Maggie (3 page)

He had set sail from India, and, on arriving in England, had immediately travelled to Scotland, first to see the solicitors, and then to survey his domain which lay in the south-west of Scotland, the county of Strathairn, dividing Ayrshire from Renfrewshire. The whole county was only sixty thousand acres but all of it was rich farm land.

His new home, Strathairn Castle, was a Victorian monstrosity of black turrets and towers and pinnacles and arrow slits, all in the mock medieval tradition. It was richly, if gloomily, furnished, and the staff were polite and well-trained. The Chamberlain of Strathairn turned out to be an efficient man called Herbert Jamieson who had required no assistance in running the estates from the late earl and seemed to require no assistance from the new one.

Peter, Lord Strathairn, had, therefore, found himself in that dangerous situation of being a presentable man in the prime of life with a great deal of money at his disposal and very little to occupy his time.

Then a letter had arrived from Mr. Farquharson. Mr.
Farquharson, a rich tea planter and his family, had been kind to Captain Peter Strange and had entertained him many times to dinner when he was on leave in Lahore. Mr. Farquharson had written to say he was retired and had returned to his native city, and, having heard of Captain Strange’s elevation to the Scottish peerage, had begged him to visit him in Glasgow.

The earl, finding himself bored with inaction and longing for the sights and sounds of India, had promptly accepted the invitation. If he could not return to India, then it would at least be some compensation to talk over old times. Now, he began to wish he had not come. He had, of course, seen dreadful scenes of poverty in India but they had somehow been mitigated by the bright sunshine, and by the fact he
was
in a foreign country, albeit a chunk of the British Empire. It was the evil-smelling darkness of Glasgow on this foggy November day, he decided, which struck such a strange chill into his heart. He felt as if something really quite awful was about to happen.

The carriage lurched and swayed as the horses slipped and stumbled on the greasy, icy cobbles. Lord Strathairn jerked down the window and peered out into the thickening gloom. There seemed to be a tremendous amount of traffic, all inching through the suffocating fog. A smell of rank poverty emanated from the looming bulk of the tenements; a smell compounded of cabbage and biscuits, vinegar, coal gas, sour milk and urine.

He drew his head in and slammed up the window as his carriage lurched forward again.

They had only gone a few feet when the carriage stopped again. It had drawn alongside a tall, black brougham which was going in the opposite direction. A young woman looked out, gazing full into the eyes of Lord Strathairn. She was flanked by two grim matrons. It was a haunting face, a wistful face; wide, lost, drowned eyes in a perfect oval of a
face; jet-black curls peeping below a modest bonnet. He raised his hat in an involuntary salute, his carriage lurched forward again, and she was gone.

“Ye shouldnae hae done that,” said his manservant, Roshie, severely.

“Indeed?” said the earl somewhat haughtily. “And why not?”

“Because thon was Maggie Macleod on her way tae the court,” said Roshie with a sort of grim satisfaction. “Her picture’s been in a’ the papers. The photo wasnae whit ye would ca’ a guid likeness, but close enough. Her husband was an inspector o’ police and she poisoned him wi’ arsenic.”

“Oh,” said the earl dismally, sinking his chin into his beaver collar and feeling even more depressed.

Maggie Macleod was weary of life with a soul sickness that ate into every fibre of her being. In a mad way, it did not seem strange to her that she should be on the way to the High Court to stand trial for the murder of her husband. Her marriage seemed to have been one long dreary desert lit by flares of cruelty, rather in the way the harsh gaslight cut through the yellow fog of the streets outside. She had been married only a year before the inspector’s death and yet it had seemed like eons.

As the carriage lurched and stopped and lurched and stopped, Maggie remembered her arrival in Glasgow and how stunned she had been by the dirt and noise and endless streets of buildings. The inspector lived in a tall mansion in Park Terrace in the West End of the city. It never dawned on Maggie’s innocent mind that her husband lived in a very grand style for a mere police inspector. The house was expensively if tastelessly furnished. Apart from a grim housekeeper, Flora Meikle, there were two housemaids, a parlour maid, an odd job man, and a daily woman to do the
heavy work. For one brief moment before her marriage, Maggie had hoped that Inspector Macleod would be kind to her. Her brutal introduction to the mysteries of the marriage bed soon dashed that hope.

