Bruce Alexander - Death of a Colonial

“And so,” said I to Sir John, “you suspected her still.”

“I did indeed.”

“Why, then?”

“Because she was young, pretty, and half the age of her husband, the chemist. As I later discovered, though it was true she had no letters and no knowledge of chemistry, it was also true that her mother was a midwife and an herb healer with a great store of knowledge regarding natural medicines and natural poisons.”

“How did you learn this?”

“From the magistrate who served her part of Hampshire. I at last took it upon myself to write a letter to him inquiring what had become of her, something we would not hesitate to do today. Yet then I had simply delayed too long to make a proper case against her. I attribute my ill-handling to my inexperience. And inexperience was to blame for my next failure, as well.”

The next tale told by Sir John concerned the death of a young maidservant from one of London’s great houses. Notification had come to him from another of the servants that she had been buried in a most irregular manner — at night, it was, and outside the gates of any churchyard or cemetery. The master of the house, a duke, had had an eye for the girl, and the duchess had been called out of London to her parents on the night in question. So it was that about midnight or sometime thereafter the servants were wakened by a great bellow from the master. He had, he said, just discovered the body of the serving girl at the foot of the stairs. She was dead, her neck broken, fully clothed but disheveled. It was obvious, said he, that she had lost her balance and tumbled head over heels down the stairs and broken her neck as she went. What was she doing upstairs, after all? Up to no good, you can be sure, declared her employer and proceeded to “find” a gold ring belonging to the duchess in the apron pocket of the corpse. He ordered that she be prepared for burial that very night, for a thief who had died in the course of her crime did not deserve Christian burial. It was done as he had told them: She was buried in a winding sheet in the garden at the rear of the mansion. When Sir John heard of this sad event, it was two days after it had taken place. Nevertheless he insisted, over the strong objections of the duke, that the body be disinterred. There could be no disputing the cause of death: Her spine was truly broken at the base of her skull. Still and all, the circumstances were sufficiently questionable that the magistrate interrogated the duke closely and repeatedly. The duke’s friends visited Sir John and suggested that he was not showing proper respect for the fellow. Pressure was brought to bear. In the end, when the coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “death by misadventure, “ Sir John pushed the matter no further. He did, however, insist that the maidservant be given a proper Christian burial and that the duke pay the cost.

“And you believe,” said I when Sir John had finished relating the facts of the case, “that this nobleman. . this duke. . had pushed the woman down the stairs?”

“Nothing as specific as that,” said Sir John. “I believed, let us say, that the master of the house was in some way responsible for her death. Whether in forcing his will upon her he snapped her neck, or, in pursuing her, he made her run for the stairs, where she took her fatal tumble, or just what the precise circumstances were, well, I cannot say. Yet I was certain then, just as I am now, that directly or indirectly he was responsible.”

“And the gold ring in her apron pocket?”

“Oh, that ,” Sir John said with a deprecating shrug. “There was not sufficient reason to believe that she herself had put it in her pocket. All the servants gave her a good character, and even the duchess was puzzled and said that the maidservant had many opportunities to steal far more valuable pieces.”

“But I take it there was no way to prove your case. No physical evidence? No testimony against him?”

He sighed. “No, nothing at all. I might have broken him down had I kept at him long enough. On the other hand, I might not have. In any case, after the coroners inquest there seemed little to do but accept ‘death by misadventure’ as the final word on the matter. But I believe, Jeremy, that if you will read through the notes on the interrogation taken by the former clerk, Mr. Brogden, you will find one, and perhaps two places in which I was provided with an opening which I failed to use. In other words, I made a mistake — perhaps two.”

I nodded soberly at that. “Yes, sir,” said I, “if it is there, I shall find it.”

“I’m confident that you will.” He paused then, as if organizing matters in his head or summoning up some important detail. It was only after a few moments spent thus that he did resume. “The last of these failures of mine offers no such specific mistake or oversight — at least I, in repeated reconsiderations, have been able to find none. However, there remains with me a certain unease about the resolution of the case. But let me tell you of it — “

Two men from the North American colonies registered at the Globe and Anchor, the largest and most respectable hostelry in the Strand. Though they arrived together and clearly knew each other, they asked for separate rooms and neither voiced any objection or disappointment when the hostelry was unable to provide them on the same floor. They sometimes took their dinners together at the hostelry’s chophouse and seemed to get on well enough — except for their last meal together there. At that one they quarreled, the larger and rougher of the two raising his voice often in anger, and the younger and more refined of them hissing his responses in vexed whispers. Sometime during the night that followed, the second of them evidently committed suicide, for he was found next morning by the maid, hanged by the neck. Except for the quarrel, there was naught to cast suspicion upon the surviving colonial — and he even denied that a quarrel had taken place. Though there was no note left, the suicide seemed genuine; there were no marks upon the body, nothing to indicate that he had been knocked unconscious before being hanged. Perhaps more important, the porter on that floor, who had a good view of the hanged man’s room, gave testimony that he had polished boots and shoes all night and would surely have noticed if there had been a visitor to the room in question; he swore there had been none. There was thus nothing to be proven against the survivor, though Sir John was extremely suspicious of the man. The colonial gentleman claimed to know the other fellow hardly at all, having met him only on shipboard. His story held up through Sir John’s repeated interrogations and, as well, against the milder questioning of the coroner, Sir Thomas Cox. The coroner’s jury returned a verdict of “death by suicide” shortly afterward.

“You are free, Jeremy, to find my mistakes in this case, and I shall accept them with head bowed low. In my opinion, however, mine are sins of omission here. Should I have been more aggressive with my questions? What question did I not ask that I should have asked? That sort of thing. “

I was about to make some suitably humble reply to the effect that I thought it extremely unlikely that I should find any sort of fault with him, when of a sudden he rose swiftly from his chair and announced his fear that as we talked it had grown late. “Have you some idea of the time, lad?”

I gave it a moment’s thought. “I should think it about three by the clock, or perhaps a little earlier.”

“If you’re correct,” said he, “then we’ve no time to spare. In any case, you must go quickly and do a wash-up and then change into your best. We ought not be late.”

“But where are we going, sir?”

“Why, to the Lord Chief Justices residence. Did I not tell you?” Hesitating, I said, “No, sir, I think not.”