The prison stood like a castle on top of a high hill overlooking much of the city. Constructed of limestone, the jail appeared as a fortress with a solid two-storey wall separating the main buildings from the road and surrounding landscape. The five-storey structure boasted ramparts along the roofline and towers placed haphazardly as if to showcase the institution’s strength rather than its usefulness.
Ainsley’s distress at the news of his friend’s current state was only made worse as the hansom rolled up to the gate. The driver would venture no further. Ainsley hopped down from the door of the carriage and turned to assist Margaret. With her hand in his, Ainsley noticed her eyes forced upward at the oppressive structure. Her face looked frozen in fear, her mind unable to accept what they had just learned.
“It will be all right, Margaret,” Ainsley said quietly so Giles behind her would not hear. “Jonas is a stocky sort.”
She made no reply while her gaze trailed the arch that straddled the laneway.
Ainsley began to second-guess his decision to let her come. “I should have insisted you go to the hotel with Cutter and Elmira,” he said. He gave a sideways glance but she did not indicate that she had heard him.
On the pavement, Giles adjusted his jacket and pulled his sleeves down over his wrists while the driver retrieved his small valise from the perch of the carriage. “Feels as if a dream, yes?” he asked, after he paid the driver.
“More like a nightmare,” Margaret corrected him. She was the first to step forward away from the safety of the road and into the dark recesses of the prison yard. At the gate they were asked about the nature of their visit and were permitted through. A portly man at the front desk just inside the arched doorway, however, refused their admittance. He had a thick, black handlebar moustache but possessed very little hair on the top of his head.
“’Tis nearly ten o’clock,” he said, aghast at their request. “We have rules, ye know.”
“He was only brought here today,” Giles protested, pointing to the article that had alerted them of Jonas’s arrest. “Surely, he’s entitled to visitors who are helping him formulate his defence.”
“Defence?” The prison guard laughed, holding his rotund belly with one hand as if to prevent the buttons from popping from his uniform. After his merriment, he jerked forward, leaning his elbow into his desk and lowering his voice. “We found him, elbow deep in the victim’s blood. He had some of the victim’s belongings in his possession at the time of his arrest. And he can’t recall a minute of the last two days to give his own account. I don’t believe there’s much of a defence that can be given for a situation like that.” The guard leaned back in his chair, knitting his fingers together over his belly.
“But he is owed a fair trial,” Ainsley sneered. “We are not barbarians.”
“But it was a barbarian who did him in, wasn’t it? Sliced open his stomach, he did. And as I understand it, the professor he done killed was going to be knighted a’fore long. Your doctor is cooked, if you ask me.” The guard smiled out the side of his mouth and huffed.
Margaret stepped forward, pushing between Giles and Ainsley, and laid a gloved fist on the visitor’s logbook in front of them. “I don’t recall asking you for your legal opinion. This man was arrested only this morning and it’s my understanding that we are permitted to pay for his release until such a time that a trial can be held. Now, are you going to start the paperwork so that my friend isn’t expected to spend another goddamn minute in this hell or do I have to take the damn keys to his cell myself?”
“You will do no such thing.”
A voice behind them bellowed through the cavernous hall. When the threesome turned they spied a well-dressed man with a slender dossier held at his side. He slipped his other hand into the pocket of his trousers in a nonchalant manner. Sporting a full beard and short haircut, the man was an imposing figure, made even more so by the darkness of the place and the overall vulnerable position Ainsley and Margaret found themselves in.
“Detective Inspector Bertram Hearst,” he said, stepping closer. “Edinburgh Police.” He did not bother to extend a hand in greeting.
Ainsley could smell a strong odour of whiskey emanating from the detective, a smell that nearly brought back all his darkest memories.
“We intend to punish your doctor friend to the full extent of the law.”
“The punishment for murder is execution,” Giles said hesitantly.
“I know.” Hearst looked almost delighted at the prospect. “The governor, the procurator fiscal, and I are of the same accord on this. This is a very serious crime, which deserves a very serious punishment.”
“Our friend is innocent,” Margaret said, without the slightest quiver in her voice.
