Maggie (4 page)

Maggie began to feel faint. Mr. Macduff’s voice went inexorably on. “… you, the said Margaret Macleod, or Margaret Fraser Macleod, ought to be punished with the pains of law, to deter others from committing the like crimes in all times coming.”

“Answer the charges, dear.” Mrs. Chisholm, the wardress was whispering in Maggie’s ear.

Maggie rose to her feet. It was like being in a nightmare where you wanted to scream but no sound came out.

At last she found her voice.

“Not guilty,” said Maggie Macleod.

The trial had begun in earnest.

Mr. Farquharson was just as Lord Strathairn had known him in the Lahore days, plump and rosy and white-haired, lacking only a cotton wool beard and red flannel suit to turn him into the perfect Father Christmas.

His wife also looked the same; small and dark and afflicted with a very yellowish wrinkled complexion under a brittle thatch of red hair. She would not make a very good Mrs. Claus. She looked more like one of the elves.

The earl had hoped for a quiet evening with the Farquharsons, reliving old times among Mr. Farquharson’s many mementoes of India; brass ornaments, elephants’ feet and stuffed tigers’ heads. But Mr. Farquharson had outdone himself in his attempts to provide suitable entertainment for the Earl of Strathairn.

He had invited several members of the Scottish nobility. There was the Honourable Alistair Ashton, young Lord John Robey, and the Marquess of Handley. Female attractions were supplied by the Misses Morag and Sheila Bentley. The guests had all been educated in England, and had accents as English as the earl’s own.

The table was groaning under the weight of too many dishes. The Farquharsons did not usually eat dinner in the evening, preferring ‘high tea’, that meal which consists of one dish and then masses of scones and cakes and buns. They felt the loss of all the usual cakes and pastry and had
tried to make up for what they thought was a very stark repast by producing about one meat dish for every missing scone and bun.

Lord Strathairn felt, however, that he might have managed to enjoy the food and the company had not the conversation turned to the trial of that famous poisoner, Maggie Macleod.

It had been a mistake to say he had seen her, for the Misses Bentley gave twittering shrieks of alarm and began to ask whether Mrs. Macleod were as awful as she had appeared in the newspapers and he found himself in the odd position of defending Maggie Macleod. He could not get her face out of his mind.

He was, perhaps, over generous in his praise of her appearance, for the Misses Bentley bridled and waved their fans and looked disappointed in him. They reminded him forceably of the failures of the London Season with their plain faces and incessant giggles and arch looks.

The men he found pleasant enough, although they too wanted to mull over the Macleod case.

Alistair Ashton was a squat, cheerful young man with a pug face embellished by an old-fashioned Newgate fringe. Lord Robey was thin and pale; pale straw-coloured hair, white eyelashes, pale milky eyes. The Marquess of Handley had a foxy look with his green eyes, long nose and red hair. He had an irritating manner of always seeming to enjoy a private joke.

“It seems pretty definite that the Macleod woman will hang,” drawled Lord Robey. “Newspapers are going quite mad about it; silly, little grubby scribe-chappies buzzin’ around the High Court like demned wasps. Of course, it is jam for them, murder in high places, don’t you know. Police Inspector killed and all that. If it had taken place in the slums, it would have received a paragraph on the bottom of the back page.”

“Talking of slums,” said Lord Strathairn quickly, anxious to turn the talk away from Maggie Macleod, “there seem to be some very squalid examples in this city. Who owns them? The Glasgow corporation? I am surprised the Press does not turn its gaze on some of the more everyday horrors of this city.”

“Most of the slum property is privately owned,” said Mr. Farquharson.

“If I were one of the owners,” said the earl, “I should not sleep quiet at night.”

“Oh, my dear, dear chap,” said the Marquess of Handley irritably. “You cannot possibly be as naîve as you appear. There are dreadful slums in London, Birmingham and Manchester, to name only a few places. Where would these creatures live if there were not slums? They are like troglodytes. They adore dark and filth. Poverty is a family disease. They’re used to it. If they want to live anywhere better, then they have only to try working for a living for a change.”

“But work is very hard to find, I believe,” said the earl stubbornly. “I am firmly persuaded they would better themselves if they could. There must be a constant battle against ill health, not to mention…”

“Babies,” put in Lord Robey with a high laugh. “They breed like rabbits.”

