HELEN WASN’T ALLOWED TO WALK out the door after the trial, she was taken back to a cell in the basement of the building and allowed to sleep. The man who took her down shook his head, and looked as though he thought her far from innocent. His nostrils flared as he said she would be detained a few more days yet, but it was for her own safety now, the mob was wild and whipping themselves up still further by deciding every person missing in the town had been murdered by William and Hare. Helen shuddered; she could well believe it. He said the feeling was highest against Hare, after the evidence he gave, most folk thought him the guiltiest party.
‘Can they be tried for the others?’ Helen asked. ‘The ones the lawmen said, the Wilson lad and poor Mary Patterson? Margaret Hare gave me Mary’s skirt and told me she’d gone to Glasgow.’
‘They can’t be tried for any of it,’ the man said. ‘That was what they meant, in the court. Neither can the doctors. That’s half the reason folk are so angry, they don’t think it’s fair.
It wasn’t fair, as far as Helen could see, but she didn’t say so.
‘Are they released?’ she asked. The man said no, they would remain in jail a while, until the court worked out what to do about them.
‘Can I see William?’ she asked, then.
‘You can apply,’ the man said. ‘They’ll take him to the Calton Jail and put him in the condemned cell there to prepare for his fate. When it’s safe for you to leave, you can put in the request.’
‘Will he have a Bible?’ Helen asked. ‘He was never without his Bible.’
The man snorted. ‘Well, I fear his reading was deficient,’ he said. ‘But aye, he’ll have a Bible, and holy men too, if he wants them.’
It was three days, in the end, before Helen was allowed out. They waited till after dark to release her, saying the streets were quiet enough, this close to the New Year folk would be holding back their drink and their strength. She kept to the shadows all the way down the West Bow and through the Grassmarket to Broggan’s, with a key they had given her from William’s things. She made straight for their own room and not the place at the back where the old wife Docherty had died. She nearly tripped over a pile of clothes right inside the door; they had made a right mess with their searching. She was too feared to light a fire or a lamp in case anyone should come, and so she wrapped herself in a great heap of shawls and blankets and lay on the bed, but sleep would not come – it was as though she had been drunk, and now must lie awake and think over all that had happened, no matter how it pained her. Towards dawn she dozed, but after an hour or so she started awake; in her dreams the old wife was here in the room in her bedgown, crying out for help, with blood round her nose and mouth. Helen found she could not draw breath for a few moments, thinking her heart would burst and she would die, but in time she calmed down and breathed easy again.
All the next day Helen hid in the room, but come evening she needed food and drink, there was no way she could pass another night, so it would be better with whisky. She tied her shawl over her head and went to the shop, but the man knew her, of course, and with a twist to his lip, he told her he wouldn’t serve her. As she left the place to try another, a gang of laddies saw her and one of them shouted, ‘It’s the bitch MacDougal,’ and they began to pelt her with muck from the street. She cowered against a wall as a crowd assembled, sure they meant to tear her limb from limb. A woman had just grabbed the bonnet off her head when she heard a whistle and a gang of policemen appeared, their staves drawn. One of them sheltered her with his body while the others shouted and bawled and threatened to leather the laddies. They took her to their watchhouse, a few roads west, and the mob followed, screaming threats and obscenities at Helen and the policemen. At last they were in the door, but the crowd outside grew ever greater, hammering on the door and smashing the windows with stones. Helen was sure they would break down the walls and she would die, but one of the policemen took her to another room and gave her a set of men’s clothes to put on, and a great coat lined with leather, such as a coachman might wear.
‘Have you money?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ Helen said. ‘Twelve pounds.’
The policeman shook his head. ‘I wonder which poor soul that was got for.’
Helen’s face flamed red, but she changed into the clothes under his cold eye, and then he cut off her hair with a knife he had – it hurt her and she thought he was pleased. Then he told her to start walking and not to stop until she was out of the city, and if she knew what was good for her, she would never return. He said they would hold the mob off a while, and then tell them she was being held again to give evidence against Hare.
Then he lifted her out a window in the back. Helen walked through the dark streets of the Old Town, avoiding the lamplight as best she could, and down the great slope of the Mound, along the wide sweep of Princes Street and down into Leith. Near the place she had lived with James MacDougal, she found a sailors’ inn and paid for a room for the night.
The next day, Helen found a seat on a coach to Falkirk and by the darkening, she was at her father’s house in Redding. When Peter Gaff opened the door, his wary look gave way to surprise as he recognised her, and then his face creased in pain.