Hearst raised an eyebrow at her insistence, and gave a half smile. “Aren’t they all? Young lady, your belief in him is commendable, sweet even, but terribly misguided. Dr. Davies was seen arriving at the university late last evening inebriated. At some point he encountered Professor Frobisher and, for reasons yet to be determined, he stabbed him to death. This morning, Dr. Davies was found alongside the body, the blood clearly evident on his hands. These are the facts, which cannot be argued. I should hate to see you waste your time defending a man who clearly cannot be defended.”
Ainsley studied the man, allowing him to speak while trying to decipher his motivation for being so assured.
“We must see him,” Margaret pressed.
The detective pulled a pocket watch from the front pocket of his vest. “I’m sorry but there is nothing that can be done, especially at this late an hour. You’ll have to come back in the morning.” He looked to the guard seated at the desk. “Angus, you’ll see that these doors are locked once they leave?”
The desk guard sat up taller in his chair and straightened the ledger on his desktop. “Yes, sir.”
Placing the watch back in his pocket, Hearst started to walk for the door but stopped suddenly and turned to Margaret. “My apologies, ma’am.”
The three of them watched as he made his way out the door and into the October night. Ainsley saw the look of pure anguish on Margaret’s face, most likely spurred on by the inspector’s smugness and arrogance. When Ainsley looked back to the guard, Angus shrugged and leaned back further into his chair.
“I only do what I am told,” he said.
Ainsley found the remark laughable. “For six shillings a day?”
Angus furrowed his eyebrows and sat up straight, but said nothing to contradict Ainsley’s claim.
“I’ll give you a month’s worth if you let me speak with my friend,” Ainsley said, hastily reaching into his pocket to pull out all the coins he had and spilling them onto the man’s logbook. He reached into his inner breast pocket and pulled out a few notes and slapped them down as well.
As Angus reached to snatch up the money, Ainsley slapped a sturdy hand over it all. The guard was too slow and for a second tried to pull Ainsley’s hand away.
“Just a quick visit, that’s all we ask. Tell me where he is.”
Eying the loose bribe, the guard swallowed. “He’s being held in the basement, second cell on the right.”
Ainsley waited a moment, studying the man’s features for sincerity before finally pulling his hand away. “You will allow us as much time as we need.”
Angus nodded rapidly before looking down the hall as if to ensure they were alone. “Yes, sir. I’ll make sure no one bothers you.”
The hallways were dark but Angus lent them a single tin lantern they could use to navigate the stairwell. Ainsley couldn’t help but be grateful for the darkness, knowing that beyond their light was the filth and squalor this particular jail was known for. Rats could be heard scurrying along the edges of the walls and every so often they could hear themselves stepping into pools of liquid, which could have been anything from blood or urine to stomach bile.
Margaret stayed close at Ainsley’s side until they reached the stairwell that would take them down to the basement.
Giles’s steps behind them had grown more distant as they went. At the top of the stairs, Ainsley glanced back to ensure the man was still there. A look of abject horror washed over Giles as the light hit his face. His brow gave off beads of sweat that Giles tried to keep at bay with a wipe of his sleeve.
“What is it?” Ainsley asked.
Giles’s gaze looked beyond them into the darkness, his expression betraying his fear. “My apologies,” he said, “I cannot go any further.”
Ainsley felt Margaret’s hands gripping tighter around his arm.
“I’m sorry, Miss Margaret,” Giles said, “I would have liked to offer you my support.” He retreated slowly into the darkness, using one hand on the wall as his guide. “I’ll wait for you both outside.”
Neither Margaret nor Ainsley protested. They could not force him on further and were secretly glad for the privacy. Ainsley remembered Giles had always been weak in the stomach, never able to hold back as the cadavers in their classroom turned after weeks of dissection and exploration. He imagined the man retching out the contents of his stomach just as he reached the outside door.
“You have a stronger stomach, it seems,” Ainsley offered when he looked to Margaret.
“Why is this surprising to you?” Margaret asked.
They made their way gingerly down the steps and out into a larger room. At first they could not see the cell bars and this forced Margaret to clutch Ainsley’s sleeve even tighter. They walked the middle of the room, guided by shadows and the outline of iron that led them past a cell where a grouping of men slept huddled for warmth in the dank underground holding.
