How is it conceivable that she should tell Briggs that Florence was murdering James with flypapers, long since thrown away, when she had been a witness to the near-fatal effects of ‘the London Medicine’? At a pre-trial hearing Alice Yapp’s deposition was as near to the truth as she was ever going to get : ‘I remember Mr Maybrick going to the Wirral Races, and after he had gone, Mrs Maybrick came to me and said: “Master has been taking an overdose of medicine. It is strychnine and is very dangerous. He is very ill.”’60
Such evidence isn’t what the Crown or the cops wanted to hear, and it would never be heard again. This so-called ‘magisterial hearing’ was a dry run for the rottenness that came after, giving the authorities a chance to rehearse and to correct any possible mistakes. Yapp’s recollection was duly corrected. By the time of her appearance in the witness box at St George’s Hall, she’d quite forgotten about the panicking bells and running up and down stairs in crisis, quite forgotten the strychnine James had taken, which had mysteriously transformed itself into brandy.
ADDISON: Do you remember the next day, Sunday the 28th of April? Did you on that day hear the bedroom bell ring?
YAPP: Yes, sir.
ADDISON: What was the next thing you saw?
YAPP: I was coming downstairs and saw Mrs Maybrick on the landing. She came to the night-nursery door and asked if I would stay with the master. He was lying on the bed with his dressing gown on. My mistress came into the bedroom a few minutes after with a cup in her hand. She said to her husband, ‘Do take this mustard and water; it will remove the brandy, and make you sick again if nothing else.’61
And that was that for the strychnine. Under further examination, Yapp revealed her benevolence towards the dying man, interspersed with spiteful jibes towards his wife, who ‘went shopping’ while Yapp sat at the bedside, ‘rubbing his hands’.62 The angel Yapp announced that it was she who had advised Mrs Maybrick to call in another doctor, which attracted the rebuke ‘All doctors are fools.’ She described how she’d seen her mistress ‘apparently pouring something out of one bottle into another’. What sort of bottles were they? ‘Medicine bottles.’63
Further questioning brought her to the fateful afternoon of Wednesday, 8 May. Having accused their mother of murder that morning (of which she said nothing in court), she said she had been outside playing with the Maybricks’ children. Yapp spent a lot of time in the garden that day. I don’t say I believe a word of it, but this is how the story of that afternoon continues.
Alice Yapp was on the lawn with the children, and Dr Humphreys was upstairs with James. On the previous day he’d been joined by another physician, Dr William Carter, together with a professional nurse. Their presence tells the tale of James’s continuing decline. It was somewhere during this traffic of bedpans and pails that Florence found a breather in which to write to Brierley. What she did next, if she did it, bears out Aunspaugh’s assessment of her intellectual shortcomings, plus some. She took the letter into the garden and gave it to Yapp to post.
Barring Michael Maybrick himself, Yapp was the last person on earth to be entrusted with such a task. As soon as Florence’s back was turned, Yapp opened the envelope. Apart from a few words that could be adjusted, it was what they were all waiting for.
Wednesday
Dearest
Your letter under cover to John K— came to hand just after I had written to you on Monday. I did not expect to hear from you so soon, and had delayed in giving him the necessary instructions. Since my return I have been nursing M— day and night. He is sick unto death! The doctors held a consultation yesterday, and now all depends upon how long his strength will hold out! Both my brothers-in-law are here, and we are terribly anxious. I cannot answer your letter fully today, my darling, but relieve your mind of all fear of discovery now and for the future. M— has been delirious since Sunday, and I know that he is perfectly ignorant of everything, even as to the name of the street and also that he has not been making any inquiries whatsoever. The tale he told me was pure fabrication, and only intended to frighten the truth out of me. In fact, he believes my statement, although he will not admit it. You need not, therefore, go abroad on this account, dearest, but in any case please don’t leave England until I have seen you once again. You must feel that those two letters of mine were written under circumstances which must ever excuse their injustice in your eyes. Do you suppose I should act as I am doing, if I really felt and meant what I inferred there? If you wish to write to me about anything do so now, as the letters pass through my hands at present. Excuse my scrawl, my own darling, but I dare not leave the room for a moment, and I do not know when I shall be able to write to you again. In haste, Yours ever, Florie.
