Heaven Knows Who: The Trial of Jessie M'Lachlan

By Christianna Brand

The chilling true account of the Sandyford murder case and the sensational nineteenth-century trial that forever changed how homicides are investigated.

Jessie M’Lachlan was one of the countless thousands who lived in the tenements of Glasgow, Scotland. In poor health ever since her pregnancy, the single mother worked herself to the bone to provide for her child, but there was never enough to make ends meet. Her only solace in the brutal port town was the company of her best friend, tough and brawny Jess M’Pherson. Jessie and Jess had forged a bond in hardship, but it would be be torn apart by murder.
 
In the summer of 1862, Jess M’Pherson was found stabbed to death in her bedroom, stripped to the waist and lying in a pool of her own blood. The killing sent Glasgow into an uproar. And when Jess’s coat was found in Jessie M’Lachlan’s home,  the victim’s closest friend was charged with murder. In one of the most sensational trials in Scottish history—the first to make use of forensic photography—Jessie’s life was picked apart. Though her lawyers argued that she was nowhere near the scene of the crime, the jury deliberated for just fifteen minutes before sentencing her to hang. It may have seemed like the end, but Jessie’s story was just beginning.
 
One of the greatest mystery authors of her generation, Christianna Brand was also a pioneer of true crime. And despite reading like fiction, every word of this gripping historical saga is rooted in fact. Fans of In Cold Blood or The Onion Field will find that Heaven Knows Who ranks among the greats.

• Language: English
• Publisher: MysteriousPress.com Open Road
• Release date: May 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781504037389

Christianna Brand

Christianna Brand (1907–1988) was one of the most popular authors of the Golden Age of British mystery writing. Born in Malaya and raised in India, Brand used her experience as a salesgirl as inspiration for her first novel, Death in High Heels, which she based on a fantasy of murdering an irritating coworker. The same year, she debuted her most famous character, Inspector Cockrill, whose adventures she followed until 1957. The film version of the second Cockrill mystery, Green for Danger, is considered one of the best-ever screen adaptations of a classic English mystery. Brand also found success writing children’s fiction. Her Nurse Matilda series, about a grotesque nanny who tames ill-behaved children, was adapted for the screen in 2005, as Nanny McPhee. Brand received Edgar Award nominations for the short stories “Twist for Twist” and “Poison in the Cup”, as well as one for her nonfiction work Heaven Knows Who. The author of more than two dozen novels, she died in 1988.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

She wore a straw bonnet throughout her trial—a lilac wool gown, a little black shawl and the straw bonnet, trimmed with broad satin ribbons, its brim edged with a frilling of narrow black lace. One can’t help wondering how she got it—this special bonnet to be worn during the four days of her trial for murder. Did the prison matron go out and buy it for her? Was James, her perfidious husband, commissioned to choose it, with anxious recommendations as to colour and trimming? If she had one poor, pitiful, seldom indulged little vanity, it was a fondness for pretty clothes.

This is the true story of the trial of Jessie M’Lachlan for murder—the ferocious murder of her dearest friend. It is in every possible detail authentic. If Jessie is described as having smiled or sighed, if a witness is said to have thought a thought—then there is evidence somewhere of that smile or that sigh or that thought. Where dialect is reproduced it is the reported dialect actually used by that speaker at the time. If a place or a person is described, it is from a contemporary description or picture. Background, ‘plot’, dialogue, character—all this, which may read like fiction, was true enough and real enough, only too true and only too real, a hundred years ago.

The murder was of a young woman named Jess M’Pherson, at 17 Sandyford Place, Glasgow, on the night of July 4, 1862. Her friend, Jessie M’Lachlan, stood her trial for four days in the Old Court, Jail Square, Glasgow—the court sitting for eleven hours of each of the first three days. At the end of this time, the jury, having deliberated for exactly fifteen minutes, returned with a unanimous verdict. It was, moreover, an unequivocal verdict. There was no question of ‘not proven’.

And the trial was interesting in this, if in nothing else—that the defence was simply that the prisoner had been nowhere near the scene when the crime was committed, that it had been committed by another person, a named person, a supposedly respectable old gentleman, Mr James Fleming, of 17 Sandyford Place. Mr Fleming variously described himself as eighty-seven years of age and seventy-eight. Whether or not his word was entirely to be trusted, we shall see: but eighty-seven is obviously a more unlikely age to be embarking on murder. It may be said here that there was no question of any collusion in the murder: one person alone, in both senses of the phrase, killed poor Jess.

