by Jane Harris
All this carefree activity continued, while in Woodside, Glasgow, at number 11, Stanley Street, there prevailed a suffocating, narrow life of desolation and despair. Only last summer, the family had wandered happily among the crowds at the International Exhibition. Now, in their grief, Ned and Annie had withdrawn from the world, and from each other. Naturally, I did everything that I could to help them during those dreadful months: nobody can deny that. Although we were probably not in each other’s pockets as much as we had been, say, earlier in the year, I do believe that recent events had brought us closer, emotionally, than we had ever been before.
In the investigation, there was little progress. Sightings of Rose had all but ceased, and no further ransom demand had been received. The journalists had grown bored by mid-summer, and began to abandon Stanley Street; even Kemp from The Citizen eventually packed his belongings and relinquished his ‘room with a view’. Then, as August turned to September, any remaining newspaper interest in the Gillespie case was eclipsed by the excitement surrounding the pursuit and arrest of John Watson Laurie: ‘The Arran Murderer’. By the time that autumn had us firmly in her grip, not one single area of inquiry had resulted in the discovery, either of Rose Gillespie, or of any single clue that might lead to her whereabouts. The mysterious foreigner who had entered the carnival site carrying a sleepy child had vanished, like a conjuror’s rabbit.
The moment that we had all been quietly dreading arrived on the morning of the 17th of September, when Detective Stirling called at Stanley Street, unannounced, to inform the Gillespies that, at the behest of his superior, Detective Inspector Grant, he had been instructed to put aside their case.
Apparently, when Stirling first arrived, Sibyl was hovering in the background, and she was present, in the parlour, when he began to explain the reason for his visit. The child must have slipped out of the room at some point, but Annie realised that she was no longer there only approximately half an hour later, when the detective stood up to leave. Stirling had been very apologetic, and kept insisting that, if it were up to him, Rose’s case would have remained open. Of course, both Ned and Annie were disappointed that the police had effectively given up their inquiries, but Stirling’s announcement was not entirely unexpected: for some time, we had feared that the investigation would be abandoned due to the very obvious lack of progress. At any rate, perhaps Ned and Annie were prepared for such an eventuality in a way that Sibyl, as a child, was not.
Once Stirling had gone, Ned disappeared into his studio, without a word. Annie went in search of Sibyl and found her curled up on the bed in her attic room. Apparently, the child was in a state of shock that the police had given up hope. When Annie sat down on the mattress, Sibyl threw herself into her mother’s arms, with a plaintive cry.
‘Will we never find Rose now?’
‘Oh, I’m sure we will,’ said Annie. She stroked her daughter’s hair, which was damp with tears. ‘There, now! Shh!’
‘But he said the police won’t be looking for her any more!’
‘No, dear, they have to work on other cases.’
At this, Sibyl wept, as though her heart might break. I imagine that, to Annie, the child felt like a scrap of nothing, wrapped up inside her clothes, all of which now swamped her tiny, bird-like frame. At length, her crying subsided. Annie tucked her into the bed and then sat, holding the girl’s hand, until she fell into an uneasy, fretful sleep.
A few hours later, Sibyl came downstairs, looking glum and tearful. However, she insisted that she felt well enough to spend the afternoon at number 14, and so, believing her to be in better spirits, Annie took her across the road. They found Elspeth in the basement, washing the floors, having sent Jean, the maid, to the post office. It was Jean who normally watched over Sibyl, since Ned’s mother was often engaged in God’s business. However, on this particular day, Annie left the girl in the care of her mother-in-law, and set off for the Gallowgate with a batch of leaflets.
Since the afternoon was fine and dry, Elspeth opened the back door and, after checking that the gate to the lane was bolted at the top, she informed Sibyl that she could play on the grass, provided that she remained within sight. However, the child professed a desire to stay inside and help her grandmother with the household chores, and so they went into the kitchen and sat down at the table, together.
