Babbicam
Page 26
Whatever, that’s the end. There’s going to be no more John Lee. His time had run out and there are no more recordings. I should be relieved. After all I’m still standing. I’ve out-stared the mutha and not blinked. Trouble is I still can’t rest. Georgia’s little feet keep on tap dancing at night and now I keep seeing a strange light, a sort of lemon-colored glow coming from the other room, like the light you get when an icebox door is left open. It’s a freakin’ spook-light. I’m sure Georgia has a hand in it. Same as that strange tapping and donking sound I hear when I’m beginning to drift off. I’m keeping it all together by staying up as long as I can. At least ’til daylight. I get Modanifil to keep myself snappy. It’s $4 a pop off the Net. Suck on that, Lee.
That reminds me, I haven’t told you what else was in that box that helped me identify the recordings as those of Babbacombe Lee in the first place. Okay, there was a scrap book with pictures of 1930s racing cars on the front which was filled with newspaper cuttings sent by Lee’s family in Devon. There was an old rubberized stamp device with a wooden handle which when inked up gave the imprint, “Howard B. Kaiser M.D.”. There was a sheaf of medical notes about Lee in hard-to-read medical shorthand; a faded receipt to Dr Kaiser for $88 for the Webster from Schuster’s Department Store; a battered copy of ‘The Man They Could Not Hang, The Life Story of John Lee Told by Himself’, an original with stiff decaying pages from 1908. Inside the front cover in faded ink was the signature, “Sincerely Yours, John Lee”—I’m not sure if this was an original signed copy kept by Lee to remind him of his glory years or whether he signed it in 1945 especially for Dr Kaiser to thank him for use of the Webster. Lee had actually died on Monday, 19th March 1945. I know this because it was listed in the Milwaukee Sentinel although Addie put him in as ‘James Lee’, still evidently following a lifetime of caution instilled in her by Lee. The death certificate lists ‘heart failure’ as the cause of death. Kaiser’s name is on the form. Lee was buried at Forest Home Cemetery next to his daughter. Under his real name that time.
The Versions of Cornelius Harrington
I really need to deal with Harrington. Or at least take a fix on him. I have an uneasy feeling that he will get away from me whatever I do. Let’s try and settle on what I do know.
He came from Plymouth on the English Devon South coast, thirty miles from Torquay. He is called a ‘Janner’ in the second spool. Apparently the term is still in use to describe someone from Plymouth. One authority on the Babbacombe murder has him being born in 1864 which would make him exactly the same age as Lee, but Lee made clear in the recordings that Harrington was an older man. There were several Cornelius Harringtons in the area at the time. Maybe it was a family of Irish origin that named all their males Cornelius? I think our Cornelius was the one that appears in the 1901 census for Devon who is listed as being born in Plymouth in 1861. That would make him aged 22 or 23 when Lee first encountered him at Colonel Brownlow’s. That seems right.
Lee does not really describe him physically. He defined him by what he was not. Lee implied he was somehow slant, gimp, walking with a limp perhaps or maybe just rolling like a seaman. These descriptions may be a mirror to his character as much as an actual picture. He was both ugly and handsome at the same time. He had a snaky charm and showed an uncanny knack of getting under Lee’s crusty shell. He had the sly scamming insight of a con artist. He seemed to be always horny yet we know he burned a special candle for Lizzie.
All we actually know of him is that he was involved with Butler Kisler in smuggling in 1883 and he was a fisherman in Harris’s boat crew in 1884. What else we know can be inferred from Lee’s account. He must have lived in lodgings somewhere in that small huddle of dwellings on the slopes of Babbacombe Bay. Somewhere close to the Glen anyway.