The crime took place, as has been said, in Glasgow, some time in the night between July 4 and July 5, not far from the scene of three other causes célèbres. It is interesting to note their outcomes: for of the three accused, Dr Pritchard, infamous mass murderer, was executed—the last to be publicly hanged in that same Jail Square where Jessie stood her trial; the resourceful Miss Smith was set free, and Oscar Slater, after twenty years of wrongful imprisonment was granted a free pardon. As for Jessie M’Lachlan—once again, we shall see.

She was about twenty-eight at the time of the murder: a frail, slender, rather pretty creature with a lovely figure, brown eyes in an oval face and soft straight light brown hair pulled back into a bun. Everyone seems to have liked her. Her sisters-in-law, it is true, who came of a large and cheerful family, thought she was not quite forthcoming enough and considered herself above them; and indeed she is often described as having ‘a ladylike air’. But she was said to be very delicate and got easily tired: and self-contained and reserved she might be, but she was ‘a very mild, gentle and kindly woman’, and ‘of a religious turn of mind’. Her neighbour, a lady rejoicing in the name of Mrs Clotworthy, gave testimony at the time of the trial that, ‘being in great distress from a melancholy accident that happened to one of my children in falling into a sawpit’ she was further discomposed by a siege of the curious flocking about her home. Mrs M’Lachlan alone refrained from joining the sensation seekers, but sent round constantly with kind enquiries. The ladies hardly knew one another, they were both people who kept themselves to themselves; but Mrs Clotworthy strongly approved of Mrs M’Lachlan. She seemed ‘a feeling, kind woman and she was particularly quiet, contrasting favourably with the other neighbours who were anything but quiet’. She was especially kind to Mrs Clotworthy’s children, who seem to have had a propensity for getting themselves into dangerous situations. But then she was fond of all children. She had a little boy of her own, of three years old.

She had been married four or five years and now, after several changes of address, lived at 182 Broomielaw Street—a district running along the banks of the Clyde, commonly referred to as the Broomielaw. The main industry of Glasgow, then as now, was ship-building, at that time in the process of changing over from wood to iron. It is a crowded, shabby city, with a beauty all its own—built on the foothills of a low valley but so packed with buildings that nothing of its conformation is to be seen except where the steep streets shoot up off the main highways, each ending in a skyline. It is built largely of red and yellow sandstone which weathers in its smoke and fog to a dark blue black; but, without the glitter of granite or the glow of Portland stone, it has nevertheless, its own loveliness of smokey blacks and greys, undertoned with sepia and rose. Through it all runs the reddy brown waters of the river Clyde, a tidal river up almost as far as the Broomielaw where Jessie lived. Here, as all over Glasgow, had been built tenement houses for the workers, so solid and strong that most of them stand to this day, though some are two hundred years old. They are mostly two or three storeys high, with a feature peculiar to Scotland—the ‘close’, presumably so called because it is on the contrary quite open, a passage at ground level running through from front to back of the building, without doors at either end. From this the stairs run up to the several flats, or houses as they are, rather confusingly, called. The opening of the passage into the street is called the ‘close mouth’. (The term ‘close’ appears also to be given to the narrow, cobbled lanes running between the main streets, with many of these tenement houses opening on to them; these are also called vennels, or wynds. In Jessie’s day, the pump would be situated in the centre of the wynd and a gutter ran down one side; they seem to have been, and indeed still are, indescribably dirty and unlovely. No traffic, of course, runs through them, and the people simply sit on the cobbles to do their gossiping, their backs against the houses, while the children play about them; above them the lines of washing hang drying on poles stuck out of the windows.)

It was in one such tenement—Clydesdale Buildings—that Jessie lived; opening out not on to a wynd, but on to Broomielaw Street itself, with only the cobbled road and the wharf-side buildings between her close-mouth and the Clyde. There was a walledin court at the back with a door to the streets. The building is gone but many like it still stand along the Broomielaw, and the streets she walked are all the same.¹ Her ‘house’ was on the second floor, or ‘stair’ as she would call it—three rooms leading off a single passage, all on the same side of it. She had also the use of a cellar in the basement.

