Widening the Circle of Our Friends . Arena Three . Hove Flat Murder? . Paul Richards, 1964-1996 . What I Did in my Holidays

Hove Flat Murder?

In the course of Peake's trial for murder at Lewes Assizes, it emerged that Noyce, who lived at home with his widowed mother, had been in the habit of calling on his friend several times a week for supper. The two had met while Peake, who was separated from his wife, was earning a living as an antique dealer and florist in Union Street. Noyce became his secretary and afterwards chauffeur but it was remarked that their friendship was "much stronger than usually existed between employer and employed".

On the night of Thursday 8th October, Noyce had called as usual. After eating supper and playing a game of draughts, Peake told him that his wife was claiming that the younger man was his son and that they had been "associating in an improper way". Noyce was very upset and fearful of the effect of the rumours on his fiancee and his mother. They spoke for some time then Peake left the hotel to make a telephone call.

On his return, he claimed, "the door was open an inch and the candles were burning. I walked into the room. I saw Noyce lying half off the chair. His head was on the left-hand side as I entered, and his right arm was on the chair. I thought he had fainted. I went and tried to lift him up. I could not manage it as one leg was extended, and the other was bent underneath. I tried to lift him, but I could not do so. I put my hand underneath his head and got some blood on my hand. His ear had been bleeding. He was foaming at the mouth. I tried to lift him again. I felt a rope, and found it was fastened to the chair."

So upset

Peake, according to his testimony, untied his friend and put him on the floor. "I was so upset I didn't know what to do. I tried to get him on to the bed. I took off his shoes, and lifted him by the shoulders and dragged him to the bed. I tried to bring life into him. I found there was no life, or I thought there was not. I moved him to the other side of the bed."

Realising the seriousness of his position, Peake made the first of two attempts to take his own life with a number of tablets and then sat down to write a letter which lay the blame for the death of his "absolute companion and friend" at his wife's door. He put on his pyjamas and moved Noyce to the other side of the bed. "I covered him with the blanket and eiderdown and lay down. I don't remember anything until the next morning. The next thing I heard was the [maid] calling."

Tragic end

Peake and Noyce's friendship was probably typical of many gay relationships at a period when two men living openly together in a town the size of Brighton might have attracted comment and attention. Such an affair - with its evening visits to a curtained and candlelit bedsitting room and long suppers brought by a maid on a tray - was easily cloaked as a master-and-servant relationship (see for example James Gardiner's A Class Apart) and might never have been discovered were it not for the younger man's tragic end. Other men managed to pass a younger lover off as a member of their family: Peake and Noyce had once stayed at a hotel in Leicester Square posing as father and son.

On the second day of the trial, the defence claim that Noyce had strangled himself during Peake's absence from the room was apparently disproved when Sir Bernard Spilsbury, the Home Office pathologist, demonstrated with the armchair, some rope and a policeman that this would not have been possible.

Despite Peake's statement that "I had every reason to keep Noyce alive, not to kill him", he was found guilty and sentenced to death. An appeal failed.

Evening Argus 9/12/1936 pp 4 & 6, 10/12/1936 pp 3 & 6