The inspector had been married before, that much Maggie had gathered from the housekeeper, Flora Meikle. But as to how or when the late Mrs. Macleod had died, Maggie could never find out. She was too shy to make friends, and, since she was rarely allowed out of the house, had little opportunity to do so.

And then, only two months ago, her life had begun to take a slight turn for the better. Her husband had been closeted in his study, night after night, with the crime reporter of the
Morning Echo
, Murdo Knight, a big, boozy, hard-drinking Scot. The inspector would fall into his bed almost every evening drunk and dead to the world. Maggie was spared his onslaughts of brutal lust. Then Mr. Macleod had begun to give her pin money, suggesting that she take a walk along Sauchiehall Street and look at the shops.

Maggie enjoyed these expeditions although she never dared venture into any of the shops where the assistants looked to her country eyes like dukes and duchesses.

She kept the money her husband gave her, carefully hoarded in a corner of her old tin trunk. Somewhere in the back of her mind had been a hope that she could save enough for a passage to America or Australia. But it was only a faint little hope. Deep inside she knew she would never have the courage to escape.

And then it looked as if her marriage might become tolerable as her husband became drunker and more jovial. Drink no longer made him as mean and malicious as her father. He would plant wet, affectionate kisses on her mouth and hint he was working on something which would surely make him superintendent.

But one bitter cold morning he had been found dead in
his study. Flora Meikle, the housekeeper, had found him and had broken the news to Maggie, saying it looked as if Mr. Macleod had died of an apoplexy.

Maggie could still remember that moment when she had stood alone in the bedroom after Flora had left and had realized that for the first time in her life she was free.

Then the blow had fallen. Mr. Macleod’s doctor, a half blind septuagenarian had been down with the ’flu and his replacement, Dr. Walker, was young and keen. He had refused to sign the death certificate, an autopsy had been performed, and the horrified Maggie had learned that her husband had died of arsenic poisoning.

That very day, October first, 1908, Maggie Macleod had been arrested and charged with the murder of her husband. It had been the housemaids’ day off and Maggie had made tea for her husband herself. She was examined before Henry Dalzell, Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and then put in prison until she should stand trial.

Flora Meikle loyally supplied Maggie with nourishing meals which she brought to the prison three times a day. Maggie was allowed to wear her own clothes and have the luxury of proper food until such time as she should be found guilty. For it seemed in no doubt that she would be found guilty.

Even the housekeeper seemed to think so, adding to Maggie’s torment by supplying her with the daily newspapers which appeared to have condemned her already particularly Murdo Knight of the
Morning Echo
, who described the sinister look on Maggie’s face as she had stared at her husband over the dinner table when he, Murdo, had been a guest. And yet, it was the newspapers that saved Maggie’s sanity. Or rather, sanity of a kind. For Maggie had all at once become convinced that she was going to be hanged for a murder she had not committed, and somehow it seemed only one more piece of injustice in an
unjust life. Death began to look attractive. Without hope, Maggie was able to face her fate.

The fact that there had been no news from her father did not surprise her.

She was to be defended in court by her chief counsel, Mr. Andrew Byles, Sheriff of Inverness, who broke it to her gently that the police had evidence that a woman of Maggie’s description had purchased arsenic at two apothecary shops in Sauchiehall Street.

Maggie nodded her head as if not surprised at that either. It seemed inevitable to her that the net should close so tightly about her. Mr. Byles took her through her statement again, regretting that, under Scottish law, Maggie would not be allowed to speak in her own defence. The girl’s sad honesty seemed to be the only thing to help prove her innocence.

The brougham taking her from the prison to the court jerked to a halt again, jolting Maggie back into the immediate present. The wardresses were discussing the forthcoming trial. They were blessing the fog and hoping they would be able to get their charge quietly into court by the side door, for already there had been rumours that the mob, inflamed by the newspaper stories, were ready to tear her to pieces.

The dank smell of the River Clyde began to permeate the carriage. They must be near the court now.

