The Ripper's Wife(88)
She took the stand and regaled the crowd with a melodramatic rendering of how she—the heroine of the hour!—had alerted the household to my murderous intentions, rousing the alarm by crying out in turn to Edwin, Michael, and Mrs. Briggs that “the mistress intends to poison the master!” With stage-worthy gestures, Nanny Yapp vividly recounted her discovery of the flypapers soaking in my bedroom, in a washbasin covered with a towel in the hope of concealing my “nefarious intentions,” and how in innocently intending to do a good deed by putting the letter my little girl had soiled by dropping it in a mud puddle into a clean envelope she had inadvertently discovered my adultery—the obvious motive for my crime! She went on to tell how she had been the one to discover the packets of arsenic nesting amidst my underclothes and yet more hidden in the linen closet. “I always knew she was up to no good!” she cried, staring daggers at me before bursting into tears. “Oh, the poor master! The poor, poor master!” she blubbered into her, or rather my, handkerchief; I spied my initials embroidered upon it in sky-blue silk.
Judge Stephen looked like a stage-door johnny wanting to shower Alice Yapp with gems and roses after that performance! He actually told the jury that she was “an exceedingly nice young woman” and that “her courageous act in retaining the letter and handing it to Mr. Edwin Maybrick must be commended.”
When she was asked about any medicine she might have seen Jim taking she was simply aghast. Mr. Maybrick had been “the most godly and temperate man” she ever knew, and she knew for a fact that he was loath to take even a simple cough remedy, preferring to trust Jesus Christ, Our Savior, to save him from any earthly infirmity. BALDERDASH! Not one year ago, my husband had stood right in the middle of the nursery, in full sight of Nanny Yapp’s adoring eyes, and drunk straight from a bottle of cough syrup to prove to the children, who were both sick, that it didn’t taste bad. He ended up drinking the whole bottle right then and there and having to send out for more—for himself and the children!
Mrs. Briggs took the stand in full mourning, replete with a complaisant air that seemed to confirm without actually saying a single word that she always knew something like this would happen from the moment she discovered that Jim had jilted her for me. She behaved as though Jim had been her husband, weeping as she recounted how Nanny Yapp, in a state of wild, weeping despair and frenzy, had met her at the door, crying out, “Thank God you have come, Mrs. Briggs! The mistress is poisoning the master! For God’s sake, go up and see him for yourself!” Wings must have sprouted from her heels, she flew so fast to his side, and found him a mere faint and fading shadow of his former self. She pooh-poohed the “absurd and ridiculous notion” that Mr. Maybrick had been an arsenic eater, then went on to enumerate all my grievous and many faults, harping, for the benefit of the housewives in the audience and all those who judged a woman by her house, on my inept and ill-managed household, my extravagance, shopping sprees, racking up debts that led me into dealings with moneylenders, and then, of course, there was “that business with Mr. Brierley.. . .”
Nurse Gore and the two other nurses who had been in attendance at Battlecrease House also had their little tale to tell, namely how Michael had forbidden me the sickroom and cautioned them to be very vigilant whenever I was near and to report any suspicious behavior on my part promptly to him.
And Mr. Samuelson, whose wife had betrayed him with my husband, took the stand against me to testify to my admission that I often said I hated Jim, taking it totally out of context and turning what I had intended to be an act of genuine kindness against me.
Mr. Schweisso, the headwaiter at Flatman’s Hotel, was the sensation of the sixth day when he was called to give evidence about how I had stayed there with Alfred Brierley, registering the two of us as man and wife—Mr. and Mrs. James Maybrick—and confirming that the two of us had slept in the same room, in the same bed, together.
I had for my defending counsel the flamboyant Irishman Sir Charles Russell, an inveterate gambler with the air of exhaustion clinging to him like a wet cloak despite all his bluff and bluster after mounting a grueling defense of Parnell, the Irish Nationalist fighting a charge of sedition. Russell came at great cost, a retainer of five hundred pounds and an additional one hundred pounds a day, but Mama said he was worth it. He was a most gallant gentleman who from the start viewed me as innocent and the case against me as a house of cards he was determined to topple. “Don’t worry, Mrs. Maybrick; the English have ever loved an underdog,” he said. “The tide may seem against you now, but it will turn in your favor.” He always referred to me as “that friendless lady” and told the jury that it was all very simple; there were just two key points they must consider: (1) Was James Maybrick’s death due to arsenic poisoning? and (2) If so, was that poison administered by his wife?
The gallant Sir Charles did his best to demolish the prosecution’s case and produced several solid, unshakable witnesses who testified in detail to my husband’s hypochondriacal tendencies and long-standing habit of casually taking dangerous medicines, namely strychnine and arsenic. Some witnesses even came all the way from America in the interest of seeing justice done. Sir Charles summoned the black valet who had attended Jim in Virginia and a madam, Mrs. Hogwood, whose brothel Jim had frequented, both of whom testified that they’d been scared to death he would suddenly drop dead on account of the white powder he was always taking and that they might in some way be held accountable. He also had the druggist, Mr. Eaton, whose shop Jim was accustomed to frequenting several times a day for his “pick-me-up” tonic, take the stand and give a detailed account of Jim’s steadily increasing dosages and visits. The druggist even told how once when Jim had gone away on a business trip he had insisted that Mr. Eaton prepare sixteen vials of this tonic for him to take with him just in case he couldn’t find an obliging druggist to cater to his special needs. Sir Charles brought in other doctors to counter the prosecution’s parade of learned medicos, all stating firmly that Jim had most likely died of gastroenteritis, insisting that in reviewing the case as well as the postmortem findings they had found no solid proof of arsenical poisoning, though years of abuse had most certainly taken a toll on his constitution.