At the next cell Ainsley felt Margaret pull away but he himself could not stop. He stepped forward at the first sight of Jonas, who was standing in the middle of a large cell with his back to them. He had his face upturned to the slit of a window that cascaded blue moonlight down onto the floor about his feet.
“Jonas?”
Keeping his hands in his pockets, he turned in place. When his eyes fell on Ainsley, Jonas’s expression of sorrow morphed into inconsolable shame. From his place outside the cell, Ainsley could see Jonas’s downturned mouth moving as if readying to speak and then thinking better of it. At last Jonas turned his head to the side, and his gaze fell to the floor.
“I had no wish to summon you,” he said softly.
“But here I am.” Ainsley stepped up to the bars and peered into the cell, where about ten others sat huddled against the wall trying to sleep. One dishevelled man with a week’s worth of grime on his face and a month’s worth of facial hair sported a relatively new jacket that match Jonas’s trousers perfectly.
Jonas followed Ainsley’s gaze. “He was colder than I.”
When Jonas turned back Ainsley saw the crimson stain at his friend’s stomach, hardened now and caked into the fibres of the dress shirt. It matched the blotch Ainsley had seen the evening before when they had returned home from the theatre. He tried not to think of how his mind had known such a detail and instead focused on the precarious predicament of his friend.
“I cannot—” Jonas stopped suddenly when his eyes lifted to see beyond Ainsley’s shoulder.
When Ainsley turned he saw that Margaret had stepped into the light of their lantern but she did not come forth to the bars as Ainsley had.
Suddenly, all of Jonas’s will to speak was gone. The sight of Ainsley, his good school chum, had made him sorrowful, but the sight of Margaret had rendered him dumbstruck. Even in the dim light, Ainsley could see Margaret willing herself to look forward, ignoring the conditions of the prison—the damp, the smell, the desperation. She licked her lips as she looked over Jonas.
“Are you injured?” she asked hesitantly.
Jonas looked down to the crusted blood on his white shirt, and shook his head. “Nothing of any consequence.”
Ainsley swallowed hard after Jonas’s black eye caught the light. “Your face?” he said softly, before he could stop himself.
Jonas’s hand went to his jaw. “Courtesy of the Edinburgh Police, I’m afraid.”
Margaret looked to Ainsley, a fearful plea in her eyes for him to carry the conversation she could not bring herself to have.
“How did you know to come?” Jonas asked.
Ainsley gave a sideways glance to Margaret. How does one explain the image that found them the night before? “I don’t know,” Ainsley said. “I just knew we had to come. No one sent for us. We saw the evening edition at the Waverley station and came straightaway.”
Jonas nodded and looked away. “It’s in the papers already, is it?”
“What happened?” Ainsley asked at last. “The papers said murder.”
“Say it isn’t so,” Margaret said, suddenly pressing herself into the iron bars that separated them. “You aren’t capable of such a thing. I know—”
“You know very little about me, Lady Margaret,” Jonas said, interrupting her, “or what I am capable of.”
Even with her body pressed up to the bars, her gloved hands curled around the iron bars, he stood back, just out of reach and a few inches more. His eye contact with her was broken, focusing on the cement floor in front of him or the darkness just beyond her shoulder.
“I know you are not capable of murder,” she said suddenly, her words giving away to a slight growl.
“We are all capable of murder,” Jonas said, stealing a glance to Ainsley. “The three of us know that more than anyone.”
Abashed, Ainsley knew his friend alluded to his own demons and a split-second decision that had almost landed him on the other side of the iron partition. Had it not been for Jonas, Ainsley would be in a much different place.
“Do not give up hope,” Ainsley said, determined to see his friend exonerated. “I can see how much this gloomy place has affected you already.”
Jonas shook his head as a slight smile tickled the edges of his lips. “There is nothing for either of you to do. You both should leave this place and never again darken its doors. I know why this has befallen me and neither of you should have anything to do with it.” Jonas turned from them slowly and tilted his face to the moonlight that streamed in through the window.
Margaret hesitated as her hands slipped from the bars. Taking a step back, she looked to Ainsley as if pleading for guidance before making up her mind to speak up. “You cannot mean that.”
