Heaven Knows Who (37 page)

The old gentleman, meanwhile, was reported to be cosily residing at Inellan, a favourite watering place but perhaps rather comfortably deserted at this season—we are now in late September—reading the reports with the greatest interest and apparently highly satisfied with his own part in it all. The Reverend Aikman had called round and had another of his chats: perhaps he thought the old gentleman might append his name to the growing roll of those petitioning for a reconsideration of the verdict—that really would have been something. If he did, however, he was disappointed. Mr Fleming only shook his head over ‘the depravity of the human heart', though rather in reference, apparently, to the things Jessie had suggested against himself than as to the crime of which she now stood convicted. (His organ, the
Herald
, had drawn pointed attention to the recent case of one, Mary Tinney, who had tried to lay the blame for a murder to which she later confessed upon her own mother.) Informed of the probability of a great number of signatures for the petition, he told Mr Aikman that he wished and earnestly prayed that the Lord would gie Jessie time that a' might be cleared up, or that she might be led to make a confession to clear him.

The petition was, in fact, enormously subscribed to. It had been resolved upon at a crowded meeting held on the Friday after the trial ended and a memorial was sent to the Home Secretary, Sir George Grey, begging him to delay execution until further enquiry should be made. Jessie's agents also sent a memorial, setting out legal grounds for a respite of sentence, and eventually a stay of execution was granted until November 1—with a warning to ‘the convict' that this was only for purposes of further investigation, and if that investigation did not bear out her statement there was no hope for her. So Jessie was sure of an additional couple of weeks at least before she was hanged in Jail Square.

Meanwhile a private enquiry had begun on the instructions of the Lord Advocate for Scotland, presided over by Sir Archibald Alison, Sheriff of Lanarkshire—Sir Archibald, a lawyer of wide experience and the deepest integrity, was to prove one of Mrs
M'Lachlan's stoutest champions. ‘I had become convinced,' he writes in his autobiography, ‘of the woman's innocence.' But there was a general expression of opinion that an investigation by none but officials already connected with the case wouldn't satisfy the public mind, and an outsider was called in, Mr George Young, Sheriff of Haddington. His powers as Commissioner were rather limited; he couldn't compel anyone to attend nor did his witnesses testify under oath—but anyone who chose to might volunteer and he did examine a large amount of evidence from sixty-nine witnesses (there were seventy-six at the trial), his reports being forwarded to the Home Secretary. The proceedings were held behind closed doors, no one else being present but the ubiquitous Jno. Gemmel, Procurator-Fiscal, and Mrs M'Lachlan's solicitor, Mr Dixon. The organisation of the whole thing was in the hands of Jno. Gemmel—a somewhat Gilbertian state of affairs, Mr Roughead suggests, since the official instigator of the recent prosecution seemed hardly the ideal person to be now enquiring into his own conduct.

The evidence elicited under these circumstances has been embodied elsewhere in different parts of this book. As has been said before, it did nothing to discredit the condemned woman's story; in many instances it bore it out to a remarkable degree, and it threw up one fact of quite startling significance—the-testimony of Miss M'Intyre that at soon after eleven that night Jess M'Pherson was heard moaning. (No one then or since seems to have given much consideration to this point or to have taken the time factor into consideration; yet there it sits, solid fact and, to the author at least, conclusive. Either Jess was attacked and left, still alive and noisily moaning, while her assailant popped round the corner for a drop of something, or she was attacked while Jessie was innocently out. You pays your money and you takes your choice.)

But, alas!—having taken it you are thrown straightway back into confusion.

With so much agitation going on, the enquiry under Mr Young not yet started and the postponed execution date less than three weeks away, Mr Dixon got permission to interview his client in the condemned cell. There were persistent rumours that old Mr Fleming had been seen—by the mysterious gentleman who did or
did not tell Mr Ritchie, who in turn did or did not tell Mr Sheridan Knowles—at the front door of No. 17 in the early hours of the morning of the murder. Mr Dixon wished to confirm with Jessie that this might have been possible; it would naturally go a long way in support of her story.

