A Child's Voice Calling (43 page)

Mabel took a deep breath. She had to lie, which went against her nature, and she had to sound convincing. ‘I had no idea at all where she was – not till I saw the newspaper report this morning.’

There was a long, dreadful silence. St Nicholas’s church bell chimed the hour, sounding out the strokes like the knell of doom. The constable’s hand hung poised in the air, holding a pencil. And she realised what she had just said.

‘What did yer see in the paper this morning, Miss Court?’

Too late, Mabel struck her head with both fists. ‘No,
no
, I didn’t mean that. I just saw that . . . that somebody had died – nothin’ to do with me grandmother – I didn’t mean that!’

‘Are yer talking about the case o’ Lady Cecilia Stanley, Miss Court?’

Mabel burst into tears. What had she said? What had she done? The words had been spoken and could never be withdrawn. She’d let it out, given herself away!

‘Miss Court, I’m afraid I’ll have to take yer back to the station with me for further questioning. Get yer hat an’ coat, and pick up yer handbag. I’ll leave my bicycle here and we’ll walk down together.’

‘Oh, my God – my God!’ she cried wildly, wringing her hands as her dire situation took shape in her head, with all its implications. Public shame and disgrace loomed much closer now that she had virtually admitted her grandmother’s involvement in Lady Stanley’s death.

‘Ye must try to control yerself, Miss Court, or I’ll
have to send for a conveyance. Come along now, the sooner we get to the bottom o’ this, the better.’

Somehow or other she managed to take a hold on herself and asked if she might tell Miss Lawton where she was being taken. Unable to face that distracted lady, Mabel scribbled a note and pushed it under her bedroom door. Then, putting on her hat and jacket, she walked with PC Derrick down Rectory Lane to the junction with Mitcham Road known as Amen Corner.

How many times had Mabel cycled past the police station on that corner, wondering what it must be like to be taken through those gloomy portals and charged with an offence, perhaps to be taken down to a police cell overnight? Little had she thought it would ever happen to her, yet here she was at the front desk where Derrick waved her straight past and down the passage, his boots clumping on the stone floor. And now she was being shown into the custody office with barred windows, its dull grey walls bare of any decoration. A whiff of stale pipe smoke hung on the air.

Mabel was told to sit at a large desk opposite a florid-faced, balding police officer who regarded her severely. The single door was closed and locked, and a young constable sat at the side of the desk to record everything she said. It was like being in the grip of a nightmare from which there was no awakening.

Her interrogator introduced himself as Police Sergeant Whittaker. ‘Ye’re in big trouble, Court,’ he told her. ‘A very serious crime has been committed and a lady of quality is dead as a result. I’ll tell yer now, Court, Sir Percy Stanley’s determined that we find the woman responsible for his wife’s death and have her committed to prison where she belongs. I
shall require yer full co-operation and strongly advise yer to stick to the truth. It’ll go against yer if yer try to obstruct the course o’ justice. Now, then!’

He rolled out the stock phrases used by policemen, giving them full dramatic emphasis and bringing in the less formal language of a man who liked to see his victims squirm. The questioning now began in earnest, a grilling about Mimi Court’s activities as a nurse, whether on the local district or further afield. Mabel was asked if any of her grandmother’s patients had come to 23 Macaulay Road for their treatment.

‘I believe some of ’em did, but I never had anything to do with those,’ she said wretchedly.

‘Where in the house did she treat these women?’

‘In a back bedroom, but I never saw – it was nothing to do with me.’

‘Did anybody assist Mrs Court?’

‘There was a domestic, Elsie – I never knew what her surname was.’

‘The same woman who accompanied Mrs Court to Bryanston Square?’

‘Yes.’

The sergeant fixed her with an accusing eye. ‘Let’s not mince our words, Court. This grandmother o’ yours performed abortions on these women, didn’t she?’

Mabel made no reply.

‘I require yer to answer me, Court.’

Still no reply. Mabel hung her head in abject misery.

‘Did yer assist her in this criminal activity, Court?’

Here Mabel could truthfully protest her innocence. She looked up and met his gimlet eyes. ‘No, I did not. Never.’

‘So what
did
yer do in that house?’

