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THE CHINA, MAIL, SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1955.
THE WOMEN DIPLOMATS BATTLE FOR PROMOTION
By Elizabeth Adams
ECENTLY into New
RE York flew blonde, blue--
eyed Miss Kathleen Mary Graham-aged 51. She had arrived to take up her post as Britain's highest ranking woman diplomat Deputy Consul-General at New York (at a basic £1,340, rising to £1,850), And she made this intriguing statement: "It's quite an experiment to iry out women in this rank: I'm the only one at present, but 1 prophesy that there will be others, I was lucky to be the one who got moved up first."
Which means what? Is Miss Graham's appointment the first step into a new era for British women in diplomacy? Is it the start of jobs for the girls?
I know who would love it if
i did. The 12 solitary women (four of them Old Roodeans) In "A" branch the diplomatic branch of the Foreign Service, Agiling their lonely battle fur promotion against their 749 male colleagues,
I know who would hate it, 400, Undoubtedly those same 740 male colleagues.
As late as 1043
it was still
being argued in the Commons thai women were totally Un- suited to diplomatic work. And it was not, in fact, until nine years ago that women became eligible for the diplomatic branch.
BU
QUIET GLITTER
DUT certainly, since that time, the small band of 12 women who have breached the sanctu- ary show a quiet glitter of achievement.
Take 32-year-old Miss Evelyn Grace Rolleston. for instance. She became a diplomat at, the
PHILHAR PISTILA S RECITALS
OPERAS
ORCHESTRAS
EDINBURGH FESTIVAL
Ho
SPITALITY
"How does he do it? Signs himself 'Eddie Calvert'—that's how he does it.”
MEET SPOONER
T
HE man in the chair facing Reginald Spooner, Murder Squad chief, was growing more confident by the minute. He was positive there could be no evidence against him. He had survived the opening of the interrogation-always the tricklest part- and now, like a poker player who knows he has his one surviving opponent licked. he was stringing Spooner along,
Or so he thought. Occasionally the Murder Squad man observed the subtle
age of 24. She was seni tohint of an alibi. Made, not Budapest in 1947. Two years with the sudden recollection Inter she had mastered Magyar
(which entitled her to £100 aand
Brown
excitement of the
year extra). She is now a second worried-but-innocent person secretary £575 rising to whose mind has been jogged
£850
by a fragment of memory; Miss Gillian Gurda
not with the methodical pre- turned diplomat when she was 20. She also went to Budapest, ciseness of the calm indivi- was proficient in Magyar after dual who accepts the situa 12 months and is now, at 32, tion with "I know it's all a second secretary,
Elizabeth Richardson, silly mistake which will be cleared
in up
few minutes."
No there it was again. Just a casual, half-hearted introduction of a fact -
Miss Girton girl, Russian-speaking, 28 years old, entered the service at 21, had served three years in Moscow bofore she was 25. Miss Maria Enid Armstrong took up diplomacy straight from Oxford at the age of 21. She is now, at 25, third secretary at Bucharest (busle £400 rising to
£550).
a
of the YARD
by PERCY HOSKINS
The first story in this sortes tells of a triumph of painstaking detection
by Reginald Spooner (left). fic is 59, a former insurance statistician, one-time" ML5 man, and now chief of the Flying Squad. Today's dossier on The Confident Killer comes from Spooner's casebook when he was with the Murder Squad,
(1) The intruder had gardener of the Wiltshaws, 29- throwaway line the actors entered the back of the year-old Lealle Green.
call it but one meant to house by way of an over- And, liko all the others,
London Expresa Bervice
Beginning a new series on the great cases of the 'great detectives of today,
Wilishaw, hod stayed at the Metropole Hotel, Leeds, the night before the murder.
Again, circumstantial but not conclusive evidence.
Two days after The murder Green told another Leeds nurse that his "aunt," a Mrs
Will shaw, had been attacked with an old-fashioned poker. No details, of the weapon had at that time been published.
Circumstantial but not direct evidence.
But now the pendulum of luck began to swing.
The men at the Station Hotel, Stafford, with whom Green had been mixing on the day of the murder, were cross-questioned, by Spooner. And he established, that there was a distinct in- terval when Green was not in sight:
Another clue
TN that interval, # 5.10 p.m2 I train lett Stafford, arriving at Bariasion at 5.35 pm There Was a train back at 8.50 p.m., which would get him back to p.m That left an interval of hülf an hour plenty of time for murder.
And what of Kathleen Mary register. And uttered by a grown spinney path which Green seemed "in the clear." the hotel by 8.20
it
taken
Graham herself, the golden girl of the bunch? She entered the service late-but her only six years since her first diplomatic appointment to collar the Deputy Consul Generalship.
SMALL FLAME
INDOUBTEDLY then, once a
man whose brain seemed to would not be be ticking over with the everyone;
"Check one deflant theme:
that, you so-and-so, and see where it gets you.”
Poker face
U woman is in the Service, BUT when it comes
application and the small quiet Bame of ability will take her forward at an adequate rate: and it is probable that Miss Graham's prophecy that others will follow hen her mild apotheosis will grikiually come 10 pass,
But why do so few gel in? Why, in the space of nine years,
have only a bare dozen man- aged to scrape into the diplo- matic service?
the
"Because," answers Foreign Office blandly, "very dew apply.". It is true to say,
that even to,
fewer manage
to producing a poker face, Reginald Spooner has few equals. He used it in his wartime duels with
known
to For those carefully dropped fragments of Information sug- gested that there were people rendy to vouch that he was 12
(2) He appeared to miles away on the afternoon of know his way about the the murder. house, because the only
It was at this moment places disturbed were those Spooner noticed the man's in which the jewels rested; shoes. They were rubber-soled,
with *
about foreign look and
them.