He liked his liquor and the habit probably caught up with him in later life. I think he feared dissolution and was scared that he would never really amount to anything. He was always looking to build himself up. He would scam folks by seeming to reveal personal stuff about himself in order to fake up a closer relationship with them then he’d generally rip them off in some way once they thought he was buddies with them. Maybe he unconsciously accepted his own dark nature although on the surface he would deny it. Maybe he wanted both Lizzie and Lee to appreciate how special he was. Maybe he has a fantasy self and admired Lizzie’s stone-like clarity which was in contrast to his own mixed–up feelings. Inside, he was likely a shifting kaleidoscope of stuff. He could never hold onto and be true to anything good. I assume that he tried to connect with Lee through the letter he left for him behind the water trough because he still wanted to con him into some other cruddy enterprise or maybe he wanted to be sure Lee would keep his mouth shut. Also, Harrington may have sought him out again because both men were united by something they had in common. The woman that had lured them both on had also abandoned the two of them.
I guess that despite his charm Harrington knew at heart that there was something very wrong with himself. When it came to the moment he was a wolverine. He struck without hesitation at Miss Keyse, he likely did something nasty to Bartlet and he certainly brutalized the Fey girls. No doubt he had a whole heap of excuses to distance himself from his bloody work. He would never enjoy the sort of life he thought he was owed.
I sometimes think of him striding up the beach to greet the dismayed Lee on Lee’s return to the Glen in’84. A slight man but strong and wiry, with thick, dark rumpled hair. He held a direct gaze though he carried the head lowered as if always searching for something on the ground. He spoke easily and had a honey tongue but his mouth was like a slit. He had a big beaky slice for a nose, a strong jaw and green eyes that drove into you. His ears were low set, his hair thick at the back of the neck like an animal. He had an angular Irish face with features that sloped like chevrons. A face like a bag of chisels, his kin would have said. A small man but with presence, something steely about him and bristling with malign purpose.
Maybe that is not him at all, I need to beware my urge to fictionalize. The facts are rich enough. I know this story and how it will all turn out though the characters remain ignorant, making their way through it like unknowing sleep walkers. I seem to see Harrington in my dreams—maybe Georgia brings him to me.
I’ve wondered what Harrington did on the early hours of the 15th once the fire had blazed. I think he probably slunk up through the woods onto Babbacombe Down then watched the proceedings. At some stage he would have had to get rid of his bloody clothing. Perhaps he saw Lee go running up Beach Road in his long coat and holding a lantern at 5 am? He does not feature among the fire fighters and witnesses at the inquest. I think he might well have been a sort of double agent working for the customs men, and they would have wanted to protect him from scrutiny. Harris, his boat captain, was dragged up for evidence but not Harrington.
I found a telling newspaper article in that online archive of Brit newspapers. The East and Devon Advertiser for 1885 had a piece about a long knife being found on the slope above the Glen and close to the highway. The piece said that the blade was bloodied and had a significant notch in the blade. The piece openly speculated that this was the actual knife in the Keyse murder and mentions the corresponding marks on the old lady’s neck bone. Maybe they were right. That was very likely Harrington’s knife. He probably fled the smoldering Glen and slung the fatal weapon over a stone wall into one of the wooded enclosures at the edge of the Mount Temple estate.
As to what happened to him afterwards it is hard to say. Police Captain Barbor mentions that Harrington was at sea when the Home Secretary ordered an investigation following Chaplain Pitkin’s 1885 suggestion that Lee might not be guilty. The 1891 census showed no trace of him in Devon and I’ve not found his name in ships’ crews or immigration lists. He must have left his letter to Lee between 1885 and 1908. Lee mentions getting a letter with an American stamp in the late 1880’s. It could be him in that census of 1901. He appears to be living then in a lodging house on King’s Street i
n Plymouth. Many of the other lodgers have Irish names and are listed as being hawkers, road menders and laborers. You’ll remember that letter where young Freddie Lee told Lee that he had been to check on the presumed Harrington but could not find him.
It would be good to trap Harrington in death’s cage, to draw the curtain on him and say goodbye for sure. Here is where he gets all tricky on my ass. There is a Cornelius Harrington listed as dying at age 70 in Plymouth in September 1936 but the dates don’t fit our man. I’ve found a death report about a Cornelius Harrington in the Idaho County Free Press, for November 26th 1903. The report says that 54 year old Harrington, a gold miner, died of heart disease in his cabin. Or take an Australian newspaper of 1891 from Walhalla, Victoria, which reported a Cornelius Harrington arrested for kicking his wife to death. The paper said that “The body was pounded out of shape, and the room in which it was found was saturated with blood.”The paper later stated that Harrington was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and died in jail.