‘I assisted her – Mrs Court – with the maternity cases she had in Tooting. Yer can ask any o’ the women I attended in their own homes, I was learnin’ to be a midwife so’s I could—’

‘Just answer the questions, Court, don’t try to foist me off with that sort o’ stuff.’

At seven o’clock, when Mabel thought she could endure it no longer, the sergeant nodded to his assistant. ‘That’s as far as we can get with that one. I’ve got enough evidence to charge her as an accessory to crimes committed by the woman known as Mimi Court, present whereabouts unknown. With something as serious as this—’ He glanced towards the defeated figure seated at the desk, head drooping, shoulders bowed. ‘Better get the ol’ girl over to take charge – the usual care o’ females and then down to the cells – better go in number 5.’ He looked up at the clock. ‘Dunno about you but I reckon it’s time for some supper.’

The young constable hesitated and spoke almost apologetically to Mabel. ‘There’ll be a woman comin’ over, er, Miss Court, and she’ll look after yer, get yer a cup o’ tea and maybe a bite to eat. If yer change yer mind about anything ye’ve said so far, or want to add somethin’, just say so and an officer’ll come and take it down, no matter what the time is.’ Mabel was silent and he cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry about all this, m’dear, but because o’ the circumstances o’ this case, the sergeant thinks ’e shouldn’t let yer go.’

She turned haggard eyes upon him. ‘What’ll happen to me in the morning?’

‘Ye’ll be taken to the Magistrates’ Court at Lavender Hill and it’ll be up to them to decide.’

‘And if my grandmother – if Mrs Court turns up, will I be allowed to go?’

‘Ooh, that depends, miss. Yer could both be charged if ye’re an accessory.’

A Mrs Cheale came bustling over from Stella Road, complaining that she had just been about to sit down to her supper. She was a big woman in navy-blue with a voluminous white apron and a small white cap, a sort of combined nurse and wardress, sent for to attend to females in custody. She glared at Mabel and was about to march her away when something struck a chord in her memory. She stared hard at her charge. ‘
What
did they say yer name was – Court? Tell yer what, gal, I knows yer! Yer was there when me friend’s daughter ’ad ’er baby at Chris’muss, name o’ Brewer, Sally Brewer, an’ ’er little boy’s doin’ ever so well! Spoke very ’ighly o’ yer, she did. ‘Ooever’d a’ thought ye’d land in ’ere? Jus’ goes to show, yer never can tell wiv people, can yer? I’d never ’a’ believed it if I ’adn’t seen yer wiv me own two eyes, oh, my! What’ve they pulled yer in for, then?’

‘I . . . I’m supposed to be a . . . an accessory,’ croaked Mabel, hoping that the woman would not probe further.

‘Well, I never did!’ exclaimed Mrs Cheale, though her manner became noticeably warmer. ‘’Ere, come on, gal, I’ll take yer dahn to ’ave a wee an’ a wash first.’

Mabel’s period had started and she needed clean linen strips. Mrs Cheale fussed over her in the lavatory and finally led her down to the cells. Number 5 was like the others, small and gloomy, with a low wooden bed covered with a straw-filled mattress, a small stool and a bucket.

‘Take yer shoes off, gal, an’ lay dahn in yer clo’es. I’ll fetch yer a blanket,’ said Mrs Cheale with a sympathetic shake of her head. ‘At least it ain’t winter – these cells can be perishin’.’

The stone walls still struck a chill into Mabel’s heart, even on a July night, and being unventilated it was also stuffy, with smells lingering on the stale air.

‘All right then, gal, I’ll be in to see yer in the mornin’. Fings’ll look a bit better then, I dare say. Night-night!’

Mrs Cheale left, closing the door with a clang and Mabel was alone in a police cell without a friend’s voice or hand to comfort her. She sat down on the hard bed. Her brothers and sisters, aunts and uncle knew nothing of her plight, and for this she was thankful, though she would have welcomed the sight of Albert.

Tarred with the same brush.

‘If yer could see yer sister now, Albert,’ she whispered. How right he had been! Again and again she reproached herself for ever going to live at Macaulay Road. Her mother had never received good at the hands of Mimi Court, and now she herself had been brought down to shame and disgrace through association with dark, unlawful deeds.

