by Jane Harris
Thereafter, while Detective Stirling escorted the inconsolable Ned back to Stanley Street, police began to examine the new evidence. It seems that, prior to placement in the grave, the child had been wrapped in an old jacket, and then bundled into the jute sack. The sack bore the stamp of the ‘Scotstoun Mill’ which lay just outside the city, at Partick. Unfortunately for the police, these flour bags were ubiquitous, and almost impossible to trace. The jacket was similarly nondescript: a working man’s brown reefer, with no label or other identifying mark. There was a large bloodstain on the chest area, which might have explained why the garment had been buried along with the body. A search of the pockets revealed nothing and, in the absence of any other information, constables were dispatched to question workers at the Scotstoun Mill. Although the discovery of the body was a major step forward in the case, detectives were disappointed not to have more leads.
Once Rose had been identified, the investigation was duly turned over to the Western Division. That evening, the box of evidence containing the jacket and sack was transferred to the police office at Cranston Street, where Detective Inspector Grant subjected it to his scrutiny. Finding nothing of interest, he went home for the night, instructing Detective Stirling to store the box in the evidence cupboard.
And there the matter might have rested, had Stirling simply followed Grant’s instructions. However, the Detective Sub-Inspector was a methodical man, who was determined to bring to justice those responsible for Rose’s death. This was his first glimpse of the new evidence, and so, upon his own initiative, he carried out a minute inspection of the box’s contents. It was during his examination of the bloodstained jacket that he discovered a remarkable ‘clue’, which was to lead to a breakthrough in the case. Noting that the stitching inside one of the jacket pockets had come undone, he slid his hand through the hole in the lining, and—groping around between the two layers of fabric—discovered an item that had been overlooked, both by his superior officer, and by his Eastern Division colleagues: a thin scrap of paper, worn soft and sheeny by time.
This key piece of evidence turned out to be an ‘Account of Wages’ issued by the warehouse department of the Dennistoun Bakery, in the autumn of the previous year. The slip itemised, in copperplate script, the dates that the payee’s employment had begun and ceased (he had lasted a mere three weeks in his job) and the total amount paid to him in pounds, shillings and pence. To Stirling’s delight, inked in a box marked ‘Employee’ was a name: Hans Schlutterhose.
Even in Germany, Schlutterhose is an uncommon name. At that time, there was only one resident in all of Glasgow thus christened, and, unfortunately for him, he was already vaguely known to the police: Hans Schlutterhose of Camlachie.
Nobody had forgotten the stories of a tall, well-built foreigner, hurrying down West Princes Street, with a little girl in his arms. Schlutterhose broadly answered the physical description of this man, but he had been overlooked in the search for Rose, for several reasons. His misdemeanours had always been of a petty nature—drunken brawls and the like—usually committed outside public houses on the Gallowgate. Moreover, at the time of Rose’s disappearance, the police had restricted their interviews to residents and labourers in the immediate vicinity of Vinegarhill. Schlutterhose’s home—a single-end (or one-roomed apartment) in Coalhill Street—fell just outside this area.
On Saturday morning, Eastern and Western Divisions joined forces, and a deputation of detectives and constables surrounded the tenement in which Schlutterhose resided. The door to the first-floor single-end was broken down, and the German was apprehended, trying to escape through a back window. He was taken into custody and the police began to search his home.
It soon became apparent that the evidence against him was overwhelming. The wage slip that had been buried along with the body was damning enough, but a search of the tiny apartment revealed samples of Schlutterhose’s handwriting, which seemed to resemble that of the ransom note. These samples also showed that he was in the habit of committing several characteristic errors, such as substituting ‘gut’ for ‘good’, ‘note’ for ‘not’, and so on, errors that were also consistent with the spelling in the ransom demand.
