Caroline Mary Hartley was born into a
wealthy English family in 1850. In 1875 she married a professional
soldier named Charles Edward Luard. After a lengthy career, Charles
Luard retired in 1887 with the rank of Major-General in the Royal
Engineers, and he and his wife settled into the pleasantly situated
home of Ightham Knoll, in Kent. During his retirement, Luard served
as a Kent County Councilor, a Justice of the Peace, and a Governor of
a local school, while both the Luards also kept active with the usual
genteel social activities.
During their life together, there were
only two known dark spots: The death of the younger of their two
sons in 1903, and a curious military scandal in 1879. After British troops were defeated by the Zulu in the Battle of Isandhlwana, blame
for the debacle was given mostly to a Colonel Anthony Durnford.
Durnford died during the battle, and thus was conveniently unable to
defend himself.
However, many in the army believed
Durnford was being posthumously slandered, and that the real
responsibility for the defeat rested on the heads of more senior
officers, most notably Baron Chemsford. Charles Luard, with,
perhaps, more loyalty than tact, was actively involved in the
campaign to save Durnford's good name. His charges against certain
of his fellow officers were considered so inflammatory that Luard was
court-martialed and censured. However, unpleasant as the whole
episode may have been, Luard was apparently able to overcome the
controversy and carry on with his career.
All in all, the Luards seemed wildly
unsuited to have figured in one of Britain's classic murder
mysteries.
Mrs. Luard earned her unenviable place
in history on August 24, 1908. At about 2:30 that afternoon, she and
her husband set out for a walk, accompanied by their dog. The
Major-General planned to get his clubs from his Golf Club, while Mrs.
Luard simply wanted a little stroll. She planned to return home
soon, as she was expecting a friend named Mary Stewart to join her
for tea.
The couple walked together for about
half an hour before parting ways. The Major-General went off towards
the Golf Course, while, he presumed, his wife made her way home. He
was seen by a number of people during his solo journey. After he had
gathered up his clubs, the local vicar, a Reverend Cotton, met him on
the road at 4:20 and drove him back to Ightham Knoll.
Upon entering his home, Luard was
surprised to find Mrs. Stewart still waiting the arrival of his wife,
and he went out in search of Caroline. At about fifteen minutes past
five, he found her.
Mrs. Luard was lying dead on the
verandah of the empty summer house owned by neighbors. It was in a
heavily wooded area about a mile from the Luard home. Someone had
shot her in the head at very close range. The three rings she had
been wearing were gone. One set of footprints led away from the
body.
It was believed that Mrs. Luard had
been killed at about 3:15, when several different witnesses heard the
sound of three gunshots coming from the direction of the summer
house. At that time, Major-General Luard was over a half-mile away,
towards the golf course clubhouse. Bloodhounds were immediately
brought on to the murder scene, but the trail they picked up went
cold when they reached the main road. A clergyman driving near the
murder scene around the time Mrs. Luard died told police he had seen
a man with a "low type of face" emerging from the woods,
but this alleged man was never found, and this possible clue went
nowhere.
At the inquest, it was revealed that
Mrs. Luard had been struck on the back of the head, knocking her
violently to the ground. Someone then used at .320 revolver to shoot
her behind the right ear and into her left cheek. The killer then removed her gloves,
wrenched the rings off her hand, and fled into oblivion. The rings
were never traced. It was noted that her husband did not own any
guns which could have been the murder weapon. The coroner's jury
returned the only possible verdict, that of "Murder by person or
persons unknown."
Unfortunately, that was all anyone
could say for sure about Caroline Luard's death, and the century
since her death has not produced any further reliable information.
The Luards appear to have been happily married, and there was no
indication that this quiet, inoffensive woman had any enemies. The
investigations of some crimes are hampered by a multiplicity of
competing leads to follow. Others are hopelessly stymied by not
having any leads at all. The Luard case is an outstanding example of
the latter.
With such a lack of clues to go by, it
was inevitable that rumor-mongering and baseless speculation would
arise to fill that gap. Although the Major-General had no known
motive, no sign of ever possessing anything that could have been the
murder weapon, and as near to a cast-iron alibi as you'll find
outside the pages of detective fiction, gossip quickly spread that he had shot his wife in cold blood and then stolen the
rings to fool police into thinking she had been the victim of a
robbery. Villagers muttered that this affluent, upper-class man was
getting away with wife-murder because his influential friends were
engaging in a cover-up. It was also rumored that Luard had been
having an affair with a local woman. The widower began receiving
vicious anonymous letters calling him a murderer, and threatening
vengeance. Luard was so rattled by these faceless, nameless taunts
that he put Ightham Knoll up for sale and made plans to leave the
area. In the meantime, he went to stay at the home of a friend,
Colonel Charles Edward Warde.
Luard's surviving son, Charles, was
serving in the army in South Africa. He was, of course, immediately
informed of his mother's death. He left for England as soon as
possible, landing in Southampton on September 18.
