Laetitia Rodd and the Case of the Wandering Scholar

by Kate Saunders

  Arthur, dear Arthur, was dead.

  I spent the long hours of that sorrowful journey praying for the repose of his soul.

  The Warden’s House

  Gabriel College

  Oxford

  Wednesday night

  Dear Fred,

  Since you always seem to know about crimes practically before they are committed, I’m sure you will already have heard the bare facts. It is all over the newspapers by now. People are saying that Rachel and Mr Barton were lovers, and that they killed Arthur to get him out of the way.

  I do not believe it for a moment – but I am aware of certain things I know, which will only make everything look worse if I reveal them! What am I to do?

  I told you of the conversation I overheard, between Arthur and Mr Barton, which I am now bound to report to the person conducting the investigation. And it makes me quite wretched to think of what a jury might make of my evidence – let alone the counsel for the prosecution. A worse punishment for eavesdropping can scarcely be imagined.

  As for Rachel, I would swear before the Court of Heaven itself that she is innocent.

  They will both need the very finest defence that can be got, regardless of cost. I beg you to recommend a suitable man or men to defend them – if they are hanged because of my evidence, I think the remorse will kill me.

  Here is what I know so far. On the 18th of this month, Arthur Somers left his house at around noon, with the intention of walking over to Swinford. Rachel was seen to give him a bottle of lemonade. He did not come home.

  On the morning of the 19th, very early, the household was roused by the local constable, a Mr Pye, and a clergyman, Gerard Fogle. They were the bearers of the terrible news that Arthur had been found dead in the room he sometimes used at Swinford.

  A Dr Jaques examined the corpse and announced that he had been poisoned ‘by the ingestion of atropine’. At first the talk was of suicide, though Arthur left no letter behind.

  An inquest took place in Oxford on August the 21st. Three people testified under oath that they had seen Arthur and Mr Barton engaged in heated disagreement on the evening of the dance – one of these witnesses being Mr Daniel Arden. The verdict was Murder.

  On August the 22nd, Mr Barton and Rachel were arrested.

  Please forgive the rambling nature of this letter – it is nearly three in the morning and the lamp is at its last gasp, but I am too upset to think of sleeping. The Warden’s House is perfectly well-appointed and my chamber very comfortable, and Mrs W-W has been endlessly kind. I must stay here for as long as Rachel needs me; she has no one else. And in any case, I am involved now – this plea is personal rather than professional.

  Your affectionate sister,

  Letty

  PS – Please tell Fanny I am sorry she was put out by my hasty departure.

  ‘Mrs Rodd – I’m so very glad to see you!’

  ‘Rachel, my dear!’

  I will never forget – it is branded on my memory for all time – my first sight of poor Rachel in her widowhood. Her face was deathly pale; she wore a plain black gown from which all trimmings had been removed and her beautiful hair was quenched beneath a widow’s cap.

  She made a faint attempt at a smile. ‘What do you think of my prison?’

  The town lock-up, with its pitiful population of vagrants and unfortunates, had not been thought suitable for a gentlewoman or for a clergyman. Mr Barton was lodged in the house of the local magistrate. Rachel’s ‘prison’ was a red-brick vicarage on the Banbury road, and her ‘warders’ were the vicar and his sister. It so happened that the vicar, Mr Philip Martindale, had once sat on a committee with my dearest Matt, and this emboldened me to turn up unannounced on his doorstep. He had very kindly allowed me this private audience with Rachel in his drawing room. We sat down on the sofa and I clasped her cold hands.

  ‘Are you comfortable here? Do you have everything you need?’

  ‘Thank you, I’m perfectly comfortable. The Martindales are very good to me. They do not judge me.’ Rachel’s red eyes brimmed with tears. ‘They know my heart is breaking and they pity my sorrow. Oh, Mrs Rodd – how has this happened to us? As if I’d ever hurt my darling Arthur!’

  ‘I know you did not murder him,’ I said. ‘The very idea is ridiculous.’

  ‘And – and I did not betray him.’ She held her head up proudly. ‘It is very important to me that you believe me.’

