The Mouthless Dead

The Mouthless Dead delves into the Wallace Murder, a national cause célèbre of the 1930s that remains unsolved over ninety years later. One night in January 1931, William Herbert Wallace, a 52-year-old insurance agent in Liverpool, received a phone message at his chess club from a 'Mr Qualtrough' who supposedly wanted to offer him work. The message contained an address in south Liverpool.

The following night, Wallace took a tram from his home in Anfield, which he shared with his wife, Julia, to visit Qualtrough at 25 Menlove Gardens East—an address he struggled to find. Even after consulting passers-by and a policeman, the road was nowhere to be found. Upon returning home two hours later, he discovered his wife dead in the parlour, her head crushed by violent blows. Despite the intricate nature of his alibi, Wallace became the primary suspect. He was arrested, tried, found guilty of murder, and sentenced to hang. However, the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned the verdict the following month, and he was released.

Since then, speculation has revolved obsessively around the identity of the killer. Both the police and the press were left baffled, while novelists, criminologists, and eminent lawyers theorised about who the guilty party might be. Dorothy L. Sayers explored the case in The Anatomy of Murder (1936). In his diary (1942), James Agate described it as "the perfect murder," and Raymond Chandler remarked, "The case is unbeatable. It will always be unbeatable."