The Conviction of Cora Burns

by Carolyn Kirby

  …HEARING (Highest audible note…)

  …EYESIGHT (Colour sense…………)

  …SPAN OF ARMS (…feet…inches)

  …EXPIRATION (………cubic inches)

  A corner of Cora’s brain wondered at the purpose of these classifications but multiplying words were still pouring from her into the empty space around the type: grasp, slip, fireman, sway, bang, steep, jump, floor, wall…

  ‘Minute over!’ Violet’s eyebrows arched as she came around to Cora’s side of the footstool. ‘Goodness! Have you done this before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Twenty! I’ve never got that many.’

  ‘You should have another go.’

  Violet shot a sideways glance towards the bookshelves then went to perch on the edge of the armchair’s cracked leather seat where she could not be seen from the back of the room. Cora had no doubt now that the master must be listening, and perhaps watching, from the laboratory.

  ‘No. You go first this time, Cora.’

  ‘If you like.’

  Violet bit her bottom lip and then, instead of turning over a card, she placed a warning forefinger to her lips and then wrote on a scrap in childish spidery capitals:

  WHO IS MY SISTER?

  Cora sniffed. She should have realised that what she’d said in the morning room would not be forgotten. She began to shake her head but Violet, lips tight-pressed and eyes glaring, thrust the written question at her. Cora did not blink as Violet waggled the slip of paper angrily in her face, but the girl’s darkly furrowed brow and quivering chin filled her with sadness. She’d almost forgotten how much rage and yearning could be compressed into the small frame of an unloved child.

  Cora sighed then pulled forward another blank scrap and began to write:

  Her name is Letty Flynn

  She lives in a poor part of town.

  She looks just like you.

  Violet’s eyes followed every loop of the pencil. Then she snatched it out of Cora’s hand. Hourglass and word cards were forgotten as Violet’s pencil scrawled:

  Does she know anything about Me?

  Can you find a way to take me to her?

  How did she come to be in the Slums?

  Do you think she would like to borrow The Keepsake?

  Does she know that our Parents are in India?

  Is she my Twin?

  Cora took the slip. ‘Minute’s up, Miss Violet. Very good. Now I think this had better be my last turn, or Cook will be wondering where I have got to.’

  Slowly and deliberately, so that it might be seen from the bookshelves, Violet inverted the brass hourglass. Sand slithered as the pencil remained hovering in Cora’s hand. Should she tell Violet more? But she had already revealed too much. The pencil formed slow deliberate loops: I cannot say.

  Violet did not wait for the sand to run out. She stamped her foot.

  ‘Three words? Can you not do better? I’ll give you another chance.’

  ‘No. I can’t think of anything else. Giving me more time won’t help. It’s too hard for me. You’d do better to play with someone who can give more useful answers.’

  ‘Like who?’

  Cora shrugged. ‘Mrs Dix?’

  Violet’s plait whipped from one shoulder to the other as she shook her head and set her face in a sulk. She began to gather the loose paper into a pile.

  ‘All right then, I shall. I shall quiz everyone until I find someone who puts down enough words to satisfy me.’

  ‘Maybe nobody knows that many, Miss Violet.’

  ‘Someone does.’

  With this, Violet turned a pointed gaze to the bookshelves and Cora pictured the master behind the leather spines, standing in the laboratory with his eye to a peephole.

  Violet carried the slips of paper to the hearth rug and sank down next to the ash bucket. Cora touched the girl’s shoulder but she did not look up. Instead, with her back to the bookshelves, Violet ripped at the paper until every word fragmented into a meaningless scribble on shreds scattering across the ash.

  specimens

  Later that night, when Ellen had gone up to the attic room but Cook had not yet turned off the gas, Cora brought out the doll with its half-sewn robe and sat at the table under the light. She hoped that upstairs in the narrow bed, Susan Gill would be getting an earful about the joys of Handsworth; how pleasant and varied were the shops on Soho Road, how large and modern was Mr Podesta’s yard. Ellen’s life must stretch out ahead of her, in her own mind at least, as comfortable and predictable; a husband, a home, a child. Cora had never allowed herself to imagine any future at all.

