The Ability to Kill Read Online Free

broke out in 1914, he immediately enlisted in the army. The following March he was sent to France. Two months later, at Givenchy, he was wounded by a shell-burst in the head and leg. After a year in various hospitals, he was invalided out of the army with a disability pension which continued until 1920. At the periodical medical inspections which he underwent over that period, he complained of dizziness and loss of memory arising from the head wound, and insomnia due to the constant reliving of the horror of a bayonet charge in which he had been involved. He also had difficulty in flexing the leg. The latter disability persisted and the medical report of 1919 attributed it to neurosis, at that time an imprecise term the meaning of which depended on the doctor who employed it. It could have been used to convey a sour hint that ex-Private Rouse might be malingering in order to retain his pension. There was no suggestion then, nor later, that the head wound had caused any organic damage to the brain.
    In retrospect, and with some knowledge of his social behaviour from then on as a guide, it seems likely that the process of regression had already begun.
    Before going to France he had married a St Albans girl. Nevertheless, during the few weeks he was overseas he managed to seduce a French girl of respectable family and make her pregnant. The child was born and he was later obliged to contribute to its upkeep. It was to be the first of many. Mrs Rouse proved to be an amazingly good-natured woman. No doubt her own inability to have children contributed to her tolerance of her husband’s ceaseless efforts to get them by other women; but it was still remarkable. Of course, she could not have known all that went on; but she certainly knew more than enough. She must have loved him very much.
    After his discharge from the army he went to work as a commercial traveller. He was a good-looking man and a persuasive talker. Soon, he was doing well and his earnings rose rapidly. Before long he was able to buy a car in which to cover his sales territory in the south of England. In the course of his work he would spend several days at a time away from his London home. He wasted not a moment of them. In her introduction to the Rouse volume in the ‘Notable British Trials’ series, Miss Helena Normanton said that the seductions of nearly eighty women were attributed to him. Most of them were chambermaids or shop assistants or waitresses—those who would be accessible to a smart chap with an officer-like toothbrush moustache (he claimed to have been a major) and a car. He used to tell them, smiling into their eyes, about his beautiful Irish mother. For the most part, however, these were not casual, one-evening relationships. There was nothing ordinary about Rouse’s promiscuity.
    In 1920 he seduced a fifteen-year-old servant girl, and a child was later born in a home for unmarried mothers. After afew weeks it died. Rouse tried again, and again the girl became pregnant; whereupon he insisted on marrying her (bigamously, of course, although she did not know that at the time) and setting up house in Islington. The second child, a son, lived. Rouse was a doting father. Unfortunately, he accumulated so many other paternal responsibilities over the years that eventually the boy’s mother was obliged to sue for maintenance. That was in 1929. The long-suffering Mrs Rouse had a meeting with the mother and offered to take the boy to live with her. Rouse approved warmly and the offer was accepted. The bigamous marriage was forgotten.
    No doubt Mrs Rouse believed that the new arrangement would have a stabilising effect on her husband. After all, this—
his
child in
their
home—was what he had always said he wanted. She did not realise that she was no longer dealing with a reclaimable man; nor did she know the extent of his difficulties. By this time, he had made at least two more bigamous marriages, and had, besides, so many illegitimate children