when I heard that. I still couldn't go near bath- tubs. But what happened, was this: he took one look at her, was seen to stagger and grow white; then declared himself only overcome with emotion, to find her so perfectly cured. He said this showed how good his methods were. He had the papers give details of his house. He got lots of new lady patients out of it, I think, and quite made his fortune.
Maud herself was set at liberty, then; and after that, she seemed to vanish. I guessed she had gone back home to Briar. I know she never came to Lant Street. I supposed her too afraid!— for of course, I would have throttled her if she had.
I did wonder if she might, however. I wondered it, every day. 'Perhaps today,' I would think each morning, 'will be the day she'll come.' And then, each night: 'Perhaps tomorrow . . .'
But, as I have said, she never did. What came instead, was the day of the trial. It came in the middle of August. The sun had kept on blazing all through that awful summer, and the court— being packed with watchers— was close: every hour a man was called to throw water on the floor to try and cool it. I sat with Dainty. I'd hoped I might sit in the box with Mrs Sucksby, and hold her hand; but the policemen laughed in my face when I asked it. They made her sit alone, and when they took her in and out of the room, they put cuffs on her. She wore a grey prison gown that made her face seem almost yellow, but her silver hair shone very bright against the dark wood walls of the court. She flinched when she first came up, and saw the crowd of strangers that had come to see her tried. Then she found out my face among them and grew, I thought, more easy. Her eye came back to mine, after that, as the day went on— though I saw her looking, too, about the court, as if in search of another. At the last, however, her gaze would always fall.
When she spoke, her voice was weak. She said she had stabbed Gentleman in a moment of anger, m a quarrel over money he owed for the renting of her room.
She earned her money from the letting of rooms? asked the prosecuting lawyer.
'Yes,' she said.
And not from the handling of stolen goods, or the unlicensed nursing— commonly known as farming— of orphaned infants?
'No.'
Then they brought in men to say they had seen her, at different times, with different bits of poke; and— what was worse— found women who swore they had given her babies that had very soon afterwards died . . .
Then John Vroom spoke. They had put him in a suit like a clerk's, and combed and shined his hair; he looked more like an infant than ever. He said he h a d s e e n everything that took place in the Lant Street kitchen, on the fatal night. He had seen Mrs Sucksby put in the knife. She had cried, 'You blackguard, take that!' And he had seen her with the knife in her hand, for at least a minute, before she did.
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'At least a minute?' the lawyer said. 'You are quite sure? You know how long a minute is? Look at that clock, there. Watch the movement of the hand ..."
We all watched it sweep. The court fell still, to do it. I never knew a minute so long.
The lawyer looked back at John.
As long as that?' he said.
John began to cry. 'Yes, sir,' he said, through his tears.
Then they brought the knife out, for him to say it was the one. The crowd broke out in murmurs when they saw it; and when John wiped his eyes and looked, and nodded, a lady swooned. The knife was shown to all the men of the jury then, one by one, and the lawyer said they must be sure to note how the blade was sharpened, more than it naturally would have been for a knife of that kind— that it was the sharpening of it that made Gentleman's wound so bad. He said that broke in pieces Mrs Sucksby's story about the quarrel, by showing evidence of forethought—
I nearly started out of my seat, when I heard that. Then I caught Mrs Sucksby's eye.
She shook her head, and looked so pleadingly at me to be silent, I fell back; and it never came out that the knife was sharp not because she had sharpened it, but because I had. They never called me to the stand. Mrs Sucksby would not let them. They did call Charles; but he wept so hard, and shook so
badly, the judge declared him unfit. He was sent back to his aunty's.
No-one was told about me, and Maud. No-one mentioned Briar or old Mr Lilly.
No-one came forward to say that Gentleman was a villain— that he had tried to rob heiresses— that he had ruined people through the selling of counterfeit stock. They made out that he was a decent young man with a promising future; they said that Mrs Sucksby had robbed him of it through simple greed. They even found out his family, and brought his parents to the trial— and you'll never believe it, but it turned out that all his tales of being a gentleman's son were so much puff. His father and mother ran a small kind of draper's shop, in a street off the Holloway Road. His sister taught piano.
His real name was not Richard Rivers or even Richard Wells; it was Frederick Bunt.
They drew his picture in the papers. Girls all over England were said to have cut it out and worn it next to their hearts.
But when I looked at that picture— and when I heard people talk of the awful murder of Mr Bunt, and of vices, and sordid trades— it seemed to me as though they must be talking of something else, something else entirely, not of Gentleman, being hurt, by mistake, in my own kitchen, with my own people all about. Even when the judge sent off the jury, and we waited, and watched the newspapermen getting ready to run with the verdict as soon as it came; even when the jury, after an hour, returned, and one of them stood and gave back their answer in a single word; even when the judge covered up his horse- hair wig with a cloth of black, and hoped that God would have mercy on Mrs Sucksby's soul— even then, I did not really feel it as you would suppose I might, did not believe, I think, that so many dark and sober gentlemen speaking so many grave and monotonous words could pinch out the spirit and the heat and the colour from the lives of people like me and Mrs Sucksby.
Then I looked at her face; and saw the spirit and heat and colour half- gone from it, already. She was looking dully about her, at the murmuring crowd— looking for me, I 332
thought, and I rose, and lifted my hand. But she caught my eye, and her gaze, as it had before, moved on: I watched it roam about the room, as if looking for someone or something else— finally it settled and seemed to clear, and I followed it and picked out, at the back of the rows of watchers, a girl dressed all in black, with a veil, that she was just putting down— It was Maud. I saw her, not expecting to see her: and I'll tell you this, my heart flew open; then I remembered everything, and my heart flew shut. She looked miserable— that was something, I thought. She was sitting alone. She made no sort of sign— to me, I mean; and none to Mrs Sucksby.
Then our lawyer called me to him, to shake my hand and say he was sorry. Dainty was weeping and needed my arm to help her walk. When I looked at Mrs Sucksby again, her head was sunk upon her breast; and when I looked for Maud, she had gone.
The week that passed after that I remember, now, as not a week at all, but as a single great endless day. It was a day without sleep— for how could I sleep, when sleep might take away thoughts of Mrs Sucksby, who was so soon to die? It was a day, almost, without darkness— for they kept lights in her cell, that burned all through the night; and in the hours I could not be with her, I kept lights burning at Lant Street— every light I could find in the house, and every light I could borrow. I sat alone, with blazing eyes. I sat and watched, as though she might be ill at my side. I hardly ate. I hardly changed my clothes. When I walked, it was to walk quickly to Horsemonger Lane, to be with her; or to walk slowly back, having left her there.