Heaven Knows Who

by Christianna Brand

  So the box was despatched to Ayr station, to lie to be called for, and was called for in due course—not at Ayr but back at Glasgow, and not by any Mrs Darnley but by Jessie’s husband, James M’Lachlan.

  M’Lachlan had got home from his ship in the early hours of Thursday morning. What must have been his wife’s feelings as she waited for him to arrive? And what must have been his feelings when he came? His ship had been in Ireland, he can have heard nothing of the murder; she docked at midnight and he had come straight home.

  Exactly what was the character of James M’Lachlan it is difficult, from his brief appearances in his wife’s story, to fathom. He was a nice-looking fellow, aged about thirty, and looked a typical sailor, bred to the sea and having been as far abroad as Australia. His employers thought highly of him. He came of a large and respectable family from round about Greenock and three of his sisters were married and living there. He does seem to have been very fond of his wife. Their friend, Mrs Fraser, gave evidence that they ‘lived together very comfortably’, and he himself said that he had ‘the utmost confidence in her’ and that he ‘never saw anything to give him reason to doubt her.’ She seems to have had less than the utmost confidence in him, however (and, as it would seem from later events, with perhaps some reason), for it is pretty certain that she did not tell him all the truth about her present troubles. On seeing in the newspapers a description of a woman wanted in connection with the murder, he remarked to Jessie, ‘That’s unco’ like you.’

  ‘It’s ower like me,’ said poor Jessie.

  It must have been with some trumped-up explanation, therefore, that she persuaded him to get back the black japanned box from Ayr and somehow dispose of it: he had a sister in Greenock with whom he was on particularly good terms—couldn’t he take it and leave it in her safe keeping? She told him, possibly, the story she later told the legal authorities: that Jess had sent her some clothes, asking her to get them dyed and altered, and now the police were seeking them and she was afraid of their being found in her possession. She had bought a box and sent them off to Ayr to be out of the way, but after all the box would remain at the station and might at any time be opened and examined, and things would look worse than ever. He begged her to tell the police the whole truth and be done with it; and she was to say later that they agreed that she would wait till the Monday and tell them then. He was due to sail again with his ship on Saturday but he arranged to stay at home. Meanwhile, at her anxious desire, he went off to the railway station and there bribed or cajoled a porter into sending a private note by the guard of the next train to the clerk at Ayr station. The clerk got the note and sent back the box by the morning train to Glasgow, still addressed to Mrs Darnley. James M’Lachlan collected it and took it back to his sister’s house in Greenock.

  Next morning the box was unpacked and the contents spread out on the bed. James M’Lachlan appears to have told his sister the whole story—or as much as he knew. Jessie would confess to pawning the silver, he said, but these clothes had nothing to do with it—she had told him that Jess had sent them, asking her to get them cleaned and altered. So they put them away in a drawer. (‘You did not put them into the bed?’ enquired Lord Deas at the trial: a new low, one might think, in judicial irony), where they remained till the Wednesday. On that day they were packed back into the box and sent off, addressed this time to ‘Mr Thomson, County Buildings: to lie till called for.’

  County Buildings is the Sheriffs’ Court of the City of Glasgow, and Mr Thomson was Sub-Inspector Audley Thompson of the Glasgow Police.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  We must now consider in more detail the state of the body and the scene where it was found. It was not, alas, a sight for the chicken-hearted.

  The bedroom was in fact, as has been said, the laundry of the house. It measured fourteen feet by fourteen, with a four-foot square table in the centre. The door was towards one end of the east wall—to your right as you came in; the windows, looking out on to Sandyford Place were in the north wall. The bed was placed rather oddly, sideways against the wall, midway between the door and the window wall, its head not up against anything: it was a large fourposter, probably five or six feet wide. Opposite was the hearth and the mangle, and along the south wall, to your left as you entered, and facing the windows, were two wash-stands and the trunk or chest which held the dead woman’s best clothes. In the corner opposite the door was a built-in cupboard. (See plan, p. 27 and ground plan at end of book.)

