Katie Mulholland

by Catherine Cookson

  ‘The names?’ he said.

  ‘I don’t rightly know their names, except they’re known as Sue and Bridget. I heard that outside the court. But I can tell you who’ll know all about them. Him that runs the Anchor, he’ll know about them or I’m very much mistaken…Look,’ she said, ‘will I make you a cup of tea? I’ve got some tea.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He rose slowly to his feet. ‘Thank you, but no.’ Then, looking around the room, his eyes picked out the chiffonier with Katie’s china on it, and her books, and he said, ‘The rest of the things are down below, you say?’

  ‘Aye, atween the two of ’em. But it’s not much use takin’ them, is it, ’cos you can’t get them in upstairs.’

  He turned and faced her fully and, his eyes narrowing again, he said, and in a tone that he hadn’t used before, for it held a deep threat, ‘It will all go back where it belongs, Mrs Robson, or else they will answer to me. If there’s a spoon missing they will answer to me.’ His tone changing again, he said, ‘But I thank you, I thank you for what you did. And I’ll tell you this also. I’ll have Kaa-tee out of that place quicker than the wind can fill a sail.’ On this he turned from her and, going out of the room and up the stairs, picked up his bag, and when he came to the bottom floor he rested the bag against the outer door and, returning to the hallway, banged first on one door and then on the other, and yelled in a loud voice, ‘I’m coming back for Kaa-tee’s things. Do you hear me in there? I’ll be back.’ He waited a moment, and when the door did not open and no voice answered he picked up his bag again and marched down the street to the docks and his ship.

  But Andrée was to find that he couldn’t get Katie out of that place quicker than the wind would fill a sail. For two days he went round the town gathering information. He started with the police station, but found it was like beating his head against a stone wall, a stone wall of prejudice. He was a foreigner; the woman he was enquiring about was not his wife, just a woman who had been put away for keeping a bad house. At the end of the second day he returned to the back room of the Anchor and Jimmy Wild. It was on midnight and the bar had just closed, and Andrée sat in the dirty, low room sipping a mug of hot rum.

  There wasn’t much about Shields and its people that Jimmy Wild didn’t know, nor yet about the inhabitants of the village of Westoe, or that of Harton. He had seen men press-ganged from this street; he had seen a man murdered just outside the door there; he had seen men knife each other, and women who had come into his bar laughing together tearing the scalps off each other when they eventually left. He knew practically everybody in his vicinity by sight, but he had never seen Katie Mulholland, and he said this again.

  ‘One thing’s certain, Captain; she wasn’t in the racket. If she’d been…well, you know yersel she’d have made her way here; they all start from here. Whether they go up or down, this is the startin’ place around these quarters. Let’s face it, I know, I know. But your lass…well, I’ve never set eyes on her. An’ you know somethin’ else? I’d never heard her name mentioned until the case came up…No, a bit afore that, when Meggie Proctor took those two swells round to her place. It was the next day I heard about the rumpus, an’ it was then I heard the name of Katie Mulholland for the first time. She had hit one of the blokes with a bottle, or a candlestick or somethin’, and split his head open.’

  Andrée now strained his neck upwards and, gripping his glass, said, ‘Those men. That’s it. You knew those men; those two?’

  ‘No, Captain, no. One of them I’d seen twice afore with Meggie Proctor, the other one I’ve never clapped eyes on until that night, and then only for a minute when they came in and picked her up.’

  ‘What were they like? Come on, describe them.’

  ‘I can’t, Captain. Well, what can you remember of strangers through the fug that’s in here at nights…? Only one thing sure I can tell you, that is they were gentry; and perhaps another, and that is there’s something fishy about the whole business. It’s like a put-up job from start to finish. Everybody round about says the same thing. The coppers had got a backhander from somebody, and they’re not the blokes to risk their good jobs at eighteen bob a week for no small fry. It’s somebody of importance that’s at the back of this. That’s the local opinion, an’ it’s never far out…‘

  It was around two o’clock when he returned to his ship, but not to sleep. At half-past ten tomorrow he’d be going out on the tide, he’d have to do something before then; find someone to carry on the probing; someone who wouldn’t be afraid of…the gentry. Someone like an investigator or solicitor…a solicitor, yes; the one Katie went to, that was it. He knew the office in King Street, she had pointed it out to him. She said he had got a barrister to speak well for her father.

