Lady of Ashes (43 page)

“A more honorable death than what you’ve provided for your victims, is it not?”

Picking up her skirts and grabbing her bag once again, Violet tore through the gate and into the lions’ enclosure. With her heart pounding erratically from an abnormal combination of fear and rage, she paused and took a deep breath.

The male had wandered back to his pride, and the females were sniffing his jaw. One female took a tentative lick at him. Hoping they were so preoccupied they wouldn’t notice the sound of her heart thumping wildly in her chest, she crept toward Susanna.

She reached what she thought was Susanna’s body and knelt down, miraculously without the lions noticing. Or if they noticed, they were too preoccupied with other things. In a flash Violet realized what her haste had wrought.

This wasn’t Susanna. On the ground were the remains from the canvas bag of deer meat. Susanna wasn’t here at all. But where was she?

Far behind her, Mrs. Barrett was cackling hysterically. Violet couldn’t help it, she sobbed aloud as she stood up in relief. The sound must have alerted the lions, because she heard a low growl across the enclosure.

“Pet the darling kitty, Mrs. Morgan. Let him lick your hand.” The murderess’s laughter was clanging in Violet’s head. Slowly turning, she realized that the male was contemplating a return to see what the disturbance was over his dinner. Violet stood as still as if she were a corpse herself, so as not to alarm him.

Mrs. Barrett continued her shrill laughter. “Aha! You thought you could best me. You should have realized otherwise.”

Now shaking from disbelief and joy, Violet was wondering how she was going to make it past a hungry lion and a deranged killer in order to get out of here and find Susanna.

As imperceptibly as she could, Violet began backing slowly toward the fence, with her eye on the pride of lions. Her movements, though, were not imperceptible enough, for Mrs. Barrett screamed at her, “Not another step!”

Violet ignored her, continuing her inexorable creep toward the fencing, but the lion was irritated by the outburst, pacing back and forth in front of his females in contemplation of what to do next. Mrs. Barrett did not pay attention to the cat’s displeasure, instead screeching at her again. “Don’t move again. You stay in that cage until the lions have had their fill.”

As Violet continued to ignore the other woman while she focused on her goal of reaching the gate, she slowly slid her hand inside her bag and withdrew her knife. Its blade gleamed even in the low lighting of the den.

The lion was approaching her, sniffing the air like an estate agent ferreting out a basement’s bad smells. Violet could see the tension in his swishing tail and taut hips. Even the females shrank back at his anger over Violet’s intrusion.

The lion bared his teeth at her from about twenty feet away. Violet nearly started cackling hysterically herself, realizing that her knife was a puny defense against such a great beast.

Not that it mattered, for at that moment, the lion roared with all of his strength, the sound of it erasing all human thought and feeling as it reverberated against every square inch of space such that it felt as though the glass panes of the ceiling might crack and come shattering down upon them. Even Mrs. Barrett was stunned into silence.

As she brought her hands up to cover her ears, Violet dropped her bag and knife—her only weapon, pathetic though it was—to the ground.

The lion went back to the girls one more time, nuzzling one of them before turning back around. As he poised back on his haunches, his nostrils flaring and his eyes blazing, Violet now knew what was about to happen to her. From the corner of her eye, she saw Mrs. Barrett smirking, as that woman also realized that the lion was about to fulfill her wishes.

With nothing left to do, Violet dropped into a crouched position and threw her hands over her head, shutting her eyes and praying that her death would be instantaneous. Was this what a doe felt like in the moments before she felt a big cat clamp its jaws around her neck, bringing her down with his massive feline paws?

But in that instant, everything happened. She heard the den’s main entry door open with a great crash, followed by the sounds of multiple shouts and people entering the den. Mrs. Barrett’s terrible shrieking rose above everything.

The fence gate also banged open. It swung open so hard that it collided with the fencing behind it, vibrating noisily. More shouting and a thin wail rising up, then hurried footsteps approaching her.

“Back!” a voice attached to those footsteps bellowed at greater volume than the lion’s earlier roar. A popping sound followed by a buzz rent the air.

Still she lived. Where was the lion’s hot, blood-tainted breath? His sharp canine teeth? His thick, clawing nails?

“Sweetheart,” she heard as she was scooped up in strong arms and carried out of the lions’ living area and back to the visitors’ area, where she was gently put on her feet.

“Sam,” she said, realizing that he had come after all. His expression of worry nearly made her collapse in his arms, but she realized there were others surrounding her—Mary, Susanna, a police officer, and a uniformed zookeeper holding a long-barreled gun. The zookeeper walked to the gate and entered the lions’ enclosure. The male lay on his side with a dart in his side. He looked to be sleeping.

Mrs. Barrett was tied to the fence by her wrists, and she alternately muttered and ranted profanities at them.

Everyone receded into the background for the moment except for Susanna. “Susanna, love,” Violet said, putting a hand tenderly to the girl’s face.

“Mama,” Susanna said weakly, reverting to her old reference for Violet. “I was so worried about you.”

“
You
were worried about
me?
” Violet said, pulling Susanna close and hugging her as if she might never see her again. “I’ve been nearly out of my mind over you. Where were you?”

