The Unseeing Read online

  Or perhaps it was something else. For most of the trial, Sarah Gale had kept her eyes to the ground, her expression unreadable. Occasionally, however, she had looked up and stared intently at Greenacre.

  • • •

  There was a murmur of voices from the floor below and Edmund heard footsteps proceeding up the stairs. His door burst open. It was his clerk, Morris. He wished the man would knock. Morris slapped a pile of papers onto Edmund’s desk.

  “The brief. Not very brief, unfortunately.” Even indoors, Morris still wore his dented stovepipe hat.

  “What is it, Morris?”

  “It is, sir, a spanker,” Morris said, putting his thumbs into the pockets of his bottle-green waistcoat.

  “But what kind of case?”

  “A regular stunner, sir, the like of which you’ve never seen.” Edmund picked the top page off the pile and scanned it. “You’re right, Morris. I have never seen such a case, because it’s a family matter, and I am a criminal lawyer.”

  “No, no, Mr. Fleetwood. It’s about a family, but it’s a criminal case all right.” Morris took the paper from him and began to jab at certain sentences with a dirty forefinger. “Look, sir. Child theft!”

  Edmund took the paper back and skimmed the introduction. It detailed the case of a woman who had absconded with her children after her husband refused her access to them.

  “I’m afraid there’s very little we can do for this Mrs. Pickton. She has no defense. What her wretched husband is doing is perfectly lawful.” He should know: his own father had done it.

  “That’s why we’ll win, sir. We act for Mr. Pickton.”

  Edmund looked up. “No, Morris, we most certainly do not.”

  “But, sir, I ’ave agreed it for you with his solicitor. And I ’ave secured an hadvance payment!”

  To prove this, Morris removed a small pouch from his pocket and shook it so that Edmund could hear the coins chinking. “Three guineas, Mr. Fleetwood.” He lowered his voice. “I know you ’as your principles, sir, but you also need to eat.”

  Edmund rubbed his face. “Morris, you will have to return the money. This is not a matter that I can or want to assist with.”

  Morris sighed and took back the piece of paper. “Very well, sir. We will let someone else dine off this good man’s money.”

  “Besides, I have to concentrate on the Edgeware Road case.”

  “Oh, yes, that one’s caused a stir. Old Paulson thinks it should ’ave been ’im what got your investigator brief. Not that he could investigate his way out of ’is own dressing gown.”

  Paulson had been Edmund’s pupil master. He had trained Edmund mainly in the art of procuring cheap port.

  “Well, evidently they wanted fresh blood,” Edmund said, although he felt again a twist of unease. For the same fee, the Home Secretary could easily have procured someone more senior. “I thought you might be interested to see this, sir.” Morris handed him a slightly soiled pamphlet entitled “The True Confession of James Greenacre to the Murder of Hannah Brown.”

  “Another one? But there have been at least three already.”

  “And all three ’ave been great sellers, I hear,” Morris said. “This one claims to be the true one, penned by Greenacre ’imself.”

  Edmund thought this unlikely. If what the Home Secretary’s clerk had said was correct, Greenacre still maintained that he had returned to his house to find Hannah Brown already dead. He began to read the pamphlet.

  “You know she’s a ladybird, sir?” Morris said in a lowered voice.

  “A ladybird?”

  “A night flower, Mr. Fleetwood. A dollymop.” He leaned forward. “A tail.”

  “You mean a prostitute.”

  “I would not be so uncouth, sir.”

  “I know the papers have written it of her, yes, but that doesn’t make it true. I met her this morning. She doesn’t strike me as the type.”

  Morris wiped his nose with his cuff. “She might not ’ave been a three-penny-upright, but she were living with Greenacre as ’is convenient, weren’t she?”

  “She believed herself to be his common-law wife, Morris.”

  “Wife in watercolors, more like.”

  “What on earth does that mean, man?”

  “It’s a fashionable expression.”

  “I’m sure,” Edmund murmured.

  “Means a woman who it’s easy to, you know, get rid of—dissolve. Like watercolors. A mistress.”

  Easy to dissolve. Edmund would have to hope she was.

  On the cover of the pamphlet were two drawings: one of Greenacre, shown surly and menacingly handsome; the other of Sarah Gale. Her face was sketched in shade beneath her bonnet and her eyes were drawn dark and pained, her lips pursed, her hands at her chest as if praying. It looked absolutely nothing like her.

  All the more pressing, then, that he got the true account and painted a more accurate picture. He took another sheet of paper and began to jot down the outline of a statement.

  5

  The body without head and legs on which an inquest was lately held, was exhumed. The head now under examination was placed with two cut surfaces in opposition. They were found in every way exactly to correspond, even to the superficial cut noticed at the inquest as existing on the right side of the neck.

  The profile struck them as being very much that of the lower order of Irish.

  —MORNING CHRONICLE, 10 JANUARY 1837

  It was Jane Hinkley who unlocked the door to Sarah’s cell that morning. She had a narrow face and a gentle pink mouth, with a smattering of freckles over her snub nose. She must have been about five and twenty. The other warders referred to each other and to the prisoners only by their surnames, but Miss Hinkley had introduced herself by her full name. This seemed to Sarah a kindness—an intimacy.

