On the night of his death, Hector had gone out to meet one of his criminal associates, and it was the prisoner in the dock who had followed him. Charles Samprey had taken their father’s army revolver but had had no intention of using it on his brother. He did not for a moment wish harm to his own flesh and blood. He knew that Hector’s associates were desperate men likely to be armed, and he carried the gun solely for his own defence.
That night, the prisoner was able to overhear the conversation between his brother and the man he met on the seashore. He was left in no doubt that a robbery was being planned. As Hector left his companion to walk home, the prisoner, who now had the proof he needed, accosted him. He said that he had overheard the conversation and was going to conduct his brother to the police station and hand him into custody. Although he was pointing the gun at his brother, it was not meant to injure him, but only to frighten him into complying with his demands. Unfortunately, Hector Samprey refused to comply. There was a struggle which was initiated by the deceased, and the gun was fired. Whether by chance, or deliberately when in fear of his life, the prisoner could not recall. Realising that his brother could not be saved, he rushed home in a state of distress. He was seen by his sister holding a gun. His first impulse was to protect his sister from all knowledge of the terrible events. He therefore persuaded her she had had a dream.
When his brother’s body was found, the prisoner determined to spare his father all knowledge of his eldest son’s lies. He told the police that his brother was going to meet his friend Barnes that night to tell him that he was going to have nothing more to do with him. Barnes was the leader of that gang of cutthroats and had been long suspected of the murder of a young policeman and other heinous crimes. It was understandably believed that it was Barnes who had killed Hector Samprey. The prisoner repeated this tale in court at Barnes’s trial. He did not know that Jenny Jemson would provide Barnes with an alibi.
Jenny Jemson, whatever one might think of her former associates, had always spoken the truth. She had since thrown off the mantle that was once forced upon her to become an example of honest toil and purity. The prisoner in the dock had always been a law-abiding and respectable gentleman, but circumstances and a wish to protect his father and sister led him to make the mistakes that placed him in the dock.
The defence asked the court to acquit Charles Samprey of the wilful murder of his brother, which they duly did. They went on to find him guilty of manslaughter and perjury. He was sentenced to a total of ten years in prison.
There was another trial in store for Charles Samprey, this time for the attempted murder by poison of the spirit medium Lady Brighthelm, whose true identity was not to be published for her own safety.
The case was hotly debated by Brighton society, and the subject of cautious speculation in the newspapers. It was generally held that Samprey was guilty of the crime, which he had committed in order to hide his involvement in the death of his brother. Whether his guilt could be proved in court was quite another question. It was a case riddled with wholly reasonable doubt, and wide open for exploitation by the defence.
It was rumoured that ever since the death of his brother, Charles Samprey had suffered from recurring nightmares in which Hector had accused him of murder. When his cousin Mr Clover told him about Lady Brighthelm being able to discover the truth, the nightmares had become more frequent and terrifying than ever.
It was expected that the prosecution would advise the court that Samprey had learned all he needed to know about Lady Brighthelm from his cousin and employee Septimus Clover. He knew that she took no money but received little gifts such as chocolates and was especially partial to Veale’s violet creams.
The accused had learned what mistakes to avoid by reading the trial of Christiana Edmunds. He did not buy the chocolates from the shop but had suggested to his sister Clarissa that she host a tea party for her friends and ordered some treats from Veale’s, including cakes and chocolates. It was thought that his housekeeper would testify that she had believed that the shop had not delivered the right quantity of chocolates, and when she commented on this her employer had told her he had taken some for his sister. And there was arsenic kept in the house for the control of vermin. Naturally there was. But that was hardly a crime.
The prosecution would then suggest that Charles Samprey had gone to Mr Beckler’s shop, removing his distinctive glasses before he went in to hinder recognition. He had then sent the assistant to look for something in the storeroom, dropped the chocolates on the counter and claimed that a messenger boy had left them.
All of these things were possible, and some of them could even be proved, but when one added it up it was a flimsy case. As the trial approached, it was generally believed that Charles Samprey would plead not guilty and an intelligent defence would heap scorn on the prosecution case and tear it into unrecognisable shreds. Richard Scarletti, who had said that he almost thought Charles Samprey was the man who had come into the shop, would be an especially unconvincing witness, and even if he was correct no one had actually seen who had left the chocolates on the counter. Charles Samprey would be acquitted. This might have been the correct result under English law, but Mina knew that if the crime stayed unsolved and unpunished, then it would remain open to Mr Hope to continue insinuating that she and Richard had been responsible.
The trial, however, opened with a surprise. Charles Samprey pleaded guilty, not to attempted murder but to the lesser offence of assault by administration of a toxic substance. His counsel maintained that the prisoner had intended merely to make the medium unwell enough to stop her consultations but had not wished to kill her. The motives for this change were unclear, but it was possible that the visits of Charles’s brother Mortimer to his prison cell and their lengthy conversations had convinced him that the Sampreys had suffered enough, and for the sake of his sister’s prospects it would be best not to expose the family to another scandalous criminal trial. The new charge and plea were accepted, and the judge directed the jury to find the prisoner guilty. Charles Samprey was sentenced to seven years in prison to run concurrently with his existing sentence. Shortly afterwards, Clarissa Samprey was betrothed to the son of a Brighton publican, who considered that both her notoriety and her marriage portion would be good for business.
Peace, or what passed for peace, was restored to the Scarletti household. Mr Hope was gone from Brighton, hopefully for good, there was no danger of Mr Beckler courting Mina’s mother, and Richard was happily working on the art for novelty photographs. A leading London spiritualist had just exposed Mr Hudson as a fraud, and his business was collapsing. There would, Mina reflected, always be people who took spirit photographs and there would always be some who believed in them, but the fashion was fading. What the next fashion would be, she must wait to see. But for the time being, she had laid all her ghosts.
