Blue Moon (24 page)

The Globe and Mail
provided an interesting perspective on the final moments of the trial: “During the addresses Evelyn's face remained inscrutable. Not so the faces of the audience. They were quiet, but every point made by the lawyers was mirrored in their expressions. From the standpoint of audience reaction this trial had all the aspects of a mystery movie. But they do it better in the movies. The movie detective would have produced the driver who took Evelyn home from the hospital. Then we would find out whether she went straight home with the child, what she did, whom she saw—and the case would have been open and shut. In a Hollywood movie, the accused woman would have been telling the truth all along, and the real murderer would be brought swiftly to justice.” My life did not imitate the movies on that day: I was found guilty of manslaughter.

Before sentence could be imposed, Mr. Robinette asked leave to provide evidence of a medical character, a request granted by LeBel. Immediately, Dr. Finlayson was called to the stand. The expert witness began by stating he could not possibly reveal the full findings
of his examination of the convicted felon, nor would the complete array of those same findings be made public. They would remain in his custody, marked “Confidential” and would be available in future years to the authorities should the question of parole ever arise.

After that long-winded introduction, he claimed that the widow had “the mental age of about thirteen years, with a mental capacity of dull normal near the borderline between dull normal and moron. She possessed an excellent memory, but her general intelligence was sub-standard, her reasoning and judgement poor, and her vocabulary extremely limited.” He continued: “Besides this retardation, she has a constitutional psychopathic personality. Such people have no feelings for their fellow human beings. They do not experience guilt or remorse. These people are notoriously difficult to train. I think the important thing here is the way this girl grew up, the constant sense of insecurity, of family trouble. She was allowed to do pretty well as she pleased. Behaviour problems are ninety-five per cent environment.”

Following this testimony, Robinette pleaded with LeBel to disregard “the emotional disturbance suffered by the public and the resulting primitive desire for revenge” and, instead, to consider “the salvation of the accused.” He also called the judge's attention to the case of the pitiful Maria McCabe, a twenty-year-old Irish domestic, who in 1883 in Hamilton was consigned to the gallows because she had drowned her illegitimate baby in a cistern. The judge who delivered the sentence broke into tears when he delivered the law's required verdict. Public outcry against the harsh penalty was so widespread that it was commuted to fourteen years in the Kingston penitentiary for women. When the young woman, who, like me, was interned at the Barton Street Jail, was given the good news of her change of fate, she was rendered mute, so extreme was her sense of relief and gratitude.

Mr. Robinette's stratagems backfired, as was painfully evident in LeBel's address to me after he directed me to stand: “You have been convicted of a horrible crime. If you are mentally ill or emotionally unstable—and there is no doubt from what Dr. Finlayson says that you are—you will be cared for in the place to which you will be confined in a better way than you have ever been up to this time. I rejoice that in cases such as yours there may be some hope of redemption. In pronouncing sentence today, however, I see nothing
whatever that justifies me beyond the merciful view which the jury has taken of the evidence in this case. The sentence of this court is that you shall spend the rest of your natural life in penitentiary.”

Even criminal lawyers of Mr. Robinette's stature cannot work miracles. He did the very best for me, although I hardly needed to be labelled moronic. Subsequently, after I refused once again to offer any testimony against the other two defendants, Bohozuk was unconditionally discharged and my father sent to prison for five years as a participant in the Dick murder. I was quickly removed to the prison for women in Kingston, Ontario.

I spent my last day and night in Hamilton by myself. No visitors were allowed. I found it difficult to sleep. When that mercy finally bestowed itself upon me, I was driving up Hamilton Mountain once again, taking all the same turns in the road, soon reaching the spot where I had encountered Mr. Romanelli.

The spot is deserted. I park the car, wait, and no one arrives. I smoke two cigarettes. I worry about John in my dream, and I am filled with anxiety for him yet again. I can't stop myself from experiencing that feeling even though I realize—in the midst of the dream—that I thought him an utter nuisance both alive and dead.

