Mary, Mary

by Julie Parsons

  And listened to the way he dissected the evidence. Took it apart, meticulously. No murder weapon had ever been found. There was blood on the shoes of the accused, and on his trousers. But, said Patrick, he found her. He touched her. He knelt beside her to try to help her. Of course he would have blood on his clothes. And there were witnesses to say that he had been seen leaving home at his usual time to go to his job as a bus conductor. And more witnesses to say that he had seemed perfectly normal during the day.

  ‘And what of the confession?’ she remembered him saying to the jury. ‘Look at him, his size, his demeanour. Think of how he would feel, grief-stricken for his wife. Suffering. Terrified by his surroundings. Intimidated.’

  And that was the conclusion the jury came to. She waited in the Round Hall for the verdict. She watched Patrick, walking backwards and forwards, his black gown flowing around him. She heard his laugh as he joked with his peers. From time to time he looked in her direction. Once he came and sat beside her, as if by chance, casually, his thigh pressing for a moment against hers, and slipped a piece of cardboard into her hand. The top of a cigarette packet with the words ‘I love you’ printed in black ink.

  And she said to him afterwards, ‘But is there no one to speak up for the victim? For the dead woman? No one to take her side, to challenge all those witnesses?’ And he looked at her as if she didn’t understand anything at all and explained that there wasn’t, that the victim had no place in the trial.

  She shifted uneasily on the hard bench. People had crammed into the public seats filling up every available space. McLoughlin had warned her that this would happen. Once the trial began to be reported, curiosity would be excited. She would need to arrive earlier and earlier every day to make sure she got her seat. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, using her elbows to move the man pushed up against her right-hand side a fraction further away. She could smell him. He was sucking extra strong mints, but they couldn’t completely hide the underlying taint of stale sweat and dirty hair.

  ‘Dr James Greenaway,’ the senior counsel called. Margaret watched as the forensic pathologist loped up to take the stand. One gangly arm reached round to smooth in place his long wisps of hair. He dispensed with the oath in double-quick time and perched on the chair, looking like a hare about to leap from the path of a greyhound.

  ‘Dr Greenaway, could you describe to me,’ Douglas began, ‘the scene on the bank of the Grand Canal on Monday the fourteenth August last?’

  Greenaway began. He could have been talking about a picnic, an outing, an occasion of great happiness. He described the weather, the sun, the heat, the water, the wildlife. His melodic voice rose and fell, cushioning, softening the impact of his words. He began to describe Mary’s injuries, beginning with her head. He talked about what he had seen as he looked at her from the canal bank, and afterwards, when, under his instructions, she had been moved. Rigor mortis had not set in so this was not the difficulty it might have been. He differentiated between the damage that had been done to her before she was placed in the water and after. He commented on the work of small rodents, rats and water voles, the marks caused by the dog. Douglas moved on to the post-mortem. He described his observation of the exterior surface of the body, the marks around the wrists, caused by what appeared to be handcuffs, which had been removed before she was put in the plastic bags. There were similar marks around her ankles. Could he say whether or not the handcuffs had been on the body when she had died? Difficult to say, probably not, he thought, as the scabs that had formed were a number of days old.

  ‘Explain to us the nature of the marks here in photograph number thirteen.’

  ‘Ah yes.’ Greenaway put on his glasses. ‘There is what seems to be an extensive burning of the skin, probably by a cigarette end. The deceased appeared to have a series of moles in a line on the inside of her right thigh and it looks as if the cigarette was applied to the skin between these marks, almost like those join-the-dots pictures that children have.’

  ‘I see. And photograph fourteen?’

  ‘Slashes made with a very sharp knife or blade around the nipples on both breasts.’ He peered at the photograph for a few seconds. ‘Very sharp. Almost scalpel-like, these incisions.’

  ‘And do you have any suggestion as to what kind of a knife was used?’

  ‘Possibly a Stanley knife, or a carpet knife, something of that order.’

  ‘Any other marks on the body you should draw our attention to?’

