She Stands Accused Part 6

It was some seven months after the execution of Anne Turner that the Countess of Ess.e.x was brought to trial. This was in May. In December, while virtually a prisoner under the charge of Sir William Smith at Lord Aubigny's house in Blackfriars, she had given birth to a daughter. In March she had been conveyed to the Tower, her baby being handed over to the care of her mother, the Countess of Suffolk. Since the autumn of the previous year she had not been permitted any communication with her husband, nor he with her. He was already lodged in the Tower when she arrived there.

On a day towards the end of May she was conveyed by water from the Tower to Westminster Hall. The hall was packed to suffocation, seats being paid for at prices which would turn a modern promoter of a world's heavyweight-boxing-championship fight green with envy. Her judges were twenty-two peers of the realm, with the Lord High Steward, the Lord Chief Justice, and seven judges at law. It was a pageant of colour, in the midst of which the woman on trial, in her careful toilette, consisting of a black stammel gown, a cypress chaperon or black crepe hood in the French fashion, relieved by touches of white in the cuffs and ruff of cobweb lawn, struck a funereal note. Preceded by the headsman carrying his axe with its edge turned away from her, she was conducted to the bar by the Lieutenant of the Tower. The indictment was read to her, and at its end came the question: "Frances Howard, Countess of Somerset, how sayest thou? Art thou guilty of this felony and murder or not guilty?"

There was a hushed pause for a moment; then came the low-voiced answer: "Guilty."

Sir Francis Bacon, the Attorney-General--himself to appear in the same place not long after to answer charges of bribery and corruption--now addressed the judges. His eloquent address was a commendation of the Countess's confession, and it hinted at royal clemency.

In answer to the formal demand of the Clerk of Arraigns if she had anything to say why judgment of death should not be given against her the Countess made a barely audible plea for mercy, begging their lordships to intercede for her with the King. Then the Lord High Steward, expressing belief that the King would be moved to mercy, delivered judgment. She was to be taken thence to the Tower of London, thence to the place of execution, where she was to be hanged by the neck until she was dead--and might the Lord have mercy on her soul.

The attendant women hastened to the side of the swaying woman. And now the halbardiers formed escort about her, the headsman in front, with the edge of his axe turned towards her in token of her conviction, and she was led away.

VI

It is perfectly clear that the Countess of Somerset was led to confess on the promise of the King's mercy. It is equally clear that she did not know what she was confessing to. Whatever might have been her conspiracy with Anne Turner it is a practical certainty that it did not result in the death of Thomas Overbury. There is no record of her being allowed any legal advice in the seven months that had elapsed since she had first been made a virtual prisoner. She had been permitted no communication with her husband. For all she knew, Overbury might indeed have died from the poison which she had caused to be sent to the Tower in such quant.i.ty and variety. And she went to trial at Westminster guilty in conscience, her one idea being to take the blame for having brought about the murder of Overbury, thinking by that to absolve her husband of any share in the plot. She could not have known that her plea of guilty would weaken Somerset's defence. The woman who could go to such lengths in order to win her husband was unlikely to have done anything that might put him in jeopardy. One can well imagine with what fierceness she would have fought her case had she thought that by doing so she could have helped the man she loved.

But Frances Howard, no less than her accomplice Anne Turner, was the victim of a gross subversion of justice. That she was guilty of a cruel and determined attempt to poison Overbury is beyond question, and, being guilty of that, she was thoroughly deserving of the fate that overcame Anne Turner, but that at the last she was allowed to escape. Her confession, however, shackled Somerset at his trial. It put her at the King's mercy. Without endangering her life Somerset dared not come to the crux of his defence, which would have been to demand why Loubel had been allowed to go free, and why the King's physician, Mayerne, had not been examined. To prevent Somerset from asking those questions, which must have given the public a sufficient hint of King James's share in the murder of Overbury, two men stood behind the Earl all through his trial with cloaks over their arms, ready to m.u.f.fle him. But, whatever may be said of Somerset, the prospect of the cloaks would not have stopped him from attempting those questions. He had sent word to King James that he was "neither Gowrie nor Balmerino," those two earlier victims of James's treachery. The thing that m.u.f.fled him was the threat to withdraw the promised mercy to his Countess. And so he kept silent, to be condemned to death as his wife had been, and to join her in the Tower.

