The Unfortunate Victim

by Greg Pyers

  Tom slapped Otto’s back, and the two men allowed themselves a small celebration that the day had begun as well as could be expected.

  Pitman’s was a bare three hundred yards from Vincent Street, and Otto and Tom stepped beneath its flimsy veranda as a curtain of rain from the west swept into town. Otto knocked hard, and, a half-minute later, Maria Molesworth unbolted the ill-fitting front door and let them in. In her face, Otto sensed there might even be some relief that he had come. In the early morning, without the yellow candle glow, the room was a cold and austere place. Rain pattered on the bark roof and smacked the ground as it cascaded from the overhang.

  Otto removed his hat. ‘Morning, Maria. Would you mind fetching Mr and Mrs Pitman? I must speak with them.’

  She nodded and left.

  ‘Thank you,’ he called after her.

  ‘I think we should brace ourselves for a storm,’ Tom said. Whether he meant one of a meteorological kind, Otto didn’t wonder; he was steeling himself for what he had to do.

  Husband and wife appeared as two halves of a wild-haired beast roused from its den. John Pitman’s socks were holed, his trouser braces dangling; Joyce was in her petticoats, with a little modesty lent by a shawl. She led the objection to this early-morning intrusion.

  ‘I’m not having this harassment, I tell you, Berliner. Maria, you go fetch Sergeant Telford —’

  ‘That won’t be necessary, Mrs Pitman,’ Otto said, ‘because I’m here to arrest your husband for the murder of Margaret Stuart.’

  All eyes, Tom’s included, were on Otto, who wondered whether it would have been possible to throw a bigger cat among the pigeons.

  Joyce Pitman slumped into a chair and turned a stricken look on her husband, who looked unconvincing in his expressions of outrage.

  Maria was the first to speak in protest. ‘No, it’s not true!’

  ‘Convince me then,’ Otto said.

  John Pitman spoke. ‘Well, I can tell you, Detective, as God is my witness, I never killed that poor woman. I’d never so much as harm a hair of her pretty head.’

  Otto showed Pitman a photograph of the knife.

  ‘Is this yours?’

  ‘I told you it is already!’ Mrs Pitman said, heaving herself to her husband’s side.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘like my wife says. It’s my knife. It looks like my knife.’

  ‘And these clothes?’ Otto handed him the photograph.

  ‘I’ve already told him they’re not your clothes, John,’ Mrs Pitman said, with great exhalation.

  Pitman was studying the image, while Mrs Pitman remained in a state of irritation alongside.

  ‘Yes, Detective, these are my clothes.’ He turned to his wife. ‘Look, on the shirt, that’s that odd button you put on. And that little tear on the leg. Don’t you remember, you stitched that? How you could get that wrong?’

  Mrs Pitman craned for a closer look. ‘Oh, yes! You’re right, love.’ She straightened. ‘I’ve made so many repairs to your clothes, I forget! Goodness me. But these are so dirty —’

  ‘When I tell you that your knife, Mr Pitman, was found by me and Mr Chuck here, wrapped within these garments, in a mine shaft within a hundred yards of Stuart’s cottage, you’ll understand why we’re asking you these questions. You see, the knife has been identified by the eminent Doctor Doolittle as one that could well have inflicted the fatal wounds on Mrs Stuart. And you see those stains? They’re not dirt, Mrs Pitman. Some are excrement, but most are blood — Maggie Stuart’s blood, we can be certain.’

  Pitman began to pace. He ran a hand through his greasy hair and across his thick stubble.

  ‘This is madness. A man has already been convicted, for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘That’s right, love,’ Mrs Pitman said. ‘Say nothing. David Rose will be dead by ten.’

  It was good advice, Otto had to concede. He would just have to provoke them all the more. And bluff.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Pitman, but if no one can corroborate your whereabouts between ten and eleven on the night of December 28th, I shall order a stay of execution while your involvement is investigated —’

  ‘You can’t do that,’ Mrs Pitman scoffed. ‘He’s bluffing, love —’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, be quiet, Joyce! Look, Berliner, they are my clothes, all right? But I never killed Maggie! I was here, the whole evening.’

  Mrs Pitman was on her feet, moving to her husband. ‘Of course you didn’t! Tell him nothing, love,’ she said. ‘Detective Walker told me Berliner’s got no authority.’

