The bedroom phone, phone calls & Neville.

[Adam]

Suppose there were three stages of escalation.

1 Sheila is quarrelling with Nevill downstairs and at some point gets the gun and goes upstairs with it.

Nevill is concerned and thinks of phoning the police but decides against it. Police cars and all the rest might upset her still more and there would be a story in the local papers. So he decides to phone Jeremy.

2 While talking to Jeremy, he hears something which makes him think that the situation is more grave than he thought, so he thinks he had better phone the police after all.

3  He rushes upstairs to find out what is happening. It’s important to remember that he would not naturally assume that Sheila would shoot his wife. Even if he had heard shots he would not know what Sheila was shooting at. He would not have got the full picture until he saw the scene in the bedroom.

This is where pro guilt people go wrong. They appear to assume that if Sheila had taken the gun Nevill would immediately assume that her intention was to shoot other family members. That doesn’t have any compelling logic behind it. I would imagine that his first thought would be for Sheila’s own safety. He might well have feared that she might shoot herself.

People with mental health problems are far more likely to commit suicide than to kill other family members. He would have been thinking about what might be the best course of action to help her, not about storming at her to save the others.

Sheila gets a gun & goes up upstairs. Neville then phones Jeremy ?

Wouldn't Neville just take the gun off her. Lock the gun in the cupboard & keep the key ? He is the head of the household. A proud 6.4 farmer & former army officer. Why phone his son at 3am ?

Neville hears noises upstairs so rings the police ?

Wouldn't he run upstairs straight away.As the head of the household he will want to protect his daughter, wife & grand children.

[Caroline R]

Yes I did use a quote from 'Crimes, Hearts & Coronets' in answer to another post. Is that a problem ? 

Well done to the spotter.

Of course it matters!! You didn't quote it, you passed it off as YOUR reply but it probably was YOUR reply!! I don't understand why people do this. Tragic!!

[Caroline R]

Anyone in particular!! 

You are one of many Nikos BUT not all would admit it!! 

[Alias]

There would be no reason to move June from the bed and I'm willing to accept that by dint of her own efforts she had managed to move out of bed and was finished off with two shots right between the eyes,which is where the DNA may have come from. What does Jeremy say about the silencer? Did Sheila walk over her mother to get to the far side of the master bedroom,necessitating her getting blood on the soles of her feet? If Jeremy is the guilty party he has to bring Sheila out of her bedroom or forensics would be able to prove she had never left that location and therefore could have taken no part in the killings.

OK, so before "leading" a totally passive Sheila to her staged suicide death (where Jeremy would have had to convince her to cooperate and lie down in an awkward manner on the floor so it would LOOK like suicide), he "led" her through the crime scene to get blood on her foot soles! 
I can just hear him: "Come sis, come walk with me through the blood."
This is all too convoluted and illogical! Bringing Sheila into the bedroom with a dead/dying June, blood everywhere, would have UPSET Sheila, it would have been counter-productive to the "staging-of-suicide-plan". Again: makes NO sense!

[Jane]

Sheila gets a gun & goes up upstairs. Neville then phones Jeremy ?

Wouldn't Neville just take the gun off her. Lock the gun in the cupboard & keep the key ? He is the head of the household. A proud 6.4 farmer & former army officer. Why phone his son at 3am ?

So do you imagine that, had Neville asked her to "Please put the gun down, darling" she would have meekly complied? She MAY have not even have recognized who he was. She MAY have been responding to unseen stimuli. She MAY have thought a strange person was trying to attack her. She MAY have been screaming incoherently. Whatever, I imagine she was WAY past answering a polite request to "Please give the gun to Daddy, darling."

[Adam]

Of course it matters!! You didn't quote it, you passed it off as YOUR reply but it probably was YOUR reply!! I don't understand why people do this. Tragic!!

Apologies. Me being lazy again.

[tyler]

Lock the gun in the gun cupboard with a key? There was no lockable 'gun cupboard'. It was simply an understairs cupboard but guns were kept everywhere at whf. And I wasn't aware that Nevill was ever an army officer?

[nugnug]

So do you imagine that, had Neville asked her to "Please put the gun down, darling" she would have meekly complied? She MAY have not even have recognized who he was. She MAY have been responding to unseen stimuli. She MAY have thought a strange person was trying to attack her. She MAY have been screaming incoherently. Whatever, I imagine she was WAY past answering a polite request to "Please give the gun to Daddy, darling."

i would say doing that would be a good way to get yourself kiled.

[Adam]

So do you imagine that, had Neville asked her to "Please put the gun down, darling" she would have meekly complied? She MAY have not even have recognized who he was. She MAY have been responding to unseen stimuli. She MAY have thought a strange person was trying to attack her. She MAY have been screaming incoherently. Whatever, I imagine she was WAY past answering a polite request to "Please give the gun to Daddy, darling."

So he rang up Jeremy. Who would come over & save the day. In about half an hour ! Although that same night Jeremy was calling her a 'nutter' & saying they don't get on'. 

If anyone was going to calm down Sheila it was Neville, who had a good relationship with Sheila.


The thought of a small woman in a nightdress charging around the house at 3 in the morning. Re loading & beating grown men is darkly comical.

[Jane]

i would say doing that would be a good way to get yourself kiled.

And it MAY be exactly what happened. Good one Nug

[maggie]

So he rang up Jeremy. Who would come over & save the day. In about half an hour ! Although that same night Jeremy was calling her a 'nutter' & saying they don't get on'. 

If anyone was going to calm down Sheila it was Neville, who had a good relationship with Sheila.


The thought of a small woman in a nightdress charging around the house at 3 in the morning. Re loading & beating grown men is darkly comical.

She isn't small Adam, she was almost 5'8" which is far from small for a woman.  She was slight but in a psychotic state, or brain storm she would be VERY strong.

[Jane]

So he rang up Jeremy. Who would come over & save the day. In about half an hour ! Although that same night Jeremy was calling her a 'nutter' & saying they don't get on'. 

If anyone was going to calm down Sheila it was Neville, who had a good relationship with Sheila.


The thought of a small woman in a nightdress charging around the house at 3 in the morning. Re loading & beating grown men is darkly comical.

It may just have been, that had Neville supported June over the future care of the twins, Sheila believed he was against her.

[grahameb]

Nevill 8 shots, June 7

Tot 15 - too many shots for the magazine (plus maybe 1 in the chamber) to hold. She (if it was Shelia) would have to reload after a max of 11 shots.

I personally don't think Sheila would have loaded a mag. to full (10) and inserted a bullet in the breach ready to go off killing.

Of course the same problem would have applied to Jeremy as well?

[Alias]

It may just have been, that had Neville supported June over the future care of the twins, Sheila believed he was against her.

That could have been the case. Sheila could have felt especially betrayed by Neville whom she had regarded as the one "on her side". We are speculating, I know.

[grahameb]

Good.

It just seems more likely that there were no calls from the house. As previously said it would take 5 minutes to make the two calls. At no time has any police officer said they heard from Neville. Jeremy said he received a call from Neville, which cannot be proved or disproved. It is a fact that Jeremy called Mugford at around this time, probably before phoning the police. If he had phoned Mugford after getting a call from Neville, he wasted valuble time while Sheila was in the house with a gun. Why ?

So why would Jeremy want to invent such a call from his father? Wouldn't he have had a better alibi in just letting the crime scene just be discovered by others?