Heaven Knows Who

by Christianna Brand

  Mr Strathern ‘could not answer that distinctly’. But a moment later, he did answer it at least fairly distinctly: he said he thought it was in the course of the husband’s examination—which lasted something under an hour.

  The examinations of the prisoners had been ‘taken in the usual way’. The Procurator-Fiscal asked the questions ‘as far as I allowed him, and I dictated the answers to a clerk’. Mrs M’Lachlan was a second time examined, some articles having been found in the interval bearing on the case. ‘The second examination was conducted in the same way as the first, but she volunteered an explanation which I thought it right to take down.’ It all sounded nice and smooth until Mr Clark pounced with his next question: at what stage was it made known to the prisoner that the articles had been found? Some introductory interrogatories were put first, admitted Mr Strathern, but these lasted only a few minutes.

  They must have lasted, in fact, for at least two hours while poor Jessie painfully unfolded her gabble of lies about her movements up at Hamilton; they ended with her categorically denying, under questioning, that she had ever seen the articles—which at that moment the Sheriff-Substitute had in his keeping, in the black japanned box. Only then was she told that they had been found.

  It was Jno. Gemmel’s turn next. The Procurator-Fiscal came in for a pretty bad time, and wriggled most painfully on the hook of his knowledge or ignorance of James M’Lachlan’s absence from Glasgow at the time of the murder. ‘It was not known, though reported.…’ ‘We had no means of ascertaining it.…’ ‘I did not personally make enquiries after her husband but I got reports from some of the criminal officers.…’

  ‘Had you not got reports from some of the criminal officers prior to the examination?’

  ‘I may; and personally I made some investigation before he was examined.’ (No one seems to have commented that he had just stated the exact contrary.) ‘I had no reason to believe that he was out of town before that period.’

  ‘Had you any reason to doubt it?’

  ‘I cannot say that I had any reason to doubt it.’

  The judge here intervened. ‘Can you state whether in fact you doubted it or not?’ But Jno. said no, he couldn’t. He was not satisfied that M’Lachlan was out of town. ‘It was stated by some persons in the house where the husband was. I had reason to doubt it, because I was not satisfied that he was out of town.’

  Mr Clark: ‘Did you not say that you had no reason to doubt it? Didn’t you say so?’

  Mr Gemmel: ‘I think I did.’

  Mr Clark: ‘And now you say you had!’

  Lord Deas wound the whole thing into a not very neat cocoon. Would it be correct, he asked Mr Gemmel, to take him down as having said: ‘I heard he had been out of town from the morning of the fourth, and I had no reason to doubt he had been so. I was not satisfied it was true.’ Jno. grasping eagerly at any form of words which would end this back-and-forth argument, said yes, it would.

  Mr Clark asked a few more questions, got him tangled up as to when he had made enquiries at the ship’s agent in Glasgow and finally let him go. He must have been considerably the worse for wear.

  Mr John Fleming succeeded the Procurator-Fiscal in the box and gave evidence of his return from Dunoon and the discovery of the body, his own precipate flight from the house in search of help and comfort, his return with Dr Ebenezer Watson. ‘He came with me and I took him downstairs and showed him the body. He put his finger on the hip and said, “Quite cold; has been dead for some time,” and asked me if I had sent for the police.’

  Mr Rutherfurd Clark’s first questions showed clearly how the defence was to be conducted. They related entirely to old Mr Fleming. Did your father attend your office? Did he collect rents for you? Was this his occupation early in July, at the time of the murder? What was his usual state of health? What was his state of health when you left for Dunoon on Friday? What was his state of health when you returned on the Monday?

  His father was quite well, said Mr Fleming. ‘He was often ailing with cold, but he was quite well, I think, that morning. I think he was quite well when I returned on Monday.’

  He described his first attempts to get through the pantry window and so into the area and in again at one of the bedroom windows: he had forgotten that those windows were barred. Then he had noticed the pantry key and tried that in the lock.

  They came to the curious business of the key in the lock of the bedroom door.

