual chess masters just stab people lmao.

Like it's actually more likely that pre-empting 1001 moves and using the most bizarre plan ever conceived with reliance on luck etc. is what happened, as opposed to say... I don't know, Lily Hall being right about her sighting and he stayed out at the Gardens past 8 because it was some prearranged time.

Is that truly harder to believe is likely than the millions of other tiny nuances and advanced scheming etc. that would have had to take place if nobody else had any hand in this? You never see anything like this outside of movies or TV dramas. Real people just don't think or work this way.

It is purely because of the fact he played chess as a hobby that people can picture him thinking 20 moves ahead to "a-ha!" the cops.

Even the JUDGE said "remember Wallace is a chess player" or something lmao. It's unbelievable really, the amount that is made of that.

[Herlock Sholmes]

But I don’t see his chess playing as important apart from the fact of the club. The plan is in essence a simple one. The other ‘nuances’ are from our own thinking 90 years later.

He decides to kill his wife. He decides on a way to give himself a reason to be away from the house via a call from a box from a mystery prospective client. A call which he believed couldn’t be traced. He can’t afford to get covered in blood so he uses a coat. He goes on his search making sure that people remember him. He returns to the house and tries to give the impression that there was someone still inside (he later admits to believing this yet we know there was no one there) He then ‘discovers’ the body. He believes that he can get away with it because a) he appeared to have had too little time before he left, b) there is no blood on him, c) he’s found a clever way of disposing of the weapon, d) there doesn’t appear to be a motive, and e) everyone will say what a good bloke he is because he has no enemies. On top of that, just as a bonus throw of the dice he throws up the names of two dodgy blokes. If they have alibis then nothing lost. If they haven’t then maybe one of them might have been blamed.

There’s nothing particularly Moriarty-like in this. Why is this anymore likely that..

