Heaven Knows Who

by Christianna Brand

  On the Tuesday, Mrs Reid, James M’Lachlan’s sister, who was closest to her brother and evidently devoted to him, decided to go to the Broomielaw and bring back his little boy, who all this time had presumably been still in the care of Mrs Campbell. But her brother met her in Glasgow and warned her not to go near the house; it was swarming with police, she’d only be arrested herself (for her part in harbouring the box of clothes?) and she had better go back home. So she returned to Greenock alone. And poor Jess M’Pherson was buried, up in the Sighthill Cemetery, with, despite all efforts to keep the time secret, a vast mob of people following her coffin out of curiosity—a tiny handful out of respect and love. It is said that her father, who till now had never owned her, turned up and tried to claim her possessions; but Jess was gone now, beyond petty greeds and resentments. Later on in the year a letter appeared in the Press. A stone was to be placed on her grave, ‘Erected by Mary Downie in memory of Jessie M’Pherson, murdered at Sandyford Place, July 5th, 1862’; and the writer asked if the public might not like to subscribe to it. There is no record of any response, so perhaps poor Mary Downie paid the whole cost herself. She had been a great friend, as great a friend as Jessie M’Lachlan. It was she who had set up with Jess the little grocery shop that failed because their hearts were too kind. She probably didn’t mind, even if she did have to pay the whole.

  By now, two weeks after the murder, interest in it was already at fever pitch, as it was to remain, with brief intervals, over almost a year. Crowds besieged the house in Sandyford Place, feeling on this side or that ran high. The newspapers, of course, were packed with information, correct or incorrect, with rumour and comment, reports and misreports of the doings and sayings of anyone however remotely connected with the case. The editors bribed the clerks at County Buildings, and their editors waylaid the witnesses at the Fiscal’s hearings, which of course were held in secret, and bribed the clerks; full reports of the proceedings were published with editorial comment, biased according to which side the papers had chosen to uphold: it was all M’Lachlan v. Fleming. So flagrant were these breaches of official confidence and so biased the comment, that the Sheriff of Lanarkshire had to write round to the editors begging them to refrain from further notice of the case, otherwise the accused would not get a fair trial. ‘Some people,’ writes Mr Roughead, ‘treated the “wretched woman” already as a convicted murderess, while shedding tears of ink over the unmerited sufferings of virtuous Mr Fleming; others clamoured for his blood and canonised the prisoner. One journal, being very certain that the rum bottle found in the house contained laudanum, insisted on an immediate analysis. A worse instance occurred with reference to certain superficial marks on the prisoner’s hands, caused, as she explained and as the Crown doctors believed, by the bite of her own small dog. This paper knew better—“they had been inflicted by Jessie M’Pherson in her death struggle.”’ These factions were led by two rival newspapers, the Morning Journal for the ‘M’Lachlanites’ and the Glasgow Herald for the ‘Flemingites’. Had Jess M’Pherson been savagely slaughtered for the price of a few well-worn clothes and ‘a handful of silver’ by a delicate, gentle young woman, her closest friend—or by an old gentleman with no apparent possible motive, confessing to eighty-seven years? The puzzle ‘was to disturb the peace of families and agitate a generation.’

  In this atmosphere the Glasgow authorities took their first big decision; and a momentous one it was.

  By Thursday, July 17, old Fleming had been in custody for eight days, Jessie M’Lachlan for five. Jessie, as we know, had already made two lengthy statements, Mr Fleming also had been under examination, ‘with the object’ as the Journal of Jurisprudence would say ‘of allowing him an opportunity to make some explanation of the circumstances which seemed to weigh upon him.’ What explanation he made at this stage we are unable to discover; ‘in Scotland,’ Mr Roughead says, ‘the secrets of a criminal investigation conducted by the Procurator-Fiscal (the official who collects evidence and reports to the Lord Advocate as Crown Prosecutor) are, unfortunately, inviolable.’ Jessie’s declarations, of course, are now no secret; they were duly, despite the arguments of her counsel as to the monstrous unfairness of their elicitation, produced in court.

