Heaven Knows Who

by Christianna Brand

  Lord Deas: ‘Do you want to hear anything he said?’

  Mr Clark: ‘I want to hear everything he said.’

  Lord Deas: ‘You had better ask your questions in detail.’

  Mr Clark: ‘Did he say anything about the noise he heard?’

  M’Call: ‘He said he had been wakened by the screams and he thought he heard another scream. He said he thought they came from the outside.’

  ‘Did he say what kind of screams they were?’

  Lord Deas: ‘These are questions to be put to the man himself.’

  Mr Clark: ‘The position I wish to occupy is to lay before the jury the same evidence which would have been laid before the jury if Mr Fleming had been the party at the bar; because one of my defences is that Mr Fleming was the person who committed this murder. Surely I am entitled to go into that evidence for my own justification, which the Crown would be entitled to go into for the purpose of proving an accusation? If Mr Fleming gave to this witness a different account regarding what he had seen and heard, I am entitled to bring it out.’

  Lord Deas: ‘I don’t object to your putting questions to the witness with the view of contradicting anything that James Fleming said in the box, but I question the correctness of a course which might lead to the contradiction of what has been said out of the box. What I have down is that James Fleming said to the witness that the screams he had heard came from the outside.’ (Actually what he said at the time he was examined was that he had first thought they came from outside, and then that they came from ‘down below’.)

  Mr Clark, resuming cross-examination: ‘Did he say from what kind of person those screams came?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did he not say anything like “the screams of loose women”?’

  ‘That was the explanation he gave me.

  ‘Did he say he had got out of bed?’

  ‘No, he did not.’

  ‘Did he say what he had done in bed?’

  ‘Yes. He said he raised himself upon his elbow and looked at his watch which he said he kept beneath his pillow.’

  ‘Did he say that he jumped out of bed?’

  ‘No.’

  So the judge’s permission for contradiction of anything Mr Fleming had said ‘in the box’ was most handsomely justified: for he had said in the box that very morning that when he heard the odd kind o’ squeal, he had jumped oot o’ bed but, a’ being quate in the coorse o’ a minute’s time, he had gaed awa’ tae his bed again. Even Lord Deas had nothing to say about that.

  And then M’Call had got information about the plate that was pledged and he had gone off to the prisoner’s house in the Broomielaw that same day, and told her that he was making enquiries about Jess M’Pherson’s murder.…

  ‘What did she say?’ asked Mr Gifford; but Mr Clark objected. It was agreed that the witness should confine his answer to the one question, without entering into the details of the conversation. This all fell rather flat, however, for in fact Jessie had made no reply.

  And so witness had taken her into custody.

  In the house had been found a sleeve or part of a sleeve, Exhibit number 23 in court. It was picked up by Mary Adams, the washer-woman, and handed over to the police by her.

  And in a cupboard in the basement of the house at Sandyford Place, there was a bottle, uncorked, containing a little rum.

  The hours passed. Evidence was taken about keys—which amounted to this, that the defence could produce no key which would have admitted the prisoner to her own home on that Friday night; the door could be opened only from the inside. Mrs Fraser testified to having called, had a glass of rum, and set off with Mrs M’Lachlan, parting from her at the corner of Stobcross Street. Mrs Campbell, the lodger, described Jessie’s movements before she left the house that evening, borrowing a bottle from the cupboard and going out for rum and biscuits—the bottle was a common bottle; Exhibit number 5 was about the size, shape and colour of the one borrowed, but she could not say that it was the same one. She had heard Mrs M’Lachlan go off with Mrs Fraser but didn’t see her leave. She was awakened in the morning by the crying of the child and saw by the Broomie-law clock that it was then about half-past five. (At this mention of her little boy, for the first time Jessie’s courage failed her, and she hung her head and wept a little tear. She was by this time very pale and appeared exhausted by the interminable day.) She did not go back to bed, continued Mrs Campbell, but remained up, in her room; sometime after eight she took in the milk from the milk-girl. Mrs M’Lachlan returned at nine o’clock and was carrying a large bundle. A short time afterwards she reappeared from her own room and went down to the cellar, wearing a dress the witness had never before seen, ‘a merino dress of reddish-brown colour and the back of it pleated, and I think it was trimmed with blue velvet.’ Shown Exhibit number 32, the dress sent by Jessie to the dyer’s to be dyed black, ‘That might be the same gown, but I cannot say. The colour is changed and it looks as if it had been dyed. The trimmings on it do not appear to be like the way it was trimmed before.’