A man uses a really mysterious phone call (which luckily Wallace isn’t suspicious of in the slightest and very luckily on the first day that year that Wallace actually attended the club) That he goes to the house and stands at the doorstep telling Julia what’s gone on and then he persuades a woman that normally wouldn’t let in a stranger to let him (and even if she had heard the name Qualtrough he was still a stranger) And he luckily achieves this without anyone seeing or hearing him. Then when the burglary is goes wrong Julia is murdered with such brutality. Then despite this being about money, and even though they know that Wallace wouldn’t be back for a while and even though they found themselves with only Ł5 to split between 3 of them they don’t even take a minute or two to search for more cash or valuables but they still waste time pointlessly turning off lights and bolting the front door. They can’t even take 30 seconds to wipe any prints off the weapon but they take it away covered in blood and brain.

~~~

We don’t need or expect any brilliance from Wallace. He made errors as humans do. He could have made better decisions or improved his plan. But surely to all this must look more like a murder than a robbery? It just doesn’t look anything like a robbery. Do burglars usually come up with such convoluted plans or do they usually just sneak in unknown when the occupants are away or in bed?

Once you get away from “kindly silver haired old William” picture and once you accept the notion that this was very obvious a murder and not a robbery then there’s only one solution.

[Herlock Sholmes]

An added question....even though we know, because William tells us, that in the dark he always returned via the front door, wouldn’t the burglars have considered this as a strong possibility? And that consequently Julia would have bolted the back door? If that was the case then skeleton keys would have been useless. Would Marsden have had the know how to have not just broken in but broken in without Julia hearing him?

[Herlock Sholmes]

I’ve just re-read the Alan Close’s trial testimony. Were usually told about him being evasive and a poor witness. This is nonsense. He’s absolutely clear about what he says. He’s adamant about times. He sounds completely convincing. He paused only once and did a bit of head shaking but this is a kid, in court, with some adult in a wig trying to make him look a liar. Also it was said that he was sometimes difficult to hear but come on, this was a 14 year old kid in an intimidating situation. He wasn’t Brian Blessed playing King Lear Only once is he inconsistent and this is when asked about whether he’d heard that the papers had incorrectly said that William had gone out at 6.15. At first he said no then he said yes. But reading the context it’s very easy to see how he’d been confused by the way the question was put. I had to read it 3 times myself.

So there’s nothing wrong with Close’s testimony. He’s clear and consistent and sounds like someone giving an honest opinion. He even says that before the reconstructions he’d have said that the route would have taken 7 or 8 minutes long. He was adamant that they recreated it properly, pausing at each stop for the correct amount of time.

The only thing that’s wrong with his testimony is that it’s inconvenient.

[WallaceWackedHer]

I’ve just re-read the Alan Close’s trial testimony. Were usually told about him being evasive and a poor witness. This is nonsense. He’s absolutely clear about what he says. He’s adamant about times. He sounds completely convincing. He paused only once and did a bit of head shaking but this is a kid, in court, with some adult in a wig trying to make him look a liar. Also it was said that he was sometimes difficult to hear but come on, this was a 14 year old kid in an intimidating situation. He wasn’t Brian Blessed playing King Lear Only once is he inconsistent and this is when asked about whether he’d heard that the papers had incorrectly said that William had gone out at 6.15. At first he said no then he said yes. But reading the context it’s very easy to see how he’d been confused by the way the question was put. I had to read it 3 times myself.

So there’s nothing wrong with Close’s testimony. He’s clear and consistent and sounds like someone giving an honest opinion. He even says that before the reconstructions he’d have said that the route would have taken 7 or 8 minutes long. He was adamant that they recreated it properly, pausing at each stop for the correct amount of time.

The only thing that’s wrong with his testimony is that it’s inconvenient.

Oh right. It's not like he was bullied down to 6.35 before the reconstructions even took place which he intimated to his friends, or like the 6.30 bells chimed before Elsie even saw him, or like he was at a fast walking pace even for someone without crates of milk etc, or like certain witnesses weren't called by the prosecution.

Nah he just chucked the milk at people's doors like the Paperboy arcade game and was running because he was anxious to go play with his friends. Sounds about right... Every single other worker who said they'd heard bells or looked at the chuck clock, they're all just silly confused children. The adults who definitely had reason to notice it was precisely 18.30 are of course spot on due to being adults.

So yes 6.30. A whole 8 extra minutes which the answer completely hinges on. I mean obviously if it's 6.30 he must have killed her and if it's 6.38 well then obviously he's innocent...

Plus Lily Hall isn't inconvenient she's just a confused lady. Parkes isn't inconvenient he's just a liar. Dolly Atkinson isn't inconvenient she was just party to the age-old lie. Lily Lloyd isn't inconvenient she's just a jilted ex. Parry forgot what day Monday was he got mixed up with Friday, Beattie is a serious man he could never imagine a faked voice but the operators obviously nailed it, and Gladys saying it's an old man well she's clearly bang on. It's totally cool McFall said she died at 19.50 and then with no additional findings or evidence put it back to 18.00.

The world sure looks intriguing from up here in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

There are always going to be Stringers, you can prove Stringer wrong but he'll still insist. There's nothing you can do about it. And that is a problem of mine because I become intensely frustrated when I can prove something is wrong beyond reasonable doubt and people still come with the same thing ad nauseam. The same trait that got Josh kicked rofl.

[moste]

Oh right. It's not like he was bullied down to 6.35 before the reconstructions even took place which he intimated to his friends, or like the 6.30 bells chimed before Elsie even saw him, or like he was at a fast walking pace even for someone without crates of milk etc, or like certain witnesses weren't called by the prosecution.

Nah he just chucked the milk at people's doors like the Paperboy arcade game and was running because he was anxious to go play with his friends. Sounds about right... Every single other worker who said they'd heard bells or looked at the chuck clock, they're all just silly confused children. The adults who definitely had reason to notice it was precisely 18.30 are of course spot on due to being adults.

So yes 6.30. A whole 8 extra minutes which the answer completely hinges on. I mean obviously if it's 6.30 he must have killed her and if it's 6.38 well then obviously he's innocent...

