The Gypsy Bride

by Katie Hutton

  Aware that as many eyes rested on him as on the speaker, Sam listened to evidence of ‘a significant blow to the head ’, ‘bruising throughout the body ’, and ‘caught against the mill-wheel’. He closed his own eyes and saw Harold, like a poor broken doll, tossed on the great dripping blades. Then he heard the doctor’s closing words: ‘Harold Chown drowned, but I cannot say how he came to go in, whether he slipped, jumped, or was pushed.’

  *

  There was a murmur of eager expectation as Ellen’s name was announced. Sam tried to get up, to go to the slim pale figure in black, but the policeman’s hand on his arm restrained him.

  ‘You are Mrs Ellen Chown, widow of the deceased?’

  ‘Yes,’ whispered Ellen.

  ‘You will have to speak up, Mrs Chown. All those present must hear your evidence. We want to know where you were and what you were doing on the night your husband died.’

  ‘I was at home with my stepdaughter, and my two children.’

  ‘You knew your husband’s errand?’

  ‘Yes. He asked me to arrange the meeting.’

  ‘And when did you do that?’

  ‘That afternoon, when I met Mr Loveridge.’

  ‘And where did you meet Mr Loveridge?’

  ‘I . . . we . . .’

  ‘I will remind you to speak up, Mrs Chown. It is imperative that we get all the evidence, regardless of how uncomfortable you may find it.’

  Ellen gripped the sides of the witness box until her knuckles whitened.

  ‘I met him in an upstairs room at the Flying Horse.’

  ‘Were you in the habit of meeting Mr Loveridge in that room? Speak up, Mrs Chown, don’t just nod your head. The recorder needs to get all this down.’

  ‘Yes, Wednesday afternoons.’

  ‘And this was for the purpose of committing adultery with Mr Loveridge? No, don’t nod, Mrs Chown, please. We need you to speak up.’

  ‘Yes, we met as man and wife.’

  ‘Mr Loveridge has told us he is the natural father of your child Thomas, who goes by the surname of Chown. Is this true?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We have heard that Mr Loveridge made your acquaintance again after the space of three years and that he succeeded again in seducing you.’

  ‘Seduced, no. I went back to him.’

  ‘But your husband found out.’

  ‘He did. But I was going to tell him anyway, before he realised about the baby.’

  ‘What baby is this, Mrs Chown?’

  ‘The one I am carrying now, sir.’

  Sam gasped, and made to rise again.

  ‘Quiet, you, or I’ll take you out! ’ hissed the policeman.

  ‘Loveridge’s child?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Only I wanted to tell Sam first. And it was too early. I wanted to wait until I knew the baby was for keeps.’

  ‘Mr Loveridge has told this court that in the course of his conversation with the deceased that he, Loveridge, had said that the choice between the two of them had to be yours. That being so, whom would you have chosen?’

  Ellen started to cry. ‘I would have taken Sam. I couldn’t do otherwise. Even though Harold threatened to keep my sons – not only David. I’d have had to find a way to get them with me, or to see them with Judy . . . I don’t know.’

  ‘I think you might have found that courts do not look kindly on mothers with characters such as yours, Mrs Chown, when they need to decide who best can bring up a child. But your husband’s death has of course spared you that obstacle. I suggest you try to compose yourself. There is a little more I must ask. I want you to tell me what you thought your husband’s state of mind was when he went out that evening to meet Mr Loveridge.’

  ‘He was very pale, very quiet. Harold didn’t find it easy to say what he felt. The only time you would really see what he was thinking was when he was up on the rostrum, when he was preaching.’

  ‘This was as a district preacher with the Primitive Methodist chapel?’

  ‘That’s right. When Sam came back, for him it was the suffering of Job. He struggled to understand why he was being put to the test when all he had wanted was to be a just man serving his God.’

  ‘Mrs Chown, would you please try to tell us as well as you can the actual words he used?’

  ‘I will try. He said, I think, “Goodbye, Ellen. I’m going to meet him now” – he said ‘him’ because he would never address Sam by name. Then, something like, “Whatever is decided this evening, I think we must live apart. But I will remind you that legally I am the father of both your sons.” I started to cry then, but he didn’t look at me and never said another word. He went out and closed the door.’

