The Unseeing Page 7

  Edmund frowned. He felt as though he had walked into the King’s chamber to consult with his advisers.

  “Mr. Greenacre, you’re aware that I have been appointed by the Home Secretary to look into the conviction of Miss Gale and whether there is any reason to question it.”

  “I am, Mr. Fleetwood. The Governor and I have spoken about it. And I say to you what I said to him, which is that I will do my utmost to ensure that that wretched woman’s conviction is overturned. It was a shocking and unnatural verdict.”

  “Why do you say that, Mr. Greenacre?”

  “Because I made clear from the very beginning that she knew nothing about the death of Miss Brown and that she played no part in it. Why would I have said that if it weren’t true?”

  This seemed to Edmund to be an odd question to ask. He might have all sorts of reasons for saying what he had.

  “I understand that you have also petitioned the Home Secretary for clemency.”

  Greenacre nodded. “I have.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “On the grounds, Mr. Fleetwood, that it was not me who killed Hannah Brown.”

  “You have new evidence to support that claim?”

  “You’re a criminal lawyer, aren’t you? You must know that no one should be found guilty unless there’s clear proof that they committed the crime. I conceded that it was me who disposed of the body, but that doesn’t mean that I murdered the woman.”

  Edmund looked closely at Greenacre. It was difficult to understand how he could be maintaining this fiction. Did he believe it himself, perhaps?

  “So you still say that she was dead by the time you arrived home?”

  “I do,” Greenacre said levelly. “We spoke. I broke off the marriage. I left. When I returned, she was dead.”

  Edmund coughed. “It was more of an argument than a conversation, wasn’t it? Some of your neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Callow, reported that they heard shouting.”

  “Some of my neighbors wanted their time in court, Mr. Fleetwood. And they were willing to say anything to get it.”

  “I see.” Edmund paused, remembering the words from Mrs. Callow’s statement.

  “We’d heard arguing plenty of times before from that house, but not like that. Nothing like that. We should have known something terrible would happen.”

  “Mr. Greenacre, could you explain to me what your relationship with Miss Gale was?”

  “Well, it started mainly as a business arrangement. You will forgive me for using the language of commerce, but I am a man of business. It began on the basis that Sarah would cook and clean for me and so on, and in return would receive board and lodging for herself and her son. In time, a relationship developed between us.”

  “You did not marry.”

  “I did not consider it to be necessary.”

  As Greenacre spoke, he gesticulated with his large hands.

  “And can you explain why you told Miss Gale to leave your house?”

  “As I said, I am a man of business, and I was offered a business proposition in the form of Miss Brown. She agreed not only to marriage but to putting her property toward my business interests.”

  “What reason did you give to Miss Gale for asking her to leave?”

  “Oh, I told her the real reason. She always understood that the nature of the arrangement between us was, let us say, conditional. She appreciated the position.”

  “She must have been upset, however. You were turning her and her young son out onto the streets in the middle of winter.”

  Greenacre set his jaw. “I don’t much like your choice of words, Mr. Fleetwood. I did not ‘turn them out,’ as you put it. I ensured that Sarah and George had a place to stay—a lodging house in Walworth. I helped her move her things. I assure you it was an amicable parting.”

  “She must nevertheless have felt some resentment, perhaps toward Miss Brown as well as yourself.”

  Edmund thought he saw something flicker across Greenacre’s eye.

  “If she felt any resentment, she did not express it.”

  “No,” said Edmund. “No, I can believe that.” But that did not mean she had not felt it.

  “And did you intend to continue to support Miss Gale financially?”

  “I had no obligation to do so,” Greenacre said. “There was no legal tie between us, nor any moral duty. The child, as I’m sure you’re aware, is not mine.”

  “So Miss Gale had been left alone and in poverty all because of Miss Brown’s intervention.”

  Greenacre frowned. “I resent your implication, sir, that she had motive. It wasn’t argued even at the trial that Sarah did anything more than assist me to conceal the body, which of course she did not.”

