“An Odd Sort of an Empty Room”
February 1, 1753
[ #1 ]
Enfield wash was a nasty little suburb, a straggle of squalid houses strung out along the Hertford road. From London you went north out Bishopsgate Street, as it might be in the Hertford coach, and so into the highroad. The way was rutted in frost and miry in thaw. Every mile a stone stood to tell you how you were faring: Stoke Newington, Stamford Hill, Tottenham, Edmonton.
Right at the ten-mile stone you are in Enfield, and halfway to Hertford. Perhaps you would stop to bait and look about you. Loomworth Dane, the host of the Bell, would make you welcome. Across the way you might see David Dyer chopping rotten bushes in front of his little place. If you were feminine, the old fellow would probably roll an eye in your direction. You might see Thomas Bennet, weaver, at his shop, or perhaps William Metcalf, painter and glazier, at work on a barn, or John Howit, carpenter, shouldering his tools wrapped in a cloth, going in at his house door.
You have a quarter-mile more to go. Loomworth Dane will mend a strap if you need it, for he has a harness-shop abovestairs; and then with a great creaking and blowing of horns you are on your way. Chinkford Hill is on the horizon to your right, beyond a vista of ploughed fields and little cottages. Past the sign of the Black Horse you come to Farmer Allen’s house, and his fields stretch ahead of you, ploughed or fallow. Beyond Allen’s, on a little brook, the tanner is muddying the water with the unmistakable traces of his trade. Now here is the gateway to the five-acre field. Then you splash through the Wash, and so come to the Two Bridges.
You have arrived at Enfield Wash. The place to stop is the Sun and Punchbowl. It is a mean little alehouse enough; but John Cantril, the publican, has ale and beer for you, and gin too, if you want cheap results quickly. Many poor folk do in these parts.
[ #2 ]
At Cantril’s, early on the morning of February 1, the local headborough was waiting for the avengers of Elizabeth Canning. He brought the warrant, which he had had backed by a Middlesex justice; the alderman’s writ did not run at Enfield.
About nine o’clock the horse brigade splashed up the muddy road and reined in before the public-house. Mr. Adamson stared at the sign in some perplexity. The punchbowl had been so badly limned in the first place, and had weathered so over the years, that he could not make out what it represented. He took it for a bolster or woolpack. Still, there was no mistaking the round sun with his rays; so the three riders put up their horses and entered the low door.
The headborough greeted the gentlemen from London and showed them the warrants. They were ready for action, but the limb of the law dissuaded them. Wells was from home.
Evidently a bivouac was in order. Strategically the Sun was a perfectly chosen point of vantage. From here they could spy out the land; Wells’s was almost directly over the way. Peering out the small panes of Cantril’s front window, a look-out could scout the lay of the land and spy on every move made by the enemy.
By turns Wintlebury, Adamson, and Scarrat scanned Wells’s weather-beaten box of a house, huddled on its meagre plot of barren ground at the corner of Marsh Lane, close to the muddy highway. The garret dormers were boarded over; the other windows were blank. Nobody was stirring.
Luckily the Sun provided ample forage, in the shape of beer, cider, wine, and gin. With these the horsemen recruited their energies while awaiting the coach-load of reinforcements. They also enlarged their ranks. It was here that they picked up a valuable recruit, Ball, the Theobalds schoolmaster, who came in to catch a quick bracer before facing a schoolroom full of hornbooks, and remained to help avenge Elizabeth Canning.
Cantril was communicative about the besieged. Besides Wells, the besiegers learned, the house held her daughter by a previous marriage, Sal Howit, together with a bevy of lodgers. There was Virtue Hall, a young chit, and Fortune Natus, a labouring man, with his wife, Judith. Cantril knew Judith well. She was always coming over for a nip of gin. He had served Wells’s other lodgers, too, a family by the name of Squires. There was old Mrs. Mary Squires, two daughters, Mary and Lucy, and a son, George.
Wells’s other children, said Cantril, were married and gone. There were two of them. John Howit had followed his father’s trade of carpenter; he was married and lived near the Bell these seven years. There was a young girl, too, by Wells’s second marriage. She was married to Richard Long and lived just a step up the road.
At this point reconnaissance was interrupted by the arrival of William White, Lord Mayor’s officer, bringing the besiegers’ strength up to six. Then the look-out gave tongue: Mother Wells had just passed by and turned in at her door. The watchers decided that the time had come for an attack in force. Accordingly they formed ranks and marched upon the house walking two and two. White was armed with the short sword or hanger of his office, the local Dogberry with the warrants, Ball with a schoolmaster’s authority, and the men of Aldermanbury with only the righteousness of their cause.
