The Trotts offered up one other scrap of information to the police—about Jane, Edmund, and about another servant who worked near the Pooks, a girl named Mary Smith. Roughly six weeks before, a childhood friend of Jane’s and a neighbor of the Trotts, William Clark, had walked with Jane from the Trotts’ in Deptford to the Pooks’ in Greenwich. In Greenwich the two had met Mary Smith, and Edmund Pook soon joined them. Edmund, Clark could not but notice, was on very, very friendly terms with Mary Smith. Indeed, all three appeared to know one another—very, very well.
The insinuation behind this story was not lost upon Griffin and Mulvany, and the seed of a suspicion that Edmund Pook was a young lothario with a particular weakness for servants was duly planted in their brains. Soon, one of the two had directed their detectives to search for Mary Smith. They quickly discovered that Mary Smith had disappeared from her place of employment—had indeed been missing for at least as long as Jane had been.
Once the Trotts had given Griffin and Mulvany a full portrait of the victim as well as a prime suspect in her murder, and once they arranged that Jane’s body would follow them home as soon as it had been examined by a coroner’s jury, to remain in their parlor until the funeral, the Trotts returned home. Later that day, William Trott made his way to the newspapers—or, more likely, the newspapers made their way to William Trott. Trott became the first of many in this case to attempt to appeal to public sympathy and shape public opinion through the papers; he fired the first salvo in a war that would be fought as much in the court of public opinion as in a number of courts of law. His primary concern was with the reputation of his murdered niece and her family—his family. Since identifying Jane, William must have seen the newspapers and had learned of the many guesses and rumors about the victim’s identity. He was particularly alarmed to hear about the story of Alice and Sarah, which first appeared on this day. He made the mistake of thinking that the press had conflated Jane with Alice, and were suggesting that Jane and her sisters had been prostitutes. He obviously feared the public would make the same mistake. “It is false to state,” he told reporters, “that she or any of her sisters were ever prostitutes, or were ever in a house of ill fame. I wish the published statement to that effect to be contradicted, if the newspapers will be kind enough to do so, in order that the character of our family may not be damaged. She never had an elder sister a prostitute, and I am sorry that the persons who wrote in some of the papers yesterday*2 were misled.”
To this plea Trott added two tantalizing observations. First, he claimed that he had found several letters from a young man in a box of Jane’s things—letters he had handed over to the police, and the names on which he would not reveal, at the request of the police. Second, he told of Mary Smith’s mysterious disappearance. With the publication of that information, rumors began to fly, helped along by the previous rumor—if it had been a rumor—that while in Guy’s Hospital Jane said “Mary Smith knows all about it.” That the press reported those words before Jane’s identity and connection with any Mary Smith was discovered was an astounding coincidence—even given the commonality of the girl’s name. Or else Michael Harris, resident physician at Guy’s, was later wrong when he swore that Jane had not spoken while at the hospital. If that is the case, then Jane Clouson had apparently attempted to point to her killer—although in a fashion both astoundingly coherent for one with her injuries and maddeningly indirect. In any case, publication of the news about Mary Smith the next day had its effect. The public, a day after the police, learned of the prime suspect—a young lothario with a particular weakness for servants, servants who subsequently disappeared.
Although the police were satisfied after the Trotts’ identification that their victim was Jane Clouson, the Trotts were not Jane’s next of kin: her father, James, was. And so that afternoon the police escorted James Clouson across London Bridge and into the morgue at Guy’s to make his own identification of the body. While James Clouson had not seen Jane for two years, he immediately identified the body as his battered, murdered child. Whether he was devastated or rather simply baffled at the sight was left unrecorded.
Superintendent Griffin and Inspector Mulvany had in the meantime returned from the hospital in Southwark to Greenwich. Earlier this day detectives had interviewed the inhabitants of 12 Ashburnham Road, where Jane had spent her last conscious weeks. Superintendent Griffin therefore convened a meeting with Mulvany, Sergeant Sayer, and other detectives to learn of these interviews and to plot out their next steps. His choice of meeting place was surprising—and later, to some, suspicious. The police gathered at the end of London Street, at dining rooms directly across from, and directly in sight of, the Pooks’ house. And while consulting, the police enjoyed at least one round of beer. Later, Griffin would tell a reporter that they chose to meet at this place purely for refreshment. But to those who saw them there, they seemed to be celebrating. The proprietor of these dining rooms, as it happens, was William Orchard, also proprietor of the White Hart public house across the street. Orchard was Ebenezer Pook’s next-door neighbor and his good friend. It was through Orchard, certainly, that the Pooks later learned of this conclave. And the Pooks couldn’t help but think that the police had put them under surveillance, and that they were celebrating solving the case—before they had solved it.