I stub out the last cigarette and get out of the car. Although there is no moonlight to guide me, I decide to wander into the woods. The pines have grown so close to each other that any attempt to penetrate them is difficult. My face becomes badly scratched, and blood drenches my hands. The strong smell of the pine tar is my only consolation, and even it threatens to overwhelm me. Slowly, and with tremendous difficulty, I move through the phalanx of trees, completely unaware of what direction I am heading.

Suddenly, the trees disappear. I approach a small white cottage with a green door. I hurry ahead and knock on the door. No one answers. Suddenly, I am certain some malignant spirit is behind me, but, when I turn around, I see only the trees that now encircle the building. I open the door cautiously and walk in.

The interior is not what I anticipate. The floor, walls and ceiling are white, and it is impossible to distinguish the borders between them. As I walk further, I now become aware that the building seems
to be the size of an enormous cathedral, something on the scale of Chartres. I walk for ages, making no progress towards any object or piece of furniture. I am enveloped in whiteness.

Suddenly, I am aware of an object a few feet on the ground ahead of me. I proceed cautiously and see a baby, wrapped in white and blue woollen garments. I bend down and notice the smiling, radiant face of a small infant. I pick him up and take him to my bosom. His tiny body is stone cold.

“You'll have to be very careful when you first get to Kingston, dear. They don't like baby murderers. It's the unpardonable crime.”

“If they've read about the case in the newspaper, they'll know I'm innocent.”

Millicent, the friendliest of the guards at Barton Street, nodded her head sagely, half in agreement with me, half in astonishment at my naivety. “They all say they're innocent, honey.”

The black Packard in which I was caged (in the back-seat, handcuffed to a matron) for the four hour drive from Hamilton to Kingston was an updated version of my former automobile. That grim
irony did not escape me. From what I could see as we approached its outskirts, Kingston was a sleepy place, filled with monuments of war such as Fort Henry. Like myself, the small city had a colourful past.

The Prison for Women—known as P4W to inmates and guards—was constructed of limestone blocks so that it would blend into and resemble the other ancient buildings of the small city, including Queen's University. When I arrived at P4W, it was only a dozen years old and was successfully masquerading itself as part and parcel of the city whose most prized possession was old-fashioned gentility. The immense, tumbling structure with barred windows that suddenly loomed up before me that afternoon reminded me of an old medieval castle, one in which I, Rapunzel-like, was about to be confined.

The fairy-tale setting was rather comically contradicted by the sixteen foot high wall surrounding my new home; the wall was topped by ten feet of wire mesh fence, which was crowned by six strands of barbed wire. In case the wall proved insufficient in deterring wily inmates from climbing over it, the entire exterior was illuminated at night by huge electric lights placed at one-hundred-foot intervals. The excuse for all this: the female prisoners were not subjected to the indignity of guard towers built into the walls.

As soon as we arrived at the gate, my shackles were removed and my custodian, with whom I had not exchanged a single word, pushed me in the direction of a tall, nervous middle-aged woman, who introduced herself as Mrs. White, the sub-warden. With old-fashioned good manners, she asked me to accompany her to the office of Mrs. Nelson, the warden. We marched together into the grim mansion and along a long corridor, at the end of which was a door leading to a large, opulent office, completely lined with books. Mrs. Nelson, seated behind her desk, indicated with a brisk nod that I was to stand before her for inspection. Mrs. White immediately took her place behind her superior.

Although both women were natives of the British Isles, they were remarkable in their contrasts, perhaps my first clue on how well they functioned as a team. Mrs. Nelson spoke in a posh fashion, in the kind of marbled grandeur of the aristocracy. Yet, every so often, a harsh nasal or sibilant betrayed her Yorkshire birth. Her subordinate's plain North London accent was less intimidating. The warden was beautifully, simply, and expensively dressed in black and white; Mrs.
White's clothing may have been expensive but nothing matched—a magenta cardigan, a green blouse, a brown tweed skirt. Her makeup was messy and smudged, as if she had applied her lipstick, powder and creams hurriedly, paying absolutely no attention to the order in which they should be used. Although considerably older than myself (I guessed her to be in her mid-fifties), Mrs. Nelson was also obviously an avid fan of the silver screen: her hair was dyed a perfect dense black, her face powder applied uniformly, her lipstick—a perfect crimson—carefully painted on the lips.

