“My dear friend, you wrong yourself abysmally,” I rejoined. ‘Why, any success we enjoyed was entirely the result of following your methods. ‘Watch the eyes,’ you counselled and that is precisely what I did. As soon as we confronted Emily Mallerby there flickered in those dark eyes precisely those emotions of guilt and fear which you had counselled me to be alert for. Once it was clear that he lady had much to hide everything else fell into place. Her mourning apparel bespoke a woman not once but twice widowed. When Narbig accosted us so soon after our interview with Mrs Mallerby it was obvious that he had received a warning from her and that they were both anxious to discover exactly what we knew.”
“What will happen to Mrs Mallerby, do you suppose?”
“Well,” said I, “she has been an accessory to at last one murder and your friend’s name can only be cleared if a guilty verdict is brought in against her. Whether or not she was complicit in the death of Mallerby is a matter for conjecture. I suspect the coroner may well authorize an exhumation.”
“Poor Gringlade,” Micawber sighed, “I cannot doubt that he will forever regret seeking the assistance of Wilkins Micawber.”
“Not so, my dear friend,” I protested. “Are you not forgetting three people who are more important to him that life itself and on whose behalf we must now expend our energies?”
It was three weeks later that I underwent a most extraordinary experience of déjà vu. Agnes and I found ourselves upon the deck of a merchant vessel in the river off Grave-send. Before us stood the substantial figure of Wilkins Micawber and his three charges. Jed Gringlade’s six-year-old twin sons each held firmly a hand of their younger sister and each stared wide-eyed at the bustle of a crew preparing to set sail. Twelve intervening years dissolved away like Thames mist and I was once again watching Mr and Mrs Micawber and their children leave as emigrants to begin a new life. Yet the circumstances of this departure differed greatly from that earlier farewell. Micawber now travelled not as a steerage passenger to be crammed and jostled with scores of others quitting their homeland with mixed emotions for some alien shore, but as a respected, first-class voyager resuming his life as a prosperous member of colonial society. I could only hope that the little family which now accompanied him would discover with their loving father the security and fulfilment which had been the happy fate of their temporary guardian.
The bell sounded for visitors to depart. We all said our goodbyes and never did I embrace fellow man more warmly than in those few seconds of farewell to great-hearted Wilkins Micawber. We descended to our boat and stood away from the graceful ship as its sails unfurled. With a crack they bellied out in the stiff evening breeze. We waved and called “Goodbye! God speed!’ across the water, then took our seats as the boatmen plied their oars.
Agnes looked at me curiously as we approached the shore. “My dear,” she said, “why are you smiling so?”
“Oh,” said I, “I am just envisaging the embellished version of this latest adventure with which Mr Wilkins Micawber, Magistrate, will be regaling all his friends – over and over again.”
Awaiting the Dawn
Marilyn Todd
Dickens was strongly opposed to capital punishment and wrote several pieces about the subject for the Daily News. Perhaps the most notable hanging he witnessed, following a notorious trial, was that of Frederick Manning and his wife Maria in November 1849 for the murder of Patrick O’Connor. Like all executions at the time, the hanging was in public, held at Horsemonger Gaol, and Dickens witnessed it from the roof of a neighbouring house. He also mingled with the crowds, gaining an impression of the public’s reaction and wrote a letter to The Times condemning public executions. He regarded the whole spectacle as “inconceivably awful” and called for its abolition. He believed that rather than be a warning to people, executions attracted the criminal element and served to encourage them. Whether or not his voice had an effect is difficult to say, but it may have been a spark, though it was twenty years before public executions ceased.
The Manning case and Dickens’s reaction were the inspiration for the following story which is set twenty years later, just when public executions had been abolished. Marilyn Todd is best known for her series featuring that cunning vixen of ancient Rome, Claudia Seferus, starting with I, Claudia (1995).