As fate would have it, Ned’s mother had decided, that day, to clean her parlour lights: a pair of glass-chimneyed paraffin lamps that she kept for occasional use, preferring their traditional glow to that of the new-fangled gaseliers. To begin her task, she tipped the old oil out of the lamps, into a jar. Then, she asked Sibyl to hand her a duster. Elspeth could not be sure what happened next but—somehow—as she took the cloth from her granddaughter, the jar was knocked over, and the old oil spilled across the table. Reluctant to ruin a duster with dirty work, the widow went to fetch rags and, upon her return, caught sight of Sibyl, who was holding out both hands above the pool of oil, as though to touch it, but when she heard her grandmother’s approach, she snatched back her fingers and moved away. Elspeth found only a small puddle of paraffin on the table, which was surprising, as the jar had been half full but, thinking little of it, she cleaned up the mess and began to polish the glass chimneys. In the meantime, Sibyl had flitted around the kitchen, from sink, to fireplace, to shelves, finally stepping into the passageway.
‘Please may I go out now?’ she lisped.
‘You may,’ said Elspeth, ‘provided that you stay where I can see you.’
With that, Sibyl slipped outside and began to skip around the back green, singing to herself. Seeing her thus occupied, Ned’s mother returned to her work, confident that if she could hear the child, then it meant that she was close at hand. Presently, however, the singing came to a halt. Peering through the window, Elspeth saw that her granddaughter was crouched down, apparently examining something on the grass. Satisfied that Sibyl was engaged in some innocuous activity, the widow began to refill her lamps. Just then, Jean returned from her errands: Elspeth heard the maid descend the basement stairs and pass the kitchen, on her way to the back door, where she usually hung up her outdoor garment, an old worsted cloak.
Subsequently, according to Ned’s mother, everything seemed to happen at once. Something outside the window attracted her attention: a bright light, or a flash, caused her to glance up. Simultaneously, she heard Jean cry out, an unusually offensive expletive. In other circumstances, Elspeth would have had words with her but by then, she was looking out of the window into the back court, and what she saw there seemed, at first, impossible.
Sibyl was in flames. Or, at least, partially in flames: the sleeves of her frock were burning as brightly and fiercely as bonfires. And yet, despite the fact that her clothes were alight, she was walking calmly around the yard, with her eyes lifted to the heavens, her burning arms held out from her body, like the Lord himself on the cross (as Elspeth later described the scene). The child did not scream, or say a word; she made no sound. Within seconds, the flames seemed to spread to her skirts, and leap higher. All at once, Ned’s mother became aware of a blur in the corner of her vision, another figure, moving quickly: it was Jean, dashing across the grass, holding out her old grey cloak in both hands, in the style of a matador. She ran at Sibyl and, in one movement, wrapped the child in the garment, and dragged her to the ground. Then she rolled the tiny figure this way and that in the fabric, attempting to smother the flames.
In the same moment, Ned’s mother grabbed the bucket of water left over from when she had washed the floor and careened out into the yard, as fast as her legs could carry her. The air was filled with the smell of burning. Her maid was lifting up the child, still wrapped in the cloak. Smoke rose from the scorched material. Sibyl’s head lolled back; her eyelids fluttered, then closed. A tin of kitchen matches lay on the grass. All the blood had drained from Jean’s face. She turned to her mistress and said something. Her lips moved, but the widow heard not a word, because of a strange rushing s
ound in her ears. Elspeth threw water over Sibyl, dousing the last of the flames. Then the bucket dropped from her hands and clattered to the ground. Perhaps it was shock, or the unaccustomed burst of physical activity, or a combination of the two, but Elspeth’s field of vision shrank to nothing, as darkness closed in. Then she sank to her knees, and fell forwards in a dead faint, landing in a heap in the middle of the back green.