Behind her desk was a placard with the following legend: “Fear not! I do not exact vengeance for evil, but compel you to be good. My hand is stern, but my heart is kind.” (I later learned this motto is a translation from the Dutch of the words engraved over the entrance of the first prison built for women, the Spinhuis, which opened in 1645 in Amsterdam.) There was also an engraving of the kindly Elizabeth Fry reading from the Bible to female inmates during her 1813 tour of London's Newgate prison.

After I had been on display for a minute or two, Mrs. Nelson broke the silence. “Evelyn, I always interview a new prisoner as the first order of business when one arrives. It is my duty to receive you into our community.” She stopped and peered into my eyes. “It is also my responsibility to caution you.”

“Yes,” Mrs. White proclaimed, “to welcome and to warn. Those are the goals of the first interview. Research has shown the prisoner must be greeted properly and, at the same time, reminded of the potential hazards that lie in her path.”

“Exactly,” Mrs. Nelson nodded in agreement. “As you can appreciate, Evelyn, I am fully responsible for you, and I take my obligations seriously. Some of the ladies—the inmates—refer to me as 'Mother Superior,' as if I were in charge of a convent of nuns. Perhaps they are having a bit of fun at my expense? As nicknames go, it is not a bad one.”

“No, Mrs. Nelson, not meant unkindly by the ladies,” her assistant reassured her.

“Well, let me continue along that line of thought. You, Evelyn, must see yourself as a postulant or novice who has joined a religious order. You may consider me demented for making such an outlandish comparison, but it is not one without merit. We are a closed
community of women. I am in charge. You are here to follow my orders; if you do so, you will be rewarded.”

“Amply rewarded,” echoed the acolyte.

“Yes, you will find your life of forced enclosure a pleasant one. Although you will have little or no money, books or amusements can be readily acquired on your behalf. So if you follow the rules of obedience and poverty, your stay will be comfortable. For instance, I hope you will not follow the lead of those tiresome ladies who wrote love notes to male prisoners in the adjacent facility, placed them in water-proof cigarette packs, and flushed them down the toilet, where they were subsequently retrieved from the sewage outlets at the lake by the plumbing crew and distributed. It was a strange but effective postal system. I have quashed that particular infraction.

“In general, though, there is the question of chastity. Many of the women here lead sullied existences, whether writing missives to their male counterparts or engaging in illicit sexual activity. To be blunt, some of the women here have carnal knowledge of each other.”

Mrs. White could not contain herself. “A great deal of research demonstrates clearly that many ladies of the night such as yourself are lesbians—that their profession destroys their interest in men as sexual partners.”

“I am not a Sapphist,” I assured them.

Mrs. White was nonplussed by my use of an expression she had thought out of the vocabulary range of any inmate. “My late husband, the eminent psychiatrist Dr. John White, conducted a great deal of research on this vexed issue. You can be honest with Mrs. Nelson and myself. We are prepared to turn a blind eye to such goings on. We know all about
commerce contre nature,
as the French so diplomatically phrase it.”

“I am being blunt with you. I have little or no interest in sexual activity of any kind.”

“So,” Mrs. Nelson inquired, “I need not worry about making arrangements to have your cell door open on certain nights so that other prisoners might join you for a few hours?”

“Correct. You need not have any concern on that score.” As I uttered those words, I could imagine Mrs. Nelson's white blouse a sort of wimple, her black skirt part of her habit; for a few seconds, I was transported back to Loretto Academy.

“So, we have reached an agreement regarding your fulfillment of the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience?”

“You have made yourself abundantly clear.”

“And you are prepared to comply?”

“I have always been a dutiful daughter.”

If Mrs. Nelson was taken aback by my claim, she did not show it. “I shall accept your word on trust, but in the event you choose to wander from the path I have ordained for you, I must sound a warning. The province has given me a mortgage on your life. For the next ten years or so, you are merely chattel at my disposal. If necessary, you can be bartered or sold willy-nilly. Govern yourself well, and you need not fear I shall abuse my power.”