MARGARET AND WILLIAM AND WILLIAM HARE went through the story Helen was to tell with her a dozen times or more, until Helen had it by heart, like a bairn with a catechism, only Helen had never managed to say her catechism – any time the dominie asked her she grew red and breathless and then there was no room in her mind for the words, she stuttered and stumbled over them and earned the strap for her troubles. She got it wrong over and over, so Margaret swore under her breath and said they should have killed Helen instead, she had always said so. That terrified Helen into getting it right, but by the time she was questioned in their room by the man Fisher who was a Sergeant-Major or some sort, and the constable called Finlay who was young with big sticking-out lugs, she had it all muddled again.
She was to say she and William had turned the Grays out for bad conduct, and ever since then the pair had had a spite against William. She got that bit right, but then when they asked about the little old woman, she was to say they had turned her out of the house about seven o’ clock in the morning, which was a lie because Helen was asleep at seven o’ clock in the morning, and the old woman was dead, and Helen’s head was so busy with thoughts of that that she became muddled and said that it was seven o’ clock at night, and that was wrong, she saw Fisher look at the constable and knew she had said the wrong thing. So she tried to save it, and said she had seen the old wife in the Vennel the very next night, on her way to the Pleasance, and the old wife had said sorry for the things she had said and done, but she could see they didn’t believe it, she never was any good at lying. They asked then why there were marks of blood on the bed, and Helen said it was women’s blood, that they had when their curse was on them, and the bedding hadn’t been washed since last a woman lay in it, Ann Gray that must have been or even Helen herself, she couldn’t remember. Their nostrils went white at that, they weren’t used to hearing women speak of such things, although Helen couldn’t think why they were so scandalised, after all they had wives and mothers, unless they thought they were born like Christ of a virgin.
They took them to the police office then, due to the differences in the accounts they had given, not the Hares but William and Helen, and put them in cells apart from each other. It seemed they had returned to the house then, with a surgeon, and they had found the old wife’s bed-gown and a quantity of blood in the straw.
Helen had no idea of that at the time, her mind was full of awful imaginings of what William might have done under the influence of the Hares. The next thing she knew, Margaret and William Hare were arrested too; that was the morning of the Sabbath and the constable told her when he brought her bread and water to break her fast. Helen was afraid Margaret might be put in with her, and said so, but the constable laughed and said she wasn’t to worry about that, they would all be kept well apart so they couldn’t put their heads together and go over their story. ‘I don’t have a story,’ Helen said. ‘I was asleep while they drank with the old wife.’ The constable wrote that down in a wee book he had, before he locked the door again and went away.
After that Helen saw no other soul the rest of the day. She fancied she could hear Margaret Hare’s step outside the cell door, but it couldn’t be her, she must be locked up or with the policemen. At one point they came and got her and showed her a body; it was the old wife’s and no doubt, although she had that strange, waxen look the dead always have, when whatever spark it was that made them a man or a woman has gone out and only the clay remains. She had marks on her, a print like a hand on the neck and other bruises on the parts Helen could see.
She shook her head and said she had no idea who this body was, she had never seen the woman before in her life. The old wife Docherty had thick dark hair and this body was grey.
After that, they took her back to her cell. She thought she should say her prayers, it was the Sabbath and her father would wish her to, but she found she couldn’t even keep her mind on that – the marks on the old wife’s neck haunted her, it was clear enough she had been done a harm. Helen felt her own neck, remembering the feeling of James MacDougal throttling her, all those years ago. She couldn’t imagine William doing such a thing to any man or woman; he might be a weak man but she didn’t think he had that in him.
The next day they took her to make her declaration and she did her level best to remember the story Margaret had dinned into her. The old woman Docherty came into their house, as far as she remembered, about ten o’ clock on the Friday morning, to join them for breakfast, and when she and William got to cracking they discovered a family connection on his mother’s side. William went out for whisky, as far as she remembered, and they all had a glass to mark Hallowe’en in the Irish manner. About two o’ clock, Helen remembered she was to say, Mrs Docherty went out to go to St Mary’s Wynd to enquire for her son, and that was the last Helen saw her that night. They took dinner and drams with William Hare and Margaret, and the Grays. Then Helen was to say she had had a falling out with Ann Gray over a gown the woman had stolen – that was a lie, Ann Gray had never had anything from Helen except a bonnet Helen had given her freely for her lass, but she managed to remember it well enough and said it as best she could. Then she said that the Grays had taken a scunner against herself and William and had made up a story about a body being in their house, to bring the police down on them. Helen said she knew nothing of any body, and that part was almost true, she had been asleep the whole time, only the next bit was a lie, and that was when she said she still hadn’t seen the body of the old woman – the body she had been shown here in the police office was of a woman she had never seen before in her life, God rest her poor old soul.
