Gillespie and I (43 page)

Regrettably, in terms of mail, we were at the mercy of the turnkeys. Letters were forever ‘going astray' and, according to Cullen, it was a miracle that we received any post at all. Amongst the early replies that I did receive was a note from Elspeth. She apologised for what had happened on Friday morning, explaining that Annie was under too much strain for one ‘so highly strung' and had, since their visit to the prison, shut herself away in her room. Apparently, the police were still in possession of Rose's remains, but the funeral would take place as soon as possible after the body had been released. With Annie incapacitated, Ned had made a solitary trip to see the undertaker but—overcome by the sheer awfulness of his mission—had fled the funeral parlour before he had even finished explaining why he was there. Subsequently, his mother had assumed responsibility for the burial arrangements, the carriages, and invitations, and so on. She finished by assuring me that she would, of course, come to see me again before the next hearing, if that proved to be possible.

However, for various reasons—not least that their last visit had resulted in a scuffle—there was some question about whether the Gillespies were to be permitted to enter the prison.

Saturday and Sunday passed, with very little to break the monotony. The hours of darkness were the hardest to endure. I tended to jerk out of my slumbers several times a night, my pulse pumping wildly, and—even though my body seemed primed for action and alert, almost as though electrified—it was always several seconds before I was able to recall where I was, or form any rational thought.

My cellmates did their best to buck up my spirits, and I soon came to realise that they were not quite as unsavoury as they had, at first, seemed. Mulgrew, with her great dimpled cheeks and hangdog expressions, was a harmless—even loyal—soul, and Cullen distracted me with stories about her various fraudulent activities, primarily, the dissemination of hundreds of letters wherein she requested donations, claiming to be the victim of an astounding array of strange misfortunes. Of course, her crimes cannot be condoned, but in my embittered state of mind, it seemed to me that anyone stupid enough to be duped by such ploys deserved to be parted from their money. For our entertainment, Cullen performed a dumb-show of the various misfortunes in her begging letters: she froze for lack of a coat; she languished for want of medicine; her father beat her; a horse kicked her in the head; and she fell sick and died. Despite her efforts, time hung heavily upon us, and I often grew close to despair.

On Monday, I received another visit from my solicitor. After he had left me, on Friday, he had attempted to see Belle Schlutterhose, but she had refused to speak a word to him. However, he had since been able to interview her husband, and had also spoken, unofficially, but at some length, to Detective Stirling. Needless to say, I was very interested to hear his account of these meetings. Added to what I had gleaned from Cullen, and from the newspapers that Caskie had brought me, I was able to piece together a half-decent picture of events leading up to the apprehension of the kidnappers. Certainly, this pair had managed to elude capture for seven months, but Schlutterhose and his wife were not exactly masterminds, and they had made a supremely silly mistake, which led the police directly to their door.

It seemed that, on the morning of Friday, the 15th of November, a carrier had been walking in some woodland near the Carntyne Road when he noticed a piece of jute protruding from disturbed ground. Thinking that he might use such a piece of sacking, he pulled at it, and was surprised when it emerged from the earth, along with what appeared to be a set of bones, tangled in rags. The bones were so small that, initially, the carrier thought that they were animal in origin. However, upon closer examination, he saw that the rags were, in fact, clothing—a child's dress, and petticoat—and he realised that he had uncovered a half-buried human body, in some degree of decomposition, that had been partially dug up, perhaps by foxes or dogs.

Within the hour, the carrier had reported his discovery at the police office in Tobago Street. Detectives accompanied him to the woods, and the body was carefully disinterred, and taken to the morgue. As soon as it was confirmed that the bones were that of a small child, the police began to suspect that they might have unearthed the missing girl from Woodside. Eastern Division detectives sent word to their colleagues in the west, at Cranston Street, and Ned was brought, without delay, to the morgue, where he identified his daughter from her clothing, which, although ragged, was still recognisable. At last, more than seven months after her disappearance, Rose Gillespie had been found.

