A Broken Vessel (11 page)

“But there have been many more successes—women who came to us hardened, their moral sense deadened by vice—just as hearing is deadened by constant noise or taste by over-indulgence. Those women have learned to repent: to cleanse their souls by confession, and weep for their sins like children before a stern but loving father. I refer, of course, to God, not to myself, who only strives to do God’s work in man’s imperfect fashion.”

The coroner was impressed, but seemed to feel they were wandering a bit from the subject. “When did the deceased come to the refuge?”

“About a fortnight ago. I believe it was late in the afternoon, on a Tuesday. She arrived alone, dressed in the tawdry finery of her calling. She seemed distraught, but said very little. I happened to be at the refuge, and interviewed her myself. Mrs. Fiske was also present, for propriety’s sake. In my work, I cannot afford even the faintest appearance of unseemliness.”

“Of course not,” said the coroner.

“I was struck from the first by the young woman’s speech and manners. She was clearly from a higher sphere of life than most of the women we see. Her fall seemed to me all the more unfortunate, given her advantages of breeding and education, she ought to have set a better example to her more ignorant sisters. I must confess, I was torn two ways in deciding whether to take her in. Her tears, her remorse, her clear understanding of her fault, boded well for her salvation. On the other hand, there was a want of openness—an unwillingness to acknowledge and confess her wrongdoing—that showed she could not yet humble herself sufficiently to repent with all her heart. She would say nothing of her family, her past life, or how she fell from grace. She steadfastly refused to tell us her surname—and even the Christian name she gave, that of the Mother of our Lord, I fear may have been invented.

“Gentlemen, what was I to do?” He appealed to the jury, who looked fascinated. “To cast her out would have forced her back upon the wretched course she was trying to abandon. Yet her stubborn silence, for which she would give no explanation, showed that her mind and heart were too filled with pride to make room for penitence. I could think of no better solution than to admit her to the refuge, while drawing a stem distinction between her and the other inmates, who had placed their trust in us and fully embraced our teachings.

“To open Mary’s eyes to the incompleteness of her repentance, I was obliged to take certain painful but necessary measures. As she had isolated herself in spirit, so I isolated her in body. I ordered that she should sleep alone, in a room barren of luxuries and distractions, and that she should take her meals at a table separate from the other inmates. A father must chastise as well as comfort, and so must a man of my cloth make felt his displeasure when an ailing soul spurns the only medicine that can save her. That Mary did not leave us—though at all times she was free to do so—suggests to me that in her heart of hearts she understood my motives, and would have submitted herself to the consolations of religion and repentance, if only her faith had been greater, or her vanity less.”

He paused. The jury waited, spellbound.

“Her death of course came as a terrible shock—I grieve for it with all my heart. That she should rush into the presence of her Maker, with her own blood upon her hands, is of all fates the one I should have wished most to spare her. Self-murder is a wicked act; I do not and cannot condone it. But I pray for her, and hope she may find mercy and peace where she is now. In spite of her obduracy, and her criminal despair—for who has the right to lose all hope, while we are in the hands of a just God, and redeemed by his Son’s grace?—even so, I would like to think it was not impiety that prompted her desperate deed, but a burden of guilt so great that it turned her mind. Gentlemen, I hope that in reaching your verdict, you will take into account her mental imbalance, and deal gently with her memory, as you would wish to be judged yourselves.”

The women spectators sniffed. One of them buried her face in her handkerchief. The jury lowered their eyes, humbled and moved, as if they were in church.

Julian marvelled at Harcourt. He had turned Mary’s death while under his care into a source of acclaim for himself and the refuge. No one dreamed of asking how he could have let such a thing happen. No one cared about the facts anymore, but only about the lovely, tragic tale he had woven around them. To Julian, the evidence was full of holes—some of them large enough to drive a coach-and-four through. But anyone attempting to point that out here would be a voice crying in the wilderness.

“Just a few last questions, Mr. Harcourt.” The coroner was practically purring. “Mere formalities, nothing more. I am sure none of us wishes to distract you any longer from your valuable work.”

Harcourt inclined his head graciously. Julian wondered if the coroner would become the newest subscriber to the Reclamation Society. Perhaps the jury would all join as well.

“Was there any evidence of forcible entry into the refuge after the deceased was found dead?”

“No. There were no broken windows, and no locks had been tampered with.”

“Have you any idea how the deceased might have obtained laudanum?”

“There, I blame myself.” (Protests and shaking of heads among the jury and the spectators.) “Yes, I feel the fault is primarily mine. These young women are self-indulgent by nature, and skilled in evading the law. They are not permitted to leave the refuge during their rehabilitation, or to have contact with anyone from outside except under close supervision, but even so, Mary may have been clever enough to smuggle in the laudanum without our knowledge. I fear I have been too trusting with the inmates, believing that their desire to reform is sincere, and that they can therefore slough off the deceitful habits inculcated over many years. I can only assure you all that I will redouble my watchfulness over them, and do everything in my power to guard them against the treacherous promptings of their own natures.”

Julian gazed at Harcourt almost in wonder. The man was grotesque but fascinating, like a figure at Mme. Tussaud’s— which, with his white, waxen skin, he rather resembled. Julian felt sure he was a fraud; there was nothing behind his rhetoric but vanity and ambition. Yet there was no denying he was eloquent. And once again he had completely diverted attention from the facts. Instead of thinking about how Mary had gotten the laudanum, the coroner and jury were caught up in his personal dismay and regret, and his resolve to surmount this misfortune and persevere in his cause.