They pushed open the front door and marched hardily in. They found themselves in a narrow hallway. Before them was a flight of steps, on either hand an open door. They marched through the left-hand doorway into the parlour and interrupted Mother Wells with some guests at her morning levee.
“That is she!” cried Adamson, ignoring the visiting matrons and levelling his finger at a wizened, malignant old face.
White immediately “drawed his hanger” and uttered the ceremonial phrase: “You are all prisoners!” Ignoring whatever screams, ejaculations, or swoonings ensued, the businesslike officer put a sentry over them, pitching upon the constable as the most official. Mr. Scarrat constituted himself unofficial sentry; thereafter he regarded the parlour as his post, and stayed at it in spite of rival attractions.
White then proceeded to search the house, most of the Aldermanbury army surging in his wake.
On the staircase the posse encountered Wells’s son-in-law Richard Long. He barred their way truculently. He wanted to see the warrant.
White did not hold this against him. He was quite within his rights. The warrant was sent for; Dogberry brought it on the run. Long was a reasonable man. He fetched the key and unlocked one of the rooms that was locked. There was nothing in it of any note.
In the best room the officer found three of the lodgers, old Mrs. Squires and her two daughters. He stared at their swarthy faces: they were gypsies.
The younger girl was pretty, with flashing eyes and teeth; she was dressed in white hollands. The elder was of quieter mien in her brown stuff gown and buckled shoes. The old woman was a mere bundle of rags, old and bent, her head swathed in clouts and buried in a great black bonnet.
The officer arrested all three and incarcerated them with Wells in the parlour.
Meanwhile Ball, the Theobalds schoolmaster, was seeing action. He fell afoul of the spry young gypsy man. George Squires had no sooner seen the law than he was in a very great hurry, and seemed much perplexed, and ran up stairs, and was going to go away. His preparations for a getaway consisted in bundling up some stockings. He was all ready to start, with greatcoat and slouch hat on, when Ball caught him at it.
“Where are you going?” shouted Ball with the assurance of a man who is absolute ruler in the realm of hornbook and primer. “You must not go away.”
But George was a stranger to a pedant’s authority. He became obstreperous and wanted to get out at the window, and Ball had to shout for help. An Aldermanbury squad responded, and George was conducted in triumph to the parlour, greatcoat and all.
In the parlour the swarthy young man spoke up boldly and asked the reason for his detention.
“There has been a robbery,” said White.
Wells said nothing, but George had something to say.
“When was the robbery committed?”
“On the 1st of January,” said White.
“We were in Dorsetshire at that time,” said George, “at a place called Abbotsbury; we went there to keep our Christmas.”
Wells still said nothing; she had no alibi to offer. But the gypsy women all spoke at once, confirming what George had said.
“Gentlemen,” added George, “search my effects; look over everything I have here.”
White thought this a good idea. He turned out everybody’s boxes, but he did not find the stays.
In the course of his search he discovered Sal Howit and Virtue Hall in the chamber they shared with Wells, and put them under detention too. Then he went into the kitchen and looked around.
As he stood in the doorway, he perceived a long dresser against the wall at his left hand, and in the opposite wall the great fireplace with its crane. In the left-hand wall were three doors in a line.
The middle door was standing open, revealing a short flight of eight steps leading up to a loft. A dishevelled woman’s head was visible peering down over the right-hand edge of the aperture.
White mounted the stairs into a long narrow loft. At his right, at the edge of the stair, was a hay bed covered with sacks. The woman was sitting up in it, scratching her head and staring. White fetched her down, dishevelled as she was.
She was Judith Natus, the labourer’s wife, and her capture completed the tale of prisoners under guard in the parlour. There was Mother Wells and her daughter Sal, her callers and her son-in-law, and all but one of her lodgers. Fortune Natus had long since been at work in the fields and so escaped the drag-net. Of them all, the old gypsy woman was the most philosophical. She filled her pipe and hunched herself over the fire, smoking reflectively.
Scarrat and the headborough stayed to guard the motley gathering; but the rest were free to indulge the detective fever, and they roamed all over the house, snooping at will. Mr. Adamson had heard of Betty’s ordeal with sympathy and indignation. He was now on the scene, and he hastened to look it over.
He looked into the bedrooms, but they did not interest him. They had beds in them, and it was a feature of Elizabeth’s tale that she lay twenty-eight days on the floor. He looked into the kitchen, and so found his way into the loft.
He looked about with interest. The first thing he noticed was a bulky pile of hay, on his left as he came up, against the facing wall. He noted an old chest of drawers, and a saddle, and the squalid hay bed from which Judith had risen, and over it a disused jack-line and pulleys.