  The circumstances at this time certainly known to the Fiscal which would seem likely to have ‘weighed upon’ old Mr Fleming were these: that, having admittedly heard screams in the night and woken next morning to find Jess M’Pherson mysteriously absent and her door locked, he had lived in the house for three days and yet done nothing at all to try and trace her—though the key in the adjoining door fitted the lock of her room; that in all that time he had not mentioned to a soul that she was missing; and that, furthermore, in the basement, where he spent much of his time, there were evident signs of blood—and of blood-stained floors having been so recently washed as to be still damp on the Monday. They seem to have weighed upon him remarkably lightly. He had entered prison ‘hale and hearty’, and remained there very calm and declaring that the Lord would send light which would soon clear him. Nor was this confidence entirely misplaced.

  The case against Jessie at this time was that she had admittedly started off that evening to see Jess M’Pherson; that she had pawned a quantity of silver missing from the house; that she was in posession of certain of the dead woman’s clothes, some of which she had concealed, some of which she had altered, most of which she had lied about; and that two naked footprints in blood on the floor of the dead woman’s room could have been made by her. And finally that up to the evening of the murder she was believed to have been short of money.…

  Youth, albeit frail and delicate youth—or crabbed old age? Mr Sheriff Strathern and Jno. Gemmel, Procurator-Fiscal, ‘proceeded to Edinburgh’ and there held consultation with the Solicitor-General and the Advocate-Depute. They came back to Glasgow and next morning the pro-Flemingite Herald was triumphantly jubilant. ‘The old innocent’ had been set free.

  And this decision was momentous for this reason: had he been charged with Jessie, he could not have testified against her; he had been liberated so that he might do so and was now by Scots law—though this was later questioned in the House of Commons—immune from further prosecution. Let Jessie M’Lachlan be found innocent of the crime as her own child—as indeed she cried out in court that she was—James Fleming was no longer in danger from the law. The old hypocrite was free; his innocence, said the Spectator, a M’Lachlanite organ, assumed as an axiom by the law, and the object of the prosecution apparently not so much to prove Jessie guilty of the murder as to demonstrate that Mr Fleming had no concern with it whatever.…

  What on earth can he have said in that secret examination as to ‘the circumstances which seemed to weigh upon him’—and despite what his Glasgow Herald called the strongest prejudice and gross perversion of the facts against him—what on earth can he have found to say to persuade Jno. Gemmel and the rest of them to this abrupt and totally conclusive decision? Whatever it was, he must have forgotten it by the time he came into court; but of course, dear old innocent, it didn’t matter by then. Not to him, anyway. Hale and hearty as ever, he was hustled out by a back entrance to avoid the crowds. Mr Fleming was free.

  It is alleged that at about this time Jno. Gemmel paid a private visit to the Fleming family which lasted a very long time.

  Jessie meanwhile, all unaware of what was going forward, continued to live out her weary days with Agnes Christie and Catherine Fairley in their prison cell; secure at least in the belief that the old man was in custody also, to bear the brunt of accusation. She knew all about the milk boy having called at the door—they supposed she had read it in the papers before she was brought to prison, said Agnes Christie—and the old man answering and saying they wanted no milk; and about ‘the lad from the country’ calling and being told on two days running that Jess was ‘not in’; and she told them that shirts, a vest and a pair of trousers of the old man’s had been found in his wardrobe, all stained with blood. Old Fleming had
offered to marry Jess, she said, and ‘put her in a house of three rooms and a kitchen’; but Jess had said that she was going to Australia, and the old man was spited of her wishing to go there and refusing to marry him—and that was the motive for his killing her. She was sorry for poor Jess—she had been a nice person and they had been on good friendly terms.…

  But the prison life was telling on her. She could not eat. She was growing daily more thin and haggard; already a shadow of the woman who, pale but calm and steady (James M’Lachlan was said to have been far more visibly distressed) had surrendered to the police less than a week ago.

