A Pin to See the Peepshow

by F. Tennyson Jesse

  She was given tea and bread and butter. She washed her hands and tried to repair her face with the materials in her bag. Couldn’t she, she asked the matron, go home and change her clothes? The matron shook her head.

  “No, you can’t do that,” she said, kindly enough, “but we will send and ask your sister to pack any clothes you want in a suitcase.”

  “She’s not my sister,” flared Julia, “she’s my husband’s sister.”

  “Well, anyway,” said the matron pacifically, “you make out a list of what you want and I’ll have to go through the things when they come, just to see there is nothing you shouldn’t have, you know.”

  “I shall want some face creams, and things,” said Julia, anxiously.

  “Oh, well, I’ll take a look at them and see the powder, too. I’m sure you’ll want that. I’ll do the best I can for you.”

  Julia made out a list of the things she wanted. She hated changing her evening clothes for those of every day without her bath, and asked the matron if she couldn’t have a larger jug of hot water, which was at once brought to her. She washed as best she could, and when her suitcase came, and it had been examined, she changed to the little dark-blue suit of every day, and made up her face.

  Then she was told she must come along to the C.I.D. office and she followed the matron. Her way led past a room where the door was open. Somebody was saying: “Well, Carr, you might just as well tell the truth …” and suddenly she stopped and stared into the room. There was Leo. … Leo, in his grey felt hat with the dented crown, his under-lip thrust out as she had so often seen it, his hands thrust deep into his overcoat-pockets. She gave a wild cry and burst into tears. She was not allowed to stop, but hurried along into the office.

  Somebody was saying to her: “Would you like to make a new statement, Mrs. Starling?” She tried to control herself, to think what she could say for the best.

  “Do you still persist in saying that nobody touched your husband last night before he fell down?”

  “Leo did.”

  “Leo?”

  “Leonard Carr. I can’t remember, I didn’t see it very clearly. I’m very short-sighted.”

  “You recognised Carr in that room when you passed just now, Mrs. Starling.”

  “I can always recognise people I know very well,” explained Julia, truthfully. “If you don’t wear your glasses always, your eye gets used to recognising people just from the rough shape they make. I can’t explain it, but it’s quite true.”

  “Did you know, Mrs. Starling, that your husband had had a severe blow at the back of his head, and his skull was fractured before he fell down?”

  “I … no, I didn’t, it was all so quick.”

  “You saw no weapon in Carr’s hand?”

  “No,” said Julia, truthfully. She had imagined Leo had merely hit him with his fist.

  “He was hit with something pretty heavy, you know, Mrs. Starling. We’ve found the weapon. It was thrown away inside the Square railings.

  “I didn’t know,” said Julia.

  “So you did know then, last night, that it was Leonard Carr who hit your husband? You saw well enough for that?”

  “Yes, he seemed to be having a tussle with my husband, and then he ran away. He was wearing the hat and coat he’s wearing now.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us this last night?”

  “I didn’t think it had anything to do with my husband dying. I knew he must have hit his head when he fell down.”

  “Well, what you now say is that you approached Saint Clement’s Square, where your husband’s body was found, and Leonard Carr ran up?”

  “Yes.”

  “And there was some sort of a scuffle, and then he ran away?”

  “Yes.”

  Then Leo was brought into the room, and the nightmare deepened in horror. They were both charged with murder … she and Leo … with having murdered Herbert. A terribly impersonal voice was saying: “Do you wish to say anything in answer to the charge? You are not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so, but whatever you say will be taken down in writing and may be given in evidence.”

  Why, those words sounded horribly familiar to her. She had read them often in newspapers. What a nightmare to hear them being used to her!

  Leo did not seem to mind so much. He held up his head and said:

  “Yes, I do wish to make a statement,” and he made one; and then she made one, a much shorter one this time. She said as little as she could—merely that Leo had rushed up, and that she had seen him scuffling with her husband, but that she had been knocked aside and was half dazed, that Leo ran away. He was wearing the same hat and coat that he was wearing now.