(3) The time factor.
Thieves who descend upon spies; this type of house the rea- in his post-war battle of soned) sacrifice a day or so wits with
treacherous watching, noting, and tim-
ing the occupants' habits,
scientists.
Probe
THE murderer had left one footprint on the polished kitchen floor of the Wiltshaw
mansion—and it had been mado by a rubber sole of similar size. Now, with the perpetual Why, then, had this man of cigarette hanging from his such
But there was one discrepancy, obviously unnecessary The
1 footprint had crease hips, he looked a dejected violence chosen the dangerous across the sale. The shoe at man forced to accept de- hour of 5.30 pm? An hour which the defective was gazing feat. But behind the that might at any moment bring had no such mark facade of gloom the detec- the return of the dead woman's
Just A trivial coincidence, te satisfy the examiners.
tive's brain was also tick- husband. (Mr Wiltshaw did in perhaps, the fact that the size
the BELIDO. Last year, for instance, onlying over. And the message fact arrive at the house within was
Certainly it 19 girls Gat the entrance It recorded was: "I don't 15 minutes of the crime). proved nothing. But it increased Spooner's suspicions. He began a systematic probe into the Ufe and activities of Leslie Green.
And soon Spooner found that Green was living beyond his station. Although he already Green had a wife and child, was "engaged" to a nurse in Leeds to whom he had, shown two rings.
laminations. None passed:
But there is, perhaps, a TED-
son why so few girls apply in
like it, I don't like it at all."
the first place, It is the little Spooner had travelled to
maiter of the marriage bar, For
Last man
a female diplomat the path to Staffordshire some 10 days LE more Spooner thought the altar-even with a Briton earlier when the bludgeon-about it, the more confident acada automatically straighted body of 62-year-old Alice he became about his theory: The through to the exit door from
Wiltshow had been found in murder was committed by some- the service.
her 14-roomed country man- one who knew the house. sion at Barlaston.
SWEET ACCORD
ADMIT that a woman might
I and it difficult to run a husband in Surbiton in sweet accord with а carcer In
I
The weapon -- an old- fashioned poker
www
was
So to the next step. That was Spooner obtained replicas of to question the relatives, the Mrs Wiltshaw's rings from the And friends of the Lelends, the
the jewellers neighbours,
nurse said that these rings were
had shown....
Tho
Then, another clue. unager of the hotel a former H.A.F. man-casually mentioned lo nolleed that when Green left to catch the 1.68 pm. train to Leads that night he was currying an Air Force macintosh.
A similar raincoat was missing , from the Witshaw home.
Immediately Spooner stat cul the order: Ask all railway lost property offices if such a macin- foch had been found,
It was traced to Holyhead--- handed in soon after the 7.50 train from Stafford arrived.
Came yet one more clue- one more step in the breaking-
down of that alibi.
... Oa Leslie Green was found a letter mentioning an address in Bei- Loods. Again montgrove, Spooner
The acted swiftly, house was searched from top to bottom. The foor was pulled up-it cost the police £50 to repair the damage. And the missing rings were discovered. (The root of the jewellery was never found.)
A whisper
THAT was enough. Armed with this evidmce Spooner con- fronted. Green, The detective asked him to try on a left- handed blood-stained glo vo found in a Barlaston ditch. The thumb of the glove was cut, And tise identical spot.
found in the kitchen. Up- tradesmen, the former employees identical with the ones Green Greena thumb bore a car at Washington--and would have to stairs, ransacked dressing of Mrs Wiltshaw. resign her career on marriage tables told the story of
anyway.
But at least would be her free choice.
the last man
Now Spooner had come to that £5,000 worth of missing
Circumstantial but not direct that long evidence,
Spooner also discovered that
On the other hand, har hus. Jowellery. On his way out list of people, the man he was
well permit un to follow his wife in hor postings and follow his own career at .tima.
same
At least the decision should be her own. At least she should
not be at the mercy of an arbitrary condemnation to spin-
thief had stopped to
wrench two rings from the
fingers of the woman.
Plain pattern
sterhood if she wishes to pros: THERE it was: a plain pat-
per in the chonery career,
Prospects for the
12 +gallant are, perhaps, fairly bright so Bong as they keep their third Onger, left ind, suitably naked and deprived. But what of the future! le Britain to insist that forever she la to be served by a badigiblo, number of diplos matic spinsters? -|-
(COFFRIGHT)
tern of murder by a stranger for whatever the house contained.
But Spooner (whose shrewdness convicted the Bacist Neville Heath) could not completely fall in with this theory, Three factors dieburbed him
point still remained to be cleared up-what of that foot- print? Back wont Spooner to the
"Can you nesu y experts.
Green, using the пале of me that Green'a Bhoo did not
mako this footprint?"
+
The killer... and his victim
"If the man was moving it
produce such a crense,” replied the lab, men.
Spooner exploded.
"Of ha
course he was moving!”
murdering the
crind. "Ho old lady"
Ота trial Groen wo the mes
confident - men who, bad
milod his way through that first
**frabelkan panik. He invoted two
supposed to be house. breakers and wwnto ho had zes - colved the rings : from coo-
them at 11 am, on July
of
Bhit that sons 10 hours, AFTER he" had thown the rings to the
WAS
When Spooner stepped into tie witness-box
Green whis- pored to his guards: "It his evidence sends me down I'll come back and haunt him."
Well, Spooner's evidence did
Green send him down, sentenced to death, 143 days after the murder, and executed on December 23, 1952.
I saw Reginald Spooner successful trapper of murderers only a a couple of nights ago. He does not look like a haunted man. In fact, he says, insomala is the least of his worries.
(COPYRIGUT)
NEXT SATURDAY: John Capstick in the Valley of Suspicion
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