  “I’m merely trying to understand the state of things at the time of the murder, Mr. Greenacre.”

  “And I’m telling you that there was no animosity.”

  Edmund paused. “You described your relationship with Miss Gale as a business arrangement. Why, then, are you so anxious to extricate her from any role in the murder?”

  “Because I am a fair man, Mr. Fleetwood, and I believe in justice. Sarah has been wrongly accused and convicted. I am simply doing what I can to remedy that.”

  Edmund nodded, but he didn’t believe a word of it. “You’ll recall that one of the pieces of evidence used against Miss Gale was the scrap of fabric found in the bag with Hannah Brown’s torso.” Edmund watched Greenacre: he did not flinch. “Fabric that the prosecution claimed matched a piece of clothing belonging to Miss Gale’s son.”

  Edmund recalled the moment when the prosecution barrister passed the piece of bloodstained calico to the jury box, together with one of George’s frocks. “You will note, gentlemen, that they are an exact match. Clear proof, we say, that the prisoner Gale knew about the murder and helped to conceal it.”

  Edmund looked closely at Greenacre. “Can you explain how that piece of fabric came to be with the body?”

  “Yes, quite easily. After I found the body and carried out the…clearing up, I needed something to stem the blood. I used some scraps from a box of rags that Sarah kept in the kitchen. I didn’t know at the time that some of the scraps came from George’s old clothing, but that was all there was to hand. They then ended up in the bag, which I hid under a paving slab off the Edgeware Road.”

  “And when did you dispose of the body pieces?”

  “I dealt with the legs on Christmas Eve.”

  “You left them in a ditch off the Coldharbour Lane.”

  “I did. I do not deny it. I was in a frenzied state,” Greenacre said calmly.

  “And the other body parts?”

  “The trunk I took to Pineapple Gate on Christmas morning. The head I carried via omnibus to Stepney on Christmas Day eve.”

  Edmund paused. “So the head was still in your house when you went to see Miss Gale at her lodging house for Christmas luncheon?”

  “That is correct.”

  “I see.” Edmund took a moment to absorb this. He looked at the warders to judge their reaction. They seemed unmoved. “And tell me: in what condition was the house by the time Miss Gale visited you on Boxing Day?”

  “Oh, very presentable. I’d cleaned everything most thoroughly.”

  “Even though you were, as you put it, in a ‘frenzied state’?”

  “I have always worked quickly and efficiently,” Greenacre replied. “Even when under stress.”

  “Surely she would have noticed that things had been moved about?”

  “Absolutely not. I was very careful to ensure that all of the furniture was in its usual position and that there wasn’t a spot of blood anywhere. It was essential that Sarah didn’t guess what had happened, as I wished her to return to live with me. To resume our former understanding.”

  “Yes. Which, rather surprisingly, she did
.”

  “Surprisingly?” There was a note of menace in Greenacre’s voice.

  “I think most women, having been asked to leave their lover’s house and replaced with another woman, would have hesitated before returning.”

  Greenacre regarded him coldly. “Sarah Gale is not most women.”

  “No, indeed. And she was, of course, dependent on your goodwill and your money.”

  “I think that sums up most relationships, does it not? Married women can own no property, after all.”

  Edmund smiled thinly. The man was not stupid. “But in your relationship the imbalance was even more marked, wasn’t it? As you have yourself acknowledged, Miss Gale had no hold over you legally or morally, and you evidently thought fit to dispense with her and then invite her back into your home when it suited you.”

  Greenacre narrowed his gray eyes.

  “Many men,” Edmund continued, “would be tempted to take advantage of such an imbalance of power. To misuse the woman and perhaps bend her to his will.”

  Greenacre leaned forward so that his face was only a few inches from Edmund’s. “I treated Sarah well. With kindness and generosity. Ask her yourself and that’s what she’ll tell you.”

  “I’m asking you.”

  “And I’m telling you that you mistake me.” Greenacre’s voice was low and dangerous. “I’m no brute. I’ve seen men stamp upon their wives and break them till they’re brittle as tinder wood. I am not one of those men. Sarah and I have a deep understanding.” He folded his arms and turned away from Edmund.