  Mr Clark: ‘When you put the key into the lock did you press out any key inside?’ ‘I don’t think so. The key went in freely; I didn’t hear any key fall inside.’

  ‘Have you always thought so?’

  ‘I don’t know how to answer that question.’

  ‘I will tell you how to answer—have you expressed that opinion to anyone?’

  Mr Fleming had expressed that opinion to P.C. Cameron and also to Dr Watson as they hurried back to the house (and to Chrystal the grocer too, Mr Clark reminded him, which was rather naughty, as Mr Chrystal was not called to give evidence and therefore should not have been quoted). Mr Fleming now denied it, however, or rather, in his eminently fair and honest way, simply reiterated, ‘I don’t think I did.’ He could swear that the door was locked; but he really could not say whether or not there had been any key inside. Under re-examination by Mr Gifford, for the Prosecution, he repeated that he had seen no key of the bedroom door when he got into the room, and if there had been one, he thought he would probably have stepped on it. ‘I was a good deal excited and if it is thought I said anything about finding a key inside the servant’s bedroom door I must have been misunderstood. I really cannot recollect saying anything at all about it.’ It is an odd little incident; but probably, in the end, Mr Fleming’s own explanation is correct enough—he was overexcited and was misunderstood. There seems no earthly reason to suppose that in fact there was any key inside the lock. It would, of course, have been to old Fleming’s advantage to have proved that there was: but his son certainly did not suspect him at this time, nor was he sufficiently calm to have made up this incident to protect the old man. And now that it might be a point in his favour, we find the son nevertheless honourably denying it.

  The only way to get into the area, said Mr Fleming, in reply to Mr Clark, was by climbing over the railing, jumping down into the area and getting in through the pantry window. There was a padlock to the pantry window but it had not been in use for some time. There was a ‘snib’ upon it, but he couldn’t remember whether or not it was fastened that day. The window opened quite easily.

  A juror, apparently infected already by the judge’s habit of asking what, from a reading of the trial, would appear to be largely unnecessary questions, here enquired whether it was possible for a person to get into the house by the window if they were to get over the railing. Lord Deas very properly pointed out that the witness had that moment said that it was.

  He himself asked Mr Fleming, before they let him go, if he knew what his father’s age was. ‘I believe,’ said John Fleming, ‘that he was eighty-seven on the ninth of August last.’

  And that in turn showed how the prosecution—in the capable hands of Lord Deas—was to be conducted.

  John Fleming, junior, followed his father. In the course of his brief examination, the prosecution were assisted by no less than eleven questions from the bench, every one of which might safely have been left to counsel. Mr Rutherfurd Clark asked him only three questions. Two were about the ‘smell’ in the basement which had caused him to go down the passage and throw open the back door. But it was not a smell, said John, just a closeness.

  Mr Clark: ‘Was there any word of Jessie going away on the Friday?’

  ‘No,’ said John.

  But that might make it look even odder that old Mr Fleming had apparently been ready to believe that she had gone. His lordship came to the rescue. ‘Not that you heard of?’

  ‘Not that I heard of,’ agreed John, obediently.

  Young Fleming stepped down; and—‘n
imbly’, reported the Morning Journal, leading organ of the M’Lachlanites—old Fleming stepped up.

  Sensation in court.

