Victorian Maiden (14 page)

“I can't believe it. I just can't believe it. How utterly stupid must the man be, Atticus? Shouldn't a magistrate be blessed with at least a spark of intelligence?”

Dr Roberts was utterly distraught as he paced back and forth in front of Sessrum House.

“Doctor, we only came over to tell you that your aunt's lawyers are preparing the papers regarding her inheritance, but we seem to have walked into a veritable brouhaha. Whatever is the matter? You look fit to explode.”

“The matter is, I've had a letter from that fool magistrate. Here, read it for yourselves.”

He thrust a ball of crumpled paper across at Atticus, who caught it, and with a deeply apprehensive glance to Lucie, opened it out and smoothed it against one of the big stone columns.

“She's failed the McNaughton test,” he said after a moment, “Due to the absence of any evidence of madness and the sworn testimony of the police. She's to stand trial at the next assizes.”

“Surely not,” breathed Lucie, “But how could she?”

“That imbecile of a police superintendant swore an oath that she could understand perfectly well what was being said to her whilst she was in their custody. It's utter poppycock, of course; she's senile. She hadn't the first idea what was happening to her in there.”

“Absence of evidence is not the same as evidence of absence,” Atticus added.

“But you're an eminent psychiatrist,” Lucie said, “Won't they take your sworn word as evidence too? Your oath is as good as his.”

“They've an idea I'm in on it!”

Roberts' eyes seemed to bulge from their sockets.

“Can you believe it? They spoke to that fool Liddle at the workhouse and he told them that I'd been there many times to see their Medical Officer. So now they think I might have conspired with Aunt Elizabeth to kill my grandfather. They think I might have coached her in how to behave like an imbecile, so she could get away with it scot-free!”

“So when are the next assize sessions?” Lucie asked hurriedly, to forestall the question she could sense was already forming on Atticus' lips.

Roberts looked at her grimly.

“Next week,” he said.

“Then,
Quo Fata Vocant
,” said Atticus, neatly folding the letter and handing it back to Roberts, “Whither the Fates Call. We need a plan of action.”

“Very well,” said Roberts, “I'll have Petty send up some tea. We'll meet Mary in the Annexe for a council of war. It'll be private there, and Aunt Elizabeth will be having her mid-morning nap.”

A few minutes later, they were back in the smoking room of the Annexe under the malevolently watchful gaze of Freya and the ghosts of the Friday Club.

“I'd forgotten quite how oppressive this place is,” Lucie whispered after the doctor had excused himself to summon Mary.

Atticus nodded.

And then Mary Lovell duly appeared, and when she did, they were appalled at the sight of her. It might have been Elizabeth Wilson herself shuffling after Dr Roberts through the door, so stooped and broken did she look. Her face was crumpled and worn, and the gloom of the Annexe accentuated the deep black semi-circles beneath her eyes. It seemed as if she hadn't slept a moment in the days and nights since they had last seen her, and that those sleepless days and nights must have worn her down like so many years.

“You've heard the news I take it?” she whispered, as she collapsed onto a seat opposite them and fell against its arm.

“We have,” Lucie confirmed.

“And they're here to help us plan a course of action if this travesty of natural justice is to be avoided,” Roberts added.

“There is no way to avoid a trial, then?” Atticus asked.

Roberts glanced at Mary, and Mary shook her head.

He said: “I'll engage a lawyer, the very best lawyer I can find to fight for it – of course I will – but the magistrate says not, especially when the sessions are so close.”

“Then we must think about a defence for her,” Atticus replied.

He tapped his chin with a forefinger.

“I've been giving all of this a lot of thought, and it seems to me that although it is conceivable by the letter of the law that Miss Elizabeth might hang, in reality it's most unlikely, most unlikely indeed. Very few women are executed for murder these days, and those that are, are either the ones who have shown clear and wicked malice aforethought, or the ones who have gone completely against their natural, maternal instincts; child killers for example.

Miss Elizabeth had only been here for a matter of hours that day, and she had no prior notion that she was going to be fetched here at all, no matter what the police might suspect. Also, remember that it was your grandfather who paid the visit to her bedroom, and not the other way about. No, I could quite imagine her being sent to an asylum or even perhaps, to a prison, but I certainly can't see her being executed.”