  As Cora sewed, Cook stood at the other end of the table beside a wire rack covered in candied peel. A heavy, fragrant bag of oranges had been delivered that morning by the grocer’s lad. The orange flesh had gone into the big stockpot to make marmalade jelly, and the skin was sliced then boiled all afternoon in sugar syrup. When Cook laid the hot drizzling strips of peel on to the rack, the kitchen had fizzed with orangey sweetness. Even Cora’s Christmas oranges from the Guardians had never smelt that good.

  Cook was using a spatula to lift the cooled peel into a high-sided biscuit tin lined with brown paper. She glanced across at the doll.

  ‘You’re handy with a needle, Cora.’

  ‘I should be. All the hours I spent sewing as a child.’

  ‘At the Union house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How long was you there?’

  Cora took a breath. She had avoided the servants’ questions about her past except for once telling Cook, because she couldn’t seem to avoid it, that she was an orphan from the Birmingham Union Workhouse. She knew Cook better now.

  ‘I was always there.’

  ‘Was you not boarded out? Or put into service for some of the time?’

  ‘No. Not until I was sixteen.’

  ‘Was that not odd? I thought they try nowadays to give the kiddies, especially the orphans and foundlings, a bit more of a life…’

  Cora’s needle remained suspended above the muslin and ribbon. The doll’s pinhead eyes looked up at her.

  ‘Not me.’

  Cook sighed. ‘Forgive me, Cora, I don’t mean to pry. Or to stir up bad memories.’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. They’re not bad memories on the whole. I never starved or froze. I learned to read and write, and to wield a needle as you see.’

  ‘But did they care for you? And treat you kindly?’

  Cook’s face suddenly knotted into a look of such pitiful concern that Cora realised, with a jolt, it could not have been provoked by Cora’s own childhood predicament. Cook’s keen interest in the Union house was clearly much closer to her heart than that.

  Cora tried to appear indifferent. ‘Some of the overseers were kind.’

  ‘But not all?’

  ‘It was like anywhere. There was both good and bad.’

  Cook looked down at the peel on the rack. Her breath seemed to stutter.

  ‘You’ve done all right though, Cora, haven’t you, in the end?’

  Cora could not answer. What would she say? Yes, apart from having a child out of wedlock or yes, apart from nineteen months in gaol? At least Cook’s question showed that she was still ignorant about the worst of Cora’s past. But her unanswered question hardened the air between them.

  Cook broke the silence by clanking open the biscuit tin and picking out a stick of sugary peel. She shook the tin towards Cora.

  ‘Here, have one. Take a few. I think we deserve ’em.’

  The tin was decorated with a hunting scene; a red-coated huntsman offered up the dead fox’s tail to a thin-lipped lady riding side-saddle in a blue habit. Cora bit into the orange peel and her mouth burst with citrus sharpness through soft flakes of sugar. It was better than any shop-bought sweet she had tasted. Perhaps it
was the sharp-sourness that caused Cook to wipe a finger across the corner of her eye.

  Cora pushed the needle into the cloth, still unsettled by Cook’s question. Had she done all right? Apart from being a hard worker and quick on the uptake, Cora could not say what sort of person she really was. Sometimes, there was no telling what she would do next, as Samuel Shepherd had found out. Perhaps only Alice Salt, or George Bowyer, could tell Cora the truth about herself.

  She felt a prick into her thumb and jerked her hand away from the muslin. One drop of blood and the pure whiteness of the dress would be ruined.

  ‘Cook, do you have a thimble? I will return it directly.’

  Cook was blowing her nose on a lace-edged handkerchief. She nodded and went to the dresser. As the drawer creaked open, they heard the first thud. Cook rolled her eyes at the ceiling. Then there was another, louder bang. Something as heavy as a water jug, or a lamp, must have been dropped from a height. There was a shout too; a woman’s voice: shrill but indistinct. It might have been the missus or Mrs Dix.