Helen knew William had a different story to tell, one they hadn’t trusted her with, that would explain how the old woman had come to be lying dead in their house, and she thought they might ask her about that, but they didn’t. Still, they seemed quite ill-satisfied with her own account of proceedings, but in truth she had none other to offer, and no matter how much they pressed her, she could say no more.
As they took her back to her cell, a woman was brought in by a different constable, writhing and spitting like a cat. As Helen passed her she stopped her struggles and asked, ‘Is thon the murderess Mistress Burke? The one that killed the puir auld Irish wife and the daft laddie?’ and she spat a great glob of spit onto Helen’s cheek. That was how Helen knew that the news was out, the whole town was talking of murder. She felt the spit on her cheek the whole way back to her cell, only wiping it off there on the blanket, they had taken her bonnet and her hankie for fear she would somehow do herself a damage with them. This was the first she had heard of the daft laddie – at least, she knew who the woman spoke of, the wife Wilson’s son who was missing, but what was he to do with William?
The days dragged on and Helen stewed in the cell. Ten days later, they told her that she and William, and Margaret and Hare, had been committed by the Sheriff to stand trial for the murder of Mary Docherty. Will Broggan had been released, they said, which was a relief to Helen, for all she had never known he had been arrested, he was just a young lad and she didn’t like to think of facing his father and mother if any harm had come to him.
All this long while no one had troubled Helen, she had bed and board in the police office, but after they were committed to trial, they sent for her again and asked her to tell them yet again the events of that afternoon. She tried to remember Margaret’s instructions, but the time was so long, and she was near distracted wanting to see William and know how it went with him. She tried her best to say the same thing as before, but she couldn’t remember the reason she was to give for Mary Docherty going away, and got muddled with Ann Gray and the stolen gown that never existed, and in the end she said that the old woman had given her no end of trouble, asking for salt to wash herself – Helen was desperate for the same, never had she gone so long without a proper wash – and tea, which Helen and William rarely had in the house, it was too expensive. So she said she had thrown the old woman out of the house about four o’ clock in the afternoon – that seemed as good an explanation as any, after all Helen really did have no idea what had happened to her.
After that Helen was moved to another place, a jail this time that she soon understood was the Tolbooth, but again she was kept on her own, and the woman who came with the slop bucket and water and porridge and bread told her the whole town was aflame with word of the awful things she had done and they couldn’t risk putting anyone else in with her for fear they would do her an injury. Helen said she had done nothing wrong, and the woman laughed and said, ‘That’s right, pet, you stick to your story,’ and then she told Helen some amazing tales of the goings-on of resurrectionists. It seemed the city was desperate for news of their crimes and the papers were full of it: a dead woman stolen from the infirmary by men claiming to be her brothers and later discovered on the surgeon’s table, a mob chasing a carriage down the North Bridge because someone said it had a stolen corpse in the back. She said the mood had turned against the anatomists; someone had had money off them for a body, but when the box was opened, it was found to contain nothing but rubbish.
‘My man did sell bodies to the surgeons,’ Helen said then. ‘That much is true. Four, I think, though I never saw them. But he never murdered anybody, I would swear to it.’
‘If you’ll take my advice, you’ll swear to nothing for any man,’ the woman said. ‘You look to yourself first, pet – if you don’t, then no one else will.’ She pinched Helen’s cheek in a kindly way and left, locking the great lock behind her.
This same woman brought Helen a letter, a day in December, and helped her read it, for it was a great long document and Helen’s own skills were not up to the task. It said she was to appear before the High Court on the 24th of December, at ten o’clock in the forenoon, to answer for the crime of murder.
Helen felt faint at that, for she had trusted that, whatever happened, she could not be accused of any such crime, for she had never laid a hand on another person. After a moment she asked the woman to read on, and she did, stumbling over the name of the lawmen who had sent the letter, and the great words they used, but then she was on surer ground as she reached the accusation, and that was when Helen found she was accused of murdering Mary Patterson.
