CHAPTER TEN
So the first long, frightening day was over. She had heard, very likely, of her husband having been set free; but with what an anxious heart for the safety of her delicate boy, with what terrors for her own predicament, must she have dragged herself wearily to her prison cell. It was a new cell to her: she arrived there—it was almost seven o’clock—to find herself sharing it with two women, thieves, who were to be her companions day and night for the next eight weeks. These were Agnes Christie (or Ward-rope) and Catherine Fairley, and they seem to have liked Jessie, as everyone always did—very different in character and station though she doubtless was. She looked very sad, Agnes Christie said, and very depressed. ‘According to custom among the prisoners’, they asked her what she had been committed for. ‘You’ve heard about the murder in Sandyford Place?’ she said, ‘about the old man killing his servant? It’s on the same matter.’ ‘Are you in for that?’ asked Agnes Christie, astonished. Jessie doubtless looked to her, as she must have looked to anyone, an unlikely person to have literally hacked another woman to death. ‘Oh no, Mr Fleming’s in for that,’ said Jessie. She had been a servant in the house for two years, she explained, and went on to tell the story of the old man having come round with the silver for her to pawn—adding, however, that he had kept the whole of the six pounds fifteen and given her nothing to recompense her for her trouble—a departure from the story she had earlier that day told the Sheriff Substitute, which perhaps in retrospect seemed to her to have sounded pretty fishy. But now, she said, old Fleming was denying having given her the plate or, indeed, ever having known her at all; he had set a trap for her and so she had been sent to prison. She declared herself innocent of the murder; she had been nowhere near Sandyford Place that night. She neither suggested nor denied in these conversations that old Fleming had killed poor Jess; she said only that she herself had not. ‘She was not very communicative,’ added Miss Christie; but there doesn’t really seem much to complain of in that respect, at any rate at this stage.
To all this information the ladies Christie and Fairley appended ‘their mark’.
James M’Lachlan, while his sad wife slept uneasily in her close prison cell, was thinking things over. Their joint apprehension had doubtless been a fearful shock to him; he could not know that the authorities had every intention of immediately releasing him again. That he must eventually be safe, of course, was certain—he could produce any amount of proof that he had been far away across the seas at the time of the murder—and indeed upon this proof he had now been set free. But as we know, Jessie had certainly been less than frank with him, and he must have been staggered to find her—let alone himself—so deeply involved. And there remained the matter of the black japanned box. He had, as we also know, got back the box from Ayr station, where she had sent it ‘to lie till called for’, and taken it to his sister, Mrs Reid, in Greenock. He said later and Jessie also said that she had told him that Jess had sent her some things to get cleaned and altered for her, and she was afraid of these being found in her possession, but we can’t know just how clear she had really made it all, and it may well be that, when he opened the box and spread the contents on his sister’s bed, this was the first he knew of all it really contained. He must at any rate have been bewildered by the whole menacing business and very much frightened—for Jessie, no doubt, but for himself as well and for his child and for all concerned with them. He had got his sister to pack the stuff away in a drawer, and there it remained till he was released from prison, having so far said nothing about it. He arrived at Mrs Reid’s that night in a state of ‘dreadful agitation’ and they talked it all over—she said afterwards, and it isn’t hard to believe, that her own advice was that he should give the things up to the police. He had three other sisters living in Greenock, all of whom must by now have known about Jessie, and they probably didn’t sit back either in companionable silence. At any rate, he spent ‘a night of agonising suspense’, torn, he said, between love and pity for his wife and his sense of duty—he said nothing about his sense of personal preservation. Next morning he arose with his mind decided: he would give the box up, he said to his sister, and give himself up too. The clothes were packed back, a porter named Donald Laurie was summoned, and the box went off on its travels again. It was addressed this time to ‘Mr Thomson, County Buildings, Glasgow’. But before it ever got to County Buildings it was collected—there was fourpence to pay on it—from Bridge Street Station.