  Pitman pushed his wife’s reaching hand away and turned on her.

  ‘Why do you care so much what I say? I have nothing to hide.’

  She reached for him again, and again he swept her away.

  ‘Mr Pitman, if you can prove that you were here between ten and eleven that night, you will have no case to answer, and I promise you Mr Chuck and I will leave you in peace.’

  Otto looked to Maria, and saw in her quivering lips and ashen face a woman in conflict. He was certain now of his hunch; she had come home early, and had spent those hours with her employer, her lover. My God, Otto thought, was she really weighing her secret affair against a man’s life?

  ‘I was with him,’ she said.

  The room was silent. Outside, water dripped and the wind whistled.

  Mrs Pitman stood heaving, as a volcano blows ash before erupting. But Maria wasn’t waiting.

  ‘Don’t worry yourself, Mrs Pitman, I’m not proud of myself. There was no love in it; it was a one-time business arrangement.’

  ‘I know you’re lying,’ Mrs Pitman said.

  ‘What the hell, Joyce? Don’t you see, she’s just given me an alibi!’

  ‘I might have known she’d be turning tricks behind my back.’ Mrs Pitman was glowering — a fearsome sight with her hair all awry.

  ‘So what, Joyce, we had a fuck! We run a brothel, remember!’ Pitman couldn’t suppress the merest chuckle, though he was red-faced in disbelief and fury at the woman he suddenly seemed to find so repulsive. Tom readied to intervene lest he assault her. Otto signalled to stand to and let them have it out. Far from being intimidated by her spouse, Mrs Pitman met the challenge full-on.

  ‘I don’t care now if they hang you, John. Now I think about it, you probably did kill Maggie Stuart, ’cause she would’ve turned you down. She had too much class for the likes of you —’

  Pitman had been thinking. He looked at his wife, his eyes a window to a brain recalling events and making calculations.

  ‘How did you know, eh?’ he said, waggling his index finger at her. ‘How did you know?’ He walked away, agitated, muttering. Something occurred to him. He spun to face her. ‘The day after the murder, in this room, I remember, you said Maggie was drenched in her own blood, and “lying up there like that”, exposed, violated. How would you know how she was lying? How would you know her nightdress was up, that she was violated? How would you know that?’

  Mrs Pitman affected puzzlement. ‘Everyone knew. Word gets around.’

  ‘Not that fast! You knew hours after she was found, how she was lying — across the bed, legs apart, dress up, like someone had raped her. You knew all that! So who told you? Because I didn’t!’

  Mrs Pitman approached her husband. ‘John, you’ve explained where you were that night, so the police can leave now.’ She faced Otto. ‘Like you promised.’

  Otto tore a page from his notebook and dashed off three lines. He gestured for Tom to come.

  ‘My colleague will take this note to the Telegraph Office. The message will be transmitted to Castlemaine, ordering that the execution of David Rose must not go ahead. He will then summon the police here to make the arrest.’ He glanced at the clock above the door. It was a minute to nine. He knew the police would see he wasn’t on the coach, and would be here within ten minutes anyway
.

  Tom took the note and departed.

  DAVID ROSE WAS LED from the condemned cell directly onto the first-floor gallery of the gaol’s central wing. Before him lay the drop; it formed a metal bridge across the corridor to the gallery on the other side. Above it was the beam with the fateful rope dangling from it.

  He stood calm and composed outside the cell door, dressed in prison garb, with only socks on his feet.

  ‘I’ll not be hanged in my shoes,’ he’d declared, and no one had denied him.

  Alongside him was Archdeacon Crawford, given the signal now by the sheriff to guide the prisoner forward. Rose moved unassisted, though he’d been pinioned, his ankles strapped and arms pulled in a hug across the front, with his wrists tied at the back. He shuffled onto the bridge, keeping to the iron railing, and at the centre he stopped. He looked down at the sixty witnesses looking back at him from the ground floor. He did not flinch, nor sway, nor pant.

  Crawford read a prayer, then gathered himself to address the prisoner in an unsteady voice.

  ‘David Rose, in the name of God, just and merciful, who knows all things, and into whose awful presence your soul is now about to be sent, and before whom I warn you not to appear with guilt unconfessed, and with a lie. In his name, as his minister, I call upon you to answer in truth this question, ere it be too late. Did you murder Margaret Stuart?’