“How can you know what I mean?” For a moment he kept his back to them, his shoulders square and his hands in his pockets.
Even in the dim light, Ainsley saw the determination in his sister’s eyes.
“I know—”
“How many weeks has it been since I’ve heard from either of you?” Jonas snapped, twisting himself around. His face was hardened in anger, his mouth curled into a sneer.
“That isn’t entirely fair!” Ainsley could not tell him all that had transpired since Jonas left for Edinburgh. In the very least Jonas was aware that their father, Lord Marshall, had been taken ill and was now bed stricken. Ainsley had written to him to tell him as much. That alone should have excused any faults as a friend, for a short while, at least.
“Jonas, I don’t understand what you are tell—”
“I am telling you to leave me. Both of you! Leave me to the fate of my own creation. Leave me and be done with it. It should save me the heartache the next time you disappear from my life.” He waved his hand, dismissing them from his sight as he turned his back to them. “You were clearly done with me and now I am done with you.”
Margaret stepped forward, her face contorted in anger and frustration. “You are the most sorrowful excuse for a man I have ever met!” she yelled, loud enough for everyone in the entire prison to hear. A few of the sleeping men turned their heads to look at her. “We came here to help you and you turn us away like … like mangy dogs?”
“Margaret.” Ainsley tried to pull her away but she jerked her arm out of his grasp.
“You may not appreciate my presence, or even the lengths it took me to get here, but I am here now and I am not leaving Edinburgh, Jonas Davies, not until I see you permanently on the other side of these bars.”
Margaret watched him determinedly for a long while, but he did not turn. He merely bowed his head and shoved his hands deeper into his trouser pockets. She looked to Ainsley, a cascade of tears filling her lower eyelids. She looked weak and tired, still unable to grasp their friend’s refusal to accept help.
“That’s it?” she asked, her face twisting into a scowl. “I’m thrown to the dogs, then? After everything?” Her voice cracked as she spoke but the rising tension was not enough to entreat Jonas to turn around. Her hardened face turned to Ainsley and back to Jonas. “Forgive me, Peter. I suddenly haven’t the stomach for this place.”
Without a lantern, she strode for the stairs with even steps and all the grace instilled in her since she was a child. Ainsley knew her heart was broken despite her great effort to conceal it. Seeing his sister’s current state made Ainsley so angry he couldn’t speak.
The iron door at the top of the stairs groaned as Margaret passed. Only then did Jonas turn his gaze toward her.
“Jonas Davies, what the hell has—?”
Ainsley’s admonishment was cut short by Jonas’s quick movement toward him.
“Get her out of Edinburgh,” he said sharply. “Take her to London, or The Briar, I don’t care. You must get her as far away from here as possible.” His words were laced with panic, a state Ainsley had never witnessed in his friend. “I don’t want her name slandered alongside mine.”
“What is happening?” Ainsley could not hide his confusion.
Jonas began to pace, running his hands through his hair, but remained close to the iron bars of his cell. “Something is terribly wrong.”
“I can help you. Tell me what happened—”
“I don’t remember anything!” Jonas’s words were punctuated by the anguish of his current state. “I don’t remember any of it. If I’d killed someone, you’d think I’d remember bits and pieces at least.” Jonas covered his mouth with a trembling hand. “I woke up like this in Frobisher’s office. I don’t remember going there, or why.” Jonas closed his eyes. “All of Edinburgh believes I killed him. I have nothing to refute such a claim. I’m as good as dead, Peter.”
“No.” Ainsley reached between the bars and grabbed Jonas’s shoulder, forcing him to look him in the eye. “You’re not. We will prove your innocence.”
The lantern light that shone on Jonas’s face revealed sudden tears. “I am a surgeon,” he said. “The son of a housemaid. I haven’t enough money to influence anyone who could help me.”
Ainsley grabbed the back of Jonas’s neck and together they leaned into the bars that separated them. “I will help you,” he said without hesitation, “as you have done for me on countless occasions.”
Jonas nodded.
“You are as a brother to me,” Ainsley said after a moment when neither of them spoke.
“As you are to me.”
“Tell me, friend, what can I do?”