Yet when the eminent alienist Charles Bucknill examined Constance in gaol, she insisted that she was sane, then and now. The doctor interrogated her about her motive for killing Saville, asking why she had not attacked the real object of her anger, her stepmother. Constance replied that this would have been 'too short'. Bucknill understood her to mean that by killing Saville she intended to inflict a prolonged torture on the woman she hated, rather than a quick extinction. Later, Bucknill told the Home Secretary that he thought Constance 'had inherited a strong tendency to insanity', but that she had 'refused to let him' state his belief in public, because she wished to protect the interests of her father and brother. Rodway explained Constance's rationale in similar terms: 'A plea of insanity at the time of the deed might, it is believed, have been set up with success,' he told the Home Secretary, 'but she, fearing that such a plea might affect prejudicially her brother's chances in life, earnestly entreated that it should not be urged on her behalf.' She was determined to protect William from the taint of madness.
After meeting Constance, Bucknill fell in with her wishes and declared her sane, but he gave the newspapers a hint of his unease. Like Whicher, he found the clue to Constance's disturbance in her stillness. The sensationalism of the murder sat strangely with the blankness of the girl. 'The only peculiarity which at all struck Bucknill,' reported the Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 'was her extreme calmness – the utter absence of any symptom of emotion.'
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MY LOVE TURNED
July–August 1865
On the evening of Tuesday, 18 July Constance was transferred to the county gaol at Salisbury. Usually prisoners were moved between towns by train, but the governor of Devizes prison took Constance by post-chaise across Salisbury Plain, a journey of forty miles. She joined about forty-five men and five women at Fisherton gaol, on the outskirts of the city. That Wednesday – two days before the trial – Rowland Rodway visited her to tell her that her lawyers believed that, despite her confession, she would be acquitted if she pleaded not guilty. He urged her to make her peace with God in private: her spiritual atonement, he argued, did not depend on a public confession and conviction. Constance reiterated her intention to plead guilty; it was 'her plain duty', she told the lawyer, 'the only course which would satisfy her conscience', and the only one that would lift suspicion from others.
Salisbury was filling with visitors. Samuel, Mary, Mary Ann and William Kent had rooms at the White Hart, a handsome Georgian hotel opposite the cathedral. Williamson was in town, as was Whicher, who may have stayed with his niece Mary Ann and her husband, William Wort, at their house in New Street. More than thirty witnesses for the prosecution were on hand in case they were required. These included Constance's schoolfriend Louisa, though Emma Moody had fallen ill and was unable to make the journey from Ireland.
John Duke Coleridge QC, one of the most successful barristers of his generation, had been appointed to represent Constance. On Thursday he met Mary Ann and William Kent to discuss their sister's case, 'and then', he wrote in his diary, 'sat up till near three, getting up my speech'. He composed a letter to his client: 'If you plead Not Guilty then whatever I can do shall be done for your acquittal. If you plead Guilty anything I can say to set others right shall be said. But I advise you against any intermediate course.' Constance replied early in the morning of Friday, 21 July, the day of the triaclass="underline" 'I am persuaded that nothing will tend to clear the innocent so completely as my conviction.'
The Wiltshire constabulary had erected barriers outside the courthouse and drafted in constables from all over the county. About thirty reporters had turned up, and they were furious to discover that no provision had been made for them – the city authorities had failed to build the press balcony they had promised. Only fourteen places were allocated to the reporters; the others had to take their chances with the rest of the mob when the doors were opened at nine.
The judge was Sir James Willes, a tall man with luxuriant dark hair, eyebrows and whiskers, a prominent nose and a melancholy, harsh stare. He was reserved and courteous in manner, and his voice had an Irish lilt – he was born in Cork, to Protestant parents, in 1814. Once he and the twenty-four magistrates serving as jurors had taken their seats, Constance was brought in. She wore a black worsted veil, a plain black cloak, a black bonnet adorned with glass beads, a pair of black gauntlet gloves. She spoke briefly to Rodway, at the back of the dock, then lifted her veil and came to the front. Her face, judged the Daily Telegraph reporter, was 'broad, full, uninteresting', with an 'expression of stupid dulness'. 'She has full eyes, in which at times there is a look as if she was suspicious of those surrounding her, and which may be best described as the glance of a person who is afraid of something.' The News of the World described her as 'dull and heavy, her forehead low, her eyes small and her figure tending to plumpness, and there being an entire absence of anything like vivacity in her air or countenance'.
The clerk of the court read out the charge and asked, 'How say you, Constance Emilie Kent, are you guilty or not guilty?'
'Guilty,' she said, in a low tone.
Willes turned to her. 'Are you aware that you are charged with having wilfully, intentionally and with malice killed your brother?'
'Yes.'
The judge paused. 'And you plead guilty to that?' Constance was silent.
After a few moments Willes pressed her: 'What is your answer?' Again she said nothing. Despite her determination to plead guilty, silence and secrecy seemed still to exert a pull on her.
'You are charged with having wilfully, intentionally and with malice killed your brother,' repeated Willes. 'Are you guilty or not guilty?'
Finally she replied: 'Guilty.'
'The plea must be recorded,' said Willes. The room was perfectly quiet as the clerk wrote it down.
Coleridge rose and addressed the court on Constance's behalf. 'I desire to say two things before the sentence of the court is passed.' He was a lean man with a long face, sharp, sympathetic eyes, and a melodious voice. 'In the first place the prisoner solemnly, in the presence of Almighty God, and as a person who values her own soul, desires me to say that the guilt is hers alone, and that her father and others, who have so long suffered most unjust and cruel suspicions, are wholly and absolutely innocent. Next she desires me to say that she was not driven to act, as has been asserted, by any unkind treatment in her home. She met nothing there but tender and forbearing love, and I hope I may add not improperly that it gives me a melancholy pleasure to be made the organ of these statements, because on my honour I believe them to be true.'
Coleridge sat down. The clerk of the court asked Constance if she could give any reason why a sentence of death should not be passed upon her. She said nothing.
Judge Willes put on his black cap, in preparation for delivering the death sentence, and addressed Constance. 'I can entertain no doubt, after having read the evidence, and considering it in connexion with your three confessions of crime, that your plea is the plea of a guilty person. You appear to have allowed feelings of jealousy –' 'Not jealousy!' Constance burst out. The judge continued '– and anger to have worked in your breast until at last they assumed over you the influence and power of the evil one.'
At this point Willes' voice broke. As he paused, unable to speak, Constance glanced up at him, and on seeing his distress was herself overcome. She turned away from the judge, trying to hold back her tears. Willes was now openly weeping. He went on with difficulty. 'Whether Her Majesty, with whom the prerogative of mercy rests, may be advised to exercise that prerogative in your case on account of the fact of your youth at the time when the murder was committed, the fact that you are convicted on your own confession, and the fact that that confession removes suspicion from others, is a question which it would be presumptuous in me to answer. It now well behoves you to live what is left to you of life as one about to die, and to seek a more enduring mercy by sincere and deep contrition, and by a reliance on the holy redemption.' He passed the death sentence, finishing with the words, 'And may God have mercy on your soul.'