Murder Most Foul – Issue 111 – January 2019

staying alone at the same time fitted the

description of the man seen running

away. There was no suggestion they

knew her and indeed one, aged around

40, had asked the receptionist to go for a

swim with him. “An unusual invitation,”

thought Detective Sergeant A. Moran.

Did Daisy work in Isow’s in Brewer

Street as a cashier at one time? asked

one writer. If she did, a Mr. Stroud

might be able to help regarding the man.

No, she did not and that was another

lead snuffed out.

People thought she often went to the

Norfolk Hotel and other public houses

in the Paddington area. Someone had

seen her outside the Café Royal in

Regent Street one lunchtime. They

might well have done. She always shut

the office up during the lunch hour. But

she does not seem to have used the time

for a liaison.

A Val Renny wrote, giving her address

as the Acocks Green, Birmingham, Post

Office, saying Daisy was a very dear

friend and that she was about to marry

a man Tonio and the police should look

for a £1,000 diamond ring. But that line

of inquiry led absolutely nowhere.

Hawkyard’s officers traced a number

of men who had known her before and

during the war as well as more recently.

Certainly there had been romances, one

or two with married men, but they had

fizzled out. The police could only find

one instance when she had spent the

night with a man and then she had told

him she was having a period. It was as

long back as 1941 or 1942 during an air

raid. In the spring before her death she

had been out to the cinema with a man

who had come to the agency looking

for a job, but that was about it. None of

the men questioned resembled the man

running away.

Camps thought that Daisy probably

had not had sex for a couple of years

before her death and perhaps not at

all. Daisy had even told her mother

she thought she might never marry. So

much for the jealous boyfriend theory.

Rather patronisingly Hawkyard’s report

thought her to be a “quiet friendly

woman of amiable disposition, a woman

who was anxious to marry and yet not

one who chased after men.”

Then there were the questions of the

stolen typewriter and the possibility that

she had surprised a burglar. Typewriters

were targets of theft after the war, just

as computers are today, and the stolen

the names of a number of male friends.

Could one of these be the jealous

boyfriend? But when it came to it, hopes

that the diaries might contain details

of her sex life were wrong. In fact the

contents were disappointing and related

solely to meetings with girlfriends and

office business.

Again there were a number of

sightings and stories about her, few

of them accurate ones. An ex-police

officer who kept a pub near Matlock

in Derbyshire said she and a man had

stayed there. Both he and his wife had

recognised Daisy from her photograph

in the Daily Express. But they were

wrong. She was known to have stayed

at the Albion Hotel, Eastbourne, in July

paying 30 shillings a day. Was this a

rendezvous? But she had taken a single

room and neither of the other two men

sister downstairs, said Daisy did not
confide in her and was moody.
Before the war Daisy had worked for
an airline, and, during the war, with the
Ministry of Aviation. After the war she
had worked in various secretarial jobs
but she had ambition and decided to
cash in her savings to set up a secretarial
agency in the spring of 1949. At the
time of her death it was not doing well
and indeed about a third of her £500
capital had gone already.
The police decided to concentrate on
her love life and they found that she was
a solitary woman who joined clubs such
as the Overseas Club and the Players
Theatre often to get cheap tickets and
that then she didn’t go there any more.
She was also a member of the Fifty-Fifty
club which had a reputation for catering
for gays. She had never drunk much
and even less since she had had a bout
of rheumatitis. Ernest Walton, who let
her the office room, said she kept herself
to herself. “A superior class of person,”
he said. She had been very upset when
her typewriter was stolen in a burglary
six weeks previously and he had lent her
another. Knowing she was struggling to
make a living he had reduced the rent.
He didn’t think there was any suggestion
of immorality.
One discovery was that she kept a
series of diaries in Clarke’s shorthand, a
system taught 30 years earlier, but which
by 1949 was obsolete. Police secretaries
couldn’t transcribe it and so outside help
was obtained at a cost of two guineas.
There was speculation it would contain

Camps thought that

Daisy probably had

not had sex for a

couple of years before

her death and perhaps

not at all. Daisy had

even told her mother

she thought she might

never marry

CRIME CAMERA

An aerial view of police and newsmen at the scene of a 1920s New York

shooting. Taking their victim for a “one-way ride” was obviously too much

trouble for the hit-men who rubbed out victim Teddy Pandola. Instead,

they took him for a “one-way walk,” although the outcome was the same.

Dr. Francis Camps who conducted

the autopsy on murdered Daisy