They Hanged My Saintly Billy (6 page)

Dr Tyle
cote had no desire to hinder Mr
Willia
m's advancement in life; but he
made a great
deal of trouble before finally
consenting to get him admitted as a pupil into the Stafford Infirmary at the end
Q
f his term, and write him a certificate of good conduct. It may well be, I can't say, that money changed hands; for pretty soon Dr Tylecote was seen driving on his rounds in a very handsome new gig, which until then he could not afford. He's a good surgeon, is Dr Tylecote, and a kindly man into the bargain.

The problem of Mrs Palmer's loneliness was not yet resolved, of course, but resolved it was later. I daresay before this trial is over, something will
be said about Mr Jeremiah Smith
to the learned Judges. Captain Hatton, head of the Stafford Constabulary, came down here around Christmas,
with his colleague, Mr Bergen,
and asked a great many pointed questions on a great many subjects. In
the
end, they seized those courting letters written by Mrs Palmer to Duffy. My missus
pretended at first she knew noth
ing of them, but they threatened to take away the licence if she would not give them up; so my sister-in-law brought
them
in—which she had kept for a lark, she said, without my missus's knowledge, when ordered to burn them in the bread-oven.

But why should the letters be taken off? The reason, Sir, is plain enough. If old Mrs Palmer were called by the Defence lawyers to give evidence on behalf of her son, which she'd do with a good heart, then the Prosecution would out with those letters and get leave from the Court to put
them
in as 'evidence of character'. She couldn't deny 'em as her own, and even if she told the truth about Dr Palmer, proving his
alibi
(as it's called) on the particular hour when he is supposed
to have poisoned Cook with strychn
ine pills, who would believe her? Those letters are plain evidence of schemings, lyings, and adultery. No, Sir, old Mrs Palmer won't appear in the witness box at the Old Bailey, of that you may be sure! If she did, not only would she do her son no particle of good, but the secrets of he
r heart would be published by th
e newspapers throughout the length and breadth of England.

Chapter IV

COLONEL BROOKES'S RESOLUTION

ABBOT'S BROMLEY, th
e country house belonging to
Charles Dawson, Esq., a wealthy wholesale chemist from Stafford, is one of the handsomest and most comfortably furnished in the entire county, besides being wonderfully placed for scenery. It lies some seven miles from Stafford. Close by, rise the famous oaks of Bagot's Park, said to be the largest in England and perhaps in the world. Within walking distance you come upon Cannock Chase with its grassy slopes and great wealth of wild flowers, and Shoughborough Park with its banks of tall ferns. Abbot's Bromley also commands a view of Colnwich Nunnery, and of the swans reflected in the Trent's placid waters.

Charles Dawson, a robust and mellow-voiced widower in his sixties, has a fine eye for horseflesh, an epicure's taste in port, a connoisseur's knowledge of pictures, statuary, medals,
et alia—
and much to relate about th
e next stage in William Palmer's chequered career. The rest of this chapter will be told in his own words.

charles dawson esq., j.p.

Poor little Annie, how sadly we all miss her here! I did my best to cure her infatuation for that smooth-tongued young scamp— as much, I swear, as any loving guardian could have done—but she would not listen to me. She had set her heart on becoming Mrs Wm Palmer. I also quarrelled mortally on her account with my old friend Mr Thomas Weaver, the solicitor; nor have I since had reason to repent my attitude, the way things turned out. Far otherwise, indeed!

Let me begin at the beginning—though, I warn you, it's by no means a savoury story. One day, while I was still actively conducting my druggist's business at Stafford, a gentleman with trembling hands and a face as yellow as a guinea, pushed open the shop door. I summed him up at once as an officer, attached to the East

India Company's forces, who had ruined his constitution by persistent bouts of fever, over-exertion in the sweltering heat of the Bengalee Plains, and constant indulgence in the curree and chutney used by the native cooks to disguise the unpalatable taste of their goat's flesh and chicken. He asked whether we could furnish him with a certain foreign drug which one of the retail druggists of the town, to whom he had applied, ignorantly asserted did not exist. I attended to this customer personally, and produced a sample of the drug named; though counselling him in
a friendly manner against its in
discriminate use. He then explained that it had been recommended to him by an old English physician in Bombay as strongly assisting the action of the liver. I told him, with what I hope was becoming modesty, that some druggists often know more about the action of drugs than do some physicians; and suggested another course of treatment as both less costly and more efficacious. A few days later the gentleman returned to thank me for my advice and, introducing himself as Colonel Brookes, late of the East India Company's service, asked me to do him the kindness of dining at his newly purchased house in Front Street.

