A Dreadful Murder by Minette Walters

insane’.
    The Coroner said that the Major-General had been driven to kill himself by the hate mail he received. Those who believed him innocent were shocked at how much cruelty had been shown by his neighbours. Those who believed him guilty thought he’d received his just deserts.
    The letters he wrote in the hours before his death were read out at his inquest and published later in the local newspapers. Some found them moving and sincere, others thought they were a final, dishonest attempt by Major-General Luard to ‘clear’ his name.
    No woman was ever named as Charles Luard’s mistress.
    No man was ever named as Caroline Luard’s lover.
    Charles and Caroline’s surviving son, Captain Elmhurst Luard, was killed in France in September 1914, shortly after the outbreak of World War I.

Author’s Note
    Most of the characters in this story existed and are real. A few – the Blaines, the Farrells, Sarah Anderson and Amy Pegg – are my own invention.
    1908 was a time of change in Britain. Herbert Asquith, the leader of the Liberal Party, was Prime Minister. Mrs Pankhurst was fighting for votes for women. And Europe was in the run-up to the most shocking and awful war the world had ever seen.
    With the help of his Chancellor, David Lloyd George, Asquith laid the way for the Welfare State. The workhouses were closed, the poor were given access to education, and the Old Age Pension was introduced.
    Such measures meant that wealthy women like Caroline Luard – who spent their days working on behalf of the poor – would no longer be needed. In future the State would decide how much benefit a person could receive, and these moves were already under way at the time of Caroline’s death.
    In view of the hate campaign against Charles afterwards, I think it probable that Caroline, too, was disliked by many of her neighbours. Few people enjoy taking charity, particularly if they have to beg for it. And if Caroline put conditions on the money she handed out, she would have made enemies.
    I don’t know if young men like Michael Blaine and Will Farrell lived in and around Ightham in 1908. But I find it easier to believe that Caroline was murdered by someone she knew rather than by a stranger.
    Clearly many people thought the same at the time otherwise they wouldn’t have focused the blame on her husband. But, apart from the Major-General, little attention was given to anyone else in the area. Police effort was put into searching for vagrants and finding witnesses to Charles Luard’s alibi.
    For myself, I have never believed that the Major-General shot his wife or hired someone else to do it for him. His alibi depended entirely on chance. He could not have known that Thomas Durrand would be outside Hall Farm when he passed by, nor that a labourer would see him ten minutes later.
    Had he been guilty, he would have stayed at the Golf Club as long as he could – acting normally, talking to friends, buying drinks – until the tragic news came through that someone else had found Caroline’s body.
    Instead, he collected his golf bag, spoke to no one, accepted a lift home from the vicar and put himself in the dangerous position of being the last person to see Caroline alive and the first to find her dead.
    I believe Charles loved Caroline. And I believe what he wrote in his last letter to his friend.
    ‘
The dreadful murder of my wife has robbed me of all my happiness.
’
    For those interested in further research,
a factual retelling of the murder can
be found on Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Mary_Luard

Praise for Minette Walters
     
     
    THE ICE HOUSE
    ‘Terrific first novel with a high
Rendellesque frisson count’
    The Times
    THE SCULPTRESS
    ‘A devastatingly effective novel’
    Observer
    THE SCOLD’S BRIDLE
    ‘A gothic puzzle of great intricacy
and psychological power’
    Sunday Times
    THE DARK ROOM
    ‘A marvellous, dramatically intelligent
novel. It shimmers with suspense, ambiguity
and a deep unholy