CHAPTER IV.

AN INTERVIEW WITH THE PRISONER

The following morning marked the passage of exactly a week since the shocking crime downstairs. Our inquiries, like those of the police, had begun to develop, but the absence of the chief suspect and her husband had protracted what should have been a short investigation.

However, while Holmes and I had breakfast, Mrs. Brooks knocked on the door of our rooms: "There's a telegram for you fae Melchester!" And she held out the envelope.

Holmes opened it. "You haven't read it?" he asked.

"I've ne'er sunk tae that. Besides, I've no' got my spectacles on."

"Well, it's progress - of a kind. The Clares were arrested at daybreak at Stonehenge, on charges of breaking and entering at Bramshurst Court. But Mrs. Clare has confessed."

Mrs. Brooks was puzzled: "Does that mean you were wrang, Mr. Holmes?"

"Not necessarily. People are not always guilty of crimes to which they confess."

"That disnae mak' sense. Why should she ? Och, maybe I should just speir at the victim!"

Holmes gave her a strange look, then re-read the telegram. "Melchester Court-House... It would seem that the suspects will probably be charged in Melchester and held there until trial. A major trial will mean the Crown Court in Wintoncester... Have we enough time...?"

"Eneuch time for what?" asked Mrs. Brooks.

"To obtain the evidence we need! Watson, take the first train to Melchester! You have the gift for dealing with emotional females," he said.

I winced, recalling my previous day's ordeal with the Darch sisters.

"Besides, as a doctor, it should be simpler for you to obtain a private interview, without police or warders eavesdropping."

"And what of you?"

"I shall be pursuing other lines of inquiry here in Sandbourne... The local constabulary have engaged my services sub rosa."


On the journey, I began to turn over the shocking events of the past week: a seemingly respectable young couple revealed to be an adulterous liaison; a calm seaside lodging house the scene of a bloody murder. There were those significant incongruities, too: between the wound and the ostensible weapon; between the alleged murderess' concealing veil and the conspicuousness of her departure. And what of the elusive Angel Clare?

Melchester is not so much a city as a charming town with a large mediæval cathedral. The tall sharp spire - the tallest in England - dominates the whole, piercing the sky like a fine-bladed dagger...

A porter gave me directions to the court, in the cells of which Mrs. Clare was being held, pending trial. I told the police officer in charge that I was her doctor in Sandbourne, and showed him my card.

"I'm glad you're here sir; we were worried that the young woman might be so minded as to harm herself, since 'tis thought she's a bit touched in the head."

That did not sound like the 'Mrs. d'Urberville' of my acquaintance. I hid my shock, and said only, "Quite."

I was fortunate enough to be permitted a private interview. A provincial court-house cell is not the best place to meet a lady. The elegant young Tess d'Urberville of The Herons, with her curves and rosy colour, had faded into Teresa Clare, prisoner - wan and worn, in ill-fitting grey charity clothes.

"Dr. Watson! I am pleased to see you!" she said, with a heart-breaking ghost of her old smile. But for those lips, she might have passed for a Quaker girl, her dark brown curls straying from under the linen cap.

"My dear Mrs. d'Ur - Mrs. Clare! How are they treating you here?"

"Well enough," she sighed, sitting down on the narrow cot. "Though they won't let me have a looking glass for fear I might harm myself - but for what? They charged me with breaking and entering, but I've confessed already. I'm glad they took those fancy clothes from me, for examining. They were what he bought me."

"You have confessed to murder? Not manslaughter?"

"Murder. That is best - I shall die for it... I confessed," she repeated, as if to reassure herself of the fact.

"But are you guilty?'

"Everything I touch I destroy. It began with my father's horse... Then my little boy... Everything dies on me. And now Alec. This way there'll be no more of it."

"You mean you killed him?"

"I had to be free of him, doctor, to be free of what he'd made me become. I couldn't let Angel walk away without me again."

Her mind is gone, I thought. She seemed dazed, yet curiously rational in her irrationality.

"Do you know what this is about? My husband, my true, loving husband, left me on our honeymoon without... becoming my husband in the flesh. He left because, years ago, when I was young, Alec d'Urberville seduced me."