***
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A NOTE TO THE READER
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading The Cyanide Ghost.
Reviews are so important to authors, and if you enjoyed the novel I would be grateful if you could spare a few minutes to post a review on Amazon and Goodreads. I love hearing from readers, and you can connect with me online, on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
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Linda Stratmann
lindastratmann.com
HISTORICAL NOTES
BRIGHTON AND SUSSEX
In 1872, the recently built West Pier was a fashionable promenade deck: the pavilion and covered band area h
ad not yet been built. The bandstand was a low raised wooden platform and was gas lit. http://regencysociety-jamesgray.com/volume2/source/jg_02_021.html
The Grand Hotel was opened in 1864. The houses to the west of the Grand Hotel were demolished for the construction of the Hotel Metropole in 1890.
The Extra Mural Cemetery was the first private cemetery to be opened in Brighton when it was no longer advisable to continue burials in overcrowded churchyards. It was consecrated in 1851. The cemetery gatehouse described in this book was demolished in 1956.
Mr John George Bishop’s Strolls in the Brighton Extra Mural Cemetery was published in 1864 with a second edition in 1867. The Cemetery Chapel is a Grade II listed building and is still in use for services.
Elm Grove Workhouse in Brighton was opened in 1867. It ceased to be used as a workhouse in 1930.
In 1872, Harrison’s Velocipede School was open daily at 14 Queen’s Road.
In 1872, Ovingdean was an agricultural village to the east of Brighton. It is now part of the city of Brighton and Hove. Ovingdean Grange is a Grade II listed manor house. It featured in the 1857 novel Ovingdean Grange: A Tale of the South Downs, by W Harrison Ainsworth.
Rottingdean is a picturesque village on the East Sussex coast. It is now part of the city of Brighton and Hove.
The Brighton Photographic Society is fictitious.
PEOPLE AND PUBLICATIONS
The Sussex Vampire. Mina did not in the end write a story with this title, which had to wait until 1924 under the authorship of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Dr David Livingstone, the lost explorer, was located by Henry Morton Stanley in November 1871; however, news of the discovery did not reach England until May 1872.
Horace Walpole (1717-1794) wrote the first Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, which was published in 1764.
The Spiritual Banner is fictional, but the quotations included here are from The Spiritual Magazine, July 1872.
Frederick Augustus Hudson (1818-1900), not to be confused with the respected Isle of Wight photographer Frederick Hudson (1822-1889), was a London photographer who was active in the early 1870s in the field of spirit photography. He was believed to have employed ‘double exposure’, although he was never arrested for fraud.
William Mumler (1832-1884) was an American spirit photographer who was tried for fraud in 1869. Although he was acquitted, the accusation destroyed his career. I am indebted to The Apparitionists by Peter Manseau (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017) and The Illustrated Photographer: Scientific and Art Journal(London, Edmund Dring, vol II 1869, May-July).
John Jabez Edwin Mayall (1813-1901), usually referred to as J E Mayall, was a prominent society photographer. He opened his Brighton portrait studio in 1864, leaving his eldest son Edwin to run his London business at 224 Regent Street. He later used electrical arc lamps for indoor photography.
Mayall was a member of the Brighton Natural History Society. He became an Alderman and later Mayor of Brighton. (See the Brighton Guardian, 21 November 1877 for a biography.) In November 1871, the London business dismissed an employee, Henry Newman, who took revenge by entering the premises and destroying valuable equipment. A jar containing four or five pounds of potassium cyanide was found uncorked. Newman had taken some home and used it to commit suicide. (London Evening Standard, 9 November 1871 p. 3). Edwin Mayall died after a long illness in February 1872, aged 37.
William Gibbs (1831-1904), Inspector of police, who brought the Brighton poisoner Christiana Edmunds to justice, was later promoted to Superintendent.
The Mayall/Hooper connection in this novel was pure serendipity. Miss Hooper’s name was first mentioned in Mr Scarletti’s Ghost, and when I researched Mr Mayall for this book, I discovered that his second wife was a former Mrs Hooper.
PHOTOGRAPHY
Cartes de visite were a popular photographic form of the period from the mid-1850s to the early 1870s. They served as small visiting cards, and those of celebrities were widely collected.
Memento mori photography was the art of photographing the deceased. It was often the only means by which a family might have an image of a loved one to remember.
ALSO BY LINDA STRATMANN
FICTION
The Mina Scarletti Mystery Series
Mr Scarletti’s Ghost
The Royal Ghost
An Unquiet Ghost
The Ghost of Hollow House
His Father's Ghost
The Frances Doughty Mystery Series
The Poisonous Seed
The Daughters of Gentlemen
A Case of Doubtful Death
An Appetite for Murder
The Children of Silence
Death in Bayswater
A True and Faithful Brother
Murder at the Bayswater Bicycle Club
NON FICTION
The Trial of the Mannings: Notable British Trials series No. 90
The Secret Poisoner
The Marquess of Queensberry: Wilde’s Nemesis
The Crooks Who Conned Millions
Notorious Blasted Rascal: Colonel Charteris and the Servant Girl’s Revenge
Whiteley’s Folly
Cruel Deeds and Dreadful Calamities: The Illustrated Police News 1864-1938
Chloroform: The Quest for Oblivion
Kent Murders
Greater London Murders
Essex Murders
More Essex Murders
Middlesex Murders
Gloucestershire Murders
Published by Sapere Books.
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Copyright © Linda Stratmann, 2021
Linda Stratmann has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events, other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales are purely coincidental.
eBook ISBN: 9781800551961
The Cyanide Ghost (Mina Scarletti Mystery Book 6) Page 28