Thereafter, while Detective Stirling escorted the inconsolable Ned back to Stanley Street, police began to examine the new evidence. It seems that, prior to placement in the grave, the child had been wrapped in an old jacket, and then bundled into the jute sack. The sack bore the stamp of the ‘Scotstoun Mill' which lay just outside the city, at Partick. Unfortunately for the police, these flour bags were ubiquitous, and almost impossible to trace. The jacket was similarly nondescript: a working man's brown reefer, with no label or other identifying mark. There was a large bloodstain on the chest area, which might have explained why the garment had been buried along with the body. A search of the pockets revealed nothing and, in the absence of any other information, constables were dispatched to question workers at the Scotstoun Mill. Although the discovery of the body was a major step forward in the case, detectives were disappointed not to have more leads.

Once Rose had been identified, the investigation was duly turned over to the Western Division. That evening, the box of evidence containing the jacket and sack was transferred to the police office at Cranston Street, where Detective Inspector Grant subjected it to his scrutiny. Finding nothing of interest, he went home for the night, instructing Detective Stirling to store the box in the evidence cupboard.

And there the matter might have rested, had Stirling simply followed Grant's instructions. However, the Detective Sub-Inspector was a methodical man, who was determined to bring to justice those responsible for Rose's death. This was his first glimpse of the new evidence, and so, upon his own initiative, he carried out a minute inspection of the box's contents. It was during his examination of the bloodstained jacket that he discovered a remarkable ‘clue', which was to lead to a breakthrough in the case. Noting that the stitching inside one of the jacket pockets had come undone, he slid his hand through the hole in the lining, and—groping around between the two layers of fabric—discovered an item that had been overlooked, both by his superior officer, and by his Eastern Division colleagues: a thin scrap of paper, worn soft and sheeny by time.

This key piece of evidence turned out to be an ‘Account of Wages' issued by the warehouse department of the Dennistoun Bakery, in the autumn of the previous year. The slip itemised, in copperplate script, the dates that the payee's employment had begun and ceased (he had lasted a mere three weeks in his job) and the total amount paid to him in pounds, shillings and pence. To Stirling's delight, inked in a box marked ‘Employee' was a name: Hans Schlutterhose.

Even in Germany, Schlutterhose is an uncommon name. At that time, there was only one resident in all of Glasgow thus christened, and, unfortunately for him, he was already vaguely known to the police: Hans Schlutterhose of Camlachie.

Nobody had forgotten the stories of a tall, well-built foreigner, hurrying down West Princes Street, with a little girl in his arms. Schlutterhose broadly answered the physical description of this man, but he had been overlooked in the search for Rose, for several reasons. His misdemeanours had always been of a petty nature—drunken brawls and the like—usually committed outside public houses on the Gallowgate. Moreover, at the time of Rose's disappearance, the police had restricted their interviews to residents and labourers in the immediate vicinity of Vinegarhill. Schlutterhose's home—a single-end (or one-roomed apartment) in Coalhill Street—fell just outside this area.

On Saturday morning, Eastern and Western Divisions joined forces, and a deputation of detectives and constables surrounded the tenement in which Schlutterhose resided. The door to the first-floor single-end was broken down, and the German was apprehended, trying to escape through a back window. He was taken into custody and the police began to search his home.

It soon became apparent that the evidence against him was overwhelming. The wage slip that had been buried along with the body was damning enough, but a search of the tiny apartment revealed samples of Schlutterhose's handwriting, which seemed to resemble that of the ransom note. These samples also showed that he was in the habit of committing several characteristic errors, such as substituting ‘gut' for ‘good', ‘note' for ‘not', and so on, errors that were also consistent with the spelling in the ransom demand.

A pawn ticket, found on the mantel, was taken directly to the nearest broker's on the Gallowgate and presented at the counter. In return, the proprietor handed over a small pair of button boots, suitable for a little girl; later the same day, Ned identified these as having belonged to Rose. The proprietor of the shop informed the police that he had received the boots several months previously, from Schlutterhose's wife, Belle. When the dates in the shop's register were checked, it was discovered that she had pawned the boots in May, just a few days after Rose's disappearance. This suggested that Belle might have been involved in the abduction—if not the death—of the child. It also implied that Rose might have breathed her last very soon after she was taken.