It was collected, as we know, by Superintendent M’Call; for James M’Lachlan had decided to put duty first.
The box contained—not at all to the astonishment of the authorities—a black watered silk gown, a black silk polka, a ‘changing-coloured’ silk dress, a black silk velvet cloak and a broadcloth cloak. Counsel at the trial got a little tied up with the changing-coloured dress; it just looked brown to him. But Superintendent M’Call said firmly that it had been described as changing-coloured to him; and anyway, that was the dress. Counsel, however, continued to refer to it bleakly as brown.
All the dresses in the box had belonged to Jess M’Pherson. A former fellow-servant who, just to complicate matters, was also called Mrs M’Lachlan, recognised them; and another, Mary Downie, who had been a close friend of Jess for nine years, the same friend who had opened the grocery shop with her, knew them all well. She had been with Jess when she bought the black watered silk, she knew when and where the others had been purchased. (Sad little echo of those happy shopping expeditions with the savings from £25 a year to be spent!) Jess M’Pherson, we know, had been ‘tasteful in dress’.
All the clothes had been kept in the chest in the dead woman’s, room: the chest that had been found almost empty, ‘raked through with a bloody hand.’
The Fiscal had Jessie up for questioning again.
She was brought from the prison to the County Buildings by cab, and a struggling mob jostled to peer in at the pale face, suddenly grown so careworn and thin. It was said that when these crowds gathered James M’Lachlan wandered among them to catch a glimpse of his wife and to hear the arguments for and against her: he would be on the spot, he had just come out of County Buildings himself, having informed against her. What must his feelings have been, watching the slender figure hustled in to be questioned for hours over those stolen clothes which he himself had delivered into the hands of her accusers? It is impossible to believe that there was not some anxiety for his own safety in whatever mixture of emotions impelled him to this act. Yet—who can judge the human heart? We can’t know what pressure was brought to bear on him by that large, rather oppressive family of his. The family conclaves must have been pretty formidable.
Jessie knew nothing of the discovery of the black japanned box. She thought it was still the trunk they were asking about, and she now filled in a few details of yesterday’s story. When she got to Hamilton on that Tuesday, the day after the murder was discovered, she elaborated, she had gone to a shop to enquire for Mrs Bain, with whom she was to stay, and had asked the woman in the shop for some tea and ham and eggs, and at the same time had arranged for a boy to go to the station with her and carry her trunk. She had found that the hinges of the trunk were broken, which must have happened on the journey for it hadn’t been like that when she sent it off. On the way back the boy had stopped by the roadside, and she opened the trunk and put in the black bag in which she had carried her clothes from Glasgow—the trunk having been sent on to Hamilton through Sarah’s error. But back at the shop, while she waited for her tea, she had taken the bag out of the trunk again as the trunk had to go to the menders, and, the bag being rather small, transferred the clothes to a kerchief and tied them up in that.
Why had she asked for her friend as Mrs Bain if the name was really Mrs Shaw?
Well, her friend had recently married, said Jessie, and she must have got the name wrong; when Mrs Chassels at the shop told her of a tailor’s cutter called Shaw, she had decided to call on Mrs Shaw and see if she was her friend. The
boy was to show her the way, which he did.…
‘Did you go to Shaw’s house?’
‘Yes, but I found the door locked.’
‘What time was this?’
‘Between four and five o’clock.’ She had told the boy to ask the saddler to return the mended trunk to his mother’s shop, and she would collect it at the beginning of the following week: she would be up then to look for a room in Hamilton (Mrs Bain—Shaw having failed her) as she wanted to come there for her child’s health and her own.
Alas, the air of Hamilton was to prove not very beneficial to Jessie after all.
‘What was in the bundle wrapped up in the handkerchief?’
What was in the bundle? ‘Some shirts of my husband’s,’ said Jessie desperately, ‘and some baby clothes and my blue and black checked poplin dress.…’
‘What happened to these things?’
‘I brought them back with me to Glasgow.’
‘In what?’
‘In the black bag and the kerchief.’