  “Time for your exercise in the yard now, Sarah. Get some color in those cheeks.”

  She led Sarah along a succession of poorly lit corridors, through huge barred doors, past the cells of those awaiting trial, and on to the women’s exercise area. Sarah ducked under the doorway to emerge into a light so sharp and white that it hurt her eyes, which had grown accustomed to Newgate’s gloom. She breathed in deeply. Although the London air was heavy with the smell of horse dung and coal smoke, it was a good deal better than the human stench of the prison. She could hear clearly the cacophony of life from Newgate Street. The sounds of the street musicians and the rush of carriage wheels seemed unbearably close, and Sarah felt a tightness about her heart at the thought of all those free people, just yards away.

  Outside the door, a group of women stood in line waiting to be led back into the prison. They stared steadily at Sarah, turning their heads to follow her as she walked by. One prisoner—her face pallid and fleshy like uncooked pastry—made a low hissing noise. As Sarah made to move past, the woman stuck out her foot. Sarah stumbled briefly and put out her hand to stop herself from falling, catching the white skin of the prisoner’s shoulder. The woman grabbed Sarah’s wrist and brought her face right up to Sarah’s so that she could feel the woman’s breath on her cheek.

  “You’re lucky today,” she whispered. “The warders are watching. But they don’t always see. They don’t always want to.”

  It was the new prisoner who had whispered about her in the breakfast hall: cold gray eyes and hair as dark as soot. Her breath stank, of rotting teeth and cheap gin. Sarah pulled away from her and moved on.

  For her half hour, Sarah paced the yard in her ill-fitting shoes, around and around the demarcated circle with the other condemned prisoners. She walked behind a tall woman whose dress came only to her calves, her thin white ankles protruding from heavy black boots. There were three rings around which the prisoners moved at the same pace. It was strange to see so many different types of women all in the same blue striped clothing, all walking at the same spe
ed and with the same hopeless expression on their faces. Here, as everywhere in the prison, silence was ordered but unenforceable. Voices hummed along the lines like the wind in the trees.

  Sarah kept her head down, but when she thought no one was watching she raised it to stare hungrily at the faces of the other prisoners, at the sunlight reflecting on puddles of rainwater, and at the pigeons, puffed against the cold, their plumage shining green and mauve. Now and again, she looked up at the sky—cornflower blue with threads of swift-moving white cloud running through it. What was George doing at this exact moment, she wondered. Was he outside playing? Was he safe?

  “You must keep him in sight at all times,” she had told her sister. And Rosina had understood why.

  When she was sure that the warders were looking elsewhere, Sarah studied the strong iron spikes atop the black walls. How would one escape? The walls must be fifteen feet high. They had been scaled before, but not by a woman. She did not have the physical strength to pull herself up, especially now, after weeks of inadequate food and little sleep. No, it was not with her hands that she would escape these walls.

  • • •

  “Someone else has come to save you today.” Groves stood in the doorway, resting her considerable weight against the doorframe.

  “Who?” Sarah asked.

  “A meddlesome Quaker woman. One of Elizabeth Fry’s do-gooders, so help me God.”

  Sarah suppressed a smile.

  When Sarah entered the lady visitors’ room, a small fragile-looking woman stood up and clutched her hands together. She was clothed all in black save for a dark-purple bonnet trimmed with velvet.

  “Miss Gale,” she said, as Sarah approached. “I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

  Groves snorted. “She is become quite famous, is our Miss Gale. I’ll be just over there. Shout if she tries anything.”

  The woman smoothed her skirts and sat down. Her movements were swift and cautious, like a bird.

  “Please,” she said, gesturing toward a chair, “sit.”

  Sarah sat.

  “Miss Gale, I’m Miss Pike—Verity Pike. I work with the British Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners.”

  The woman had large brown eyes, which darted about as she spoke, and a small upturned nose. She did not look well.

  “I wrote to you,” Sarah said. “It’s kind of you to come.”

  “Kindness has nothing to do with it, Miss Gale. We knew you needed our help. I attended your trial. I saw with my own eyes what you endured before those men, and I saw clearly that it was you who were the victim in all of this.”

  Her darting eyes were now fixed on Sarah’s.

  She, the victim? That was a first.

  “What exactly do you mean, Miss Pike?”

  “It’s the curse of Eve,” Miss Pike said confidentially.

  She was leaning forward now, her dark eyes gleaming. She spoke in a hushed but urgent tone.

  “Ever since Eve, we have been doubly punished. Once for committing a crime, once for being a woman. I’ve worked for the Society for many years, Miss Gale, and during that time I’ve seen many women—some little more than girls—punished more harshly than their brothers, husbands or lovers precisely because they were women.”

  She put both of her hands on the table.

  “It’s always assumed, you see, that women can do no harm. That they’re instinctive nurturers, mothers, wives, carers. So if they hurt, or kill—for whatever reason—they’re seen as turning over the natural order of things. They become monsters.”