‘Mary!’ she cried. ‘But Mary is gone away to Glasgow! How can I have killed her?’
The woman said she didn’t know, and she seemed to fair pity Helen in her distress. She asked if she should read on, and Helen said yes, and she found that the letter accused her and William, or just William, neither she nor the woman could make that out, of lying on Mary so that she couldn’t breathe and covering her mouth, and in that way bringing about her death. Helen wept to think of that; she had known Mary since she was a child and it pained her to think of anyone hurting her so.
The woman read on, and Helen heard again the name of the daftie lad, Jamie Wilson, whose mother had tramped the streets and closes all those months in search of him. She knew the lad by sight, everyone did, but she had never spent a moment in his company, and she told the woman so, and again the woman seemed to believe her.
‘You will have to tell them as you’ve told me, pet,’ she said, and she gave Helen a shot of her own handkerchief, even though it was forbidden, and said she could keep it. She asked if she should read more, and when Helen was ready she nodded, and the women reached the murder of Mary Docherty, or McGonegal, or Duffie, or Campbell; it seemed she had a great raft of names she was known by, and as well as Mary she was sometimes called Madgy or Margery. There was a great long description of how the old wife died, and then of all sorts of articles of clothing and other gear that the police had found in Helen and William’s house. Most of it she recognised but some not, and she told the woman that the clothes had come from Margaret Hare.
‘Does it say nothing of her?’ Helen asked. ‘If it truly happened that William did these awful things, then it was she and her man led him to it, for they were as thick as thieves, and she always had a great many articles in her rooms, that she said guests had left behind when they quit the place.’
‘There’s no word of her,’ the woman said. ‘No, wait, here she is on the list of witnesses. She must be coming to court to speak for you Helen, that’s what it’ll be.’
Helen thanked the woman for her service and asked if she could be left alone. The woman – Jamesina her name was, she had told Helen that long syne – squeezed her hand and told her to be brave, she must just tell the truth and trust in God. Then she left, and Helen turned her face to the wall. If Margaret Hare was the best hope she had of a person to speak for her, she knew she might meet her Maker very soon indeed.
* * *
On the day fixed for the trial, Jamesina brought Helen her own clothes, washed and pressed, and gave her back her bonnet that had been taken from her eight weeks before for fear she might hang herself with its strings. She said there was a right to-do out on the streets, had been since the night before, with folk thronging to see Helen and William, and Margaret and Hare, go into the court. There were policemen everywhere, brought in from every town in the country, it seemed, and the cavalry were mustered in case of an emergency.
‘So you’ll be perfectly safe, Helen,’ said Jamesina, although her account to that point had given Helen quite the opposite impression.
She had been woken early, and it was still full dark when she was taken to the court in Parliament Square and placed in a cell below. At last she was taken upstairs and into the court, where there was a clock that showed twenty to ten. Beside her in the dock was William, the first time she had seen him in all those weeks, except for a glimpse maybe, from the window of her cell in the police office, when he had been taken for questioning. He looked pale and tired, and he seemed smaller than she remembered; she hadn’t known how to think of him in all those weeks, reading the things he was accused of and half-believing them to be true. He smiled when he saw her, though, and she found herself smiling back, though her face was little accustomed to it and she felt she made a poor job of it. As she sat by him, he found a way to squeeze her hand and she felt her heart leap, for all this trouble she would still wish to be his, if only they could be in Redding and never have come to this place or met the Hares.
They sat there a while waiting for something, which turned out to be the arrival of the judges. There were three of them, and a great many more lawmen; some would be speaking for Helen – she had met with three who had explained it to her – and some for William. Others would speak against them. Jamesina said she was lucky, these men would have no pay for defending her but they were famous lawmen and she was fortunate to have them on her side. She didn’t feel fortunate, she felt afraid, and the men made her uncomfortable, she saw how they pitied and despised her.
The middle judge spoke to them at last, saying they must listen to the indictment against them, but he didn’t manage to finish this instruction, as one of their own men said there was an objection to the way it was all being carried out, and he wished to object. There was some argy-bargy then, but the judge held sway and the whole awful list of accusations was read out, bringing tears to Helen’s eyes again to think of poor Mary and the Wilson woman’s lad.
