Gillespie and I (41 page)

As it turned out, the proceedings in the Police Court were a mere formality. The Court was simply a room in the Cranston Street Office, presided over by the Bailie, a rather sinister-looking City Councillor, whose name escapes me. I was given little opportunity to speak and, contrary to what I had anticipated, my case was not dismissed. Instead, I was remitted to appear at eleven o'clock, that very morning, at the Sheriff Court, and was taken there directly, in an enclosed, horse-drawn wagon of dark polished wood. This van was windowless, and possessed only one narrow door, at the rear. As a vehicle, it resembled nothing more than a huge coffin on wheels. The journey was brief, and bumpy, and all that I could see of the outside world, through a tiny skylight in the roof, was a square of grey clouds. At Wilson Street, the two constables who had ridden the footboard helped me out onto the pavement. A few passers-by turned to stare, but otherwise, our arrival seemed to go unremarked.

Inside the Sheriff Court, I was placed in a basement cell, where I had my first meeting with John Caskie, the solicitor whom I had chosen from the list at the police office. I had been assured that all the men named thereupon were expert criminal lawyers but, on first acquaintance, Caskie seemed ill-suited to the legal profession, for he was a mild-mannered gent, of perhaps three and sixty, with the vague, distracted air of a bookseller or, perhaps, an ageing curate. In his hand, he had a piece of paper, a Petition, which laid out the charge against me. There, in black and white, it said that whilst acting with those Germans, I had stolen Rose. Naturally, I impressed upon Caskie my complete innocence of this charge. He looked startled at my hopeful suggestion that the case might be summarily dismissed.

‘Heck, no,' said he. ‘I doubt that'll happen.'

‘Do you have any advice for me, sir?'

‘Tell the truth, and dinna haiver.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘Nae haivering,' he said, but when he saw that I was still confused, he clarified: ‘Be brief, Miss Baxter. They'll ask you a hantle of questions but dinna worry. This may be your sole opportunity to speak, mind, but say no more than you must. Then we'll see what we can do about getting you bail.'

Presumably, these words were meant to be reassuring, but I am afraid that they afforded me little consolation. As the time approached for my appearance in court, I became increasingly agitated, having no idea what to expect. Caskie had not, as yet, spoken to the Gillespies. He knew not whether Annie had returned from Aberdeen, and was unable to tell me whether the police had even informed Ned of my arrest. Reluctant as I was to have my friends hear about my predicament, part of me felt that it might have been reassuring to see their faces in court but, apparently, the hearing that morning would be held in private, and it was highly unlikely that anyone of my acquaintance would be present. Nor would my Teutonic accusers be in attendance. Caskie had it on good authority that they had already been remanded to prison. Schlutterhose had been sent to the new gaol, outside Glasgow, while his wife was in the North Prison, in Duke Street: a grim, soot-blackened monstrosity that loomed over the city, behind high boundary walls. A few months earlier, I had chanced to pass the main gate, and witnessed several shabby damsels, laughing and jeering, as they were discharged into the street; and I had heard, from Elspeth, the most horrific stories about the conditions inside. The mere thought of Duke Street gaol made my stomach turn over within me.

All too soon, it was eleven o'clock. My solicitor took his leave, and then the constables arrived to escort me upstairs to the Sheriff's chambers. There, behind an enormous desk at the window, sat the bewigged Mr Spence, the Sheriff-Substitute. His Clerk occupied a small escritoire, to one side, while Mr Caskie and Donald McPhail, the beetle-browed Procurator Fiscal, were seated at opposite sides of a table in the middle of the room. Caskie gave me a reassuring smile as I entered, and when the Clerk asked me if I was Harriet Baxter, I mumbled my assent.

After giving the documents in front of him a final glance, Spence opened the proceedings, addressing me in a gentle, refined voice.

‘You've had sight of the Petition, containing a charge of plagium against you?'

‘I have, my Lord,' I replied.

‘Do you understand the charge?'

‘I do.'

‘Now, Mr McPhail here and I will ask you certain questions. You're not bound to answer any question, but be aware that your failure to answer will be noted by my Clerk, and could be commented upon at your trial. Remember, this is your opportunity to set out your case.'