She was pitifully poor. Her husband, James M’Lachlan, was a sailor, and out of his pay of thirty shillings a week he must keep back twelve—ten for food, for he provided his own board when he was with his ship, which was for three or four days in each week, and a couple for himself—leaving her with only eighteen shillings for rent, heating, food, clothing and any further expenses for themselves and the child. The further expenses were heaviest of all for, it was explained at her trial, she was obliged to pay out ceaselessly for doctors and medicine and for help in the house. She suffered from a heart condition which since the birth of her baby had become very much worse—from palpitations and breathlessness, and often from a total weakness which kept her bedridden for many weeks at a time. She had been in bed four months after the birth, and the doctors had now warned them that, unless she had some sort of assistance with the work of her home, she might fall dead at any moment. So she got in a woman, a Mrs Adams, to do her washing and cleaning. ‘She might be able to wash a few things for herself,’ said Mrs Adams, ‘but not a day’s washing. She was a weakly woman and had often trouble.’ She paid Mrs Adams a shilling a day and employed her twelve-year-old daughter, Sarah, to do odd chores at a further six or seven shillings a week. But how was she to pay for it all out of eighteen shillings? Her brother was very good to her, giving her constant gifts of money; all her friends were kind, even her landlords maintained a polite fiction as to the time she had to pay in. But you couldn’t struggle against illness and helplessness. To try to make ends meet she let off two of her three rooms to lodgers. They can’t have added much to her income, for her total rent for the ‘house’ was five shillings a week, but anyway they were mostly sailors like her husband, and not only did they sometimes bilk her of her rent altogether but they often went off to sea leaving money owing. Her only recourse was to pawn such possessions as they left in her keeping, hastily redeeming them before the owners got back. ‘They were left as a kind of pledge,’ said the child, Sarah Adams, who knew all about it, ‘not to pawn,’ and her mother confirms, ‘She was often compelled to pawn the clothes they had left with her. They were never pawned to raise money for intemperances or extravagance but to pay for medicine or the doctor, or me, or for what the house needed. In living she was very moderate. She was a very temperate woman. She did not drink unless by the doctor’s orders—she would take one glass of spirits but she would take no more. She could not live more economically than she did.’ She—Mrs Adams—and Sarah, were invariably employed upon these missions to the pawnshop. Jessie never went herself and she always instructed them to give false names. She evidently did not care to have too many people knowing about her business. They would not have far to go—every third shop in those days was a pawnshop (and every fourth a spirit shop).

So, all in all, she must have been thankful when a chance arose to let her rooms to a Mrs Campbell, who might be more regularly solvent or who at least wouldn’t always be going off to sea. Mrs Campbell in turn sublet one room—still to a sailor—but now it was her responsibility to collect the rent. The sailor’s name was John MacDonald, and Mrs Campbell had besides a young daughter who shared her room. It must have been something of a scrum—six people living in three small rooms.

On that night, then—the night of the murder—a couple of months after they had moved in, Mrs Campbell and her daughter were sleeping in what was in fact the kitchen, nearest to the front door of the apartment; her lodger was snoring away, from eleven o’clock on, in the middle room; and Mrs M’Lachlan’s little boy was in the end room, ordinarily the parlour, to which he and his parents were now reduced. James M’Lachlan was away at sea. And Jessie—Jessie, alas, was not at home that night.

Jessie M’Lachlan’s great friend was another Jessie, Jessie M’Pherson, more often called Jess. The names in this chronicle are not helpful to clear narrative. The two principals were called Jessie, there are two John Flemings, three Mr Flemings in all plus a Doctor Fleming, no relation. Two principal witnesses at the trial were called Paton, a detective was M’Laughlin—the list could go on for ever. To complicate matters—for the author at any rate—by the Scottish custom all married women are referred to by their maiden as well as their married names—‘Agnes Wardrope or Christie’. To avert a major muddle, Mrs M’Lachlan is always referred to as Jessie, the murdered woman as Jess.

Jess was about thirty-eight at the time of her death—a big, brawny woman though ‘of a genteel figure and generally tasteful in dress’, who had once in a friendly trial put a policeman on the floor—he had asked for a kiss. She had been less on the defensive, apparently, with two other gentlemen similarly inclined, for she had suffered two ‘misfortunes’, one of which had resulted in a stillborn child, the other in a boy who had thrived and who at the time of her death seems to have been in Australia. She was herself an illegitimate child; her name in fact, or her mother’s name, was Richardson. The mother was now married, but Jess had been brought up by foster-parents and had taken their name. They remained devoted to her, and she does seem to have been a delightful person, kind and generous and ‘with a peculiar faculty for making and keeping friends’. She had been put out to service at the age of ten and had worked as a domestic servant ever since, retiring only for brief periods to allow for the ‘misfortunes’ and for a break of one year, when she left the family with whom she was then employed—the Flemings, of Sandyford Place—and set up a little grocery stores with a friend and ex-fellow servant, Mary Downie. But the business failed. It was run on the ‘passbook system’, that is to say on credit; times were hard in Glasgow, their hearts were too kind to allow them to pursue their debtors—though it was suggested when she died that she had been murdered by some enraged creditor whom she had got sent to prison—and after only a year they had to shut up shop. She went back to the Flemings and at the time of her death had, all in all, been with them—a much trusted and valued servant—for six or seven years. Jessie M’Lachlan before her marriage had worked for two years with the same family, in Sandyford Place, and it was thus that she and Jess had become such friends. The friendship had lasted ever since.

