Waxwork Read Free Page A

returned.

FRIDAY, 8th JUNE
    T HE TRIAL ITSELF OPENED on a morning of overcast sky and heavy rain. The chandeliers were turned up in Number One Court at 10 a.m. The ushers opened the doors of the public gallery and it filled in little more than a minute, the jewellery in the gaslight confirming that it was still a fashionable occasion, even if the confession had removed the uncertainty over the outcome.
    The call to rise came at 10.35 a.m. Mr Justice Colbeck was wearing the ermine-trimmed scarlet robe of the Queen’s Bench Division. He carried a pair of white gloves in his left hand and a piece of black material in his right. Without looking up, he deposited them on the bench beside the small posy of flowers to his right. Then he drew his robe forward and took his seat under the sword of justice. The court settled again.
    The prisoner was called to the bar.
    All week the illustrated newspapers had supplied their readers with artists’ ‘impressions’ of Miriam Cromer. They were strikingly at one with each other. And with the faces of the young women advertising Pear’s, Cadbury’s and Eno’s.
    People craned for a view of the woman as she was. Flanked by two wardresses, she mounted the steps from the passage under the dock a few minutes before the judge’s procession entered. Those seated nearest had heard the click of the dock-handle, but the prisoner had been kept well back, obscured in a group that included the keeper of Newgate Prison, the chaplain and a doctor. Now the wardresses steered her to the front.
    She faced the judge without gripping the rail, a slight figure in that vast dock.
    She was wearing black, as was customary. Her clothes were fashionable, even so: a zouave jacket in velvet over an Ottoman silk gown with jockey sleeves and jet fastenings. The line of the skirt was augmented dramatically by a crinolette, a bustle worn low in the latest style. She was not veiled. The crownless velvet toque high on her head accented the honey colour of her hair in the artificial light. It was styled of necessity in a simple fashion, drawn back severely to a chignon.
    Her features, profiled against the dark panelling, betrayed no anguish. Rather she seemed to repudiate sympathy in the way she held her head so that her throat and jaw formed an angle as sharp as the outline of the dock. Her lips curved naturally in a shape that could have been taken for the start of a smile if it were not corrected by the slight contraction of muscles in her cheek, dignifying the expression. Her skin was smooth and very pale. She had a fine nose, delicate, arched eyebrows and a high, intelligent brow. What ambushed the expectations of the packed court were the eyes of the accused woman—eyes, the least susceptible of all the features to the pens of newspaper illustrators. Hers held no shame. Almost violet in their blueness and dark-edged from weeks in prison cells, those eyes were unforgettable. Dignified, resolute and steady.
    So steady.
    There was an air of suspended animation about her, giving her the look of a figure in wax.
    The indictment was read: ‘Miriam Jane Cromer, you stand charged with having at Kew in the County of Surrey on the twelfth of March, 1888, wilfully and with malice aforethought, killed and murdered one Josiah Perceval. How say you: are you Guilty or Not Guilty?’
    She answered clearly and without hesitation, ‘Guilty.’
    At the request of the judge, the Attorney-General, representing the Crown, made a statement summarising the facts of the case, showing how the evidence substantiated the confession of the accused.
    Counsel for the Defence, Mr Michael Gaskell, Q.C., then rose to say, ‘My lord, the prisoner wishes to inform the court that she alone is guilty of this crime. In affirming her readiness to atone for her guilt, she asks that consideration be given in judgment to the painful and insupportable circumstances that induced her to perpetrate the