Plus Lily Hall isn't inconvenient she's just a confused lady. Parkes isn't inconvenient he's just a liar. Dolly Atkinson isn't inconvenient she was just party to the age-old lie. Lily Lloyd isn't inconvenient she's just a jilted ex. Parry forgot what day Monday was he got mixed up with Friday, Beattie is a serious man he could never imagine a faked voice but the operators obviously nailed it, and Gladys saying it's an old man well she's clearly bang on. It's totally cool McFall said she died at 19.50 and then with no additional findings or evidence put it back to 18.00.

The world sure looks intriguing from up here in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

There are always going to be Stringers, you can prove Stringer wrong but he'll still insist. There's nothing you can do about it. And that is a problem of mine because I become intensely frustrated when I can prove something is wrong beyond reasonable doubt and people still come with the same thing ad nauseam. The same trait that got Josh kicked rofl.

What would Alan Close’s motive be for lying?

[WallaceWackedHer]

What would Alan Close’s motive be for lying?

He was forced into it by the police because they didn't like his testimony. He told his friends, ALL of them, 18:45. He went to the police and said 18:45, they told him maybe he's mistaken, he must mean 18:35, which he intimated to friends (that the police wouldn't accept 18:45 when he told them and kept suggesting he's wrong it was earlier even though at that time they did not yet have proof it was) which is why that particular time is on the Man from the Pru movie.

He said in court he told friends 18:30 to 18:45. He didn't. Every single witness said he said 18:45.

They do a reconstruction based on apparently seeing the clock at 18:25. They have the boy at a near jogging pace while carrying milk crates to make the time they gave.

I'm not arguing proven BS I'll just get mad. It's proven wrong. And I won't entertain it just so we can brownnose the law. People take the tiniest scinitilla of "evidence" so they can make it ALLLLL one way.

It's a fairytale essentially. It's a script for an episode of Poirot, blatantly not real. Anyone who thinks some of this is the most reasonable answer is straight delusional no joke. It's not even opinion just legit delusional thinking, schizophrenic tier.

People laugh at Hemmerde saying William dressed up as his wife. But there's no difference. Hemmerde was also certain and decidedly pushed everything one way hence crossdressing ideas. You might as well just start saying he crossdressed. It's no more disproven than the police's given time for Alan. William crouching behind the door in a dress speaking funny due to Julia's "cold" is almost exactly as likely.

Same type of delirious thought patterns making SURE everything fits. Apparently ALL this is a better fit than the fact that maaaaybe just maybe real life isn't a TV show and someone else killed her with or without his knowledge.

There will always be Rod Stringers where it can be proven beyond almost any reasonable doubt the fact they give is wrong and it just gets repeated over and over.

I won't allow it. I will never allow it. Mad? Get mad. I will shoot down proven BS furiously every single time.

[Al Bundy's Eyes]

https://liverpool1207blog.wordpress.com/old-liverpool-maps/

Don't know if this is much use to you guys, but there's loads of zoomable maps.

[Herlock Sholmes]

He was forced into it by the police because they didn't like his testimony. He told his friends, ALL of them, 18:45. He went to the police and said 18:45, they told him maybe he's mistaken, he must mean 18:35, which he intimated to friends (that the police wouldn't accept 18:45 when he told them and kept suggesting he's wrong it was earlier even though at that time they did not yet have proof it was) which is why that particular time is on the Man from the Pru movie.

He said in court he told friends 18:30 to 18:45. He didn't. Every single witness said he said 18:45.

They do a reconstruction based on apparently seeing the clock at 18:25. They have the boy at a near jogging pace while carrying milk crates to make the time they gave.

I'm not arguing proven BS I'll just get mad. It's proven wrong. And I won't entertain it just so we can brownnose the law. People take the tiniest scinitilla of "evidence" so they can make it ALLLLL one way.

It's a fairytale essentially. It's a script for an episode of Poirot, blatantly not real. Anyone who thinks some of this is the most reasonable answer is straight delusional no joke. It's not even opinion just legit delusional thinking, schizophrenic tier.

People laugh at Hemmerde saying William dressed up as his wife. But there's no difference. Hemmerde was also certain and decidedly pushed everything one way hence crossdressing ideas. You might as well just start saying he crossdressed. It's no more disproven than the police's given time for Alan. William crouching behind the door in a dress speaking funny due to Julia's "cold" is almost exactly as likely.

Same type of delirious thought patterns making SURE everything fits. Apparently ALL this is a better fit than the fact that maaaaybe just maybe real life isn't a TV show and someone else killed her with or without his knowledge.

There will always be Rod Stringers where it can be proven beyond almost any reasonable doubt the fact they give is wrong and it just gets repeated over and over.

I won't allow it. I will never allow it. Mad? Get mad. I will shoot down proven BS furiously every single time.

There isn’t a single, solitary shred of evidence that Close was made to alter his time. This is used by those desperate to prove Wallace innocent. It’s wish-thinking pure and simple.

Is there anything to suggest that he wasn’t at the Holy Trinity Church when the clock said 6.25? > No there isn’t.

We have Elsie Wright who said that she saw him in Richmond Park at 6.40. > What reason do we have to place more value on her time that Close’s? None. In fact the other witnesses show her to be wrong.

We have three kids, who said that Close said that he’d seen Julia at 6.45. > Close however said that he’d told them that he’d seen Julia between 6.30 and 6.45 which, if he was at the HT Church, would have been literally true. Additionally, if the police were coaching him wouldn’t they have wanted no conflict? So why didn’t they tell him to say “well I did say 6.45 but it was only approximately but when I did the reconstruction it proved that it must have been earlier.” So it was only selective coaching.

We have James Allison Wildman saying that he saw Close on the Wallace’s doorstep at 6.37/38.

Then we have the very conveniently dismissed adults. Can any poster on this thread say, with hand on heart, that adults aren’t usually more trustworthy than children on matters of time? Of course they are. Adults live by the clock. >Florence Johnston said that the milk boy delivered at around 6.30!! This testimony alone should dismiss the 6.45 lie without a doubt.

Then we have the Holme’s on the other side. > They said they heard the knock at the Wallace’s door (which could only have been Close) at 6.30/6.35. But of course these get dismissed too.

So we are being asked to favour three kids on what they thought that they heard Close say the day after the event over witnesses that were actually there. EVERYONE OF WHOM SAY WELL BEFORE 6.45.