A pawn ticket, found on the mantel, was taken directly to the nearest broker’s on the Gallowgate and presented at the counter. In return, the proprietor handed over a small pair of button boots, suitable for a little girl; later the same day, Ned identified these as having belonged to Rose. The proprietor of the shop informed the police that he had received the boots several months previously, from Schlutterhose’s wife, Belle. When the dates in the shop’s register were checked, it was discovered that she had pawned the boots in May, just a few days after Rose’s disappearance. This suggested that Belle might have been involved in the abduction—if not the death—of the child. It also implied that Rose might have breathed her last very soon after she was taken.
A search of the back greens yielded, from almost directly below the window of Schlutterhose’s home, a flat stone, stained with a dark red patch of what might have been either rust or blood. The stone had lain for a long time where it was found, for the grass underneath it had faded to yellow. It was thought that this stone might be a possible murder weapon.
Belle had not been at home that morning when the police raided the single-end, but a group of men now lay in wait for her return. Presently, she was spotted, towards noon, weaving her way up the street in a whiskified state. As several police officers approached her from various directions, Belle realised her plight, and was seen to fumble at her throat, and then drop something into the road, just before her arrest. A search of the gutter revealed that she had attempted to dispose of a mother-of-pearl necklace, which bore a strong resemblance to the one that Rose had been wearing at the time of her disappearance, right down to the child’s name, engraved upon the silver setting, and Ned was soon to identify it as the pendant that he had given to his daughter the previous Christmas.
Schlutterhose and Belle remained taciturn whilst in police custody over the course of Saturday night and into the Sabbath. On Monday morning, at the Sheriff Court, they were examined, separately, and both refused to speak, at first, other than to confirm their identities. Belle steadfastly maintained that she had nothing to say to the charge. However, when the Sheriff impressed upon Hans that this hearing might constitute his sole opportunity to set out his position, and the Procurator Fiscal went on to inform him that the charges against him might ultimately include cold-blooded murder of an innocent child, Schlutterhose became most agitated, crying out: ‘No murder! No murder!’ He made a declaration, in which he confessed to having abducted Rose, claiming that she had subsequently died as the result of a tragic accident. According to him, the theft of Rose Gillespie had not been accomplished on his own initiative. Indeed, he would never have dreamed of committing such a crime (or so he said). No—he was a mere auxiliary, a paid lackey, acting upon orders, manipulated into unaccustomed wrongdoing—or, as his declaration put it, to grotesquely comic effect when read aloud, at the trial: ‘I was just a prawn in this matter.’
He must have realised that the evidence against him and his wife was overwhelming, and had thus invented a story incriminating someone else, as instigator. And what a story it was! For, according to Schlutterhose, the impetus for the abduction had come directly from none other than myself, Miss Harriet Baxter, an English lady, and personal friend of the Gillespie family.
Why had this loathsome miscreant singled me out, in particular? Why me?—the prisoner’s eternal cry. Make no mistake: I have thought long and hard about why this might have been so. There were times, whilst incarcerated, when I contemplated the tenets of Buddhism, and the notion that I might be suffering punishment for some crime committed, unwittingly, in a previous life. At the time, I was unaware of any connection between the Schlutterhoses and myself and, according to Caskie, the police had been unable, thus far, to link us together, which, according to him, was only to our advantage. I thought that,
perhaps, I may have come to their attention at the time of Gillespie’s solo exhibition: they might have seen the sketch of me with Ned in The Thistle, or heard the silly rumours. Or perhaps I was simply an arbitrary choice on their part, since, in every other respect, they failed to demonstrate one whit of clear, sensible thinking, or good judgement.
Whatever the case, I was easily demonised, and the local newspapers of the day took great pleasure in calling attention to certain of my characteristics that were bound to appeal to the innate prejudices of their readers. Firstly, I was a woman. This may not seem a handicap, in this day and age, now that we have the franchise, but remember that these events took place almost fifty years ago, when the world was a very different place. Not only was I horribly female, but also, I was horribly unmarried; at thirty-six, too old to be of use to anyone, and although the newspapers referred to me as a ‘spinster’ this was no more than a euphemism for ‘witch’. If you are of a certain age, you might even remember the jokes and cartoons at the time of the trial. Gentlemen were advised, in jest, not to read the newspaper of a morning, lest their gaze accidentally fall upon a sketch of my countenance, an image reputed to be so frightful that it would put any man ‘right aff his porridge’.