She sat with her back straight, hands clasped in her lap. Had it not been for the cold, or perhaps something else, you would have called her handsome, with her dark hair tied back in a bun and her black satin dress pinched in at the waist.
Midnight came. One o’clock. Two.
As the cold intensified, the young woman seemed to draw strength from its cruelty, and through the tiny aperture that passed for a window, a solitary star shone in the blackness. Brighter than a turnkey’s stare. Elizabeth watched until it moved out of sight, then shifted position ever so slightly. An economy of movement that attracted attention almost as much as the murder itself.
CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT, Oct. 2.
Throughout the proceedings, the prisoner sat, as was her custom, as motionless as a statue, looking neither to the left nor the right, and was never once seen to turn her eyes towards her husband.
The Times. 3 Oct., 1868.
Elizabeth fixed on the point where the dawn would eventually brighten. At eight, the prison bell would toll. The chaplain, the governor, the attending surgeon and no less than two turnkeys would accompany the miserable procession towards what yesterday’s editorial referred to as “the awful change”. Her knuckles whitened. Is that what they thought? That placing a cap over someone’s head, tightening a rope round their neck, then having the floor drop away equated to nothing more than a shift in personal circumstances?
Her gaze fell to the book lying open beside her. For these past twenty-four days – three clear Sundays being the stipulated interval between sentence being delivered and execution carried out – Elizabeth had had little to do except wait and read, read and wait, wait and read. In the end, she discovered, it was surprisingly easy to overpower reality with a good story, and in this case the book’s author was Charles Dickens, its title Great Expectations.
The irony of neither was lost.
Subsequent to the hanging he witnessed of another couple who hit the headlines for cold-blooded murder, Mr Dickens launched a campaign for the abolition of capital punishment. And whilst he was not entirely successful in his endeavours, he was not entirely unsuccessful, either. After nineteen years, Parliament finally compromised by decreeing it should at least be a solemn and intimate affair, business to be carried out within the prison, and away from public jeering and scrutiny. And since this law had only just come into being, newspapermen were apparently obliged to find new ways to fire their readers’ interest. Without doubt, a phrase as emotive as “the awful change” would generate debate. Debate, of course, would keep the paper’s profile high. More and more copies would be sold.
And there was no denying that William Lacey’s violent and untimely end was proving exceedingly profitable for the broadsheets. Love, lust, money, betrayal, this crime contained every ingredient necessary to keep the presses rolling, especially since so many questions remained unanswered.
THE LEXINGTON-PLACE MURDER. EXAMINATION OF MR AND MRS MARKHAM.
The proceedings of the case of Mr John Albert Markham, remanded on Tuesday 14th, and of Elizabeth Markham, his wife, remanded Friday, 17th, resumed yesterday at the Southwark Police-court.
Inspector Haywood stated, in reply to a question from the bench, that the prisoners had been permitted an interview. Markham was on record as stating, “I have nothing to say to my wife.” Mrs Markham said, “I do not wish to say anything to him, not one word.” The interview lasted under two minutes.
At 11 o’clock the prisoners, who have both denied the charge laid against them, were then placed at the bar. Markham, who was first introduced, was elevated on a chair on the right-hand side. In contrast, Mrs Markham was careful to position her chair as far away from her husband as was hum
anly possible, and did not pass him a look or a token of recognition throughout the day.
The Times. 20 Aug., 1868.
All the world loves a mystery, it makes the front page.
All the world, that is, except for Inspector Haywood, who preferred his solved.
“Until your marriage in June of this year, Mrs Markham, you were employed in the household of Sir Henry James Wilton, who—” he consulted his notes “—who is in coal, I see.”
Who sucks money from the north so he can wallow in luxury in the south, she thought, and where more food is thrown out in a week than any one of his miners earns in a month.
“That is correct.”
Inspector Haywood. The name conjured up images of a policeman of stature, lean perhaps to the point of bony, even, with unruly dark hair and gimlet eyes. In practice, his fringe was thinning, his waistline thickening, he was shorter than Elizabeth and reeked of carbolic soap. Only the gimlet eyes matched her expectations.