At about this time Elizabeth Canning’s loyal foot soldiers limped up the muddy road, a foot-sore trio: Uncle Thomas Colley, Edward Rossiter, and friend.
Soon Uncle Colley was sleuthing about with Mr. Adamson. They made a sortie up Marsh Lane. They observed the muddy little pond beside the house, the farmhouses strung along the north side of the way, and the gates through the hedgerows into the fields on the south side. They scouted the narrow footway behind the house, only eighteen inches wide and rising immediately to a bank edged with trees. It ran along behind a lath-and-plaster lean-to or penthouse built onto the back of the house.
A PLAN OF SUSANNA WELLS’S HOUSE AT ENFIELD WASH; WITH A PLAN, ELEVATIONS, AND A PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF THE INSIDE OF THE ROOM
N.B. This Plan &c. were produced in Court on the Trial, & the Truth & Exactness of them attested by John Donowell who Surveyed them.
(l. to r.) |
A Plan of the House &c. |
A Plan of the Loft or Workshop with Elevations of the Sides and Ends | |
A Perspective View of the Inside of the Loft or Workshop taken from the Chimney to the North End. |
REFERENCES TO THE PLAN OF THE HOUSE &c.
1. The Stair Case
2. The Dresser
3. The Chimney
4. The Stairs into the Loft, from the Kitchen
5. The Stairs into the Cellar
6. The Stairs into the Wash-house
7. A Copper
8. An Oven
9. A Chest of Drawers
10. The Window in the North End of the Room
11. The Window in the East Side of the Room
12. The Chimney
13. A Head-way into the Wash-house
14. Old Pulleys for a Jack
15. A Hole thro’ the Wall into the Kitchen for a Jack Line
N.B. The bottom of the Windows N°. 10 & 11 is 9 F. 1 In. from the Ground without side. The Loft or Workshop is over the Cellar and Wash-house.
* The most remarkable Circumstances in a Description of the Loft are: Its extraordinary Shape, being near 4 times as long as wide. The Stairs come thro’ the Floor almost into the middle of the Room, without Rails or Partition to inclose them. See N°. 4. Several Holes in the Floor where the Edges of the Boards are rotted away. A Chest of Draws of an uncommon Fashion. See N°. 9. A Hole in the Wall for a Jack-line thro’ which whatever is done in the Kitchen may be seen. See N°. 15. There are several Rafters cross the Room with Props from them to support the Roof. The Rafters and Tiling are seen within Side like the Top of a Shed or Barn.
Harvard College Library
About the same time the Mayor’s marshalman was inside the penthouse observing it with an unprejudiced professional eye. He observed the pile of hay, to the value of ten or twelve trusses, the chest of drawers, several saddles, a musket standing in the corner, and a tub. There was a good deal more lumber, but he did not stay to make a particular observation. The loft had two windows, one narrow, fronting the stairs, with a glass casement; the other half glass and half boarded up. This might have been the window that Elizabeth escaped by; so White descended and went outside to look for footprints.
Under the window he found Mr. Adamson and Uncle Colley at a high pitch of detective fever. They had found a clue. They thought the plaster was scratched and broken away under the escape window; they were showing the scratches to everybody, and some fragments of fresh mortar on the ground. They showed them to White. White couldn’t see them.
The clay ground under the window was so soft that a step of a dog might have made an impression. White looked for footprints. There were none, nor yet the prints of someone tumbling in a heap. There were no prints at all in the soft clay.
The cellar door was directly under the window. It was an ordinary perpendicular door, not the slanting type children like to slide down. Under the window stood a heap of human dung, about as high as the body of a quart bottle. I blench from reflecting on the strange unsanitary habits of the Natuses, or whoever was responsible for this phenomenon. White did not blench. It was an unsanitary age.
After a while the detective game palled, and the advance guard began to wish for more action. The Goldsmiths’ men were long in arriving; about eleven o’clock the horsemen began to wonder if they were dallying at the Rose and Crown. Somebody ought to go and see. Adamson and Scarrat declined to tax their borrowed horses, but Wintlebury was willing. He galloped off on the errand, and met the coach at Houndsfield. He told the passengers that the miscreants had been apprehended.
The Goldsmiths’ men had been very jocular coming down, but now the detective fever gripped them too. The coachman whipped up his horses and got them there in haste. They turned in at the Sun and Punchbowl and piled out hurriedly.
