John Brown's Body (10 page)

1953 was Coronation year, the year Scobie died. That cold, wet second day of June the excitement and ceremony had gone over his head, he hadn’t seen any of it, not one Duchess, not one ermine. The day stuck out, disjointed, belonging neither to the ceremony nor to the wet, and fifteen years after it fitted where it touched. And touched on a sore point still.

There had been a discussion, as usual. Scobie discussed everything with herself, something which she had perfected
after she began to be ill. It helped her, she knew she could say to her own face what was in her mind. “I’m sick in body,” she said, “and sorry in mind, and what comes out is regretful.”

She had tried to decide whether to listen to the ceremonies on the radio. She didn’t really want to but was afraid of missing something.

“What use is it going to be to us? We should ask that, don’t you think, if we’re to sit listening to gestures all day?”

When she had first started to leave Ralph out, still saying ‘we’ and ‘us’ when she meant ‘I’ and ‘me’, was when she finally accepted the truth about herself. She was a reasonable woman and had not found it easy to accept that truth could be unreasonable.

“Of course there’ll be music but the whole thing is simply a mammoth sequence of gestures.”

When Ralph pitied her pain she said that it wasn’t pain which made a coward of her.

“Well, what else shall we do? What magnificent thing shall we do if we don’t listen? Is there anything we
could
do, for God’s sake, more important than listening?”

Ralph had waited, looking out over the wet roofs, to be told whether to switch on the radio or not. It made no difference to him, he would be staying all day in this room with her, going across the passage to prepare their meals, to the corner shop for a paper.

“It would be wonderful, it would be healthy if we ever did anything without holding an inquest first. We kill everything with talk, we’ve killed the Coronation. Oh, what nonsense! It’s history in the making, who are we to turn a deaf ear? Who are we to be dozing or reading or cutting our nails while history is being made? But will any of it feed a single soul?”

Ralph turned to the beginning of the file of newspapers, to January, 1953. It could be a tedious job. Here were the year’s events cut and dried and trussed, and the Whybrow murders and John Brown’s trial were but a few straws. Hard
news – the death of Stalin, for instance – would push them off the front page. He skimmed through the inside pages for more local events.

There seemed to have been murders almost every day. He was surprised at the number of people who met violent ends at the hands of other people. From the newspaper reports, anyway, it was murder
qua
murder.

He could appreciate that why one man killed another could be too complex to go into a ten inch column. So he must expect to read about John Brown the murderer, not John Brown the man – what Scobie might have called reading about a gesture.

In July the Korean armistice was signed and on the 31st Senator Taft died – the same day as Scobie.

Coming away from the hospital – she had died at three o’clock in the afternoon – his concern was how to get through the rest of the day. How to pass the hours decently and fittingly until her death was no longer that same afternoon. There were people to notify, he might go back to the flat and start writing: ‘I am sorry to have to tell you that my wife died today –’

That would be a lie and he had an almost hysterical determination not to tell it. In fact he had already refuted it. As the nurse drew the sheet over Scobie’s face he said, “She won’t be sorry that’s over, neither am I.” For the first time since her illness Scobie had not left him out.

He thought of putting an announcement in the paper: ‘On 31st July, after a long illness bravely borne, Scobie, dearly loved wife of Ralph Shilling –’ But he would have to give her other name – Flora. She had disliked it so much that she would not let it be used. She was ‘Scobie’ to her friends and ‘Miss Scobie’, before her marriage, to everyone else. ‘Flora, dearly loved wife of Ralph Shilling.’ That also would be a lie, he had never loved a Flora.

Reading accounts of murder trials he encountered a cursoriness, as of a tall story baldly told. None of them rang true unless he chanced upon an odd statement which jolted
and threw light. Then he could not be sure if it was the right light, or the right subject, or if the subject was part of the case or just part of his own mind.

It wasn’t until October and another atomic bang at Woomera that Elvie Whybrow’s body was found,
in
puris
naturalibus
, and almost bifurcated, in the cellar of No. 14, Casimir Terrace.

Two days later, echoes of Woomera fading, Casimir Terrace was front page news when the remains of a second woman, believed to be Miss Francis Whybrow, were found buried – in flower-pots.