  This decided, he trimmed the lamp afresh and wrote a letter to her: ‘Oh, Kaa-tee, Kaa-tee, my darling Kaa-tee.’ Then went on to tell her of his love and his faith, and his determination to clear her name and to get her out of that place as soon as possible. He addressed the letter to Her Majesty’s Prison, Durham.

  It was eight o’clock when he left the ship again. He posted the letter; then, going to the house in Crane Street, he went upstairs and knocked on Mrs Robson’s door, and when, bleary-eyed, she opened it he said abruptly, ‘I’ve had no luck, and I sail today. Will you go and visit her at the times they allow?’ When he saw her hesitation he added quickly, ‘I will pay for your travel, and there’s half a sovereign for every time you visit her. What about it?’

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll go, and mind, not that I’m doing it for the money alone…’

  ‘Thank you. I have written to her. But you tell her that I’m doing everything to clear her…You will, won’t you?’

  ‘Aye, I’ll do that. But I don’t see much use in raising her hopes.’

  He pushed one and a half sovereigns into her hand, saying, ‘One to pay the travel and you, and spend the half on food for her.’

  ‘Aye, aye, I’ll do that, ’cos it’s lean fare they get in there. What about upstairs?’ She jerked her head.

  ‘I’ve seen to that. I’ve paid the rent for four weeks in advance. Here is the key.’ He handed it to her. ‘Tell them’—he looked downwards—‘that if everything isn’t returned by the time I get back again there’ll be some broken pates flying around this house. You understand?’

  ‘Aye, I understand.’

  ‘I must go now.’ He paused. ‘Thank you for your help; you will not lose by it.’

  She returned his nod but gave him no farewell, and he went down the stairs, and as he passed through the hall he beat his fist once on Meggie Proctor’s door; it was a warning. Then he marched out of the house.

  When he reached King Street and the office of Chapel & Hewitt he saw by his watch it was five minutes past nine. Without pausing he pushed the door open, went along a dark passage and up some stairs and to a door which again read ‘Chapel & Hewitt, Solicitors’. After knocking he was bidden to enter, and when he opened the door he saw sitting on a high stool, at a high desk, with a ledger before him, a tall, thin man of middle age. On the sight of him the man slid to his feet and, coming forward said, ‘Yes, sir, what can I do for you, sir?’

  ‘Are you Mr Chapel or Mr Hewitt?’

  The man smiled, a soft deprecating smile, saying, ‘Neither, sir. Mr Chapel is deceased. I’m Mr Hewitt’s chief clerk.’

  ‘Is he in?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Do you wish to see him?’

  ‘Yes, I wish to see him.’

  ‘Will you take a seat, sir, and I will ascertain whether he is available.’

  Andrée waved the seat away, and the clerk hurried now towards the door of another room, and after knocking he entered. It was perhaps three minutes before he returned and, holding the door open, said, ‘Mr Hewitt will see you now, sir.’

  Arnold Hewitt was a good judge of character—it was a necessary qualification of his profession; and as he looked at the big, fair-haired man, whom he dubbed, even before he had opened his mouth, as a S
wede or Norwegian, he saw that his client, if he was to be so, was a man of purpose, a man who would waste no words and a man who would likely pay well for deeds.

  Almost immediately Andrée confirmed the solicitor’s summing up of his character by saying, ‘I haven’t much time to waste; I sail in just over an hour back to Norway. I want you to do some work for me.’

  ‘Yes, if it is within my capacity, sir, and such work as I am used to undertaking, I will oblige. Kindly take a seat and tell me what your business is.’