They found the neighbourhood in an uproar. People on horseback, people on foot, passing neighbours, were milling about, gawking at the house or drinking Cantril’s beer. A farmer’s boy in a smock was gaping in the dooryard; the high-toned lady over the way stood elbow to elbow with her servant, peering over her gate. John Inifer, the fish and oyster man, was neglecting his cart to stare; Farmer Starr’s wife was chattering in the Sun yard. Even Loomworth Dane had come up from the Bell; he could hardly hope for customers when Cantril had an attraction like this.
The Goldsmiths’ Company arrivals pushed importantly through the crowd. Smock frocks and leather waistcoats made way for full-skirted coats and buckled shoes as the men from London filed into the parlour to view the prisoners. Lyon led the way by virtue of his white hairs.
George Squires pulled off his flapped hat to him as soon as he entered the room.
“How came you in this house?” Lyon asked him.
“I am a traveller,” answered the dark-faced young man, “and came here to lodge.”
“Could you not,” Lyon asked him, frowning on sullen old Mother Wells, “find a house of better character?”
“I was recommended to her house for a lodging; they said she was a very civil woman. I never saw her in my life before this time.”
“Well,” said Lyon, “you must give a further account of yourself.”
The swarthy young man was eager to do so. He was a travelling pedlar, he began; he had chosen to winter at Enfield instead of going to his house at Newington Butts, for fear of the bailiffs. He had an influential relative in Southwark—Samuel Squires of White Hart Yard, he was in the customs—and he hoped with his aid to straighten his tangled finances.
Mr. Lyon was not interested in the gypsy man’s debts. He took himself back to the Sun for refreshment. Mr. Hague went with him, but Aldridge and Nash preferred to view the premises.
Mr. Aldridge was the first to locate the loft. He noticed the little chimney in the corner. It was covered with cobwebs from side to side, and full of dirt.
Mr. Nash made the mistake of going up the front stairs first. He stared at the unmade beds in the bedrooms. Nothing like Elizabeth’s prison here. So he descended again and went into the kitchen. There he found a man with a broomstick in his hand.
“Friend,” said Nash, “do you know anything of this house? Is there another room than those above?”
“There is a room here,” said the man, and unbuttoned a button on the loft door and opened it. Nash opened the other doors too. One opened to a cellar full of water, the other to a place like an oven. It was the wash-house, and it smelled of pig; the sow and her litter were down there. He observed the loft door with interest. There was no sign of a lock; only the inadequate button, and a bar that barred all three doors together.
Nash mounted to the loft. A nasty room he thought it. He looked about him, comparing the actuality before him with the description he had heard Elizabeth give before Alderman Chitty. There was the hay, the nest of drawers, a high tub with pollard or bran in it, two side-saddles, and a man’s saddle. He saw the hay bed, with some wool put into a sack for a bolster. Over this nasty bed was a hole through which, it seemed, the line used to run. There was some hay stuffed in it to keep out the wind. Nash took it out and looked directly into the kitchen through an aperture in the partition of lath and plaster. The prospect was extensive, he noted; through that hole a person might see everything that happened in the kitchen. He put the hay back; he was beginning to be dubious.
In the hall he met White, the Lord Mayor’s marshalman.
“For God’s sake,” said Nash, “what do you think of this affair?”
“I think,” said White, “we are got into the wrong box; the girl was never in this house.”
Nash went over to Cantril’s, brooding, and had a glass of wine. Then the four Goldsmiths’ men returned to the loft. Of the four, only Lyon cared for Elizabeth; the rest were prepared to be perfectly open-minded.
In the light that streamed through the chinks in the roof they looked about the loft once more.
“This must be the room,” somebody said.
“This cannot be the room,” said Nash, “according to her description of it, for she said it was an empty, dark room.”
Deaf Mr. Lyon looked about at the lumber and trash. You certainly could not call it an empty room.
“These things may have been put here since Monday,” he said defensively.
As a matter of fact, there was at that moment in the loft much more lumber than any of these observers noted. Fortune Natus, who said he had slept there every night but one for ten weeks, later enumerated a lot of other useless items he shared the loft with. Every kind of junk found its way to the shuffle-board room.
When Mother Wells was keeping an alehouse and changed her sign, she put the old one up in the loft; it depicted a fountain. In the ’45 she took down the new sign, the Crown, as being exacerbating to already inflamed passions, and stowed that up in the loft with the Fountain. When she lost her publican’s licence because of irregular goings-on at her house, up into the loft went the bar where she had been keeping her liquor. When her son John Howit got tired of lugging his tools home from a job, he stopped in and chucked them into the shuffle-board room along with the rest of the lumber.