  The body was found lying face downwards in the entrance to the narrow space—about two feet wide—between the bed and the central table: its feet towards the windows, its head towards the door—its position was afterwards to be significant. It was naked up as far as the waist. The clothes (the knitted jacket-vest, the chemise and the woollen dressing gown) were rucked up from the waist round the shoulders and head, the head enveloped in them, and they were damp when the body was found, and much stained with blood. A small mat or piece of carpet covered the upper part of the body as though it had been thrown down carelessly on top of it.

  The full and official description of the injuries is so dreadful as to make nightmarish reading for the layman. We will confine ourselves therefore to such details as may be necessary to any solution of the mystery.

  There was little cadaveric rigidity—rigor mortis—a state which sets in (and also passes off) after a space of time varying with the conditions under which the corpse remains. There were no signs whatsoever of decomposition.

  There were forty wounds about the head, neck, face, hands and arms.

  First, there were three deep, incised wounds, one across the middle of the forehead, two across the bridge of the nose; and these, alone among the wounds, ran transversely, straight across the face. Any of these three wounds would probably have caused stupor; but, except possibly eventually from loss of blood, even together they would not have caused death. The lethal injuries were to the right side of the head. There were three major cuts, midway between the ear and the top of the head, cleaving right into the skull, and three other severe scalp wounds a little further back. On the left side of the head there were ten more wounds, less severe in character; and there were a few shallow cuts on the back of the neck.

  With the exception of the three cuts across the forehead and the bridge of the nose, all the wounds sloped from above downwards, and from behind forwards. Of the deep cuts, several grew more shallow towards the back of the head.

  On the right temple was a further small wound which had not injured the bone beneath.

  There was a large bruise on the top of the right shoulder and another on the back of the right upper arm. Dr Watson, who was first to examine the body, noted one ‘remarkable’ bruise in the small of the back; but none of the other doctors observed, or at any rate could later recollect it.

  There were flesh wounds of greater or less extent on both arms, both wrists and both hands; the right hand being ‘dreadfully mutilated’.

  And finally there were some small abrasions of the knees and shins, which were also soiled. The feet and legs were extended to their uttermost.

  There was an accumulation of blood beneath the head but not, said Dr Watson who first examined it, a pool of blood. The face was lying upon the rucked-up, blood-stained clothes. And, strange to relate, as has been said, the face, neck and chest of the corpse appeared to have been washed; not just wiped, but washed with water. Yet there was coagulated blood upon the face, which had come there since the face had been washed.

  In other words—someone, after some but not all of the injuries, had been inflicted, had bathed the face and throat.

  The room was in a horrid confusion. There is no official mention of scattered clothes but they were certainly there; on the other hand it was not true as one report avers, that poor Jess’s clothes had been ‘evidently torn off by a person not much skilled in doffing female habiliments.’ The bed looked as though it might have been slept in but it was now in complete upheaval. The bedclothe
s were heaped at the foot, not tucked in at all. There had been blood on the blankets but it had been washed out. A sheet had been torn off and lay under one of the washstands, that nearest the door. It showed no blood until it was unrolled; it was then found to be damp all over as though it had been washed, but it was smeared with blood from one end to the other and in some parts saturated. There was blood upon the mattress; a good deal of it, ‘about half the breadth of the crown of my hat,’ said Police Office Jeffrey, ‘on the edge of the bed; and there was a piece more, over where the bolsters had been lying; it was like where a person’s shoulder would lie, a small bit down from the pillow.’ The pillows, both patched with blood, had been thrown down—‘scattered’—upon the bed.

  There was a good deal of blood where the body lay, and three large drops nearer the head of the bed. Against the wall facing the windows were the chest and the two washstands. Under the first of these was the rolled-up sheet; the second was smeared with blood, there was blood on the white basin, and blood on the floor all about it. The chest—a common type used by servants to keep their clothes in—was closed, but its lock had apparently been broken long ago. It proved to be almost empty: such ‘trimmings and ribbons and bits of gowns’ as it still contained had been raked through with a bloody hand, and a band-box inside it had had its lock forced by the same hand.