These doleful thoughts were interrupted by a sudden commotion, a jangling of keys and the hoarse voices of two women brought in for disturbing the peace with a drunken quarrel. No Mrs Cheale for them: they were pushed unceremoniously into a cell by the night guard, and Mabel’s ears were assailed by the sound of retching and coarse mutterings. After a while the noises faded, but the place was never quiet, for at intervals the guard would patrol
the cells and peer into each one by the light of the flaring gaslights in the corridor; his heavy footsteps approached and receded, again and again. Mabel did not sleep a wink all night, though the hideous waking dream went on and on, and her thoughts led her down ever darker paths. Surely this could not be happening to her! But it
was
: she had reached her lowest ebb.

Lady Cecilia Stanley was dead. That fact went round and round in her head like a buzzing insect caught in a glass jar. And from there to the Magistrates’ Court which she would have to face in the morning – ‘up before the beak,’ as Albert would have said. And from there to the very worst fate of all, the report of the court proceedings in the
Evening Standard
.

It had been the publishing of Albert’s name in the newspaper as a railway striker that had lost her the job at the Anti-Vivisection Hospital. Now her
own
name would appear and in connection with a much more scandalous event. There it would be, in black and white for everybody to read and pass round. Her shame would be public property, known to the neighbours, shopkeepers, Dr Knowles, Mrs James and Miss Carter – and the Booth Street Poor Law infirmary. She pictured the Matron crossing her name off the list of new probationers due to start training on 1 September and she would never be allowed to work as a nurse again. That, surely, was the very worst aspect of this whole horrible business.

And there was somebody else who would be bound to see the newspaper report.

Harry Drover. Yes, he too – and his parents and sister – would read about the depths to which his one-time ‘dearest Mabel’ had sunk. She uttered a
heartbroken low moan at the thought of his horror and disgust: at last he would be free of her and in his disillusionment able to forget her . . . which was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Oh, but at what a cost!

And yet the thought came to Mabel that if Harry were ever in such a situation as this, confined in a police cell for something he had not done – what would he do? Where would he turn for comfort and strength? She knew the answer: he would pray.

And so would she. Going down on her knees beside the rank-smelling mattress, Mabel could think of no words of her own, only the remembered cry of the Psalmist in his extremity:
Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord: Lord, hear my voice
.

THE REVERBERATIONS OF
Lady Stanley’s death spread far and touched many lives, including some who had never even heard of her.

Ruth Lawton lay tossing and turning, her unquiet conscience giving her no rest. She had read the note pushed under her door and when Mabel did not return from the police station Ruth believed that she should go there too and tell what she knew – what she had known for years but had kept secret, held back by a promise extracted from her long ago. Getting out of bed, she paced up and down her small room through the hours of the night, wrestling with her fear and indecision until she truly thought she was losing her reason. And still her courage failed her. ‘Coward! Coward!’ she muttered in accusation against herself, seeing her whole life as an empty sham, her churchgoing and professed Christian beliefs meaningless; but to unburden herself of the weight of years would mean breaking her side of a bargain by which she and her mother had been saved from destitution. And she feared the woman known as Mimi Court.

So was she going to betray Mabel by keeping quiet and leaving the girl to her fate?

As the summer dawn began to pale the eastern sky, Ruth Lawton did as Mabel had done: she fell on her knees and prayed for deliverance from what she saw as her despicable cowardice. And as she prayed
it seemed that her mother was at her side, alive and radiant, with all her faculties restored, sent to bring comfort and good counsel to her unhappy daughter.

Sir Percy Stanley’s first reaction had been to bring down vengeance on everybody who had played a part in causing his wife’s death. His poor Cecilia had confessed her sins and repented of them all before she died; he had held her lifeless body in his arms and cursed her murderers. He would see to it that Viscount Eastcote was publicly accused and shamed; he would have to leave the country, so great would be his disgrace. The woman Court would be tracked down and charged with manslaughter and the maidservant Ling arraigned as her accomplice. They would both be judged and sentenced to whatever punishment the law considered they deserved. So vowed the betrayed and bereaved husband, keeping vigil beside the body of his wife, still beautiful in the pallor of death.

Then, on the Tuesday evening, he discovered the maidservant Ling whom he had earlier ordered to be thrown out on the street, lying in an agony of grief outside the room in which the body lay; and instead of ordering her to be thrown out again he had found himself weeping beside her.