Heaven Knows Who by Christianna Brand Read Free Book Online Page B

rubbing, said Mary, to rub it off; and the old man had given her a piece of white flannel like as if it had been torn off a semmet and also a bucket with an iron handle, full of water and he had said, ‘Scrub it well, my girl.’ It was old Mr Fleming, she knew him well, for many a time she had seen him and run off to hide from him when she was going to see Jessie; she was feared to let him see her go in, in case he might object to it. Having satisfied her own curiosity, Mrs Brown told her in future to hold her tongue and not be blethering about things she had no right to. Mary, however, could not resist confiding in a girl called Bella Beveridge, and faithless Bella told a policeman and Mary was hauled up to tell it all again, before the Sheriff. So that’s what comes of blethering when your mother tells you not to.
    Old Fleming had spent much of his life in Anderston, a ward or district of Glasgow, first as a hand-loom weaver and later as a small manufacturer, making damask cloth and shawls. In his old age, his son, the prosperous accountant, had arranged a little job for him—presumably largely to keep him out of mischief, in which case he was not entirely successful—pottering about,collecting small weekly rents. (The properties were old and decayed, John Fleming cheerfully admitted—they were not his properties. They were generally high houses with common stairs and the tenants did not stay long—not so much from dissatisfaction with their surroundings, however, as from an inability to keep up with the rent. They were mostly in the lower part of the town, about the Old Wynd—a very good name for Fleming, senior; one at least was in the Broomielaw, where poor Jessie M’Lachlan also had her dwelling). For this work he was paid forty pounds a year and at the time of the murder he had 150 pounds in one bank which he had not touched for some considerable time, and thirty pounds in another, to which he was gradually adding. Those who did business with him had no complaint to make as to his mental faculties.
    As we know, Mr Fleming was up on the Saturday betimes, to announce that he ‘was for nae milk.’ Some time later that day he turned up at John Fleming’s office, or counting-house, in St Vincent Place and remained about half an hour there. He said nothing about Jess to anyone in the office.
    Elizabeth Brownlie was servant to Mr Stewart, the jeweller who lived next door at No. 16 and had heard the scream in the night. The family having gone off that day to their summer residence, she had had in a friend to keep her company that evening—like Sarah Adams, a little girl of twelve years old—who had finally stayed overnight. It seems likely that they slept in the small back room, corresponding to the room where old Mr Fleming kept his wardrobe—the lay-out of the houses was the same. The room where Jess slept was in fact the laundry; the back room was probably intended for the servant’s bedroom but owing to young John’s having to share a bedroom with him, Grandpa’s possessions overflowed from the ground floor to the basement and poor Jess was crowded out. (There was a shed at the back of the garden known as the ‘wash-house’—but there was still a mangle in Jessie’s room and one doctor at least recognised it as really a laundry and referred to it as such throughout). If we suppose that at No. 16 Elizabeth retained her rights, she would be using the back room, therefore, overlooking the garden; and would have only the party wall between herself and the Flemings’ kitchen. Through this wall you could hear, for example, a coal being broken in the kitchen—the hearth was upagainst this wall. But that night Elizabeth and the child heard nothing.
    Elizabeth knew Jess to speak to and was acquainted with Mr Fleming—the tiresome old man was always snooping on the servant girls next door and Jess had confirmed that he knew everything