‘Mr Smyth-Hilton!’ Judge Beecham snapped. ‘Desist, sir, desist.’
Mr Smyth-Hilton did not desist.
‘But if he will not sully his good name with this woman, why should we believe her?’
‘Mr Smyth-Hilton, I will hold you in contempt if you do not stop this line of questioning at once.’
With Mr Hewitt glaring at him, Smyth-Hilton finished and, with a flourish of his billowing sleeves, went back and sat behind the table.
A deathly hush prevailed for some moments, then all eyes left the pugnacious barrister and turned to Ellen.
‘Have you any further questions for the witness, Mr Hewitt?’ she heard Judge Beecham ask from a long way away.
The prosecuting barrister indicated with an airy wave of his lace handkerchief that he did not. The judge turned to Ellen. ‘You may leave the witness box, Mrs O’Casey,’ he said.
Robert stood rooted to the spot as he heard Ellen give her testimony. He was unaware of the sly looks around him when it was revealed that he and Ellen were lovers, because he was so utterly appalled. Appalled at himself.
Ellen, the woman he loved and would love while there was breath in his body, had been almost beaten to death to protect him and now she was being beaten again verbally by the vile, unscrupulous Smyth-Hilton.
Watching what was left of Ellen’s reputation being torn to shreds and trampled under the brass-heeled boot of Danny’s barrister, Robert felt utter revulsion at his part in it.
He cursed himself roundly. It was his weakness that had held him back. William’s words and the snub from the Royal College of Physician had unsettled him. Not that Robert thought for one moment that his marriage to Ellen would not cause tongues to wag. He had expected some of the fashionable homes in the city to scrub his name off their social list. But if he were brutally honest, he hadn’t expected such a swift reaction from those he regarded as enlightened colleagues.
By keeping their love and their plans to marry a secret until after the trial, Robert now realised he had played right into Danny’s hands.
As Ellen stumbled back from being publicly humiliated, Robert tried to move towards her, but now that the trial was drawing to a close the spectators’ area was packed with those who wanted to hear the verdict and sentence.
The jury left and the court settled a little. All around, the spectators were arguing over the evidence. He heard Ellen’s name mentioned a couple of times and was aware of furtive glances his way and the odd snigger. From where he stood Robert could see Ellen’s cheeks were flushed and felt sure she was hearing the same coarse comments as he was. He had to go to her.
He tried to catch Ellen’s eye but she had her face averted and was still looking at her feet. She sat at the far corner from him by the door.
In the light from the chandelier above, Robert caught a glimpse of unnatural brightness in her fixed gaze. He wasn’t surprised. Being reviled the way she had been over the last hour would have brought a lesser woman than Ellen to tears.
There was a flurry of activity as, after only twenty minutes, the jury returned. Robert was hardly surprised that the twelve men didn’t need time to consider their verdict. The evidence against Danny was overwhelming, and there could surely be only one verdict.
Judge Beecham rapped his gavel on its striking wood. ‘Your verdict, if you please, sir.’
The voice of the foreman of the jury rang out. ‘On the charge of embezzling parish funds we find the defendant guilty.
A roar went up from the floor of the courthouse.
‘On the charge of grand larceny we find the defendant guilty,’ the stout foreman said, in a formal voice.
The crowd around Robert erupted again. Ellen was obscured from his view by the sea of waving arms.
‘On the charge of the murder of ...’ the foreman listed the seven men who had been linked with the scrubbed out names in Danny’s ledger. ‘... we find the defendant guilty.’
‘On the charge of murder by arson, we find the defendant guilty,’ the foreman continued above the noise of the courtroom.
‘And, finally, on the charge of attempted murder of Mrs Ellen O’Casey ...’
Robert glancing towards where Ellen sat straight-backed.
Although Ellen’s good name had been thoroughly trodden into the mud, a guilty verdict would show clearly that Smyth-Hilton’s oratory was a pack of lies.
‘... we find the defendant not guilty.’
What!
Robert couldn’t believe his ears. A roar of outrage escaped him. Not guilty? Robert’s mind conjured up the image of Ellen’s beautiful body covered with the many bruises inflicted by Danny. He remembered having to ply Ellen with laudanum before he could manipulate her broken collarbone. She was like a piece of butchered meat when the bastard had finished with her.