An old lanthorn and an old spit stood by the chimney. Somebody had shoved an old cross-cut saw into the empty chimney-piece, where it stood upright. It was the bottom drawer from the chest of drawers that was filled with pollard for the pigs; it was too warped to fit into its frame any more. In the other drawers Judith Natus was in the habit of keeping her bread and cheese, “because the mice should not run away with the cheese.” An extra gun-barrel stood by the old gun on a pile of pantiles in the corner. The loft was overflowing with junk.
Nothing, Fortune said, was taken away while he was there, except that the landlord of the White Hart and Crown had bought the sign of the Crown.
The relative inadequacy of every other catalogue of the loft’s contents, by Wintlebury, Adamson, Aldridge, White, and Nash, cannot be taken to prove that they were careless observers, or even, necessarily, liars. It is the difference between a man who looks about him, however carefully, for a space of minutes, and a man who has lived on the premises ten weeks.
What about a girl who says she was imprisoned there for twenty-eight days?
That is what the Goldsmiths’ men were thinking as they once more returned to the Sun and wet their whistles with Cantril’s wine. They wished Elizabeth Canning would get there and settle the matter.
The zealous men of Aldermanbury were wishing the same thing. Like the coach, the chaise that Elizabeth Canning was approaching in needed hurrying up.
It wasn’t fair to ask Wintlebury; his horse was blown from the gallop back to Houndsfield to meet the coach. Scarrat and Adamson had a dispute about it.
“You go,” said Scarrat, who wanted to stay on guard.
“No,” said Adamson, “you go.”
Scarrat could not see why.
“I took the horse without leave,” said Adamson sulkily, “and he has ridden far enough. I won’t go.”
“Toss for it,” suggested somebody.
They tossed a halfpenny. Scarrat won the toss. Adamson tried to pretend that the lot had thus fallen on Scarrat, but he was voted down, so he sulkily mounted his borrowed horse and set off to meet Elizabeth Canning.
[ #3 ]
The chaise had nearly reached the Rose and Crown when Mr. Adamson came in sight, riding as hard as could reasonably be expected from a borrowed horse.
The coachman reined in, and the ladies greeted their champion. Supporting Elizabeth were Mrs. Myers, Mrs. Canning, and a crony. Mrs. Canning had brought the baby; there was nowhere to leave it.
Adamson exhorted the coachman:
“Drive, coachman, I wonder you stay so long. We are all out of patience in waiting.”
“The road is so bad,” said the coachman surlily, “and such a load I have—“looking at the junketing females that formed his cargo—“I can go no faster.”
Then Adamson improved his opportunity. He had not seen Betty Canning in months, and he had never heard her relate her story.
“Bet,” he inquired, “what sort of a room was you in?”
Betty Canning spoke low, but everybody in the coach heard her reply:
“Sir, it is an odd sort of an empty room, there is hay and a fireplace in it.”
Betty said no more, and Mr. Adamson rode on at a gallop to bring news of the Aldermanbury heroine’s arrival.
He rode up to Wells’s door brandishing his hat and shouting: “By God, we are all right yet, for she says there is a little hay in the room.”
The rest of the posse, just on the point of returning refreshed from Cantril’s, thought his enthusiasm a little odd. They attributed his wild arrival to violent partisanship for Elizabeth; he attributed it to his borrowed horse’s having finally got out of hand while going through the Wash.
When Elizabeth drove up in her chaise, they were all in the dooryard to receive her. With them were the farmers and the farmers’ wives and the ragtag and bobtail of the Wash, all savouring the sensation. There was a murmur as the loyal Adamson lifted down the emaciated girl, wan and pathetic, and carried her over the threshold. He bore her into the kitchen and set her down on the dresser.
Seated on the kitchen dresser, Bet Canning was too exhausted to move or speak. If the identification of the men of Aldermanbury was right, this was the room where her purgatory started; but she did not say so, she did not even shrink or tremble. She sat in a weary stupor and gave no sign to her waiting supporters.
Mrs. Myers and her crony were cold. A movement was set on foot to fetch a bottle of wine for the chaise party. Perhaps a little mulled wine would bring Bet to life. In the meantime they moved her from the dresser and set her on a broken stool before the fireplace to toast her back. She could have seen right up the stair into the loft, for the door was open; but she did not point to it, she never looked in that direction. She sat so for twenty minutes, while they fetched a pint of wine from Cantril’s and mulled it for her.
When the wine was ready, Elizabeth swallowed a mouthful. The rest of the women finished it off. This apparently revived her sufficiently. The posse was then ready to fetch in Mother Wells and confront her with her accuser.
“Hold, gentlemen,” said the level-headed Nash, “this will be an Old Bailey story, and whoever is fixed upon for committing the fact, they’ll certainly be hanged. Let the room be filled full of people, and let her go and find out the people whom she accuses with robbing her. There are all the people in the parlour, she may be carried in there.”
