In 1931, William Herbert Wallace was first convicted and then acquitted on appeal of the murder of his wife, Julia. Her killer was never found and the case remains one of the most pored-over mysteries of the 20th century. Crime novelists including Dorothy L Sayers and PD James have written essays and books about it, and none other than Raymond Chandler, who knew a thing or two about unsolvable wickedness, described it as “the nonpareil of all murder mysteries... I call it the impossible murder because Wallace couldn’t have done it, and neither could anyone else.” Why would anyone murder an apparently nondescript, harmless woman? Anthony Quinn has now turned his attention to the case in his new novel; the result is intensely readable and, appropriately enough, indelibly haunting.
Quinn’s masterstroke is not to focus on Wallace himself, a middle-aged insurance company collection agent who lived in Liverpool, but to invent a new character, Detective Inspector Key, who plays chess with Wallace and is drawn into the case as much through his friendship with the accused man as for professional reasons.
The early chapters of the book stick closely to the historical facts as recorded. On 19 January 1931, Wallace was telephoned at home by a mysterious man – a “Mr Qualtrough” – who suggested that “he had some business to put Wallace’s way” and that he should call on him at home the following night. Wallace, who was off the clock by then, headed to Qualtrough’s given address of 25 Menlove Gardens East, only to find that it did not exist, and returned home where Julia had been brutally murdered in his absence.
In real life, Wallace’s guilt seemed to be overwhelming, if largely circumstantial, and he was arrested, tried and initially convicted. Quinn’s Key – an experienced policeman who believes that his colleagues’ rush to solve a high-profile murder meant that they fixed on the wrong man – enables him to offer an alternative perspective to the case. In Quinn’s telling, it is in part thanks to Key’s support that Wallace is acquitted at the court of criminal appeal the month after he was sentenced to death (in life it proved a pyrrhic victory; already in poor health, Wallace remained a target of suspicion and distrust, and died of a persistent kidney infection a couple of years later).
Were this simply a true-life tale, a la Kate Summerscale, it would be interesting enough. But Quinn has another intention, and he blends the true-life account with his own storyline, in which Key recounts the sorry tale to a pair of intrigued listeners - playboy and aspirant writer Teddy and a “somewhat plain girl, awkwardly tall” Lydia Tarrant while on a transatlantic cruise 15 years later. Teddy is persuaded into writing a screenplay about the events and there is a Hitchcockian tension as Quinn, through flashbacks, elegantly offers a compelling solution to the killer’s identity.
The novel is rich in legal and procedural detail – in the acknowledgments, Quinn says that he was inspired to write about the case by a conversation with his barrister friend Thomas Grant, to whom the book is dedicated – but is never dense. Instead, it remains gripping and surprising, right up to the final revelation. It is a mark of The Mouthless Dead’s great quality as both a novel and reinvestigation of this bewildering murder that the reader finishes with a sense of satisfaction at apparently having the case closed, even though, in reality, Julia Wallace’s killer will probably remain unknown for ever.
• The Mouthless Dead by Anthony Quinn is published by Abacus (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
