Eight Weeks in the Summer of Victoria's Jubilee

by Bob Biderman

  Maggie recalled the testimony of Dr Kay saying that Lipski was found when searching for the missing vial which had contained the poison. It was subsequently located in a fold of the bed covers, pointed out, she recalled, by Rosenbloom.

  Now a man named Charles Moore was called to the stand. He was the manager of the shop in Blackchurch Lane where the origin of the substance had been traced. Moore testified that he remembered a man coming into his shop that fateful morning at around nine o’clock who asked for a pennyworth of aqua fortis. Moore had weighed it out for him – one ounce in weight – and had poured it into a two-ounce vial the man had brought with him.

  It was Friday morning, several days after the murder, that Moore was brought to London hospital and taken to the ward where Lipski was being held in order to identify the prisoner.

  But how was he identified? Moore had been escorted to the Hospital by a police inspector and taken to the ward where Lipski was kept, watched over by a constable who sat guard at the foot of the bed. There lay a man of foreign appearance with bandages over his head and a policeman standing watch. In such circumstances was an identification fair? After all, as McIntyre ascertained, hadn’t Moore’s shop been especially busy that morning? Hadn’t there been a half dozen people asking him for different things and competing for his attention?

  A circumstantial chain had been constructed by the prosecution, Maggie thought, which looked to be straightforward. But it all depended on belief – belief and interpretation. Maggie, herself, was well versed in taking facts and ideas and spinning them out in various ways in order to create believable fiction. Sometimes things fit together easily, sometimes they were forced. But she could always create a number of different stories from her material.

  Anyway, it had come out in the evidence that nitric acid was often used by stickmakers to stain their wood. Therefore, it wouldn’t have been unusual to find a vial of the stuff in a stickmaker’s shop. And even if Lipski had purchased an ounce of aqua fortis that morning in question, did that mean he had used it to murder Miriam Angel? After all, there was a flood of acid to be accounted for, not merely an ounce.

  When Moore had completed his testimony and had left the witness box there was a moment of confusion as if something was supposed to happen but, for whatever reason, hadn’t. Maggie glanced around. She heard a sound like the rustle of leaves that portends something in the woods, something unexpected. The audience was restless in expectation. Was there something they knew, she wondered? Something she didn’t?

  And then she saw her, being escorted down the aisle which led to the witness box next to the judge. She was a plain and simple woman, someone who would have easily faded into the crowd at Petticoat Lane; thick of leg, slightly hunched, a face worn over by the years and eyes without an inkling of twinkle, without even an echo of the glint that comes with youth. Whatever there had been had dried away like arid dessert ruts that once were cool blue streams but left no trace after years of blistering heat and stifling dust. This woman, thought Maggie, had at one time been a girl even though it was hard for her to imagine. And she had been a baby once, someone whose parents had showered with love and looked upon with faithful eyes of hope. What imponderable events had robbed her of that? Who was this poor creature? Why was she being called to court? What manner of beast would force this sad, ungainly thing to play a part in such grotesqueness?

  Her name was Anna Lyons. And hearing the surname, Maggie suddenly understood. For this was the woman whose daughter, Kate, had been engaged to the young man who stood on the other side of the room and gazed out with hollow eyes that were expressionless.

  Anna Lyons spoke English and answered the questions put to her by the hawk-nosed prosecutor in a languid tone but without hesitation. Her daughter, she said, had been engaged to the prisoner for six months. On Monday, the 27th of June, her future son-in-law had come to her house about one o’clock to eat his dinner and had asked whether she would be kind enough to lend him some money. But, she had no money left to lend him that day. So she had taken her brush and her ring to Church Street to pawn in return for twenty-five shillings.

  Maggie gazed at the woman with tired, tired eyes and thought about pawning a brush and a ring. A brush and a ring. How would she brush her brittle hair? What would she wear on her thin, barren fingers?

  She pawned these things for twenty-five shillings and then… and then…

  And then what? Maggie thought to herself. And then what did she do?