Drinking their beer, Griffin and Mulvany learned that two of those at Ashburnham Road confirmed and contributed to what they had learned from the Trotts about Jane. Mrs. Matilda Wolledge, in whose room Jane had stayed, knew nothing: she was a residential nurse, and that month she attended day and night to a woman and her newborn twins; because she had been gone, Jane was able to take her space in the bed. Matilda’s daughter, Emily, knew much more. She knew that Jane had been depressed, often in tears, since the day she moved in. But she knew the very moment that Jane’s mood changed. On Friday, April 21, Jane received a letter in the post. Emily herself had picked it up and handed it to Jane. Emily could not, however, recognize the handwriting or recollect the postmark. Jane, Emily said, opened the letter, read it, immediately and carefully tore it to pieces and dropped the scraps to burn in the kitchen fire under the kettle. Then Jane wrote a letter of her own and went out and posted it herself. After that, she was happy—but about what, Emily did not know, for Jane was, surprisingly, reticent with her. Jane never confided to Emily the writer of the letter or the letter’s contents. She never told Emily—or anyone else at Ashburnham Road, for that matter—that she was pregnant. And though Emily knew that Jane had arranged a meeting the following Tuesday evening, Jane never told her where she was going, or whom she was meeting.
Jane revealed both these things, however, to the Wolledges’ landlady, Fanny Hamilton. Fanny Hamilton, too, had noted Jane’s despondency, but on the Tuesday before her meeting it was long gone, replaced by a bubbling impatient excitement, a great expectation. Jane had arranged to meet someone just after seven that evening, and when she learned that Mrs. Hamilton had to run errands in Deptford just before that, Jane decided to accompany her for no other reason than to pass the time more quickly. The two had left the house at six. Jane, of course, was dressed in her walking-out clothes. They walked to Deptford High Street. There Fanny, most likely at Jane’s request, stopped to ask a passing woman the time; the woman consulted a watch and told her it was twenty-three minutes before seven. Soon after that, Jane couldn’t contain herself: she told Fanny Hamilton that she was going to meet Edmund Pook at his request; they would meet at the top of Crooms Hill, near Prince Arthur’s House, at the edge of Greenwich Park and on the verge of Blackheath.*3 She and Edmund had great plans to make. Jane would no longer have to look for factory work: Edmund had promised to do for her something much better than that. And with that, three minutes after Fanny had asked the time, they parted, Jane walking toward Blackheath Road. No one in Deptford or Greenwich ever saw her alive after that.
Griffin and Mulvany must have found all of this information about Jane’s final conscious days more heady than the b
eer that they drank. Twelve hours before, the victim’s identity had been a complete mystery, but now the evidence was coming in a flood: they knew about Jane; they had a strong suspect in her murder; they had a sense of motive, of means—even of opportunity. True, they had no solid evidence—yet—establishing Pook’s relationship with Jane, let alone establishing him as the one who impregnated her. And they had no evidence connecting Pook with the hammer or with Kidbrooke Lane. But they knew enough, certainly, to interview the young man. Later, Inspector Mulvany swore that they had no intention of arresting Edmund Pook when they went to his house to speak with him. Perhaps not. But they certainly had hopes of arresting Edmund Pook, either by confronting him with what they knew and forcing him into an incriminating admission, or by discovering incriminating evidence in his house.
But to catch Pook, they knew they had to be careful. They would have to go in quickly, for one thing. By the next morning—perhaps even by that evening—the newspapers would report Jane Clouson’s identity. Until then, the police had surprise on their side: Edmund Pook would not know how much they knew, and they could catch him off guard. They might get him to admit to a relationship with Jane, admit to being the father of the child she bore, or admit to writing the letter or to meeting Jane on the Tuesday evening. They knew, as well, that they would have to handle Edmund’s father, Ebenezer, very delicately. Ebenezer would be much more valuable as their ally than as an enemy. If they could speak with him alone and convince him of his son’s involvement with Jane Clouson, he might assist them in coaxing Edmund to admit to the truth. Griffin and Mulvany therefore decided that they would visit the Pooks alone, without their detectives, and would try to speak to Ebenezer before they spoke with his son. Mulvany, as detective, would do most of the talking; Griffin would do his best to maintain a familiar, sympathetic, and reassuring presence. Then, with Ebenezer’s cooperation—or at least without his outright hostility—they would interview Edmund. And whether Edmund incriminated himself or not, they also planned to look at the clothes he wore the previous Tuesday night. It had been six days since the attack at Kidbrooke Lane: plenty of time for Edmund to dispose of bloody clothing. But Edmund didn’t yet know he was under suspicion. And he might be careless. They had no search warrant and therefore could only examine Edmund’s clothing with Ebenezer’s permission, if not Edmund’s.*4 Enlisting the cooperation of Ebenezer—if not Edmund—would therefore be essential.