"Seduced - or worse?" I asked: as a doctor, I know how some women are ashamed to admit to having been violated.

"It just - was. I was cold and frightened, needed comforting... We were in The Chase... They say it's the oldest wood in England... Things happen in the wildwood - if you know what I mean..."

Enigmatically, she was almost smiling. You know what I mean... Her words reminded me of the Queen of Spades. Tess had been arrested at Stonehenge; there was something deeply pagan about her, also. Her dead lover had told me that she could speak the language of birds... I recalled that paganus literally means a rustic: were all these rural sirens witches? A shiver ran down my spine, and suddenly I felt hot.

"Maybe I was beguiled too easy... We had a few weeks together, then I left him. You couldn't call it love - not on my side, anyway. A kind of hunger... I bore a son, but he didn't live... When I told Angel, he didn't want me - because I wasn't pure, he said. And he'd told me what he'd done in London, with some trollop! I said 'twas the same, but he said not... Oh, I wanted to die then! I even thought of killing myself - of hanging myself, like the mistletoe over our bed! He said I wasn't the woman he'd married - that she was dead. He sleep-walked with me, and laid me in a stone coffin - that's how much he believed it. Then he went to Brazil... Later I heard he'd asked my friend Izz to go with him, but she refused.

"I - Well, times got worse - I was labouring for Farmer Groby. Alec tempted me then, but I'd have none of him; then Father died, and we lost our home... That was on Old Lady Day, last month. Alec said my husband would never come back. He promised he'd give my family a home, send the children to school. He was always there, so I... You know what I did.

"Then the other morning, Angel came back and found me, and told me he'd repented! I wept - he was so broken down, I thought he was dying - for me, for my sin that had driven him away..."

"And that is why you killed your lover?" I asked.

"Alec asked why I was crying. I told him I knew now he'd lied to me - saying I was foolish even to hope my husband would return; that he'd deceived me to win me back again; that his helping my mother had been a ruse, too, to trap me... He lost his temper."

For a moment I wondered if she was going to imply that she had acted in self-defence, but no. "He said I'd be a fool to run after a man who'd already cast me off once! That Angel was a 'self-pitying, bloodless hypocrite' - his words exactly - and that I'd only humiliate myself by crawling back to him..." She raised her head and there was a cruel note of scorn in her voice: "He even said he loved me! Can you believe that?"

"And that was why you killed him?"

"He insulted my husband - called him names you wouldn't give a dog."

"So you stabbed him?"

She hesitated. "I was in a rage. I finished dressing and went out."

Her apparent callousness perturbed me: it did not belong to the haunted yet lovely young woman I remembered from The Herons. "You finished dressing in the same room as a dying man?"

"He had no right to keep me from my husband! No right! Why are you taking his side?"

"When murder has been committed, it is not unusual to pity the victim."

"Victim? I was the victim!"

"I'm speaking as the doctor in attendance," I said flatly. I liked her too much to believe that her charm hid the cold heart of a common harlot.

She averted her gaze, and the uncharacteristic harshness faded for a moment, like the temporary slipping of a mask. "Oh... You saw...? I wasn't told that."

"Mrs. Clare - Tess - how did it happen?"

"There was a knife on the breakfast tray - with the ham. A carving-knife... I must've picked it up... I'm not sorry."

The carving-knife - which I knew could not have been the real killer's weapon. "You mean you do not remember actually striking the blow?"

"It wasn't a big wound... I tried to stop the blood with my hand..."

"Alec's?"

"No, Prince, our old horse's... That's what started it... Years ago. I can't remember - it must be the shock. My soul travels out of my body sometimes... Perhaps I was out of it when I killed him."

"You have suffered some grave shocks recently, that is certain... And your confession - Is it possible that your mind - your memory - has been affected in that, also?"

Again, she denied it. "That's what my husband says. He thought I'd gone mad when I said what I'd done."

"Where is your husband?"

"Gone. He knew nothing. They're not even charging him for Bramshurst Court, where we hid together... They let him go. He didn't believe I'd truly done it till the police came for me at Stonehenge."