  Andrée again ignored the offer of a seat and began:

  ‘Just this…’ There followed, in clipped, rapid but good English, Katie’s story as Andrée knew it. He commenced at the beginning—at least at the beginning of this last affair when Meggie Proctor had brought the two men upstairs—and as he talked the solicitor listened attentively with the main part of his mind, but there was a section that was telling him that this was a strange, a very strange coincidence, for he had been in court on the day that this girl, this Katie Mulholland, had been put away for three months for importuning, and not only had he felt that the woman was innocent but also he’d had a strong suspicion that there was some jiggery-pokery going on. How had the two men, the two vital witnesses, to his mind, in the case, been allowed to escape? These men that the prisoner, it was understood, had housed, and for whom she had procured the two girls. And then there was the telling point of who those girls were. They came from a family that stank, a family whose name was a byword in the low quarters; but all that this implied had gone by the board on the evidence of the policemen…And this man sitting before him now was the foreign sailor who had been mentioned in the case. And there was something stranger still in his mind with regard to this woman: it was not the first time he had come across her. She had paid a tidy bill five or six years ago for the defence of her father, but the whole case was a foregone conclusion, the jury being made up of picked pit officials. They had used the Mulholland man as a scarecrow to keep the miners quiet. He remembered at the time that the girl had been befriended by the Rosiers. It was Rosier’s daughter who had brought her along here, that was why he had taken on the case. And now here was this Katie Mulholland being befriended yet again, but by a burly sea captain this time and a foreigner into the bargain. It was an interesting state of affairs.

  Of course he would work for him, he would do all he could. He was speaking aloud now. ‘Just leave it with me, Captain Fraenkel. I will make all the enquiries I can, but you must understand I can’t promise you any magic results. She has been sent to prison for three months. Magistrates don’t like to think they have made mistakes, you understand?’

  ‘But you will do something. Find out why this has happened; above all, find out who the men were who Meggie Proctor brought to the house that night, frighten it out of her, anything so that my…Miss Mulholland will be freed. And I know this much now, she won’t be free until I learn the name of one of those men. This is the second time he has harmed her, and it’s worse than the first…’

  ‘Wait, wait.’ The solicitor lifted his hand. ‘You mean she knew who the man was whom this Proctor woman brought to the house? She had seen him before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And she never told you his name?’

  ‘No. Would I be asking you now?’

  ‘But it is strange that she did not tell you his name, after telling you so much…’

  ‘Not at all. She was afraid of what I might do to him. He, this man, he gave her a child when she was but a child herself. As I understand it, he was the cause of her marrying the man, Bunting, who was killed by her father because of his treatment of her.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I know all about that, Captain.’

  Andrée drew his chin in, then, leaning forward over the desk, he said softly, ‘Well now, sir, you’ve seen her, so you’ll know she’s not capable of doing what she has been imprisoned for. She’s a fine woman, a wonderful woman, and she has suffered much. This last is beyond her endurance, and I am afraid of what it will do to her; so you see how important it is that you move quickly.’

  ‘I will do all I can, Captain. Leave it to me. How long do you expect to be away?’

  ‘Ten days, a fortnight. A fortnight at the most.’

  ‘I may have some news for you when you return.’ Andrée drew in sharp breath and repeated, ‘May have? I want news!’

  ‘Yes, of course. And I can assure you we’ll do our utmost for you.’ He stood up and extended his hand. Andrée took it, then made for the door, and Mr Hewitt accompanied him, and again assured him that he would give the matter his special attention.

  As Mr Hewitt returned to his office he beckoned his clerk to follow him, and once he was behind his desk he looked at the tall man standing at the other side, and it was with some pride in his voice that he said, ‘You remember the Mulholland woman who was put away for three months for procuring?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘He wants us to work on it. He is the foreign sailor who was mentioned in the case. You remember I said I thought there was some jiggery-pokery going on in that business, for if ever a woman proclaimed her innocence from the dock she did. You remember I said that?’

  ‘Yes, sir, I remember distinctly.’

  ‘He seems a man of substance, Kenny. An educated man. Not all ships’ captains are educated.’