  ‘I see. How did you interpret those last words, Mrs Chown?’

  ‘I thought he meant that he would put me aside and keep the boys, even if I was to give up Sam or him give up me.’

  ‘Would Harold Chown have been the kind of man who would have taken his own life?’

  ‘No, no! Never. It wasn’t his to take.’

  ‘And is Sampson Loveridge the kind of man who would have taken it for him, Mrs Chown?’

  ‘No! Not Sam! No . . . !’ Ellen swayed in the witness box, clutching at the sides, then bumped down out of view.

  ‘Ellen! ’ cried Sam, getting to his feet, pushing away the policeman.

  ‘Silence! ’ the coroner shouted into the ensuing tumult. ‘Someone help the witness. She appears to have fainted!’

  Two hefty policemen struggled with Sam. ‘I warned you, Sunny Jim! Out you come!’ And he was bundled out of the courtroom, still calling Ellen’s name.

  Sam was pushed into a chair in the bare room where he had been kept before being brought to give evidence, with the warning to ‘hold your peace if you know what’s good for you!’. An officer stayed, standing guard by the door.

  ‘She’s in the family way, my Ellen, she’ll have to come with me now,’ Sam said.

  ‘Well, that’s what you wanted, drowning her old man,’ said the officer.

  Sam stared at him in disbelief.

  *

  He didn’t know how much later it was that he heard a door bang open somewhere down the corridor and a voice shout: ‘Verdict!’ followed by a roar of noise as the court emptied out. It subsided gradually into sporadic conversation he could not make out, bursts of laughter, the tapping of women’s heels on the marble floors.

  ‘Where’ve they put the proud father then?’ called a man’s voice.

  ‘Here, George!’ shouted Sam’s gaoler, unlocking the door. Two of his colleagues came in. Sam stood up.

  ‘How’s Mrs Chown? Can I go to her now?’

  One of the policemen laughed. ‘Hardly! It’s murder, Loveridge. And they’ve named you.’

  *

  In a room further down the corridor Ellen was being tended to by the doctor who had carried out Harold’s post-mortem.

  ‘Well, if nothing else you’ve been spared the scribblers. They’ll have gone off home by now. They’ll have their fun at the assizes, of course.’

  ‘What fun?’ asked Ellen. ‘What fun?’

  ‘Do try to stay calm, Mrs Chown, if you want to keep your child. I’m afraid that chap of yours has been arrested.’

  ‘Sam! Sam! ’

  ‘Nurse, go and find Miss Chown, would you? I think we’d best arrange a car to take them both home.’

  *

  ‘Ellen, the doctor was right, even if he was a clumsy oaf,’ said Judith. ‘Try to stay calm. You’re home safe now and the boys are playing upstairs.’

  ‘They wanted to go outside.’

  ‘Not wise.’

  ‘Sam might hang! ’

  ‘Ssh. Don’t give old Clerk the satisfaction.’

  ‘She’s gone out. I heard her door go. She had her clacky shoes on, and was in a great hurry.’

  ‘Let’s be grateful for small mercies. Now, Flora and John will be in on the 4.19. As soon as they’re here I’ll go looking for a legal man. I’d
have gone earlier only Wattie had to go on shift.’

  ‘My brother’s coming? Oh John!’

  ‘See, he’ll know what to do. Hot sweet tea in the meantime, I think.’

  But as Judith got up to go into the scullery, there was a thunderous knocking at the front door. She went to answer it, looking through the window first. Trembling in the back room, Ellen heard a rumble of male voices, and Judith’s exasperated response.

  ‘You can’t just barge in like that! She’s had a terrible shock, you know. Hey! ’

  The little room was suddenly full of uniformed men. As if from a distance Ellen heard one of them say, ‘Mrs Chown, you’re wanted for questioning in connection with the murder of your husband Harold Chown. Come with us, please.’

  *

  A police matron stood behind Ellen’s shoulder.

  ‘An accessory to murder?’ stammered Ellen. ‘Sam wouldn’t murder anyone.’