“Ladies present,” said Mr. Farquharson reprovingly.

“Ah, yes,” smiled the Marquess of Handley. “Let us not forget the fair company. We must be boring them to death.”

“If slum conditions bore them to death,” said the earl, suddenly disliking the marquess immensely, “then no doubt the murder case at the High Court must also fatigue them.” He turned to Mrs. Farquharson and smiled. “My apologies, Mrs. Farquharson. Perhaps I am wrong to be so shocked after a mere glimpse at this city, but I firmly believe that slum owners are worse criminals than Mrs. Macleod and
should be made to stand trial for mass murder.”

There was an awkward silence, then the marquess laughed. “Well, well, well, a Bolshie has joined the ranks of the peerage.”

Lord Strathairn looked at him and surprised a stare of pure hatred in the marquess’s green eyes. In a second it was gone, and the marquess was complimenting Miss Morag Bentley on her gown.

The earl sat back in his chair, surprised at his own feelings. He had seen poverty before and had never considered himself to be a reformer of any sort.

Mrs. Farquharson, seeing his frown, rose quickly to her feet as a signal that the gentlemen should be left to their port.

A silence fell on the dinner party after the ladies had left. Mr. Farquharson was quite obviously tired. Then Alistair Ashton began to talk about his experiences with the Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire hunt. Soon the rest were describing their own hunting experiences, the earl describing some of his Indian adventures.

But when the topic was exhausted, there was another restless silence. The earl had a feeling that the three other guests did not normally spend their evenings in such quiet and respectable company. Ashton and Robey were married, that much he had gleaned from earlier conversation, and yet they had not brought their wives, nor it seemed, had their wives been expected. It was almost as if they were using Mr. Farquharson’s house as a restaurant, somewhere respectable to dine before they went on to sample the less respectable delights of the night. The Marquess of Handley seemed to be the ringleader for the eyes of the other two would constantly stray towards him as if seeking approval, and they tried to copy Handley’s rather effeminate mannerisms and style of dress.

All three wore flowing ties and velvet jackets, affecting a type of genteel Bohemianism.

It was the marquess who suggested that they should join the ladies. The earl frowned in disapproval. Lord Handley should, he felt, have waited for his host to make the suggestion. As he rose from the table, he became aware that his disapproval had been marked by the marquess whose foxy eyes shone with a mocking gleam.

Lord Strathairn began to feel uncomfortable and wondered whether he were becoming a prude.

When they entered the drawing-room, the men noticed with sinking hearts that the candles in their brackets on the pleated silk front of the piano had been lit and that Miss Morag Bentley was to entertain them.

Mrs. Farquharson was asleep, her lace cap tilted over one eye. The men balanced cups of tea on their knees and nibbled at chocolates and blanched almonds, and one and all prayed that Miss Morag did not have an extensive repertoire.

Possibly in honour of the earl she began with a rendering of ‘Pale Hands I Loved, Beside the Shalimar’. She had a thin, penetrating voice, slightly off-key. Mrs. Farquharson awoke with a start and immediately leaned forward with a fixed smile of appreciation on her face. Morag’s next offering was fortunately not accompanied by her voice. But it was a long, heavy, soporific work involving a lot of business of cross-hands which seemed to go on forever. The earl felt his eyes beginning to droop and jerked them open with an effort.

Slow chord after slow chord crawled across the hot, foggy air. Bands of fog lay across the room through which the massive red plush Victorian furniture looked like great beasts massing for a foray out of the primeval swamp. The gaslights in their brackets hissed and sang, the fire crackled on the hearth, numerous clocks ticked like metronomes, and Mr. Farquharson suddenly let out a stentorian snore.

Miss Morag played on, regardless.

Just when the earl felt he could not bear it any longer, the Misses Bentley’s servant arrived to announce their carriage was waiting.

With many arch looks and would-be pretty pouts, the sisters departed in a blast of cold foggy air, since the servant had forgotten to close the street door.

Old Mr. Farquharson was looking very weary indeed and the earl hesitantly suggested they should bring the evening to an end and allow their kind host to go to bed.