“Where you served as a governess to Sir Henry’s daughter?”
“Prudence.” A less suitable name for an overindulged, under-exercised brat Elizabeth could not imagine. Even at twelve, she was so fat that it was impossible to tell where face finished and shoulders commenced, and what paradox. Calling her after the virtue of restraint in an environment where moderation was a creature of legend.
Haywood turned a fresh page in his notebook. “Now before we come to how a property owner, landlord and money-lender from Stretford, came to be buried in quicklime under your scullery floor, Mrs Markham, perhaps you would be kind enough to explain how a governess to the landed gentry came to be acquainted with such a character.”
Elizabeth’s gaze travelled round the small, dingy, basement room that served as the inspector’s office. Through the window high up beside the ceiling, mud-splattered hems scurried past, spats clicked on the pavement, occasionally a dog would stop to sniff at the glass.
“Mr Lacey gets his boots hand-made at Norton’s,” she explained. “The establishment supplies Sir Henry and his family with their footwear.”
He snorted. “Wish I could afford to have my corns and calluses shod there.”
“As, I am sure, do the pit-men of Durham.”
“Hmm.”
That “hmm”, she decided, was of a man looking to make Chief Inspector, even Superintendent: heights unlikely to be scaled fretting about social concerns. Whereas securing a firm case for the prosecution offered a distinctly promising springboard –
“So it was while ordering a pair of boots for yourself that you encountered William Lacey?”
Elizabeth flashed him a smile that fell midway between sympathetic and wry. “Like policemen, Inspector, governesses cannot afford bespoke footwear.”
Not only poorly paid, they were neither fish nor fowl in the world that they lived in. With a position too elevated to allow them to mix with the servants but too low to join the family, was there ever a colder, lonelier, more miserable existence? For the moment, youth was on Elizabeth’s side. But unless she was careful, spinsterhood and poverty were all she had to look forward to in her old age.
“It was while I was collecting a pair of riding boots for Prudence that I first made Mr Lacey’s acquaintance.”
Ordinarily, Norton’s delivered. But it just so happened that Prudence’s little fat feet were outstripping their casings faster than you can say knife, to the point where the day dawned where she had a pony saddled and waiting downstairs in the yard, but no boots she could squeeze into.
Now in theory, this being Saturday, it should have been Elizabeth’s day off. A day normally spent shoring up contacts, putting out feelers, and generally testing the market for husbands. However, she calculated that if she collected the boots in person, Prudence’s tantrums could be calmed in a third of the time, and apart from the pleasure of riding in Sir Henry’s carriage, which was not to be sniffed at, with its plumed horses and gold crest on the doors, she would also have an opportunity to gaze into the many shop windows that fronted Bond-street.
That was back in February, of course, and to be frank, very little about that first meeting stood out. She’d been too busy picturing herself swirling around dance floors in the various ball gowns or floating in one of the furs to pay much attention to the portly, rather gingerish, customer with gold-rimmed spectacles perched on the end of his nose. For though his tailoring was impeccable, albeit a tad loud, and his pocket-watch worth a small fortune, Elizabeth was eager to escape her governess life. Not desperate.
The inspector licked the tip of his pencil. “Yet a friendship between William Lacey and yourself did develop?”
“No impropriety occurred, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“My apologies, Mrs Markham, for implying anything of the sort.” All the same, he looked disappointed. “Mr Lacey may have been no stranger to the law, but his housekeeper vouches most vehemently that she found no, uh, traces of improper conduct on the premises. Indeed, even your husband, who himself seems to be of a passionate and sometimes violent nature, has cast no aspersions on your fidelity.” The gimlet eyes flickered. “I am simply curious as to what a respectable married woman and an unscrupulous moneylender might have in common.”
Of course he was. The press, too. In fact, the whole world had its tongue hanging out, panting.