Worse still than my sex and spinsterdom was my unfortunate nationality. With good reason, the Scots despise no race more than the English, and, beneath the façade of colonial co-operation, resentment simmers. It mattered not that my parents were Scottish by birth. I had been brought up down south; my accent was English; I had what were deemed fancy, southern ways: going hither and thither, unaccompanied, sometimes without a hat—not to mention the cigarette smoking. My final failing was that I was well-to-do, or, comparatively so. Humble origins would have served me so much better, since no species peeves the Scotsman quite so much as an English spinster of independent means: this is a truth, to my mind, universally unacknowledged.
But forgive me; I digress. My point is this: that, in accusing me, Schlutterhose and his wife had selected the perfect scapegoat for their purposes.
My next appearance before the Sheriff took place on Wednesday, the 27th of November. By then, the press was full of stories about the discovery of Rose’s body, the capture of the kidnappers, and my own arrest. As yet, Ned had not replied to the letter that I had sent him, and I could hardly bear to contemplate what poisonous rumours he might have heard about me.
For the short trip from the prison to the Sheriff Court, I was, once again, transported in the windowless wagon, this time accompanied by a young female turnkey. I had slept badly, and my hazy thoughts kept drifting to images that I found comforting, such as the studio at Merlinsfield. In my note to Agnes, I had asked her to leave the birdcage where I had placed it, on the table next to the window; I wished with every fibre of my being that I could be there, beside it. Perhaps I would be, soon, for I was hopeful that the Sheriff would, this time, grant Caskie’s application for bail. I closed my eyes, and tried to remember how the birdcage felt beneath my fingers, the rough surface of the carvings, and the smooth bamboo slats.
Of a sudden, I heard a din of voices and my eyes snapped open. The horses slowed down and, without warning, the wooden sides of the wagon began to boom and rattle, as dozens of unseen hands banged furiously upon them. The turnkey looked at me, in alarm, as the vehicle came to an abrupt standstill. I heard angry shouts, and more banging. Then, we lurched forwards for another minute or so, before finally coming to a halt. After a brief pause, the back door flew open to reveal a sea of angry faces: about a hundred people had gathered in the street in front of the Sheriff Court. A nervous constable guided us out, while his colleague tried to fend off the rabble. As we stepped onto the pavement, I was met with a hail of rotten eggs, several of which shattered upon my chest and shoulders. The crowd surged forwards, falling over each other, in an attempt to push closer. The policemen were soon overwhelmed. Someone managed to grab my collar, and a fist smashed into my face. The next few seconds are a blur but, somehow, the young warder was able to drag me away, and bundle me, through a side entrance, into the building.
My nose was pouring with blood and, by the time that we reached the basement, I had ruined my handkerchief in an attempt to staunch the flow. Caskie was already in the cell, clutching another Petition in his hand. I had never seen him look quite so grim. Without a word, he handed me the page, and my legs almost buckled when I saw what was written upon it: a second charge, of murder, had now been added to the original one of plagium.
Caskie shook his head.
‘This is a bad business—a bad business, Miss Baxter. I havenae a notion what evidence they’ve got against you on a murder charge, but up there today I’d advise you to say nothing at all, other than to vehemently deny these charges.’
So stunned was I, that I could do little other than nod my head. As it transpired, the proceedings were delayed. We waited, and waited. As the minutes ticked by, and I had still not been called, Caskie looked ever more distracted. I had come to realise that his vague demeanour masked a nature that was exceedingly cautious, almost to the point of pessimism. He tried to hide his anxiety from me, but I noticed that the more agitated he became, the more he hunched his shoulders. Presently, a rumour began to circulate. It was said that the crowd in the street had continued to cause trouble, and even the Sheriff-Substitute himself had been held up outside. Eventually, half an hour late, Caskie was summoned. Then, the constables escorted us upstairs, into the Sheriff’s chamber. As I entered, McPhail, the Fiscal, gazed at me, coldly. Mr Spence, the Sheriff-Substitute, was reading a pile of papers that were stacked in front of him. Caskie caught my eye and tapped his finger against his lips, a gesture that might be interpreted as thoughtful, but I knew that he was reminding me to say nothing. And so, when the Fiscal began to question me, I held my tongue.