  But strangest of all, in the corner opposite the door, on the other side of the central table from where the body lay, there was a large area of the floor, part wood, part ‘waxcloth’, which though it was now dry had all the appearance of having been washed. It formed an irregular circle and though it was cleaner than the rest of the floor, it had a reddish colour as though there had been blood split there, and the edges seemed still bloody; at one side, half on the wood, half on the hearthstone, there were big, elongated splashes of blood, as though blood had spurted out in the general direction of the window, and the wall.

  There was a small table under the window furthest from the door. Between this table and the hearth, skirting round the mangle, were the three bloody imprints of a naked foot.

  The kitchen was a longer room than the bedroom, though rather narrower. The hearth was on the same side as the hearth in the bedroom, the opposite side from the door. There was a large central table. The floor was of stone of a very dark blue colour; a type of stone, said an architect, O’Neill, in evidence, that would dry quickly.

  And here also, there were signs of blood. There was a stain on the jaw-box—the sink—as though a bloody hand had clutched at it. The mat in the doorway was so steeped in blood that it actually stuck to the floor; and halfway up the doorposts and across the inside of the door were streaks ‘as though a brush had been dipped in blood and drawn across it’; or, said the same witness, as though a woman’s skirts, stained with blood, had swept through the door.

  These marks, in the clear light of a July evening at five o’clock were perfectly obvious; ‘if your eye had been turned in that direction, they might have been seen at once’.

  Between the fireplace and the sink, there was a large patch which looked as though it had been washed; there was no actual sign of blood but the floor had a greasy appearance, with a reddish tinge. There was a fire burning in the kitchen and by the evening the floor was dry; but when first observed an hour after the discovery of the body, it had the appearance of being still quite moist. It was hard to tell, for the stone was dark; but still it looked very recently done.

  And all about this area, between the kitchen hearth and the sink, at the perimeter of the washed space, were the marks of shuffling feet—small scratches, confused footmarks, the turn of a heel, the twist of the ball of a naked foot on the polished stone.

  The stones of the lobby between the kitchen and the bedroom were of the same dark blue as the kitchen. Here also—blood. Blood at the end of the passage, by the back door into the walled garden. Blood on the stairs, and particularly on the lowest step; blood on the wall at the foot of the stairs. Blood on the built-in pantry cupboard between the kitchen and bedroom doors—inside the cupboard, high up at the top of the door: two patches, three or four inches square. (The door opened outwards into the lobby.)

  And once again the floor had been washed. But this time it remained, three days and two nights after the murder—absolutely damp.

  Nor had it been so well washed but that a trail remained clearly to be seen between the kitchen and the bedroom door: a ‘bloody track about the breadth of a body, part of it blood, the rest just marks of streaking’; as though the victim had been dragged through the passage while the arterial blood still flowed: or at any rate, so soon after death that it was still fluid enough to leave its trail.

  At the end of the passage, near the back door, was the small room where old Mr Fleming kept his clothes. Here there were some spots of blood in the centre of the floor. Of all the drawers and cupboards, only one drawer was locked. The old gentleman on request had handed over a bunch of keys; one key unlocked this drawer. In it was a pile of laundered and folded shirts. The sleeves of the two topmost shirts were spotted with small spots of blood.

  No positive signs of blood were found on any cloths with which the floors could have been washed; but thrown into a cellar were several, still damp, which might well have been used.

  In a drawer in the kitchen was found a cleaver, which could have been the instrument which caused the wounds—one doctor thought those on the wrists had been caused by a finer blade, but this theory never came to anything. There was no blood on the blade of the cleaver but it was extensively marked with fresh, rust on both sides—suggestive of its having been recently washed. There was a considerable quantity of blood, however, dried into the join between the blade and the wooden handle, though the methods of those days could not establish for certain that it was human blood. (The cleaver is preserved in the museum at the police head-quarters in Glasgow: a smooth wooden handle and a broad blade, perhaps five inches at its widest point. It looks very innocent hanging meekly there.)