And then Maggie, looking dully out of the window, saw a face staring at her from a carriage window opposite.

It was a handsome, tanned, rakish face under the shadow of a tall silk hat. As she stared at him, his blue eyes twinkled and he gallantly raised his hat in salute.

And then the carriage moved on.

One of the wardresses muttered ‘Masher’ and leaned forward and jerked down the carriage blind.

Maggie felt her eyes fill with tears. She felt as if someone
had waved to her from some far-away sunny world on the other side of a black pit.

Then reality closed in and death, literally, stared her in the face.

Down under the subterranean passages of the court, Maggie could hear the din above her head as people fought for places.

“Time for us to go,” said one of the wardresses, Mrs. Chisholm. She straightened a fold of Maggie’s dress and then surveyed her critically like a dresser preparing an actress for her stage appearance.

Maggie had been advised by Flora Meikle to wear her best dress, but Mrs. Chisholm thought Maggie’s afternoon dress of fawn silk trimmed with coarse cream lace and silk and cord tassels was a shade too elaborate for a court appearance. But the golden-brown velvet bonnet was neat and modest and framed Maggie’s pale face very prettily.

They made their way along dark passages, up a narrow flight of stone stairs and through a trapdoor which led directly into the dock. Maggie blinked in the yellow foggy light of the court and then winced as she felt hundreds of eyes avidly scanning her face.

Had Maggie had any hope of an acquittal left in her tired brain, then surely the sight of the judge would have dashed it.

The trumpeters in their green and gold livery sounded a fanfare and everyone rose as Lord Dancer strolled into court, his white silk robes with their scarlet crosses billowing about his willowy body. His face under his wig was handsome in a cold, high-nosed way, but his strong belief in capital punishment had earned him the name of ‘The Grim Reaper’.

Every neck was craned as Maggie—or the panel as the accused is called in Scotland—was placed at the bar. Mr. Ian
Macduff, Advocate-Depute conducting the prosecution, put the tips of his fingers together and peered over the steeple made by them at Maggie who was on the other side of the well of the foggy court. The sonorous voice of the clergyman raised in the opening prayer sounded in the sudden tense silence.

Mr. Macduff found himself puzzled. Maggie Macleod was not what he expected.

One enterprising photographer had been on the spot when Maggie had been taken from her home after being charged with murder. His second cousin worked as a nurse in the office of the doctor who had refused to sign the death certificate and so he had learned that something was afoot.

When Maggie had been led from the house the morning had been dark, the pavements and roads gleaming faintly under a coating of frost. The photographer had lit the magnesium powder and had taken a flash picture with his plate camera.

This picture had been sold to all the newspapers. The magnesium flash had made Maggie’s face appear a dead-white oval with two black pits for eyes and a shadow distorting her mouth. She had looked decidedly sinister.

But the girl in the dock was beautiful. Thick black curls rioted under a sober bonnet, and her eyes were large and brown in her white and flawless face. Macduff decided all at once that she looked the very picture of innocent innocence, resigned to a malign fate, and felt the first stirrings of unease.

She exuded an air of soft and virginal femininity, although the girl could hardly be a virgin after being married to a brute like Macleod, reflected Macduff. He glanced up and took a look at Lord Dancer and knew instinctively that the judge had taken a dislike to the girl and, also, that anyone as feminine and appealing as Mrs. Macleod would always bring out the cruel side of the judge’s nature.

The jury of fifteen men sat very sober and silent, fifteen
pairs of eyes riveted on the accused.

Macduff gave a weary shrug and hitched his gown around his shoulders. He was acting for the Crown and the evidence against Mrs. Macleod was damning. She would hang. The trial was a charade. Nothing more.

Maggie heard the Advocate-Depute’s voice begin to read out the indictment. It seemed to come from very far away until all at once her mind grasped what he was saying.

“That albeit, by the laws of this and of every other well-governed realm, the wickedly and feloniously administering of arsenic, or other poison, to any of the lieges, with intent to murder; as also, murder, are crimes of a heinous nature, and severely punishable: yet true it is and of verity, that you, the said Margaret Macleod, or Margaret Fraser Macleod, are guilty of the said crime…”