The Wallace Case

A phone message, an address that didn't exist, and the most argued-over alibi in Britain.

William Herbert Wallace was a quiet insurance agent and a keen member of the Liverpool Central Chess Club. On the evening of 19 January 1931, before he arrived at the club, a man telephoned it and left a message for him: a Mr R. M. Qualtrough wanted Wallace to call at 25 Menlove Gardens East the following evening, on a matter of business.

The puzzle

The next evening Wallace set off across the city. There was a Menlove Gardens North, South and West, but no East. He asked a string of people for directions, including a policeman, as if, his accusers later said, he wanted to be remembered. Giving up, he went home, and found his wife Julia dead in the parlour.

Either Wallace had made the call himself to build an alibi, or someone else had lured him out of the house so that Julia would be alone. Both explanations fit the facts. Neither could be proved.

What happened next

Wallace was tried at the Liverpool Assizes in April 1931 and convicted. A month later the Court of Criminal Appeal quashed the conviction because the verdict was not supported by the evidence, a landmark in English law. Wallace was free, but many in Liverpool still believed him guilty. He died in 1933.

Decades later, researchers pointed to a young man who had once worked with Wallace and knew his routines. He was questioned in 1931 and gave an alibi, and he was never charged.

Why it still fascinates

Crime writers have argued over it for ninety years. It is the pure detective-story problem: a chess player, a phantom client, a clock running against an alibi, and two solutions that each seem to fit.