He found her, he subsequently related, in a highly overwrought condition, inclined to hysteria, divided between easy laughter and easy tears. She seemed to want to talk about anything but her statement. However, that was what he was there for. He pressed her to answer: did she think the rumour could be true?

To this Jessie replied that she was quite sure it wasn't true; and what was more, she added, they needn't trouble themselves hunting round to confirm it, because it couldn't be true.

Mr Dixon was naturally somewhat taken aback. Had she any reason for saying that it couldn't be true?

She evaded the question, she went off again into irrelevances—she didn't think much of the portraits in the pamphlet account of the trial. (They are certainly very unflattering.) He brought her back to the subject, however, and persisted. ‘Well, then, where was the old man at this time?'

She didn't say anything for a moment; and then she looked into his face and said: ‘I may just as weel tell ye—the auld man wasna' there at a'.'

‘Wasn't
there
?' said Mr Dixon. ‘What do you mean?'

What she meant, said Jessie, was that she hadn't seen Mr Fleming at all that night.

Poor Mr Dixon! ‘Do you mean to tell me that he wasn't there, that he wasn't sitting in the armchair when you went down to the kitchen—?'

‘I didna' go “down” to the kitchen at a',' said Jessie. ‘I didna' go by the front door.'

‘Not by the front door? Then how did you go in?'

‘I went by the back way.' And, she added, she hadn't been upstairs at all that night.

But … ‘Do you meant to say it wasn't the old man who sent you out for the whisky?'

‘I was not out for whisky at a'.'

‘But you were seen. Miss Dykes and Mrs Walker saw you. What were you doing out?'

‘I hadna' been in,' said Jessie. ‘I was just arriving.'

‘You left Mrs Fraser at the Gushet house at ten past ten. What were you doing after that?'

She wasn't doing anything, said Jessie. She'd gone straight to Sandyford Place.

‘But it's only a ten minutes walk from the Gushet House. It was after eleven when Mrs Walker saw you.'

‘I went straight there,' insisted Jessie.

That was just nonsense. Doubtful, incredulous, he began to test her. One thing at least he knew for certain—impossible to doubt the evidence of the milk-boy, Donald M'Quarrie, and George Paton, his master. ‘Mrs M'Lachlan—who opened the door to the milk-boy?'

‘I opened it to him myself,' said Jessie.

‘You opened it yourself? Then where was Mr Fleming?'

‘I didna' see Mr Fleming at a'. He'd be awa' in his bed.'

‘But then … do you tell me that it was you who committed this murder?'

‘I dinna ken,' said Jessie. ‘I ken naething about the murder.'

‘But if the old man didn't do it—then it must have been you?'

So she told him her story—positively the last story of Jessie M'Lachlan as to the events of that terrible night. She and Jess had been drinking. There was a good deal of drink going, and finally Jess became drunk and lay vomiting on the kitchen floor. So she, Jessie, herself somewhat the worse for wear, cleaned Jess up a bit and washed over the floor, and brought some bedclothes through and covered Jess with them as she lay on the floor by the fire. But Jess was only sick again and she had to wash the blankets too. By the time Jess recovered, what with nausea at her unlovely tasks and the drink she had taken, she herself was retching. So Jess, who was a great one for laudanum whenever she had anything wrong, made her take a large dose. The effect of laudanum was always ‘to take her in her head and make her delirious'—her husband and her sister would confirm that. Once when the doctor had given her a sleeping draught, instead of composing her, it made her start out of bed and go rushing round the room, and they had to hold her down. The laudanum that night had had the same effect, and from the time she took it she had no recollection of anything, of any quarrel, of any struggle—only a confused memory of Jess crying out, ‘Jessie, Jessie, what are you doing?' And then she was creeping about on her hands and knees in the
dark, but where she was or what she was doing she didn't know. And then nothing. She awoke in the morning and found Jess dead.

‘And you never saw the old man at all?'

Not at all. She repeated it over and over again. She hadn't seen the old man at all that night.

‘And it was you who opened the door to the milk-boy?'

‘Yes.'

‘And if the milk-boy says, and his master says, and they both swear that it was Mr Fleming who opened the door—?'

‘I know they say that,' said Jessie. ‘But I opened the door.'

And then?