Strange, I thought - surely he could have been charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive? But this was rural England, not London, and Tess's Angel - however fallen - was a clergyman's son. The old social order of parson and squire was still intact in these parts.

"Ought he not be near you?"

"I asked him to look after my family - our 'Liza-Lu most of all... I'm sure he will. I hope he'll marry her. He is a good man, Dr. Watson."

I could not admit my reservations about her judgement. She was leaning forward, her eyes - long-lashed and of strangely mutable colour - wide yet vague, her ample bosom heaving within the too-tight grey gown. Alec d'Urberville had been right about one thing, at least: what man worthy of the name would abandon such a woman for the perils of South America on account of a sudden attack of selfish morality?

Such thoughts were jolted from me by the rasping of the cover of the grille in the door: "Five more minutes, doctor!"

"Tess - if you are innocent as I believe, you must save yourself!"

"Why? I used to think, Once a victim, always a victim, but now ! I'm not sorry, you know - not about Alec! He - he made me a bad woman..."

"You are not a bad woman!"

Once more, guilt shadowed her face. "I was his woman in the flesh and Angel's in law - that's sin enough. And even before... Good women don't take pleasure in it, do they?"

"Tess - I'm a doctor; I'm also married, quite contentedly - and, believe me, that is nonsense! If you are happy with someone, whatever you have been taught you ought to feel -"

"But if he were not my husband?"

"That is a question for a priest or a lawyer, not a doctor."

"Do you think I'm wicked, then?"

"Did you love him?"

She flinched physically at the question, again looking away from me. "No, I didn't. I couldn't. Don't ask that!"

"Tess, this is what you must think about if you stand by this confession of yours. When you go to trial, you shall be publicly cross-examined on every aspect of your past. There will be questions about your lover, your baby, your marriage, the reasons for your husband's desertion, your life at Sandbourne. Everything will be scrutinised. The yellow press will feed on each morsel of scandal. Your family will be spared nothing. You say you killed Alec d'Urberville to redeem your honour? By the time the courts and the newspapers have finished with you, you will have no honour. And whether guilty of murder or not, you will be found guilty, because British juries and British judges show scant mercy to women who commit adultery. Think of Mrs. Maybrick's case - locked up for life, though Holmes is sure she is innocent! Or you may hang... "

"So be it," she said, squaring her shoulders.

"No," I insisted. "It does not have to be! I beg you - think about it. A man who loved you is dead, and while you remain here, his assailant is still free."

The grating opened again. "Time's up, doctor."

"Please, Tess!"

"It was kind of you to visit me, doctor."

"Goodbye, then," I said curtly.

She faltered. "If - if I - Doctor, if there's anything else I need to get in touch with you about...?"

"I'm still at The Herons. Please think about what I've said."

The constable on duty waved the keys. "Come along now, sir." Behind me, he locked the cell door upon Tess Clare.

I made my way to an ancient hostelry, The Haunch of Venison, where I obtained a meal. Then I returned to the railway station, and commenced my journey back to Sandbourne. I had to change trains, and there was a delay on the line called by straying cattle, and so it was evening before I neared the elegant seaside town.

I reflected on what Tess had told me, and hoped that, in her cell, she was dwelling as much upon my words. Courts are usually harder on a woman accused of killing a man than on a man who kills a woman; and a pretty girl with a colourful reputation was especially vulnerable... As Mrs. Brooks had bitterly observed, virtue for a woman is seen in purely negative terms: what she has not done. Yet there was no doubt in my mind that what Tess Clare had not done was the stabbing of her lover. The missing carving-knife was a red herring, not the murder weapon. And yet Mrs. Brooks, Holmes and I had seen her - or her double - leaving the house after the murder to which she had confessed. I recalled Holmes' observation about the recently-opened perfume bottle in the bedroom, and wished that her original clothing had not been taken from her... I doubted whether the Melchester police would be as thorough as my learned colleague in their forensic examinations.

Somehow the key to the case lay in that tormented triangular relationship between Tess and her two young men: the late Alec d'Urberville and the living but elusive Angel Clare.


I was seized with a violent attack of sneezing on entering the dining room at The Herons. The long table was covered with a sheet. Upon it, and under the flickering gasolier and the beady eyes of Rio in his cage, Mrs. Brooks was cleaning a boxful of books and toys. They had evidently been in storage in the attic, and were covered in dust.