  ‘A number of bite marks on the upper breast, stomach, inner thighs, buttocks.’

  The senior counsel pressed him to move on to the results of the post-mortem.

  ‘Ah, yes, may I, my lord?’ Greenaway gestured to his notebook, addressing the judge, Margaret noted, as the guards had, rather than David Douglas. The pathologist flicked through it, humming softly under his breath.

  ‘Death,’ he said, ‘was caused by an intercranial haemorrhage, as a result of the laceration of the middle meningeal artery.’

  ‘And what was this caused by?’

  ‘Injuries were consistent with a blow, probably from a fist, to the left temple.’ Greenaway rubbed his fingers against the side of his skull.

  ‘And would death have been instantaneous?’

  ‘No.’ Dr Greenaway looked straight at the judge as he answered.

  Not at all, thought Margaret, remembering the diagrams, the descriptions in her textbooks. There would have been a temporary loss of consciousness at the time of the blow, followed by a period of normal consciousness, possibly for one to two hours. Then gradual loss of consciousness again, with death resulting from increased intercranial pressure. The Glasgow scale of consciousness, she remembered, is the standard measurement. They call it the ‘talk and die’ phenomenon.

  McLoughlin had told her. ‘It’s not going to be easy for you,’ he had said. ‘What you have to understand is that as far as the law is concerned nothing exists unless it is said in that courtroom. Practically every single piece of evidence, except for the very occasional exception, must be stated, described, explained, accounted for by word. And you will have to sit there and listen. Everything that happens every day is going to cause you a lot of pain – the description of your daughter’s injuries, the manner of her death, everything will be spelt out, syllable by syllable. If Fitzsimons had pleaded guilty, and we did think he would to begin with, he’d have saved us all a lot of bother, but now that he’s using Patrick Holland, God knows what will happen. Because Holland is the worst or the best, depending on where you’re standing. He’s methodical, relentless, completely ruthless.’

  The senior counsel was speaking again. ‘Let’s move on, Dr Greenaway, to her other injuries.’ Margaret willed her ears to close. The man next to her was making notes. She looked at his lined pad, a leaking biro smearing words across the page. She watched the jury. They were all staring, mesmerized, at James Greenaway’s description. She looked at Patrick. He, too, was making notes, staring down at his pad. Finally she looked at Jimmy Fitzsimons. He was pale. From time to time he ran his tongue over his bottom lip and bit deep into his thumbnail. She wanted to stand up and rush to the doctor and put her hand over his mouth. Leave her alone, she wanted to shout. Don’t do this to her. This body that you describe in such beautiful, careful, fastidious detail doesn’t exist any longer. There are no longer any tissues. No longer any flesh, any blood. There are just my memories of her. Please, please, leave them alone.

  But the process of revelation was relentless. The doctor was now describing the nature of the injuries to her vagina and anus.

  ‘Evidence of semen?’ asked Douglas.

  ‘Actually no. But skin was found under her fingernails which matched that of the accused.’

  Margaret swallowed hard. As the prosecuting counsel sat down, Patrick stood up. He waited until the room was once again in complete silence. He looked around him. Then he began.

  ‘Now, Dr Greenaway, of course we all know your expertise in these matters, and of course
we would not deign to question any of your findings.’ A titter of laughter rose up from the group of journalists. ‘However, Dr Greenaway, there is something in your report which I don’t think the prosecution has seen fit to bring into court. Perhaps you would like to describe to the members of the jury your findings in relation to the condition of Ms Mitchell’s cervix, which,’ and he turned smartly to his right to address the jury, ‘for the benefit of those of you with a less than encyclopaedic knowledge of the anatomy of a woman, is the neck or entrance to the womb.’

  Dr Greenaway hesitated. ‘From my examination,’ he began, ‘I would say that the deceased had been pregnant at some time in the recent past.’

  ‘And, Dr Greenaway, how do you know this?’

  ‘There are physical changes,’ he said. ‘The cervix is slitlike after pregnancy. The skin around the nipples, the areola as it’s called, changes colour, darkens, as does the skin of the vulva.’