And then she supposed she just hung about the house, too sick and dazed with the laudanum and drink to have the sense to escape. It was almost nine when she finally pulled herself together and went. She went by the back door.

He did not know what to do. All Scotland and all England were in an uproar over this woman's conviction, execution had been postponed, an official enquiry was pending. He said at last: ‘Well, I don't know what to make of it all. But one thing I do know. It puts me in an awkward position, Mrs M'Lachlan. I'm not sure that I can go on acting for you.'

‘Not act for me?'

‘How can I—after what you've told me?'

‘But you don't really believe it?' said Jessie. ‘Of course, there's not a word of truth in it—the whole thing's just nonsense.'

‘Then why did you say it?'

‘I just wanted to see how you'd look,' said Jessie. Mr Dixon's narrative doesn't tell us whether when she said it she was laughing or crying.

But that was a bit too easy. She told him something and, when he threatened to desert her, then she contradicted it. ‘I shall have to think it over,' he said.

‘But you won't tell anyone?' she begged him anxiously. Of course it was all nonsense, all lies—the statement she had given him to read out in court was the truth.

‘I am your lawyer,' he said. ‘I'm bound to secrecy. Of course I shan't tell anyone.' And for her part, as long as her fate was in suspense, she had better be very careful herself and not go repeating to anyone, not to her visitors or to anyone else, what she had
just said to him. She had better not enter into the subject at all.…

She went on entreating him—don't tell anyone, not anyone, not even Mr Wilson or Mr Strachan.…

Mr Dixon did not tell his associates, but he did feel the need to consult somebody, and he finally took into his confidence two non-legal friends—it seems a very odd choice—and asked their advice as to the propriety of his continuing to act for Mrs M'Lachlan; and made up his mind at last that he couldn't at this stage desert her—he was known to have had a private interview with her and it would look too pointed.

Only, as it happened, on the way home from the prison, full of thoughts upon this extraordinary interview, Mr Dixon ran into two detectives whom he knew to speak to, Audley Thomson and William Smith, popularly known as ‘Black Will'. They all three stopped and had a cosy little chat.

The Home Secretary didn't take his choice either way—he sat on the fence in the middle. Mr Waddington, Chief Under Secretary in the Criminal Department of the Home Office, received a long memorial from Sir Archibald Alison, who had originated the initial enquiry after the trial, and who as Sheriff of Lanarkshire had been concerned with the case throughout. Sir Archibald's submissions, Mr Waddington reported, were unanswerable. (As we know, Sir Archibald was now himself convinced of the prisoner's innocence.) ‘The prisoner was an accidental and constrained witness of the murder but not an actor in it. She can never be hanged.' (It was being said in Edinburgh that ‘it would take a regiment of soldiers to hang Mrs M'Lachlan') But, ‘having concealed and adopted it' advised Mr Waddington, she would have to be punished.

Lord Grey accordingly wrote off to the Lord Provost of Glasgow. The Lord Provost had requested the Post Office to forward immediately any official letter addressed to himself and, all honour to him, the moment he received the letter, though it was after eleven at night, he hurried round to the jail. There was a glorious mix-up when he hammered at the locked gates—dogs barked, voices demanded to know who he was, and only when that information finally filtered through were the doors hastily thrown open to the great man. Everyone was in bed, but the Governor hastily got up again, and as the clock struck the midnight
hour he was conducted down the endless corridors, through the innumerable locked doors, to the condemned cell. He had arranged for a message to be sent off at once to James M'Lachlan. He enquired of the prison wardresses how the prisoner had been. She had been very much distressed after the trial, but now she seemed more composed again. He went into the cell and there read the letter to her. It was November 6—five months since the murder, five weeks since the trial had ended; five days before Jessie was due to die. She said: ‘Will there be naething done on Saturday, then?'

Not on Saturday or ever. That was all over. She was ‘respited until further significance of Her Majesty's pleasure.'

Her Majesty's pleasure was made known to her nine days later. A conditional pardon—the condition being that she be kept in penal servitude for the term of her natural life. Such was the Home Secretary's conception of a suitable punishment for an accidental witness to a crime who had subsequently, having taken an oath on the Bible and being threatened with her life, kept silence. Penal servitude for life.