  A drawing of him made in court shows a thin, rather bent old man, apparently using a stick to support himself; with a bald head, surrounded by a thick fringe of white hair and long white side-whiskers. His nose is high and thin with a tendency to ‘nut-cracker’ with his chin; his mouth is thin and his eye has a rather leery sideways look. There is nothing about the picture of doddering or senility, nothing to suggest a man of nearly ninety years—nothing, indeed, to suggest any great age, except for the stoop, the white hair and the suggestion of a stick. It must be added, however, that it was fashionable among the M’Lachlanites to believe him to be in fact seventy-eight and not the other way about, and the nasty, thin-lipped, sly face depicted would lead one to suppose that the drawing was made by an artist not too favourably inclined—a M’Lachlanite, perhaps, who would not go out of his way to make ‘the auld devil’ seem more frail—or any more attractive—than he really was. He does seem, nevertheless, to have been pretty spry as he mounted the steps to the box and to have had all the appearance of excellent health and spirits. His conscience, at any rate, was in splendid condition. He had been visited by his pastor, the Reverend John Aikman, a few days earlier, who had had a long private interview with him. He had given, that gentleman later declared, precisely the same account of his actings during the crucial days as he gave the Court—the reader will judge in due course how possible this can have been—and had assured him that he had been praying away like anything. Mr Aikman accepted this as a matter of course. ‘Ay, but yae prayer,’ said the old man. Mr Aikman looked him sternly in the face (or searchingly in the face, he couldn’t afterwards be sure which) and asked him what the prayer was. That God would strengthen his recollection, said old Mr Fleming, so that he could tell all he knew about this awfu’ business; for really his memory was terrible, ‘I lay things out of my hand the yae minute and forget them the next.’ (No one else mentions this peculiarity; but Mr Fleming’s faculties, hitherto remarkably good, had suddenly taken a turn for the worse all round—he had grown hard of hearing, taken to spectacles and now here is his memory growing treacherous.) Mr Aikman went on looking him sternly (or searchingly) in the face. ‘But what about your conscience in this matter?’ he suggested. Mr Fleming said that he had many sins to answer for but on this he was perfectly clear. ‘Would you feel perfectly comfortable in your mind,’ insisted Mr Aikman, ‘if summoned from the witness box to that Judgement Bar where the secrets of the heart are known?’ Mr Fleming drew himself up ‘with manifest indignation and surprise’ and said crisply, ‘Perfectly, so far as that’s concerned.’

  Mr Aikman could hold out no longer. The impression produced upon his mind, he declared, was that the old gentleman looked with horror upon the murder but was entirely ignorant and therefore innocent of ‘the circumstances attending the commission of the crime.’

  Mr Fleming fortunately survived his ordeal in the witness box and it was not till several years later that he was called upon to account for himself before any bar higher than that over which Lord Deas now presided. Let us hope that when the time came, justice was tempered with as much mercy as was now showered upon him by a temporal judge.

  He took the oath in a loud clear voice that could be heard distinctly all over the court.

  Mr Gifford, prosecuting, came to the point at once. ‘Mr Fleming—how old are you?’

  ‘I was eighty-seven on the ninth of August last.’

  ‘What is your employment?’

  ‘Eh?’ said the old gentleman. ‘I’m a little dull o’ hearing, sir.’

  ‘We’ll try to make you hear,’ said Mr Gifford indulgently. ‘How were you employed?’

  The old man explained his work in his son’s office; he was employed ‘to be generally useful’. He lived with his son at Sandy-ford Place; he had lived there all the time his son had—two or three years. Yes, he knew Jessie M’Pherson.

  ‘When did you know her?’

  ‘She was a servant wi’ Mr Fleming, and cam’ back the second time. I first kent her when she cam’ the first time to be a servant wi’ my son.’

  ‘How long ago is it since Jessie M’Pherson came to be a servant?’

  There was no reply to this and Mr Gifford rephrased it. ‘How long is it since she left?’

  ‘She gaed to keep a bit shop for hersel’. It will be—my memory is no very guid; I can’t tell you exactly. She gaed ony way, her and anither comrade, and took up a bit shop and sell’t grocery goods. It’s a few years ago. She cam’ back again.’

  ‘How long ago is that?’

  ‘It’s—let me see—a year ago.’

  ‘In July last was your son residing part of his time at Dunoon?’

  ‘Yes; he has a cottage there, and spent part of the week in Glasgow and part in Dunoon.’

  ‘Who had charge of the house?’

  ‘Jess M’Pherson. She had the whole charge.’

  ‘The other servants were at Dunoon?’

  ‘Yes; but there was anither servant at hame besides Jess. It was anither servant that assisted her in the kitchen.’

  ‘Did she go with the other servants to Dunoon?’

  ‘No, she is a witness here the day. I canna tell ye her name.’

  ‘Martha M’Intyre?’