  She took it there. Where? She took it there to his house and gave it to him, to Mr Lipski. She called him that – ‘Mr Lipski’. She pawned her brush and her ring and took the money there to his house and gave it to him – to Mr Lipski.

  Oh, how sad, Maggie thought. How very, very sad. A brush and a ring. Pawned for what? For hope. For the future of her daughter and the promise of offspring. She pawned her ring and her brush for the promise of life after death. And now it was gone. Gone was the ring. Gone was the brush. Gone was the twenty-five shillings. Gone was the promise of grandchildren. Gone was hope. Gone. All gone.

  Did the prisoner say anything about repaying her? The hawk-nosed prosecutor wanted to know. Repaid? Of course she would be repaid! She was to be repaid ten times over. Repaid by the promise of the future of her daughter. But, yes, he said, ‘Saturday, please God, I will take in the work, or finish the work. I shall pay you all I owe you.’

  Had he borrowed some before? Of, course, she said. The total had been two pounds and five shillings. And had any money been given back? Nothing. Nothing back. But on Saturday, please God, he would take in work or finish work and pay back all he owed her. That is what he said. And that is what he meant to do.

  The prosecutor waved his hand as if to say what more could be added to such a story: an old woman who pawns her ring and her brush to lend money to a murderer.

  Then McIntyre came up to cross-examine. Had she known Lipski long? Oh, yes – for two years. Ever since he had been working for her son-in-law. (Another son-in-law, thought Maggie? Had she also pawned a brush and ring for the first one?)

  Was he a man of good character, asked McIntyre? So far she couldn’t give him a bad character as he always behaved himself. But left unsaid, the words lingered in the air: Who knows? Perhaps he is a murderer.

  And did she know that the money she had lent him would be used for the purpose of fitting up a workshop? Yes, she thought so. Yes, she did. And did she know what kind of work he was doing? Yes, horn work. Stick work? Yes, horn work and stick work. And did she know that he was working for a Mr Lewis in Aldermanbury? No she didn’t. And others? She didn’t know them.

  With a flourish, McIntyre handed the judge a list of names of the people for whom Lipski would be making sticks. So there it was – hard evidence that the sticks would indeed have buyers. There it was in black and white. God willing, on Saturday, Lipski would really have paid his future mother-in-law back the money that he owed her.

  CHAPTER 19

  Z COULD HARDLY believe his ears, as if they were impacted with wax causing a distortion of sound, transforming the intricate codes that allow the magic of comprehension to be short-circuited and thus changing the nature of meaning into gibberish. But today impacted wax wasn’t the problem and so he stared out at the pathetic figure of McIntyre with disbelief, wondering if what he said could possibly be correct.

  Poland had just announced that the case for the Crown had been concluded. Now McIntyre stood before the judge and spoke in the monotonous tones of a commercial lawyer more used to unravelling the Gordian knots of arcane contracts tied neatly with pink ribbons and smelling of eau de cologne than dealing with strange-sounding foreigners living in stinking slums and occasionally killing one another as starving rodents might do when faced with a shortage of edible dung. To Z’s horror, McIntyre stood there and said that the defence did not intend to call any witnesses.

  No witnesses?

 
Not a single one offering alternatives to Lipski’s curious injuries or how he ended up stuffed underneath a bed behind an egg crate, a jacket and a smelly old coat or questioning the workings of that ridiculous lock (and thus the idea that Lipski had bolted himself in) or, even more incredibly, disputing the lack of any significant motive that might engender such a horrific crime in a pauperised house where a swollen woman lay like a lump in bed in a room with nothing of value – not even herself? Was there no one to query why a young man of good reputation, engaged to be married and just starting a business of his own, would brutally kill a hapless being such as that, without a penny to her name and six months with child, by pouring acid down her throat? Could Z actually have heard correctly? Did McIntyre really say that the defence would call no witnesses?

  In fact, that is exactly what McIntyre said. And having said what he did, the defence rested. So, apart from the final summations, the trial was essentially over. And, as if to emphasise this fact, the judge banged his gavel and the court broke for lunch.