Five weary years were the couple to eat their hearts out there, their death sentences remitted, before their ultimate banishment far from the Court to a life of impoverished obscurity in the country. Better for them, one would think, if they had died on Tower Green. It is hard to imagine that the dozen years or so which they were to spend together could contain anything of happiness for them--she the confessed would-be poisoner, and he haunted by the memory of that betrayal of friendship which had begun the process of their double ruin. Frances Howard died in 1632, her husband twenty-three years later. The longer lease of life could have been no blessing to the fallen favourite.

There is a portrait of Frances Howard in the National Portrait Gallery by an unknown artist. It is an odd little face which appears above the elaborate filigree of the stiff lace ruff and under the carefully dressed bush of dark brown hair. With her gay jacket of red gold-embroidered, and her gold-ornamented grey gown, cut low to show the valley between her young b.r.e.a.s.t.s, she looks like a child dressed up. If there is no great indication of the beauty which so many poets shed ink over there is less promise of the dire determination which was to pursue a man's life with cruel poisons over several months. It is, however, a narrow little face, and there is a tight-liddedness about the eyes which in an older woman might indicate the bigot. Bigot she proved herself to be, if it be bigotry in a woman to love a man with an intensity that will not stop at murder in order to win him. That is the one thing that may be said for Frances Howard. She did love Robert Carr. She loved him to his ruin.

IV: -- A MODEL FOR MR HOGARTH

On a Sunday, the 5th of February, 1733, there came toddling into that narrow pa.s.sage of the Temple known as Tanfield Court an elderly lady by the name of Mrs Love. It was just after one o'clock of the afternoon.

The giants of St Dunstan's behind her had only a minute before rapped out the hour with their clubs.

Mrs Love's business was at once charitable and social. She was going, by appointment made on the previous Friday night, to eat dinner with a frail old lady named Mrs Duncomb, who lived in chambers on the third floor of one of the buildings that had entry from the court. Mrs Duncomb was the widow of a law stationer of the City. She had been a widow for a good number of years. The deceased law stationer, if he had not left her rich, at least had left her in fairly comfortable circ.u.mstances. It was said about the environs that she had some property, and this fact, combined with the other that she was obviously nearing the end of life's journey, made her an object of melancholy interest to the womenkind of the neighbourhood.

Mrs Duncomb was looked after by a couple of servants. One of them, Betty Harrison, had been the old lady's companion for a lifetime. Mrs Duncomb, described as "old," was only sixty.[16] Her weakness and bodily condition seem to have made her appear much older. Betty, then, also described as "old," may have been of an age with her mistress, or even older. She was, at all events, not by much less frail. The other servant was a comparatively new addition to the establishment, a fresh little girl of about seventeen, Ann (or Nanny) Price by name.

Mrs Love climbed the three flights of stairs to the top landing. It surprised her, or disturbed her, but little that she found no signs of life on the various floors, because it was, as we have seen, a Sunday.

The occupants of the chambers of the staircase, mostly gentlemen connected in one way or another with the law, would be, she knew abroad for the eating of their Sunday dinners, either at their favourite taverns or at commons in the Temple itself. What did rather disturb kindly Mrs Love was the fact that she found Mrs Duncomb's outer door closed--an unwonted fact--and it faintly surprised her that no odour of cooking greeted her nostrils.

Mrs Love knocked. There was no reply. She knocked, indeed, at intervals over a period of some fifteen minutes, still obtaining no response. The disturbed sense of something being wrong became stronger and stronger in the mind of Mrs Love.

On the night of the previous Friday she had been calling upon Mrs Duncomb, and she had found the old lady very weak, very nervous, and very low in spirits. It had not been a very cheerful visit all round, because the old maidservant, Betty Harrison, had also been far from well. There had been a good deal of talk between the old women of dying, a subject to which their minds had been very p.r.o.ne to revert. Besides Mrs Love there were two other visitors, but they too failed to cheer the old couple up. One of the visitors, a laundress of the Temple called Mrs Oliphant, had done her best, poohpoohing such melancholy talk, and attributing the low spirits in which the old women found themselves to the bleakness of the February weather, and promising them that they would find a new lease of life with the advent of spring. But Mrs Betty especially had been hard to console.

"My mistress," she had said to cheerful Mrs Oliphant, "will talk of dying. And she would have me die with her."

As she stood in considerable perturbation of mind on the cheerless third-floor landing that Sunday afternoon Mrs Love found small matter for comfort in her memory of the Friday evening. She remembered that old Mrs Duncomb had spoken complainingly of the lonesomeness which had come upon her floor by the vacation of the chambers opposite her on the landing. The tenant had gone a day or two before, leaving the rooms empty of furniture, and the key with a Mr Twysden.