‘Where is the kerchief now?’
‘This is it—the one I’m wearing round my neck,’ said Jessie. But they knew very well that it was not, that it had been given to Mirrilees Chassels with instructions to get it hemmed. We can imagine the ironic triumph with which they made her take the kerchief from her neck and hand it over, then and there. ‘… the handkerchief I have round my neck, and now give up, is that in which I tied the clothes, and a sealed label is attached thereto, which is docquetted and subscribed as relative thereto.’
And so they sprang their trap. ‘Is it not true that in fact you gave the handkerchief to a boy in Hamilton …?’
What was there to do—but to deny it blankly?
And now the questions followed thick and fast, some relevant, some not, so that you must answer them quickly, not appearing to have to think out your answers, never knowing, because you had not time to reflect, whether what you said would do harm or not: whether you had best tell the truth or lie. Had you two crinolines? I had two, as I said before, but one of them was burned. How long had you had the flannel petticoat you wore when you were apprehended? I had had it four years. Has it not been recently hemmed? I re-hemmed it after I washed it—both parts, top and bottom—a fortnight ago. How long had you had the shift you wore when you were apprehended? I’ve had it for six months. Ann gave it to me, my sister in Edinburgh. The coals you say you got on that Saturday morning—where did you get them? I got them from a woman. What woman? I think she’s the wife of the man who keeps the coal depot. How much coal did you buy? Well—a quarter of a hundredweight. How much did you pay? I think it was three-halfpence farthing. Did you borrow a pair of stockings from Mrs Campbell who lives in your house? Yes, I did; about two months ago. What became of them? I only wore them once, the day I borrowed them; then they got mixed up by mistake with my husband’s socks. Where are they now? I suppose they’re at home, or with his things aboard his ship. What boots have you? Have you none older than the ones you were wearing when you came here?’ ‘I had an old pair, the only pair I had for wearing. Where are they? I threw them out. When? On—on that Friday, July the fourth. Why? I was cleaning out my room: I threw them out with a lot of other rubbish. And bought a new pair? Yes; yes I bought a new pair (which I now see and identify, and a sealed label attached thereto is docquetted and subscribed as relative thereto).
On that evening, the Friday evening when Mrs Fraser came to your house, did you take a bottle out of Mrs Campbell’s cupboard? Yes, I did, and went to the public-house and wanted a gill and a half of whisky, but the bottle was too small and one of the shopmen gave me a pint bottle to contain the whisky, and I left Mrs Campbell’s bottle instead. The pint bottle was in our house when I was apprehended.…
(Ah yes, Jessie; but Mrs Fraser says it was rum you brought back in the bottle!)
Did the late Jess M’Pherson have a black watered silk dress?
Yes. Yes, she had.
And another dress of silk, a changing colour with flounces and with cotton cloth beneath?
Yes, she had.
And a velvet cloak, the front lined with blue silk? And a drab-coloured cloth cloak? And a black dyed harness plaid? And a black silk polka?
I don’t know that she had a black silk polka.
Do you not know perfectly well that she had a black silk polka?
I think she told me she had a black silk polka.
But you never saw it?
No, I never saw it.
The other things, however, you did see?
Yes, the other things I did see.
How recently? When did you see them last?
I haven’t seen them recently.
What none of them? None of these articles?
None of these articles; not recently.
Not in her possession?
No, not in her possession—
Or anywhere else?
—not in her possession or anywhere else.
Then what are these two silk dresses (having a sealed label attached), and what are these two cloaks (having a sealed label attached), and what is this piece of twilled cloth? And are they not Jessie M’Pherson’s? And what is this black japanned box, with sealed label attached, and did you not despatch to Ayr on Tuesday or Wednesday, the eighth of ninth of this month, the said tin box, containing the said dresses, cloaks and plaid, wrapped in the said cotton cloth and addressed to Mrs Darnley, Ayr, to lie till called for …?
Did it flash through her mind then that James, her own husband, had betrayed her?
