Margaret Atwood - Alias Grace

“I then proceeded to destroy the reputation of the unfortunate Montgomery woman. I didn’t feel guilty about slandering her, as the poor creature was already well out of it. She’d had a child previously, you know — which died, I presume of midwives’ mercy — and at the autopsy it was found she was pregnant. Undoubtedly the father was Kinnear, but I did my level best to produce a shadowy Romeo who’d strangled the poor woman out of jealousy. However, pull as I might, that rabbit refused to come out of the hat.”

“Possibly because there was no rabbit,” says Simon.

“Quite right. My next trick was an attempted sleight-of-hand with the shirts. Who was wearing which shirt, when, and why? McDermott had been caught in one of Kinnear’s shirts — what then? I established the fact that Nancy had been in the habit of selling her employer’s cast-off garments to the servants, with or without her master’s permission; so McDermott could have come by his Shirt of Nessus honestly enough. Unfortunately, Kinnear’s corpse had churlishly slipped on one of McDermott’s shirts, which was a stumbling block indeed. I tried my best to avoid it, but the Prosecution hammered me with it, fair and square.

“I then pointed the finger of suspicion at the peddler to whom the bloody shirt thrown behind the door could be traced, as he had tried to palm off the same goods elsewhere. But that was no good either; there was testimony that the peddler had sold that very shirt to McDermott — a whole poker hand of shirts, in fact — and had then been unobliging enough to have vanished into thin air. For some reason he didn’t wish to appear at the trial and run the risk of getting his own neck stretched.”

“Cowardly fellow,” says Simon.

“Just so,” says MacKenzie, laughing. “And when it came to Grace, I must say I wasn’t given much help. The foolish girl could not be dissuaded from dressing herself up in the murdered woman’s finery, an act which was viewed with horror by the press and public; although if I’d had my wits about me, I would have advanced that very fact as evidence of an innocent and untroubled conscience, or, even better, of lunacy. But I didn’t have the cunning to think of it at the time.

“In addition, Grace had muddied the trail considerably. She’d said at the time of her arrest that she hadn’t known where Nancy was. Then, at the inquest, she said she suspected Nancy was dead and in the cellar, though she hadn’t seen her put there. But, at the trial, and in her supposed Confession — that little item put out by the Star, and a tidy sum they made by it — she claimed to have seen McDermott dragging Nancy by the hair, and tossing her down the stairs. She never went so far as to admit to the strangling, however.”

“But she did admit it to you, later,” says Simon.

“Did she? I don’t recall….”

“In the Penitentiary,” says Simon. “She told you she was haunted by Nancy‘s bloodshot eyes; or so Mrs. Moodie reported you as having said.”

MacKenzie gives an uncomfortable wiggle, and looks down. “Grace was certainly in a troubled state of mind,” he says. “Confused and melancholy.”

“But the eyes?”

“Mrs. Moodie — for whom I have the greatest regard,” says MacKenzie, “has a somewhat conventional imagination, and a tendency to exaggerate. She put some fine speeches into the mouths of her subjects, which it is highly unlikely they ever made, McDermott having been an unmitigated lout — even I, who was defending him, found it a stretch to scrape together a few good words for the man — and Grace a near child, and uneducated. As for the eyes, what is strongly anticipated by the mind is often supplied by it. You see it every day on the witness stand.”

“So there were no eyes?”

MacKenzie wiggles again. “I couldn’t swear to the eyes, on oath,” he says. “Grace said nothing, exactly, that would stand up in court, as constituting a confession, although she did say she was sorry that Nancy was dead. But anyone might say that.”

“Indeed,” says Simon. He suspects now that the eyes did not originate with Mrs. Moodie, and wonders what other parts of her narrative were due to MacKenzie’s own flamboyant tastes as a raconteur. “But we also have McDermott’s statement, made just before he was hanged.”

“Yes, yes; a scaffold pronouncement always makes it into the newspapers.”

“Why did he wait so long, I wonder?”

“Until the very last, he hoped for a commutation, since Grace had been given one. He considered their guilt to be equal, and thought the sentences ought to be, as well; and he could not accuse her without knotting the noose very firmly around his own neck, as he’d need to admit to the axe-play and so forth.”

“Whereas Grace could accuse him with relative impunity,” says Simon.

“Just so,” says MacKenzie. “Nor did she flinch from it when the moment came. Sauve qui peut! That woman has nerves like flint. She’d have made a good lawyer, if a man.”

“But McDermott didn’t get his reprieve,” says Simon.

“Of course not! He was mad to expect it, but furious nonetheless. He considered that too to be Grace’s fault — in his eyes, she’d cornered the clemency market — and as I read it, he then wanted to be revenged.”

“Somewhat understandably,” says Simon. “As I recall, he claimed that Grace came down into the cellar with him, and strangled Nancy with her own kerchief.”

“Well, the kerchief was indeed found. But the rest of it is not hard evidence. The man had already told several different stories, and was a notorious liar into the bargain.”

“Although,” says Simon, “to turn Devil’s advocate — just because a man is known to lie, it does not follow that he always does so.”

“Precisely,” says MacKenzie. “Well, I see the fascinating Grace has been leading you a merry chase.”

“Not so merry,” says Simon. “I must admit I’ve been baffled. What she says has the ring of truth; her manner is candid and sincere; and yet I can’t shake the suspicion that, in some way I cannot put my finger on, she is lying to me.”

“Lying,” says MacKenzie. “A severe term, surely. Has she been lying to you, you ask? Let me put it this way — did Scheherazade lie? Not in her own eyes; indeed, the stories she told ought never to be subjected to the harsh categories of Truth and Falsehood. They belong in another realm altogether. Perhaps Grace Marks has merely been telling you what she needs to tell, in order to accomplish the desired end.”

“Which is?” asks Simon.

“To keep the Sultan amused,” says MacKenzie. “To keep the blow from falling. To forestall your departure, and make you stay in the room with her as long as possible.”

“What on earth would be the point of that?” says Simon. “Amusing me won’t get her out of prison.”

“I don’t suppose she really expects that,” says MacKenzie. “But isn’t it obvious? The poor creature has fallen in love with you. A single man, more or less young and not ill-favoured, appears to one who has long been sequestered, and deprived of masculine company. You are doubtless the object of her waking daydreams.”

“Surely not,” says Simon, flushing despite himself. If Grace is in love with him, she has preserved the secret extremely well.

“But I say, surely so! I had the very experience myself, or the twin of it; for I had to pass many hours with her, in her jail cell in Toronto, while she spun out her yarn for me to as great a length as it would go. She was besotted with me, and didn’t wish to let me out of her sight. Such melting and languorous glances! A hand placed on hers, and she would have thrown herself into my arms.”

Simon is disgusted. What a conceited little troll, with his natty vest and bulbous nose! “Indeed?” he says, trying not to let his anger show.