  She was shown thirteen pieces of a torn-up flannel petticoat; it was ‘very like’ one Mrs M’Lachlan had had, which she had said was made out of a piece of blanket. And twenty pieces of coburg were ‘very like the dress Mrs M’Lachlan wore on the Friday. They look like the colour of the dress. That was a dress I knew very well’ Mrs M’Lachlan’s dress had had three flounces and here were the remains of flounces. And shown three pieces of a wincey petticoat: ‘That is not like, the colour of the dress (sic) I examined before. It may be the gaslight.’ When she had seen it before at the Fiscal’s office, she agreed, she had thought it was something like the wincey petticoat that Mrs M’Lachlan used to wear. But, shown a flannel petticoat, Exhibit 24, she had never seen that before, except at the Fiscal’s office. (This would presumably be Jess M’Pherson’s petticoat.)

  She had been at home all the Friday, over the weekend and on the Monday, except that she might have been out for a few minutes on Friday. She had not seen any strange man call on Mrs M’Lachlan on the Friday, nor had anyone called on the Saturday. She had never seen any old man call on Mrs M’Lachlan. Mrs M’Lachlan seemed very unwell on the Saturday and Sunday. On the Monday, she was going out and in all day.

  It being now nearly nine o’clock and Lord Deas despairing of ‘bringing this trial to a conclusion in the course of the present sederunt’—not unnaturally, since in fact it took another three days—he decided that the Court should rise till the following morning at a quarter to ten, and ‘ordained all concerned then to attend under the pains of law and the baill fifteen jurors now in the box being hereby ordained to repair under the charge of the macers of Court, and of John Murray, Sheriff-Officer, Glasgow, as their assistant (who, being present, was duly sworn de fideli) to Carrick’s Hotel, George Street, Glasgow, to remain under their charge till brought here tomorrow morning, in the hour of cause above mentioned, being kept strictly secluded during the period of adjournment from all communication with any person whatsoever on the subject of the trial, the Clerk of the Court having liberty to communicate with them in relation to their private affairs.…’

  It was pretty tough going a hundred years ago, for those who got mixed up in legal affairs, on whichever side of the bars they might be.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The second day of the trial opened with the evidence of Mary Adams, who had ‘washed for’ Mrs M’Lachlan at the Broomielaw. She described her various errands to the pawnshops, and the forgotten message to the locksmith about the key to the outer door; and Mrs M’Lachlan’s having given her the burnt crinoline wires for Sarah. Faced with the various petticoats she was indefinite, but the brown coburg dress from the Hamilton fields she identified positively as the prisoner’s—the missing sleeve she herself had found at the Broomielaw and handed over to the police. She and defence counsel got into a fine old tangle over the cinnamon merino which Jessie was alleged to have dyed black. She had said in her examination-in-chief that she had never see
n Mrs M’Lachlan with it, or seen it at all till it was shown to her at the Fiscal’s office. Mr Clark for the defence asked her: ‘You said that it appears to you to be dyed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Because I see it’s dyed.’

  ‘You mean that it is coloured?’

  ‘Yes, from the colour it was.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I see that it’s dyed.’

  ‘How do you know that it was not coloured before?’

  ‘Just because I see it’s dyed. It’s not its first colour.’

  The Judge: ‘You say you think it is not the original colour?’

  ‘It has been dyed, whether it’s the original colour or not. It’s new.’

  Mr Clark: ‘How do you know that is dyed new?’

  ‘Any person can see that it’s dyed.’

  ‘Can you give me any reason how you know it has been dyed?’

  ‘I can see it.’

  ‘New dyed?’

