The strange countess
“Here we are,” said the governor, and opened the cell door with his
pass-key.
For five minutes she was engaged with the sulky woman, who had a
whining grievance against everybody except herself; and at last, with
a heartfelt sigh of relief, she came out through the door and joined
the governor. As he locked the cell, she said:
“Thank heaven I shan’t come here any more.”
“Giving up being a lawyer?” he asked good-humouredly. “Well, I never
thought it was much of a profession for a girl.”
“You give my intelligence too great credit,” she smiled. “I am a very
commonplace clerk and have no other knowledge of the law than that
stamps must be put on certain documents and in certain places!”
They did not go back the way they had come, but went out through the
hall into the parade ground. So perfect was the organisation that in
the brief space she had been in the cell the yard was filled with grey
figures parading in circles.
“Exercise hour,” said the governor. “I thought you’d like to see
them.”
The girl’s heart was filled with pity and an unreasoning resentment
against the law which had taken these women and made them into so many
meaningless ciphers. With their print dresses and white mob caps,
there was something very ugly, very sordid about them, something which
clutched at the girl’s heart and filled her with a vague fear. There
were women of all ages, old and young, some mere girls, some grown
ancient in sin, and each bore on her face the indefinable stamp of
abnormality. There were fierce faces, cunning faces, weak, pathetic
faces that turned to her as the ghastly circle shuffled on its way;
faded eyes that stared stupidly, dark eyes that gleamed with malignant
envy, careless eyes that did not trouble to investigate her further
than by a casual glance. Shambling, shuffling women, who seemed after
a while to be unreal.
The circle had nearly passed in hideous completeness when Lois saw a
tall figure that seemed to stand out from that ground of horror. Her
back was straight, her chin uplifted, her calm eyes looked straight
ahead. She might have been forty, or fifty. The delicately moulded
features were unlined, but the hair was white. There was something
divinely serene in her carriage.
“What is that woman doing here?” said Lois, before she realised that
she had asked a question which no visitor must put to a prison
official.
Dr. Stannard did not answer her. He was watching the figure as it came
abreast. For a second the woman’s eyes rested gravely upon the girl.
Only for a second--just that period of time that a well-bred woman
would look at the face of another--and then she had passed.
The girl heaved a sigh.
“I’m sorry I asked,” she said, as she walked by the governor’s side
through the grille to his office.
“Other people have asked that,” said the governor, “and haven’t been
satisfied. It is against the prison rules to identify any convict, as
you know. But, curiously enough----” He was looking round for
something, and presently he found it, a stout calf-bound book that had
been opened and laid face downwards on a filing cabinet.
Without a word he handed it to her, and she looked at the title. She
was sufficiently acquainted with law books to recognise it as one of
that variety. It was labelled _Fawley’s Criminal Cases_.
“Mary Pinder,” he said briefly, and she saw that the book was open at
the page which was headed by that name. “It is rather curious, I was
reading up the case just before you came in. I was looking up the
essential details to see whether my memory was at fault. I don’t mind
telling you”--he dropped his voice as though in fear of an
eavesdropper--“that I share your wonder!”
She looked at the title: “Mary Pinder--Murder,” and gasped.
“A murderess?” she asked incredulously.
The doctor nodded.
“But that is impossible!”
“Read the case,” said the other, and she took up the book and read:
Mary Pinder--Murder. Convicted at Hereford Assizes. Sentenced to
death; commuted to penal servitude for life. This is a typical case of
a murder for gain. Pinder lived in lodgings with a young man, who was
reputedly her husband, and who disappeared before the crime occurred.
It is believed that he left her penniless. Her landlady, Mrs. Curtain,
was a wealthy widow, somewhat eccentric, believed to be on the border
line of insanity. She kept large sums of money in the house and a
quantity of antique jewellery. After her husband had left her Pinder
advertised for a temporary situation, and a lady, calling at the house
in answer to the advertisement, found the front door unfastened, and,
after repeated knocking, receiving no answer, walked in. Seeing one of
the room doors open, she looked in and found, to her horror, Mrs.
Curtain lying on the floor, apparently in a fit. She immediately went
in search of a policeman, who, arriving at the house, found the woman
was dead. The drawers of an old secretaire were open and their
contents thrown on the floor, including a piece of jewellery.
Suspicion being aroused, the room of the lodger, who had been seen
leaving the house just before the discovery, was searched in her
absence. A small bottle containing cyanide of potassium, together with
many pieces of jewellery, was found in a locked box, and she was
arrested. The defence was that the deceased had frequently threatened
to commit suicide, and that there was no evidence to prove the
purchase of the poison, which was in an unlabelled bottle. Pinder
refused to give information about herself or her husband; no marriage
certificate was discovered; and she was tried before Darson J. and
convicted. It is believed that Pinder, being in urgent need of money,
was seized with the sudden temptation and, dropping cyanide in the
woman’s tea, afterwards ransacked her secretaire. The case presents no
unusual features, except the refusal of the prisoner to plead.
Twice Lois read the account and shook her head.