‘Wait there,’ he said, and then she heard him call to the bairns to get themselves all up the stairs to the loft, they could all sleep up there that night. Then he came back and opened the door again, standing in silence while Helen came in and sat by the fire. Jezebel appeared and wound round her ankles, the first kind touch Helen had felt in days.
‘Is it true, Helen?’ he asked. ‘Did William do these dreadful things? I canna think it true, but I canna think the courts would get the thing so wrong.’
Helen said nothing, but tears ran down her face.
‘I see,’ Peter Gaff said. ‘Well, I don’t know what to say to you, Helen. I thought I’d brought you up right. I ken there was the accident with Maisie, I kent you could be careless, but I never thought you could hurt another body on purpose. For money, Helen? For shame!’
‘I didna,’ Helen said. ‘I never harmed anyone. I didna ken William had done it either.’
‘And how can that be?’ her father demanded. ‘How big was this place you bided in, in Edinburgh, that your man could kill a woman and you no ken?’
‘It was a lodging house,’ Helen said. ‘There were other rooms.’ She took a deep breath, and she said, ‘I kent he had done a wrong thing, and selt bodies to the doctors. He didna sleep because of it, and I said he should stop, and he said he had and I . . . I believed him.’
Her father shook his head. ‘So you thought it was a different crime,’ he said. ‘One against God.’
‘I telt him to stop.’
‘You should have left him, Helen,’ her father said. ‘One bad man was bad enough.’
Helen began to cry in earnest. ‘I didna see badness in him, just weakness. Did you? Did you see badness in him, Faither?’
Peter Gaff sighed. ‘No,’ he said, ‘and it grieves me sair. To think he was here in my house, wi the bairns. To think I said you should tak Maisie and wee Annie hame. And now I read he has a wife in Ireland, to boot!’
‘What do I do now?’ Helen asked, through her tears. ‘What do I do, Faither?’
Peter Gaff shook his head. ‘You canna stay here,’ he said. ‘Have you money? I thought you were a lad when I opened the door – if you take a room in an inn and keep your head down, you’ll be well enough hidden. But you can’t stay long in these parts, you’ll have to arrange to take yourself somewhere far from here.’
‘Where?’ Helen sobbed.
‘England, maybe,’ Peter Gaff said. ‘Or America. Somewhere naebody kens ye, Helen. It’s the only way. I canna see that you’d be safe, else. An I canna hae the bairns in danger.’
‘What could I do in England or America?’ Helen asked.
‘Trust in God,’ her father said. ‘Think on what he did for Jacob. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.’
Helen nodded, she could see she had no choice. ‘Can I see the lassies?’ she asked. ‘To take my farewell?’
‘No,’ said Peter Gaff. ‘They canna ken you’re here, it’s no safe. But as you leave, I’ll bring them to stand in the door so you can see them.’
‘Tell them I’ve died then,’ Helen said numbly. ‘I nearly did, in Edinburgh. There was a mob there that wanted to tear me limb from limb.’
‘It’s no a bad thought,’ her father said, ‘though it pains me to lie. But if I tell folk I’ve had word of your death, they might not look for you any longer. I’d no see you harmed, lassie.’
He wept then, and Helen wept, and then he packed up such food as he could spare in a cloth and gave it to her. Then they walked to the door and Helen took her farewell of him, knowing they would never meet again. A wee bit along the road, she stopped and looked back. He was as good as his word. Maisie and wee Annie were standing in the doorway, and she heard Maisie laugh at her grandfather and say he was daft, there was no snow at all. And Peter Gaff said she was right, he had been mistaken, but was it no a bonnie night, look at the stars. Helen stared at the three figures as if she could imprint the sight of them onto her eyes. When at last Annie said she was cold and they went back inside, she turned and walked on.
She was glad they had parted, so, a few days later. She was staying in a rooming house in Glasgow, waiting for passage to Ireland and then onward to America. There was an almighty hubbub below, and she risked poking her nose out of the room and asking a cleaning lass what was the to-do.
‘The murderer Burke has made a confession!’ the lass said, near beside herself with excitement. ‘They’ve printed it in the paper today. He says he and Hare killed more than a dozen folk – near a score! Can ye imagine? A poor cinder wifie and a salt seller, and a daftie and a mother and daughter, and even an old woman and her wee grandson! Hare’s wife was a part of it too, would you credit it? She took a pound a body for her trouble!’
Helen’s gorge rose but she swallowed it down. ‘Bring me up a copy,’ she said, offering a coin. The lass ran off to fetch it. Helen uncorked a bottle of whisky and sat, ready to look him in the face at last, the man she had forgiven, and excused, and shared her life with for the last ten years.