  ‘I don’t know whether it has been dyed new or not, but I think the dye is new.’

  ‘How can you tell that it has been newly dyed?’

  ‘Anybody could by the smell.’

  On about July 4, the day of the murder, or a little earlier—she couldn’t be sure of the date—the prisoner had said to her that she ‘would have to get money somewhere or another.’ ‘I don’t know what for. She would be needing it, I suppose. She did not give any reason.’ She had thought, said Mrs Adams, that Mrs M’Lachlan’s husband must have a few pounds by him that she was going to lift, or that she herself must have a little money put by and was going to break into it. (James M’Lachlan was subsequently to say that he had no money put by.) Her impression was that Mrs M’Lachlan wanted to get her clothes out of pawn and must have some money for that purpose. Most of this information was elicited from her by Lord Deas.

  Her daughter, Sarah, followed. She described the episode of the trunk which she eventually took for the prisoner to the Hamilton station, and an errand to Sandyford Place four or five months before the murder, with instructions to ask Jess M’Pherson for the loan of £2. She positively identified the torn-up woollen petticoat; ‘I know it by the stitching.’

  Lord Deas: ‘Did you say you know the stitching?’

  ‘It is my own stitching.’ The prisoner being in a hurry one day, she explained, had given it to her to finish off the sewing. She very positively recognised Jessie’s brown coburg dress and the separate sleeve; but as positively denied any knowledge of the crinoline wires—evidently Mama did not hand them on to her little daughter as Mrs M’Lachlan had suggested.

  Mr Rutherfurd Clark contented himself largely with the destruction of Miss Adams’ character for reliability. Sarah admitted that two years ago—she being then ten years old—she had given evidence in a case between Jessie Mackay, who was a friend of her mother’s, and Edward M’Geachie. Her mother and Miss Mackay had later quarrelled and Sarah had been re-examined ‘for the defender’—Mr M’Geachie. ‘And did you then say that all you had said in your first examination was quite untrue?’

  ‘I told them that Jess Mackay had told me to tell lies. She said she would give me a dress and a bonnet.’

  Cross-examined about the coburg dress, she said she knew the prisoner had had a dress of that colour and material, the bodice trimmed with narrow velvet; but she agreed that she could not say more than that. Lord Deas was having no such convenient equivocations, however, when they were favourable to the accused. He ordered that the child be confronted again with the pieces of coburg and asked her if she had’ any doubt that these were part of the prisoner’s dress. He then distinctly heard her reply. ‘They are part of the prisoner’s dress,’ whereas the reporters (an unprejudiced body) had as distinctly heard her say, ‘I think they are part of the prisoner’s dress.’ The jury, appealed to, knew better than to hear otherwise than as his lordship heard—thus qualifying for the first flower in the large bouquet of praise which he was to bestow upon them at the end of the trial. Having established the reply firmly in their minds, he invited counsel to put the question again. But Mr Clark didn’t bother. What was the use?

  Mrs M’Gregor, a dressmaker, somewhat revenged Mr Clark, though she had been brought there by the prosecution. An eminently fair witness, she refused to commit herself regarding the pieces of the brown coburg dress, though if in fact it was the prisoner’s, she herself had made it. It seemed to be the same kind of colour and cloth, and she had had a similar trimming in the shop. She thought the sleeve and the dress belonged together but under cross examination she agreed readily that she could not say more than that they were of the same cloth and the same colour, and the lining was the same—but it was a very common cloth and a very common lining. Unfortunately Mr Clark, perhaps a little over-elated, now pressed her too hard. She agreed that there was no real reason that the sleeve shouldn’t belong to another, similar, dress; but then she added, ‘it would scarcely correspond with the dress as to the exact shade.’ Mr Clark sat down, doubtless wishing he had done so just two questions earlier.