  Sarah thought of all the names that had been applied to her in the past months: witch, whore, murderess, demoness…

  “I know what you’ve been through,” said Miss Pike. “You were forced into a situation over which you had no control.” She reached forward and encircled Sarah’s wrist lightly with her thin fingers.

  Sarah flinched. It was so long since anyone had touched her except to push or pinch or handcuff her.

  “You don’t understand,” she said.

  “Oh, but I think I do,” Miss Pike replied, not releasing her hand from Sarah’s wrist. “I’ve witnessed many in your situation: too in thrall to another to speak out against them. But we can help you, Miss Gale. We can help you find the strength.”

  The woman was gazing at Sarah intently. She was misguided, but a good person, Sarah thought. She was the sort of person Sarah herself might have been, had not the good in her become shrunken and sealed in, like an insect imprisoned in amber.

  “Then you’ll support my petition?”

  “My dear woman, I’ve already written to the Home Secretary. Several other people of prominence have been approached, and we intend to speak with the appointed investigator to convince him of the merits of your case.”

  Sarah bit her lip. “The investigator—he came to see me yesterday.”

  “Oh, yes? Who is he?” Miss Pike asked.

  “A young lawyer. His name is Edmund Fleetwood.”

  Miss Pike furrowed her brow. “I’ve not heard of him. How does he seem? What sort of man is he, do you think?”

  Sarah considered this. He had seemed genuine, but she had no idea where his allegiances lay, nor what he really wanted. “It’s difficult for me to tell,” she said. “My experience with lawyers has not been positive, but he said he wanted to hear my side of the story.”

  “Well, that’s a good start, certainly,” said Miss Pike. “But of course you must tell him the right story. We will do what we can to support you, but ultimately it’s you who hold the cards.” Miss Pike smiled at her.

  Sarah forced herself to smile back, but she felt a twist of fear. She was not at all sure that she had the right cards, nor whether it was the right time to show them.

  6

  “As described at recipe 1019, this bird is variously served with or without the head on; and although we do not personally object to the appearance of the head as shown in the woodcut, yet it seems to be more in vogue to serve it without. The carving is not difficult, but should be elegantly and deftly done.”

  —Mrs. Beeton’s Book of Household Management, 1861

  It was a Tuesday morning and Edmund pushed his way through the crowds of Cornhill and the Royal Exchange, turned up Bishopsgate, and walked briskly to the police station. He found Inspector Feltham sitting in an armchair before a fire wearing a dark-blue buttoned-up frock coat.

  “We conducted a very thorough investigation, Mr. Fleetwood. I hope you’re not suggesting otherwise.”

  “Inspector, I assure you I’m not here to pick holes in your investigation. However, the Home Secretary has tasked me with analyzing the evidence, and I therefore need to make sure I fully understand the facts.”

  Feltham looked at him stonily. “Let me explain them to you, then: Greenacre killed the woman. Gale helped ’im cover it up.”

  Edmund bit the inside of his cheek. “You are certain that it was Greenacre himself who killed Hannah Brown?”

  “Oh, yes, it were ’im all right. He was heard arguing with her that night. And we knew ’im already.”

  “What for?”

  “Assault, fraud, abandonment. And there were rumors of much worse.”

  “Such as?”

  “You know both his wives died young?” Feltham raised his eyebrows. “The first, he done up so bad that she died of ’er injuries.”

  “I thought she had consumption.”

  Feltham shrugged. “Depends who you ask.”

  “Did you investigate it at the time?”

  “No. Seems he hooked it to America just after she died.”

  “And the second wife?”

  “Took ill of a sudden and jacked it before the doctor could get there. Now there’s a coincidence for you.” Feltham took a long pull on his pipe.

  “Greenacre claimed, did
n’t he, that he returned to the house to find Hannah Brown dead?”

  The inspector snorted. “Oh, yes, that’s what ’e claimed. Said he’d gone out for an hour and come back to see her lyin’ on the kitchen floor. But by that stage he’d already admitted to cutting up the body with a carpenter’s saw. Let me ask you, sir: If you came home and found a dead woman in your house, would you call for a constable or would you slice the body up and cart the pieces all around town?”

  For a moment, there was silence, save for the dropping of cinders in the grate.

  “It was you who arrested him, wasn’t it?”

  “It was. We’d got word that Greenacre was lodging in a house in St. Alban’s Street, Kennington. I got there at ’bout half-past ten o’clock on a Saturday night. It’s best to do these things at night, when the suspect’s in bed or in liquor. Sure enough, we found him in his shirtsleeves, half-cut, and Sarah Gale was there with ’im, sitting up in bed. We took ’em both down to the station, her little boy too.”

  “Why did you arrest her?”

  “I saw she ’ad some rings on her fingers that she were trying to hide. It was that gave me the idea she was part of it all. And then we found the pawn tickets and the earrings in ’er pocket.”

  “Did she say anything at the time to explain why she had them?”

  “No, she were very quiet. Kept silent for the whole trip to the station, save for whisperin’ to her little boy.”