Julian knew the time had come for him and Sally to produce the letter. He also knew he had no intention of doing so, if he could think of any justification for keeping it back. He did not believe anyone here would give it serious attention. Harcourt would dismiss it as further proof of poor Mary’s stubborn pride—for why should she be so secretive, if she were truly humbled and repentant? The coroner and jury would sigh sympathetically, and that would be the end of the matter. Julian looked around the room, but there did not seem to be one person immune from Harcourt’s spell, who could take a cold, unsentimental look at the facts.

All at once his eyes fell on Samuel Digby. He was leaning back with his gouty foot propped on a chair, his arms folded, and an expression of cynical amusement on his face. Thank God, thought Julian, I’m not mad, I’m not alone—here’s someone else who sees Harcourt for what he is.

And Digby was a magistrate, Julian recalled. He might have a duty to come forward with the letter, but surely he could choose which of the authorities he would approach. He had a good idea now who his choice would be.

CHAPTER
8

W
hat he needed above all, Julian thought, was to talk this whole business over with Dr. MacGregor. That evening, he called on MacGregor at Dr. Greeley’s and gave him an account of Mary’s death and the inquest. Dr. Greeley was settled for the night, leaving MacGregor free to talk with Julian in the snug, dark-panelled library.

“The verdict was a foregone conclusion,” Julian finished. “The coroner summed up briefly to the jury, making it clear what he thought had happened. An almost empty laudanum bottle was found by Mary’s bed, next to the glass that had contained her dose of cordial. Traces of cordial, laudanum, and water were found in the glass,
ergo
, she must have poured the laudanum from the bottle into the glass, diluted it with water from her water jug, and drunk it. The doctor’s evidence ruled out accidental death, but it didn’t necessarily follow that Mary was rational enough to be held accountable for her act. The jury understood what was expected of them and obligingly brought in a verdict of suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed. So the enquiry is over, Mary can be buried in sanctified ground, and Harcourt left the inquest with a few more strands of gold added to his halo.”

MacGregor shook his head sadly. “Poor little soul. This city’s got a good deal to answer for—taking a nice, respectable girl and turning her into the most abandoned thing in nature. You can’t wonder she couldn’t live with the idea of what she’d been once, and what she’d sunk to now. But it’s a terrible thing she did, to put herself beyond hope or help that way. I won’t believe there’s a human soul that can’t be saved, if you can just bring to bear the right influence at the right time. Those Reclamation Society people were too harsh with her, that’s all. No point in beating a broken reed. Of course she was a sinner, but I wouldn’t punish a soul as frail and tender as hers, any more than I’d bleed and purge a body that’s weak with disease—though I know there’s many a medical man who’d disagree with me about that! Oh, well, it’s a pity you didn’t reach her in time. Something might have been done to help her.”

“Yes, it
is
a pity,” said Julian quietly.

MacGregor looked at him very hard, then exclaimed, “I see why you’re in such a fret about this! You young lunatic, you think it’s your fault she’s dead!”

“I don’t think it’s my fault, exactly. I didn’t pour the laudanum down her throat. But still—I can’t forget that Sally wanted to go to the refuge yesterday, and I told her there was no hurry. A day can’t make any difference, I said—”

“For God’s sake, man, you couldn’t have known! You had every right to assume that, of all places the girl could be, a refuge run by a clergyman would be the safest. And who would have thought she’d put hands on herself just now? She’d only just written that letter—it was dated this past Saturday evening, wasn’t it? So she couldn’t have sent it more than three days ago. You’d think she’d have waited long enough to give whomever she wrote to a fair chance to come and find her—”

He broke off. Julian was leaning toward him, his greenish eyes strangely alight. “So that’s struck you, too?”

“What are you getting at? Dash it, man, what’s this all about?”

“You’re exactly right: why should she kill herself when she’d only just sent her letter? It may have miscarried somehow—it’s hard to believe she intended it for any of those three men. But she must have thought she’d posted it successfully: Florrie Ames told Sally she’d been in better spirits the past few days. This was no time to kill herself. If weeks had gone by, and there’d been no response, she might have given up hope and determined to die. But this was too soon.”

“Perhaps she did get an answer, in some way we don’t know about. Whomever she wrote to may have got a message to her last night, saying he wanted nothing more to do with her.”

“He would have had to be remarkably intrepid, to smuggle a message to her at the refuge. The place seems little better than a prison. But here’s another question: why didn’t she leave a note?”

“Not all suicides do.”

“No. But not all suicides are as articulate as this one was. After writing an eloquent letter like this”—he took it out of his pocket and held it up—“can you conceive she would take her own life without leaving a note of explanation or regret—some expression of her feelings?”

“It’s happening again—the same confounded thing as that business at Bellegarde! Here’s a perfectly cut-and-dried affair— a straightforward suicide—and you stir up a hornets’ nest of complications!”

“Wasn’t that how we solved the Bellegarde murder?” Julian asked mildly.

“But that was obviously a murder!”

“This is, at the very least, a highly unconvincing suicide. How did Mary get the laudanum? Harcourt and Mrs. Fiske both said, with magnificent vagueness, that the inmates are so corrupt and clever, they could have found some means or other of spiriting laudanum into the refuge. But it appears the matrons watch them like hawks, searching their rooms and looking in on them at all hours of the night. It’s all very well to say that since Mary had the laudanum, she must have had some means of obtaining it. One could equally say that if she had no means, she must
not
have obtained it.”

“What are you saying? Somebody sneaked into Mary’s room last night and forced her to drink the stuff?”

“Well, she did have a room to herself. Florrie told Sally she was the only one of the inmates who slept alone.”

“Heavens above, man, think about what you’re saying!” MacGregor paced back and forth, waving his hands. “Anybody meaning to kill Mary that way would have had to pour out a whacking great dose of laudanum, mix it with water or spirits— you can’t drink laudanum neat—and then force her to drink it down. It seems like a pretty clumsy and dangerous way to commit a murder.”

“People do commit murder by opium poisoning.”