Colonel Brookes proved to be a reserved and gentle man, the veteran of many hard-fought campaigns against the Pindaries and Mahrattas. He was considerate, generous and wealthy, but unmarried and, though a Staffordshire man, had been so long absent from our shores as to have very few friends or acquaintances left in the county. I took a liking to the Colonel and presently introduced him to Dr Edward Knight, the most competent physician in Stafford, and old Mr Wright, the brewer; and we were very glad of him to make a fourth at short whist in our twice-weekly sessions, and thus fill the place vacated by the late Captain Browne, R.N., recently dead of an apoplexy. We found the Colonel to be a keen and skilful player, with a fine sense of sportsmanship, and though he never became our intimate in the rollicking style of poor Captain Browne, we congratulated ourselves on our acquisition. He opened his heart most fully to Dr Knight, with whom he discovered that he had been a fellow-scholar at the Grammar School some fifty years before, and who was married to a cousin of his. When Dr Knight inquired privately one day: ' Colonel, may I be permitted to ask a perhaps indiscreet question—why is it that you have never married?', he heaved a deep sigh and took fully a minute to answer.

Then he explained that he had been one of five brothers, of which he was now the sole survivor. 'They each and all died by pistol shot,' he added.

'They were inveterate duellists, I suppose ?' Dr Knight suggested.

The Colonel shook his head mournfully.

'Ah, so they fell in battle?' pursued Dr Knight.

Again a shake of the head. 'We Brookes are a melancholy breed, Sir,' the Colonel at last forced himself to
say, 'and each of my broth
ers in turn, wh
en the unhappiness of living th
is life out proved too great for him, blew out his own brains. That is the reason why I have never married; I cannot wish either to perpetuate the family taint of suicide by begetting children, or to bring disgrace on their mother. For though I have fought successfully against the temptation of self-murder all my life, and
though
its recurrence has become both less frequent and less violent with advancing age, I can never be sure that it will not one day leap upon me like a lurking tiger. Indeed, only the other evening

Emotion prevented the Colonel from completing the sentence, but Dr Knight made him promise that if he ever felt a return of the evil, he would promise on his honour to call without delay at the surgery, whatever the hour, for consolation and friendly support. Colonel Brookes pledged him his word as a soldier, and appeared to be very much heartened by
the
old Doctor's evident sympath
y.

I had, by the way, also introduced Colonel Brookes to the Mr Thomas Weaver of whom I spoke just now: a competent solicitor, then entrusted with my own business affairs, who seemed willing enough to undertake the Colonel's. Mr Weaver advised him to buy a property in the town consisting of seventeen acres of land, valued at three to four hundred pounds the acre; also of nine fine dwelling houses at
the
back of St Mary's Church, the leases of winch brought in a handsome income, or at least handsome in comparison with
the
purchase price. The largest of these had lately become unoccupied at the expiration of its lease.

Now, though Colonel Brookes was a model citizen in all other respects, chronic ill-health had blunted neither his sexual appetite nor his virility; and when he engaged a widow and her daughter to act, respectively, as his cook and his parlour-maid, trouble soon ensued. Disdaining the widow, a buxom woman of forty who had already set her cap at him, he made surreptitious love to the seventeen-year-old daughter who (let me be frank), failed to repel his advances with the firmness that might have been expected of a decent gir
l. The mother, returning from th
e market one day, caught the
pair together in the parlour: the Colonel seated on th
e sofa, the girl mounted astride his bony knees, while his aged hands greedily explored her young bosom. Rage and jealousy did
their
work: the widow not only gave immediate notice, but demanded fifty guineas from him as the price of silence.

Their precipitate departure from the house, and the blushes of the daughter when questioned on it, gave rise to so much talk among neighbours and tradespeople, that the Colonel was hard pressed to find domestic service; for Sta
fford is not a large town. He th
erefore privately consulted Mr Weaver, making a clean breast of the affair and begging for his help. Mr Weaver hummed and hawed for a while before he ventured:' Well, Colonel Brookes, I understand that you are not a marrying man, but that neither are you a monk, and I daresay during your stay in India you found little difficulty in assuaging . . .'

' No difficu
lty at all,' agreed the Colonel
^.
Among the heathen Hindoos these matters are easily and cheaply arranged. And
I
have
always liked young bed-fellows; the younger the better, let me confess.'

Mr Weaver hummed and hawed again. Then he came out with: 'Well, Sir, I am not a pander by profession, but you consult me as a friend in trouble . . . well, there's pretty Mary Ann Thornton, who was in great distress last year. Captain John Browne, of the Royal Navy, her employer
...
in short, he died suddenly, leaving her in the family way. However, since the child did not long survive its birth, no claim for maintenance was made on his estate, and Miss Thornton is at present unemployed. She has the reputation of being a hard worker, and appears to prefer mature men to her own contemporaries. She can't be a day above eighteen years old, with fair hair, blue eyes, and a good figure. May I send her along to your residence?'