  “What do you mean by a deep understanding?” Edmund asked.

  Greenacre gave no reply.

  “Miss Gale’s sister,” Edmund said, “believes you bullied and ill-used her.”

  Greenacre snorted. “Rosina Farr would malign any man who so much as touched her precious sister. Rosina Farr is as mad as Bedlam.”

  Edmund thought of Rosina’s warm smile, of her bright, shrewd eyes. “When I spoke to her she seemed perfectly lucid,” he said coldly.

  Greenacre turned to look at him. “Yes, Mr. Fleetwood. The maddest often do.”

  • • •

  Edmund thought back to Greenacre’s words as he sat writing up his notes that afternoon. To what “deep understanding” was he referring? Why were Sarah and he covering up for each other?

  He was roused from his work by a rap at the door.

  “Come in!”

  Flora slouched into the room, her cap askew on her head. Edmund wondered if she might be drunk.

  “Your post, sir.” She dropped two envelopes onto his desk and dipped unsteadily into a low curtsy.

  Yes, there was a definite smell of the ginhouse about her. He would have to speak to Bessie.

  Once Flora had left, Edmund unsealed the letters. The first contained a note from his father asking him to call on him at his earliest convenience, presumably to express his views on how the investigation should be conducted. Edmund put the letter to one side. The second envelope contained the list of witnesses that the police investigation had identified. Most of the names he recognized as those called at the Old Bailey: the bricklayer who had found the trunk, resting in a pool of frozen blood; the lockkeeper who had fished the severed head from Regent’s Canal; the laborer who had found the last piece of the jigsaw—the legs—poking from a sack in a ditch in Camberwell. Then the friends, relatives, and neighbors of the deceased: the people who knew Greenacre had broken off his marriage to Hannah Brown on Christmas Eve, those who had heard them shouting, and others who had seen Sarah Gale return to Greenacre’s house on Boxing Day.

  At the trial, Adolphus, the lead prosecution barrister, had built the Crown’s case on circumstantial evidence—on the argument that Mr. and Mrs. Callow had overheard, on the boxes belonging to Hannah Brown that were found in Greenacre’s house, on the jewelry and clothing in Sarah Gale’s possession when she was arrested. Adolphus had made much of the water that Sarah had borrowed from a neighbor, “doubtless used to wash the blood from the floor.”

  Although the prosecution had skillfully glossed over it, the fact was that they had no eyewitness—no one who had seen the deed being committed or who could say with certainty what role the prisoners had played in Hannah Brown’s death. They could not even place Greenacre or Gale at the scene of the crime when the murder occurred. Casting his eye down the witness list, Edmund wondered if all of these people were telling the truth. Surely someone had seen something.

  The strongest evidence against Greenacre was, of course, his admission that he had cut up the body. Edmund had previously wondered whether Greenacre might have disposed of the body parts in order to protect someone else: the true killer. But, having now met Greenacre, he was quite certain that the man only acted in his own interests. He would not have put himself at risk of death in order to protect another.

  Which made it all the more strange that he persisted in his claims that Sarah knew nothing of the murder. Greenacre had spoken of their relationship in the language of business, not of love, and he admitted he had not helped her in December, financially or otherwise.

  Why defend her now?

  • • •

  At dinner, over their roasted fowl and potatoes, Edmund broached with Bessie the subject of Flora and her drinking.

  Bessie pressed her fingers to her forehead. “Are you quite sure, Edmund? Might she not simply have been…tired?”

  “Bessie, she smelled like a gin still at three o’clock in the afternoon. I can talk to her if you’d prefer.”

  “No,” Bessie closed her eyes for a moment, “I should do it, but I don’t understand it: her previous employer gave her a good character. He wrote such a nice letter.”

  Edmund turned his plate so that the chipped side faced away from him. “Yes, well, what one person says of another isn’t necessarily true.”