*
At 1:50 that afternoon Superintendent Griffin and Inspector Mulvany crossed London Street and passed through the display windows and into Ebenezer Pook’s shop. Griffin could at once see that Ebenezer Pook was not there, but the Pooks’ assistants were at work. He asked one if he could see Mr. Pook, and in a few moments Ebenezer Pook came downstairs. Pook of course recognized Griffin but not Mulvany. Introductions were made, hands shaken, and the police asked to speak with the elder Pook privately. Vaguely surprised by the official visit, but polite, Pook asked them up to the family drawing room, where they would be alone. They followed him up. On the stairs, they could hear the chatter and laughter of the Pook family at their midday dinner. The Pook house was quite compact, they must have noticed: prominent in Greenwich by location, but not by size. The house’s façade was very narrow, but the shop and the home stretched back. The Pooks resided on the floor above the shop, and slept on the floor above that. There was no garret above that and no closet off the kitchen—none of the usual places for a servant to sleep. The police later learned that sleeping space was so limited that Jane Clouson had not slept alone while working there; rather, in a true breach of decorum, she slept in the same room as a member of the family, Harriet Chaplin, Mary Pook’s cousin.
When Ebenezer closed the door of the drawing room, Mulvany wasted no time in getting to the point. They were there, he said to Pook, about the dead girl, the family’s former servant, Jane Clouson. Pook seemed genuinely shocked to hear of this; like everyone else, he knew of the assault at Eltham, but professed to have no inkling that the victim could have been Jane. He was sorry to hear it was so, he said. Mulvany then repeated to the startled and obviously incredulous man every scrap of information, every rumor—everything that they had heard in the past few hours about Edmund’s relationship with Jane. People had said, Mulvany told him, that Edmund was on “terms of intimacy” with the girl. And Jane wasn’t the only servant he had seduced; Edmund had also been intimate with Mary Smith. With both of them “he did as he liked.” Edmund had given Jane a lover’s gift, a locket found on her after the attack. Before the murder, the police had learned, Edmund had written a letter to her, and a “respectable” witness had told them that Jane was going to meet Edmund on the night of the attack. And while Mulvany heaped accusations upon Ebenezer’s son, Griffin somberly—fussily, Ebenezer thought—repeated, “Ah, it is a very painful matter, but it is too true.”
It was false, Ebenezer protested, ridiculous and false. His son was not as the police portrayed him. He was a good boy. And he was a homebody: suffering from epilepsy and subject to fits, he had to be. The family watched him constantly. If he was quiet in his bedroom “a minute longer than we thought he should be,” someone went to see if anything was the matter. And for the past two or three weeks, he had been watched particularly carefully by his brother, Thomas. Thomas Pook was married and had his own home in Greenwich, but two or three weeks before, his wife had left him with their daughter for her parents’ home in the country; during that time Thomas had stayed at London Street and had shared Edmund’s bed. And during the day, according to Ebenezer, the brothers were inseparable. “I am positive it is not the case,” he told them. “Edmund is a different sort of boy altogether; it is almost impossible anything of that sort could have gone on without some of us discovering it.” As for Jane’s abrupt departure from their home, Ebenezer had a simple explanation. Jane was a slovenly girl—very slovenly; they had warned her about it two or three times, and on the last time she herself had decided not to stay, and she left. The family, he said, had had absolutely no idea at the time that Jane was then pregnant.
Having failed utterly at enlisting Ebenezer Pook’s support in establishing his son’s guilt—indeed, having convinced Pook that the police bore an implacable and irrational hostility toward Edmund—Inspector Mulvany changed his tactics, and asked if he could see Edmund’s room and examine his clothes. Ebenezer agreed, certain his son had nothing to hide. He led the police upstairs to a cramped bedroom at the back of the house, and he and Griffin watched Mulvany go to work. Mulvany sifted through clothes in a portmanteau, and examined some coats, trousers, and waistcoats hung on the back of a door. His inspection, Mulvany later admitted, was not as thorough as it could have been: without a search warrant he thought himself on delicate ground. He did, however, scrutinize carefully every item of clothing he saw. He found no blood on any of them.
Ebenezer led them back down to the drawing room and offered them seats while he called his son in. He returned with Edmund, who was smiling, fresh from pleasant conversation. John Mulvany—if not James Griffin—took his first look at their suspect. Edmund was a handsome young man—young, but looking more mature than his twenty years. He was slightly built and his complexion slightly dark, his hair a shock of black curls, parted down the middle. But it was his eyes that captured attention: black, steady, and piercing. He calmly looked each officer in the eye. Mulvany introduced himself and Griffin. “Good Morning, Mr. Griffin, I know you,” Edmund said cheerfully, reaching over to shake the superintendent’s hand.
“We have come to inform you,” said Mulvany, “that the young woman who was injured, and murdered in Kidbrooke Lane, and died in the hospital, was your late servant, Jane Clouson.” Both police must have watched Edmund closely, hoping for a flinch. It did not come. Edmund told them that he would answer anything they asked.
“We have heard,” Mulvany told him, “that she was a sweetheart of yours, and that you have been corresponding with her.”
Edmund denied it instantly
. Jane had meant nothing to him, nothing. “She was a dirty girl, and left in consequence.”
But, Mulvany told him, “you have corresponded with her; you have written a letter to her.”
“No, I have not.”
“People say you have.”
“Do they? Have you the letter? If it is in my handwriting, that will prove it.”
Mulvany took another tack. “You were the last person who was with her on the night she met with her injuries; she left a person to join you on the Tuesday night.”
Pretty Jane and the Viper of Kidbrooke Lane Page 5