  ‘I do, my dear.’ I spoke soothingly, for this was no time to air my own suspicions about her feelings for Mr Barton. ‘Now you must try to recall for me every detail of poor Arthur’s last day on earth. I understand that he left for Swinford just before noon.’

  ‘Yes, and I sent him off with a bottle of poisoned lemonade, which I placed in his pocket in front of several witnesses.’

  ‘I’m afraid you will be asked a great many questions about that bottle of lemonade,’ I said. ‘For example, who filled it – and when?’

  ‘I did, naturally. I’ll give you the entire history, if you like, right back to the lemon tree.’

  ‘Rachel, please; I am not against you.’

  ‘I beg your pardon, I shouldn’t snap at you, of all people.’ She was meek now. ‘I had made the lemonade the previous day. I drank some, with no ill effects, so it wasn’t poisonous yet. I left the pitcher in the dairy overnight to keep it cool, and I filled the bottle for Arthur a few minutes before he left.’ She sighed softly, and was quiet for a few moments. ‘Everyone in the house must have heard me calling out to him to wait while I fetched it – which I surely would not have done if I meant to commit a crime.’

  ‘No, indeed,’ I said. ‘I hope you examined the contents of that pitcher.’

  ‘It was tested, but nothing was found; the atropine was only in the bottle I gave to Arthur.’

  ‘So it is established that the poison must have been added somewhere outside the house.’

  ‘I know Mr Barton had nothing to do with it; he loved Arthur.’

  (And threatened to kill him, I couldn’t help remembering.) ‘Let’s go back to that day. Did you know that Arthur would be spending the night at Swinford?’

  ‘No, but he often stayed there,’ said Rachel. ‘That’s why I wasn’t unduly worried when he didn’t come home. He was perfectly well that day, and perfectly happy. I was completely unprepared for the news of his death; I don’t think I truly believe it yet.’ She added, ‘I know how ridiculous that sounds, but I keep catching myself thinking of him as if he were still here.’

  (This was a sensation I remembered only too well from the commencement of my own widowhood; in the midst of all the shock and pain of my husband’s sudden death, I found myself storing up things to tell him.)

  ‘It’s because they wouldn’t let me see him,’ said Rachel, with a catch in her voice that went to my heart. ‘And Miss Martindale says he is to be buried tomorrow.’

  ‘He has not yet been buried?’

  ‘The coroner has only just released the body. He is at Swinford now.’

  I shuddered to think of the state of the corpse so many days after death; it was just as well Rachel could not see it. ‘Remember that it’s not Arthur any more,’ I said gently. ‘The true Arthur is now rejoicing in the light of the next world.’

  ‘Mrs Rodd, will you go to him at Swinford?’

  ‘Yes, if you wish it.’ I had already decided to do exactly that, while I still had the use of Mrs Watts-Weston’s neat little one-horse carriage (and while the lady herself was otherwise engaged and could not interfere). ‘I will go this very day.’

  ‘Please pray for me.’ Rachel clutched at my hand. ‘I mean – please pray on my behalf. My own prayers aren’t any good.’

  ‘You know that’s not true.’

  ‘In my mind I know it,’ said Rachel. ‘But my heart feels nothing; when I try to pray it’s like banging on a locked door.’

  I glanced up at the wooden clock on the chimney-piece; Mr Martindale had only allowed us a very few minutes and might come in
at any moment. ‘When you are tried,’ I said, ‘the prosecuting counsel will do everything in his power to convince the jury that you and Henry Barton were lovers. And whether it’s true or not, the jury is likely to take it as evidence that you conspired to kill your husband. If you have held anything back, I entreat you to tell me at once.’

  ‘I have told you everything.’ It was an effort for her to meet my eyes. ‘Before Heaven, we are innocent.’

  Thirteen

  The notorious ‘monastic’ community at Swinford held a fascination in those days that younger readers might find hard to comprehend. In the popular imagination it was a sinister place, a hotbed of Jesuitical intrigue, where innocent young men were lured away from their respectable families into the Roman Catholic priesthood.