  The older of the two policemen sitting opposite leaned forward. ‘Neat, though, isn’t it? This is how we see it, Mrs Chown. There’s your fancy man with no money of his own, sleeping in a farmyard no better than a dog, and you in a neat little house standing to get whatever your husband has if the poor fool can be got out of the way. He wants his kiddy for himself, but you couldn’t just run off and leave Chown because he’s the father of your lawful child and who says you’d get to keep him? And what innocent man comes out with “I didn’t kill him” when nobody’d said he had done?’

  ‘An honest one – a scared one!’ cried Ellen.

  ‘Your house is being searched, Mrs Chown. We’ve sent a man to the Flying Horse as well. We’ve had a witness tell us about you shouting at your husband. You’d be as well to tell us all you know, if you want to see your kiddies again. Forget your gippo. Think about them – about yourself.’

  ‘There is nothing more to tell,’ she wept. ‘Nothing.’

  *

  ‘What are those men doing, Judy?’ cried Tom.

  ‘Are they taking our toys away?’ chimed in David.

  ‘Where’s Mother?’

  ‘She’ll be back soon – and nobody’s taking your toys away!’ Judith listened to the thumps and bangings from upstairs. What on earth were they expecting to find?

  ‘Has Papa finished his big sleep yet?’ asked David.

  ‘Oh Lord . . . I wish Wattie was here.’ Judith covered her face with her hands.

  CHAPTER 31

  We feare to wrong the law,

  We live in servile awe,

  Yet wheresoere we goe

  We seldome find a foe:

  Wheresoere we come, we find

  For one that hates, an hundred kind.

  ‘The Brave English Jipsie’, broadside ballad, 1570

  Witness

  Sam sat with his head in his hands after the sergeant had left. The man had actually smiled when he said that Ellen was in custody. Nothing else mattered, not the drop, not a life of sewing mailbags, but that they let Ellen go. He’d sign anything they wanted for her sake, never mind that he’d struggle to read it.

  Keys clattered in the lock and a younger policeman came in, carrying a cup of pale tea rattling in its saucer.

  ‘Thought you might need this, Sam.’

  He looked up suspiciously.

  ‘It’s not poisoned.’

  ‘Don’t think I’d care if it was,’ said Sam. He pulled the saucer towards him and drank.

  ‘They’ve nothing on her,’ said the policeman. ‘She’s here but they’re going to let her go. So don’t go signing anything.’

  ‘What are you telling me for? Why should I trust a gavver?’

  ‘A constable, is that? No reason, but why would I tell you something they don’t want you to know?’

  ‘Yes, why would you?’

  ‘Maybe because I think they’re wrong.’

  ‘About me pushing poor Chown in the drink?’

  ‘As to that, I don’t know – I meant keeping the poor lady here. I can’t see as there is any proof against you myself, but what they’re looking at is motive. You’ll need to get yourself a solicitor, counsel, all that sort of thing.’

  Sam laughed scornfully. ‘How can the likes of me pay for a rokrengro?’

  ‘That other young woman – her stepdaughter – she’s going to get you a legal man. I could see them letting your lady go just to stop her worrying at them. But take my advice and leave off the Romani cant.’

  ‘It’s all I’ve got left. I still don’t understand why you want to help me. Or have you come to soften me up for them?’

  ‘I haven’t. You’ll just have to believe me. My grandfer . . . I was very fond of him. They called him Tony but his name was Tornapo Hearn. Having family born in a Gypsy wagon won’t help me get my stripes. Now do you trust me?’

  ‘I do. But what about the kiddies?’

  ‘Miss Chown has left them with some chapel people – Deakin, I think the name is – but she’s going back for them as soon as Mrs Chown is discharged. Now try not to worry more than you have to. Don’t sign their papers without your legal man; in fact, until you have one, don’t sign anything they give you. If I can, I’ll let you know if your Ellen gets out. You’ll be going to the gaol this afternoon, but I’ve pals there who’ll take a message. If you see one of the warders scratch his nose at you – like this – you’ll know but no one else will be any the wiser. I’d better go now, if you’ve finished that tea.’

  ‘I have, and thank you. Kushti bok, prala! ’32

  The policeman smiled back, uncomprehending.