~~~

As for the reconstruction or the “all coppers are b*****ds” defence. We see a bit of blatant misinformation here (to use Rod’s favourite word.) You say that he was carrying crates!! Obviously he wasn’t carrying crates or anything that was too heavy for him to walk at a reasonable speed. You also say that he was comically throwing things into yards in place of deliveries. No, I’m actually simply repeating what Close said that he’d actually done on his rounds.1. He collected his milk from his dad’s shop which he stated was on the counter waiting for him when he got there. So this would have taken a matter of seconds. 2. He delivered to one house in Letchworth Street where he stated that he simply knocked on the door then handed over the milk. This would have taken a matter of seconds. 3. He put two bottles into a garden in Richmond Park (again, seconds) then walked on to the Wallace’s. Yes if you want to insinuate that Close was walking and acting like Buzz Aldrin on the moon then you can make it appear difficult. But it wasn’t.

So there’s zero evidence for any manipulation except for conspiracy thinking. So what do we do? Do we ignore/dismiss the facts simply to manufacture a reduced window of time for William to have killed Julia. Do we claim that the interpretation of a conversation held the day before by three kids somehow carries more weight than the testimony of Florence Johnston who actually opened the door to Close and took milk from him at around 6.30 (backed up by the neighbours on the other side.) Then a paperboy who puts Close there slightly later but still nowhere near 6.45.

Paranoid fantasy or facts? This has long been a narrative set by those who simply have to try and exonerate our kindly silver haired old insurance agent by assuming that the corrupt cops got at Close despite there being zero evidence for it. It’s like the mythical hoardes all saying that the Wallace’s were deliriously happy. We need to stick to the facts. To the likelihoods and probabilities that make up the case and not get involved in a crusade. The fact are in black and white. All that you have is the words of three kids interpreting a conversation and a none-existant police conspiracy. I have the word of Close. A police reconstruction. Two reliable adult witness and James Wildman. All of who prove beyond doubt that the 6.45 time is an invention.

