Injured Parties: Solving the Murder of Dr Helen Davidson

By Monica Weller

On 9 November 1966, popular GP Dr Helen Davidson was battered to death in dense woodland while birdwatching and exercising her dog a few miles from her Buckinghamshire home. Her body was found the next day, her eyes having been pushed into her skull. ‘She had binoculars round her neck, spied illicit lovers, was spotted, and one or both of them killed her,’ surmised Detective Chief Superintendent Jack ‘Razor’ Williams of New Scotland Yard. He had received fifty police commendations in his career, yet not one for a murder enquiry. Unsurprisingly, within weeks the police operation was wound down, Williams retired, and another cold case hit the statistics. Fifty years later, amateur sleuth and author Monica Weller set about solving the murder – without the help of the prohibited files. As she sifted the evidence, a number of suspects and sinister motives began to emerge; it was clear it was not a random killing after all. Weller uncovered secret passions, deep jealousies, unusual relationships and a victim with a dark past. Her persistence and dedication were dramatically rewarded when she uncovered the identity of the murderer – revealed here for the first time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: May 2, 2016
• ISBN: 9780750968843

Reviews for Injured Parties

[Chris Roberts · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

As someone who was brought up in Little Missenden and knew most of the people mentioned in this book, I was looking forward to reading Injured Parties very much. I managed to get hold of a signed copy from Amazon for 19p, plus £2.69 postage and packing.

I knew Dr. Helen Davidson and Mr. Herbert Baker well, and I was also acquainted with Ms. Kathleen Cook. I am the son of the late vicar of Little Missenden, the Rev. Canon Francis Roberts and Mrs. Gwenda Roberts, who had been at Little Missenden for 16 years at the time of the murder. Dr. Davidson was our family doctor, and had been mine and my sister’s doctor for the first 11 years of my life prior to her death in 1966. Dr. Davidson was a family friend, along with her husband Herbert Baker who was the lay reader at St. Andrew’s Church in Hyde Heath. My father took both the funeral service and the memorial service for Dr. Davidson.

In her book, Monica Weller claims to have achieved what the police were unable to in solving a local murder case that took place over 50 years ago, which certainly piqued my interest. This murder was a shocking and mysterious case that left a significant mark on my childhood.

It is obvious from reading the book that the author has put a lot of time and effort into her research. She has evidently examined the background to this brutal murder of a much loved and respected doctor in some detail, without any recourse to the police records, and for that she can be commended.

However, I have to admit that I found Injured Parties to be ultimately disappointing, and not what I had expected.

The book attempts to knit together the known facts of Dr. Davidson’s murder into a thrilling and sensational account, but in doing so unfortunately loses its reliability as an objective piece of work. Throughout the book, Weller takes great liberties in describing not only the actions and routines of the people involved, but also their thoughts and feelings – these are entirely speculative, and make the book read more like a work of fiction than of fact.

Phrases such as ‘against her better judgment’ and ‘she was aware that’ to describe the inner thoughts of Dr. Davidson prior to her murder cannot conclusively be proven or disproven, and make the book problematic in its presentation of the deceased. A particularly vivid description of Dr. Davidson’s feelings towards birdwatching on page 33 are written entirely fictionally, presenting her more like a character from a storybook than a real woman whose life was brutally taken from her. It is understandable, therefore, why I may question the ethical legitimacy of Weller’s work.

In addition, I have serious concerns about some of the sources that Weller has come to rely on for her book. One source I will mention particularly, as it concerns my family: the former Amersham magistrate Miss Pamela Appleby MBE. Miss Appleby was quoted several times in the book, and on page 57 she describes my late parents. The description is, to me, entirely unrecognisable – my father, Rev. Roberts, is described as ‘a man of small stature, large ego’, who would deliberately swing his cloak in an aloof manner before ‘pretending not to notice the attention’. To contrast, my mother, Gwenda, is described as ‘poverty-stricken and down’. I can attest that these statements are untrue – my father was a highly respected and charismatic clergyman who was a dedicated and tireless worker, dealing with even the most troubling of circumstances in the village with grace. My mother was certainly not ‘poverty-stricken’ nor ‘down’. They were a happy, generous, devoted couple who loved their church and village community.

Here, the inaccuracies continue: Miss Appleby mentions that my mother banked at Barclays in Amersham – a small detail, but nonetheless false, as my mother banked at Lloyd’s at the recommendation of her brother, who was himself a banker. Furthermore, Miss Appleby describes my father’s cloak as having a ‘lovely red lining’, which is also untrue – the cloak in question is still in my family’s possession and is black with a black lining.

Indeed, I am not certain that Miss Appleby ever held a full conversation with my father in his entire life, and so I find it difficult to know that someone who did not truly know him was chosen to represent him in this published work. Weller’s decision to publish Miss Appleby’s personal and erroneous comments without due care or consideration for my parents’ living relatives or ongoing legacy is deeply troubling and offensive to myself and my family.

The book also includes a great deal of speculation surrounding the relationship between Dr. Davidson and her husband, Herbert Baker. On both pages 25 and 143 of the book, Miss Pam Appleby is quoted once more as stating that Dr. Davidson’s marriage to Herbert Baker was ‘a disaster’, and that rumours circulated around Old Amersham that he had persisted in an affair with Kathleen Cook, his housekeeper. Not only are these rumours entirely unsubstantiated, but Weller relies on these personal accounts to make sweeping judgments about the circumstances of Dr. Davidson’s death, including her alleged marital troubles and the potential motives behind her murderer’s actions. As far as I am aware, no relatives of Dr. Davidson, Herbert Baker or Kathleen Cook themselves were consulted in the formulation of this account, leaving the deceased parties entirely unable to defend themselves or provide any counterarguments to these allegations.

A number of key figures from the time are also omitted entirely from the text: the Rev. C. Edward “Teddy” Vogel who was my father’s curate, with a special responsibility for St. Andrew’s Church Hyde Heath, and a personal friend of Herbert Baker, and Frank Onions, a campanologist who lived in Highmore Cottages in Little Missenden, who worked at the bus station in Old Amersham.

The book requires serious editing, with significant grammatical and typographical errors throughout, as well as lengthy repetition. It failed to convince me that the murder of Dr. Helen Davidson has been ‘solved’ beyond reasonable doubt – and I believe it to be unethical for Weller to present her readers with subjective descriptions and opinions and attempt to pass them off as objective facts.

I hear that an adaptation of this book may be in the works, as a documentary with dramatic reconstructions. I do sincerely hope that the relatives, friends and neighbours of the individuals presented in this work are consulted fairly in the production of this adaptation, in order to avoid the same presumptuous depictions being broadcast to the entire nation.