The Unseeing Read online

  “How did she seem? Was she shocked, do you think? Might that have been why she didn’t speak?”

  The inspector looked at him shrewdly. “In my experience, Mr. Fleetwood, when a cove don’t speak it’s ’cos they’ve got something to hide.”

  Edmund nodded. “Do you have a list of all of the witnesses you interviewed?”

  “Not a list, as such.”

  “Would it be possible to have one drawn up?”

  Feltham grimaced. “I can assure you we spoke to every man and woman in the area.”

  “Nevertheless, it would be useful to see a full list.”

  Feltham eyed him coldly. “I suppose I’ll ’ave to get one drawn up, then. Was there anything else? I do ’ave other things to be getting on with.”

  “I’d like to see the earrings and the rings that were found in Miss Gale’s possession. She maintains that they’re hers.”

  “Well, she would, wouldn’t she?”

  “Nevertheless, I would like to see them and to show them to people who knew Miss Gale.”

  “That won’t be possible. Those particaler exhibits went missing before the trial.”

  “Missing?” Edmund struggled to keep the surprise from his voice. “Were they stolen?”

  “I’ve drawn no conclusions, Mr. Fleetwood. In the event, they wasn’t needed. Miss Brown’s brother’d already viewed ’em and confirmed that they belonged to her.”

  “I see,” Edmund said, although in fact he did not see how police exhibits could have gone missing before trial, and the matter not have been raised during the proceedings. If Sarah Gale’s lawyers had had half a cup of sense, they would have had all evidence on this point thrown out.

  “One last thing,” he said. “Had Sarah Gale ever come to your attention before all of this? For soliciting, perhaps. Some of the newspapers reported she was a fallen woman.”

  Feltham shook his head. “As far as we could make out, she ’ad no criminal history—no antecedents, nothing. But then, the best criminals don’t.”

  • • •

  Hart Street, Covent Garden, was not a good address: the street was known for the cheapness of its brothels, the stench of its cowsheds, and the rowdiness of its public houses. However, number forty-six itself was an attractive enough two-story brick building, the lower part a grocer’s shop furnished with barred sashes and painted woodwork. Above, dormer windows projected from the steep slope of the slated mansard roof. The sound of laughter rippled down to Edmund as he made his way up the stairwell to the apartment.

  Rosina Farr opened the door in her apron. He knew immediately that it was her, for she had her sister’s large, brown, dark-lashed eyes and her high cheekbones. Rosina looked much younger, however, and her skin had a pinkish bloom in contrast to Sarah’s Newgate pallor.

  “I’m afraid you’ve caught me in the middle of preparing our tea,” she said, once he had introduced himself, “but please come in.”

  Rosina led Edmund into the kitchen, where she was making a pie of some kind. The room was spare and barely furnished—a small fireplace and a coal box, some cheap pottery ornaments and a pair of brass candlesticks on the mantelpiece, a few earthenware cups and plates on a small shelf—but it was warm and clean and neat.

  At the table, cutting out shapes from the pastry, was a little boy with dust-colored hair and a thin, floury face. This must be Sarah’s son—indeed, he looked familiar.

  “George, say hello to Mr. Fleetwood. He’s helping your mama.”

  Edmund wanted to tell Rosina that he was not helping Sarah; he was investigating her case, but it seemed wrong to say anything at that moment. Perhaps, in any event, she was only saying it to comfort the child.

  George looked at him with wide eyes but said nothing. Edmund bent down to his level. “I see you’re assisting your aunt with the dinner.”

  The boy looked to Rosina for reassurance and her face broke into a wide smile, forming dimples in her cheeks. When she smiled, she looked very different from her sister, but then, it occurred to Edmund, he had not seen Sarah smile.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, Miss Farr, but I wanted to ask you a few questions. It shouldn’t take too long.”

  Rosina wiped her hands on her apron and untied the strings. “George, be a good boy and go and play in your room for a few minutes while I talk to this gentleman.”