  He thought again of Greenacre and his claims that Sarah had taken the news of his engagement to Hannah Brown calmly. She must, surely, have been furious.

  “I just hope she doesn’t leave,” Bessie said.

  Edmund inspected a desiccated leg of chicken. “Would it be so bad if she did? She’s not exactly faultless.”

  Bessie did not look at him. “Nor is she exactly expensive, Edmund. And, unless I have misunderstood our current situation, we are not in a position to employ someone better.”

  Edmund felt a flush of shame spread across his face. He had assured Bessie that his practice would flourish; that they, like so many other barristers’ families, would soon be able to move to better lodgings outside the Temple; that they would take a tour of Europe together. And now here they were, reduced to eating from chipped china and to employing a surly drunk as a maid.

  “Things will change soon, Bessie. I will see to that.”

  • • •

  Late on Friday afternoon, Edmund traveled to Walworth, to the south of London, to meet the couple with whom Sarah had stayed after Greenacre threw her out: the people who she had said could confirm her alibi. The lodging house was a narrow, dirty building on a terraced street. The door was opened by a scrawny woman with a mouth that turned down at the corners. This, it transpired, was Mrs. Wignal, the lady of the house, which smelled of damp, dogs, and old cooking. She led him into a small, dingy parlor where jars of faded rose leaves attempted to conceal the smell of mildew and a miserable-looking linnet pecked at its cage. She brought weak tea and some thinly sliced seed cake and sat opposite Edmund on a low settee next to her husband.

  “Miss Gale came to lodge in our house on the twenty-second of December,” Mrs. Wignal said. “She took the back parlor, unfurnished. Told us she was a widow woman.” She exchanged a knowing look with her husband, a loose-fleshed man with small black eyes in a wide face the color of lard.

  “I first saw Mr. Greenacre the following morning. That was the twenty-third. He came again on Saturday
the twenty-fourth of December. Neither of us much liked him, did we, Mr. Wignal?”

  Mr. Wignal shook his head. “A coarse kind of man, to my mind.”

  Edmund took a bite of cake. It crumbled like sawdust in his mouth. When he was able to speak again, he said, “And Sarah Gale? What sort of a person did you think her? I’m trying to understand her character.”

  Mr. Wignal snorted. “I think poor Hannah’s mutilated body should give you a pretty good idea of what kind of woman she is.”

  Edmund thought of the torso, upright in a pool of blood, of Hannah Brown’s pale, sightless face floating in solution. “Mrs. Wignal, Sarah Gale says that she went out on the morning of the 24th, but came back in the evening. She told me that you saw her return. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” said the woman. “I saw ’er with my own eyes. She brought the little boy back at about nine—far too late for a child of that age to be up. I saw her carryin’ him up the stairs as I came back into the house.”

  “You said good night to her?”

  “I did. We was always civil.”

  “And she didn’t go out again?”

  “I’m sure I should have heard if she did. I listens out for these things, just in case a lodger tries to shoot the moon, as we call it. She struck me as the type to try and leave without paying.”

  “I see. Well, I am obliged to you.” Edmund got up to leave.

  “It’s my opinion,” Mrs. Wignal said, “that she played more of a role in the crime than she pretends.”

  Her husband nodded. “You’ve got to wonder whether she weren’t the guiding hand in the whole business.”

  “Why do you think that?” Edmund asked.

  “Just call it a hunch,” said Mr. Wignal, putting his thumbs in his waistcoat, “but it were odd, weren’t it, that she was gone from his house such a very short time. Left the house just afore the murder and came back the day after he got rid of the body.”

  Mrs. Wignal sucked in her cheeks. “You might almost ’a thought they’d planned it together.”

  Edmund’s eyes rested on a bluebottle that had become stuck to a flycatcher sheet and was wriggling furiously to free itself. They were right, of course, that Sarah was gone from the house for a fairly short time, but did that mean she had been instrumental in the killing—some kind of Lady Macbeth character—or simply that she was operating at Greenacre’s beck and call?