Free The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale Page B

say to him?’ continued the magistrate. ‘Did you ask him to do it?’
    â€˜Please, sir. I said, “Are you going to do it?”’
    Here Stephenson, the prosecutor, interjected: ‘Was he the first to speak about doing it, or were you?’
    Nattie continued to avoid the question. ‘He said he had bought a knife, and was going home to do it. It was not this knife here. It was one like what we use for dinner. He said, “There is a knife just by the Barking Road that will do it.”’ It seemed that Robert had bought two knives: an ordinary kitchen knife, which he had told Nattie about when they were both out of the house one day; and then the dagger-like knife from Mrs Brecht’s shop, which he showed his brother back at Cave Road.
    None of the lawyers pressed Nattie on whether it was he who had urged Robert to kill their mother on the weekend of her death.
    Baggallay asked: ‘When your brother came in to the room, as you say, early in the morning and told you, what did you do after that?’
    â€˜He said, “Come and look if you don’t believe me.”’ Again gasps of horror ran round the courtroom.
    â€˜Did you go and look?’
    â€˜Yes; but I never went close to the bed. I went into the room and looked and heard a groan, and then I went back to bed again.’
    If Nattie had heard his mother groaning in her bed, Dr Kennedy had been wrong to tell the coroner that Emily Coombes’s death was instantaneous.
    â€˜Did you go at all after that and look at your mother?’
    â€˜About twice.’
    â€˜How many days afterwards?’
    â€˜I think it was on the Wednesday and Thursday.’
    â€˜On that morning did you two boys go out?’
    â€˜Yes; we went to Lord’s Cricket Ground.’
    â€˜Had you any money?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Where did you get it from?’
    â€˜She had some in her dress.’
    â€˜Who had?’
    â€˜My mother.’
    â€˜Did you take it?’
    â€˜No; Robert got it out. I saw him take it. He brought the dress into my room and there took the money out.’ This was the dress that Emily had taken off the previous night, before going to bed in her underclothes.
    â€˜Did you see the money box? Who broke that open?’
    â€˜That was broke open a long time ago.’ Nattie did not specify that it was he and Robert who had smashed it open, before running away to Liverpool together a year or two earlier.
    â€˜When did John Fox come to the house?’
    â€˜He came on the Wednesday afternoon.’
    â€˜Now, when you went upstairs on the Wednesday and Thursday did you go alone?’
    â€˜No, my brother went up with me.’
    â€˜Anyone else?’
    â€˜John Fox went up to make the bed.’
    â€˜Did he go into the front room?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Was anything said between you and Fox about your mother?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Did he ask about your mother?’
    â€˜He asked my brother where she had gone, and he said she had gone to Liverpool.’
    â€˜Did he ask any more questions?’
    â€˜No, sir.’
    Stephenson asked Nattie when the unpleasant smell in the front bedroom had first become apparent.
    â€˜There was a bad smell in the house when I opened the door. That was going on for a long time before my aunt came, but Fox did not say anything about it.’
    Baggallay asked Nattie if he had seen Robert write the letters to his father and to the
Evening News
. Nattie said that he had.
    Sharman then submitted questions on Fox’s behalf. These were put to Nattie by Baggallay, since he had established a rapport with the boy. In reply, Nattie confirmed that the two boys went together to fetch Fox and that they did not tell him that their mother was dead.
    Nattie was dismissed, and Guy Stephenson said that this closed his case.
    Sharman addressed the magistrate. ‘I submit that there is no evidence to show that Fox knew of the terrible