  Then she and Leo were separated and she was put into a cell in the police court. Oh, it must be a nightmare. Things like this only happened in newspapers. This could not happen to her! It wasn’t possible … it simply wasn’t possible!

  That strange incredulity still held Julia in its grasp. It couldn’t, of course, be she, Julia Starling, who was going to appear in a police court, and who was going there in that strange thing which she had often got glimpses of in her childhood, called a “Black Maria.” Once, when she had been a very little girl riding on the top of an omnibus—there were still horse omnibuses in those days—a “Black Maria” had been driven just in front of the omnibus. It couldn’t be possible that she herself was now going in one of those things. They were motors now, of course, but the old sick horror of them was unchanged.

  Julia did the best she could for her face, pulled her hair forwards in a curve over each cheek, adjusted her little hat, and wrapped the blue Italian officer’s cape about her. She thought she would die of a sort of sick shame as she mounted the steps at the back of the prison van, and went into the little compartment, which was promptly locked upon her. Oh no, it was a nightmare, it must be.

  She heard London all about her; the noise of the motor-buses, the sound of horns, the rarer clop, clop of hoofs, the trill of a bicycle bell, and here she was being jolted along, hidden in this shameful conveyance.

  It came to a standstill. The motor went into reverse, and she felt the van being backed through a wide gateway, which she heard closing behind it. Her door was unlocked—it seemed to her already that for years she had heard nothing but the locking and unlocking of doors—it was odd how all her life she had never noticed the opening and shutting of a door until now, and, blinded by the bright cold sunlight, she felt her short-sighted way down the steps into the yard of the police court. It was very like a police station, was her first thought, the same brown and white walls.

  The matron took her along a corridor and showed her into a little cell. She was shut in again. There was the sound of a key turning in the lock, and she was by herself. The cell was very tiny. It had one chair, and in the corner there was a water-closet with a seat of scrubbed wood.

  Julia looked at it in horror. How could one use that when there was a large square opening cut in the door, through which a policeman might look at any moment? Nevertheless, she had to use it during the hour that followed; an agonising hour of waiting, during which her entrails seemed turned to water. The matron walked up and down outside, and no man looked in through the door.

  Then again there came the turning of the key, and she was taken to another room where stood an elderly gentleman who had what Julia would have called a clever face. He shook hands with her.

  “Mrs. Starling,” he said, “I’m a solicitor. My name is Henry Withers. Apparently, your mother rang up Mrs. Danvers last night. I have known Mrs. Danvers nearly all her life, and she at once telephoned to me and asked me to come here. You must have a solicitor, you know. I wish I could have seen you last night at the police station, but that can’t be helped. Now, I want you to say as little as possible. Just plead ‘Not Guilty’ and reserve your defence. You must leave everything to me.”
/>   “Oh, but I want to tell them …” began Julia.

  “Don’t tell them anything. Believe me, what I say is for the best, Mrs. Starling. I can’t act for you unless you trust unreservedly to me. I assure you I’m a very good solicitor, and there’s absolutely nothing for you to worry about. Do you understand?”

  “Oh yes,” said Julia, “thank you very much. How sweet of Mrs. Danvers.”

  “She has,” said Mr. Withers, “a heart of gold, and she’s very fond of you. Now you’ve got to go into the court. Don’t be frightened, there’s absolutely nothing to alarm you.”

  She was taken along rather a dark passage and a door of ingrained yellow wood was thrown open, and she found herself suddenly in the white light of the police court. The roof was of glass, and through it the light seemed to beat down and make her blink. Straight in front of her was a little pen, surrounded by an iron railing. She was told to go into it, and stumbled up two steps, and going along to the far end, sank upon the polished wooden seat.