It is not unreasonable to describe this letter as toxic, both in provenance and content, and in how it arrived in the hands of Michael Maybrick ‘that same night’. It was claimed under oath by Yapp that it was given to her at about three o’clock that Wednesday afternoon, in time to catch the 3.45 post. This is contradicted by the letter itself, and everything after is a Yapp invention. She said she gave it to the Maybricks’ young daughter Gladys to carry, but that she dropped it in the mud. A fresh envelope was required, she said, but instead of asking for one in the post office, readdressing it and mailing the original in that, she opened Florence’s letter.
In fact Yapp was nowhere near the post office, and the child had not dropped the letter. She opened it because she was a conniving little sneak, and everyone including Sir Charles Russell knew this ‘mud’ story was rubbish.64 Nevertheless, it gave the Irish Judas an opportunity of showboating, which at the ‘trial’ served its purpose of looking like something to do with Florie’s defence.
RUSSELL: Why did you open that letter?
YAPP: To put it in a clean envelope.
RUSSELL: Why didn’t you put it in a clean envelope without opening it?
(No answer.)
He then demanded to know whether it was a wet or a dry day.65 Again, no answer. He pressed her, and again received no answer. The Brierley envelope was produced, the address quite clear despite a water stain, and with no running of the ink.
RUSSELL: Can you suggest how there can be any damp or wet in connection with it without causing some running of the ink?
YAPP: I cannot.
RUSSELL: On your oath, girl, did you not manufacture that stain as an excuse for opening your mistress’s letter?66
Yapp denied it, but the envelope didn’t. That the ink hadn’t run is a small but notable point whose subtext was missed by Russell. The letter was written in pencil, ‘in haste’ – so, in such haste, why bother to seek out a pen and ink for the address? In respect of ‘adjustments’ that were later made to the text, it crosses my mind that this wasn’t the genuine envelope at all, but that it was part of an overall fabrication.
When Florence’s mother, the Baroness, arrived at Battlecrease House from Paris on 17 May, to discover her daughter prostrate in a filthy bed and detained under police guard, she laid into Edwin Maybrick, demanding an explanation. According to her, he had a rather different story to tell regarding the letter’s provenance:
Oh, I have been very fond of Florie. I would never have believed anything wrong of her. I would have stood by her, and did until a letter to a man was found. I said, ‘Letter to a man! Do Edwin, tell me a straight story!’ ‘Why, to the man Brierley. She wrote him a letter and it was found.’ I said, ‘Who found it – you?’ He said, ‘Nurse.’ I asked, ‘Where?’ He replied: ‘She found it on the floor; it fell from her dress when she fainted and I carried her into the spare bedroom.’ ‘But,’ I said, ‘how did you know it was to Brierley?’ He replied: ‘It was directed to him, it was written in pencil; and it fell to the floor.’67
We can take our pick, Yapp or Edwin. Both are lying, but at least Edwin confirms that the address was written in pencil.68
As Russell charged, the mud-stained envelope was faked, a ruse to disguise the prying. From where they acquired this letter in truth remains
unknown. So much sinister baggage is attached to it, it’s tiresome to work out where to begin. Florence admitted to her mother that she had indeed written to Brierley, but because she never saw or was able to comment on the version of the letter that was used in evidence against her, she couldn’t know what letter it was, or what the text actually said.69 Looking at it from the point of view of Yapp’s evidence (that it had been given to her in the garden at 3 p.m.) raises the first egregious inconsistency. Were this true, the line ‘Both my brothers-in-law are here’ is in want of explanation. At three o’clock only Edwin was there. Michael didn’t arrive from London until about 8.30 that evening.