"Sae you visited the quine? Did she say onythin' about wha's tae pay the bill?"

"I daresay Mr. d'Urberville's estate will take care of the matter," I replied, as soon as I had regained my breath. "What are you doing?"

"Just sortin' some things for Mistress Durbeyfield's bairns. Mr. Holmes is up in his chaumer, readin'."

I picked up a volume of fairy tales. "The children will probably be delighted! Where did you find all these?"

"They've been packed awa' these one-and-twenty years. Mr. Holmes helped me fetch them doun."

I opened the book: there was an inscription in the neat hand adults use when writing for children: 'For Davie, with dearest love from Mama, Christmas 1868'. Another - Æsop's Fables - was inscribed similarly 'For Ketty'.

Mrs. Brooks glanced up from dusting a wooden lion from Noah's Ark. "You understand," she said quietly. It was a statement, not a question.

"Your children?"

"January 1869. Brain-fever. What you doctors ca' meningitis... You doctors were nae use... They're buried in Bristol. Josh was aff Valparaiso when it happened. I've a stepson livin' - Nell's lad - aulder nor I. He went tae New Bedford, wi' the whalin'; owns his ain ships now. But he disnae write."

"I'm so very sorry."

She shrugged. "It's best if yon puir bairns get some joy o' these. They've scarce been played wi'."

"I'm sure they will be much appreciated."

"Aye. But it fashes me! Thon quine! The matter o' the ceilin': it cost money tae get the plaisterer... And the floor. And the sheets... Guid linen's no' cheap... And the laddie left naked and bleedin' in his bed... In my bed - my sheets!" As her emotions slipped from her control, so the toy animal slipped from her fingers and fell on to the covered table with a dull thud. "You need a man that's gaein' tae be there - no' in bluidy South America!" she swore. Then her usual stoicism reasserted itself. "Och, I'm sorry, doctor..."

"I do understand."

"There's a cauld supper for you up in your chaumer," she said brusquely. "We thocht you'd be hame sooner."

I sensed that she wanted to be left alone, perhaps to weep a little over her cobwebbed treasures while she prepared them for other small hands, and over the tragic irony of a woman preferring an absent husband to a constant lover, when she herself had had no such choice.

The following day, we held a 'council of war' around the table in the rear parlour, beneath the pink smudge of fresh plaster which had replaced the sinister bloodstain. Mrs. Brooks made a large pot of tea and some sandwiches, filled with Joan's apple jam. I related to the others the whole of my meeting with Tess, and the content of our interview. Holmes listened quietly, smoking.

But Mrs. Brooks was baffled. "Why should she confess if she's no' guilty?"

"She seems to have a psychological problem - a tendency to feel personally culpable for all misfortunes which befall her. 'Once a victim, always a victim', she said," I replied.

"Haivers! I'd hae thocht fae the luik o' her she'd mair backbane nor that! A sonsie big quine, wi' a sound heid on her shouthers!"

Holmes drew on his pipe. "It's not a question of intelligence, dear lady, but of individual perception. The study of such matters - what scientists call 'psychology' - is still in its infancy, but I foresee it may yet prove useful in cases such as this one. Dr. Watson's account suggests that Mrs. Clare is simultaneously in the grip of an obsessive passion for her husband and of an overwhelming sense of guilt. It is as if she is in love with suffering; as if she believes that she deserves punishment."

"I dinna understand it! I've seen it afore - though no' sae bad - for in this wark you're aye meetin' fowk o' a' kinds - and when we stayed in Bristol. It's aye women - they think they're no' guid eneuch for even the warst o' men! As if men had nae minds or consciences o' their ain! And there's men that'll play on it - like thon husband of hers, runnin' aff tae stravaig around Brazil! If he thinks she's no' guid eneuch for him, that's his problem - she disnae hae tae believe it! Suppose she had gaun and hanged hersel' on their honeymoon? Would he've lost ony sleep? Or would he've just run aff wi' her wee friend- It's him she should hae thocht o' hangin'!"

