Heaven Knows Who (10 page)

There was an accumulation of blood beneath the head but not, said Dr Watson who first examined it, a pool of blood. The face was lying upon the rucked-up, blood-stained clothes. And, strange to relate, as has been said, the face, neck and chest of the corpse appeared to have been washed; not just wiped, but washed with water. Yet there was coagulated blood upon the face, which had come there since the face had been washed.

In other words—someone, after some
but not all
of the injuries, had been inflicted, had bathed the face and throat.

The room was in a horrid confusion. There is no official mention of scattered clothes but they were certainly there; on the other hand it was not true as one report avers, that poor Jess's clothes had been ‘evidently torn off by a person not much skilled in doffing female habiliments.' The bed looked as though it might have been slept in but it was now in complete upheaval. The bedclothes were heaped at the foot, not tucked in at all. There had been blood on the blankets but it had been washed out. A sheet had been torn off and lay under one of the washstands, that nearest the door. It showed no blood until it was unrolled; it was then found to be damp all over as though it had been washed, but it was smeared with blood from one end to the other and in some parts saturated. There was blood upon the mattress; a good deal of it, ‘about half the breadth of the crown of my hat,' said Police Office Jeffrey, ‘on the edge of the bed; and there was a piece more, over where the bolsters had been lying; it was like where a person's shoulder would lie, a small bit down from the pillow.' The pillows, both patched with blood, had been thrown down—‘scattered'—upon the bed.

There was a good deal of blood where the body lay, and three large drops nearer the head of the bed. Against the wall facing the windows were the chest and the two washstands. Under the first of these was the rolled-up sheet; the second was smeared with blood, there was blood on the white basin, and blood on the floor all about it. The chest—a common type used by servants to keep their clothes in—was closed, but its lock had apparently been broken long ago. It proved to be almost empty: such ‘trimmings and ribbons and bits of gowns' as it still contained had been raked through with a bloody hand, and a band-box inside it had had its lock forced by the same hand.

But strangest of all, in the corner opposite the door, on the other side of the central table from where the body lay, there was a large area of the floor, part wood, part ‘waxcloth', which though it was now dry had all the appearance of having been washed. It formed an irregular circle and though it was cleaner than the rest of the floor, it had a reddish colour as though there had been blood split there, and the edges seemed still bloody; at one side, half on the wood, half on the hearthstone, there were big,
elongated splashes of blood, as though blood had spurted out in the general direction of the window, and the wall.

There was a small table under the window furthest from the door. Between this table and the hearth, skirting round the mangle, were the three bloody imprints of a naked foot.

The kitchen was a longer room than the bedroom, though rather narrower. The hearth was on the same side as the hearth in the bedroom, the opposite side from the door. There was a large central table. The floor was of stone of a very dark blue colour; a type of stone, said an architect, O'Neill, in evidence, that would dry quickly.

And here also, there were signs of blood. There was a stain on the jaw-box—the sink—as though a bloody hand had clutched at it. The mat in the doorway was so steeped in blood that it actually stuck to the floor; and halfway up the doorposts and across the inside of the door were streaks ‘as though a brush had been dipped in blood and drawn across it'; or, said the same witness, as though a woman's skirts, stained with blood, had swept through the door.

These marks, in the clear light of a July evening at five o'clock were perfectly obvious; ‘if your eye had been turned in that direction, they might have been seen at once'.

Between the fireplace and the sink, there was a large patch which looked as though it had been washed; there was no actual sign of blood but the floor had a greasy appearance, with a reddish tinge. There was a fire burning in the kitchen and by the evening the floor was dry; but when first observed an hour after the discovery of the body, it had the appearance of being still quite moist. It was hard to tell, for the stone was dark; but still it looked very recently done.

And all about this area, between the kitchen hearth and the sink, at the perimeter of the washed space, were the marks of shuffling feet—small scratches, confused footmarks, the turn of a heel, the twist of the ball of a naked foot on the polished stone.