The Marquess of Handley put a friendly arm around the earl’s shoulders. “I’m sure Farquharson will excuse you if you would care to come with us to The Club for a round of cards. For young fellows like us the night is still young.”

The earl hesitated. He was a guest of the Farquharsons and felt he should not go, but Mr. Farquharson was delighted that his young friend appeared to have made a good impression on his other guests and enthusiastically urged him to accept the invitation. The earl glanced at the clock in the corner. Eleven. Well, perhaps only an hour and then he could return.

He reluctantly agreed. Soon he was standing with his new friends on the steps of Mr. Farquharson’s home in Sandyford Place, one of the stately terraces on a main road leading up to Charing Cross, and drawing on his gloves.

The fog was still thick. Frost glittered on the pavements and on the black winter trees, lining the road.

He was seized by a strange premonition that he should not go, that somehow this night would change his life, but he put it down to the fog and the strangeness of this black city and fell into step with his companions who had elected to walk to The Club.

For a long time afterwards, the earl was to blame the city of Glasgow itself for the folly of his behaviour of that night.

Normally a cool, level-headed man with all his wits about him, he was, nonetheless, extremely sensitive to atmosphere,
and, as he walked along, his footsteps and those of his companions echoing in the silent street, he became aware of a feeling of excitement which seemed to permeate the filthy, frozen air about him; an air of the-devil-take-tomorrow, an air of danger. As the fog thinned, their shadows grew and shortened as they walked under the hissing gas of the street lamps, each surrounded with its own Aurora Borealis of rainbow colours.

Through Charing Cross they went and along Sauchiehall Street, the men stopping to buy the morning papers which were already on the street, on each front page that terrible photograph of Maggie Macleod.

They stopped under a street lamp to read the reports of the day’s court proceedings, and the earl felt a sinking feeling of pity for the girl. Her case seemed hopeless. Apothecary James Russell, of 151 Sauchiehall Street had identified her as being the young lady who had bought a quantity of arsenic from him a week before the death of Mr. Macleod, as did apothecary Simon McWhirter of St. George’s Cross. Both men said she had signed the book, saying she was going to use the arsenic to put down rats. Mr. Andrew Byles, for the defence, had promptly had the signatures compared with that of Mrs. Macleod and had said triumphantly that they did not match. And with that, Lord Dancer had risen to his feet and had adjourned the case until the morning.

“Now that’s a hanging I would like to see,” said the marquess.

“Why, in God’s name?” exclaimed the earl hotly.

“You must not take me seriously,” mocked the marquess. He turned to his friends. “Can it be that our new friend, Strathairn, has a soft spot for the girl?”

They all laughed and linked arms with the earl, forcing him to walk along with them at a smart pace. There seemed to be drunks everywhere, lurching in and out of the shadows.

A barefoot woman with a baby wrapped in a shawl stopped
them and said something to the marquess in an accent so broad that the earl could not make out a word she was saying.

“Hey, Constable!” shouted the marquess in a loud voice. “Police, I say!”

The woman gave him a terrified look and ran away into the concealing fog, clutching the baby tightly, while the marquess roared with laughter and Alistair Ashton and Lord Robey looked uncomfortable.

“Just imagine,” said the marquess cheerfully as they resumed their fast walk, “soliciting while carrying a baby, no less, and as ugly and dirty as sin. She
deserves
to be arrested.”

The earl stopped and said in a level voice, “That poor woman probably needed money for food. There was no need to frighten her so. This whole place stinks of poverty.”

There was a startled little silence and then Lord Robey laughed awkwardly. “Don’t distress yourself,” he said. “As I said earlier, poverty is a disease. These people could better themselves if they wanted to. Hey, we are nearly there. It’s called The Club because there is no other club in Glasgow worth belonging to.”

They turned off Sauchiehall Street and walked down Hope Street for some yards and stopped outside a large grey building where lights still burned behind closed blinds.

By this time the earl would not have been surprised to find himself in a gambling hell, but The Club appeared to be the epitome of respectability with smooth green carpets and large leather chairs stretched out under the blazing white light of the gaseliers. They left their hats and coats with the porter, the earl was signed in as an honorary member, and the marquess led the way to the card room.