  ‘So, can you tell us if that child was carried to full term?’

  ‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘Practically speaking there are no signs, in any woman, to show this, apart from changes to the skin of the lower abdomen, “stretch marks” as they’re commonly called. There were none of these on the body of the deceased, but they do not occur in every pregnancy, so that of itself doesn’t tell us much.’

  ‘You said “had been” pregnant, Dr Greenaway, so she was not pregnant at the time of her death?’

  ‘Definitely not.’

  ‘And, Dr Greenaway, do you know if Mary Mitchell had any children?’

  Again the hesitation. Then the answer. ‘I don’t. Not within my ambit, I’m afraid, my lord.’

  Patrick turned again to face the jury. ‘Well, I do know and I can state quite categorically that Ms Mitchell had not given birth to any living child.’ He paused, and then spoke clearly and slowly. ‘Any living child at all.’

  Greenaway stepped down from the stand. Patrick slumped in his seat. A hiss of interest spread around the room. Margaret looked at Jimmy, at the way he had relaxed back into his bench, the way his eyes shone as he looked across the room at the jury. She could almost hear the tune he was humming. She dropped her gaze to the knot of cotton around her wrist. Still there, frayed, but still there.

  42

  It was winter. It was London. Twenty-one years ago. Sun trickled through the small square frosted window and laid its weak light across Margaret’s bare wrists and hands. She was lying on a trolley, a faded surgical gown, tied criss-cross around her waist, barely covering her knees. She was very cold. She had waited with the ten other women in a large dark room. They sat on either side of a long mahogany table, some leafing through old copies of Cosmopolitan and Woman’s Own, others gazing idly into space. Net curtains shielded them from the view of passers-by, although there was nothing to distinguish the red-brick house from any other on this suburban street. No one spoke. When her name was called she was taken into the anteroom, told to undress and handed the gown and a paper hat. ‘For your hair, dear. Stuff it all in like a good girl, will you?’ Now she lay still, her eyes fixed on a patch of damp that stained the ceiling in an irregular spidery shape. A swing door led into the operating theatre. Familiar sounds filtered through to her. The clang of stainless steel on stainless steel. The beep of an electronic sensor and the chatter of the team.

  ‘. . . so it’s up to you next Saturday, Jim.’

  ‘Well, if you think I’m going to have a barbecue in this weather, you’ve got to be kidding.’

  ‘It’s not a barbecue, not really, but there’ll be fireworks, won’t there? And food and drink? And music. Sarah, you bring your banjo and I’ll bring the guitar.’

  Guy Fawkes Night.

  Remember, remember the fifth of November,

  Gunpowder, treason and plot.

  Remember, remember the first of November, the day that you told your father you were pregnant.

  Her parents had come back from Paris late on Monday evening. She had waited for them. The house was clean and warm. She had bought flowers, bunches of freesias, clear, strong yellow and deep pink. Their gentle sweet scent seeped from room to room. Her father had brought her a present. It was a print from the Louvre.

  ‘La Gioconda,’ he said grandly. ‘I know it’s a bit of cliché, but really, Maggie, she is so beautiful when you actually get to see her. We had to wait until the guided tours had moved out of the way, but I fell in love, instantly. And the way Leonardo has painted her, you feel that you could reach out and put your arms around her waist.’

  ‘Rubbish.’ Catherine stood up abruptly. ‘Romantic rubbish. I’m going to have a bath and go straight to bed. And will someone please bring me a cup of tea. I haven’t had a decent one for days.’

  They had sat in the kitchen drinking first the tea, then Calvados, which he had brought from a small wine shop, ‘just near that famous café, you know the one where Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir used to spend all their time.’ He sniffed the golden liquid. ‘Delicious, this stuff, isn’t it? My favourite, reminds me of picking windfall apples in my granny’s orchard.’ She had watched him with love. At last she felt safe. Her pain, which had coagulated and hardened into a thick crust, began to melt. It would be all right. He would understand. He would hold out his arms, and wrap them around her and take her fear and make it vanish.

