The Ripper's Wife(87)

From the start Judge Stephen displayed a shocking prejudice against me, describing my late husband as a man “unhappy enough to have an unfaithful wife” and using words like adulterous intrigue every chance he got. Every single time he addressed the jury he seemed more concerned with my infidelity than whether the evidence presented was truly sufficient to convict me of murder. In truth, he seemed quite bored with that, though given the dry, ponderous nature of the medical testimony I could hardly blame him. There were moments when those doctors and scientists were on the stand when I could hardly keep my eyes open and was grateful to my heavy black veil for hiding my yawns. Time and again Justice Stephen would swat the medical arguments aside like a bothersome fly, commenting on their complexity and declaring them too difficult for his mind to grasp, and draw the jury’s attention back to my adultery. He seemed to particularly relish the reading aloud of my love letters and the testimony of those witnesses brought in to provide proof of my illicit trysts. Like a Bible-banging zealot he saw in me the reincarnation of all the evil women of history—Eve, Delilah, Jezebel, Salome, Agrippina, Cleopatra, Messalina, Catherine de Medici, and Lucrezia Borgia, to name just a few he cited in his apparent passion for the subject.

There was a lengthy parade of scientific witnesses largely consisting of bickering doctors. I wondered even if you could get them all to agree to the sky being blue if they would fight one another like tigers over the precise hue; I could picture them coming to verbal blows over celestial versus cerulean. The tide seemed to be turning unexpectedly in my favor when a Mr. Davies who was an analytical chemist, brought in by the prosecution no less, admitted that the traces of arsenic found in Jim’s organs were too slight to be measured and insufficient to cause the death of a normal person, let alone a habitual arsenic eater like James Maybrick was said to have been. But then a Dr. Stevenson, an esteemed toxicologist, took the stand and spoke with such a resounding air of authority when he declared, “I have no doubts that this man died from the effects of arsenic,” that the jury could not fail to be impressed.

Michael was there every day, staring at me, smiling like the cat that got the canary, and stroking his gold Mason’s ring. When he was called to the stand he emphatically declared that Jim was not a person given to dosing himself with medicines. Michael recounted Nurse Gore’s tale of my tampering with the bottle of Valentine’s Meat Juice, claiming “my brother grew gradually worse from that time on.” When queried about Jim’s habitual use of arsenic, Michael briefly lost his composure, sitting forward with his fists clenched. “Whoever told you that is a damned liar!” he said, his eyes daring anyone to disagree. “They should think of my brother’s children before uttering such rubbish!”

Then it was Edwin’s turn. He admitted that he was “very fond of Florence, and I would never have believed anything wrong about her . . . until a letter to a man was found. . . .” Judge Stephen loved that! He was actually leaning over, nodding encouragingly at Edwin, almost begging for more, and Edwin, his pride still smarting, eagerly acquiesced. Following in Michael’s footsteps, Edwin feigned ignorance about Jim’s use of drugs, which he knew to be habitual; standing over what turned out to be Jim’s deathbed he had blamed his brother’s sad and sorry state on those “damn strychnine pills; he’s been taking them like candy!” Edwin sat there, after laying his hand on the Holy Bible and swearing to tell the truth, insisting that “on the whole my brother enjoyed very good health and only occasionally took digestive remedies as prescribed by his physician.” There was a moment of comedy when Edwin sought to mop his sweat-beaded brow in the sweltering courtroom and drew out a whole string of rainbow silk handkerchiefs and couldn’t quite manage to cram them all back into his pocket, so that when he exited the stand they were trailing behind him like the tail of a kite. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been crying.

Then the servants had their moment to bask in the sun of fame or infamy, call it what you will. They got to see their names and pictures in the newspapers, souvenirs to save for their grandchildren. Everything I had ever done suddenly seemed sinister and suspect to them in hindsight and they tattled and prattled on endlessly about my ineptly run household and the occasionally violent quarrels between the master and mistress, the cause of which was, no doubt, some grievous fault of mine, since it was quite obvious by this point that James Maybrick had been a saint. I was expecting Judge Stephen to usurp the Pope’s authority and canonize Jim at any moment. Jim and I got along like a house on fire in our passion and our fury. There was no denying that; even I would have admitted it if anyone had ever asked. Mr. Maybrick, each and every one of our servants avowed, had been the best and kindest master and gentleman it had been their pleasure to serve; he was one of the finest men who ever lived. And it hurt all their hearts to see how Mrs. Maybrick, to save her own skin, was trying to paint a picture of this goodly and godly Christian gentleman as some kind of drug fiend. They were simply appalled when my counsel dared to bring up the fact that Jim had a mistress and five bastard children to try to balance the scales when everyone knew it was different for men and what was good for the gander wasn’t necessarily appropriate behavior for the goose. Oh, what hypocrites!

Next Nanny Yapp came flouncing up the center aisle, for all the world like a Floradora girl—a blind Floradora girl, since she had forsaken her spectacles for this performance. She was wearing one of my dresses, custard-yellow satin trimmed with rows of black velvet bows and black lace flounces, with stuffed canary birds perched amongst frills of black lace on her—my!—hat, twirling her—my!—parasol like a flirtatious belle promenading in the park trying to catch a gentleman’s eye. I could just hear her in my mind again singing, While strolling through the park one day, in the merry, merry month of May . . .