The stones of the lobby between the kitchen and the bedroom were of the same dark blue as the kitchen. Here also—blood. Blood at the end of the passage, by the back door into the walled garden. Blood on the stairs, and particularly on the lowest step;
blood on the wall at the foot of the stairs. Blood on the built-in pantry cupboard between the kitchen and bedroom doors—inside the cupboard, high up at the top of the door: two patches, three or four inches square. (The door opened outwards into the lobby.)

And once again the floor had been washed. But this time it remained, three days and two nights after the murder—absolutely damp.

Nor had it been so well washed but that a trail remained clearly to be seen between the kitchen and the bedroom door: a ‘bloody track about the breadth of a body, part of it blood, the rest just marks of streaking'; as though the victim had been dragged through the passage while the arterial blood still flowed: or at any rate, so soon after death that it was still fluid enough to leave its trail.

At the end of the passage, near the back door, was the small room where old Mr Fleming kept his clothes. Here there were some spots of blood in the centre of the floor. Of all the drawers and cupboards, only one drawer was locked. The old gentleman on request had handed over a bunch of keys; one key unlocked this drawer. In it was a pile of laundered and folded shirts. The sleeves of the two topmost shirts were spotted with small spots of blood.

No positive signs of blood were found on any cloths with which the floors could have been washed; but thrown into a cellar were several, still damp, which might well have been used.

In a drawer in the kitchen was found a cleaver, which could have been the instrument which caused the wounds—one doctor thought those on the wrists had been caused by a finer blade, but this theory never came to anything. There was no blood on the blade of the cleaver but it was extensively marked with fresh, rust on both sides—suggestive of its having been recently washed. There was a considerable quantity of blood, however, dried into the join between the blade and the wooden handle, though the methods of those days could not establish for certain that it was human blood. (The cleaver is preserved in the museum at the police head-quarters in Glasgow: a smooth wooden handle and a broad blade, perhaps five inches at its widest point. It looks very innocent hanging meekly there.)

On the Saturday following the discovery of the murder, the
house having been in police hands since the Monday, Bernard M'Laughlin, a Sheriff's officer, was introduced there to make yet further examination of the scene of the death. He found ‘on the kitchen dresser' an iron hammer with marks of blood on one side of the head. This little item had apparently escaped the attention of the police investigators, satisfied, as they no doubt were with their blood-stained cleaver. He discovered further and made much of, a pair of man's socks, old and much worn, which lay in Jess's bedroom between the head of the bed and the window; but as, despite the most eager scrutiny, they proved innocent of blood or any other guilty sign, this treasure amounted to little. In the kitchen grate he found and sifted a great quantity of ashes, looking for signs of any clothing having been burnt there. He did find a button, which he treated with the utmost reverence, but that too came to nothing; and anyway, his colleagues had kept the fire burning away merrily all the time they had been in occupation.

Upstairs, Mary Brown had evidently done her work well, for no sign was remarked of the bloody footstep covered with soot which she had, on the Saturday morning, been employed to wash away. But in the old gentleman's bedroom, Police Officer Jeffrey—Mr Fleming being by then in custody—had a good rootle round. He discovered a grey canvas bag, apparently a dirty-linen bag, which had been washed but still showed bloodstains—variously described as a patch the size of a shilling on one side, and as a stain extending all over the bottom of the bag. And ‘under a chair', or, as he later explained, ‘under the chair cover', he found a long narrow strip of cotton cloth with small spots of blood on it. The blood, when he saw it, ‘seemed to be old'; and it does sound a little like a bandage from some old, trifling injury, which had somehow got stuffed away there and been forgotten. Little was made of it at the trial, and had it been incriminating, it would surely have been too easy for the old man to have thrown it on the kitchen fire and so got rid of it?