According to Edwin’s more plausible version of the provenance, the letter didn’t come into their possession until Florence had ‘fainted’ on Saturday, 11 May, the day on which James died, by which time both her brothers-in-law were there, and James truly was ‘sick unto death’. This brings the date of Wednesday, 8 May into obvious question. Macdougall thinks the letter was forged, and so do I. ‘I have my suspicions,’ he writes,
Nay! my doubts about the genuineness of some parts of that letter!! I do not doubt that the great bulk of it is genuine, but assuming it to have been written on Wednesday the 8th of May, I doubt the genuineness of some parts of it. I must recall one or two dates. Mrs Maybrick returned from her visit to London on the 28th of March. On the 29th of March Mr James Maybrick attended the Grand National and among his party were Florence and Brierley. Under such circumstances I think it inconceivable that the words, ‘Since my return I have been nursing him day and night,’ can be the genuine words which Mrs Maybrick would have written to Brierley on the 8th of May!!
Macdougall’s argument is sound. Moreover, in his sworn affidavit Brierley states, ‘I only met her once again after the Grand National races on 29th March, viz: on or about the 6th of April, when I met her in Liverpool.’ This was a clandestine encounter of which the forger was ignorant, exposing the sentence ‘since my return’ in the letter as the counterfeit it was.
‘It’s written,’ continues Macdougall, ‘on the first piece of paper that came to hand, bearing the monogram of her mother, the Baroness von Roques. It purports to be dated, “Wednesday”, and I call attention to the flourish under that word and invite my readers to compare it with the flourish under the signature “Florie”. I appeal to my readers to share my doubt whether the same hand made that flourish under “Wednesday” as under “Florie”.’
Unquestionably it’s an iffy-looking ‘Wednesday’, but with or without it the text stands no scrutiny. It goes far beyond Brierley’s point about ‘you’ for ‘him’, underpinning the certainty that whatever is genuine in this ‘May 8th’ letter had to have been written in March. John Baillie Knight was not forwarding letters ‘under cover’ to Florence in May. As Brierley had written, the affair was all over by 24 March. The question therefore is, to whom did this meddling hand belong? Could it be the same one the police had commandeered to cook up a letter from Florence, as reported without denial, in the Liverpool newspapers of 3 June?
The New York Herald wrote of Mrs Briggs that she ‘constituted herself as a public prosecutor before Maybrick’s death, and to that end was a most skilled traitress to Mrs Maybrick during all the time preceding’. I second that, and Macdougall seconds me in believing the Brierley text was amended by Briggs.
You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to see the conspiracy here. Here was Briggs swapping telegrams with Michael Maybrick: ‘Come quickly,’ she wired. ‘Strange things going on.’ He claimed he received four telegrams from Briggs before she rushed round to Battlecrease House, barging into James’s bedroom in a pantomime of neighbourly concern. Here was Yapp, whispering ‘poison’ in the morning – and it was pretty damned convenient that the incriminating ‘love letter’ should fall into her hands that same afternoon. And here comes Michael; having created the scene he now walked into it, all on that same Wednesday, 8 May. Macdougall says the ‘accusing three’, Yapp, Edwin and Michael, kept the letter secret for three days, but in my view this is incorrect. I don’t think they kept it a secret because I don’t think they had it yet. I don’t think it was found until James was dead and Florence unconscious, and these three, abetted by Briggs and Hughes, ransacked the house.
Meanwhile, on his arrival at Battlecrease, Michael Maybrick had just put his bag down in the hall. No time was wasted with pleasantries. Within minutes he owned this place and everyone in it. He met Florence on the landing, and the pair of them went into James’s sickroom. ‘I was much shocked at my brother’s condition,’ Michael said in evidence at the ‘trial’. ‘Afterwards, downstairs, I told Mrs Maybrick I had very strong suspicions about the case. She asked me what I meant. I said my suspicions were that he had not been properly attended to, and that he ought to have had a professional nurse and a second doctor earlier. She said she had nursed him alone up to that point, and who had a greater right to nurse him than his own wife, or words to that effect. I then said I was not satisfied with the case, and that I would see Doctor Humphreys at once, which I did.’70
While he was popping round the corner, Edwin kept ‘suspicions’ on the boil: forbidding ‘any intervention by Mrs Maybrick in the nursing or administration of medicine or food, I gave orders on Wednesday night to Nurse Gore, and repeated them on Thursday morning. I never mentioned Mrs Maybrick’s name in the matter, but I told the nurses I should hold them responsible for all foods and medicines given to him, and that no one was to attend to him at all except the nurses, but I did not mention any names.’71
He admitted under cross-examination that he said nothing to Mrs Maybrick about any of this, but the infection was now abroad. Thereafter lies were dancing in the air like gnats.