  Since there is nothing duller than dead Church politics, I will sketch the background as briefly as possible. Mr Gerard Fogle (I saw no reason to address the man as ‘Father’ in the Roman manner) was a great figure in the so-called Oxford Movement. He was expelled from his college amidst claims that he presented a moral danger to his students (there were comparisons to Socrates, though not from my dear husband, whose comments on the matter are not fit to print). Mr Fogle was given the living of St Alphage and All Saints at Swinford, a small village a few miles to the south of Oxford. He famously kept to the ‘monastic rule’ of a medieval monk, and such numbers of young admirers flocked around him that he had the nearby stables made into bare white cells.

  Arthur had walked to Swinford across the fields. The journey was longer by road; I drove myself there directly after taking leave of Rachel, in Mrs W-W’s little one-horse trap, and it was not an agreeable experience. Vulgar people always feel free to shout insults at a lone female driver, and there were knots of loafers at every corner, apparently with nothing better to do; I was almost glad when the rain drove them all indoors (though I worried about the dye coming out of my second-best bonnet). I was by this stage absolutely famished for concrete facts.

  I was also intensely curious to see the real Swinford. Well, as far as I was concerned it was a thorough let-down. I stopped the natty little carriage outside a perfectly ordinary country church, in a perfectly commonplace village. The famous ‘community’ was nothing more than a huddle of farm buildings – all dripping thatch and puddles, most unlike the romantic picture conjured in my mind by the word ‘monastery’.

  Nothing stirred, nobody came out – no brown-kirtled friars, nor anyone else. I left the horse under a chestnut tree, nuzzling at the grass; he was a good-natured, patient, biddable creature (as all creatures around Mrs W-W, including husband, children and the kitchen cat, tended to be).

  The rectory was a large house of red brick that took up one side of the village green. I knocked loudly on the front door, and listened to the sound dying away into emptiness. Just as I was debating with myself whether to knock again, I heard footsteps hurrying towards me. The door opened about six inches and a young man peered out.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ I said. ‘I wish to speak to Mr Fogle, on a very urgent matter; please tell him that I am here.’ I held out one of my visiting cards. ‘My name is Laetitia Rodd.’

  The young man stared at it anxiously. ‘Oh – er – I’m afraid I can’t disturb him.’

  ‘I am calling on behalf of Mrs Somers. I’ll wait if necessary.’

  ‘You see, the thing is, they don’t generally have ladies here.’

  ‘If I am not allowed inside this house, Mr Fogle must meet me somewhere else,’ I said, more forcefully. ‘I am determined to speak to him.’

  ‘It’s all right, Rivers; I will see to this.’ The voice was arrestingly soft and sweet. ‘You may admit this lady.’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ He opened the door and stepped aside for me to enter.

  The large hall was bare and clean, with no furnishings save one gloomy brown painting of someone being martyred. There was a smell of old cooking and carbolic soap, cut through with a tang of incense. The young man bowed to me quickly and scuttled away through a door under the stairs, leaving me alone with one of the most celebrated and argued-about churchmen in England.

  Gerard Fogle was tall and very thin, clad in a priestly black suit and Roman collar, and handsomer than the soulful portraits I had seen in the newspapers. He was in his middle forties, with smooth dark hair. His grey eyes were large and expressive, and if they had belonged to a young girl they would have been beautiful; in Mr Fogle’s thin, beaky face the effect was disconcerting.

  ‘You are welcome here, Mrs Rodd; please come into my study.’ His voice had a feminine lilt to it, and his manner was unexpectedly charming; it was easy to see why he exerted such power over his devotees. ‘There is a fire; I find this damp weather very trying.’

  It was a very small fire. Mr Fogle’s study was not a comfortable room (I could not help comparing it to Matt’s study in Herefordshire which was absolutely consecrated to the dear man’s comfort, with its roaring fires, easy chairs and decanters).

  This room was as sparsely furnished as possible. The floor was of bare wood and the walls not covered with books were of whitewashed plaster. A large mahogany crucifix, of the kind seen in foreign churches, loomed over Mr Fogle’s desk. We sat down beside the fire in two hard wooden chairs.