Neighbours could recall nothing unusual, except that Mr Brown, from the Insurance, who was by way of being a friend of the Whybrows, had got no reply when he called and was worried about them. The police were requesting him to come forward to help with their enquiries. It was courteous, but the net was out.

A sliding window shot back and a man in a leather apron asked Ralph if he knew what he was looking for.

“I’ve found it, thank you.” Ralph put his head down behind a page of the newspaper.

“Found what?” The man leaned on his elbows. “Have to know for the records, have to keep records.”

Ralph didn’t believe him. He was surprised that anyone in a busy newspaper office had time for idle curiosity.

“The Whybrow murders.”

“Ah, that was nice, a very nice story.”

“You remember it?”

“I never forget a lead. We had some nice pictures, some real interesting pictures.”

Ralph looked through the pages. “Of the murderer?”

“They didn’t leave much to the imagination. I remember the trial, those women would have torn him limb from limb if they could have got to him.”

“What women?”

“I remember the business with Madame Tussaud’s afterwards.
They wanted him for the Chamber of Horrors, it would have made a nice little scene.”

“But they couldn’t,” said Ralph. “It would be libel, he had to be presumed innocent. He never was proved guilty.”

“I’ll tell you something else. If he walked in here now I’d know him, same as I’d know Evans and Christie.”

Ralph looked him in the eye. “Would you?”

“He strung himself in Broadmoor so I shan’t get the chance.”

“Who did? Who are you talking about?”

“The one you’re talking about, the Brighton Baby Butcher.”

Someone should remember John Brown, thought Ralph, someone besides Jack Tomelty. The front pages had broken out banners for him – ‘BROWN HELD, FACES MURDER CHARGE’ – and carried his photograph. Ralph found that he was instinctively shielding the page with his hand and was vexed to think how much faith he put in Jack Tomelty’s theory of his physical similarity.

“Is that him?” He deliberately tilted the heavy volume so that the man in the leather apron could see the photograph.

“Didn’t I say he was a funny looking bastard? I said he had murder written on him, didn’t I? I don’t need the typesetter to tell me where a face like that goes. It goes to the top of the spread.”

“It does?” Ralph peered closely at John Brown’s picture.

“Bent as a hairpin he was. You’re looking at something special.”

“I don’t think he looks special.”

John Brown looked ordinary. So far as could be seen from the newspaper print he had an unremarkable face, well-shaved, well-composed, and nothing, one would say, had discomposed it for a long time.

Was there a likeness? Was it possible to tell, when Ralph didn’t know how his own face looked to other people? Should he try to compare flesh and blood and printer’s ink, or take the representation of one thing and try to see it as
the representation of another? Perhaps if he could visualise a newspaper photograph of himself –

Bertha would have known: any angle, any mood, if there was a similarity she would have seen it. If he could hide the context – he would have to do that or she would cry indignantly, “It’s not a bit like you! How can you think so?”

Perhaps there was a resemblance. Perhaps in the mirrors at the Pilot he had seen himself like that, much like that. Perhaps if he thought as much of himself as this man obviously had, he would look prized, there was a prized air about John Brown which even the newsprint could not suppress.

“If you’re writing a book,” said the man in the leather apron, “I can give you inside stories about all of them.”

“I’m not.”

“You couldn’t print it, mind, unless it was privately, for limited circulation. Collectors’ pieces mine are, not common currency.”

“Does this look like me?” The bound volume was bulky and Ralph propped it against his chest. “Would you say I was –” what had she said, what had Tomelty said she had said? – “the live ringer of him?”

“Arthur Rosenberg, that’s who he’s like. Rosenberg had a lot of trouble from women thinking he was hanging around their prams. He nearly got lynched. Besides, he was red-haired.”

“Who was?”

“Red as a fox. If you’re not a writer, what are you?”

“I’m just looking. If there’s a charge of course I’ll pay –”

“I’m looking through this window,” said the man in the leather apron, “to see you don’t mutilate, destroy or deface the files.”

He slid the pane to between them and Ralph laid down the volume and turned the sheets. The account of the trial would be the nearest he would ever get to John Brown and to hearing, out of his mouth, testimony for or against him.

