Heaven Knows Who (6 page)

Mrs Adams ran no more errands that day, ‘unless for the house'; but Mrs M'Lachlan asked her to come again on Monday—she wanted some more parcels out of pawn.

She went out only once again, according to Mrs Campbell, taking her baby with her. When she returned, she showed Mrs Campbell a little bonnet that she had bought for him.

Poor Jessie!

That evening, P.C. Campbell, all unaware of the tragedy so near at hand, was once again patrolling his beat. In the post box of the Receiving House at Sandyford Toll was a letter to his father, a ploughman, which he had recently posted. It was by the date of this letter that he later confirmed this particular evening, Saturday, July 5, as being the one on which he observed an apparently trivial incident at Sandyford Place, though whether or not this calculation was correct remains extremely doubtful.

He had been trying the door of No. 16—in the course of his ordinary duties, to see that it was safely locked—and he noticed that the door of No. 17 had opened and two women had come out on the steps, neither of whom, he was certain, was Jessie M'Lachlan. One woman appeared to be seeing the other woman off: a rather tall, dark, thin woman, ‘a respectable servant type,' in a light gown and a white apron with a white ‘mutch' with long white ties over her shoulders—in other words, a servant's cap. The other was a girl of about twenty-two as to whom P.C. Campbell is not very gallant—‘a low-set, stout woman with a red, fat face' but ‘of a decent servant-like appearance and seemed quite sober.' She wore a white straw bonnet with blue ribbons and a dark grey cloak. They remained on the doorstep talking for five minutes or so, in low voices, then the younger went off towards Sauchiehall Street and the other went in and closed the door. He was not aware of having ever seen either before; he certainly never saw them again.

CHAPTER FOUR

Meanwhile on that Saturday, at 17 Sandyford Place, things had not been standing still. Mary Brown, aged sixteen, used now and again to go there and do a bit of the rough work for Jess. She was one of a family of six, her mother a widow and ‘lying in a decline.' Mary had had instructions to come along on the Saturday morning and she was seen off by four of her family and the declining mother at twenty minutes past eight, which if she walked pretty quick would bring her to Sandyford Place at a quarter to nine. She did walk pretty quick, for she had another job to go on to afterwards; so it must have been about a quarter to when she went up to the front door steps and rang the bell.

There was a little delay, ‘longer than a servant would have taken to answer because a servant comes quickly to the door' and then the door was opened as far as the chain would allow and the old gentleman peered out. (We know that the chain had been released at twenty to eight, for Donald M'Quarrie, the milk-boy, had heard the rattle; so evidently the door had been refastened afterwards).

Mr Fleming said, ‘Well?'

‘I'm the girl who does the steps for Jessie,' said Mary Brown. He opened the door, let her in, and replaced the chain.

He had on a black coat and black trousers. The coat looked as if it had been noo ta'en oot of a kist, said Mary, not like a coat he had had on the night before: it had creases in it. It was the sort of a long-tailed coat that she had seen gentlemen wear at funerals and at church on Sundays. It was buttoned up across the front, tight up to the neck and he seemed to have on no waistcoat for his shirt showed between the bottom of the coat in front and the top of his trousers. All in all, Mary thought, he was not like a man dressed for the day, but like one who had hurriedly put on a coat; and indeed it was true that the old gentleman usually pottered about the house in his shirtsleeves most of the morning, when he was at home.

She did not ask for Jess M'Pherson, and he did not mention her. He appeared perfectly calm and normal, and it never entered her head for a moment that anything might be wrong.