Mrs. Love, turning to view the door opposite to that on which she had been rapping so long and so ineffectively, had a shuddery feeling that she was alone on the top of the world.

She remembered how she had left Mrs Duncomb on the Friday night. Mrs Oliphant had departed first, accompanied by the second visitor, one Sarah Malcolm, a charwoman who had worked for Mrs Duncomb up to the previous Christmas, and who had called in to see how her former employer was faring. An odd, silent sort of young woman this Sarah, good-looking in a hardfeatured sort of way, she had taken but a very small part in the conversation, but had sat staring rather sullenly into the fire by the side of Betty Harrison, or else casting a flickering glance about the room. Mrs Love, before following the other two women downstairs, had helped the ailing Betty to get Mrs Duncomb settled for the night. In the dim candle-light and the faint glow of the fire that scarce illumined the wainscoted room the high tester-bed of the old lady, with its curtains, had seemed like a shadowed catafalque, an illusion nothing lessened by the frail old figure under the bedclothing.

It came to the mind of Mrs Love that the illness manifesting itself in Betty on the Friday night had worsened. Nanny, she imagined, must have gone abroad on some errand. The old servant, she thought, was too ill to come to the door, and her voice would be too weak to convey an answer to the knocking. Mrs Love, not without a shudder for the chill feeling of that top landing, betook herself downstairs again to make what inquiry she might. It happened that she met one of her fellow-visitors of the Friday night, Mrs Oliphant.

Mrs Oliphant was sympathetic, but could not give any information. She had seen no member of the old lady's establishment that day. She could only advise Mrs Love to go upstairs again and knock louder.

This Mrs Love did, but again got no reply. She then evolved the theory that Betty had died during the night, and that Nanny, Mrs Duncomb being confined to bed, had gone to look for help, possibly from her sister, and to find a woman who would lay out the body of the old servant. With this in her mind Mrs Love descended the stairs once more, and went to look for another friend of Mrs Duncomb's, a Mrs Rhymer.

Mrs Rhymer was a friend of the old lady's of some thirty years'

standing. She was, indeed, named as executrix in Mrs Duncomb's will. Mrs Love finding her and explaining the situation as she saw it, Mrs Rhymer at once returned with Mrs Love to Tanfield Court.

The two women ascended the stairs, and tried pushing the old lady's door. It refused to yield to their efforts. Then Mrs Love went to the staircase window that overlooked the court, and gazed around to see if there was anyone about who might help. Some distance away, at the door, we are told, "of my Lord Bishop of Bangor," was the third of Friday night's visitors to Mrs Duncomb, the charwoman named Sarah Malcolm. Mrs Love hailed her.

"Prithee, Sarah," begged Mrs Love, "go and fetch a smith to open Mrs Duncomb's door."

"I will go at all speed," Sarah a.s.sured her, with ready willingness, and off she sped. Mrs Love and Mrs Rhymer waited some time. Sarah came back with Mrs Oliphant in tow, but had been unable to secure the services of a locksmith. This was probably due to the fact that it was a Sunday.

By now both Mrs Love and Mrs Rhymer had become deeply apprehensive, and the former appealed to Mrs Oliphant. "I do believe they are all dead, and the smith is not come!" cried Mrs Love. "What shall we do, Mrs Oliphant?"

Mrs Oliphant, much younger than the others, seems to have been a woman of resource. She had from Mr Twysden, she said, the key of the vacant chambers opposite to Mrs Duncomb's. "Now let me see," she continued, "if I cannot get out of the back chamber window into the gutter, and so into Mrs Duncomb's apartment."

The other women urged her to try.[17] Mrs Oliphant set off, her heels echoing in the empty rooms. Presently the waiting women heard a pane snap, and they guessed that Mrs Oliphant had broken through Mrs Duncomb's cas.e.m.e.nt to get at the handle. They heard, through the door, the noise of furniture being moved as she got through the window. Then came a shriek, the scuffle of feet. The outer door of Mrs Duncomb's chambers was flung open. Mrs Oliphant, ashen-faced, appeared on the landing. "G.o.d! Oh, gracious G.o.d!" she cried. "They're all murdered!"