  ‘I daursay yes.’

  ‘Or is it Margaret M’Innes; which?’

  There was again no answer; and the judge interrupted. ‘No matter; she will tell you herself.’

  There was some muddle here: Martha M’Intyre had in fact left the Flemings’ service some months earlier, nor was any servant left except Jess in the house in Sandyford Place.

  Mr Gifford resumed. Yes, the old man remembered the fourth of July last; yes, he had breakfasted at Sandyford Place, but he didna’ recolleck whether his son had left for the office or not.

  ‘Did Jessie M’Pherson serve you that morning?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where did you go upon that Friday?’

  Mr Fleming did not answer him directly. He burst into a description, instead, of Jess M’Pherson’s day and gabbled away until Mr Gifford had almost to beg him to stop. ‘She had been thrang for three days wi’ a washing, and she was finishin’ the shirts and dressin’ them that day—’

  ‘What a clock—?’

  ‘—and her maister’s were laid by, and mines were finishin’, an’ they were hangin’ on the screens, ye ken, at the side of the fire, an’ I cam’ hame to ma dinner at the usual time, aboot four o’clock, an’ took ma dinner: an’ after I took ma dinner I had a custom of going up to the West End Park an’ takin’ a walk after dinner. This was Friday an’ I went away the fecht o’ couple of hours—’

  ‘Stop a moment!’

  ‘—It was vera wat thae days. I was vera much fasht wi’ cauld feet and there was no fire in the room, and I went doun to the kitchen fire to get ma feet warmed, and Jessie M’Pherson made ma tea.’

  ‘What o’clock?’ said Mr Gifford, making himself heard at last.

  ‘I reckon it wad be weel on eight o’clock. She made ma tea and she poored it oot and took a cup along wi’ me; and after the tea was by—’

  Lord Deas: ‘Was it in the kitchen you got the tea?’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Then after I got my tea by, I yoked to the readin’; I had always the papers in ma pouch; and then I stopped till half-past nine o’clock.’

  ‘In the kitchen?’

  ‘At the kitchen fire. At that hour, I said I would go and mak’ ready for bed: and I went awa’ to ma bed up the stair. I left Jess M’Pherson working away in the kitchen, ye ken; and in the mornin’ I wauken’t wi’ a lood squeal.’

  Mr Fleming paused again on this dramatic note, and no doubt there was a further sensation in court. Mr Gifford started him off again. ‘Where is your bedroom? What flat [floor] of the house is your bedroom on?’

  ‘It is a flat
above the kitchen, ye ken. Weel, I was sayin’ I was wauken’t i’ the mornin’ wi’ a lood squeal; and after that followed ither two, not so lood as the first ane. But it was an odd kind o’ squeal I heard and I jumped oot o’ bed, and I heard no noise. A’ was by in the coorse o’ a minute’s time; in a minute a’ was quate, and I heard naething nor saw naething. I took oot ma watch—I kept the time beneath ma pillow—and looked what o’clock it was. It was exactly four o’clock; a bonny, clear mornin’.’

  ‘A lovely morning, still and calm,’ Peterina M’Clean had called it: pausing with her two sisters, strolling home from their wedding party, to listen to the small birds singing in the trees opposite the houses in Sandyford Place—observing, at four o’clock in the morning, the lights of the gasolier burning in the ground floor front room of No. 17.

  ‘So—what did you do?’

  ‘I gaed awa’ to ma bed again,’ said the old man. But even he must have thought this needed some elaboration for he explained reasonably: ‘A’ was quate.’

  ‘What did you think had happened?’

  ‘I thocht she had got somebody to stay wi’ her. There was a woman she ca’d a sister o’ hers—she bood to be in her room.’ (‘She bood’ would mean here ‘behoved’, in other words, she must be in her room; but this answer is elsewhere reported as ‘There was a body she ca’d a sister and wis stopping wi’ her or else some ither body.’ It may be said here that Jess’s foster-sister later stated that she had never in her life spent a night at Sandyford Place, and ‘the old man had no reason in the world to say that I ever did.’)