The Telephone Call

Shedunnit

Caroline Crampton

Arts, Books

4.9 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 September 2020

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Why has the murder of Julia Wallace on the night of 20 January 1931 haunted detective novelists for decades? Well, it all comes back to the telephone call. Become a member of the Shedunnit Book Club and get bonus audio, listen to ad free episodes and join a book-loving community at shedunnitshow.com/bookclub. Books and sources: —The Nurse Daniels episode of this podcast —The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace —The Edith Thompson episode of this podcast — The Scoop by Members of the Detection Club —The Anatomy of Murder by Members of the Detection Club —“The Compassionate Machine” by Margery Allingham, collected in Truly Criminal: A Crime Writers' Association Anthology of True Crime edited by Martin Edwards —Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers —Skin for Skin by Winnifred Duke —Vegetable Duck by John Rhode —The Telephone Call by John Rhode —“Absolutely Elsewhere” by Dorothy L. Sayers, collected in In the Teeth of the Evidence —Personal Call by Agatha Christie —P.D. James on the Wallace case in 2013 —The Skull Beneath The Skin by P.D. James —The Murder Room by P.D. James —The Trial of William Herbert Wallace by W.F. Wyndham Brown —Wallace: The Final Verdict by Roger Wilkes —The Killing of Julia Wallace by Jonathan GoodmanThanks to my sponsor for this episode, BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com/shedunnit for 10% off your first month of professional online counselling. To be the first to know about future developments with the podcast, sign up for the newsletter at shedunnitshow.com/newsletter. The podcast is on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and Instagram as @ShedunnitShow, and you can find it in all major podcast apps. Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss the next episode. Click here to do that now in your app of choice. Find a full transcript of this episode at shedunnitshow.com/thetelephonecalltranscript. Music by Audioblocks and Blue Dot Sessions. See shedunnitshow.com/musiccredits for more details. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The most sinister and disturbing crimes bloom from moments so mundane that they're barely noticeable.
0:11.2	A spontaneous break in a long-held routine, a friendly smile to a stranger,
0:16.5	a spur of the moment decision on a warm evening to take the long way home. Those are the points
0:22.0	where the splinters of tragedy begin to pierce an otherwise peaceful
0:25.4	existence. That's how it was in the case of Julia Wallace, found brutally battered
0:31.0	to death in the sitting room of her home in Liverpool on the evening of the 20th of January 1931.
0:37.0	A crime seemingly without a motive or a solution, it has haunted the imaginations of crime writers ever since.
0:45.0	Dorothy L. Sayers, Marjorie Allingham, PD James,
0:48.0	they all spent time submerged in the overlapping and contradictory mysteries of this one 48-hour period in 1930s Liverpool
0:56.0	baffled as to how this real life case could be stranger than any fiction and it all started with a telephone call.
1:04.1	Welcome to She Dunnet. I'm Caroline Crampton. I want to remind
1:16.7	listeners that this is a very research intensive and completely independent
1:20.6	podcast. If you enjoy listening to it and feel able to support what I do,
1:25.3	the best way is to become a member of the She-Darnett Book Club,
1:28.6	where in return for your contribution you get to hear the show without advertising, listen to extended versions of interviews,
1:35.0	and join the community in reading and discussing a different Golden Age murder mystery every month.
1:40.0	Find out more and sign up by visiting She-Danitbook club.com
1:45.0	slash join or by clicking the link in the description of this episode. The telephone call was for William Herbert Wallace, Julia's husband. On Monday the 19th of January 1931, the day before her death,
2:06.4	William set out as usual from their home on Wolverton Street in Anfield,
2:10.7	a neighborhood that lies to the north and east of Liverpool City Centre, to go to his weekly chess night.
2:17.0	The Liverpool Central Chess Club met at the City Café, and William had entered his name in advance for the tournament that was to be played that evening.
2:25.0	He left home as usual about 715, expecting to arrive in time to start playing around 745.
	...

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