Then the lawmen spoke for Helen and William, and although they might as well have been speaking in Latin for all the words meant to Helen, she had had it explained to her that they planned to argue that it was improper for William to be tried for three deaths that occurred at different times and in different places, with no connection proven between them at all, and moreover it was worse that he was to be tried with Helen, who no one was suggesting had any idea of the first of these crimes at all. Indeed, when they had explained this stratagem to Helen, she had asked them, ‘Is Mary dead then, right enough?’ and had wept a little when they said aye, there was ample evidence she was, enough of the students had known her to recognise her corpse.
The lawman spoke for a long time on this count, and Helen found herself drifting off, she hadn’t expected that, thinking she would be riveted to the spot in terror. That turned out to be the way in which she passed most of the trial, by turns panicked and bored, struggling to keep awake or listen to them yaw on. The crowd in court seemed more entertained, making faces of approval at some of the arguments and scowls at others. Helen wished to watch them, in hope she might gain some idea of how the matter was going, but she was too afraid to catch anyone’s eye.
The main man that was to speak against them rose up after that, and he seemed to make out that the arrangement her own man thought so unfair was actually a good one for Helen, for if William was tried and found guilty, and she tried after, she might have cause for complaint. He argued then that he had no choice but to try William for all three of the murders laid against him, although his reasons why were listed in language Helen could make no sense of at all. After that one of their own men spoke to say he was wrong, and Helen thought she might go distracted, it was like listening to old men in their cups, arguing to and fro. At last the judges made their own speeches, and it seemed they had thrown out the objection to Helen being tried with William, but on the matter of the three charges, their men had won, and William would be tried for one murder only. The opposition seemed put out by that, but at length he said he would choose that William be tried for the murder of the old wife Docherty.
Helen had her chance to speak then, but only to say she was not guilty, and she heard what a small and coarse voice she had, among these types who sounded to have been weaned on portwine and partridges. William said he was not guilty too, and then they started to sort out the jury of fifteen men who would pronounce judgement on them.
After that it was fell dry stuff for a while, with a man coming in to speak to some drawings he had done of their lodgings and the houses around, although how that mattered Helen could not understand. Then a woman called Stewart came to swear that Mrs Docherty had spent the night before Hallowe’en in her house in the Pleasance, where her son also lodged. This woman said Mary Docherty was in fine health, which Helen thought a clear lie, the woman was skin and bone and looked like to blow over at the slightest gust of wind. The Stewart woman said the bedgown found in their house was Mrs Docherty’s, and so did a man named McLachlan, who also lodged in the house, although what business he had looking at auld wives in their bedgowns was anyone’s guess. A shop lad came to say he had seen William meet Mrs Docherty, which no one was denying and so seemed a pointless exercise, but then he said William had bought a tea-chest from him the very next day, and he thought the tea-chest was the same one in which one Dr Knox had taken delivery of the old woman’s body. Helen looked at William when she heard that; she remembered the name Knox, he was the one William had sold the old man’s body to the year before.
Next came Mrs Connoway, their neighbour, who yawed on about how she had met Mrs Docherty on the day of Hallowe’en, and then that evening they had all come to her house. She said Helen was in the company, which wasn’t true, but judging by the state of the old biddy the next day, she had taken a good skinful herself and it might be that she didn’t remember. She said the Docherty woman had hurt her feet at the dancing, which didn’t surprise Helen, given the state of her. She told of the breakfast they had all eaten together the next day and that Helen had said she had kicked the old woman out for being over-familiar with William, although as Helen remembered it, William had said he had kicked her out for being impudent. The woman had to admit she had heard no disturbance in the night – Faith, no surprise, Helen thought, she was passed out with drink! – or imagined anything amiss at all. On her way down from the place where she gave her evidence, she looked over at Helen, and Helen thought she seemed sorry. Mrs Connoway’s great mucker Mrs Law was next, and she said much the same thing, and it was boring listening to everyone trot out the same accounts with no differences, although the lawmen had explained why, all the evidence had to be corroborated. At the end, though, her account differed, and she said she had heard shuffling or fighting from the house.
Another neighbour came next, and he said he had heard a noise on Hallowe’en as he went along the close, like two men fighting and then a woman’s voice crying ‘murder’. Then he heard a cry which he kent was a person or an animal being strangled, and the same woman’s voice cried ‘murder’. He was much afraid of fire, he said, which made no sense at all, and so he went to find a policeman, but he didn’t, and so he went to his bed and forgot the whole thing. The lawman speaking for Helen rolled his eyes at this, which did seem to be patent nonsense.