Thereafter, the Procurator Fiscal began his examination of me, in harsh, sepulchral tones, and I answered him as best I could. Admittedly, I was nervous, but it was a relief, in a way, to be able to speak, to set out my version of events, which would, hopefully, counter Grant's preposterous theories. As for my testimony that day, I shall not include it. Apart from the fact that I was under great duress at the time, anything that was said has already been described here, more coherently and comprehensively. Besides, the Clerk wrote down every word, and that document, or ‘declaration', was read aloud at the trial, and is a matter of public record; it is even reproduced, verbatim, in Mr Kemp's recent pamphlet.

During McPhail's interrogation of me, the Sheriff-Substitute stared, sad-eyed, out of a window, alternately scribbling in a ledger, and tugging at his luxuriant, drooping whiskers, which had surely been grown to compensate for the lack of hair on his gleaming pate, just visible beneath his wig. Once or twice, he scored out some phrase that he had written, and began again. Frankly, he appeared, with Olympian indifference to my Fate, to be using this opportunity to compose some lines of verse! As soon as the Fiscal had exhausted his supply of questions, the Sheriff asked a few more, and then Caskie jumped to his feet.

‘My Lord, I wish to make an application for bail on behalf of the pannel.'

Presumably, I was ‘the pannel'.

McPhail turned to Spence. ‘My lord, as I've already informed Mr Caskie, we're currently conducting further inquiries related to this case.'

‘So I believe,' said Spence. He put down his pen and turned to regard me with a searching, melancholy gaze. Although he seemed to have been composing a poem throughout most of the proceedings—which tended to prejudice me against him—in every other respect, he gave the impression of being a perceptive, kindly fellow. Surely he would grant bail?

The Fiscal persisted: ‘These inquiries, my Lord, are likely to result in a charge of the most serious nature being levelled against the pannel.'

Spence sighed and looked at me, with regret.

‘In that case, I cannot but recognise that another, more serious charge may yet be preferred against you, Miss Baxter, and, accordingly, bail is refused. The pannel is committed for further examination, to appear before me, next Wednesday, and, until then, is remanded in custody.'

So astounded was I at this pronouncement, that I almost missed what he went on to say: that I was to be taken from the Sheriff Court, and housed in the North Prison—the very place that I had pictured earlier, with such dread. The next few minutes are incomplete in my memory. I seem to recall that Caskie hurried over, with various assurances, and promises to visit me as soon as he was able. Then the constables led me out of the building to the coffin-shaped van.

As we rattled northwards towards Duke Street gaol, I felt only numb. All I could think of was that these streets were but a stone's throw from Elspeth's church. Our route to the prison might even take us within sight of St John's, and I kept imagining that Ned or his mother might happen to be passing through that part of town. They might see this sinister van hurtling past, without ever guessing that their friend, Harriet Baxter, was locked up inside.

Prison is a sordid place and there are countless stories that document the sufferings of those poor souls who are unfortunate enough to be incarcerated. To be perfectly frank, I do not intend to dwell on the dismal conditions in the gaol, the lack of hot water and lavatories, the filth, and so on: this is not a manifesto for Reform. Suffice to say, after my initial reception, I was taken to the Head Warder, who informed me that I was to be housed in the hospital. Rather naively, I assumed that this ‘hospital' would be a separate building, but it turned out, simply, to be a large ‘association' cell on the ground floor of one of the ordinary wings.

Apparently, I was to share this room with two other females, both of whom were already installed when I arrived. Neither woman was sick, as far as I could see, although one was abnormally large in stature, and looked a little dim-witted. The other was a stunning, lively-eyed creature with bright red curls. The Christian names of these two ladies have long since faded from my memory, perhaps because the wardens referred to us only by our surnames. The redhead, Cullen, was a clever piece of work who, as I soon grew to realise, had at least as much power and influence as the warders, and she ran matters in the prison, almost single-handedly, from our cell. The giantess, Mulgrew, was a hefty creature with fists the size of hams. She rarely spoke, but during my first day and night in Duke Street, perhaps as a means of intimidation, she made a point of copying everything that I did: if I sighed, she sighed; if I folded my arms, she folded hers; if I put my hand to my face, she did the same. It was ever so disconcerting, and all that I could do was ignore her, in the hope that she would soon grow bored.

