Little Bones (27 page)

She was shown into a great wide office, where the
warden
released her grateful wrists from the handcuffs. Mr Henshaw appeared holding a fat sheaf of papers.

‘Here we are,’ he said. ‘You’ve made it.’

On all sides shelves crammed with leather-bound books rose to the ceiling. Jane stared at the black and gold lettering, the Latin, the stuffed eagle owl, and the painting of the courtroom itself.

‘Nervous?’ asked Mr Henshaw, buttoning his waistcoat.

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘But I want it to be over.’

‘Of course you do. And it will be over soon enough. Today the papers are full of it. There are plenty of scathing comic sketches showing Swift the Magician.’

‘With Mamie, sir?’

‘Who?’

‘His voluptuous assistant.’

‘I don’t know about Mamie,’ he said, ‘but there were lots of silk hats breeding lots of little rabbits.’

Mr Henshaw poured them both a glass of water. ‘It is going to be a very long day,’ he said, pushing a glass towards her. ‘Perhaps the longest of your life.’

‘I’ll be glad to tell my story, sir.’

He smiled at her sadly. ‘For the most part,’ he said, ‘you will have to sit on your hands and listen.’

Fidgeting in her chair, Jane could see into the corridor. Men in wigs and gowns passed in a tight, orderly procession.

‘It’s raining harder,’ said Jane. ‘I can hear it.’

Twenty minutes later, Jane ascended to the dock. For weeks she had pictured this scene, but she had never imagined it to look quite so theatrical, with its galleries,
balconies
and aisles. There were faces everywhere. Even as the judge started speaking, she scanned the room searching for Ivy, Arthur or Agnes, because if they had heard about her plight, then surely they would be there for her. At first only Mr Henshaw was familiar. Then she saw the barrister. When she lifted her eyes to the gallery, she could see Jeremiah Beam and three of his flower girls. She smiled. The girl he called Rose covered her mouth with a handkerchief.

Jane wanted to concentrate. It was difficult. Her head was full of the people in front of her. She heard herself saying her name. That she was guilty. It made her feel ashamed. And then she felt the doctor, not a few feet from her side. She glanced at him. The familiarity of his face made her lurch and she gripped the bar tighter. Then his voice startled her. He was not a doctor, he was a prisoner, but his voice was just the same.

Looking ahead, she could hear the sergeant talking about the exhibits; the bottles of tincture had labels around their tiny necks. The doctor’s bag was there, its contents displayed on a table for all the world to see. There were scraps of addresses. Receipts. A piece of soap. A small folded towel. And, oh, the shame of the
Sporting Life
and the pair of nail scissors, which, Jane wanted to clarify straight away to the court, were never used on the girls, but only on the doctor’s broken fingernails.

The certificate was produced. It caused a craning of necks. Jane could hear the voice of the sergeant talking about correspondence courses. America. How the certificate had been supposedly stamped and legitimised in Baltimore, but a man had come forward, a
Mr
Jonathan Campbell, who admitted printing the certificate at his workshop in High Holborn, having been told it would be used as nothing more than a stage prop.

Jane was sitting by the warden. The seat was very hard and her vision was impaired by the bar. Listening to Swift spout his excuses, she looked for Mrs Swift. She wondered if the authorities had managed to get her through the front door and into the courtroom. Had they pulled her into the station for questioning?

Swift was now shuffling on the spot. Jane could hear the creaking of his shoes. ‘I did nothing to the women they did not ask me to do,’ he was saying. ‘I called myself “doctor” but it was made quite clear to them I was not a medical doctor. I was simply helping them out. They liked to say the word “doctor”. It made them feel more comfortable.’

‘And safe?’

‘I did the girls no harm,’ he said.

The women in the courtroom took to swooning and gasping. The judge had warned them that the case was unsavoury. He had advised the more delicate to leave. It appeared that Swift had admitted the business with Miss Lincoln, though he still called her Miss Brown, and although he had confessed about the tincture, he had not disclosed how differently it was used. ‘Mr Treble brought her to me,’ he said. ‘I was made to help. They both wanted help. The man was very threatening.’

The crowd in the gallery rose.
Threatening? No!
They had all loved the late Johnny Treble. They would not
hear
a bad word against him.
‘Liar!’
one man shouted.
‘Liar!’