Next came a man Helen had never seen in her life before. This man, one Davie Paterson, was the keeper of the museum of Dr Knox, whatever that might mean, and it was clear the courtroom was hanging on his evidence. He said that William had come to fetch him on the first of November, to say he had a subject for him, by which he meant a body for cutting up. He said he went with William to the house and paid him an instalment for the body. The lawman asked him this question and that about the state of the body, which he had given up to the police, and he said it was clear the woman had never seen the inside of a grave, the corpse was as fresh as could be, and it had marks of violence on it and a terrible look on the face that told him it had been strangled. He said he knew William and William Hare well, and had paid them for many bodies, and not one of those showed any signs of having been buried at all. He tried to cover for himself, since that made him look bad too, by saying that he knew of men that would go to a sick-house and carry off the body as soon as the poor unfortunate expired, and this was what he had thought William and Hare were doing.
Will Broggan came next, and the policemen, who made much of the differences in the accounts Helen and William had given of the events of Hallowe’en and the next day, although Helen thought the folk in the court found it wearing after the excitement of Paterson’s evidence, with its suggestion that the doctors were as much to blame as anyone.
The effect of the next witness was like wind through barley; a murmur passed through the court, almost too low to be heard. This was William Hare, who seemed not to turn a hair, coming to the place where he was to speak with his usual smirk on his scarred face and his green jacket on. One of the judges spoke to him, saying whatever share he had had in the transaction, if he spoke the truth he could never again be questioned in a court of law. Helen knew he would speak against them, and pay no price himself for all that he had done, but still it stuck in her throat and she felt her face flush red and she had to stare at her feet until she could control her breathing again.
Hare swore his oath in a different way from most, on a cross, as he was a Catholic. He was reminded he would only need to speak about Mary Docherty, and he cheerfully told the court that he and William had taken a dram together on Hallowe’en, when William told him he had an old woman in his house he had found on the streets, and she would be a good ‘shot’ to take to the doctors. Hare understood, he said, that this was code for murdering the old woman, and then he described the events of the evening more or less as Helen remembered them, except he never said that she went to bed. He said he and William had had a fight – he couldn’t remember why – and the old woman tried to intervene, but in the confusion she tripped over a stool and fell. Then he said William sat astride her, and she cried out, but William kept in her breath.
The lawman asked if William did anything else and Hare said yes, he pressed down her head with his breast.
The lawman asked if she had cried out and Hare said she had, one cry and then some moaning. William had put one hand under her nose, and the other under her chin, so her mouth was closed. In this way he had stopped her breath. Hare could not say how long he had done this for, perhaps ten or fifteen minutes.
The lawman kept up his questions and Hare claimed that the whole while he was sitting on a chair, as William got off the woman and put his hand over her mouth for two or three minutes more. He could not say for certain whether or not she was dead at this point.
Then he said that William had stripped the body and tied it in a sheet, so it was doubled over. He maintained that Helen and his own wife had run from the room while this all happened, and did not return until the woman was dead.
Helen tasted vomit in the back of her throat and swallowed it down. Weasel though he was, there was a ring of truth to Hare’s words and she could see the scene before her, although she would bet that William had sat on the woman and it was Hare who had held her mouth and nose pinched shut. She couldn’t look at William, who she knew would see in her eyes that she believed it.
Their own lawmen had a chance at Hare then, and there was some argy-bargy when they tried to get him to tell them whether he had sold other bodies to the doctors. Hare was taken out while the lawmen settled the matter amongst themselves, so that William and Helen’s lawmen were allowed to ask the question, but Hare was equally allowed not to answer. He did, however, flat out denying that he had ever been involved with any corpse except Mrs Docherty’s. He lied with such ease, if Helen hadn’t known it to be untrue, she might have believed him.
The lawmen had another go then, and another, asking if Hare had seen William selling other bodies, or if he had been involved in any other murders, but Hare said he wouldn’t answer. The lawmen pressed him, all but accusing him of murders on his own property, but again he wouldn’t answer. He went through it all again, sticking to his story in every detail, and then was taken out to a cell, for he was still being held by the courts.