As you might imagine, I was terrified out of my wits. On that first night, I was afraid to close my eyes, although Cullen had assured me that we were quite safe: the door was locked, and neither she nor her associate meant me any harm; indeed, the two women were trustees, of some sort, and I had been housed with them for my own protection. Despite this, I barely slept a wink. My wakefulness was assisted partly by Mulgrew, who snored so loudly, at first, that I began to think that she might be putting it on for comic effect, and partly by the various bangs, crashes, yells and blood-curdling screams that echoed through the dark corridors of the prison.

Once Mulgrew's snores had subsided, I did manage to drift off, but found myself awake at frequent intervals throughout the night and, each time, in the moment that I regained consciousness—not yet sufficiently alert to know where I was—the same phenomenon would occur. For a few seconds, I would lie there, in the limbo between sleep and waking, and then, as I remembered what had happened (Rose dead, myself accused and imprisoned), I would think: ‘Oh, what a terrible dream that was!', only, moments later, to jump out of my skin, with a sensation as though my heart and innards had been jerked by invisible hands, and then the sickening sensation of grief, dread and fear would flood through my body, as it dawned on me, all over again, that what I was experiencing was no dream, no dream at all.

Early the following morning, a female warder brought us a bucket of water, and then another arrived with a jug of tea, and later still, a third came knocking, bearing a pot of thin gruel. On the previous day, upon arriving at the prison, I had seen several male warders, but it seemed that this wing was guarded, exclusively, by females. In general, according to Cullen, they were harsher than the males. She was respectful in their presence but, behind their backs, she spoke of them with disdain. Apparently, this particular wing was presided over by a newly arrived Principal Warder, a Mrs Fee, whose authoritarian reputation preceded her.

By mid-morning, Mulgrew, the giantess, had grown bored of mimicking my every move and, for the most part, she sat in silence, biting her fingernails. Cullen, on the other hand, proved to be very informative, and I soon came to realise that she knew more about my case than I did. Apparently, my supposed ‘fellow suspects' and I were to be kept separate at all times. Schlutterhose and his wife had been segregated since their arrest; he would remain in the new prison, outwith the town, and to avoid a meeting between his wife and myself, she had been put at the far side of Duke Street, in another female wing. It was unlikely that I would encounter either of this pair of miscreants, since our movements were severely restricted.

‘They'll always separate you from your pals, if they can,' said Cullen. ‘In case you start fighting about whose fault it is you got nabbed.'

‘These people are not my friends,' I told her. ‘I don't even know them.'

Cullen exchanged a glance with Mulgrew. ‘Even so,' she said. ‘Nae doubt they'll be holding a grudge of some sort, so you need to be on yer mettle.'

According to her, the kidnappers were not the only ones who might want to cause me harm. As I soon came to realise, prison was a hierarchical place, with a surprisingly strict moral code. News spread fast and, given the high profile of the Rose Gillespie story, it was only a matter of time before the whole gaol heard that the missing girl from Woodside had been found, dead. I knew that the charges against me were false, but no other Duke Street inmate would have expected so, and many within those walls would not take kindly to someone who was even suspected of having harmed a child. The fact that I was English made matters worse. Thus, Cullen explained, I had been put here, on the quietest wing, and would be watched over, very carefully.

She and the giantess then stood up and proceeded, forthwith, to show me the various ways in which I could protect myself from violent assault by other prisoners. Perhaps, by this stage, nothing would have surprised me, or perhaps I was still in shock; at any rate, I found myself obediently studying them as they demonstrated how to deal with an attack from behind, by striking the assailant in the stomach, with a backward thrust of the elbow.

This extraordinary display was interrupted when the door opened, yet again, to reveal a sturdy female, who simply said: ‘Baxter—visit.'

‘Thank you, Mrs Fee,' said Cullen, adding, to me: ‘That'll be your solicitor.' I interpreted the significant look that she gave me as a warning that this turnkey was the aforementioned new Principal Warder.