The standing joke between Jessie and Jess was ‘Grandpa’. Grandpa was Mr Fleming senior, and the joke was that he wanted to marry Jess. The house belonged to his son, John Fleming, an accountant, respectable and prosperous, who lived there with his son, also John, who was about twenty, and two daughters. He was evidently a widower, for his sister, Margaret Fleming, kept house for him. His father lived with them, having a room on the ground floor and, especially when the rest of the family were away, haunting the servants’ quarters in the basement and making a nuisance of himself. They were away a good deal, for they had a cottage by the sea, near Dunoon, and Miss Fleming and the girls spent most of the summer there, taking one of the two maids and leaving the other to run the house in town. John Fleming and John junior joined them at the week-ends. They appear not to have loved Grandpa so dearly that they often took him with them. More commonly he was left at home in Sandyford Place with Jess.

Jessie, of course, knew the old gentleman well. She called him ‘Grandpa’, and after she was married he now and again dropped in to see her in her own home and have a cup or ‘a dram’. They seemed quite intimate and friendly, said a witness who was once present when he called, ‘like familiar acquaintances’. He was affable to her husband also, and on two occasions at least there are accounts of James M’Lachlan going round with his wife to Sandyford Place and having a drink with the old man—though of course in the basement, with Jess. The Fleming family were at this time on the way up socially; and it may well be that the grandfather, who had started life as a hand-loom weaver, was more easy in the company of these humble people than his son and his grandson would have been. On the other hand, he was considered a little eccentric, and one of his oddities may have lain in this disposition to be friendly with their domestic staff.

On Friday night, July 4, 1862, Jessie had arranged to go round to Sandyford Place and see her friend. They met very frequently: they were as affectionate and easily intimate as two devoted sisters. Jess M’Pherson earned about fourteen pounds a year, but she had her keep above that, and she was always kind and generous to poor ailing and harassed Jessie. She was always giving her things that ‘she would require to buy for herself straight after’; and once when a friend suggested that she should summon Jessie for money still owing for goods from her grocery shop she said ‘never to heed, for Jessie had been to great expense on account of her illness and she’d pay when she got better.’ Jess had stayed three weeks with the M’Lachlans at the time she opened her shop with no question of payment between them; and on one occasion—it would doubtless be while she was working on her own—when she couldn’t pay her baker’s bill, Jessie had pawned some clothes and her husband’s watch to help her; it can’t have been much of a watch, the whole bill was four shillings. Jess, spent much of her meagre off time at the Broomielaw, and Jessie was always in and out of the basement at Sandyford Place. She knew it well, of course; she had lived there herself for two years, and many an evening, especially when the family were away and Jess therefore not so busy, she would go round and spend an hour talking over old times, confiding her own troubles and listening to Jess’s complaints about the old gentleman.

For the joke about Grandpa courting Jess was now growing exceedingly thin. Jess herself had never for one instant entertained the idea, the whole thing had at first amused and now disgusted her; but James Fleming was apparently quite serious, and had been for a long time, and was becoming worse than a nuisance. He half lived in the kitchen and, in her own word, ‘tormented’ her with his attentions. Only a week before she died, when she was walking in the street, a friend, a Mrs Smith, had met her and thought her looking ill and depressed. She confessed that she was both. ‘You don’t know how I’m situated; I have a miserable life of it.’ She couldn’t get rid of the old man, she said, he made excuses to come down to the basement with the newspapers or ‘to make up the sugar and tea’, and she couldn’t be bothered with him any longer; it was making her ill. It wasn’t so bad when the family was at home, but as soon as they left her alone with him it was misery. He wouldn’t let her out of his sight, no one else was allowed into the house, and sooner than let her run round and buy so much as a cabbage he’d go out and get it himself. And she burst out suddenly and violently that he was an old wretch and an old devil.… ‘Why, what has he done to you?’ asked Mrs Smith, horrified and curious. But Jess wouldn’t tell. That there was something to tell she did not conceal, but she couldn’t speak of it in front of Mrs Smith’s husband. She promised to come round the following Sunday and confide it all to her, over a cup of tea.