  The boy looked at Edmund suspiciously before doing as he was asked.

  Rosina gestured to Edmund to sit down at the table and she took a seat opposite him. With George gone, she at once became serious. “Please tell me: how is she? They won’t let me see her.”

  Edmund shifted awkwardly in his seat. “She is…unharmed,” he said, trying and failing to come up with a more positive description of her state.

  Rosina looked at him searchingly. “Where is she kept? Is she given enough to eat?”

  Edmund hesitated and she shook her head. “I knew it.”

  He spread his hands. “Newgate is not as bad as some have described it, at least not anymore.” This was not a lie. Some of the descriptions he had heard of the women’s side before Elizabeth Fry’s intervention were horrific: naked screaming babies, born in filth; women packed into cells, sleeping in dirty straw; jail fever rife, prostitution common. The place was awful, but perhaps not as nightmarish as it had once been. Then again, maybe it was simply a different kind of hell.

  “Have they hurt her?”

  “So far as I know, your sister has not been mistreated there.”

  Again, not an untruth.

  “Forgive me, sir, for interrogating you, but I’ve been so worried about Sarah and they won’t let me visit her, nor even pass a letter to her.”

  “No, well, the nature of the charge means she isn’t entitled to visits from family or friends.”

  Rosina smiled bitterly. “There are no friends. There’s just me. And George.”

  Edmund nodded, imagining for a moment how Bessie would bear it were she to be cut off from her son and her sister. He brushed the thought aside: he needed to be careful not to get drawn into this; that was not why he was there.

  “I wanted,” he said, “to ask you about the jewelry that was found on your sister’s person when she was arrested. There’s a difficulty in that the police have mislaid the items, but I was wondering if you could describe to me the jewelry you know your sister to have owned.”

  “They say they lost the jewelry?” She squinted at him.

  “Apparently so. Before the trial.”

  “Maybe they never seized it.”

  Edmund pressed his lips together. “At all events, they don’t have it.”

  Rosina frowned. “Well, Sarah had very little. There were two thin gold bands that George dug up in the garden a while back while looking for fairy gold.” She gave a half smile. “I remember Sarah showing me the engraving on the inside of one: initials. We discussed whose they might be. Then there were the earrings—some gold and carnelian drops that I bought for her myself. They’re the only decent present I ever bought her, so now to hear they’ve been used against her…” She shook her head. “And she had a locket, a silver one with a portrait of our brother inside.”

  “Thank you,” Edmund said. “And Sarah was with you on Christmas Eve, wasn’t she?”

  “She was with me during the day, at my employer’s house on Camberwell Grove. She left in the evening to put George to bed.”

  “What sort of time was that?”

  “About half after eight o’clock, I’d say. She didn’t want to go back to that nasty lodging house, but I couldn’t let her stay with me. I would have been dismissed.”

  “I see. I also wanted to ask you about James Greenacre.” Her expression darkened. “What of him?”

  “What do you think of him?”

  “That he has no more heart than an iron file. That the sooner they hang him,
the better.”

  “Did you think that your sister’s relationship him was…a normal one?”

  “Depends what you mean by normal. There are many women who put up with all manner of things from their men.” She looked away from him, toward the fireplace.

  “It would help me,” Edmund said, “if you could tell me more about their relationship.”

  Rosina met Edmund’s eyes then. After a moment, she said: “You were appointed by the Home Office, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, by Lord Russell.” Was she wondering, perhaps, why he had been selected despite his relative youth? Was she questioning his authority? But it was not that at all.

  “Could you ask Lord Russell to let me see my sister? Could you ask him to allow George and me to visit her? It’s very important, you see, that I talk to her.”

  When Edmund did not immediately reply, she continued, “We couldn’t do any harm, and it’s not right, Mr. Fleetwood, for a four-year-old boy to be kept away from his mother all this time. If you would just ask…” She held his gaze, her brown eyes steady and shrewd. Was she bartering? His assistance for her information?