  Outside it was a cold night. Later there would be fog, which would soften the trees’ jagged outlines and hug the shore like a mohair shawl. But now the stars stood out from the sky, the shape of the constellations revealed, and ice crystals were beginning to form on the short winter grass, the bare granite walls, the last red rose in the garden, defining its petals with a clear white line. A stray cat had slunk along the back wall above the railway. The light from the kitchen window fanned out into the black. He jumped down onto the path and trotted confidently towards the house. Sometimes the door would be open and he could sneak in to snatch a piece of meat or lick the butter in its dish leaving fine hair-like markings on its smooth surface. Sometimes he could find a place to curl up and sleep, in a basket of clothes from the washing line, or the shelf at the top of the broom cupboard. Tonight the door was closed. He jumped up against it and pushed but it didn’t budge. He picked his way delicately through the flower bed that ran along the wall beneath the window, then climbed up through the branches of a small hebe. From there it was just a step onto the window sill. He sat on the ledge, settling himself into the warmth of his winter coat. But there were noises, loud, from inside. Voices, angry. The cat’s yellow eyes widened. He sat up, and then, as the noises grew and grew, he leaped out over the bushes and back into the safety of the darkness. He prowled around the side of the house, slipping through the bars of the wrought-iron gate. The lid of the dustbin might be loose, and he could nudge it with his head and hunt for whatever scraps of food might be there. But just as he reached the bin the front door opened. A blast of light and noise, footsteps slipping on the gravel, and the loud clang of the front gate. He shrank back beneath the hedge and waited until the door closed, the light went off and the footsteps outside on the path slowly faded.

  She woke early next morning. She turned her head slowly to look at the man lying with his head on the greasy pillow beside her. What was his name? Freddy, Teddy, Eddy? He had bad skin. Acne scars etched deeply into his cheeks and as he turned away from her she could see that they ran across his shoulders too. She hadn’t cared last night. All she’d wanted was someone to put his arms around her, to tell her that he wanted her. It didn’t matter that she’d never met him before, that he was the cousin of a guy in the year below her, that all he talked about was rugby.

  She had got off the bus at Greene’s bookshop and stumbled into the Lincoln Inn. It was packed as always. She pushed her way through the solid mass of bodies crammed up against the bar, men with barrel chests and thick wrists where heavy gold watches nestled in among the black hair. In a corner at the back she found a group of students she vaguely knew. They were surprised to s
ee her, and even more surprised when she bought a drink and stood with them. She knew what they were thinking. Snooty bitch, slumming tonight. She drank quickly, brandy and ginger ale, then staggered down the steep stairs to the tiny ladies’ toilet where she vomited until her knees sagged. Then she drank more and more. Finally at closing time there were just the two of them left in the deserted bar as the lights flicked on and off and a tired barman swept cigarette butts from under their feet.

  She didn’t remember much of what had happened next. They had walked, she was sure of that, to his flat. They had drunk more before he pulled her clothes off and fell on top of her. Now she just wanted to get out, quickly, before he woke. She had phone calls to make, arrangements to take care of. She crawled carefully out from under the blankets. Her clothes were scattered over the dingy carpet. She dressed and found her bag. She didn’t look at the figure in the bed as she quietly opened the door and left.

  It had all been very easy. They had asked her if she was sure of her decision, discussed in a desultory way what her options might be. She didn’t cry any more. She had been certain, but now as she lay on the narrow metal trolley, certainty left her, dribbled away like water seeping through sand. She felt acutely aware of everything around her, the sticky plastic mattress under her bare thighs, the bulky sanitary towel they’d told her to place between her legs. Outside, beyond the glass, a blackbird was singing one of its incessantly happy tunes. She could imagine it, high up in the branches of a leafless cherry tree, the sun shining on its glossy back, its head turned slightly to one side, and its song lifting up over the roofs, catching the attention of every other blackbird in the neighbourhood. She got up and went to the window. She tried to open it, but its old brass handle wouldn’t budge. Her fingers came away stained with green, the same colour as the gown she was wearing.