A search of the back greens yielded, from almost directly below the window of Schlutterhose's home, a flat stone, stained with a dark red patch of what might have been either rust or blood. The stone had lain for a long time where it was found, for the grass underneath it had faded to yellow. It was thought that this stone might be a possible murder weapon.

Belle had not been at home that morning when the police raided the single-end, but a group of men now lay in wait for her return. Presently, she was spotted, towards noon, weaving her way up the street in a whiskified state. As several police officers approached her from various directions, Belle realised her plight, and was seen to fumble at her throat, and then drop something into the road, just before her arrest. A search of the gutter revealed that she had attempted to dispose of a mother-of-pearl necklace, which bore a strong resemblance to the one that Rose had been wearing at the time of her disappearance, right down to the child's name, engraved upon the silver setting, and Ned was soon to identify it as the pendant that he had given to his daughter the previous Christmas.

Schlutterhose and Belle remained taciturn whilst in police custody over the course of Saturday night and into the Sabbath. On Monday morning, at the Sheriff Court, they were examined, separately, and both refused to speak, at first, other than to confirm their identities. Belle steadfastly maintained that she had nothing to say to the charge. However, when the Sheriff impressed upon Hans that this hearing might constitute his sole opportunity to set out his position, and the Procurator Fiscal went on to inform him that the charges against him might ultimately include cold-blooded murder of an innocent child, Schlutterhose became most agitated, crying out: ‘No murder! No murder!' He made a declaration, in which he confessed to having abducted Rose, claiming that she had subsequently died as the result of a tragic accident. According to him, the theft of Rose Gillespie had not been accomplished on his own initiative. Indeed, he would never have dreamed of committing such a crime (or so he said). No—he was a mere auxiliary, a paid lackey, acting upon orders, manipulated into unaccustomed wrongdoing—or, as his declaration put it, to grotesquely comic effect when read aloud, at the trial: ‘I was just a prawn in this matter.'

He must have realised that the evidence against him and his wife was overwhelming, and had thus invented a story incriminating someone else, as instigator. And what a story it was! For, according to Schlutterhose, the impetus for the abduction had come directly from none other than myself, Miss Harriet Baxter, an English lady, and personal friend of the Gillespie family.

Why had this loathsome miscreant singled me out, in particular? Why me?—the prisoner's eternal cry. Make no mistake: I have thought long and hard about why this might have been so. There were times, whilst incarcerated, when I contemplated the tenets of Buddhism, and the notion that I might be suffering punishment for some crime committed, unwittingly, in a previous life. At the time, I was unaware of any connection between the Schlutterhoses and myself and, according to Caskie, the police had been unable, thus far, to link us together, which, according to him, was only to our advantage. I thought that, perhaps, I may have come to their attention at the time of Gillespie's solo exhibition: they might have seen the sketch of me with Ned in
The Thistle
, or heard the silly rumours. Or perhaps I was simply an arbitrary choice on their part, since, in every other respect, they failed to demonstrate one whit of clear, sensible thinking, or good judgement.

Whatever the case, I was easily demonised, and the local newspapers of the day took great pleasure in calling attention to certain of my characteristics that were bound to appeal to the innate prejudices of their readers. Firstly, I was a woman. This may not seem a handicap, in this day and age, now that we have the franchise, but remember that these events took place almost fifty years ago, when the world was a very different place. Not only was I horribly female, but also, I was horribly unmarried; at thirty-six, too old to be of use to anyone, and although the newspapers referred to me as a ‘spinster' this was no more than a euphemism for ‘witch'. If you are of a certain age, you might even remember the jokes and cartoons at the time of the trial. Gentlemen were advised, in jest, not to read the newspaper of a morning, lest their gaze accidentally fall upon a sketch of my countenance, an image reputed to be so frightful that it would put any man ‘right aff his porridge'.