  Cora’s eyes rose to the ceiling. ‘Who was that?’

  Cook shook her head. ‘It’ll be herself. Creating.’

  ‘Should we do something?’

  ‘Aye, put on the milk pan. No doubt Mrs Dix’ll ring for milk if she thinks we’re still up.’

  Outside the kitchen door, Cora stopped in the passage with the pan in her hand. There were still noises from above; voices slightly raised and footsteps, but calmer. In the larder, she poured milk from the covered jug. A warm bodily smell oozed from the cuts of meat hanging from hooks against the walls. Perhaps Ellen would be happy spending her days cleaning a room that smelled of horse and cooking poor imitations of the dishes that Samuel was so fond of here. But Cora would rather unpick oakum than act as an unpaid skivvy to a man. She knew that, at least, about herself.

  There was another thud upstairs before the real crashing began. Bang after bang. China ornaments perhaps? And then something as heavy as the potted fern on the landing. Another crash came, just as heavy, but with the shatter of glass. A bottle? A window pane? Cora glanced up as hard footsteps, running, shook the ceiling. Then came a scream.

  Cora hurried back to the kitchen, milk slopping. ‘Should we go up? Could it be an intruder?’

  Cook wiped her hands on her apron. ‘We’ll both go. You take the rolling pin.’

  Cook picked up the poker from the stand by the range and Cora followed her out of the door. As they climbed haltingly up the back stairs, a clamour erupted; doors slammed, glass shattered. Through it all a woman screamed obscenities that Cora could only just make out.

  ‘Fiend… Judas… devil!’

  And then, at the top of the stairs Cora heard the master’s voice raised and agitated.

  ‘Stop, damn you. Stop, I say.’

  All of the doors leading on to the landing were open but it was from the laboratory that the dull half-light of an oil lamp burned. Cook edged towards it, the poker held up in front of her but as she reached the open doorway, her hand lowered to her side. The sour-sharp odour of the specimen jars wafted from the laboratory. Cora gripped the glass rolling pin so hard that her wrist throbbed but when she too reached the door, it almost dropped from her hand.

  The room had been ravaged; the camera and its tripod knocked to the floor, the specimen jars all pulled from the shelves and smashed. The linoleum swam with preserving fluid and dead creatures. And at the back of the laboratory, both in billowing white nightgowns, were Mr and Mrs Jerwood. The mistress’s face was ashen and wild-eyed, straggled with greying hair. Her arms were pinned behind her back by the master. Blood ran freely from his cheek on to his neck. His chest heaved as he shouted to Cook.

  ‘See to Mrs Dix. Make sure she is all right. Quick, woman. Go!’

  Cook shook herself and dashed across the landing into the mistress’s bedroom. Cora could not think what to do or say. Then from the attic stairs, Susan Gill and Ellen appeared wrapped in shawls, their faces white as their nightdresses. And behind them came another smaller figure in white. Violet pushed herself forward until she stood on the threshold of the laboratory. The girl’s lips were moving but the words almost soundless.

  ‘Mamma… Oh Mamma…’

  Cora stared uncomprehending at Violet. But then her voice was drowned by a hollow laugh that grew shriller and more sinister until it was eerie as a vixen’s howl. Words screeched through strangled gasps.

  ‘See her? There she is. The girl. The harlot. The murderess. There! There!’

  The master struggled to keep a grip on his wife’s arm and force it to her side but he lacked the strength to stop it from rising; a rigid finger extended to point straight at Cora.

  Twenty-four

  Weds 16th

  My research into hypnotherapeutic treatment for the insane has been interrupted by a relapse in the condition of Mary B. In the weeks since her last trance, she has fallen in and out of a melancholic stupor and, having refused to eat, has had to be fed on several occasions by the stomach pump. When I examined her in the infirmary last week, she presented a sorry sight; very thin and her nose reddened from the introduction of the tube. For the past few days, however, her meals have become more regular and she has responded well to my prescription for daily doses of 2gr quinine and 4oz brandy. The knife wounds to her upper legs have all but healed.