  Thomas Millar gave evidence as to articles’ pawned for Mrs M’Lachlan by the Adams’s, mere et fille; pawned over many months usually in the name of Mary Fraser and with a false address. Thomas Robb, superintendent of police, had found forty-one tickets in the prisoner’s home, all under the name of Fraser with varying Christian names. A clerk of the Caledonian railway described the trunk brought by Sarah Adams—it weighed twenty-one pounds: empty, it weighed twelve pounds, the deduction being that it contained nine pounds weight of—something. Three days later, the prisoner, after walking three or four times past his office door, came in and asked him if the trunk had been sent off. Aaron Wharton told of the arrival of the trunk at Hamilton. Several days later a boy had come in and asked if it was there; on hearing that it was he went out and came back with a woman, who, signing herself ‘Mrs M’Lachlan’, collected the trunk and helped the boy carry it away. The Chassels family told of Jessie’s visit to their house, of twelve-year-old James going back with her for the trunk, and afterwards taking it, empty now, to the saddler’s for repair. She had gone off, carrying the big bundle, tied in a kerchief. Mrs Chassels had seen part of a brown wool flounce, sticking out of the bundle, and the lady had said it was a merino wrapper. Later she had met Mirrilees and given him the kerchief, which she said she had found; and told him to take it home and get it hemmed. And Elizabeth Gibson described the frail, weary creature coming to her public house a mile out of Hamilton, and asking for a glass of spirits: and creeping off again, carrying her heavy bundle. The two small girls identified her as the lady they had met near the Tommy Linn Park who had asked them if there was not a burn or sheugh whaur a person micht wat their lips; and told how they had subsequently found the torn and blood-stained clothing hidden in the fields a little further on. Various members of the Hamilton police confirmed these discoveries.

  Mr Rutherfurd Clark let it all go by with hardly any cross-examination at all.

  And Miss M’Crone described how on the morning after the murder, a woman—she could not identify her as the prisoner—had brought in the cinnamon merino dress to be dyed black and the grey cloak to be cleaned, giving the name of M’Donald. And Mrs Rainny told how she had first redeemed the blue and black poplin and how Mrs M’Lachlan had changed into it before taking the cinnamon merino to be dyed. Shown the merino she would not swear to it as the same dress, but ‘by the shape and the make’ she thought it was. ‘This is dyed, ye ken. It was a brown one then.’

  Robert Lundie gave evidence of the pawning of the silver from the house in Sandyford Place on the morning after the murder. He agreed with counsel for the defence that when confronted with the prisoner, he had had some difficulty before he finally identified her. She had given the name of Mary M’Donald and said she had been sent by her mistress—she was alone, she had no child with her. She came in some time between twelve and one. On the following Tuesday h
e saw an account of the murder in the papers (he had meanwhile been out of town) with a description of the missing plate. He examined the silver, found it was marked with an ‘F’, and immediately handed it over to the police. His assistant confirmed very positively that the plate had been pawned after midday.

  And William Smith Dunlop recognised the black japanned box as having come from his shop—it had their private mark on it. It was sold on the morning after the murder by an assistant called Nish who had since gone off to Antigua. He did not see the woman at the time the box was sold, but recognised the prisoner as having come in several days later; she either took the box away with her or it was ‘by her orders sent after her to some station’. She said she was sending the box by some railway—not going with it herself.

  Mr Rutherfurd Clark embarked upon another of his adventures—he appears to have specialised somewhat in mixed-up witnesses. ‘You say that this is a common box of which you sell numbers?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Now, how can you tell us that that (Exhibit 28) is the box that the prisoner spoke about on the Tuesday or Wednesday when you saw her?’

  ‘I beg your pardon? I don’t understand the question.’

  ‘How is it that you know that it is the box to which the address was affixed of which you spoke?’

  Had Sir Winston Churchill been present he would doubtless have muttered that this was sheer pedantry up with which he would not put. William Smith Dunlop simply looked blank and said nothing.

  ‘How is it that you know that this is the box that left the shop on Wednesday?’

  Mr Dunlop took refuge in an alibi and said that James Fullerton had been beside him and seen the whole.

  ‘No, no, never mind what James Fullerton saw. You have said that this is the box which was sent out of your shop on Wednesday. How do you know that it is?’

  ‘I know it because it has our private mark on it.’

  ‘Have the other boxes that you sell not the same private mark?’