  Leo was already there, looking spruce and confident, as usual. He stood very upright, his hands in his pockets, beside her. She could hear a whispering and a buzzing from behind her, and turned her head. A long seat ran behind the dock, and on it she could see Leo’s mother, pale, with red-rimmed eyes, a black bonnet stuck on anyhow, and there was her own mother, and Aunt Mildred, looking grim, and Elsa, looking somehow excited and important, and there was Bertha—Bertha looking far grimmer than Aunt Mildred—looking dreadful.

  Behind her was a wooden fencing of the same light ingrained wood as everything else in the court, and behind this fencing was a strange many-headed beast that surged and muttered and stared at her.

  Julia turned her head back very quickly and stared in front of her. That was the magistrate, that ordinary pleasant-looking man, in a morning coat, sitting at a desk. He had above his head a carved wooden canopy with the Lion and the Unicorn striving eternally to get at each other on either side of a shield. Dark red curtains hung down straightly against the wall on either side of the canopy.

  For the first time Julia felt caught and trapped, far more than she had at the police station, or even in the cell at the police court that morning. Here she was in the middle of this large, light, airy room, with its white-washed walls, its glass roof, its ingrained woodwork and maroon curtains, and she couldn’t get out of it. Beyond the narrow little opening of the dock were policemen. In front of her was the magistrate, behind her were people who wished her ill. To the left of her, over the door opposite that by which she had come in, was a great moon-faced clock, a clock that was ticking out relentlessly the minutes that were henceforth to be ordered for her.

  ii

  Remand

  Leo had gone, still with that high head, and pouting under-lip—that swagger for which she had loved him! She felt she didn’t even know what it meant now, or what it had ever meant, for she was being taken to prison; not even back to the police station, but to prison. “On remand” they called it. She had not been found guilty—magistrates couldn’t do that—but they told her she had been sent for trial.

  She was given a good midday dinner at the police court, a dinner that was sent out for, but in the afternoon came again the hideous degradation of the prison van, but a long drive this time, right across London. She said to herself—now it must be passing close to George Street. They have just begun to get going at the shop. It was the day for Lady Evelyn’s fitting, and she wanted more passionately than she had ever wanted anything in her life to be in the fitting-room at l’Etrangère’s; to be pointing out where the frock needed altering, to be coaxing even the most difficult and unpleasant customer into acquiescence.

  The van went on and on, and it seemed to Julia that even the sound of London changed and grew less pleasant. Then she heard what was to her the familiar sound of tramcars, the rhythmic scream, the grinding, the jolting, the clanging of the bell. The van took a sharp turn and stopped. Again came the opening of great gates, the van went in, and turned to the right so suddenly that Julia was thrown against the wall of her little compartment. Then the van stopped, and again she got out.

  She was sick with exhaustion by now. She had been unable to eat her lunch, and she was helped down the steps, and stood blinking in front of a brown doorway. She was in a wide space that was half yard and half garden, and there seemed to be grey walls enclosing the buildings all about her. She went in through the brown door and into a little room on the right. How odd that there should be such cheerful-faced women there in dark blue uniforms; women who took down all her particulars as though it were all in the day’s work—as, of course, it was.

  She saw, with a shiver of repulsion, that on the bare, polished table lay the clothes of a woman who must have come in just before her. A pair of dirty, artificial-silk stockings, and a still dirtier suspender-belt, that had once been pink, but whose frilled edges were now dark grey.

  She was told to go behind a screen and strip to her last garment, which was a little yellow chemise that Leo had given her. She was weighed and measured, given a wrapper and some washable heel-less slippers. Then she was led to a bath. It was all clean, spotlessly clean, but her flesh seemed to crawl. She could not get the thought of that dirty suspender-belt out of her mind. She washed herself with the soap in the bath, and dried with the coarse towel. Then her own clothes were given back to her—clothes that she had brought in a suitcase, and when she had dressed, one of the pleasant-faced women said briskly: “Now, come across to the infirmary. I expect you feel you could eat something by now.”