Several people testified later to the same sort of thing. Though half a dozen ex-servants were found to say they had never seen any signs in the old gentleman of ‘indecency’, most of them agreed that he was interfering and inquisitive and not seldom ‘tipsy’. One young lady who refrained from coming forward could have gone even further; for in the spring of 1852, he being then rising eighty by his present reckoning, he had been suddenly smitten by his conscience and made a voluntary confession to the Moderator and elders of his kirk that he had been guilty of the sin of fornication and had an illegitimate child by one Janet Dunsmore, a domestic servant. He was rebuked and admonished and then all was forgiven; for never had the witnesses seen so striking and edifying a display of remorse.

Miss Dunsmore did not come forward at Jessie’s trial or at the subsequent enquiry, but Mary M’Kinnon, foster-sister of Jess, said again that Jess was tormented by the old man, that he was an old devil; the doorbell couldn’t ring without his poking his head out of his bedroom window, or coming downstairs, to find out what it was about and he was for ever hanging about her kitchen; her heart was broken with him, and when she’d completed this six months’ service she’d give in her notice. And to Elizabeth Halliday, at that time a fellow-servant with her at the house in Dunoon, she had said—as much as three years ago—that he was ‘a nasty body or a dirty body’; she had been left alone with him recently at Dunoon, and Elizabeth got the impression, though it was not openly stated, that he had been behaving indecently. She was surprised when Jess, having left to open her shop and the venture having failed, went back into the service of the Fleming family.

By the summer of 1862, however, Jess had had enough of it. She was seriously thinking—perhaps because her child was there?—of emigrating to Australia.

Jessie had not been round to Sandyford Place for a couple of weeks. The fact of the matter was that she had pawned her cloak. She was, as ever, weighed down by money troubles, and £4 19s in arrears with her rent. She paid 5s a week, quarterly, for her ‘house’ and had to be constantly dunned for it—though dunned may be too hard a word, for the agents obviously liked her and were sorry for her and made things as easy as they could: a kindly fabrication had even been built up allowing her to believe that she had still two months’ grace before she must settle. But the rent was not all; and now even her cloak was in pawn and, though the weather was fine, it was still early in July and, delicate as she was, she could not go out at night without it. She wanted to leave her visit till late: if she went too early the old man would still be up and they couldn’t talk freely before him—last time she and her husband had gone there together, though Jess had taken them into her own room, he followed them there and resolutely sat them out. She would leave it till ten, by which time he should have gone off to bed. But it meant that she must have her cloak. She got hold of Mary Adams, who was in the house that morning doing some washing for the lodger, Mrs Campbell, and asked her to go to the pawn for her. She gave her a dressing glass and told her to ask for six shillings on it, ‘lift’ the cloak out of pawn and come back with the change. So off went Mrs Adams and returned triumphantly with the cloak and one and fourpence ha’penny left over.

Mrs M’Lachlan, thanking her, explained that she wanted the cloak to go round and see Jess, by whom Mary Adams understood Jess M’Pherson, whom she herself knew very well. Nor was she surprised when Mrs M’Lachlan explained that she was going late to try to avoid the old man. And by the way, she added, would Mary Adams drop in on her way home at the locksmith’s at the foot of Carrick Street and ask him to call round for the check key to the front door—it would have to be repaired, the door wouldn’t open from the outside without it, and she didn’t like troubling Mrs Campbell all the time to open it to her. Oh, and could Mrs Adams come in and sit with the child while she was out that evening?—she would only be an hour or so.

Mary Adams agreed, but by half-past nine she had not turned up, nor had the smith arrived. (Mrs Adams had in fact forgotten all about him). Mrs M’Lachlan was not unduly worried by her non-arrival. Mrs Campbell was easy and good-natured and would let her in when she got back from Jess’s, which shouldn’t be later than eleven; and if the boy woke and cried while she was out, would go along and hush him to sleep again. She tucked him up in bed and put on her cloak and began to tie the strings, of her bonnet.…

It was a ‘drab-coloured’ velvet bonnet, a sort of rather dull light brown; and the cloak was light grey. Beneath it she wore a dark brown coberg gown—a fine wool or wool-and-cotton mixture, rather like cashmere—with a trimmed bodice and, round its crinolined skirt, two flounces. It was only her well-worn everyday going-out gown; but within a few days it was to become one of the two most talked about dresses in all England and Scotland. The other was cinnamon coloured trimmed with blue velvet and had no flounces.