  Edmund sat back in his chair. “I could certainly ask, Miss Farr. Like you, I cannot see that any harm would come of it, and I am sure that your sister’s state of mind would be much improved by a visit.” Maybe, in fact, Rosina would encourage Sarah to talk. Maybe seeing her son would inspire her with the confidence to speak out. “But I cannot promise that the Home Office will grant any such request. It isn’t the normal procedure.”

  “No,” Rosina said thoughtfully, “but then your investigation isn’t normal procedure either, is it? How often do they appoint someone to investigate a petition for mercy?”

  “Very rarely, so I understand.”

  She nodded. “Did the Home Secretary select Sarah’s case because he thought there’d been a miscarriage of justice, or was it simply because the case has attracted so much attention?”

  Edmund was surprised by her boldness. “I really can’t discuss the terms or reasons for my appointment. I can, however, assure you that I take my duties very seriously and that I’m doing my utmost to get to the truth of the matter. That’s why it’s important that you answer my questions as best you can.”

  Rosina nodded slowly. “Well, as far as Sarah’s relationship with James went, it certainly wasn’t healthy. It didn’t make her happy. It turned her into a miserable, cowed creature—not my sister at all.”

  “You think he manipulated her?”

  “I think he did his best to destroy her: to make her feel that she wasn’t worth a straw. Some men do that. Makes them feel good about themselves.” As she spoke, she kneaded a piece of pastry, crushing it into the table. “James tried to stop her seeing me, you know. He wanted to isolate her so she couldn’t get away.”

  “Do you think she covered up for him?”

  Rosina stopped kneading the pastry. “No. My sister is a good person. She’s always protected me. She wouldn’t have helped him.”

  “You really believe she didn’t know what he’d done?”

  “She was blind to what kind of a man he was, Mr. Fleetwood. I tried time and time again to show her, but she couldn’t see it. Or didn’t want to.”

  “Would she have lied for him?”

  For a few moments, Rosina did not speak, and then she said, “I don’t believe she’d have done anything to assist him with covering up another woman’s murder, no matter what power he might have had over her. And James has maintained throughout all this that Sarah played no part in the death. I can assure you he isn’t saying that out of the goodness of his heart or out of love for my sister. He must be saying it because it’s true.”

  There was, Edmund thought, something else. Something she wasn’t telling him. “Is there—” he began, but Rosina held up her hand to stop him.

  “George,” she called, “are you outside the door?”

  The door opened a crack and a small face peered through it. “I’m hungry,” the boy said.

  “Yes, I must get on and finish cooking. Mr. Fleetwood, you’re welcome to stay and join us. The pie just needs half an hour in the bakehouse.”

  Standing in the flour-filled, sweet-smelling kitchen, Edmund was almost tempted. “Thank you, but I must get home to my own luncheon. I have a little boy myself, a few years older than you, George.”

  “Well, then,” Rosina said, “you’ll know how important it is for a boy to have his mother with him.” She looked at Edmund, her gaze hard as flint, and then quietly she said, “Please get my sister out of there. We need her here. We need her home.”

  • • •

  When Edmund returned to his chambers, he found Bessie and Clem at the table, finishing their meal. Bessie gave a strained smile as he entered the dining room. There was a darkness beneath her eyes that made her seem older than her twenty-seven years and Edmund wondered if she might again be pregnant. He would not ask. Clem was the only one of four babies she had carried to term and Bessie held her grief close and silent.

  “You’re late, Daddy,” Clem informed him brightly as Edmund took his seat.

  Looking at Clem, so well fed and self-assured, his blue eyes clear and untroubled, Edmund could not help but compare him with Sarah Gale’s son: pinch-faced and wary.

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that, but I’ve been meeting with another small boy, one rather less fortunate than you.”

  “I’ll bet he doesn’t have to eat Flora’s tapioca pudding.”