  Up in Hamilton the two little girls had been talking and the police set off towards the Tommy Linn Park to investigate, P.C. Stewart taking with him ‘a wee boy’ whom he presumably thought fit companion in the macabre treasure hunt upon which they were embarked. With the wee boy’s assistance, he found thrust away under the roots of a hedge the brown coburg dress, all torn to ribbons and with one sleeve missing; and under another hedge a flannel petticoat torn into thirteen blood-stained pieces, and under yet another, opposite, a wincey petticoat also torn into strips. P.C. Cooper, without the advantage of the wee boy’s help, found only a single petticoat—in a field called Hollandbush, near Low Waters, where the stranger had called for her glass of whisky at the public-house. It was not until the following Monday, however, that Jessie was confronted with these trophies. The authorities had other things to think about. For this was the day—though they had not yet heard of the discoveries at Hamilton—that they had decided to set James Fleming free.

  Five days later, the authorities having meanwhile happily plied their investigations in the light of these new discoveries, Jessie was hauled up again—for the third and last of her celebrated examinations.

  This time, despite the reticence of the Fiscal, she was in some sort prepared. The prison grapevine had been at work and, while exercising on the green, Agnes Christie had heard that a bundle of bloody clothes, supposed to refer to the Sandyford murder, had been found in Hamilton. (There is never any mention of Jessie joining these exercisings on the green, which seems to suggest that her health prevented any exertion.) Back in their cell, Agnes Christie asked if Jessie had any acquaintances in Hamilton; even Miss Christie, it seems, was not unsuspicious and walked warily. Jessie said she had no friends there, but she had acquaintances, with whom, however, she kept up no correspondence; and enquired why she asked. ‘Because a bundle of clothes has been found there,’ said Agnes; on which ‘she looked amazed and confused, but I did not put it to her whether she had placed the bundle at Hamilton and the conversation turned to another subject.’ It would be fascinating to know what subject transcended this in immediate importance; and whether it was through lack of curiosity or through the merciful courtesies of one unfortunate to another that Agnes Christie was content to let it lie.

  Mr Sheriff Strathern and his associates were naturally not so considerate. ‘Compeared, Jessie M’Intosh or M’Lachlan, presently a prisoner in the Prison of Glasgow, and the declarations emitted by her in the presence of said Sheriff-Substitute on the 14th and 16th days of July current, being now read over to her, after being again judicially admonished, and being examined, declares and says—I adhere to said two declarations as being correct. And being now shown thirteen pieces of flannel, to which a label is attached; as also six pieces of wincey cloth, to which a label is attached; as also twenty pieces, or thereby, of merino to which a label is attached; and, being interrogated, declares—None of said articles now shown me belong to me and I never had any of them in my possession. I was not wearing a gown of the colour of the pieces of merino shown me on Friday the 4th July current. I am shown a piece of merino, apparently part of the sleeve of a gown, to which a label is attached. Declares that it is not the sleeve of any gown belonging to me that I know of. I had at one time a gown of the same colour as that sleeve, the skirt of which I gave to the Washerwoman, Black or Adams, as I have mentioned in a previous declaration. I never had a gown of the same colour except that one. The body of the gown was worn done, and I gave it away about a twelvemonth ago to a poor woman who came to my door; or perhaps, for I am not quite certain, I may have thrown it into the ashpit. The several labels above referred to are docquetted and subscribed as relative thereto. All which I declare to be the truth.

  Signed: Jessie M’Lachlan.

  Alexander Strathern.’

  The foregoing declaration, etcetera, etcetera, was signed by P. Morton and Bernard M’Laughlin as usual, but Jno. Gemmel was replaced by William Hart, writer in Glasgow. Jessie must have quite missed Jno. from those merry meetings—of which, alas, there were to be no more.

  It would be a clarification perhaps at this stage to trace the comings and goings of all these clothes and, stepping for a moment from the chronological order of events, foreshadow something of their significance. Shorn of Mrs M’Lachlan’s denials and evasions, it is all a good deal more simple than at first it seems.