By the end of the morning, the voices were little more than a humming in Jane’s ears. George and Imogen Butler appeared to say yes, that definitely was the man who had given her the tincture, and yes, that definitely was the man who had produced silk handkerchiefs from his sleeves at the Elephant and Castle. Jane was exhausted. When a voice said ‘All rise’, she didn’t move and was pulled to her feet by the warden. This time she was not taken into a book-lined room, but into what appeared to be a holding cell.

‘You are doing very well,’ said Mr Henshaw, wiping his forehead.

‘I have said nothing yet.’

‘You are well behaved. A model prisoner,’ he told her.

‘I hope they believe me,’ she said. ‘I know I am guilty, but I did what I was told.’

‘It will be taken into account,’ said Mr Henshaw. ‘Unlike Mr Swift, who thinks he’s Henry Irving.’

‘But whatever we say, sir, and whatever they believe, I know the truth. The girls wanted it, sir. They wanted to take the tincture. They were in trouble and he helped them. They were always glad of it.’

‘What he did was plainly unlawful. Still, you must eat,’ he urged, when a warden appeared with some food. ‘It really is important that you eat.’

Mr Henshaw disappeared to his own lunch. She imagined Swift in his cell. In the dock he had looked like the doctor of old. He had dressed well. She had seen oil in his hair. He had shaved.

The afternoon moved slowly. The tincture was discussed in the most scientific language. Jane wondered if the Frenchman would appear, and when at two o’clock he did, she could not help smiling towards him. The sergeant had the apothecary’s receipts. Jane could see his sharp handwriting. His voice was lilting, musical – though plenty in the courtroom screwed their foreheads and stroked their chins as if they could not understand a blessed word he was saying.

‘You had no idea what the tincture would be used for?’

‘I had an idea,’ said the Frenchman.

‘Yet you sold it all the same?’

‘It is my business to sell my products. The tincture is not illegal, sir. It has always been popular. It has all sorts of uses.’

‘Such as?’

The Frenchman moved his lips, twitching his moustache. ‘It can clear blockages of the bowels, or the intestines. It can be used to purge the stomach. Induce a bout of vomiting.’

‘But it can also be used to bring on a miscarriage?’

‘Yes, sir.’

A woman towards the back of the court was led away. Smelling salts were found.

‘And had you any idea that Swift was working in this line of business?’

‘Business, sir?’

‘The business of helping women to miscarry.’

‘It had crossed my mind, once or twice.’

‘Yet you did not report him?’

‘No, sir. It was just an idea. I did not know the truth of it.’

The Frenchman told the court that the tincture was bought in the name of Dr Swift. The word ‘doctor’ had appeared on all the orders and receipts. It had been printed on the writing paper he had ordered from a stationer’s in Oxford Street. ‘You believed he was a doctor?’

‘I did,’ said the Frenchman.

‘Thank you, Mr Boutin.’

By the end of the afternoon, Jane could barely remember how to breathe. Back inside her cell, the silence was startling. The words of the day circled her head and she knew she would have to go through the same thing again tomorrow – only tomorrow she would have to open her mouth and speak.

She tried not to think about the crowd outside the courthouse. They didn’t know her, Mr Henshaw had explained. Not really. And though he had told her that these crowds appeared every time there was a case they had read about, it was hard not to take it personally. The name calling. Hissing. The stones.

When night came, Jane dreamt of her family. Agnes was running from the dressmaker’s, her tape measure flying like a ribbon from her neck. She had left the dress she was working on, not caring that the sleeves were missing or that she had knocked a cup of tea across its bodice in her hurry to be free. Her apron was patterned with curls of coloured cotton. Silver pins sat shivering in her pockets. Running past the news-stands, losing the tape measure to the wind, pushing through
crowds
of gormless tourists, she ran faster, shouting for her sister, screaming,
Jane! Jane! Jane!