  ‘I am very glad to see that poor Mrs Somers has someone to speak on her behalf. I have not been in a position to help her; this house of holiness is now the scene of a crime.’ His great, girlish eyes filled with tears. ‘When you knocked I thought you were another policeman. They have sent some men from London.’

  I was on the alert at once; I had known someone would be sent from Scotland Yard, but I had hoped to steal a march on them (they made such an awful mess of a crime scene in those early days). Never mind. I forced myself to concentrate upon Rachel, the true reason for my visit; I had given her my solemn promise that I would pray, on her behalf, over Arthur’s remains. It was the only comfort that I could bring her.

  ‘Mr Fogle, I understand that Arthur is still here.’

  ‘Yes, he lies in our chapel; he was brought back to us as soon as the coroner released him. He will be buried here tomorrow.’ The tears rolled down his cheeks; he made no attempt to hide them from me. ‘In the place he was happiest.’

  ‘I know that he was very happy here,’ I said. ‘He spoke of it more than once. He spoke of his friendship with you.’

  ‘It was more than friendship. I loved him beyond expression.’

  ‘Oh.’ I was a little taken aback by the extravagance of this declaration.

  ‘I know that you loved him too, Mrs Rodd; you must not be afraid to use the word. Arthur often spoke of you and your late husband, and the kindness you showed to him.’

  ‘I’m afraid he and my husband didn’t always see eye to eye.’

  ‘Not in some matters, perhaps,’ said Mr Fogle. ‘But your husband – at considerable risk to himself – did Arthur a great service, which he never forgot.’

  I did not know what he meant; I could not remember anything in the shape of a ‘great service’ done to Arthur by Matt (unless you counted teaching him whist).

  I hurried on, a little flustered by those radiant eyes. ‘During my last visit to Oxfordshire, I was struck by the amount of time he spent here. He seemed to walk to Swinford nearly every day.’

  ‘Yes, he came often.’ Mr Fogle was as mild as ever, yet I sensed a wariness. ‘There was no formal attachment to our community; it was simply that he and I were very old friends. He was troubled; it was natural for him to turn to me.’

  I must confess that, for once, my courage failed me; I simply could not bring myself to utter a word about the wretched matter of the blackmail, never mind the sin attached to it; in my time I have faced up to murderers and here I was, smitten into silence by a wraith of a man I could easily have knocked down. But how were such things to be spoken of before a creature of such refinement?

  Quickly changing direction (and with the strangest sense that this ethereal being could read my
mind), I said, ‘The shock of his death must have been quite dreadful.’

  ‘I felt it as a bolt of lightning,’ said Mr Fogle. ‘As an arrow in my heart.’

  ‘Who was the first to discover the body?’

  ‘One of my young men; Edward Rivers, whom you saw in the hall just now. It was very early in the morning. Rivers had arranged to pray with Arthur, as preparation for the six o’clock service in our chapel. When he failed to appear, Rivers assumed he had overslept and went to his room. There was no response to his knocking. He went into the room—’ Mr Fogle’s face creased up in anguish and he could not continue.

  I pitied the man, but there were things I needed to know and, now that Scotland Yard had taken over, I was aware that I might not get a chance to question Mr Edward Rivers myself. ‘When did you hear of it?’

  ‘I was in my bedchamber, engaged in my morning devotions,’ said Mr Fogle. ‘I was summoned at once – the sight is burned into my memory for all time. Rivers had not touched Arthur’s body, for he was quite obviously dead. He lay halfway between the bed and the floor, with his eyes wide open and staring at nothing, and his face frozen into the most ghastly, snarling expression – forgive me.’ He was struggling to compose himself. ‘He looked like a stranger.’

  ‘The distorted face can be a sign of atropine poisoning.’

  ‘He was not given poison in this house,’ said Mr Fogle. ‘The Coroner’s Court decided that it was administered at some time in the afternoon of that day, before his arrival at Swinford.’

  ‘At what time was that?’

  ‘Six o’clock. He stayed in his room for an hour and came to me here at seven.’

  He stopped suddenly, and I had a strong sense that there was something he did not want me to know (my instinct is very reliable; I can always smell a secret). ‘Can you tell me what the two of you talked about that evening?’