Birdcage Walk (35 page)

Windsor consulted his list once again. “Did you see him again?”

“I didn’t expect to, I suppose, but my goddaughter has a habit of befriending people and she came to the door while I was paying him—the cage was to be a surprise birthday present for her. A week or two later, she and her mother met Mr. Woolfe by chance on Holloway Road in Islington. Captain Drew is away at sea a great deal and Mrs. Drew asked if George would carry a heavy item of furniture downstairs from the attic as a favour. He did so and an arrangement was made, of a casual nature, that from then on he would go to the house to run errands and take on small tasks that the women in the house couldn’t have managed otherwise.”

Windsor nodded energetically.

“Yes, I see, and thank you, sir, but perhaps you can explain to the court why Mrs. Drew is not here herself to give a character reference for the prisoner?”

“Mrs. Drew is a very generous woman, but I do not think her nerves would have stood the atmosphere of a courtroom. She, and particularly my young goddaughter, have been most distressed at the events of Christmas Day and the ensuing investigation. Mrs. Drew was interviewed by a police inspector—a Mr. McArthur—in her own drawing room and told him how she had found Mr. Woolfe to be a respectable sort of young man. She wished me to say that on the stand today, on her behalf, and my goddaughter Clemency wished me to say a great deal more for his good character.”

Most of the jurors and those on the public benches smiled at his words. George gripped the hem of his worn jacket, almost numb with disbelief at the events going on around him.

“Mr. Booth, what were your first thoughts when you heard that the prisoner was wanted for the murder of the young woman he had been involved with?”

“Naturally my first reaction was shock. Miss Drew had happened upon the story in a newspaper and sent me a note about it. When I considered the matter more carefully, I found myself questioning the very possibility. The young man I had met seemed so very mild-mannered that I simply couldn’t equate him with the disturbing reports I came to read myself in the papers.”

Windsor looked even more eager than he had so far. ‘In short, you don’t believe that he did it?’

Booth hesitated. “Perhaps it would be unwise to put it so strongly. I do not know the minutiae of the case, nor do I know the defendant very well. My goddaughter fervently believes that he is incapable of such a violent act, but I would not being honest if I claimed the same. I can only say this: I liked George Woolfe when I met him, and thought him to be a respectful and respectable young fellow who had a measure of underused intelligence and . . . a finer sense of the world he lived in. More than that I should not like to say, under the circumstances.”

George was touched and he admired Booth’s candour too. An inner voice told him that what he had said sounded more convincing than if Booth had sung his praises without reservation. He watched Windsor thank the witness and return to his seat. Mr. Muir, when he stood, betrayed none of his previous discomfort at the introduction of this new witness. In fact, while Windsor had been asking his questions, Muir had been entirely absorbed in his papers, occasionally writing on the piece of paper he now took with him to the stand. He smiled unctuously at Booth, who did not return it.

“Mr. Booth, it is a great honour to have you here with us today, I must say.”

The judge cleared his throat pointedly and Muir’s smile faded.

“Mr. Booth, you talked of your goddaughter Miss Drew as a great advocate of the prisoner. Can I ask how old she is?”

Booth frowned. “She has not long turned sixteen. If she had been older, I am sure she would have insisted on sitting here herself.”

“Indeed. How well would you say she had come to know the prisoner during his visits to the house to perform small tasks and run errands?”

Booth took his time in answering, shifting slightly in his seat. “I’m not sure that has any relevance to the case. I have been told that he didn’t visit the house more than half a dozen times.”

“If you wouldn’t mind answering the question for the court, sir?”

“I don’t believe he knew her very well. My goddaughter is in many ways young for her age and still forms the fervent attachments of a child. She adores the Drews’ maid, for instance. In addition to that natural naivety is a genuine interest in the lives of others, rather like my own.”

“Would the prisoner and she have spent any time unchaperoned, perhaps?”

Booth smiled grimly. “I see now what you are getting at, Mr. Muir. No, my understanding is that my goddaughter’s mother Mrs. Drew was constantly present.”

Muir nodded and walked slowly away from the box before turning suddenly, as if responding to a sudden thought.