Not guilty! It was outrageous.
Pandemonium erupted around him as people shouted and threw their hats in the air. Robert stood dumbly and stared ahead at Judge Beecham, who was now calling for the black hood to be brought to him.
While the judge pronounced the sentence of death by hanging, Donovan’s body then to be given for dissection, in Robert’s mind the words ‘not guilty’ tumbled back and forth, adding fuel to his already burning emotions.
Having set the time and date when Danny Donovan would meet his Maker, Judge Beecham stood up and left the courtroom to wild applause. Not only was the shadow of the vicious Danny Donovan lifted from people’s lives forever, but there was the spectacle of a public hanging to look forward to as well.
By the oak desk, Hewitt and his clerks were already being mobbed by well-wishers, and scribes from the daily newspapers were pressing forward to glean further information for their editors.
Robert stood on the balls of his feet and scanned over the heads of the crowd, but he couldn’t see Ellen. He tried again to slide between the men around him. But he was held back. He pressed forward again, but to no avail. Turning towards the back of the court, he headed for the wall where there were fewer people and edged his way towards the main door.
He couldn’t blame Ellen for fleeing from the furore that was now the Old Bailey’s public entrance. The verdict of not guilty of attempting to murder her was tantamount to saying that Ellen was all the things Danny’s barrister had accused her of and more.
The voices around him crashed in Robert’s ears. The hard twang of the native East Londoners mingled with the well-rounded speech of the solicitors and barristers.
With a mighty shove, Robert got himself away from the wall and plunged into the surging bodies around him. He lost his hat and let it go. He was pulled on all sides as people recognised him. Well-wishers slapped his back and blessed him. Robert fixed a bland smile on his face and pressed forward.
As he burst out of the courtroom, the cold November air took his breath for a second but it cleared his head. His eyes darted along the street towards Cheapside. Ellen was nowhere to be seen. People were collecting together by the back entrance of the court waiting for Danny Donovan to emerge on the prison cart for his short trip back to Newgate.
Turning north, Robert was about to walk briskly along the street when he heard his name called and a number of men rushed over to him.
‘Doctor Munroe, can you tell the readers of
The Examiner
if you are satisfied now that Danny Donovan has been brought to justice?’ a young man with a scrappy beard and ink-stained fingers asked him.
‘Satisfied?’ Robert answered. ‘I am satisfied that an evil man has been judged as such, but I am not satisfied with the way that Mrs—’
‘I’m from the
Standard,
Doctor Munroe. I understand that Earl Grey would welcome you into the House. Are you considering standing for Parliament?’ a bald man with discoloured teeth asked.
Another rotund individual pushed to the front. ‘Viscount Melbourne, the Home Secretary, is a close friend of yours, is he not?’
‘I wouldn’t say frie—’
‘The readers of the
Weekly Visitor
would like to know when you and Mrs O’Casey first met,’ a thin man with oiled hair plastered to his head asked, as he grinned at Robert.
‘I have nothing to say,’ Robert said abruptly, walking on.
‘Will you be continuing to see Mrs O’Casey now that Danny Donovan has been convicted?’ the grubby reporter from the
Weekly Visitor
enquired.
Robert spun around on his heels and gave the slovenly individual an icy look, but before he could give his biting retort, a shout went up from the mass of people gathered by the back gate as it slowly began to open.
A hellish howl rose around him as, under the bar of the gate, came a wooden cart drawn by two dray horses. It travelled over the cobbles and the occupants were forced to hold the rails to remain standing. The same two jailers who had stood next to Danny throughout the long trial now stood sentry while he took the short journey to Newgate, but Robert’s eyes were riveted to the man in the front of the wagon with his hands shackled together in front of him.
All around Robert, rotten fruit and vegetables and dirt flew through the air. Some missiles splattered on the planks at the side of the cart while others, thrown by those with a truer aim, hit Danny Donovan as he stood erect and unmoved.
As if he knew Robert was there, Danny Donovan looked over to where he stood. Robert saw a small flicker of his old humour as the stout Irishman held his gaze. For a long moment the two men stared at each other, then, just as the wagon turned the corner, Danny lifted his hands, touched his forelock at Robert and gave a wink.