She was starting off down to the basement but he stopped her. He indicated a part of the lobby and asked her if she would wash it. It was the part where she was now standing at the head of the basement stairs—where the hall narrowed down to a passage about three feet wide and six feet long, passing the stairs and leading to his bedroom at the rear of the house. The patch was considerably marked—at first sight it looked as though people had been ‘trampling' between the top of the basement stairs and the old man's bedroom and the back parlour, with soot on their feet. She agreed to wash the patch and would have gone down for water and cleaning materials but he went himself to a cupboard on the ground floor and got a pail and filled it with water and got a piece of cloth—a strip of clean flannel that looked as though it had been torn off a flannel vest—and stood over her while she got down on her hands and knees to it. On closer examination—so Mary later said, but this may be doubtful—it seemed to her that there had been some stain there and someone had taken a sooty cloth and rubbed over it, to hide it; the soot was dry by now but she could recognise the smell as she washed it. The door of Mr Fleming's bedroom was open and she washed inside it as far as the ‘waxcloth' extended. She thought that the mark which the soot had been intended to conceal was a bloody footprint; she couldn't be sure, but it might be that of a woman. It was close to the bedroom door, leading in from the top of the basement stairs. The stain that the soot had been put over was liker blood than anything else, said Mary; but if any redness came off on the cloth, it was not visible—because of the soot. It took ten minutes of hard rubbing to get it off.

She stood up and lifted the pail to take it down to the basement and empty out the dirty water, but the old man again stopped her. He told her to leave it where it was. Then he fished in his pocket and gave her sixpence. ‘Is that all?' she said, surprised—referring to the work, not the sixpence: she could not see ahead a hundred years, when the rate of three-and-six an hour would be commonplace. He said yes, that was all, and showed her off the premises. But before she left he ‘catched a grip of her by the hand
and put his other hand on her waist and said she was a nice girl.' Whatever his extremity, old Mr Fleming was apparently still up to his tricks.

Mary, however, had her sixpence and must have gone her way rejoicing—her next assignment was with a Mrs Napier and she worked four hours there for a penny ha'penny.

She did not, however, particularly mention Sandyford Place to her mother when, that afternoon, she handed over her earnings, and it was not till after she heard of the murder that she thought of telling anyone about it: and then it was ‘the lady next door.' Mrs Brown, overhearing her, administered what Sarah Adams would have called a flyting and told her never to open her mouth about it again, for fear she might get into some hobble. ‘Mary,' she said, ‘it was strange in you to go in when you didna' see the girl.' ‘Mother,' said Mary, ‘it was all one to me when the man asked me to come in.' She proceeded to describe the lobby fornent the bedroom door—there was something like stains on it and it was like rubbed over with black soot, and the water was quite black as if something had been spilled on it and something black rubbed over it. She had had a great rubbing, said Mary, to rub it off; and the old man had given her a piece of white flannel like as if it had been torn off a semmet and also a bucket with an iron handle, full of water and he had said, ‘Scrub it well, my girl.' It was old Mr Fleming, she knew him well, for many a time she had seen him and run off to hide from him when she was going to see Jessie; she was feared to let him see her go in, in case he might object to it. Having satisfied her own curiosity, Mrs Brown told her in future to hold her tongue and not be blethering about things she had no right to. Mary, however, could not resist confiding in a girl called Bella Beveridge, and faithless Bella told a policeman and Mary was hauled up to tell it all again, before the Sheriff. So that's what comes of blethering when your mother tells you not to.

Old Fleming had spent much of his life in Anderston, a ward or district of Glasgow, first as a hand-loom weaver and later as a small manufacturer, making damask cloth and shawls. In his old age, his son, the prosperous accountant, had arranged a little job for him—presumably largely to keep him out of mischief, in which case he was not entirely successful—pottering about,
collecting small weekly rents. (The properties were old and decayed, John Fleming cheerfully admitted—they were not his properties. They were generally high houses with common stairs and the tenants did not stay long—not so much from dissatisfaction with their surroundings, however, as from an inability to keep up with the rent. They were mostly in the lower part of the town, about the Old Wynd—a very good name for Fleming, senior; one at least was in the Broomielaw, where poor Jessie M'Lachlan also had her dwelling). For this work he was paid forty pounds a year and at the time of the murder he had 150 pounds in one bank which he had not touched for some considerable time, and thirty pounds in another, to which he was gradually adding. Those who did business with him had no complaint to make as to his mental faculties.

As we know, Mr Fleming was up on the Saturday betimes, to announce that he ‘was for nae milk.' Some time later that day he turned up at John Fleming's office, or counting-house, in St Vincent Place and remained about half an hour there. He said nothing about Jess to anyone in the office.

