THE STORY SO FAR
A tale from the archives.
Alma’s exciting marriage had turned stale and loveless. Then she’d started a passionate affair with her chauffeur. Soon her husband was dead.
But who killed him?
THE CASE
Mrs Alma Rattenbury, 39, sighed miserably, drifting around her comfortable home, Villa Madeira. Her life had been so exciting once, full of fun and passion…
What had happened?
She was 27 when she’d met Francis ‘Ratz’ Rattenbury in Canada.
Alma was a popular, beautiful musician then, raising her son alone after being widowed and then divorced.
She loved to party. And at one wild affair she’d met Ratz. What a catch!
At 56, he was older and married with two children. Yet as the architect who’d designed the Canadian town of Victoria’s lavish parliament buildings, he was rich, respected – and sexy.
They began a passionate affair, and in 1925, Ratz abandoned his family to wed Alma.
It was thrilling – yet scandalous. The pair were shunned by society. So they left for England, bought Villa Madeira in Bournemouth and had a son, John.
But Ratz’s career never recovered. Haunted by failure, he’d become an impotent, bitter alcoholic. Now 67, he slept downstairs each night, drunk on whisky, leaving outgoing, glamorous Alma craving the adventure and passion that she’d once enjoyed.
But then on 25 September 1934, Alma’s life changed forever – when they hired a chauffeur-handyman.
George Percy Stoner, 18, wasn’t just polite and hardworking. He was young and handsome, too. And soon he was besotted with the sexy lady of the house.
Alma, starved of love and passion, couldn’t resist him. Smitten, she confessed to her housekeeper, Irene Riggs, that she was madly in love.
But Irene was horrified. It could only end in tears.
In March 1935, Alma told her husband she needed an operation. Then she whisked George off to a top London hotel.
They made love, gorged on fine foods and shopped in Harrods. Servants bowed and scraped to George, calling him ‘Sir.’
Heaven.
Yet two days after they returned home, Alma announced she’d arranged another trip. This time to Bridport in Dorset with Ratz.
He’d been depressed and needed a lift.
Poor young George was distraught, begged Alma not to go. He couldn’t bear it if she and Ratz slept together!
Alma promised they’d have separate rooms.
So George calmed down and left at 8pm to visit his grandparents, and while he was there, he asked to borrow their mallet to fix a fence.
Back at Villa Madeira, Alma and Ratz played cards, then she kissed him goodnight and went upstairs to pack for Bridport.
All was calm. But at 10.30pm, housekeeper Irene heard a terrible shrieking and ran downstairs.
She found a hysterical Alma. Ratz was slumped in his armchair in the drawing room – blood pouring from his head. He’d been struck repeatedly with a heavy object.
Irene rang the doctor, while Alma drank whisky, weeping and raving.
‘Poor Ratz! Look at the blood! Someone has finished him.’
Yet Ratz was not dead. As an ambulance rushed him to hospital, police filled the house.
They were shocked as Alma ran around in a drunken frenzy, playing loud music, turning on every light, even trying to kiss the cops.
And she kept slurring something astonishing…
‘I did it. He has lived too long. I will make a better job of it next time. I thought I was strong enough.’
Was she in shock?
But next morning she told an incredible tale. How they’d been playing cards… ‘when he dared me to kill him, as he wanted to die. I picked up a mallet, and he said, “You have not the guts to do it!” Then I hit him. I would have shot him if I had a gun. I did it deliberately, and would do it again.’
Alma was arrested and charged with GBH with intent to murder. But Irene wasn’t convinced.
‘I know she did not do it,’ she told officers.
For George had got drunk and confessed to her.
‘Mrs Rattenbury is in jail – and I’ve put her there!’ he’d wailed.
He said he’d bludgeoned Ratz, not Alma.
So George was arrested, too.
Five days later, Ratz died. Now it was murder.
Except that both George and Alma insisted they were guilty – and the other was innocent. Who was protecting whom?
‘If you lie, you would only hang yourself, without saving him,’ Alma’s solicitor begged. Finally, when her son pleaded with her, Alma cracked.
She said that before she’d found Ratz’s body, George had crept into her room, agitated.
‘You won’t be going to Bridport tomorrow,’ he’d blurted out, admitting he’d just hit Ratz with the mallet.
‘He was frightened at what he’d done – I thought he’d just hurt him badly enough to prevent Ratz going,’ Alma wept.
Their trial at the Old Bailey in May 1935 was a sensation. In the end, both denied murder, and George refused to even testify.
Alma’s defence cast George as a tragic victim. ‘Melodramatic, impulsive, jealous… never mixed with girls… taken away to London, flung into the vortex of this illicit love, his first love,’ he said. ‘That will be (Alma’s) sorrow and her disgrace so long as she lives. A woman, self indulgent and wilful, who by her own folly has erected in this poor young man a Frankenstein of jealousy which she couldn’t control.’
Now the jury had to decide. Who had killed Ratz?
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