  *

  Sam was grateful that this time he was the only man in the van taking him to the prison. But so much was the same as before – the clanging shut of the mighty doors as the vehicle was driven in, the sudden expectant hush of the prison yard, that enclosed world within the living, breathing, free city.

  Processing was simpler. He was told he would have more privileges. He was only being held until trial.

  ‘Innocent until proven guilty, eh?’ said the warder.

  It might not be for long – yet . . . where do they hang ’em?

  *

  His first visitor came the following morning.

  ‘And who might you be?’ said Sam warily, as he was brought into the room. He nudged the table as he sat down. It was screwed in place. His chair wouldn’t move either.

  The sober-looking grey-haired man pushed his spectacles up his nose and extended his hand.

  ‘I am James Deakin. Sampson Loveridge?’

  ‘That’s me. You’ll be the rai – the gentleman what’s taking care of them two boys, ain’t you? Mrs Chown’s children, I mean.’

  ‘The very same. And a credit they are to her, I might say.’

  ‘And what business does someone like you want with someone like me?’

  ‘I’m your solicitor – that is to say, at the moment I am what goes for your legal team.’

  ‘You are? I’ve no wonga to give you, more than a pawn ticket for an old earring.’

  ‘That’s being taken care of. Now, with regard to the charge laid against you, Mr Loveridge, how were you intending to plead?’

  ‘I never laid a hand on Mr Chown. I left him by the mill race and I dunt know how he came to be in the water. But that jury said I pushed him in, and I’d say yes to it if it got Ellen out of trouble.’

  ‘I strongly advise you not to. If you say you didn’t drown Mrs Chown’s husband then you must plead not guilty. And sign nothing that is put in front of you without my being present. But I think you should not be overly concerned about a coroner’s jury. They can only express an opinion, even if that is finding for murder and naming you. They cannot themselves send you to the gallows, but only to the assizes.’

  Deakin pulled some papers out of his briefcase and took the top off his fountain pen.

  ‘A coroner’s jury, Loveridge, will sometimes hand down a murder verdict because they are unsure as to what happened, and want a higher court to try the case. If they’d sai
d misadventure, or suicide, then the matter would have stopped there, and even if you had killed him, you could not have been tried. If they’d handed down an open verdict, then the police might have weighed up whether they had any evidence at all, and proceeded accordingly. As it is, they will proceed as they cannot ignore the coroner’s jury, but unless other evidence appears, all the police have is a supposed motive, and circumstance. And a real jury in a capital case are, in my experience, less likely to convict than a coroner’s if they have any doubts. Sometimes it happens that they will convict with a recommendation to mercy, but usually only if they are both sure he is guilty and they feel sorry for the defendant, and think if he puts in some years of hard labour and then takes himself off to Australia everyone may sleep with a quiet conscience. However, if the judge has rowed with his wife that morning then he may not feel like being merciful to anyone. You have told me you didn’t kill poor Harold, so let us go forward on that basis. Most of all, Mr Loveridge, I would urge you to keep a cool head.’

  ‘You called him poor Harold as if he was a friend of yours.’

  ‘He was. He was my clerk.’

  Sam swore, and stood up, swinging himself round the room. Deakin sat on, apparently unperturbed.

  ‘Do sit down, Mr Loveridge.’

  ‘What do you want with me?’

  ‘Keep your voice down or the warders will come in. Believe it or not, it’s justice I want. I want it for Harold’s sake, not just yours. Are you familiar with the Ten Commandments?’

  ‘Course I am. I was taught ’em by the chaplain – in Princetown. And the rashai33 in Winchester was forever preaching on ‘em too.’

  ‘Ah yes, of course. They told me you’d had prior experience of our penal system.’

  ‘I’m in this trouble for number seven, I know, the ’dulterating one. That’s how I hurt Mr Chown, but not by number six. Seven was bad enough for him, and that’s on my conscience, though I swear I couldn’t stop myself and don’t know as I would do anything different if it was all to come round again. But them commandments ain’t so different from how my old mother taught me to live. And I’ve never stolen, apart from bagging the odd rabbit when there was too many of them for the man as had the land to eat anyway – though people will say otherwise of us. You’ll know I went down for horse-stealing but that was to cover for my brother-in-law seeing as I had a debt to pay his sister for the ’dulterating.’