From all these signs and symptoms, Joseph Fleming, surgeon of police, assisted by Dr George Husband Baird Macleod, M.D., F.R.C.S., came to the following conclusions:

1. That this woman was murdered and that with extreme ferocity.

2. That her death had taken place within three days.

3. That a severe struggle had taken place before death.

4. That such an instrument as a cleaver for cutting meat or a similar weapon was that most likely to have caused the fatal injuries found.

5. That the injuries had been inflicted before or immediately after death.

6. That all the wounds on the neck and head with the exception of those on the nose and forehead had apparently been inflicted by a person standing over the deceased as she lay on her face on the ground.

7. That the comparatively slight degree of strength shown in the blows would point to a female or a weak man as having inflicted them; and,

8. Lastly, that the body had been drawn by the head, with the face downwards, along the lobby from the kitchen to the front room.

This is the truth on soul and conscience.

Geo. H. B. Macleod, M.D., F.R.C.S.

Joseph Fleming, Surgeon.

Of these, their number three seems based on very slight evidence: and their ‘lastly' to be, if the evidence is examined, not the least extraordinary proposition to be put forward in this most extraordinary case.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Upon what information the police first suspected Jessie M'Lachlan of being concerned in the murder, is not certainly known. Old Fleming himself is suspected of having put forward her name or it may have been someone nearer home. From the small size of the naked footprints and from the marks on the stairs and kitchen door of the swish of a blood-stained skirt, they had early made up their minds that a woman might well be implicated. As early as Monday, the day of the discovery, they were asking Miss Dykes whether she had seen a woman enter the lane behind Sandyford Place that night. How they can have got on to this, one can't imagine: if Mrs Walker had told them of the woman in grey who turned into the lane while they two stood gossiping, Miss Dykes would surely have been reminded of this episode, but in fact it was not until much later that she recalled it. It may simply be that the police were asking all persons living thereabouts after any woman who might have; come to the house—with no reference to the woman Miss Dykes and Mrs Walker saw.

On July 9, at any rate—the Wednesday—Lundie, the pawnbroker had laid information as to the missing silver having been left with him; and a description of the woman who had pledged it was given in the newspapers—a fair or sandy-haired woman with an oval face, whose hands and arms were too white to be those of a working woman. This description was later altered for no apparent reason: the woman, on the contrary, had been very dark with a hard, hatchet face, short, and ‘ordinarily stout'. But long before she read either description, Mrs Campbell must surely have been growing suspicious. She would hear of the murder on the Monday night or Tuesday morning, would learn that the woman had already been dead some days. Her first question would surely have been to Jessie, ‘Didn't you go to see her on Saturday evening?' Jessie would say, no doubt, that she had changed her mind; but now a new and terrible idea would
strike Mrs Campbell. She had let Mrs M'Lachlan in at nine the next morning. She probably thought at the time, if she thought about it at all, that her landlady had been out already and was coming in again. But in the light of the murder giving it closer attention—that couldn't be: for how could she have come in when she returned from her visit that night, since she had no key? And now she would recall the bundle carried under the cloak, the change of dress, the sudden acquisition of money.… And, with much inward shrinking, no doubt, for she seems from the way she gave her evidence to have been an honest, good-hearted woman, she would confide her shocking fears to first one friend, then another, and wonder what she ought to do. Mrs Adams would hear of it, almost certainly, and Sarah would soon get to know and so the match would be set to the first small kindlings of the bonfire of gossip, conjecture and ‘information to the police'. The pawnbroker's (first) description would be added confirmation and Jessie was known to frequent such places, albeit by proxy. It may well have been the deciding factor. At any rate that day, the day the description was published—it was also the day of old Fleming's apprehension, however, which does rather point to him as the informant—the police became interested for the first time in Mrs M'Lachlan. They set a watch on the house, three times came and questioned her, and at four o'clock on the Sunday made their spring. The child was hastily handed over into Mrs Campbell's care, and Jessie and her husband were bundled into a cab and driven off, both under arrest, on charges of murder and theft.