Next came the witness Helen was dreading, but still her mouth fell open when she appeared. Margaret Hare carried a babe in her arms, that she claimed was her own although Helen knew fine the woman had no bairns of her own – this one must have been procured from its unsuspecting parents for the charade. The poor creature was creasing and kinking with the whooping cough, and Margaret made much of this, especially when it seemed the questioning was going against her. Helen was sure she had a pin or some other sharp article in her hand to prick the child, so neatly did it interrupt proceedings when it suited Margaret, and moreover let her play the picture of maternal solicitude. Helen wondered how they could all fall for it; had this really been the woman’s child then she would have been going about her murdering with it in her belly!
Margaret lied almost as smoothly as Hare; only once did she seem to have made an error. When the lawmen asked her what she thought when she returned to the house and found Mrs Docherty gone, she readily admitted she had thought the old wife murdered, for she had seen such tricks before. The lawmen asked no more on that front, though, leaving Helen near biting through her lip in frustration.
The last of the witnesses were doctors, a surgeon working for the police and other medical men, and they gave all sorts of evidence about the state of the old wife’s body, and it was awful at first but then Helen was nodding by the time they were done; they had sat all day listening, into the evening and through the night with only a break for an hour for a meal at six she could not eat. Then her own statement and William’s were read, and there was no more evidence, the lawmen stepped up to begin their addresses to the jury, who looked near as tired now as Helen herself. The first to speak praised the policemen and the witnesses, and he spoke at some length of the decision to allow Hare to give evidence against his own confederates, which seemed to Helen to be more about protecting his own reputation than anything else. He asked the jury to find William and Helen guilty and it seemed the courtroom was swayed by him, for their eyes turned to Helen and William with no kindness.
William’s man spoke next, and he had less style about him, but still he laboured on behalf of William, arguing that this piece of evidence or that was faulty, and the only real testimony against William came from a man who admitted he was as much to blame as William was. He said William and Helen could have made just as good a case against Hare and Margaret, were the tables turned, and he called Hare a ruffian, with hands steeped in blood.
Helen’s man came last, and he asked the jury to think of Hare’s evidence again, that he had sat in a chair and watched while William killed a woman over fifteen minutes nearly, without so much as raising a cry for help. His wife, the lawman said, admitted that she had seen such tricks before, and Helen’s heart lifted that he had noticed, she wasn’t alone in realising Margaret Hare had given herself away. He had sharp words for both Hare and Margaret, which was balm to Helen’s wounded heart, and he even said Margaret’s show of motherly care had been a charade. He ended by saying the jury could put no trust in Hare or Margaret, and could not send Helen to her death on the basis of their lies. He asked them to find the case against Helen not proven, and let the public rage as it pleased.
There was one more speech, guidance to the jury, and then they went out. It was morning now, and Helen felt faint with tiredness and lack of food. William turned to her and said they must comport themselves well, even if the worst were to happen, and must not cry or call out. The hands of the clock made almost an hour’s turn, and the jury were back. Helen’s heart pounded as the man stood and she heard such a rushing in her ears that she couldn’t hear the verdict. She only knew what it was when William turned to her and said, ‘Nelly, you’re out of the scrape.’
There was a great round of applause, but it wasn’t for Helen, it was for William who had been found guilty, and in a moment they could hear an echo from the street outside, for it seemed the whole city was there and cheering. Helen looked at William and he seemed calm enough, only his face was smoother than usual and she knew he was holding himself rigid so as not to shake or cry. He would not look at her, after that one thing he said to her, and instead kept his eyes fixed on the judges as they pronounced sentence upon him. They spoke at length of his coldness and depravity, and said he must die, for it was the rule of God and the law of Scotland, and after that they said he should be given to the surgeons for dissection. One of the judges put on the black cap and William got on his feet and the judge said that he must prepare himself to appear before the throne of Almighty God to answer for his crime. He said he had considered recommending that William’s body be exhibited in chains, to deter others from such base and alarming crimes, but that the public should be spared the sight, and instead William’s body would be publicly anatomised and his skeleton preserved so that his crimes might be remembered, if such a thing was possible.
He turned to Helen then, as William’s sentence was written in a great book they had, and told her she had not been found not guilty, but the charge was not proven, and he said he left it to her conscience to know whether or not she was guilty of the crime. Helen knew she had done no killing, but she had no idea how to feel, for William stood rigid and unmoving beside her, and she knew now all that he had done in her house, and how he had lied, and betrayed her, but he was her man, he had been her man these many years, and the tears flowed down her cheeks for him.