Or here is yet another version of Harrington from the New York Times in the early years of the last century about a Cornelius Harrington, a thief, killed by an Eyrie Basin policeman when caught in the act of stealing rope. The policeman managed to break his skull by hitting him with an oar during a struggle.
That’s it, take your pick, dudes. You decide which one is the right Cornelius Harrington. I guess it doesn’t really matter which one he is. ‘Abyssus Abyssum Invocat’ should be on his tombstone wherever it stands. Deep calls to deep: it’s a translation in the Latin vulgate from Psalm 42, and more explicitly it means, ‘hell calls to hell’.
Lonely
There’s no more Lee to distract me. No more crawling drag-ass transcription to keep me occupied. How am I going to live without him? It’s the end of August. Georgia rules the night so I sleep only in the day. I don’t even go to Scottie’s any more. I feel that people are looking at me. I’m existing on take-out red boxes from The Golden Corral and bags of Funyuns. Crudalicious! I’ve had thoughts of driving out to Waukesha with Grandpa’s commemoration Colt automatic and going looking for my high school bullies. They’re probably working as order clerks or dishwashers now. Yo, guys! How ya doin’? Remember me? Kapow!
Lighting Out
What did she do to you, Lizzie? It’s not as if Miss Keyse had come scratching at your bedroom door in the night like she did to your brother. I guess she was a querulous, demanding, miserable old bitch but she gave you a job. She hardly deserved the treatment you meted out. No doubt it was your choice of men that really burned your bridges, Lizzie. You had juggled with brother Jack, with dangerous Cornelius, and the diseased bonehead Templer, all at the same time. Everything was going to come crashing down at some stage. Maybe you thought to boost some of the old woman’s valuables then light out somewhere abroad. If Jack could keep up with you then he could stay with you but if not, you would journey alone. Yeah, you were pregnant but you had coped on your own for a long time. You had conceived that child in the August, in Regatta time. Did you even know who the father was?
Sexy, resolute Lizzie Harris, I can’t help admiring you. I’ve studied the drawing that the court artist made of you, a face like a carnal apple. I can see why those men wanted to look into your pale, still eyes. Born 20th August, a Leo, brave, sensual and good at keeping secrets according to the sun signs book I’ve had for years. Crummy to look at astrology I know, but you have to believe in something.
You carried such a stately name, Elizabeth Hamlyn Esterbrook Harris. Though really it was a sign of shame. The Hamlyn-Esterbrooks were gentleman farmers on Dartmoor and one of them must have knocked up your mother. Your rotten ma dumped you out of her life but she wanted you to never forget the circumstances of your shameful birth so she saddled you with that name. You were born in a one-horse flyspeck of a place called Torbryan. Then you were farmed off to kin and brought up alone in that gloomy farmstead by the marshy estuary of the Teign. But you survived and made your way despite the family neglect and your bad name.
Some would paint you as a Lady Macbeth or a Lizzie Borden, a crazy and ruthless woman sacrificing your dumb brother. Brave also, you kept on refusing to wear mourning clothes for Miss Keyse even though it told against you. Maybe you really did hate Miss Keyse for something? Your brother was a partial witness in his recorded memories of you. Besides, what abandoned lover is ever happy with the disappeared one? You “carried your character with you” he said of you in his last letter home before the planned hanging. But I think he still loved you all of his life.
A reporter for the Torquay Times of January 30th 1885 spotted you leaving Torre Station on the way to the murder trial at Exeter. He noted that it was a wet day and Sergeant Knott had difficulty rounding up the witnesses to board the train. You are described as being “in fairly good spirits and talking gaily” with your companions. You were in dark clothes but not in mourning. He said that you looked thinner than at the inquest but your resemblance to Lee was more striking than ever. The reporter followed you into the carriage and watched as you stared out the window the whole journey.