  ‘I agree with you, sir. Are you going to take the case, sir?’

  ‘Yes, Kenny. Yes. Yes, I’ve promised to do what I can. Not that I can see us getting her out of Durham before her time’s up, but we may be able to clear up one or two matters that are of as much interest to me from one angle as to the captain from another. Did you know that this Mulholland girl had a baby when she was very young, and that she was visited by this child’s father a few weeks ago, and that she hit him with an implement, splitting his brow open. And don’t you think it strange, Kenny, that the incident of procuring should follow? Who, Kenny, could bribe the police? Not a poor man.’

  ‘No, sir. Definitely not a poor man.’

  ‘Someone of importance. A name behind them. Money. Gentry, Kenny, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, sir! Gentry.’

  ‘The captain would like to know this gentleman’s name, and, Kenny, so would we.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Indeed we would like to know his name.’

  ‘So that is what we will work on, Kenny, unearthing this very mysterious gentleman who resented so much being hit on the head with a candlestick.’

  The conversation between Arnold Hewitt and his chief clerk was serious; there was no hint of humour in it. It was only that the solicitor and his clerk were in the habit of discussing cases in this fashion.

  Chapter Eight

  It was in the middle of March when Andrée brought his ship into the Tyne yet once again, and the usual berthing procedure was hardly finished before he stepped from her deck and on to the quay and hurried towards King Street.

  Mr Hewitt was awaiting him. He had word that Captain Fraenkel’s ship was in, and he wasn’t looking forward to another meeting with the blond giant, whose eyes would look at him with the coldness of frozen sea water when he had to tell him how little progress he had made with his case.

  He was standing on his feet to greet the captain, and he shook him warmly by the hand, and when Andrée said the one word with which he usually opened these proceedings, ‘Well?’ he raised his shoulder slightly and spread out his hands, then said hastily, ‘I’m sorry, Captain, I’m sorry. And I’m sorry for my own sake, too, because I hate to be baffled. But I’m afraid I must admit that I’ve come up against a blank wall on all sides. I’ve heard nothing…Well, I won’t say nothing exactly, but what I have gleaned has led us to just another blind alley, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Well, what did you learn?’ Andrée’s voice had a bitter edge to it.

  ‘That one of the men, the particular man who visited Miss Mulholland that night, was not of the town. He left it on horseback.’

  ‘Did you fi
nd out where he stabled his horse?’

  ‘Yes, but nothing further, except perhaps…that he was gentry. And that places an armour plate against the wall, if you follow what I mean.’

  ‘I follow what you mean,’ said Andrée grimly. ‘About the other. Did you arrange that I could see her?’

  Mr Hewitt lowered his head. ‘I’m afraid not, Captain. I feel very sore about this, but they would make no concessions…If…’ Mr Hewitt now examined his fingernails, then drummed the pads of his fingers on the desk before going on, ‘If you had any claim on her—I mean legal—then it would have been a different matter, but as it is…’

  ‘Did you find out if her brother had been to visit her?’

  ‘We investigated that part of it, and I’m sorry to say that he hasn’t.’

  ‘God Almighty!’ Andrée leant his elbow on the desk and dropped his head to his hand.

  ‘And I have a little further news that might add to her distress. Her sister has passed away.’

  Andrée’s head jerked upwards. ‘Lizzie? Dead?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Captain. About a week ago.’

  ‘She is buried, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  Now Mr Hewitt lifted his gaze from Andrée’s face and looked at his hands again before he said, ‘In the common grave. You see, I had no instructions.’

  Andrée lowered his head on to his hand again and said, ‘No, of course not; you had no instructions.’ After a moment he rose, saying abruptly, ‘I will call in again before I leave. Good day to you.’

  ‘Good day, Captain.’

  Andrée now made his way to Crane Street, and going swiftly up the stairs he knocked on Mrs Robson’s door. She, too, appeared to be waiting for him, for she opened the door immediately.

  ‘It’s you,’ she said. ‘Well, she’s all right. I saw her, but she doesn’t speak much; she’s very quiet like.’