“Mr Fox,” Mary said, her voice no more than a whisper, “Incarceration would be a thousand times worse for Lizzie than execution.”

“Worse? But how could it possibly be worse, Miss Lovell?”

Atticus was astonished.

“Her mind is gone as you all agree. So as long as she was warm and adequately fed, surely she wouldn't know the difference?”

“In short, as long as she was kept caged, like the meanest animal, that would be fine, Mr Fox? Is that what you're saying?”

Mary Lovell's words dripped with venom.

“No, no of course I didn't mean it like that, Miss Lovell,” Atticus replied hastily, “It's just…”

He paused to select his words carefully.

“It's just that she surely wouldn't feel the pain of imprisonment as keenly as an ordinary person would, someone who had a full command of their faculties.”

“You're quite wrong, Mr Fox.”

“Excuse me, but how so?”

“Because her thoughts and memories torment her far more than you could possibly imagine. She's in purgatory every single, waking hour. I believe Dr Roberts has already told you how she takes a knife to her arms and breasts so that the pain of her wounds can distract her from the pain of her soul. Before her dementia, she used to tell me continually how she could never quite drive the demons from her mind. Every day for nearly fifty years she has wished herself dead, Mr Fox. She has spent every single day yearning to die, and the only things that have stopped her from taking her own life have been sheer good fortune, and a fear of going to Hell. You see, she believed that she was so wicked, so utterly loathsome, that if she died, she would surely go straight to Hell and be tormented for eternity.”

She hesitated.

“And there was one other thing.”

“Which is what?”

She hesitated again, her eyes pained with fear and doubt.

“You must tell us everything, Miss Lovell, if we are to help her,” Lucie urged. But instead of Mary Lovell, it was Dr Roberts who answered. His rage had all but subsided, and instead had given way to exhaustion and resignation.

“May I tell you both something in the strictest confidence, something you must never divulge to another, living soul?”

“I can't guarantee anything, Dr Roberts,” Atticus answered cautiously, “But we pride ourselves on our discretion.”

“Very well, I can't ask for anything more, I suppose.”

Roberts took a long breath and raised up his head, as if it were he that was about to face the gallows and not his aunt and said: “In plain terms, Atticus and Mrs Fox, my grandfather was nothing less than a monster.”

“A monster,” Atticus exclaimed, “But how can you call him that? He may have been a little overbearing perhaps, bombastic even, but in spite of that, he was still a great philanthropist. Or like Miss Lovell, are you saying now that he wasn't even that?”

Roberts shook his head and Mary stared stoically at the tea tray.

“That's what he would have had the world believe.”

He took another long, deep breath.

“It was Lord Acton I think who wrote that: ‘Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.' Alas, how true those words prove to be. We British are undoubtedly a great and powerful nation, Atticus. It's just unfortunate that, as a consequence, we have produced a disproportionate number of great, but corrupt and ultimately bad men. We think that with the genius of our engineers, the wealth of our industry, and our sheer military might, we can do almost anything we choose. Tragically, too many of those same corrupt men believe that they can indeed do anything they choose, and get away with it. Tell me: Have either of you ever heard of something called the ‘Defloration Mania'?”

Atticus shook his head. He glanced at his wife, who was staring at Roberts in what might have been horror.

“It's also been called, ‘The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon,' I believe.” Roberts added.

At that, a great wave of comprehension swept over Atticus Fox. It left him cold, dazed and wet with sweat.

“Stead,” he hissed at last; “W. T. Stead, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette. I read about his articles a few years ago – the ‘Maiden Tribute' articles – if that's what you mean. I thought that Stead was just a sensationalist, just someone trying to sell copies of a newspaper. I mean to say, thousands of young, innocent girls entrapped or bought like slaves on the streets of Britain for the perverted pleasure of the wealthy classes. I can't see how all of that could have been going on under our very noses. Surely it would have raised Hell itself?”