What he got when he had read through the report of the trial was an overwhelming impression of mystification. Most
people had been unable to make up their minds and those who did had obviously done so in defiance. There was a small core of decision against John Brown, but it was too small to convict him.

Ralph was discouraged by the verbatim reporting. There was a ludicrous baldness about the questions and answers. If he must learn about John Brown from what was not said, how many minuses would it take to make one plus?

The trial lasted two days, hit and miss. The Prosecution frequently missed and its few hits were not consolidated, they were unrelated facts which did not jell.

The Defence had called some unimpeachable witnesses and produced their evidence with a flourish, so much so that the Judge was obliged to rebuke Counsel for his bravura.

So far as Ralph could make out, Brown’s neck was never in danger. The Crown had not even established that it was a practical possibility for him to have murdered Miss Elvie at the material time. Or at any time – except future time, said Counsel for the Defence. It was some of his bravura.

Brown had witnesses to swear to his movements and to his character, that he was balanced, likeable, good-tempered, popular, not the man to murder women and butcher them. He owed no money, he had some detractors, but no enemies. True, he was one for the ladies: he came, saw and acquired, but not, to do him justice, other men’s preserves. The Why brow sisters were acquisitions, unmarried ladies living in their own house on a small income which died with them.

“You were a regular visitor. How often did you go?”

“Twice a week.”

“On business or pleasure?”

“Both.”

“The business was to collect their insurance premiums. What was the pleasure?”

“We played cards.”

The Prosecution suggested that the ladies had played for his favours. Brown denied it though he admitted to favouring
them both. Whereupon the Prosecution wondered how impartially and hinted at jealousy, at degrading and depraving quarrels between Miss Fran and the gentle Miss Elvie.

That Brown had been the lover of them both was an integral part of the case against him. Sex, of a rustic sort, the corsets and braces, featherbed and velvet stout sort, was back of everything at Casimir Terrace. Not so surprising: the ladies, though virginal, were approaching middle age when John Brown appeared and they entered into Sex with the gusto of women who had had time to know what they were missing. Anyone else would have found them a handful. John Brown had come to an arrangement, vulgar and opportunist, but very cosy, very satisfying. It satisfied him, did it do less for the Whybrows? The Judge, in his summing-up, asked who could say what had gone on in the minds of those two ladies. It was still relevant to ask the question because nobody knew, not their neighbours, not their friends, and whatever the supercharged atmosphere of Casimir Terrace had been charged with had died with them. Only John Brown, the charger, remained.

“Did you speak of marriage to them? To either of them?”

“No.”

“Did they speak of it to you?”

“No.”

“Which one did you like best?”

“I liked them both.”

“You slept with them both?”

“No.”

“Ah, you only slept with one. Which one?”

“I didn’t sleep with either.”

“You have admitted that sexual relations took place.”

“Yes, but I always went home afterwards.”

It was preposterous. How could anyone say such a thing? How had John Brown said it? Ralph winced, hearing the titter go through the courtroom.

There was some fundamental absurdity about the case. Proof was not being sought, proof either way would make
no scrap of difference to what everyone knew – that Brown had killed these women. In fact he had produced all the proof that anyone could want to show that he had
not
killed them and what breathed through the newspaper reports was a general scepticism as to the value of proof. Which meant that the grain of salt was being taken with everything that Brown established in his defence, and was also being weighed against him in lieu of evidence.

Of that there was no shred and witnesses swore to his physical presence elsewhere, miles from Casimir Terrace, at the time of Miss Elvie’s death.

On the face of it, the Whybrows were no trouble to him. He kept them happy and he was not the sort of man to find it an intolerable burden. They were not rich, under the terms of their father’s will whatever they left when they died went to specified charities. Yet who else under the sun knew them well enough to kill one with the connivance of the other? And if Miss Elvie had stabbed Miss Fran, who but John Brown could have strangled Miss Elvie? What other seducer could seduce a tender and fastidious woman to the act of dismembering and disembowelling her own sister? Elvie had obviously helped with that grisly business: there were stains on her clothes, some of them half washed, others half burnt in the kitchen boiler.