Almost before Nash was through speaking, the Mayor’s officer came in to present the same view. Someone had come in and put everyone into a flurry by announcing that they were to file into the kitchen to be identified. Everyone had stood up in confusion and started streaming into the hall. White got them back into places again, everyone somewhere else; it happened that Mother Wells and Mary Squires got into each other’s places by the fire. Then the officer went into the kitchen to fetch Bet Canning.
“Bet,” said old Mr. Lyon kindly, “do not be daunted, for you have friends about you, and, on the other hand, be careful, and challenge nobody in this house without you are positive of them.”
“Sir,” said she, “I will not.”
“For God’s sake,” seconded White, “be sure before you fix upon anybody.”
Then Betty Canning went into the parlour.
The people of Enfield Wash were seated about the fireplace in a half-moon. Mother Wells was now to the left of the chimney-piece, and old Mary Squires to the right. The gypsy crone sat hunched up, chin to knee, sucking on her old short pipe. She was wrapped in a whitish cloak; her face was muffled in clouts and hidden in her old black bonnet. She never so much as looked up when Elizabeth Canning came in.
Mother Wells looked at her with a sneer.
“Why, the girl is sick,” she muttered contemptuously. She got up and confronted the drooping girl.
“Madam,” she demanded, “do you know me?”
Elizabeth looked at her. The posse waited to hear her accused.
“No,” said Elizabeth, “I don’t know that ever I saw you in my life before.”
The posse was thunderstruck.
George Squires pushed forward.
“Madam,” he asked in his turn, “do you know me?”
“No,” said Elizabeth. “It was that old woman in the corner that cut my stays off,” and she pointed at the oblivious old gypsy woman.
The old gypsy neither lifted her head nor moved. For a moment there was a breathless silence in the room. Then Lucy Squires spoke to the motionless old figure.
“Do you hear what the gentlewoman says? She says you cut off her stays.”
For the first time the old gypsy seemed to hear. She rose to her feet and confronted her accuser.
“Madam, do you say I robbed you?”
She put up her gnarled old hands and pushed back the clouts from her face.
Harvard College Library
MARY SQUIRES
“ELIZ: Squires the Gypsy, who stript Eliza. Canning, at Enfield Wash, Drawn while She was on her Examination before Justice Fielding, by the Honourable R—E—and Etch’d by Thos. Worlidge Painter in the Piazza, Covent Garden.”
“Look, for God’s sake,” she cried, “look at this face. If you have once seen it before, you must have remembered it, for God Almighty, I think, never made such another. I am a very remarkable woman, I have got the evil in my face, and you may know me by night or by day.”
The old gypsy spoke no more than the truth. Elizabeth Canning looked into a face like a nightmare. A great frog’s mouth was smeared all over the lower half, the lower lip as thick as a child’s arm almost. The nose was as broad, and hooked down towards her chin. “The evil in her face” was no mere metaphor; the lower half of her face was livid with purplish-black scars left by scrofula, “the King’s evil.”
Elizabeth Canning did not blench before the hideous out-thrust face.
“I know you very well,” she said steadily, “I know you too well, to my sorrow.”
“Pray, madam,” demanded the gypsy crone, “when do you say I robbed you?”
“It was on the first day of the new year.”
“The first day of the new year, madam, do you say? Lord bless me! I was an hundred and twenty miles from this place then.”
Gawen Nash spoke up.
“Dame,” says he, tapping her on the shoulder with his finger, “where was you?”
“I was at Abbotsbury in Dorsetshire, and there are a hundred people I can bring to prove it; and some of them have known me twenty, thirty, and forty years.”
At this there was a general clamour of assent: the gypsies had been in Enfield Wash but a week and a day.
Elizabeth Canning stuck to her story.
“This young woman,” she said, pointing at Lucy, “was leaning on the dresser when my stays were cut off; and this one,” pointing to Virtue Hall, “was standing by her; but they did nothing to me.”
Virtue Hall laughed in her face.
“God forgive you, madam,” she cried, “I never saw you in this house in my life.”
It seemed a shame that George Squires should get off, he was such a likely candidate for one of the footpads in Moor-fields. The Aldermanbury men hustled him forward again.
Elizabeth considered him carefully this time, and shook her head.
“No,” she said, “he looks very like one of the men, but I will not positively swear to him.”
This was disappointing, but it had to be put up with. At least it showed how careful the Aldermanbury heroine was about telling the truth.