“You mentioned a maid. Did the prisoner know her at all?”

“I really couldn’t tell you. I do not live at the house so am not privy to all its inner workings. I presume the maid let him in and out of the house on the occasions he visited, as maids are wont to do.”

A nervous titter sounded and George nearly smiled himself.

“Mr. Booth, if you do not live at the house then how can you be so sure that Miss Drew and the prisoner were always chaperoned?”

Booth’s hands curled momentarily into fists.

“I know because I have discussed it with Mrs. Drew.”

“And was this a discussion that took place because you were concerned that her daughter was vulnerable to the prisoner’s . . . influence?”

Booth remained silent and Muir smiled thinly before waving away the question.

“Are you aware, sir, that the Drew’s maid made a visit to Stoke Newington Police Station in a bid to visit the prisoner? A bid that was successful, I might add.”

“I was informed of it, yes.” Mr. Booth was by now looking distinctly uncomfortable, something George would not have expected of him in any situation, and something he felt wretched for now.

“According to police records of that visit, the maid claimed to be the prisoner’s sister. Leaving that falsehood aside, we must look to the reasons she had for visiting. What do you think they were? Do you think Miss Drew bid her go, to take a message perhaps? Or do you think the maid wanted to visit the prisoner for her own, personal reasons?”

Booth shook his head. “I think they were both concerned for the prisoner and also rather . . . caught up in their own proximity to the case. They could not imagine the George Woolfe they had known to have been responsible, but could not rest until they had heard what he had to say in his own defence. It was a rash plan, but one that grew from good intentions, I would say.”

Muir turned back to the court.

“You will remember the note that was written to the deceased from the prisoner, and the reference within it to the prisoner having ‘made the acquaintance of a young lady’ he admired ‘much better’ than poor Charlotte Cheeseman. Mr. Booth, do you have any thoughts to who this young lady might be?”

Booth shook his head again. “None whatsoever, it might have been anyone or no one at all.”

“I put it to you, sir, that it was Miss Drew, or perhaps even her maid, with whom—we trust—he had rather more opportunity to see alone.”

“You have no proof of this. It is nothing but scandal-mongering,” said Booth sharply.

George clutched at his stomach as it twinged painfully. The afternoon sun was low now; he had thought the trial would be over soon, and without having involved the Drews. The elation he’d felt when he saw Mr. Booth take the stand for him ebbed away, leaden guilt taking its place.

“Before today, Mr. Booth, when did you last see the prisoner? asked Muir.

As George watched his face, he could see Booth’s irritation swiftly replaced by resignation.

“On Christmas Eve, at the annual gathering hosted at the Drew house.”

“The prisoner was invited?” Muir looked skeptical.

“He was, by Mrs. Drew. Captain Drew had returned from a long stint at sea and Mrs. Drew must have thought it was a good opportunity for her husband to meet the young man who had been helping around the house. Woolfe had only a few days before assisted with the erection and decoration of the tree.”

“I see,” Muir’s face almost gleeful. “And what was the result of the meeting between Captain Drew and the prisoner?”

The judge raised his head at this point and George and Mr. Booth looked hopefully in his direction.

“Mr. Muir, you are taking a great deal of time to get to a point I can only presume exists. This is a murder trial; we are not here to discuss Christmas decorations and soirees.”

“I am coming to it, your honour, and I believe it is key to the case, to establishing the dubious character of the prisoner.”

“Well, get on with it then. I’m sure Mr. Booth has his books to return to.”

Muir bridled at that but quickly recovered. He drew closer to the witness box.

“Let us move directly to the point then, Mr. Booth. In the course of Inspector McArthur’s interviews at the Drew household, it was revealed that the prisoner, after a short interview with Captain Drew in his study, was ejected from the Christmas party. Is that not correct?”

Booth looked over at George for an instant, who found himself hanging his head.

“Yes, that is true.”

“Am I correct in saying that this expulsion was deemed necessary by the Captain because he was concerned for the . . . welfare of his young and rather gauche daughter?”

Booth nodded once, his face closed.

“Please explain to the court why Captain Drew, who had only just returned home from a long absence, could possibly have reached this conclusion so quickly?”