  Matron Abbott advises that there has been no further speech from Mary B, either conscious or whilst asleep, but having discussed her condition at length, we have agreed that Mary B should again be fit for hypnosis this coming Sunday. The trance may produce distress, but Matron and I agree that this catharsis could be ultimately beneficial to Mary B’s cure. I prescribed beef tea and custard to be added to the patient’s diet.

  Thurs 17th

  I slept little last night as my mind cantered around the likely aetiology of Mary B’s condition. Might her insanity be rooted in the poverty and rural squalor of her childhood? Yet the few words she spoke about this time, and of her mother, seemed fond. Was her lunacy instead the result of overwork and exploitation at the ‘fine house’ she mentioned? Yet it is hard to imagine how a young girl might have lapsed from respectable domestic service to a life of crime. The father of Mary B’s child, whoever he might be, is no doubt the villain of this story, although I cannot ignore the evidence of the admission certificate which declared Mary B to be a violent prisoner; a danger to herself and those around her. Our more recent experience of her self-inflicted harm with the kitchen knife would seem to confirm her inherent tendency to viciousness at moments of distress.

  Having thrashed about in my bedclothes long enough, I resolved to further research Mary B’s past and in particular the nature of the crime that resulted in her conviction. As soon as is practicable, I will take an afternoon stroll along the canal and introduce myself to the medical authorities at Birmingham Gaol. With this hopeful plan in my head, I was finally able to sleep.

  Fri 18th

  I find myself quite shaken by my visit to Birmingham Gaol. Dr Grainger had kindly supplied me with a letter of introduction to Dr Tomlinson, the prison’s medical officer and this peculiarly genial fellow gave up more than an hour of his time to show me into the gaol and to look through the records (such as they were) which might pertain to Mary B.

  Once I had passed through the castellated gatehouse (as impressive and foreboding as any medieval citadel) and been welcomed by Dr Tomlinson, we entered the record office. At first, the prison’s atmosphere was akin to any public building that caters for the poor. Asylum, workhouse and infirmary all have the same dull corridors that smell of cabbage and drains. The administrative portion of the gaol was no different.

  Dr Tomlinson helped me to look through the cabinets for a female admission prior to June 1865 that showed the name Mary B−. Alas we could find nothing. Dr Tomlinson explained that this period fell before the incorporation of the gaol i
nto the control of Her Majesty’s government. In the sixties, the Borough Gaol, as it was then, operated on rather slap-dash lines and he was not surprised that I was unable to locate information about my patient.

  By way of consolation, Dr Tomlinson offered to give me a brief tour of the wings. As we climbed the echoing metal stairways and surveyed the galleries that radiate from the gaol’s fan-lit core, I struggled to suppress the rage growing inside me. Miserable stripe-clad figures shuffled along the hollow walkways. Some were shackled and hooded; all appeared weighed down by humiliation. Dr Tomlinson cheerfully outlined the regime; how little contact each prisoner has with any other, how meals are passed through a slot in each cell door, how prisoners are made to face away from each other even during services in the chapel. The female prisoners too, are subject to a regime of isolation and minimal communication.

  I strived to keep my composure in the face of the good doctor’s obvious pride in this barbaric regime. How can Man, already doomed to a short life dominated by illness and grief, inflict such purposeless brutality upon his fellow Man? If any place on earth was designed to produce lunatics, then this gaol must be it.

  At that point, pleading a little queasiness, I thanked Dr Tomlinson for his informative tour and promised to repay the favour at the asylum.

  Sun 20th

  After chapel, Matron Abbott brought Mary B to my office as arranged. I must say I felt a little wary of continuing the session when I saw the look in the patient’s eyes. They had the classic dullness of extreme melancholia, as if their twin points of light had been touched out with grey paint. Mrs Abbott assured me, however, that Mary B had been much brighter upon waking this morning; almost her old self. So, we decided to proceed with the hypnosis and Mary B made no sign of complaint. The patient eventually fell under with the same method as before, but her descent was more halting.