  On the Saturday following the discovery of the murder, the house having been in police hands since the Monday, Bernard M’Laughlin, a Sheriff’s officer, was introduced there to make yet further examination of the scene of the death. He found ‘on the kitchen dresser’ an iron hammer with marks of blood on one side of the head. This little item had apparently escaped the attention of the police investigators, satisfied, as they no doubt were with their blood-stained cleaver. He discovered further and made much of, a pair of man’s socks, old and much worn, which lay in Jess’s bedroom between the head of the bed and the window; but as, despite the most eager scrutiny, they proved innocent of blood or any other guilty sign, this treasure amounted to little. In the kitchen grate he found and sifted a great quantity of ashes, looking for signs of any clothing having been burnt there. He did find a button, which he treated with the utmost reverence, but that too came to nothing; and anyway, his colleagues had kept the fire burning away merrily all the time they had been in occupation.

  Upstairs, Mary Brown had evidently done her work well, for no sign was remarked of the bloody footstep covered with soot which she had, on the Saturday morning, been employed to wash away. But in the old gentleman’s bedroom, Police Officer Jeffrey—Mr Fleming being by then in custody—had a good rootle round. He discovered a grey canvas bag, apparently a dirty-linen bag, which had been washed but still showed bloodstains—variously described as a patch the size of a shilling on one side, and as a stain extending all over the bottom of the bag. And ‘under a chair’, or, as he later explained, ‘under the chair cover’, he found a long narrow strip of cotton cloth with small spots of blood on it. The blood, when he saw it, ‘seemed to be old’; and it does sound a little like a bandage from some old, trifling injury, which had somehow got stuffed away there and been forgotten. Little was made of it at the trial, and had it been incriminating, it would surely have been too easy for the old man to have thrown it on the kitchen fire and so got rid of it?

  From all
these signs and symptoms, Joseph Fleming, surgeon of police, assisted by Dr George Husband Baird Macleod, M.D., F.R.C.S., came to the following conclusions:

  1. That this woman was murdered and that with extreme ferocity.

  2. That her death had taken place within three days.

  3. That a severe struggle had taken place before death.

  4. That such an instrument as a cleaver for cutting meat or a similar weapon was that most likely to have caused the fatal injuries found.

  5. That the injuries had been inflicted before or immediately after death.

  6. That all the wounds on the neck and head with the exception of those on the nose and forehead had apparently been inflicted by a person standing over the deceased as she lay on her face on the ground.

  7. That the comparatively slight degree of strength shown in the blows would point to a female or a weak man as having inflicted them; and,

  8. Lastly, that the body had been drawn by the head, with the face downwards, along the lobby from the kitchen to the front room.

  This is the truth on soul and conscience.

  Geo. H. B. Macleod, M.D., F.R.C.S.

  Joseph Fleming, Surgeon.

  Of these, their number three seems based on very slight evidence: and their ‘lastly’ to be, if the evidence is examined, not the least extraordinary proposition to be put forward in this most extraordinary case.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Upon what information the police first suspected Jessie M’Lachlan of being concerned in the murder, is not certainly known. Old Fleming himself is suspected of having put forward her name or it may have been someone nearer home. From the small size of the naked footprints and from the marks on the stairs and kitchen door of the swish of a blood-stained skirt, they had early made up their minds that a woman might well be implicated. As early as Monday, the day of the discovery, they were asking Miss Dykes whether she had seen a woman enter the lane behind Sandyford Place that night. How they can have got on to this, one can’t imagine: if Mrs Walker had told them of the woman in grey who turned into the lane while they two stood gossiping, Miss Dykes would surely have been reminded of this episode, but in fact it was not until much later that she recalled it. It may simply be that the police were asking all persons living thereabouts after any woman who might have; come to the house—with no reference to the woman Miss Dykes and Mrs Walker saw.