All this took place on the Tuesday. I myself was not in Glasgow on that particular afternoon. I had gone to Bardowie, to oversee the arrangement of some furniture and other household paraphernalia that had been carted out to the house a few weeks previously. However, upon my return to town, I soon heard about what had happened in my absence. Sibyl had been taken to the Royal Infirmary, where she lay on a bed, swathed in bandages and, during the course of several days thereafter, the doctors seemed doubtful that she would survive her injuries and the pneumonia that set in as a result of the accident. We were all very relieved when her eyes opened for a short while, on Friday, and then, again, the following day. For a week, she drifted in and out of consciousness but, thankfully, no further complications ensued. After a further fortnight, the lungs started to heal themselves and, slowly, she began to recover. By some miracle, Elspeth’s and Jean’s rapid reactions had saved the child. Sadly, Sibyl’s burns were extensive, particularly on her arms and shoulders, and the doctors were agreed that she would carry the scars for the rest of her life.
As if that were not tragedy enough, as soon as she was sufficiently recovered, she was taken directly to the Ladies Department of the Royal Lunatic Asylum at Kelvinside, where she was committed for an indefinite period. This time, her actions had been so extreme that even Ned could not deny the truth: the poor girl had completely lost her mind.
It is part of human nature, in such circumstances, to think: ‘If only…’ If only Annie had not taken Sibyl across the road to number 14. If only Ned’s mother had not chosen that particular afternoon to clean her oil lamps. If only she had kept a closer watch over her granddaughter. If only the girl had not been so indulged by all and sundry—and so on, and so forth. Such thoughts are useless, inutile, no matter how often one thinks them; it is always too late. Sibyl had forever been a needy and unstable child, whose devious quirks of character put too many demands upon her parents and, ultimately, she had descended into a state of twisted self-loathing and despair. Yet, despite her mental problems, none of us could have foreseen that she would carry out such an act of lunacy. When all is said and done, nobody can be held accountable for what became of her.
15
Thankfully, there was only muted public interest in this latest disaster to strike the family because all of Scotland was now obsessed with the forthcoming trial for the Arran murderer. Only a few short items appeared in the press, and Sibyl’s injuries were attributed to a simple, but unfortunate, domestic accident. Some weeks later, when she had recovered sufficiently from her burns, and the time came to move her to the Ladies Department of the asylum, this was quietly done, in the middle of the night, in order to avoid alerting any unwanted attention. As far as I am aware, none of the newspapers reported that she had been admitted to the asylum until it became public, a few months later, during the trial.
Soon after her admission, Sibyl began, once again, to refuse food, and I believe that the attendants found it almost impossible to persuade her to eat. She also became increasingly sensitive to any external stimulus: the sound of a voice could make her wince; at the clatter of a dropped teacup she would cover her ears; a ray of sunlight on her face could cause her to turn up her eyes in agony. Any extremes of emotion caused such agitation in her that it could take hours for the attendants to pacify her. Even the anticipation of a meeting with her parents sent her into a state of anxiety, and she was so distraught after having seen them that the physicians restricted their visits. Ned was instructed that he and Annie should come to see Sibyl only once a fortnight, and that each visit could last no longer than an hour.
Other visitors were discouraged altogether, for the time being. I suspect that Ned’s mother was secretly relieved. Although she never admitted to any culpability vis-à-vis Sibyl’s current predicament, it is my belief that Elspeth was, in private, consumed by feelings of remorse. One can only imagine how wretched the old lady must have felt: the pangs of dread, churning her stomach; the actual physical ache, in the region of the heart; a tremble in the hands; the bitter taste at the back of her throat; and the ever-present sensation of nausea. These are the kind of symptoms, I suppose, that must have plagued her.
I know that Ned and Annie were set reeling by Sibyl’s incarceration in the asylum: it was a devastating blow, and delivered so soon after the disappearance of Rose. In hindsight, I believe that I myself may have gone into something of a depression at around this time. Usually, I have a vivid recollection of the past, but the ensuing weeks are not as clear in my memory as other periods in my life. No doubt, the shock of Rose’s disappearance, followed by Sibyl’s horrific and unexpected attempts on her own life, and the inevitable repercussions on my friends the Gillespies, all had an effect upon my own state of mind.