  “Admittedly no,” Edmund said, eyeing the lumpy mess in Clem’s bowl. “He is not so unfortunate as that.”

  “Oh, very well, Clem,” Bessie said, removing the napkin from his collar. “You may leave your pudding, so long as you promise to be good for Miss Plimpton.”

  Their son, although nearly eight, was still schooled at home by a governess: a young, rotund woman with startled-looking eyes behind thick glasses. Edmund supposed that in a year or so they would have to send him to public school, but he shied away from the idea. Even now, remembering his early years at Harrow caused a sharp pain around his heart. He had thought that his father’s strict regimen would have inured him against the cruelties of small boys, but it turned out that there were parts of him that could still be hurt. He had no wish to inflict that on his own child.

  “Why have you been meeting with small boys?” Bessie asked, once Clem had left the room.

  “Sarah Gale’s son.”

  “Surely you weren’t interviewing him?”

  “No, I had to speak with his aunt—Sarah’s sister. I was hoping she might throw some light on what happened.”

  “And did she?”

  “Well, she was adamant that her sister wouldn’t have helped Greenacre, but what woman would not say that to save her sister from the gallows?” He lifted the lid on the soup tureen and spooned some clear broth into his dish. “She did seem credible, however. And at least she was willing to talk, which is more than can be said of Sarah Gale.”

  “Does she not answer your questions?”

  “Oh, she answers them, but without giving very much away. Which may be because she’s afraid. Or it may, of course, be because she’s guilty as the devil.”

  “Or it may be that she doesn’t trust you.”

  “I’m quite sure she doesn’t. I suppose that’s hardly surprising. The question is how to convince her to tell all.”

  “Well,” Bessie said, her expression thoughtful, “why does any person trust another? Why did I learn to trust you?”

  “I’m sure I don’t know,” Edmund muttered into his soup. “Because my father told you to?” Bessie was the daughter of one of his father’s clients. It had been he who had introduced them.

  “Edmund, you do know. You took me seriously, even though I was full of sugar and nonsense. You listened to my tedious worries and hopes and acted as though they meant so
mething.”

  He looked at his wife and, for a moment, saw her as he had first known her: luminous and confident and with plans for their future. Was it him and his own defeated hopes that had changed her?

  “I suppose,” Bessie said, “trust is about thinking that the other person will take seriously what you tell them. Perhaps Sarah Gale will only confide in you if she thinks you’re on her side.”

  Edmund suppressed a surge of irritation. “Bessie, the point of my being the investigator is that I remain neutral. I do not take sides.” He picked up a bread roll. “But maybe you have a point. Maybe in order to gain her trust, I need her to think I believe her.”

  • • •

  During their second meeting, Sarah Gale seemed even more wary than when they had first met. She glanced nervously at the other prisoners seated nearby: a pale-faced woman with raven-black hair who sat sullen and silent with her arms folded, a stocky girl in urgent conversation with her solicitor.

  “No, I never took it,” the girl was saying. “Strike me blind if I did.”

  “Do you know these women?” Edmund asked Sarah, by way of prelude.

  She looked at him with what he thought might be contempt. “We’re not allowed to speak to one another.”

  “I see,” he said. But that did not answer his question. He tried again. “I visited your sister.”

  She sat up straighter at that. “Oh, yes? How is she? Did you see George?”

  There was an edge to her voice. Was it fear?

  “Yes, they both seem well. Rosina looks very like you.”

  “You are polite, Mr. Fleetwood. She is younger and far prettier than me. And George, did he seem…unsettled?”

  “No,” Edmund lied. “He was perfectly content. They were making pastry together.”

  Edmund thought he saw the gleam of tears in her eyes, but her voice remained steady.

  “What did Rosina tell you?”

  “She confirmed, as you said she would, that the jewelry was yours. And she indicated that she was no great admirer of James Greenacre.”

  “No,” Sarah gave the ghost of a smile. “They do not much like one another. I’m sure he will tell you that himself.”