  Julia felt she could never eat again, but part of this horrible new life was that you had to do everything you were told. She had to walk across that yard, and in at the door of the hospital, which was unlocked for her entry, and locked again behind her. Otherwise, she thought, you wouldn’t have known it was a prison. It looked just like any other hospital. The walls were painted green half-way up, with a darker green at the top of the dado, and white paint above. She was taken up white stone steps and into a ward with about a dozen other women in it. How frightful—and she had always wanted her room to herself.

  Julia sank upon her bed hardly noticing its hardness. She felt her feet lifted up, then her head was propped forward; a glass of sal volatile was held to her lips. She drank it, almost choked, and felt a little better.

  “That’s all right,” said someone cheerfully. “Now do you think you could manage to eat some tea?” And, oddly enough, Julia suddenly felt she could. She felt hungry, almost horribly hungry. She nodded, a little shakily, and sat up.

  When the tea came in she attacked it ravenously, but soon found that, after all, she couldn’t eat. The tea was Ceylon tea, and after a few mouthfuls she put down her cup. She felt curiously light-headed; perhaps that was the sal volatile—light-headed and yet very clear—she was noticing everything. There were the initials “G.R.” on the plate and on the cup of tea that they brought her. “G.R.”: what was that? Georgius Rex, of course. How did the King like having his initials on all the crockery of this dreadful place? There had been a joke in the war, she remembered, about all the old buffers in uniform, “gorgeous wrecks,” somebody had called them. She pushed the plate away. It wasn’t any good, and the tea was hateful, strong, Ceylon tea.

  But the worst was yet to come, she wasn’t to be left alone. Not only were these other women—who most of them seemed half-witted—to be with her, but there were always attendants, always someone watching. One of the brighter patients told her it was the Observation Ward. She was going to be watched perpetually. She was asked if she would like a book, and she tried to read; but for the first time in her life could not make sense of the printed page, though she read one over five times.

  The doctor, a big-boned Scot, with eyes that were oddly gentle considering how keen and searching they were, came and looked at her and talked to her; asked her a lot of questions. Tea-time came, with more of that horr
ible strong tea, and more bread and margarine. Supper-time came, and she was asked what she would like. Would she like milk or bovril? She stared, she didn’t know. What she would have liked would have been a stiff whisky and soda, but if she felt faint they only gave her sal volatile.

  She was told it was time to go to bed. She was escorted to the lavatory. It had no lock on the inside. When she came out the female officer was waiting for her, and went back with her. She washed and got into her nightgown, and into bed. The sheets were unbleached calico, and rasped her skin. Lights weren’t lowered till nine, and an officer asked her if she would like a book. They seemed to think, she thought, that she always wanted to be reading, and the funny thing was she always had wanted to be reading, and now she didn’t want to any more. If only she could be alone!

  At ten o’clock, an hour after the whole prison seemed to have gone to bed, she sat up and began to scream. The nurse pressed a bell, and presently the doctor was there again. She was given something to drink out of a little glass and told it would send her to sleep, but it didn’t. She lay awake all night until the white light of dawn came in through the clouded window, and the gas was turned out.

  The days went on, one very much like the other. She was allowed visitors every day between ten and eleven in the morning, and two and three in the afternoon; but except for her solicitor she did not really care about visitors. Who was there to come and see her? Mum, Uncle George, Aunt Mildred, Elsa … what comfort was there in these? Gipsy came every week, sometimes two and three times a week. Gipsy kept on telling her that she and Miss Lestrange were doing all they could, that they were getting a fund together for the defence. Gipsy would sit and talk to her easily, and try and cheer her up. Oddly enough Julia only wanted to know what was going on at the shop. Gipsy soon found this out and told her everything that was of interest. What had happened to Lady Evelyn’s fitting; what had happened with the Richborough woman, the Manton woman, and the rest of the more or less faithful customers.