Susanna stepped back. “Mama, I was so scared. That lady killed my mother.”

“I know, I know.”

“She took me from our house and locked me in a basement. She made me drink something foul and then I went to sleep for a long time. I thought she was doing to me what she did to my mother. But I didn’t die, and she came down and talked to me every day to tell me that she was just using me to kill you, Mama. It was so hard to understand her sometimes because my head was always muddled.”

Violet nodded. “She kept you drugged.”

“I knew who she was on the train, but when we didn’t find her again, I just hoped she was dead. I really did. I wanted her to be dead. But then when we prepared those other poor people, I knew she wasn’t.”

“On the train?” Sam asked.

“She was a passenger with us in the Clayton Tunnel accident,” Violet said.

He shook his head. “I don’t understand, why would that make her want to kill you?”

“Sam, it’s a very long story.”

It was Sam’s turn to nod. “Susanna,” he said. “How did you get away from Mrs. Barrett? How did you know your mother was at the zoo?”

Susanna shrugged. “She told me yesterday that the lions would help ‘take care of’ Mama today. She also forgot to give me my daily potion yesterday, so my head didn’t seem muddled this morning. I found a loose brick in the fire pit and threw it at the window. I got out before Mrs. Barrett knew what I’d done. I’m a little scratched.” She held up her arms, which had lost the battle with whatever jagged glass they had encountered in Mrs. Barrett’s basement window.

“Now we are a matching pair,” Susanna said.

Violet laughed. “Yes, we are.”

“What does she mean, ‘a matching pair’?” Sam said. “Ah, another long story, I see.”

“I knew where the zoo was because my mama—my other mama—brought me here once. When I arrived, Mr. Harper and Mrs. Overfelt were also running through the entrance.”

With Susanna safe and Mrs. Barrett under careful watch, Violet felt herself unraveling. She tumbled into Sam’s arms, comforting and strong around her, and buried her face in his neck, sobbing as she tangled her fingers in his hair. A widow publicly embracing a man was beyond the pale.

She didn’t care.

“My God, sweetheart, what if I’d lost you?” Sam murmured in her ear, words she’d heard from Graham once, before he’d seen her damaged arm. What if Sam saw it? Would he be disgusted, too?

For now, it didn’t matter. He was whispering reassurances and it was as if they were alone together, with the stench of animals and the fear of death a lifetime away. Violet felt herself go limp in his arms, willing to let him support her while she digested the enormity of what had nearly happened to her and Susanna. Finally recovering her strength, she pulled away and looked at him.

“Where were you?” Violet asked. “Did you get my note?”

“Only just now, thanks to Mrs. Overfelt. His Excellency invited me to sup with him, so I didn’t make my daily visit to the shop. She, however, came by to see you, and when Harry told her you’d gone home, she was suspicious. When she didn’t find you at home, either, she decided to seek me out. The woman was tenacious in looking for me at my hotel and nearby confectionaries, and she finally decided to try the minister’s residence. The minister gave me his personal vehicle to go to the Metropolitan Police and then we got here as quickly as we could. It was Mary who shouted at a zookeeper to follow us with a tranquilizer gun—a brilliant idea, if I may say so.”

Violet turned to Mary, tears pricking her eyes once again. “Oh Mary, I owe you such an apology. How could I have distrusted you? I hope you can forgive me.”

Mary grabbed both of Violet’s hands. “Think nothing of it. Might I not have done worse in your same position? I’m so relieved you and Susanna are safe.” Mary flashed a knowing look. “But now I think you probably need some rest. Mr. Harper, I’ll find my own way home. I’ll call on you tomorrow, Violet.”

With that, Mary left the lions’ den. Right behind her, the police officer marched Mrs. Barrett out.

“Is she all right?” Sam asked the man. The officer paused, allowing Violet to see once more the mocking bitterness in Mrs. Barrett’s eyes.

“Yes. I had to use rope. Her wrists are too small for handcuffs; she’ll slip right out of them. She’s not going anywhere now, though. The Metropolitan Police thank you for leading us to her, Mr. Harper.”

“The United States government will be glad to know it was able to help Great Britain in this small way.”

The officer asked Violet, “Do you think you can come around and make a statement about what happened to you?”

“Of course,” Violet said.

Mrs. Barrett snatched her moment of opportunity to spit at Violet, missing completely and then bitterly cursing her ill luck the entire way out the door.

“No wonder she used poison as her weapon,” Sam said. “She’s a terrible shot.”

F
aced with conclusive evidence, Dr. Beasley ordered that Mr. Young and Mrs. Atkinson be exhumed. Both were found to have been poisoned by sulfuric acid. A subsequent exhumation of Susanna’s mother revealed the same means of death.

Murder charges were brought against Mrs. Barrett, or, rather, Catherine Wilson, as police later learned was her name. The investigation revealed that Wilson had once before been brought up on charges of attempted murder against a Sarah Carnell. Catherine had come to live with Sarah’s family as housekeeper and the two women became close, and in due course Sarah altered her will to make Wilson the chief beneficiary. Soon after, Sarah caught a chill and Catherine offered to look after her, even going to the chemist’s shop to purchase a healing tonic for her friend.