The answers that read so slick and coherently in fact were wild impromptu explanations, meeting each crisis as it came: had she had a prepared reply, she would not have denied recent knowledge of the clothes. Tricked into that falsehood and then confronted with police omniscience, she sought frantically to recover. The things had been sent to her by Jess, she said. On the Friday (little knowing she would have no further use for them!) Jess had given them to a little girl to take round to the Broomielaw—Jessie didn’t know the name of the little girl, but it was the one who cleaned the knives at Sandyford Place. There was a message with them.…
What message? What about?
Well, about the clothes. ‘Jess asked me to take the watered silk to Anderson’s in Buchanan Street and get it dressed; and the changing-coloured silk to be opened down and dyed brown. And the cloth cloak to be dyed black—’
‘Why?’
‘She’d spoilt it by washing it.’ She embarked on another of her rather pathetic embellishments, harking back, perhaps, to some past discussion. ‘The black velvet cloak was to have a puffing of silk round the bottom to lengthen it, and which puffing Jess was afterwards to send down to me.…’
‘And the black plaid?’
‘The black plaid was to be re-dyed because it was not well done.’
‘And you got said things—when?’
‘On the Friday, about five o’clock, wrapped up in said cotton twilled cloth.’
‘Did you take said things to the dyer in Buchanan Street?’
‘No, I meant to take them on the Saturday, but I wasn’t well enough.’
‘On the Monday, then, or the Tuesday?’
‘No; I couldn’t, I had to stay at home with my child; I wasn’t out at all on Monday or Tuesday.…”
But she had already admitted to being out on the Saturday, paying her rent, pawning the silver, going to Mrs Rainny’s house with the errand about the blue and black poplin dress; had already admitted to the long day at Hamilton on the Tuesday—when, she now said, she hadn’t been out of the house.
‘But these clothes have been found in the black japanned box, and your husband has given information about this box.…’
So now she knew. ‘Yes, I put them in the black box. When I heard of the murder—’
‘When did you hear of the murder?’
‘I heard of it on Tuesday, and next day I heard that some of her clothes were a-wanting and, having them in my possession, I got frigh
tened; so I put them in the black bonnet-box and sent them up to Ayr.…’
‘Addressed to Mrs Darnley?’
‘Yes, because I knew Mrs Darnley and I could explain to her. I sent them to Ayr to be out of the way until I could see her and talk to her.’
‘But you changed your mind?’
‘Yes, on Thursday night I got frightened about them lying there where anyone might examine the box, and I told my husband about them and asked him to take them to Greenock, to his sister. He wanted me to go to the Fiscal’s office and tell about them,’ said Jessie loyally, turning the other cheek to his treachery, ‘but I felt frightened.’
‘Where did you get the black japanned box?’
She had bought it, she said, ‘for general use’—just a Useful Box to put things in as Winnie the Pooh would have said?—and paid five and sixpence for it; and the sealed labels referred to in the foregoing, etcetera, etcetera: and all of which she declared to be the truth.…
And this also, commented Jno. Gemmel, Peter Morton, Bernard M’Laughlin, old Uncle Tom Cobley and all, was freely and voluntarily emitted by the therein designed Jessie M’Lachlan while in her sound and sober senses: and all the rest of it.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
And so the days went by. The world wagged on—a large Monkey or Baboon escaped from a sailor down at the docks and made a Frightful Attack upon a mother and child; the Glasgow Herald fulminated against the indiscriminate use of Turkish Baths; the Beautiful very Fast Sailing Clipper ship Edouard et Julie, newly coppered, was still actively Loading and would soon set sail for Singapore. In Paris an old gentleman who thought he was Robespierre was visited by a relative unaware of his peculiarity and, crying out ‘He is the gendarme Metra, behind him is the coward Louis Bourdon!’ jumped out of a window and killed himself. You could go by Cheap Midday Sail to Renfrew, Bowling, Greenock and Dunoon, fares for the round one shilling, steerage sixpence.…
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