The affair was thus arranged, and Mary Ann Thornton came to the Front Street house, bringing with her as cook an elderly aunt, whom the Colonel agreed to pay pretty high wages. Miss Thornton herself doubled the parts of housekeeper and concubine. The Colonel became passionately addicted to her company.

Well, Sir, men are men, and we of the whist club turned a blind eye to these domesticities, as being none of our business; especially after Dr Knight dropped a broad hint of why the Colonel shrank from marriage. 'And I am sure it is far better,' he said, 'that the

Colonel should keep a healthy young mistress, than be obliged to seek the doubtful solace of a bawdy house—his visits there would be not only dangerous, as exposing him to venereal infection, but also scandalous. We do not, I take it, wish to be known as persons who regularly associate with an old rake.'

We assented, though not without presentiment of some unhappy sequel. Miss Thornton soon came to realize the Colonel's increasing dependence on her services. She grew worldly and ambitious, and nothing would satisfy her save that 'he should make an honest woman of me', as she put it, paradoxically enough. Yet he continued obdurate in his resolve to stay a bachelor, even when she announced her pregnancy. It has, by the bye, been said that a younger lover fathered the child; this is Market gossip, though, and the Colonel at least believed himself responsible for her condition. I took the view that he could do worse than marry the girl, despite her gross ignorance and low birth. The former fault might have been remedied by private tuition; the latter would have been cancelled by the adoption of his name. He felt very tenderly towards her, that is certain, and made a solemn undertaking, in Mr Weaver's presence, not only to keep her in the style which she might have expected as a wife, but to remember her handsomely in his will. All her tears and pleadings, however, failed to shake his resolution not to marry. When he offered to arrange an abortion, if she so desired, she professed to be outraged, saying that this was a crime against the laws of England and against Nature. Until the very end of her confinement she cheris
h
ed hopes for a change of heart in him, but all that he would do by way of placating her was to move from their somewhat cramped and public quarters in Front Street to the more commodious vacant house behind St Mary's Church, and furnish it regardless of expense. She suffered a difficult pregnancy, which made her behave in a very strange manner, casting the wildest threats at the Colonel. On one occasion (so he confided to Dr Knight) she snatched up a kitchen knife and chased him around the table. On another, when he went to his bedroom, shortly before dinner, he found her lying drunk on the floor, with an empty quartern bottle of gin tumbled beside her.

Nevertheless, the child, a girl, was born safe and sound. The Colonel felt lasting chagrin, since it had been to avoid the begetting of children that he had registered his vow; and Mary Ann Thornton, unappeasable resentment. Even if he now made her

Mrs Brookes, that honour would come too late: the child was born illegitimate. She continued to drink heavily and, since the Colonel had guilty feelings in regard to her, tyrannized over him with impunity. The affair reached such a pitch that neither old Mr Wright, Dr Knight, nor myself dared call at his house for fear of witnessing disgraceful scenes. The blue-eyed belle was fast losing her looks, becoming thin and angular, with that blueish pallor which betrays a constant recourse to gin; and made no attempt to rule her excessively foul and vulgar tongue. She never ceased to blame him for 'whoring' her and, by his cruelty and neglect, driving her to the bottle.

The chief bone of contention between them was the child, whom Miss (now Mrs) Thornton regarded with possessive greed, and on whom Colonel Brookes doted, for he loved the company of children. In better moods she encouraged his affection for little Annie, but when the gin was working in her, would roughly

order him out of the nursery. 'This is my b
…. child,' she would
scream. 'It could also have been yours, you toad, you turd, you Turk, if you
had been the gentl
eman I first mistook you for! But you have cast a blight on the poor innocent's life by your refusal to lend her your name, and neither she nor I will ever forgive you. So, go, go—out with you—before I tear your eyes from their sockets! And one word of protest—you b—— you—and I'll dame you with these shears!'

She would then pick up the shears, or it might be a knife, or a cleaver, and my unhappy old friend would run for shelter to The Lamb and Flag. He even, on one occasion, took sanctuary in the vestry of St Mary's Church. Thus the scandal which Mr Weaver had hoped to avert, by his discreet pandering to the Colonel's weaknesses, grew a thousand times worse than if the unfortunate man had merely been known as a frequenter of bawdy houses. He could, of course, have posted out of the country for his weekly pleasures; to Liverpool, for example, and little harm done. But now, when one of her ungovernable rages overcame her, she would follow him all the way to The Lamb and Flag—not fully clad neither, her hair in curling pins—where with her ramping, stamping, tearing and swearing, for all the world like a drunken Lifeguardsman, she would create a most horrible scene, finally catching him by the collar and hauling him off home. 'Poor gentleman,' some of the rough fellows who frequented The Lamb used to say naively, 'he might as well have been married!'