For one thing, there had been no disguising William Lacey’s fascination for Elizabeth. In fact, from the moment he stepped aside to allow her to be served before him, he confided to friends how he had been struck by her poise. By the time they were engaged, in conversation while Prudence’s boots were being attended to, he confessed that her wit and intelligence had him enthralled. Indeed, the instant Elizabeth vacated the premises, Lacey was badgering Mr Norton about her and then, having discovered where she worked, boasted many times in the weeks that followed of the various “coincidental” meetings that he engineered.
But the police, the public and the jury were no fools. If his attentions had been unwelcome, Elizabeth was more than capable of quashing them. It was obvious as the nose on their face that she had strung him along, but all she would say on the matter was that Mr Lacey was not husband material.
While making no effort to explain why a renowned drinker and gambler who could not hold a job was.
She shrugged. “Who can say what binds friendship together, Inspector?”
“Obviously not confidences,” Haywood snapped back. “Right up until his death, William Lacey remained ignorant in the matter of your marriage, so perhaps you could enlighten me as to why you kept it a secret? Was it that you were ashamed of John Markham?”
“On the contrary.” She smiled demurely. “I found my husband exciting.”
So did the press. Impoverished spinster living a sheltered life on the one hand. A handsome, cocky, ladies’-man on the other. The fact that he was seven years younger than his bride only added to the piquancy of the pairing, and the newspapers left little doubt in their readership’s mind that the new Mrs Markham found her wifely duties less than onerous.
“Then why not tell your ‘good friend’ about your marriage?”
“How cruel you are, Inspector. When I was only too keenly aware of Mr Lacey’s tenderness towards me, why should I desire to hurt his feelings?”
“And this had nothing to do with the fact that Mr Lacey was of the Roman Catholic persuasion, and that although his wife left him many years previously, he was still legally married?”
“I see absolutely no relevance in the matter.”
Haywood’s fist slammed down on the table. “Mrs Mark-ham. For broadsheet editors, your composure and beauty might be a front-page dream, but a man is dead. Lured to your lodgings in Lexington-place, shot and then buried like litter beneath your kitchen floor, and quicklime thrown over his body. On the very same morning, if you please, that he transferred five thousand pounds’ worth of securities into cash, every penny of which has gone missing, while your own husband accuses you of sending him out to
purchase an air pistol, a shovel, a bag of quicklime and two train tickets to Brighton. All this, while you yourself were engaged in giving notice to quit your lodgings and selling the bulk of your furniture to a broker, if you please! Oh, yes, your husband is also on record as stating that, when he returned home from his walk, he found you in the scullery with blood on your dress, the gun in your hand and the victim dead at your feet.”
His notebook snapped shut.
“Premeditated murder, Mrs Markham. Now, I grant society has few reasons to mourn William Lacey’s passing, but please spare me any pleas about hurting his feelings. The man was killed for a motive as base and pitiless as money, and I have every intention of bringing the perpetrators of this vile crime to justice. So is there anything you wish to say in your defence?” His eyes narrowed at her continued silence. “Nothing? No questions at all that you wish to ask? Not—” he paused “—not even why the young man who promised so ardently to love, cherish and honour you just three short months ago sold you out?”
Elizabeth drew a deep breath. “Maybe there is one thing, Inspector.”
“Oh?” He leaned towards her. “And what might that be?”
“I was wondering if I might have a cup of tea, please? With just half a teaspoonful of sugar?”
If her approach infuriated the police, then the public was thrilled. So many questions. So few answers.
What happened to the five thousand pounds? There was no trace of it at Lexington-place and, with the house next to a main thoroughfare, half a dozen witnesses were able to confirm that William Lacey was carrying no baggage when he entered the house.
Which begged another question. Where did William Lacey go between cashing in his securities and calling on the Markhams?
And why, if Elizabeth was truly after his fortune, would a woman of such obvious intelligence kill the golden goose before it had laid any eggs?
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 30