"I must confess," admitted Holmes, "that Mr. Clare's character remains an enigma to me. His wife's emotional devotion to him - regardless of her physical infidelity, which seems to have been financially motivated - seems excessive in the light of his shabby treatment of her."

I was inclined to agree. "This is a perplexing case: it has as many layers as an onion, and goes back some years into the past."

"You said he laid her in a stone coffin, didn't you, Watson?"

"Yes - while sleep-walking, Tess said."

Holmes snorted. "Sleep-walking! I do not believe... Gothick mummery! And he refused to consummate the marriage... Ruskin, Watson - what do you remember about John Ruskin?"

"Writer, critic, artist -" I began.

"The divorce case! I wonder if our Mr. Clare takes a Ruskinian view of women - an extreme idealisation which cannot cope with their physical reality?"

I shrugged. "They were on the run together for a week; and although Tess didn't say so outright, I suspect he may have made up for lost time then."

"When he thocht she'd killed the ither chiel? And after that coffin business - Och, that's a gey queer state o' things! What sort o' a man...?" And she shuddered involuntarily. "Are you sure he's got a proper alibi?"

Holmes nodded. "It's one of the few certainties in this case. His cadaverous appearance was so distinctive that everyone at his hotel vividly remembers seeing him in the dining-room. But I should still like to speak with him... or rather, 'Captain Mycroft' would! He may be able to furnish us with clues to what this is really about."

"Tess told me it was about her honour," I said. "But she has let her past dishonour at the victim's hands blind her to his later constancy, while her infatuation with her husband leads her to accept his dishonourable behaviour as proof of and judgement on her own worthlessness. And the notion that honour can be restored by murder - well - it simply isn't cricket!"

"It certainly isn't very British - at least, not by modern standards," Holmes concurred. I could see that his mind was turning over the matter, as if 'Captain Mycroft''s next foray into the investigation was already taking shape.

"I suppose we must hope, too, that the girl comes to her senses. She is still suffering from shock; she did not seem to be herself."

"How so?"

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say she reminded me of a patient emerging from a delirium or a mesmeric trance. Also, there used to be something very open about her expression, but now it's as if she finds it hard to look anyone in the eye. She is denying her emotions - as if she wants to be condemned as a harlot and murderess. But the fact that she still believes that the carving-knife was used proves her innocence."

"It is most curious," Holmes observed, "how a guilty conscience about one matter may prompt someone to confess to another, of which he or she is innocent. Tess Clare - for whatever cause - is clearly as susceptible to guilt as she is to the warmer emotions. She feels it as keenly for the death of a horse as for her irregular personal affairs; and I suspect that it is her guilt at her adultery which compels her to confess falsely to murder. Mesmerism, you said- That is interesting..."

I shook my head. "Perhaps some enthusiastic constable inadvertently played on her suggestibility. I cannot seem to find any logic in this case."

"There is no logic to it, Watson - which is why affairs of the heart hold no attraction for me. Once this love business takes hold, people become slaves to primal emotions, of which guilt is but one. If we are to help the girl, she must regain some sense of moral proportion."

"Moral proportion!" sniffed Mrs. Brooks indignantly, and she glanced up at the patch of pink plaster on the ceiling. "She's just plain thrawn! Fancyin' thon peengie Angel cratur mair nor a braw, bonnie de'il like Mr. d'Urberville! And him in love wi' her! If I'd kent thirty years back what I ken now... But we're aye wiser after."

"You speak from experience?" Holmes asked.

"I was mairrit tae a man that loved a deid wife, and was as guid as deid tae me for a' the time we had thegither. I ken how it maun hae been for thon puir lad - him lovin' her, and her still thinkin' on the loun that had left her. If I'd kent then what I ken now, I'd no' hae mairrit the man I did."

"Then why do you try to communicate with your late husband?"

She smiled. "Revenge: sae that when he's wi' her, it's me he's thinkin' of. Whether it's true or no', I dinna ken - maybe it is just this shoogly table leg that taps..." - and she demonstrated by shifting one of the gatelegs with her foot - "but I aye feel better for it."

Holmes looked as if an idea had occurred to him, but said nothing.

To be continued.