  Z, still confounded by the rapidity of events, stared out at the courtroom as if in a daze. What he saw in the scurry of bodies headed for the exit door, was the image of the uncomprehending prisoner, a look of utter confusion on his face, being led away to the darkness of the cellar. And then his eyes scanned the room, searching for a particular face which he located in a scrum of lawyers. Their eyes met – his and Myers. What message was transmitted? Confusion? Despair? Or was it betrayal? And if so, betrayal of what? Betrayal of whom?

  He waited behind as the courtroom cleared, the buzz and clatter becoming progressively lessened, like a crowded train watched from a station moving off into the distance. Then he stood there once more alone. Except for her. She waited for him again by the door. Quietly. Patiently. And yet, as he walked towards her, he could see that she was brimming with emotion – but so contained. How unlike the ghetto, he thought, where emotion flowed ceaseless from every pore. She had the outward appearance of statuesque tranquillity until he studied her face and saw the slight twitching at the corners of her mouth. Like climbing up a peaceful hill, he thought – peaceful until one looks down into the cone of the volcano

  She wanted to know what was going on. Couldn’t he interpret for her? After all, these were his people.

  His people? Well they were, weren’t they? And yet they weren’t. They knew nothing of the poetry of Keats nor the tranquil air when boating up the Thames on the way to his beloved Kew Gardens. What did they know of all that – those people who thought that life revolves around the schul and the market? What on earth compelled him to come to this dreary place? Who was that man Lipski anyway? Why did he care what happened to him?

  Myers was waiting outside the courtroom door. He was in a rush – couldn’t stay to talk. But things weren’t as bad as they seemed. No, not at all. There was method in the madness. The prosecution hadn’t proved their case. The ball was in their court, so to speak. It was up to them to show that all the supposition and coincidence was enough to hang someone. That now depended on how convincing Poland would be in summing up. If McIntyre had called a single witness, then the prosecution would be allowed to address the jury last. Ridiculous, of course, but until the law could be changed, that’s the way it was. So the defence, considering their options, thought it better to retain their rights and have the jury leave with McIntyre’s words ringing in their ears instead of Poland’s.

  Maggie thought that possibly Myers was right. The case certainly hadn’t been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, she told him as they sat in the same wooden booth at the same pub they had come to the day before.

  Z thought of McIntyre and pictured him just moments before droning on emotionlessly like a statistician giving a lecture on the number of beans it takes to cleanse your bowels. Was it the cold light of reason or logic that would save Israel Lipski’s hide? He suspected not. In fact, Z felt himself beset by a strong premonition of doom.

  Maggie on the other hand felt that there was still hope. For, despite everything, she had a basic, elemental and deep seeded trust in British justice.

  .

  CHAPTER 20

  Z’S PENCIL FLEW fast and furiously as he watched Poland expound to the jury, his face of chiselled stone, expressionless, but his eyes like those of a hawk focused intently on its prey.

  Poland’s summation was short, forceful and to the point. After scribbling his notations, Z inserted some parenthetical comments so as to underline questionable aspects of the case:

  ‘The facts were so simple and clear that the jury could come to only one conclusion. The prisoner and the deceased were the only ones in the room and on that day the prisoner had purchased the acid which undoubtedly was the cause of her death. The question of motive was not material (why not?) but it was reasonable to suppose that the accused might have intended to outrage the deceased (really?) or to commit a robbery (what was there to rob?). The prisoner’s answer to the charge was that the crime was committed by Rosenbloom and Schmuss. He asks the jury to believe that even though they were unknown to each other (are we certain?) these two men combined together to kill Mrs Angel in broad daylight and that even though the woman was unknown to them and was in such poverty that she had to borrow five shillings the day before to pay her rent. (They didn’t know that, but maybe Lipski did.) The prisoner was an active young man and if he had struggled for dear life with those two men, didn’t the jury think he would have marked them in some manner while they were seizing him and opening his mouth? (Perhaps not if one held his arms from behind.) But neither man had any mark, neither did the prisoner have any marks such as he would have had if there was the struggle he had alleged (How about the marks on his elbows and in his throat?) The marks he did bear were such as he would be likely to get in a struggle with a woman (how come?) and this was all the more likely to be the most feasible explanation when they remembered that he uttered no cries for help. (How could he cry out if they had gagged him? Why didn’t the woman cry out as well?) At first there was a little mystery in the case, the man Schmuss having gone away, but it was now proved he went to Birmingham for work and that he made no secret about going…(Indeed! So what does that prove?)’