Humphreys’ doorbell rang at about 10.30 that Wednesday night. He could have had no idea of the wickedness motivating his visitor. In the bastard went, and the doctor listened while the most notorious killer in England aired his suspicions about the flypapers Mrs Maybrick had procured in some quantity before James’s illness. Apparently they were a source of arsenic. It must have been heart-rending for Michael, so sensitive was the matter, but James was his much-loved brother, and he felt he had a duty to speak. Humphreys’ reaction was far from what was hoped for. The quack was so shocked he went to bed.
Back at Battlecrease, Edwin’s orders had been converted into whispers. Anyone who doubts a conspiracy was in progress might ask themselves how, that same Wednesday, Yapp and Michael came to the same conclusion about arsenic? Yapp told the court she didn’t think anything of the flypapers, so how was it that Michael Maybrick was thinking of them 250 miles away? Who told him there were flypapers soaking in a bowl? Who told her they were ‘suspicious’?
In March Florence had written to Michael expressing her concerns over the ‘white powders’ James was taking. He acknowledged receipt of her letter, but ignored it. ‘I destroyed it,’ he said. A month later, in the so-called ‘Blucher’ letter, James supposedly wrote to Michael about his overdose of strychnine and his desire to be cut up after death, and Michael ignored that too.
Thus ‘strychnine’ from his brother, and ‘white powders’ from his sister-in-law, were apparently of no consequence? Yet one whisper of ‘flypapers’ in a neighbour’s ear, and he was running to Liverpool in perfect synchronicity with Alice Yapp? What did Yapp know that James Maybrick’s relatives didn’t? James was an expert on arsenic, and he said nothing of it. How is it credible that a servant girl knew more about arsenic than he did?
James had three days to live. On the first of them, 9 May, Michael made another move on the medical contingent, including Nurse Gore. If Dr Humphreys didn’t want to hear it, Dr Carter was going to get it in no uncertain terms. He was considered one of the most distinguished physicians in Liverpool, a widely held misconception shared by Carter himself.
At about 4.30 that afternoon he arrived at Battlecrease, called in response to a telegram from Florence. Edwin, Yapp and Briggs all claimed to have been instigators of
the visit, but this was a spiteful fabrication. Michael came immediately to the point, bearing down on Carter in his usual commanding manner. I leave it to the physician to describe the ensuing conversation in his own words:
‘Now what is the matter with my brother, Dr Carter?’ was a question put to me very abruptly in the presence of Dr Humphreys, before we had any opportunity for further conversation. I therefore simply repeated the opinion we had informed [on 7 May] and expressed then [acute dyspepsia]. ‘But what is the cause of it?’ demanded Michael, to which Carter replied, ‘It was by no means clear. It could have been caused by many things.’
The conclusion the doctors had formed was that James ‘must have committed a grave error of diet, by taking some irritant food or drink, so to have set up inflammation.’ But Michael didn’t want to know about diet.
Turning then sharply to Dr Humphreys, Michael Maybrick asked him, if he had informed me of the subject of their last night’s conversation? Humphreys simply replied that he had informed me of nothing. All this was a matter of great surprise to me. I did not know until that moment that any conversation had taken place, and as I had had no communication directly or indirectly with Doctor Humphreys since the time it was said to have been held, I looked at the speaker wondering what would come next.
What came next was a reiteration of the previous night’s accusations. Michael was talking flypapers and he was talking arsenic, and once again he spoke under the strain of cosmetic rectitude:
It was made under the influence of great excitement, the speaker’s mind evidently struggling under a conflicting sense of what was due to his brother on the one hand, and possible injustice to his brother’s wife on the other. ‘God forbid that I should unjustly suspect anyone,’ he said, in reply to an observation made by myself, ‘but do you not think I have serious grounds for fearing that all may not be right, that it is my duty to say so to you.’
They All Love Jack Page 69