McPhail soon grew frustrated.
‘Is that it?’ he demanded. ‘Are you going to say nothing at all?’
To which I replied: ‘I deny these charges.’ But my voice sounded so timid that I had to clear my throat, and repeat: ‘I vehemently deny these charges.’
Sheriff-Substitute Spence glanced up and then peered at me, startled.
‘In Heaven’s name!’ he cried. ‘What the—?’
Unfortunately, my nose had commenced to bleed once more. Great crimson drops fell upon my frock, and splashed the parquet floor. Spence appealed to his Clerk and the turnkey.
‘Quick—give her something!’
The Clerk gave me a handkerchief, and I did my best to wipe my face and bodice. Meanwhile, His Lordship was questioning my escorts.
‘Was this done by these folk outside?’ When one of the constables replied in the affirmative, the Sheriff-Substitute shook his head, and then frowned down at the red stains on his parquet, muttering: ‘Blood all over the place!’
Alas, ‘blood all over the place’, was perhaps my undoing, that day, for—with no further ado—Mr Spence set aside his pen and announced that bail was denied. My solicitor was already on his feet, but Spence waved aside his objections.
‘Save your breath to cool your porridge, Mr Caskie. You well know that there’s no bail on a charge of murder, and your client, sir, looks as though she’s gone six rounds with the Boston Strong Boy. We’re not about to set her free, only to have her strung up from the nearest lamp-post. Miss Baxter, you are committed for trial, until liberated in due course of law.’
The following day, I received another visit from Caskie. This time, his demeanour was as gloomy as a wet Sunday afternoon. Apparently, he had now seen the warrant that the police had used to examine my bank’s records, and the daybook or ledger that they had seized. Thus far, he had been unable to track down the builder’s receipts that I had told him about, and he was beginning to fear that this particular argument would prove to be troublesome.
‘It’s a bad coincidence about these dates,’ he said. ‘Without the receipts…’
‘I shall write to Agnes again and ask her to look for them, mo
re thoroughly.’
In the meantime, I ventured to ask him about another matter that had recently been on my mind.
‘Surely all these claims that I paid this man money on various dates, et cetera, are of no consequence? There can be no case against me, for the simple reason that I have—or had—no motive. Why would I want to harm Rose, or her family? The very idea is ridiculous. We all doted on her, and I was forever bringing her presents.’
‘Yes, so I’m told.’
‘Whereas Schlutterhose and his wife presumably did have a motive. For example, if they had seen something in the press about Ned’s exhibition, might they not have thought—being ignorant, perhaps, of such matters—that an artist who features in the newspaper must necessarily be a wealthy man? And what better way to get his money than to kidnap his child? And why should I send a ransom demand? Financially speaking, I’m much better off than the Gillespies. The police must know that, by now. Is it not patently obvious to them that I don’t have a single speck of motive—whereas this man and his wife most certainly do?’
‘The trouble is’, said Caskie, ‘the judicial system of this country doesnae give two hoots about motive. The police and the Fiscal—they’re not really interested in “why”, Miss Baxter. “Why” is of little consequence to them. What they really want to know is “who”.’
I sighed, in exasperation.
‘On another note,’ Caskie went on: ‘I’ve been investigating an accident on St George’s Road, something that Schlutterhose claims happened just after he took the child. Grant and the Fiscal want to disbelieve his story—or at least they want to disbelieve elements of it—but I’m not so sure, and I’ve yet to speak to any witness. We need to find out exactly what happened that afternoon. That’s all for today, except…’ He grimaced. ‘I’m sorry, but at the risk of upsetting you further, I ought to mention, before I leave, that they’re to bury Rose, this afternoon.’