“I can’t believe it! It is incredible--impossible!” she said. “She was
imprisoned for life--but surely she should be out by now? Isn’t there
a remission of sentence for good conduct?”
The governor shook his head.
“Unfortunately she made two attempts to escape, and lost all her
marks. It is a great pity, because she’s a fairly rich woman. An uncle
of hers, who only learnt of her conviction after she had been five
years in gaol, left her a very considerable fortune. She never told us
who she was--he visited her here a few weeks before his death--and
we’re just as wise as ever we were, except that we know that he was a
relation of her mother.”
Lois took up the book again and stared at the printed page.
“A murderess--that wonderful woman!”
He nodded.
“Yes. Remarkable. Yet the most innocent-looking people commit bad
offences. I have been here twenty years and lost most of my
illusions.”
“If they thought she was a murderess, why didn’t they----”
She could not bring herself to say “hang her.” The governor looked at
her curiously.
“Ha--h’m--well, there was a reason, a very excellent reason.”
Lois was puzzled for a moment, and then suddenly the explanation came
to her.
“Yes, the baby was born in this very prison--the prettiest little baby
girl I’ve ever seen--a perfect child. I hated the time when she had to
be taken away. Poor little soul!”
“She didn’t know, perhaps doesn’t know now,” said Lois, her eyes
filling with tears.
“No, I suppose not. She was adopted by a woman who was a neighbour and
always believed in Mrs. Pinder’s innocence. No, when I said ‘poor
little soul,’ I was thinking of the fool of a nurse who let the child
burn its arm against the top of a hot water bottle. A pretty bad burn.
I remember it because it left a scar on the baby’s forearm--the
stopper of the water bottle had a star.”
Lois Reddle clutched the edge of the table and her face went suddenly
white. The doctor was putting away the book and his back was towards
her. With an effort she gained control of her voice.
“Do--do you remember the name by which the baby was christened?” she
asked in a low voice.
“Yes,” he said instantly, “an unusual name, and I always remember it.
Lois Margeritta!”
Chapter Four
Lois Margeritta! Her own name! And the star-shaped burn on her arm!
Her head was in a whirl; the room seemed to be spinning round
drunkenly and it needed all her strength of mind to keep her from
crying out.
But it was true. That dignified, stately woman who had marched so
calmly in the circle of pain was her mother! Incredible, impossible
though it seemed, she knew this was the truth. Her mother!
Obeying a blind impulse, she darted to the door, flung it open, and
was half-way along the stone passage before the startled governor had
overtaken her.
“Whatever is the matter with you, girl?” he demanded, half astonished
and half angry. “Are you ill?”
“Let me go, let me go!” she muttered incoherently. “I must go to her!”
And then she came back to sanity with a gasp, and allowed herself to
be led back to the governor’s room.
“You sit down there while I give you a slight sedative,” said the
doctor, as he closed the door with a bang which echoed along the
hollow passage.
He opened the medicine chest, deftly mixed the contents of three
bottles and added water from a carafe on his table.
“Drink this,” he said.
The girl raised the glass to her lips with fingers that shook, and the
governor, hearing the glass rattle against her teeth, smiled.
“I think I’m a little mad,” she said.
“You’re a little hysterical,” said the practical doctor, “and it is my
fault for letting you see these people. We’ve broken all the rules by
talking about them.”
“I’m dreadfully sorry,” she muttered, as she put the glass on the
table. “I--I--it was so dreadful!”
“Of course it was,” he said. “And I was several kinds of an old fool
to talk about it.”
“Will you tell me one thing, doctor, please? What--what became of the
child?”
The doctor was obviously loth to discuss the matter any further.
“I believe she died,” he said briefly. “She was taken away by some
excellent people, but they failed to rear her. That is the story I
have. As a matter of fact it was published in the newspapers--there
was a great deal of interest in the case--that the child had died in
prison, but that was not the case. She was a healthy little creature
when she left here. And now, young lady, I am going to turn you out.”
He rang for the wardress, who conducted her to the gatekeeper’s lodge,
and in another second Lois was standing outside the black door, behind
which was--who?
She was mad to have made such a fool of herself. There was so much
more she wanted to know, so many opportunities which might have been
hers to see the beautiful woman who was--her mother? Her heart raced
at the thought. It couldn’t be! Her mother was dead; that stout,
homely body who had been a mother to her. It was a coincidence. There
must be other children in the world called “Lois Margeritta” than she,
and it was possible that some had been branded in babyhood.
She shook her head; it was impossible, it was beyond all the bounds of
probability that there could be two Lois Margerittas with a
star-shaped burn on the left arm.
Climbing painfully into the car, her knees giving under her, her
trembling hands manipulated the gears. The car wobbled painfully, and,
as she came slowly out on to the little road that runs by the prison,
she was conscious of a weakness which almost terrified her. She
stopped the car a few inches from the kerb, and at that moment she
heard a quick step, and, turning her head, saw the man with whose
machine she had collided earlier in the afternoon. There was a look of
deep concern on his saturnine face.
“Anything wrong?” he asked sharply.