Sarah took one sip of the tonic and spat it out because it burned her mouth. She was astounded to find the foul liquid eating through her bedclothes. Catherine fled the house, never to return. She was later arrested and duly appeared before the Old Bailey. Catherine’s defense team claimed that there was no proof that Catherine had intentionally done anything, that there may have simply been an error at the chemist’s. The jury gave her the benefit of the doubt and she was released to the world to reinvent herself and continue her murderous rampage.

There would be no benefit of the doubt this time.

On September 22, 1862, Catherine stood in the dock at the Old Bailey for a second time, this time before Justice John Barnard Byles. The Old Bailey was a three-story building topped by a dome reminiscent of St. Paul’s, except instead of salvation from eternal hellfire, its occupants were hoping to avoid the hangman’s noose.

All of London was voraciously reading news about the event surrounding the trial, which Violet, Sam, George, Mary, and the Sinclairs attended. The woman’s string of murders was endless, as evidenced by those who came forward to testify against her.

Various witnesses testified to Catherine’s suspected involvement in the 1854 death of a seafaring gentleman named Peter Mawer, for whom she had been housekeeper and who had obviously been poisoned. However, Captain Mawer suffered from gout and was taking the dangerous drug colchicum, so his doctor declared that he had taken an accidental overdose. His family never thought so.

Next was the case of Maria Soames, who ran the lodging house where the newly married Jimmy Dixon and Catherine Wilson moved in November 1855. Dixon died suddenly in June 1856, followed mysteriously by Maria in October.

Catherine’s trail of carnage continued, as she moved from residence to residence, claiming to be either nurse or housekeeper, depending upon what was necessary to secure employment. After subsequently securing the affection of her employers and seeing their wills rewritten to include her, her employers expired quite suddenly, but always such that it could have been from natural causes. Catherine became quite adept at convincing doctors not to perform autopsies.

Taken together, the evidence was damning, but circumstantial nevertheless. Until Violet was brought forward to provide her own eyewitness testimony. The presses ran day and night, releasing additional details of the foul Catherine Wilson’s exploits. All of London was clamoring for justice.

Her pursuit of an undertaker who had already been at the center of an earlier scandal was an irony that set the gossips’ tongues wagging at a speed faster than that of any newspaper press.

In an episode much like that of her testimony before Parliament, Violet was once again brought forward to testify. All of London collectively leaned forward to listen.

In painful detail, Violet recounted the condition in which she had found Mr. Young and Mrs. Atkinson and her suspicions of the nature of their deaths. Sam nodded encouragingly at her from his seat as she spoke of innocently meeting Catherine on the train involved in the Clayton Tunnel crash, and later having Susanna snatched away from her because of that brief and tragic interlude. With both fists clenched in her lap, she told the jury of the mocking poetry Catherine had mailed her and of their final clash at the zoo, resulting in Catherine attempting to poison her not once, but twice. Heads shook and tongues clucked at Violet’s testimony.

Violet was the last witness to be heard, but her statements were the most incredible. The judge sent the jury off to deliberations with a quick summary: “Gentlemen, if such a state of things as this were allowed to exist, no living person could sit down to a meal in safety.”

The outcome was virtually certain. It took the jury three hours to return a verdict of guilty—thereby setting the presses off to a fury once again—and Catherine was sentenced to hang by the neck until dead. At her sentencing, Judge Byles declared Catherine the greatest criminal that ever lived.

Violet couldn’t have agreed more.

In summing up its own judgment of the trial,
Harper’s Weekly
opined:

At eight o’clock in the morning on October 20, 1862, a crowd of nearly twenty thousand gathered outside the debtors’ door at Newgate Prison, Violet and Sam among them. Because she was still officially in deep mourning, she chose to wear her blackest dress and accoutrements, but this day wore them as homage to all of the victims who had suffered by Catherine Wilson’s hand.

Catherine was brought out, her hair tightly pulled back and her arms bound behind her. She stared straight on as she climbed the stairs to the platform of the scaffolding, and acknowledged none of the catcalls and shouting going on around her, even ignoring a handful of blackberries that was pelted at her, leaving a streaming trail of purple mush on her gray prison dress.

The condemned refused an offer to address the crowd and was dispatched quickly and efficiently. Disappointment rippled through the crowd, who were hoping for a long strangulation, or at the very least for Catherine to be humiliated by soiling herself.

Violet hoped for no such thing. She knew that Catherine would be tossed into the rough pine box waiting for her beneath the trapdoor, then likely buried secretly that night in an unmarked grave. Despite Catherine’s grievous crimes, it still offended Violet’s sense of propriety for any person to be buried so shamefully. Yet she only dwelt on it briefly, for it was proper that Catherine suffer an ignominious end as retribution for her vile life on earth.

Having thus resolved things in her mind, Violet blew out a breath of relief. Never again would she have to fear this murderous woman and her insane notions of right and wrong. She and Sam left the prison, her heart lifted for the first time in years at the prospect of a hopeful future, perhaps one involving Sam.

Her hopes were to be dashed almost immediately.