[Herlock Sholmes]

https://liverpool1207blog.wordpress....iverpool-maps/

Don't know if this is much use to you guys, but there's loads of zoomable maps.

Thanks Al. These are great.

[Herlock Sholmes]

Another point. The narrative is one of trying to show that Close was at the Wallace’s door at 6.45 (despite the 3 witnesses who refute this claim.) To get to this it’s being claimed that the police reconstruction was dishonest. Actually of course there were two reconstructions, at different times, involving 2 sets of 2 different police officers.

Did any dissenting voice at the time walk the route and show the times to have been false? No they didn’t.

So is it possible that the timings of 5 and 6 minutes might have been a minute or two out (due to different walking speeds or slightly longer times taken on deliveries)? I’d say of course it’s possible.

But can we really be expected to believe that the police chopped it down from 20 minutes (6.25 at the church to 6.45 at the house) to 5 or 6 minutes? Can it really be suggested that the police quartered the time and hoped that no one said “hang on, thats impossible!” Or that the defence might even have sent someone to walk the route? This kind of checking does occur of course in true crime cases.

This would beggars belief. Close was at the Wallace’s door between 6.30 and 6.38 with the evidence of 2 reliable adults (Mrs Johnston is enough on her own) showing that it was likelier to have been at the earlier end. These are the facts.

[caz]

Hi Herlock,

I’ve tried to explain to WWH why I see the milk boy as a bit of a red herring. His only role as far as Wallace was concerned was to deliver the milk as usual. If Wallace was innocent, it apparently didn’t dawn on him that the boy’s timing might help save his bacon, which is why I strongly doubt Close could have seen Julia either at, or just a minute or so before "a quarter to seven", which was the precise time Wallace gave the Johnstons for his own departure, supposedly witnessed by his wife. Why would he not have told the police about this crucial, totally exonerating sighting by the milk boy? If guilty, however, Wallace couldn’t do the deed until Close had buggered off, for very obvious reasons. But equally obviously, if Close buggered off some ten minutes before Wallace did, then the boy’s sighting of Julia alive would not have provided a solid alibi, even if Wallace had thought to try it on.

More later...

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

Some thoughts after reading the latest posts...

If Dorothy L. Sayers was correct about it being “a well-known trick of burglars to lure away householders with bogus telephone messages”, Wallace could have been using the same trick to lure himself away, to make it look as though burglars did it so they could get access to his cash box.

WWH made the reasonable observation that it would have been unusual in a genuine burglary to lure away the householder, knowing that his wife would still be in the house. Most burglars would prefer an empty house for obvious reasons, and that would apply even more so if they were known to any of the occupants personally. WWH got round this by referring to the claim that when Wallace and his wife both went out, leaving the house empty, they would take all the cash and insurance moneys with them. So the idea is that the burglary HAD to take place while Julia was at home, or there would have been no takings to pinch. But how would a potential burglar have KNOWN this was Wallace’s policy [no pun intended], unless he or his wife had freely advertised the fact? Why would they do that, and risk being mugged every time they left the house together? It makes no sense.

I had to agree with Herlock that Wallace’s reaction to the telephone message, both immediately and after the murder, seems most peculiar and out of character. He had ample opportunity before the Tuesday evening to enquire about the name Qualtrough and the exact whereabouts of 25 Menlove Gardens East. He’d supposedly never heard of the name or the address [the latter didn’t exist, so how could he?] and had no idea how or why he had been singled out for special attention and tracked down to the chess club. If ANYONE else made that call, it had to be someone who was considerably better informed about Wallace and his movements than Wallace was about Qualtrough – which was not at all. For starters, someone must have seen the notice board and informed Qualtrough that Wallace was due to play that evening.