  Into the cold silence, Rose replied, distinctly and deliberately, ‘I did not.’

  MRS PITMAN WAS AT Otto’s ear. ‘Arrest? What are you talking about, Berliner? My husband was home all that night, even if it was with this cow.’ She rounded on Maria. ‘There’s nothing lower in this world than a cheating whore.’

  ‘Mrs Pitman,’ Otto said, blocking her line of sight to Maria, ‘George Stuart told me that the only people he told about his night shift were his wife, the girl Louisa Goulding, and you. No one else.’

  ‘I don’t remember it.’

  Otto saw her glance at the clock. Ten past. He could sense that the moment of resolution was very near.

  ‘Mrs Pitman, you’re a jealous woman, aren’t you? Jealous of Margaret Stuart, in particular, the beautiful young neighbour who walked by this house every day. You couldn’t compete with that; you knew your husband had designs on her, and, like many men, would have been intimate with her if she allowed it.’ Otto turned to Pitman. ‘To be fair to you, Mrs Pitman, I think such a conviction would be well founded. Your husband is most probably a man of considerable moral elasticity.’

  Pitman shook his head, in a concession that any words of protest he might utter would ring hollow.

  Otto turned back to Mrs Pitman. ‘But surely not so morally elastic that he would countenance murder of the woman he desired?’

  Here Pitman found his voice. ‘I told you I would never harm that girl.’

  Mrs Pitman had been silent and still, offering no protest, and Otto knew it was time to increase the pressure. ‘Mrs Pitman, I believe you left Christy’s Minstrels early that night, changed into your husband’s clothes — you had them secreted somewhere, in your woodshed maybe — and, so attired, you paid a visit to the Stuart cottage.’

  ‘Dressed as my husband? That is ridiculous.’

  ‘No, Mrs Pitman, not dressed as your husband, but as a man. These were ordinary clothes that any man could have worn. Even you didn’t recognise them,’ he added, allowing himself a smirk.

  Mrs Pitman jabbed a finger at the photograph. ‘There’s no soot on them clothes. How can that be when the killer came down the chimney?’

  Otto shook his head. ‘You came through the front door, Mrs Pitman. I know this, because while there was blood on the doorknob, there was none on the key, which meant that Maggie must have unlocked the door to let her killer in. This means she knew who it was who’d come knocking at that late hour. Further, George Stuart said the marks on the chimney were not made by clothing, but by the brush his wife used to whitewash with; I’ve read the trial reports, the inquest transcript, and, most importantly, heard Mr Chuck’s meticulously detailed first-hand account, so be assured that I am fully informed.’

  Pitman was staring at his wife. ‘You killed Maggie?’ He spun away from her, turning his head this way and that, as if searching for explanation amid the furniture. Maria Molesworth sat in a corner, stricken and motionless.

  Mrs Pitman was on her feet, glancing at the clock. Otto finished what he’d started.

  ‘You took that knife, and you went in disguise because your intention was to kill Maggie Stuart. You could have changed your mind, but there you were, in her house, this beautiful young woman in her nightdress. And there’s you. What else could you do, but kill her? You’re a large and powerful woman, Mrs Pitman, and you used your advantage to hold Maggie down, while you stabbed this knife again and again at her throat. And when you were done, you arranged the body of this virtuous young woman in the most egregious manner. What a cold, calculating woman you are, Mrs Pitman.’

  Joyce Pitman stood very still, her face unreadable. Was she simply dumbfounded by outrageous allegations, or pondering what she should do, now that the truth was out? And then she removed all doubt with a glance at the clock. She smirked. ‘Twenty-five past nine, Detective. Looks like your assistant has failed —’

  John Pitman’s hands were at his wife’s shoulders, swivelling her so close that she could breathe his rage and incomprehension.

  ‘Please, Joyce, for pity’s sake, tell me you didn’t do it,’ he said in breaking voice.

  For a moment, it seemed that Mrs Pitman was considering a denial, but even she could see it was too late for that, and now the whole horror of her jealousy spilled from her mouth.

