Two further actors now come upon the scene. And for the proper grasping
of events we must go back an hour or two in time to notice their
activities.
They are a Mr Gehagan, a young Irish barrister, and a friend of his
named Kerrel.[18] These young men occupy chambers on opposite sides
of the same landing, the third floor, over the Alienation Office in
Tanfield Court.
Mr Gehagan was one of Sarah Malcolm's employers. That Sunday morning at
nine she had appeared in his rooms to do them up and to light the fire.
While Gehagan was talking to Sarah he was joined by his friend Kerrel,
who offered to stand him some tea. Sarah was given a shilling and sent
out to buy tea. She returned and made the brew, then remained about
the chambers until the horn blew, as was then the Temple custom, for
commons. The two young men departed. After commons they walked for a
while in the Temple Gardens, then returned to Tanfield Court.
By this time the crowd attracted by the murder was blocking up the
court, and Gehagan asked what was the matter. He was told of the murder,
and he remarked to Kerrel that the old lady had been their charwoman's
acquaintance.
The two friends then made their way to a coffee-house in Covent Garden.
There was some talk there of the murder, and the theory was advanced by
some one that it could have been done only by some laundress who knew
the chambers and how to get in and out of them. From Covent Garden,
towards night, Gehagan and Kerrel went to a tavern in Essex Street, and
there they stayed carousing until one o'clock in the morning, when they
left for the Temple. They were not a little astonished on reaching their
common landing to find Kerrel's door open, a fire burning in the
grate of his room, and a candle on the table. By the fire, with a dark
riding-hood about her head, was Sarah Malcolm. To Kerrel's natural
question of what she was doing there at such an unearthly hour she
muttered something about having things to collect. Kerrel then,
reminding her that Mrs Duncomb had been her acquaintance, asked her if
anyone had been "taken up" for the murder.
"That Mr Knight," Sarah replied, "who has chambers under her, has been
absent two or three days. He is suspected."
"Well," said Kerrel, remembering the theory put forward in the
coffee-house, and made suspicious by her presence at that strange hour,
"nobody that was acquainted with Mrs Duncomb is wanted here until the
murderer is discovered. Look out your things, therefore, and begone!"
Kerrel's suspicion thickened, and he asked his friend to run downstairs
and call up the watch. Gehagan ran down, but found difficulty in opening
the door below, and had to return. Kerrel himself went down then, and
came back with two watchmen. They found Sarah in the bedroom at a chest
of drawers, in which she was turning over some linen that she claimed
to be hers. The now completely suspicious Kerrel went to his closet, and
noticed that two or three waistcoats were missing from a portmanteau.
He asked Sarah where they were; upon which Sarah, with an eye to the
watchmen and to Gehagan, begged to be allowed to speak with him alone.
Kerrel refused, saying he could have no business with her that was
secret.
Sarah then confessed that she had pawned the missing waistcoats for two
guineas, and begged him not to be angry. Kerrel asked her why she had
not asked him for money. He could readily forgive her for pawning the
waistcoats, but, having heard her talk of Mrs Lydia Duncomb, he was
afraid she was concerned with the murder. A pair of earrings were found
in the drawers, and these Sarah claimed, putting them in her corsage. An
odd-looking bundle in the closet then attracted Kerrel's attention, and
he kicked it, and asked Sarah what it was. She said it was merely dirty
linen wrapped up in an old gown. She did not wish it exposed. Kerrel
made further search, and found that other things were missing. He told
the watch to take the woman and hold her strictly.
Sarah was led away. Kerrel, now thoroughly roused, continued his search,
and he found underneath his bed another bundle. He also came upon some
bloodstained linen in another place, and in a close-stool a silver
tankard, upon the handle of which was a lot of dried blood.
Kerrel's excitement passed to Gehagan, and the two of them went at
speed downstairs yelling for the watch. After a little the two watchmen
reappeared, but without Sarah. They had let her go, they said, because
they had found nothing on her, and, besides, she had not been charged
before a constable.
One here comes upon a recital by the watchmen which reveals the
extraordinary slackness in dealing with suspect persons that
characterized the guardians of the peace in London in those times. They
had let the woman go, but she had come back. Her home was in Shoreditch,
she said, and rather than walk all that way on a cold and boisterous
night she had wanted to sit up in the watch-house. The watchmen refused
to let her do this, but ordered her to "go about her business," advising
her sternly at the same time to turn up again by ten o'clock in the
morning. Sarah had given her word, and had gone away.
On hearing this story Kerrel became very angry, threatening the two
watchmen, Hughes and Mastreter, with Newgate if they did not pick her
up again immediately. Upon this the watchmen scurried off as quickly as
their age and the cumbrous nature of their clothing would let them.
They found Sarah in the company of two other watchmen at the gate of
the Temple. Hughes, as a means of persuading her to go with them more
easily, told her that Kerrel wanted to speak with her, and that he was
not angry any longer. Presently, in Tanfield Court, they came on the two
young men carrying the tankard and the bloodied linen. This time it was
Gehagan who did the talking. He accused Sarah furiously, showing her the
tankard. Sarah attempted to wipe the blood off the tankard handle with
her apron. Gehagan stopped her.
Sarah said the tankard was her own. Her mother had given it her, and she
had had it for five years. It was to get the tankard out of pawn that
she had taken Kerrel's waistcoats, needing thirty shillings. The blood
on the handle was due to her having pricked a finger.
With this began the series of lies Sarah Malcolm put up in her defence.
She was hauled into the watchman's box and more thoroughly searched. A
green silk purse containing twenty-one guineas was found in the bosom of
her dress. This purse Sarah declared she had found in the street, and as
an excuse for its cleanliness, unlikely with the streets as foul as they
were at that age and time of year, said she had washed it. Both bundles
of linen were bloodstained. There was some doubt as to the identity of
the green purse. Mrs Rhymer, who, as we have seen, was likelier than
anyone to recognize it, would not swear it was the green purse that had
been in Mrs Duncomb's black box. There was, however, no doubt at all
about the tankard. It had the initials "C. D." engraved upon it, and
was at once identified as Mrs Duncomb's. The linen which Sarah had
been handling in Mr Kerrel's drawer was said to be darned in a way
recognizable as Mrs Duncomb's. It had lain beside the tankard and the
money in the black box.