He arrived to be confronted not just by
one tragedy, but two. On the morning before Charles Luard arrived
home, his father rose from bed, dressed, wrote letters addressed to
his son, to Charles Warde, and to his brother-in-law Tom Hartley. He
then walked to the nearby railway line. As the 9:09 train from
Maidstone West to Tonbridge came up the tracks, he threw himself
under it. The inquest on Luard's death had a verdict that was
different, but just as starkly simple as his wife's: "Suicide
while temporarily insane."
Luard had left in his room a note
saying, "I am sick of the scandalous and lying reports, and I
cannot face my son." His letter to Warde read: "I am sorry to have returned your kindness and hospitality and long friendship in this way, but I am satisfied it is best to join her in the second life at once, as I can be of no further use to anyone in future in this world, of which I am tired, and in which I don't wish to live any longer. I thought my strength was sufficient to bear up against the horrible imputations and terrible letters which I have received since that awful crime was committed which robbed me of all my happiness. And it is so lonely. And the goodness, kindness, and sympathy of so many friends kept me going but somehow now the last day or two something seems to have snapped. The strength has left me, and I care for nothing except to join her again. So good-bye, dear friend, to both of us."
At the inquest, the coroner made a point of accusing the poison-pen writers (who were never identified) of being morally culpable in the Major-General's demise.
At the inquest, the coroner made a point of accusing the poison-pen writers (who were never identified) of being morally culpable in the Major-General's demise.
Eight months after Mrs. Luard's death,
a workhouse inmate named David Woodruff was arrested and charged with
her murder. It was widely suspected that his arrest was a "frame-up"
devised by the Chief Constable (who was the brother of Luard's friend
Charles Warde,) to conveniently "solve" the murder--a
suspicion that only deepened when it was immediately established that
Woodruff was in prison on the day Mrs. Luard died. The embarrassed
police had no choice but to free their one and only suspect.
The investigation into the Luard murder
was essentially over almost as soon as it had begun, but the
conspiracy theories continue vigorously to this day. The idea that
Mrs. Luard was killed by a highway robber or other wandering villain
is the simplest solution, and perhaps for that reason it has gotten
virtually no support at all. There is a general conviction that this
was a carefully pre-planned murder, committed by
someone she knew.
But who could this person have been?
And what motive could he or she have had?
One popular theory gives a scenario
that would do Agatha Christie proud. It involves a petty
professional crook named John Alexander Dickman, who was executed in
1910 for the robbery/murder of a man named John Nisbet. At the time,
however, many--including some of the jurors at his trial!--had doubts
about Dickman's guilt, as his conviction was based on weak
circumstantial evidence. However, then-Home Secretary Winston
Churchill refused all requests to commute the death sentence. A
judge named Sir Sidney Orme Rowan-Hamilton, who wrote a book about
the case four years later, reportedly believed Dickman was the
murderer of Caroline Luard. Clarence Henry Norman, who had served as
court shorthand writer during Dickman's trial and subsequently led
the efforts to have his sentence overturned, claimed that Sir Sidney
told him that Mrs. Luard had--without her husband's knowledge--sent
Dickman money after seeing an ad he had placed in the "Times"
pleading for financial help. Dickman then altered her check so it
showed a larger amount. When Mrs. Luard discovered this forgery, she
secretly arranged a meeting with Dickman in order to confront him
with his fraud. He chose to shut her up about his thievery by
murdering her. According to Norman's account, friends of the
Luards--who included the judge at Dickman's trial and Winston
Churchill--all colluded to indirectly punish Dickman for the Luard
murder by railroading him for the killing of Nisbet.
Unfortunately, as colorful as this
scenario may be, there appears to be not one scintilla of evidence to
support any of it, other than Norman's hearsay. Other armchair
detectives have made brave attempts to formulate scenarios where
Charles Luard--using a hidden bicycle or other devious means--might,
just might, have been able to swiftly and secretly change his route
long enough to shoot Caroline during her walk home. (To be fair, it
is true that Charles' albi only holds up if the sounds witnesses
heard at 3:15 were indeed those of the gunshots that killed
Caroline--something which was never absolutely proven. In the
British countryside, the sound of gunshots made by hunters was
commonplace.) Out of sheer desperation, a few people have even
wondered if Charles Luard's court-martial might have had something to
do with his wife's murder many years later. Could Mrs. Luard have
been murdered by a secret lover? Or killed by her husband
because she had a secret lover?
So many theories,
so few facts. It is as if Caroline Luard was murdered by a phantom.
"Western Gazette," August 27, 1909 |
Murder by firearm was very uncommon in Britain in those days - and still is quite uncommon, I think. It seems unlikely that a roving tramp or common criminal would commit such a deed. Any theory on the murder is, as you pointed out, fanciful - if in some cases ingenious.
ReplyDeleteIf the gun was a .32, was that a military weapon?
ReplyDelete