The first episode that I can recall with any clarity that autumn was when I visited the Gillespies one Friday afternoon, towards the middle of November. I knew that they had been at the asylum on the previous day, and I was keen to hear any news of Sibyl. That morning, I had picked up one or two things in town for Merlinsfield, and, not wishing to arrive at Stanley Street empty-handed, I also bought an apple pie at the baker’s.
The entrance to number 11 was now kept locked, as it had been in the past, since the residents’ fears about burglars had prevailed, and the stone that had propped open the door during the early weeks of Rose’s disappearance was long since gone. On that particular afternoon, I happened to arrive at the same time as Mrs Calthrop, who let me into the building. We got into conversation on the way in and, by coincidence, it turned out that she had just been to the shops, and had bought some tobacco for Ned. I offered to save her a trip upstairs and, since I was encumbered with parcels, she dropped the twist of tobacco into my carpetbag.
Up on the top landing, all was quiet. I knocked, tentatively, and was surprised when the door opened, almost at once, to reveal Ned. Never, in all the time that I had known him, had he answered the door. I must admit that his appearance was startling, even heart-rending. Poor thing: he was unshaven, and his hair stuck up around his head, at all angles. He looked hollow-cheeked and, for the first time, I noticed deep lines around his eyes.
‘Oh!’ he said, leaning out to peer over the banister. ‘I thought it was…’
‘I’m terribly sorry—were you expecting someone?’
‘No, just—’ He retreated into the doorway. ‘Annie’s not here.’
‘What a shame. I brought you this apple pie. Oh, and in the depths of my bag, I have your tobacco. I ran into your neighbour, you see. I’d get it out, only…’
My hands were full, but I was reluctant to set my belongings on the floor: the landing looked as though it had not been swept in some time. Ned seemed so uninterested in the pie that I wondered whether I was mistaken about apple being his favourite. But, presumably, he had no appetite. Usually, he was chivalrous to a fault, but he must have been in some kind of prolonged shock over all the recent calamities because he did not even offer to take the dish from me. He simply stepped back into the apartment, saying: ‘Well, if you want, you can put it on the…’
He gestured towards the kitchen, before wandering off down the hall. I put the pie in the larder, and then sought out Ned. He was standing by the parlour fireplace. As I entered, he held out his pipe.
‘Do you have that, eh…?’
‘Oh, yes, of course.’
I set down all my packages and, now that my hands were free, I was able to reach into my bag and give him the tobacco. He put the twist on the mantelpiece and began to cut it, without a word. I took a moment to glance around the room. Even though the newspaperm
en were long gone from outside, the curtains at the front of the house remained partially drawn, giving the place a funereal gloom. All the windows were still nailed shut, and the apartment had the stale scent of unaired linens, and something else, a sour smell, like rancid bacon.
‘Where’s Annie?’ I asked.
‘She’s away to Aberdeen for a few days. There was a sighting, of Rose, up there. She’s gone to investigate.’
‘Oh? I do hope she’s not disappointed.’
My gaze fell upon one of my parcels: a large package of stiff brown paper. Inside, was the boxwood birdcage that I had purchased that very morning, at the japonais curio shop in Sauchiehall Street. I thought that it might cheer Ned up to see what I had bought, and so I tore off the wrapping paper, and set the cage on the table, exclaiming: ‘Look—from the Japanese shop! Isn’t it enchanting?’
‘What is it?’ he asked, with a glance at his watch.
‘It’s that birdcage—the one we liked.’
‘I didn’t know you had birds, Harriet.’
‘I don’t—but I hope to buy some. I was thinking of putting the cage in the studio at Merlinsfield. I’ve been staying out there some of the time, you know.’ I paused, but he made no response, and so I went on: ‘Wouldn’t that be wonderful—to hear a couple of songbirds twittering away in the corner, whilst one painted?’