Elizabeth Brownlie was servant to Mr Stewart, the jeweller who lived next door at No. 16 and had heard the scream in the night. The family having gone off that day to their summer residence, she had had in a friend to keep her company that evening—like Sarah Adams, a little girl of twelve years old—who had finally stayed overnight. It seems likely that they slept in the small back room, corresponding to the room where old Mr Fleming kept his wardrobe—the lay-out of the houses was the same. The room where Jess slept was in fact the laundry; the back room was probably intended for the servant's bedroom but owing to young John's having to share a bedroom with him, Grandpa's possessions overflowed from the ground floor to the basement and poor Jess was crowded out. (There was a shed at the back of the garden known as the ‘wash-house'—but there was still a mangle in Jessie's room and one doctor at least recognised it as really a laundry and referred to it as such throughout). If we suppose that at No. 16 Elizabeth retained her rights, she would be using the back room, therefore, overlooking the garden; and would have only the party wall between herself and the Flemings' kitchen. Through this wall you could hear, for example, a coal being broken in the kitchen—the hearth was up
against this wall. But that night Elizabeth and the child heard nothing.

Elizabeth knew Jess to speak to and was acquainted with Mr Fleming—the tiresome old man was always snooping on the servant girls next door and Jess had confirmed that he knew everything that went on there. This watch he could maintain without the use of spectacles; indeed Jess had told her that he could see perfectly, even to read the newspapers.

On the morning after the murder, however, Elizabeth in her turn unwittingly did a little spying. At about half-past ten, she saw the old man come out into the back garden looking round surreptitiously as though to see that he was not observed and then go down to the shed at the end for some coals. Her curiosity perhaps was piqued by this. At any rate she popped round that afternoon to borrow a spade.

The old man answered the door. He told her to come with him and they went down through the basement to the back door and out into the garden, where the tools were kept in a shed at the further end. But halfway down the garden he stopped and turned back; he said that the door was locked so he couldn't get the spade after all, and ‘the girl was out.'

Elizabeth suggested that the key might be in the kitchen, but he said no it wasn't, because he had looked. She glanced in at the kitchen as she passed the door; screens of linen were airing before the fire, but she did not particularly notice anything else. She went off saying she'd come another time for the spade, and he said, yes, to come some other time.

That evening at about six, Andrew Darnley turned up. He was a pattern-maker from Falkirk and had known Jess when she worked in his father's house—the family had kept up with her since, though the reason of her leaving their service had been one of her two ‘misfortunes.' He rang the front door bell and an old gentleman answered.

Andrew asked ‘if this was whaur Mr Fleming stopped.' The old man said yes. He then asked if there was one, Jess M'Pherson, here. The old man said yes. He appeared to be a little deaf. Andrew, persisting, said well, was she in the house? The old man said no.

‘Do you no ken whaur she is?' said Andrew, and when he said again no, ‘Well, has she been gone long?'

The old gentleman said she had been out a good while. (‘That's what he said,' repeated Andrew Darnley firmly, at the trial). He left his name and said he would be going home to Falkirk that night; and went away.

The next day was Sunday. If Jessie M'Lachlan left her house that day, we have no record of it. Mr Fleming, however, was up and dressed by the time the milk boy called: once again he was for nae milk. At ten to eleven a friend met him trotting off to Mr Aikman's, the Presbyterian church in Anderston—a ‘ward' or district of Glasgow where he had had his manufacturing business, no distance from Sandyford Place.

He made some remark about the weather and Mr M'Allister asked, ‘Are you still going down to the old church, Mr Fleming?'

‘Yes,' said the old gentleman, ‘it's no use changing now.'

This was the church where, ten years ago, he had made his confession of fornication. No doubt he considered that the devil who knew might be better than the devil who didn't: no offence intended to the Reverend Aikman.

That evening at about seven Andrew Darnley presented himself again at the front door of No. 17. He had not after all gone home to Falkirk, as he had told Mr Fleming he would the evening before, but had stayed the night with a friend. Mr Fleming answered the bell and he asked if Jess was in tonight.