Nothing more could be done in the parlour, so they took Betty back into the kitchen and set her down by the fire. The Aldermanbury men meant to make assurance doubly sure. They now paraded the suspects one by one before Elizabeth, and she confirmed all her previous identifications. The Lord Mayor’s officer thought this an act of superfluity.
The next move was to locate Elizabeth’s prison. She was led into the hall to the foot of the main staircase. She looked at it.
“I believe this is the staircase,” she said.
They lifted the hatch at the stair-top, and supported her into each room. The key was fetched again to unlock the one that was locked. Elizabeth was not in a moment’s doubt about any of the rooms. She glanced in each and decided quickly: “This is not it, and this is not it.”
They were ready to take her up the next flight, into the garret, but the girl hung back.
“I was not carried so high,” she said positively.
They took her back into the kitchen. She seemed to be more noticing this time.
“That is the corner,” said she to Adamson, “where the girl stood and laughed at me, when my stays were cut off.”
Adamson told her to be sure she made no mistake: “You see you was once mistaken in the staircase.”
Then Adamson and Hague supported her between them, and Wintlebury held her hand, and the whole party trooped into the loft.
At the top of the stairs Elizabeth stared for a moment in silence. She looked at the hay bed and the chimney-piece. Then she turned her head and looked at the half-boarded window.
“Yes,” she said, “this is the room I was confined in.”
On the step below her her excitable mother gave tongue.
“Ay,” she cried, “this is the room my poor child was confined in.”
She peered over the stair-edge and saw the hay bed, and fell to lamenting sadly that “that was the hay that her poor, dear girl had laid upon.”
“Good woman,” said Hague severely, holding Elizabeth by the arm, “were you confined here with her?”
“No,” says she, “but I believe everything my daughter says.”
“Then,” says Hague, “pray hold your tongue, and do not answer any questions.”
An even more choleric gentleman, not of Aldermanbury, gave her a shove, saying: “Get you down, get you down,” and the rebuked widow withdrew.
Meanwhile Elizabeth was looking around. She thought there was rather more hay than there had been. This sent Mr. Adamson to the hay. He tried it with his hand; it lay very light.
“There has been some hay put in lately,” said somebody.
“I think not,” said the knowledgeable Adamson, “for I went round the house to make an observation, and I don’t think there has been any hay brought in; because if there had, there must have been some scattered about.”
While Mr. Adamson was investigating the hay, every other part of the loft was humming with activity. All Mrs. Wells’s old junk became the object of the closest scrutiny. Everyone was agog to see whether Elizabeth would identify the place further.
“What else do you remember?” asked Mr. Wintlebury, still holding Elizabeth by the hand.
Somebody, maybe it was Scarrat, came running up with a broken-necked black jug.
“That is it,” said Elizabeth, “that is the jug I had my water in.”
This created a sensation. Mr. Lyon brought her an odd little instrument, a mould for measuring out pennyworths of tobacco; not much use in the household since the alehouse business was a thing of the past. Elizabeth remembered it.
“What else do you remember?” asked Mr. Hague, still holding Elizabeth by the arm. “Do you remember the three saddles?”
“I believe there was one,” said Elizabeth doubtfully.
Mr. Hague looked at them. They were nasty and dusty and seemed to have been there for years.
“The nest of drawers,” said somebody, “do you remember the nest of drawers?”
“No,” said Elizabeth, “I don’t remember them at all.”
A dozen hands heaved it away from the wall, dispossessing generations of spiders from their immemorial webs.
“Have you been here twenty-eight days,” said a voice, “and never remember them drawers?”
“I don’t remember them,” said Elizabeth Canning.
With his free hand Mr. Hague pointed to the useless pulley suspended from the ceiling over the jack-hole.
“Do you remember that?” he asked.
Elizabeth stared at it.
“No,” she said, “I never saw it.”
Hague indicated a glassless casement, sealed to the wall above the chimney-ledge by countless spider-webs.
“Child,” he said, still kindly, “did you take this for a picture?”
“No,” said Elizabeth Canning.
Hague moved the casement; on the wall was a print of it, as if it had been there a year or two.
“Zounds, child,” said Mr. Hague disgustedly, “I cannot think you were ever here at all.”
Elizabeth Canning said nothing.
By this time Mr. Adamson was following a new hunch. He was energetically turning over the pile of hay looking for the stays. He didn’t find them. To anticipate, Elizabeth Canning’s ten-shilling stays were never seen again.
Mr. Hague turned his attention to the small glass casement window fronting the stairs. Turning a long hook, he opened it with one hand, holding Elizabeth all the time with the other.
“How came you, child,” he asked, “not to get out here? You see it is very easy.”
“Sir,” said Elizabeth Canning readily, “that was nailed up when I was here.”