“I do indeed mean Mr Stead's articles, Atticus, and yes, I do mean the procurement of vast numbers of very young girls – virgin girls – in order to forcibly deflower them. Mr Stead's claims were, and still are, entirely accurate. I will concede that you're right when you say it should have raised Hell. But it happened here, in this Annexe, for years and it didn't even raise the servants.

I'm deeply ashamed to admit to you both that my grandfather and his select circle of friends in the Friday Club rejoiced in the vanguard of Harrogate's very own defloration mania.”

They glanced as one at the picture high on the wall, and the smirks and leers of the faces there betrayed the stark truth of his words.

“Then thank Providence that's all the Friday Club is now,” Lucie said, “Just awful memories and an old photograph on a wall.”

“We're all very glad too, Mrs Fox,” Roberts agreed. “Those men are all either dead now or at least are very old and frail. But remember this: Mr Stead wrote those articles – his ‘infernal narrative,' as he called it – not fifty, not twenty, not even ten, but just five short years ago. There have been some reforms to be sure; the age of consent for girls has been raised from thirteen to sixteen years for example, but you can be certain of this: The Maiden Tribute is still being paid to this day, in the dark places of every town and city in the realm.”

Roberts shook his head despairingly.

“When my Aunt Elizabeth came to live here directly after her mama's death, she was thirteen years of age. My grandfather was her only living relative. He couldn't believe his luck. His niece, his sister's daughter, a beautiful, young, innocent girl, had been dropped completely into his power. In his own words, she would have cost him a clear two hundred pounds if he'd bought her from a procuress but there she was, a free gift of the Fates.

Forgive my indelicacy, Mrs Fox, but he used her wretchedly. Her mama hadn't even gone cold in her grave before he took Elizabeth's virginity, and for the next two years, he used her as nothing more than a plaything. Worse than that, he allowed, in fact he encouraged, the other gentlemen of his Friday Club to do the same. Often they would sedate her with chloral hydrate or laudanum to prevent her resisting, especially if one of the older, frailer gentlemen was having a turn at her. Perhaps in coming back here, to this house, to this Annexe where much of it happened, it triggered memories of her life of Hell here. Perhaps that's why she killed him.”

Lucie was the first to recover and her voice was both steady and calm.

“Then that would certainly explain her apparent battle fatigue, but if she left before you were born, Doctor, how is it you know all of this?”

“There was the inevitable talk amongst the servants. My grandfather thought it was all a closely guarded secret but they knew; they knew or at least they suspected what was going on. I overheard their conversations many times as I played here.”

“But I knew for certain.”

Sister Lovell turned back at last from the tray and her face was ashen white.

“I was Elizabeth's governess. I knew that he, and the beasts-of-the-field he called his gentlemen friends, were taking advantage of her, and of all the other poor young girls that passed through this wretched Annexe; the girls the whole world thought he had rescued from poverty and was sending on to a better life.”

She turned and stabbed a finger at a large tapestry hanging on the wall opposite.

“Freya, Mr and Mrs Fox, was the Viking goddess of love and beauty.”

She stared at it in contempt.

“Beauty certainly; they much preferred their girls, and occasionally boys, to be beautiful, but love – hah – the only grains of love they had were for themselves. And people thought them philanthropists! Dear God, what philanthropy is there in procuring virgin girls from the streets and from the workhouses and even from their own poor mothers, and in plain terms, bringing them here to be raped? Tell me that, Mr and Mrs Fox.”

“And not just raped.”

Roberts' voice broke the ringing silence that followed Mary's words.

“They were raped as violently and as painfully as possible. Do you remember the words carved over the door downstairs: ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'?”

Atticus and Lucie nodded together.

“They used to show them those words as they brought them in. They wanted the girls to be terrified even before they began. And when they did begin, when they viciously and sadistically deflowered them, they would delight in being as hard and as brutal as they could – just like the Viking barbarians they idolised. That, Atticus, and that, Mrs Fox, is why the walls and the doors of the Annexe are so thick, and why the carpets are doubled. It was to muffle the sounds of the girls as they screamed and begged for mercy, and it was to deaden the sounds of the boys being buggered.”