Maggie Read Online Free Page A

that for the first time in her life she was free.
    Then the blow had fallen. Mr. Macleod’s doctor, a half blind septuagenarian had been down with the ’flu and his replacement, Dr. Walker, was young and keen. He had refused to sign the death certificate, an autopsy had been performed, and the horrified Maggie had learned that her husband had died of arsenic poisoning.
    That very day, October first, 1908, Maggie Macleod had been arrested and charged with the murder of her husband. It had been the housemaids’ day off and Maggie had made tea for her husband herself. She was examined before Henry Dalzell, Sheriff of Lanarkshire, and then put in prison until she should stand trial.
    Flora Meikle loyally supplied Maggie with nourishing meals which she brought to the prison three times a day. Maggie was allowed to wear her own clothes and have the luxury of proper food until such time as she should be found guilty. For it seemed in no doubt that she would be found guilty.
    Even the housekeeper seemed to think so, adding to Maggie’s torment by supplying her with the daily newspapers which appeared to have condemned her already particularly Murdo Knight of the
Morning Echo
, who described the sinister look on Maggie’s face as she had stared at her husband over the dinner table when he, Murdo, had been a guest. And yet, it was the newspapers that saved Maggie’s sanity. Or rather, sanity of a kind. For Maggie had all at once become convinced that she was going to be hanged for a murder she had not committed, and somehow it seemed only one more piece of injustice in anunjust life. Death began to look attractive. Without hope, Maggie was able to face her fate.
    The fact that there had been no news from her father did not surprise her.
    She was to be defended in court by her chief counsel, Mr. Andrew Byles, Sheriff of Inverness, who broke it to her gently that the police had evidence that a woman of Maggie’s description had purchased arsenic at two apothecary shops in Sauchiehall Street.
    Maggie nodded her head as if not surprised at that either. It seemed inevitable to her that the net should close so tightly about her. Mr. Byles took her through her statement again, regretting that, under Scottish law, Maggie would not be allowed to speak in her own defence. The girl’s sad honesty seemed to be the only thing to help prove her innocence.
    The brougham taking her from the prison to the court jerked to a halt again, jolting Maggie back into the immediate present. The wardresses were discussing the forthcoming trial. They were blessing the fog and hoping they would be able to get their charge quietly into court by the side door, for already there had been rumours that the mob, inflamed by the newspaper stories, were ready to tear her to pieces.
    The dank smell of the River Clyde began to permeate the carriage. They must be near the court now.
    And then Maggie, looking dully out of the window, saw a face staring at her from a carriage window opposite.
    It was a handsome, tanned, rakish face under the shadow of a tall silk hat. As she stared at him, his blue eyes twinkled and he gallantly raised his hat in salute.
    And then the carriage moved on.
    One of the wardresses muttered ‘Masher’ and leaned forward and jerked down the carriage blind.
    Maggie felt her eyes fill with tears. She felt as if someonehad waved to her from some far-away sunny world on the other side of a black pit.
    Then reality closed in and death, literally, stared her in the face.
    Down under the subterranean passages of the court, Maggie could hear the din above her head as people fought for places.
    “Time for us to go,” said one of the wardresses, Mrs. Chisholm. She straightened a fold of Maggie’s dress and then surveyed her critically like a dresser preparing an actress for her stage appearance.
    Maggie had been advised by Flora Meikle to wear her best dress, but Mrs. Chisholm thought Maggie’s afternoon dress of fawn silk trimmed with coarse