Lizzie, what did you think about when you were leaving Torre Station? You had the presence of mind to joke around with the Necks—perhaps you wanted to distract yourself from the grim business that was waiting for you in the witness box. You had to nail your brother down, he was good for nothing else. Perhaps life at Aunt Millie’s in Tormohan was tough. You were eating for two now also. It must have been a relief when the trial ended. Another reporter saw you standing in Exeter Assizes courtyard after the guilty sentence, you were dabbing at your eyes with a handkerchief then you tucked into a tea and bun. At some later stage you admitted yourself to Newton Abbot Workhouse. I guess after the weird reprieve of your brother everyone turned against you. Maybe your neighbors had begun to think if God had saved Jack then His finger was pointing at you as the true guilty one.
Beatrice, your daughter, was born in May 1885. Maybe you had picked the name because Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Beatrice, had been married in that same year. You stayed only long enough to nurse her for seven months into winter then you slipped out of Plymouth Sound on an emigrant boat. Beatrice was left behind despite her hopeful aristocratic name.
There wasn’t much of a life left in England was there? Who paid for your ticket, I wonder? What did you have to do to get it? You can’t have had any wages left after eight months out of work. Maybe you sold Beatrice like in some Thomas Hardy novel and comforted yourself that she would have a better life? Or more likely you left the kid behind because she carried bad blood and you didn’t want to be reminded of that for the rest of your life.
You arrived at Maryborough on the Queensland Fraser coast after a hundred days at sea. The name of town has the echo of the St Marychurch that you left. I found you listed aged 31 arriving on the iron-hulled, full rigger, The Eastminster, in 1886. It was an old ship that was mysteriously lost at sea four years later. You got away Lizzie, sailing to a new life with all your secrets packed away. It couldn’t have been easy. I have no idea what you had to do to survive those first six years. You seem to have stayed in bustling Maryborough, a port on the Mary River which took in twenty thousand emigrants in those years. You fought your way among that crowd and in 1892 you married Robert Dukes, an English laborer from the East Riding of Yorkshire. He was ten years younger than you and had already married a young local girl. Maybe the previous woman had died or moved on or maybe you replaced her. You knew how to please a man after all your adventures. Whatever the reality, you managed to hold on to a settled life. You had two daughters and a son. At some stage the family moved to the small frontier settlement of Broweena a little way inland but in the end you came back to March Street, by the river, close to the center of Maryborough. No-one seems to have found you or linked you to the Babbacombe mystery.
I found a passenger listing of a Cornelius Harrington sailing from Southampton to Sidney in 1914 so maybe he was still sniffing on your track even then, but
I can’t believe that he actually found you. The outside world did intrude though, your twenty year old son Robert was called away to war and died on the Somme on the Western Front in France in 1916. You lived on. After the war, the Australia newspapers featured the human interest-type story of a devoted Devon couple who had lived together for 86 years as man and wife and who had died within a week of each other. Their names were William Easterbrook and Anne Hamlyn, late of Torbryan. They must have been close kin and William might even have been your father. I wonder if you noticed the story.
You could not fail to have heard of the good reviews of a new movie production, made in Australia in 1921 and touring all the country. It was a movie of ‘The Man They Could Not Hang’ with an accompanying live performance by the actor Arthur Sterry playing the celebrated Babbacombe murderer, John Lee. The sell-out production appeared at the Wintergarden Palace Theatre on Kent Street, not half a mile from your house. Maybe you never went to it because you couldn’t tell your husband about your past. When you died in February 1926, aged 70, he filed you wrongly as being born in Kingsteington and gave a fictitious name for your father. Maybe you never told him the truth.
There probably still is a picture of you somewhere in a family album, an old lady with a gypsy face shielding your eyes from the fierce Queensland sun. Someday I’d like to go to the Fraser coast and look up your grave. I’ll stand among the weeds and the sallow grasses among the emigrant dead, trying to sense you. You don’t need to be scared. I’ll be a friendly presence, maybe I’ll leave some flowers and a handful of red Devon soil as a greeting. You should understand, I want to make my peace with the dead of this story