  One could make a simple division perhaps—as Jessie herself did—between the small trunk which the little girl, Sarah Adams, saw being packed in the basement, and which she later carried for Mrs M’Lachlan to the Hamilton station, and the black japanned box which Jessie bought on the morning after the murder and sent off to Ayr.

  The contents of the trunk, which were found scattered about the countryside by the Hamilton police, added up to three petticoats and a brown coburg dress—all blood-stained and all torn to shreds. One petticoat had belonged to the dead woman, the other two were Jessie’s own—a thick woollen one made out of a blanket and designed to be worn over crinoline wires, and a wincey. The dress was her own dark brown coburg with the flounced skirt, which she had worn when she set out from the Broomielaw that Friday night. One sleeve was missing.

  The black japanned box contained six garments, intact and in good order, which were found to be those missing from the chest in Jess M’Pherson’s room—a silk cloak, a velvet cloak, a black silk dress and a brown ‘changing-colour’ silk dress, a silk ‘polka’ and a black plaid—all wrapped in a piece of cotton twill. The black japanned box is, of course, the one which Jessie bought on the Saturday morning after the murder. She left it at the shop, locked and labelled ‘Mrs Darnley, Edinburgh, to lie till called for’, promising to come back that afternoon. She did not in fact return till the middle of the following week, when the box was re-addressed ‘Mrs Darnley, Ayr, to lie till called for’, and sent off. It was reclaimed from Ayr station after her apprehension by her husband, James M’Lachlan, taken back to his sister’s house in Greenock and there unpacked; later it was repacked and addressed, this time to ‘Mr Thompson, County Buildings, Glasgow, to lie till called for’, and once more sent on its way, and so came through James M’Lachlan’s own confession into the hands of the police.

  These then were the contents of the two boxes—Jessie’s own clothes, torn and blood-stained, in the trunk; and the dead woman’s best cloaks and dresses in the black japanned box.

  There was further missing from Jess M’Pherson’s room her everyday dress, a cinnamon brown merino, trimmed with blue; it was a cinnamon brown merino that Jessie was wearing when she arrived home on the morning after the murder. Later that day, having redeemed her blue and black shaded poplin, she changed into it and took the cinnamon merino to be dyed black. At the same time she arranged for her light grey cloak to be cleaned, went away for half an hour, returned wearing a black plaid and handed in the cloak. She showed Mrs Campbell the plaid a couple of nights afterwards and said she had bought it very cheap at three or four shillings.

  The inference to be drawn from all this was only too plain. Wearing her light grey cloak and brown coburg dress, the accused went on that Friday evening to Sandyford Place, and there in the course of the night she murdered Jess M’Pherson and broke open the chest in her room and stole its contents—the two cloaks, the two silk dresses, and the polka and the black plaid. Finding her dress blood-stained, she changed into one of the dead woman
’s, the cinnamon brown, wrapped her own brown coburg in a bundle with the stolen clothes (including Jess M’Pherson’s blood-stained petticoat perhaps by mistake) and took them all home. So much of her personal wardrobe was in pawn that she was obliged to continue wearing Jess M’Pherson’s dress till she could redeem one of her own—the blue and black poplin. Having changed into this she sought to disguise the cinnamon merino by taking it to be dyed black; at the same time, lest it show traces of blood, she left her grey cloak to be cleaned, buying with her ill-gotten gains a black plaid to replace it. Her own blood-stained dress and petticoats and the dead woman’s petticoat which she had brought home by mistake she tore to pieces—either with the idea of trying to dispose of them bit by bit or of disguising them lest they be discovered. She sent the rags off to Hamilton in the trunk and later reclaimed them and hid them under hedges in the countryside outside the town. A sleeve of her brown coburg, however, got left at home by mistake; it was later proved to match the dress found at Hamilton. The covered crinoline wires of her woollen petticoat being also bloodstained, she tried to eliminate the marks by burning and, not aware perhaps that this had not entirely succeeded, gave the wires to Mrs Adams for the little girl Sarah, with a story of the wire having been pushed against the fire by her little boy.