In a rainy field in Kent, dodging sloppy cow pats and hummocks, her parents were shooing away the herd, those nudging brown faces now specks in the distance. They clambered over splintered posts and hedges, ankles wobbling on loose stony lanes, the man with the sack of sour apples laughing as they careered into a carthorse, but as luck would have it the driver encouraged them up, and suddenly they were catching their breath behind yeasty barrels of cider, which they did not like to take advantage of, the man upfront being so kind-hearted, and ignoring their thirst (oh the agony!) they sat watching the rain changing the fields to emeralds. Like Ireland, said Arthur, and Ivy had laughed saying, what would you know, you great lummock, you only ever sing their sentimental clap-trap. He waved at a scarecrow. They watched buildings growing wider. The sky getting shorter. They passed crushed terraced rows with their banks and offices. Fish-supper restaurants. A man on a doorstep was sleeping curled into his dog. Factory girls poured through open gates. And then the chimneys came from nowhere. And the traffic. Boards were propped on every street corner, proudly announcing Miss Jane Stretch,
For A Limited Engagement Only! Now Appearing In Court! Showing Twice Daily!

‘Halt! You can stop!’ Ivy called to the man, wildly waving her arms. ‘I said stop your bleedin’ horse, mister, we’ve landed!’

To Jane’s surprise, the warden did not take her straight into the yard, but led her into an office. ‘Sit down,’
she
told her, pulling out a chair. The heat from an oil stove pushed against Jane’s ankles. On the desk there was nothing but a water jug and two small glasses. When the door opened, Jane glanced towards it. Then she put her hand to her mouth and shrieked.

‘Hello, Jane,’ said Agnes.

The tears came quickly. She grabbed her sister’s arms and the warden looked away. After all these months, Jane could hardly believe that Agnes was standing in front of her. She wanted to capture her. To attach herself. Keep her.

When she could speak again, the words came juddering from her throat. ‘Agnes, you are really here, thank goodness you are here. Where have you been? Oh, how I’ve needed you!’

The warden pulled them gently apart and told them to sit and to calm themselves. They separated reluctantly, Jane making one last grab for her sister’s wet hand.

Agnes had dressed carefully. Jane’s eyes were blurred, but she could see her sister was wearing a grey felt coat and a fine blue scarf. Her hair had been pinned with a small silver butterfly. Her eyes, like Jane’s, were swollen and pink.

‘Do you hate me?’ asked Jane.

‘Of course not,’ said Agnes. ‘Because I know it can’t be true.’

Jane’s chin began to tremble. ‘I just did what he told me to do,’ she swallowed. What else could she say?

‘So, you really did do those awful things?’

Jane nodded. ‘I had no choice. I had to.’

Agnes shook her head. ‘No! I don’t want to believe it. Why would you do such a thing?’

‘I had nothing else,’ said Jane. ‘They saved me.’

‘They saved you? By turning you into a murderer?’ The word came out in a hiss. It made Jane pull herself backwards.

‘It wasn’t like that,’ she sobbed. ‘It was nothing like that.’

They sat for a while. For all her shame, Jane could not stop looking at her sister’s flushed face. She wanted to rush across the desk, to press her face into Agnes’ collar. To fasten herself to her coat.

‘Where did you go? Why did you leave me like that?’

‘I was going to come back,’ Agnes told her. ‘I always meant to come back.’

‘But I waited and waited.’

‘I wanted to come back with something,’ said Agnes. ‘I wanted to tell you that everything was all right. That I was doing well for myself.’

‘But it wouldn’t have mattered.’

‘I know.’

‘So where did you go?’ asked Jane.

Agnes poured them both a glass of water. A small pool spilled across the table. Agnes told Jane she had tried to find work. It was difficult without a reference. She had stayed in a charity hall. Finally, she had managed to find employment sewing smocks for women in Victoria.

‘You were so close?’

Agnes nodded. ‘And then I married,’ she said.

Jane felt the breath quickly leave her. She could
almost
see it flying like smoke into the room. ‘You married? Who?’ she asked. ‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Will Harris. He’s a painter.’

‘I missed your wedding. No! I missed my sister’s wedding!’

‘It was a very small wedding,’ said Agnes, groping up her sleeve for a handkerchief.

‘Do you love him?’

Agnes nodded.

‘Does he paint you?’

‘No. He only paints horses.’

Jane asked if she had heard from their mother and father, but Agnes said she hadn’t seen or heard from their parents since they left Covent Garden for Kent. ‘They won’t have made it. They’ll be drinking themselves into a stupor,’ she said. ‘Pa will be having more of his ominous notions.’

‘And this time,’ said Jane, ‘he’d be right.’

Glancing at the clock, the warden said they had less than five minutes.