Booth remained silent and the judge made no move to make him speak so Muir continued.

“The fact is that there was another visitor to the Captain’s study only that morning, a young woman who had requested an interview with him so she might warn him of the danger she believed his daughter to be in from the prisoner.”

A burst of excited murmuring went up around the room and George braced himself for what he knew would come next.

“Tragically that young woman had only hours to live. Her name was Charlotte Cheeseman.” Muir almost bowed as he said the last words and had to catch himself, his eyes modestly lowered to the varnished boards beneath his polished shoes.

There seemed little reason to extract any more information out of Mr. Booth, and he was shortly dismissed. As he left, he did not look at George or anyone else, his face still closed, impossible to read. After that, it did not seem to take much longer until the case for the defence came to an end.

Over the course of two days an unexpected variety of witnesses had been called, questioned and cross-examined; the jury asked to pore over photographs provided of the Park Hotel and timetables of the bus service between Tottenham and Hoxton; in short, every intricacy of the case had been explored and, at least in the case of the prosecution, exhausted. George no longer had any notion of whether the jury would find him innocent or guilty, though the painful cross-examination of Mr. Booth so close to the verdict could not have helped. A perverse part of George was looking forward to the verdict being read out and the sentence passed down. It was the waiting that he felt might drive him out of his wits.

There was no separate room for the jury to confer in, and so they conferred awkwardly with each other not ten feet from where he sat. As he waited, he found that keeping entirely still was impossible. He felt he might burst out of his own skin if he tried. Out of sight, he tapped his foot as fast as he could, the rhythm of it something of a distraction, measuring out the time remaining before he knew his fate in quick, bearable chunks.

When his father and sister were led back into the courtroom, finding space to stand at the very back of the already overcrowded room, he knew that the waiting was almost over. The judge, beneath his stern expression, looked faintly bored, and George found himself wondering what he would do when this was over. He caught a fleeting glimpse of the man suddenly devoid of his robes and powdered wig, ordering a nip of whisky at his club and settling down with the day’s newspaper. Was it too late for the verdict to be in the last edition, George wondered? He supposed it would be in the morning’s paper instead.

Strange to think too of the man who would write the words of the story, perhaps forming sentences that described the date and manner of an execution, a man that was probably making notes in the courtroom now. Curious also to think about the typesetters at the print, men skilled like those he knew at Carlisle’s, who would pick out the letters with their oil-streaked fingers and lay them out in the correct order. To them it would be simply more words, more work: lineage brief enough not to impinge on the guttering, nothing more.

Just then a hush descended that drove him from his own thoughts and back to the reality of the present.

“Have you reached your verdict?” asked the judge of the jury’s foreman, whose ill-fitting jacket sleeves now exposed his thin, milk white wrists.

“We have, your honour,” he replied and the hands attached to those pale wrists shook slightly as he did.

“And how do you find the accused?”

The juror paused then, as if he knew a moment of dramatic tension was deserving of those who had turned up to court for the day with their knitting and notebooks.

“We find him guilty, your honour.”

His eyes met George’s as he said it, and George thought he looked more embarrassed than righteous. He heard a girlish voice cry out softly and wondered if it was Cissy, though he could not manage to move and look her way. He kept his eyes instead on the judge, or more precisely the judge’s hand. As he knew it must now, he watched it move towards the square of black fabric that must have been placed there by a clerk that morning. Once it had been part of a larger bolt of cloth, rolled up in a back room, waiting for the scissors to scythe through it. The judge laid it on his head, where it perched, slightly askew.

“George Woolfe, you have been found guilty of the murder of Charlotte Cheeseman. This was a particularly vicious murder, exacted on a woman who had her best years of life ahead of her, and who wished only for you to marry her. You took her trust and murdered her on deserted marshland on the eve of Christmas, for what reasons we shall perhaps never know. By pleading innocent you have shown no remorse for what you did, nor given your victim’s family an opportunity to close this terrible chapter. I sentence you to be hanged by the neck until dead. The High Sheriff of the County will fix the execution date, which will be set tomorrow. Before you are taken down to the condemned cell, do you have anything to say?”