The Governor’s House, Newgate Prison
I have been in prison for only two weeks but it feels like a lifetime. Not a letter, not a word. In my mind I go over all that you said the afternoon you left, and have near gone mad imagining what could have befallen you.
Perhaps I misunderstood you. Perhaps you never loved me. Perhaps, perhaps, you lied to me. How lost am I. Still I refuse to believe that you would be so deceitful, for what would be the purpose in such deception? Or is love like sand, running elusively through the fingers?
Time hangs heavier than the rope that is waiting to hug my neck.
A Mr John Gately came to see me today, a solemn man with a face that would make a gravedigger proud. He bowed gracefully, flicked back his coat tails and sat.
‘We haven’t long to prepare. The case is due to be heard on fourth October.’
‘Please, before we begin,’ I said, ‘there is something I must know.’
Mr Gately looked me straight in the eye. I could see that this was a man who believed in little. His disappointment with humanity oozed from every pore.
‘I must know if Mr Avery Fitzjohn is alive.’
‘Mr Avery Fitzjohn? The brother of Lord Frederick Fitzjohn?’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Madam, he is dead,’ said Mr Gately.
I could hear my blood thumping in my ears.
I must have had turned white for Mr Gately asked, ‘Do you need assistance? Shall I call someone?’
‘No one would come,’ I said. ‘When…when did Mr Fitzjohn die?’
Mr Gately had no interest in the death of Mr Avery Fitzjohn. It was an irritant, a distraction that he felt I could ill afford.
‘Try to concentrate on the matter in hand, madam,’ he said. ‘You are accused of murder.’
Seeing that his words had no effect, he said, ‘Perhaps it would help if you wrote down the events of the evening that led to the shooting of your husband, Captain Spiggot. I have the statements that you gave the coroner, but I would like to hear the truth from you.’ He stood up. He had no patience with the humours of women. ‘I will be here tomorrow morning and I hope you will be more in the mood for talking.’
‘Wait, sir, please. What happened to Avery Fitzjohn?’
Finally, some part of Mr Gately’s learned brain made the connection: Avery Fitzjohn mattered a great deal to this client and was the reason she was unable to concentrate. The lawyer sat down again.
‘You haven’t seen the newspapers?’
‘I do not receive the newspapers.’
‘Mr Fitzjohn went missing some eight weeks ago. He had an appointment with a lawyer, a Mr Quibble, but, according to Mr Quibble, he never arrived at the lawyer’s chambers. Last week a body was washed up near Tilbury Docks. It has been identified as that of Avery Fitzjohn.’
‘Who identified it?’
‘Lord Fitzjohn. Mr Fitzjohn is to be buried in the family vault.’
The memory of Lord Frederick Fitzjohn, down in his cups, swam before me.
‘The damn countess would be mine if it was not for my brother. He is all that stands between me and a fortune.’
These walls, which were used to hearing so much woe, were almost comforted by tragedy. I felt dead inside. The only thing alive in me was the baby, our baby.
When Mr Crease showed me how to walk a tightrope, he said, ‘It looks as if you are tiptoeing through air. But to balance you need all your weight in your feet. It is weight that makes the act possible.’
This letter to you is my only way of staying on the tightrope. It gives me gravity, where otherwise I would fly away. I can’t think of you drowned, I can’t think of you dead. Part of me is sure that if you were, I would have known.
My lawyer wishes me to concentrate on the facts, without embellishment, just the simple truth. And as I don’t want to be tried as a witch, the facts might serve me best. I had started, this morning, to write them down when Hope and Queenie arrived. My lawyer had sent for them, concerned that his client did not realise the peril she was in or how severe were the charges against her.
Perhaps it was because I had seen so little colour, but Hope and Queenie, standing brightly dressed in my small cell, were parrots against the grey.
Queenie gave me a hug and pushed my hair out of my face. ‘You have to be brave, Tully,’ she said. ‘You have to.’
Rose petals. My knees weakened. Her perfume was so evocative of the fairy house.
‘You can’t let yourself be hanged. You have to tell the truth.’
‘The truth is, I shot Captain Spiggot with Mr Crease’s pistol.’
‘You have to fight. You must plead not guilty.’
‘How is Mercy?’
‘She is getting stronger, day by day.’ Hope was crying; Queenie was wearing the mask of determination. ‘You’re not to give up now, gal,’ she said. ‘You are with child and for that baby alone you’d better buck up your ideas. I hear that Lord Barbeau left you a very wealthy woman. Well, you have money enough to play a man’s game. The one we play comes at a great price for when looks fade and the goods are damaged, whores are left to rot on the streets. I want justice for you and for Mercy, for Flora and for my Pretty Poppet. Hold up your head and fight like a she-cat, for if you are hanged, Wrattan will go free.’
‘I will try,’ I said. ‘That’s all I can do.’
‘Hope, tell Mr Gately he can come in.’
The lawyer bowed as Queenie and Hope left.
‘Shall we begin?’ he said.
‘Where shall I start?’
‘What made you decide to leave the fairy house dressed as a boy?’
I told him the facts. The facts sounded logical. I left out the parts that would make a lawyer despair. Justice doesn’t like the irrational. Mr Gately stayed for about an hour and wrote everything down.
Now I will write the true account of what happened the night I murdered my husband, for the truth is often stranger than the facts and the facts don’t always tell the truth.