As she stood there tying up her bonnet someone knocked at the front door. Mrs Campbell, who was getting ready for bed, went and answered it; her preparations apparently did not include undressing, so no doubt she did not keep the visitors waiting. She probably thought it was her own lodger, the sailor, John Mac-Donald; but it wasn’t, it was a Mrs Fraser, a friend of Jessie’s, with her two children. Mrs Campbell showed them down to the room at the end of the corridor and went and got back into bed.

Jessie was happy enough to see Christina Fraser, but she was already rather pressed for time. A friend’s child was ill and she had been remiss in not enquiring after it and had intended calling in on her way to Sandyford Place. She was rather late already; and besides she had meant to beg a small favour. Her sister Ann was, like Jess, contemplating emigrating to Australia and the sick child’s father, James M’Gregor, was in a position to write her a certificate of good character. However, so was Mrs Fraser, who had known them all from their childhood, and that would do instead. Mrs Fraser was happy to oblige and sat down with pen and paper. But Jessie had no envelopes and she went along to Mrs Campbell’s room and asked if Mrs Campbell’s daughter would mind running round to the post office for her and getting some. (They seem to have kept late hours in the Broomielaw. It was after half-past nine, but a three-year-old child had only just been put to bed, Mrs Fraser with her children was out visiting, far from home, Jessie herself had not yet even started out; and the local post office was still open for the sale of envelopes).

Mrs Campbell was, as we have seen already—fully dressed—in bed. The girl went off for the envelopes and duly came back with them; and meanwhile Mrs M’Lachlan went across to what in fact was the kitchen cupboard and took out an empty glass bottle which belonged to Mrs Campbell. She said nothing to its owner about it, but it was, after all, only an empty bottle and she probably gave no thought as to whose it was. With this in her hand and carrying a little black basket, borrowed from Mrs Campbell, she called to Tommy Fraser and together they went round the corner to a shop in Argyle Street for ‘a dram’ to offer to her guest. A gill and a half of rum was measured out into the bottle, at a cost of sevenpence ha’penny; she would give Mrs Fraser a glass and have a drop with her and then take the rest round to Jess. She bought a few biscuits to go with the rum and, having been out only a few minutes, she and Tommy went back to the house. Mrs Fraser was waiting for them and let them in, not troubling Mrs Campbell again.

Mrs Fraser had meanwhile been struggling with the certificate; but she ‘could not please herself with it’, and indeed we all know the difficulties of writing recommendations of our friends. She suggested at last that she should take it home and think it over, and that Jessie should call the following evening for the finished result. This was agreed to and they drank their rum and had a little gossip, and then it really was time to be going—though the certificate was no longer required of him, Jessie still intended to call in on Mr M’Gregor and ask after his child. So off they went, the four of them together, Jessie carrying the little black basket with the rest of the rum and the biscuits. Mrs Campbell, hearing them go, wondered, no doubt a little ruefully, what time her landlady would be back—Mrs M’Lachlan was always talking about having the check key attended to but it never seemed to get done, and Mrs Campbell would have to get up when she did return and open the door for her. Moreover, her own lodger, MacDonald, wasn’t in yet, and he too would have to be admitted. Perhaps Mrs Campbell had some reason after all for keeping her clothes on when she went to bed.

But as it happened, she was not very much disturbed that night. MacDonald came in at about eleven and went to his room; and from then on Mrs Campbell lay fast asleep.

When she did wake it was to hear Mrs M’Lachlan’s little boy crying. As he did not stop she got up and went along to the end room to find out if anything was wrong. The child was alone. She picked him up and comforted him, gave him ‘a piece’—i.e. something to eat—and put him back to sleep in his mother’s bed: being Mrs Campbell, she first fully dressed him. He went off at once and she returned to her room, but as she went she examined the front door to see that it was still safely locked. It was just as she had left it after admitting her lodger, MacDonald, at eleven.

She glanced out of the window. A bonny clear morning; and the hands of the big clock in the Broomielaw standing at half-past five.

Three and a half hours later Jessie M’Lachlan came home, and now she was wearing, not her own dark brown coberg dress but a cinnamon-coloured merino—which had belonged to Jess.

¹ Washington Street is now largely taken up by the warehouses of a whisky distillery. In wet weather there is a constant drip from the roof. The author stood