Gallows End

Chapter 3

AS GENTLE A SOUL AS EVER WALKED THIS EARTH‘Mildred, can you tell me what you saw and heard,’ Yarrow asked Ethel’s neighbour, a plump woman wearing a faded summer dress, a pinafore and her hair tied back under a flowery scarf as a sobbing Mary Palmer clung to her skirts. Four more Palmer children were being comforted by other neighbours and the street outside was packed with a gawping crowd, mostly women, who had gathered in a nosey, noisy crowd of onlookers as two uniformed police tried, vainly, to keep them back.

‘Well, I can’t say that I saw owt at all, I don’t know what went on in the house, didn’t see none of that, I mean, how could I?’

‘That’s all right, Mildred, just tell us what you can, doesn’t matter if you think it unimportant, everything, however small, will help us.’

‘Well, I saw Jack come from the pub, he had face on him like thunder, and I thought, aye-aye, there’ll be trouble now.’

‘Why did you think that?’

‘Because there’s always trouble when that man comes back from the pub and poor Ethel and the kids are the ones as suffer,’ Mildred said bitterly. ‘He’s an animal and I pray that he’ll be hanged for what he’s done.’

‘We don’t know for certain that it was Jack Palmer, do we?’ Yarrow said gently. He had no doubts himself that Jack Palmer had beaten Ethel to death, but by saying he had doubts, he hoped to encourage Mildred to say more, to use her anger and indignation to extract as much information as he could from her.

‘Well, who else could it have been but that bastard, excuse my language, that man Jack Palmer? He comes back from the pub with a face on, soon as he’s in that house there’s screaming and shouting and less than three minutes later he stamps out the house with blood on his hands.’

‘He had blood on his hands, you saw blood on his hands, you’re certain about that?’ Marcus Harding asked, the first time he had spoken during the interview.

‘As certain as I am that the sun will rise tomorrow morning.’

‘And you’ll testify to that in court?’ Yarrow asked.

‘You just try and stop me,’

‘Good, and then what?’

‘I saw Jack leaving the house and then I heard poor Mary here crying and sobbing, saying Mam, Mam, Mam, so I went round, saw poor Ethel lying on the floor and this poor mite sobbing and crying,’ giving the child a brief hug as she spoke,’ so I ran to Vera’s house, Vera McDonald at number 16, telling her to run down to the phone box on the corner and call the police. Then I went back and brought poor Mary and the other kids in here, wee kiddies should not have to see their Mam like that, it’ll scar them for life.’

‘Thank you, Mildred, you’ve been most helpful.’

‘Just catch the brute, that’s all I ask. Catch the brute and get him hung for what he done to poor Ethel, as gentle a soul as ever walked this earth,’