  ‘How could I go on living in this place, while ever she was next door! I saw you, looking at her, and don’t you deny it—’

  ‘You murdered her for that! You stupid, mad woman! Of course I looked at her. And I’ll tell you this, Joyce, I imagined her in my bed. What man wouldn’t? She was beautiful—’

  Here was a word above all words to stab into Mrs Pitman’s very heart. She broke away, angry and fierce, as if her husband’s admission had vindicated her crime.

  Horses came to a stop outside. Loud knocks set the front door shaking.

  Mrs Pitman hurried to open it, to Telford, Walker, and Brady. Otto saw what she was up to. If she got away long enough for Rose to hang, she’d be untouchable.

  ‘Sergeant Telford, thank God.’ She pointed at Otto. ‘That man is harassing me and my husband.’

  She bustled by the policemen and into the street.

  ‘Stop her, Telford, for heaven’s sake!’

  But Telford was having none of it.

  ‘Give up, Berliner.’ He grinned as he advanced on Otto, while Walker and Brady stood guard at the door. ‘We gave you fair warning, Otto, but you’re just too bloody pompous for your own good.’

  Telford was close now. Mr Pitman was making for the door, to set out after his wife. Walker and Brady stood aside to let him through. Otto saw a chance, and took it. In a moment, he was at Pitman’s side and slipping out with him.

  On Albert Street, the rain had eased and traffic had built up. Mrs Pitman was thirty yards towards town, glancing behind as she bustled on. Her freedom was a matter of the smallest delay. Had the telegram got through to Castlemaine, Otto wondered. Had Tom even sent it? He should have been back by now. Otto felt Telford’s meaty hand on his shoulder. He broke away in pursuit of the killer.

  ‘Berliner!’ Telford barked, as Otto closed in on his suspect. Mrs Pitman saw him, and struck out across the boggy street. An outbound coach was approaching. Mrs Pitman made her dash, but hadn’t reckoned on the thick mud; her dress and feet anchored her, and she fell flat to the road before the pounding hooves. The driver shouted, but he was too late; his wheels had already ridden over her limp body.

  ‘PRAY FOR ME.’ THE words were softly spoken, fo
r Crawford’s ears only. The archdeacon squeezed Rose’s forearm, and saw that the condemned man’s hands were twitching. Crawford stepped away to the wall. The hangman stepped forward, pulled down the cap, and deftly fitted the noose over the head. He drew it tight, and there were gasps from below when the semblance of a human face appeared against the shroud. Breathing drew in the linen and blew it back out. The hangman stepped to the side, withdrew the bolt, and David Rose was suddenly a dead weight gently swinging.

  Epilogue

  WEDNESDAY 23rd AUGUST 1865

  LINDEN’S GENTLEMEN’S SALON, COLLINS STREET MELBOURNE

  The murderer had a very bad head. The forehead was low and retreating, there was very little crown, while the animal bumps at the back of the skull were largely developed.

  Otto put down his newspaper, closed his eyes, and expected to yield to the rake of the comb across his scalp, the soft, padded leather beneath him, and the muffled rhythm of the street outside. Yet his troubled mind would not cease its wandering over the deflating disappointment of the week just past.

  What profit, he wondered, was there to be salvaged from this failed mission to save a man? The knowledge that he had been right, his detractors wrong, and that he had stood by his conviction in the face of menace and ridicule? Yes, for this he could rightly be proud. He’d tried, but they wouldn’t listen. The telegram had been sent, but no one had read it. Otto sighed. So much incompetence! And so, there would be no accolade for exemplary detective work, no reflected commendation for his Private Inquiry Office. And no public condemnation of Joyce Pitman, nor justice for David Rose. No, all Otto’s good work of the past few days would remain forever unsung …

  A thought struck him: this would be his penance, not just for bringing in an innocent man, but for the hubris that had been his motivation for doing so. Yes, from this he would profit, being reminded of the simple lesson never to mind what lesser men might think of him.

  It was small consolation, but that’s all there was, so now he did surrender to the chair and thought of brighter things: of the friend he had made in Tom Chuck, and of his future. He would remain a detective, but one unencumbered, unhindered, unfettered by police department inefficiencies, pettiness, and ineptitude. He’d already decided long ago that while ever he remained a salaried employee, he would never be free of the likes of Telford and Walker. So why was he waiting?