I also liked moste’s observation that Wallace’s best bet under the circumstances would have been to drop Qualtrough a line, suggesting he call at Wallace’s house the next day, either at lunch time or in the evening. He could have explained that he was not familiar with the Menlove Gardens area, and it would have saved him all that effort, using the tongue in his head, to ask for directions to MGE. It does seem to me he was already planning to use that tongue to good effect when mentioning it – preparing for the following evening’s bogus journey. Since the address didn’t exist, nobody could give him more than a rough idea of where he might find it. As moste pointed out, Wallace did NOT leave in good time for a 7.30 appointment on a miserable winter’s evening, if he knew he’d be trusting the tongue in his head to be his guide. Something is certainly not quite right with the whole thing.

If Wallace dreamed up the fake address it was so the tongue in his head could not possibly take him straight to a real one, leaving him with no good excuse to prolong the failed mission. That particular fake address was well chosen because he could continue to search for as long as it suited him, even after being told there was no MG East. He could still legitimately try MG West, North and South, if he wanted to put more minutes between leaving and returning to his house, during which any other potential suspect without a decent alibi for the entire two hours could find himself in the frame – especially considering the huge difficulty then and now, to give an accurate or reliable time of death without recourse to last sightings and so on. That was always Wallace’s best bet regarding reasonable doubt: the window of opportunity for someone else to have killed Julia during her devoted husband’s absence on business.

If Wallace was even vaguely familiar with Menlove Avenue, he surely knew it was a 40 minute walk from end to end, and that – in theory – Menlove Gardens East could have been almost anywhere in relation to the avenue. It didn’t even have to be that close to Menlove Gardens West, North or South, and in practice we know it wasn’t. It wasn’t close to anywhere! So anyone making assumptions about where Wallace might find the address would be wrong. I find it hard to believe that an experienced insurance salesman, making his living by travelling to the homes of new or established customers, would not have appreciated the potential pitfalls of setting off at the time Wallace did, trusting only the tongue in his head to get him to an unfamiliar destination, somewhere in the Menlove Avenue area, by 7.30. I totally agree with Herlock on this point. It seems like a contradiction that Wallace was so incurious and casual about the mysterious Qualtrough, and his request for an appointment the following evening, that he didn’t make a single enquiry beforehand and then left it to chance that he would find the address at all, let alone in good time, with the result that his tongue had to work overtime and ultimately to no avail. An innocent man would have cursed himself for his stupidity, on learning that his dear wife had been so brutally murdered while he was out chasing a wild goose. If only he’d planned his moves in advance by doing just a modicum of research, he could have smelled a rat in time to save a tragedy.

After the murder, it would have become obvious that Qualtrough had already known Wallace’s address when asking Beattie for it. An innocent Wallace would have scratched his head over this, but realised that the caller was trying to give the FALSE impression that he did not know Wallace personally. The fact that Beattie couldn’t supply the address would have told an innocent Wallace that “Qualtrough” was someone who DID know him personally, narrowing down the suspect list accordingly.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

For those who think the Wallace relationship was a normal and happy one, just because some people at the time were given no reason to think otherwise...

From this week's Radio Times:

Murder 24/7, a new BBC documentary:

‘In Southend, officers examine the flat where a violent assault took place. A heart-shaped cushion sits on a bloodstained sofa. Essex police’s prime suspect is Ian Slater, but he’s gone missing. In an almost comic interlude a neighbour insists Slater is “the sweetest geezer going”, just as officers searching Slater’s flat find a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire....’

If Wallace planned to murder his wife, he'd have been beyond stupid to advertise the fact that he wasn't a kind and cuddly husband to her.

If Wallace planned to murder his wife, he'd have been beyond stupid to hide the bloody murder weapon in his little chemistry lab for instance - or indeed to use poison instead, with the risk that any suspicious circumstances would automatically lead the police to look for a connection between her death and that same chemistry lab.

Make it look like Mister and Missus could have won the Mr. and Mrs. tv game show, and the Missus was murdered by Bertie Burglar in the Parlour with the Lead Piping, which he took away with him, and with a dollop of luck and a smidgen of reasonable doubt you can get away with your foul play.

Love,

Caz
X