II

All four women pressed into the chambers. All three of the women occupying them had been murdered. In the pa.s.sage or lobby little Nanny Price lay in her bed in a welter of blood, her throat savagely cut. Her hair was loose and over her eyes, her clenched hands all bloodied about her throat. It was apparent that she had struggled desperately for life. Next door, in the dining-room, old Betty Harrison lay across the press-bed in which she usually slept. Being in the habit of keeping her gown on for warmth, as it was said, she was partially dressed. She had been strangled, it seemed, "with an ap.r.o.n-string or a pack-thread," for there was a deep crease about her neck and the bruised indentations as of knuckles. In her bedroom, also across her bed, lay the dead body of old Mrs Duncomb. There had been here also an attempt to strangle, an unnecessary attempt it appeared, for the crease about the neck was very faint. Frail as the old lady had been, the mere weight of the murderer's body, it was conjectured, had been enough to kill her.

These pathological details were established on the arrival later of Mr Bigg, the surgeon, fetched from the Rainbow Coffee-house near by by Fairlow, one of the Temple porters. But the four women could see enough for themselves, without the help of Mr Bigg, to understand how death had been dealt in all three cases. They could see quite clearly also for what motive the crime had been committed. A black strong-box, with papers scattered about it, lay beside Mrs Duncomb's bed, its lid forced open. It was in this box that the old lady had been accustomed to keep her money.

If any witness had been needed to say what the black box had contained there was Mrs Rhymer, executrix under the old lady's will. And if Mrs.

Rhymer had been at any need to refresh her memory regarding the contents opportunity had been given her no farther back than the afternoon of the previous Thursday. On that day she had called upon Mrs Duncomb to take tea and to talk affairs. Three or four years before, with her rapidly increasing frailness, the old lady's memory had begun to fail. Mrs Rhymer acted for her as a sort of unofficial curator bonis, receiving her money and depositing it in the black box, of which she kept the key.

On the Thursday, old Betty and young Nanny being sent from the room, the old lady had told Mrs Rhymer that she needed some money--a guinea. Mrs Rhymer had gone through the solemn process of opening the black box, and, one must suppose--old ladies nearing their end being what they are--had been at need to tell over the contents of the box for the hundredth time, just to rea.s.sure Mrs Duncomb that she thoroughly understood the duties she had agreed to undertake as executrix

At the top of the box was a silver tankard. It had belonged to Mrs Duncomb's husband. In the tankard was a hundred pounds. Beside the tankard lay a bag containing guinea pieces to the number of twenty or so. This was the bag that Mrs Rhymer had carried over to the old lady's chair by the fire, in order to take from it the needed guinea.

There were some half-dozen packets of money in the box, each sealed with black wax and set aside for particular purposes after Mrs Duncomb's death. Other sums, greater in quant.i.ty than those contained in the packets, were earmarked in the same way. There was, for example, twenty guineas set aside for the old lady's burial, eighteen moidores to meet unforeseen contingencies, and in a green purse some thirty or forty shillings, which were to be distributed among poor people of Mrs Duncomb's acquaintance. The ritual of telling over the box contents, if something ghostly, had had its usual effect of comforting the old lady's mind. It consoled her to know that all arrangements were in order for her pa.s.sing in genteel fashion to her long home, that all the decorums of respectable demise would be observed, and that "the greatest of these" would not be forgotten. The ritual over, the black box was closed and locked, and on her departure Mrs Rhymer had taken away the key as usual.

The motive for the crime, as said, was plain. The black box had been forced, and there was no sign of tankard, packets, green purse, or bag of guineas.

The horror and distress of the old lady's friends that Sunday afternoon may better be imagined than described. Loudest of the four, we are told, was Sarah Malcolm. It is also said that she was, however, the coolest, keen to point out the various methods by which the murderers (for the crime to her did not look like a single-handed effort) could have got into the chambers. She drew attention to the wideness of the kitchen chimney and to the weakness of the lock in the door to the vacant rooms on the other side of the landing. She also pointed out that, since the bolt of the spring-lock of the outer door to Mrs Duncomb's rooms had been engaged when they arrived, the miscreants could not have used that exit.

This last piece of deduction on Sarah's part, however, was made rather negligible by experiments presently carried out by the porter, Fairlow, with the aid of a piece of string. He showed that a person outside the shut door could quite easily pull the bolt to on the inside.

The news of the triple murder quickly spread, and it was not long before a crowd had collected in Tanfield Court, up the stairs to Mrs. Duncomb's landing, and round about the door of Mrs Duncomb's chambers. It did not disperse until the officers had made their investigations and the bodies of the three victims had been removed. And even then, one may be sure, there would still be a few of those odd sort of people hanging about who, in those times as in these, must linger on the scene of a crime long after the last drop of interest has evaporated.