  The jury had listened to Poland carefully, noting his every word and seemed not to flinch at any of the inconsistencies or suppositions neatly contained in this off-handed summation which Z had annotated with the terse comments above. They appeared content and satisfied with no trace of scepticism on their collective brow. If anything, they seemed quite pleased that a gentleman like Poland would address them with such courtesy – asking them to believe, not actually demanding. It was, after all, up to them to verify what the good gentleman claimed was so obvious. But would the good gentleman have claimed that if it wasn’t?

  Maggie also focused attentively on Poland’s summation. But her eyes were directed somewhere else. She was gazing at the prisoner in the dock and trying to intuit how much he understood. He knew more English than he let on, she thought, noticing his eyebrows twitch after Poland spoke about the absence of any signs of struggle because the prisoner showed no serious trace of marks. No serious trace of marks?. One only needed to look at his boyish face which wasn’t boyish anymore. Over two days his features had hardened and his face had become that of an ageless man. Oh, yes, he was marked, but not in the way Poland meant it!

  And then McIntyre stood to make his final address. He stood for a moment, quietly, as if deep in thought. It might have been his finest hour. It might have been the moment of his career when suddenly words of brilliance would leap into his head and he could speak them with a golden tongue. It might have been. But who, after all, was he trying to defend? What, really, was in it for him?

  When he finally spoke, his words were restrained and his tone was almost apologetic. That he was forced to have put forward a defence which had implicated others was a painful duty. But whether or not they were convinced of Lipski’s
innocence, he had to submit that the prosecution had not made out such a case against the accused as would justify his conviction upon this fearful charge. What motive did the prisoner have? He had first thought that the prosecution was trying to imply that the prisoner had entered the woman’s room for an immoral purpose, but the medical evidence entirely destroyed that contention and the prosecution had given it up.

  For a moment, it seemed to Z, there was a light in McIntyre’s eyes and a little wind, however slight, had buffeted his sail. But just as he had established a bit of connection with the jury, just when they had started to perk up, hearing something of interest beyond the drone, just at that moment…

  Mr Justice Stephen interjected. In a voice that bristled with authority he instructed the jury that the prosecution had not given up the motive of immorality – certainly not! It was only that they hadn’t attempted to prove adultery had taken place!

  All eyes had shifted from McIntyre to the judge. And when Justice Stephen had said what he had to say, venting his annoyance, all eyes shifted back again to McIntyre, who now looked that much smaller. It was like pricking a human balloon. For a moment, thought Z, he had almost flown, but now, admonished by the judge, he had been well and truly deflated, fluttering haplessly to the ground.

  McIntyre cleared his throat and continued: The alternative motive suggested was robbery, but the accused was known to be a man of exemplary character. He did not conceal his movements on the morning in question and must have been aware that there wasn’t much to be gained by plundering the deceased’s room. In fact, the circumstances seemed to indicate that the murder was the work of two men not one. If the prisoner had indeed attempted to outrage the deceased she would have certainly struggled and called out for assistance. But had there been two men, one could easily have gagged the woman while the other administered the blows, preventing her from calling out in alarm. It was asserted that the door of the room was locked on the inside when the prisoner was found under the deceased woman’s bed. The evidence, however, showed that the door was easily opened by the women pushing from the outside, which would indicate that the lock had merely stuck. If the door had been locked, what reason could there possibly be for the prisoner locking himself in? The fact that the accused was found under the bed in an insensible condition was far more in keeping with his statement that he was attacked by two men than with the theory of the prosecution. Given the contradictory aspects of the evidence, certainly the jury would find it too inconclusive to justify finding the prisoner guilty of this awfully serious charge.