Anger flooded over Robert. Was he satisfied, the reporter had asked. No, he bloody wasn’t.
If it had been difficult for him to marry Ellen before, it now was near on impossible. Danny might be condemned to death, but he had condemned Robert and Ellen to another kind of death alongside him.
Josie should have been furious with her mother for forbidding her to attend the trial, but she wasn’t. Although nearly everyone from the surrounding streets who was able to go was crowded into or around the Old Bailey, Patrick Nolan wasn’t among them. That was because on the very day that the judge was making Danny Donovan an overdue appointment with the gallows, the
Jupiter,
Patrick’s first ship, was sailing out of the Port of London bound for New York. Ellen’s absence had allowed Josie to wave him goodbye without having to answer any awkward questions.
Sitting in the window looking out towards the river Josie hugged herself and gave a little smile. Despite her opposition to his choice of career, Patrick’s mother had been on the dockside to see off her eldest son and, much to Josie’s satisfaction, Mrs Nolan’s presence hadn’t stopped Patrick kissing her noisily just before he threw his seaman’s sack over his shoulder and mounted the gangplank.
As the ropes were thrown off the ship and it weighed anchor, Josie stood among the other seamen’s women, sobbing as the sails unfurled and the wind filled them. She waited until the topsail had disappeared around the Woolwich reach and then she drifted back to Mr Cooper’s snug house. Although she enjoyed the company of Mr Cooper’s daughters, Elsie and Violet, she was pleased that they were both out. Repairing to the small room she shared with her mother, Josie took up a book and settled herself in the window. Her eyes skimmed over the page without seeing any of the words as she lost herself in dreaming of the future and her new life. The new life she would have when her mother married Doctor Munroe.
She pictured herself living in a house much like the one she had been staying in for the past twelve weeks. A snug house with oil lamps instead of tallow, where the tea was brewed with tea leaves that hadn’t been used, dried and resold. A house with proper carpets on the floor, and a clock. No one she had known before had actually owned a clock, but Mr Cooper had three, and she was certain Doctor Munroe must have at least one or two. But more than that, she dreamed of a house that was a home, where she and her mother would be cared for. That was just what he had promised. Not in so many words, but in every action towards her mother. There was the same softness as they spoke each other’s names and the same warmth as they looked at each other. It made Josie feel tender inside. She was just about to hug herself again when the door flew open and her mother appeared. She jumped off the sill and beamed at her, but there was no answering smile. Ellen, who looked ashen, pushed past Josie and threw herself on her knees before the trunk under the window. Josie watched her scrabbling around for a few moments, then asked, ‘Is the trial over?’
‘Yes, and we are leaving,’ Ellen answered, as she threw their few scraps of clothing into the middle of the candlewick counterpane.
‘Leaving? Shouldn’t we wait for Doctor Mu—’
‘Now!’ bellowed her mother. Josie started back in surprise at the sharpness in her mother’s voice. A sad smile stole over Ellen’s face. ‘The trial went badly. We have to leave before Robert arrives. It is the only way.’
‘But I don’t...’ Josie’s face crumpled as she watched Ellen tying the corners of the bedspread together into a bundle. ‘I don’t want to leave. I want to stay. I want you and Doctor Munroe to be married—’
‘That can never be now,’ Ellen said in a strangled voice. She went back to her task, tugging and clawing the bundle to shape it. Then she started to sob. ‘It’s... it’s... my ... fault. I ... I should ha ... have realised.’
The vision of the house with carpets and clocks began to fragment in Josie’s mind as other, less pleasant thoughts crowded in. What had happened? Had Danny been found not guilty? Was he coming for them? Was that why they had to leave?
‘But Ma—’
‘It was doomed from the start,’ her mother told her, tears coursing unchecked down her cheeks.
Josie couldn’t bear the pain in her mother’s voice. She caught hold of her. ‘Ma?’
‘I’m sorry, my sweetheart, so sorry,’ Ellen said, her hand resting lovingly on Josie’s cheek. ‘We have to go. I’ll explain on the way. But be my good girl and do as I say now.’