“What, boarded up?” asked Adamson, abandoning the search in the hay.
“No,” she said, “but I tried to open it, and could not.”
Others were beginning to be of one mind with Mr. Hague. Adamson leaped into the breach with a test to demonstrate whether she had been there. He stepped between her and the window and asked her what prospect was to be seen from it, saying:
“If you have been confined in this room so long, you will be able to give a very good account of it, and,” he added encouragingly, “I expect you will.”
Elizabeth was at that time about six feet from the window, and Adamson stood directly in front of her. She answered him readily.
“Trees,” she said, “and fields, and a hill in the distance; and to the left a little lane with houses.”
At this everybody flocked to look out at the window, abandoning the other activities that had been keeping the place humming. Mr. Rossiter, Uncle Colley, Mr. Nash, Mr. Scarrat, Mr. Lyon, and all the hangers-on crowded to the window and peered out. There were the trees under the window, and the fields beyond rising to Chinkford Hill on the horizon; and on the left Marsh Lane, with the houses along it.
All the gentlemen having satisfied themselves that Bet’s description of the prospect was substantially correct, Mr. Adamson took charge again.
“Where did you look out,” he asked her “to see the Hertford coach?”
She pointed to the end window.
“That is the window,” she said, “and that is also the window I made my escape out at.”
“Let us see,” said Adamson, “whether we can see the road out at it or not.”
All eyes turned to the end window. The right-hand side was of glass. The left-hand side was boarded like a little shutter. It was one piece of wainscot that went clear across and covered it all pretty near to the top. The light came in over a crack on top.
Mr. Wintlebury and Mr. Adamson noticed that these boards seemed to be freshly nailed up, in a very cobbling way. The nails were not driven home, but bent double. It did not seem to be done by a man. The wood was fresh split with driving a great nail through it; the crack appeared quite fresh.
Fired with zeal, Mr. Adamson applied the same test as had been applied to the chest of drawers and the casement over the chimney. He pulled away the boards. Uncle Colley helped him. This time no spiders ran out, no webs were pulled loose. Mr. Adamson called all the gentlemen to witness that the boarding-up had been done very recently, too recently for spider-housing to gain any headway.
Mr. Aldridge did not linger long enough to see this test. He hung on the edges, inspected the jack-hole, the saddles, the glassless casement, the hay, the windows; and he was satisfied that the loft was not like a place of confinement. He left the amateur investigators to their busy devices and went and stood at the door.
“What do you think of it?” asked Ball the schoolmaster, coming up.
“The girl is mistaken,” said Aldridge, “I believe she never was here.”
The men of Aldermanbury were done in the loft. They impounded the black jug as evidence and came away.
Betty was worn out. They carried her out of that inimical house, over the way to the Sun and Punchbowl. A cup of wine refreshed her, and the zealous Adamson began to question her again.
“How,” he asked, “did you get into the fields behind the house? How did you get through the hedgerows?”
“Sir,” said Bet, setting down her cup and looking at him with her pale eyes, “I went down the lane a quarter of a mile, and so turned on my right hand through a gate.”
“It is very odd,” observed Adamson, “that you should go so far down the lane, for there is a gate nearer than that.”
“Yes, sir,” said Elizabeth, “there is a gate about twenty or thirty yards from the house; but it is so near that I was afraid to go over it, for fear they would see me from the house.”
Mr. Adamson was satisfied. There was no stopping the juggernaut of vengeance. The men of Aldermanbury set about carrying the wicked old gypsy and her abettor, the bawd of Enfield Wash, before the nearest magistrate. They were not conveyed in triumph, tied to Elizabeth’s chaise wheels; son-in-law Long was allowed to provide transportation for them in his cart.
The carting of the malefactors was a scene of frenzied excitement. Mrs. Wells’s yard was crowded with friends and enemies, afoot and on horseback. The high-toned neighbour was glued to her gate; the farmer’s wife and the farmer’s boy gaped side by side; Edward Aldridge, the wheelwright, basked in the reflected glory of his cousin’s prominence in the affair; all the customers flocked over from Cantril’s to see their neighbours carted.
They went peaceably enough. The aged gypsy was first in the cart. The people of Enfield Wash stared at her avidly. Then Wells was hustled in, and Virtue Hall after her. Then all the other inmates of the house were crowded in, George in his greatcoat, Lucy and young Mary, Judith and Sal. It made quite a cartful.
The carter’s wife stepped boldly up and shook hands with Mother Wells over the cart’s edge.
“Well,” she said maliciously, “you have done for yourself this time, haven’t you?”
Mother Wells took her hand away.
“I shall return again,” she said grimly.
