In Cave Street, a falsehood did the work of a bolt. For ten days in July 1895, Robert Coombes, aged thirteen, gave out that his mother had departed for Liverpool to settle a matter of inheritance. His brother Nathaniel, aged twelve, repeated the tale to sundry neighbours; John Fox, a friend of the family, lodged in the house, wore the father’s garments, and pledged sundry household articles at the pawnbroker’s. Behind the door of a first-floor bedchamber, Emily Harrison Coombes lay beneath the bedclothes. When it was forced open, the law encountered not a single narrative, but three prisoners answering in diverse capacities for the death of a woman.
The trial opened on September 9th before the Central Criminal Court. The heading of the Old Bailey Proceedings establishes at the outset a decisive distinction: Robert and Nathaniel stood indicted for murder; John Fox, as an accessory after the fact. The prosecution offering no evidence against Nathaniel, the court directed a verdict of not guilty in his favour. The record, following the depositions and subsequent medical testimonies, does not conclude with the ordinary verdict one might have anticipated. One must retrace the days preceding the discovery to measure what was proved and what remained in dispute.
The father, a ship’s steward, had put to sea on Friday, July 5th. A neighbour, Rosina Robertson, observed Emily in good health on Sunday the 7th, between half-past six and half-past eight, upon her doorstep. Her husband encountered the woman towards eight o’clock and spoke with her. The following morning, at a quarter-past six, he met Robert and Nathaniel, and gave the elder two half-sovereigns in exchange for a sovereign. Robert explained that his mother was obliged to travel to Liverpool concerning an estate; when asked whether she had already set out, he answered that she had been taken ill—perhaps with a fit. This neighbourly recollection established the singular nature of the account, though not the precise hour of the deed.
Nathaniel testified at trial that Robert had announced to him, between half-past eight and nine o’clock on the Monday morning, that he had killed their mother. He maintained that he had heard a groan upon glancing into the chamber, without distinctly seeing the body. Robert’s subsequent accounts varied: to his aunt, he stated that he had struck with a knife after rising from his bed; to the police officer, he spoke of a signal given by Nathaniel in the form of two coughs. He asserted further that he had covered the body and gone off to the cricket match at Lord’s. These discrepancies were of moment, yet the record tenders them merely as reported speech; it does not transmute them into an infallible relation of the scene.
Throughout the week, the brothers slept in the parlour on the ground floor, their mother’s room remaining locked. They went abroad together, played, and visited the cricket ground. Several witnesses saw Fox in their company in the yard or about the house, none describing him as a stranger abruptly introduced. Robert obtained an advance of money from the cashier of the steamship company under the pretext that his mother was indisposed; he subsequently dispatched a letter purporting to be a medical certificate. On July 10th, a watch belonging to his father was pledged in Robert’s name; other articles followed. The record does not prove that Fox was then aware of the death. It notes that Robert handed him jewels to pawn, and that Fox explained he had been fetched from a vessel where he was employed at odd jobs.
On Wednesday, July 17th, Emily Coombes, an aunt of the lads bearing the same name, repaired to the house accompanied by a neighbour. Fox opened the door. Robert pretended that his mother was at the lodging of another woman; the aunt insisted upon entering. Within the locked bedchamber, she discovered the body upon the bed. She hastened downstairs and charged Robert with knowing his mother was dead. According to her deposition, he drew her towards him and confessed that he had killed Emily, offering by way of explanation a quarrel over a punishment. Police Constable Robert Thwart recorded in his turn a voluntary statement: Robert accused himself, yet alleged that Nathaniel had bidden him stab their mother following a chastisement. Sergeant Balch took down a second formulation, likewise entered at trial. Thus the confession was damning in its essence, whilst pointing to an accomplice whom the remaining evidence failed to implicate.
Mr. Kennedy, the surgeon, discovered two deep wounds above the heart and concluded they were the cause of death. The knife found by the family upon the bed was capable of inflicting them; it bore marks of blood. Robert had also told his aunt that the weapon lay at the foot of the bed. The officer observed that it was not concealed; by contrast, the entire body remained beneath the counterpane, the face covered by a pillow. These particulars proceeded from different witnesses, each recounting what had met their eyes once the door was forced. The remains were in an advanced state of decomposition and infested with insects; the medical officer observed that the stench must have been present for several days. Yet the Robertson neighbours had perceived neither odour nor disturbance from the room. One of them observed large flies at the casements and explained that he would scarce have distinguished another offensive smell, the adjacent gardens being treated with manure. These depositions could not fix the exact day of death; they showed only the extent to which ordinary life can absorb ominous signs.
The prosecution likewise produced a bloodstained shirt, the pledged watch and trinkets, the money abstracted from the mother’s purse, and the untruthful letters addressed to the father. These objects, the concealment of the body, and Robert’s own admissions formed a formidable chain of evidence. Fox, for his part, denied all knowledge of what had occurred; several neighbours portrayed him as a simple, obliging man, accustomed to odd labor aboard ships and about the household. He was clad in a suit belonging to the father, a circumstance which witnesses attributed to the boys’ doing; he had pawned certain items at Robert’s bidding. The jury acquitted him. This finding does not establish that he was wholly ignorant, but the record affords no warrant for laying the murder at his door.
Robert’s defense rested upon his mental responsibility at the time of the act; it did not dispute the statements wherein he accused himself. The inquiry did not reduce his childhood to a single portrait: his aunt described the mother as kind to him, whereas his father and a neighbour spoke of violent headaches and fits of excitement. At school, several masters had deemed him intelligent and well-behaved; he had left and re-entered diverse establishments, and had worked for a brief space in a shipyard. Dr. Walker, the prison medical officer, reported that the boy spoke of hearing voices commanding him to kill his mother; he noted also unequal pupils, scars upon the temples, and eccentric demeanour. Under cross-examination, however, he conceded that Robert answered with intelligence, that sundry facts were compatible with an intact understanding, and that he could not positively affirm his incapacity at the precise moment of the homicide. The other medical gentlemen relied in part upon the father’s relation; one of them had never witnessed Robert in a state of mania. In the courtroom, a medical hypothesis remained a matter submitted to the jury, not a direct window into the lad’s mind.
The deliberation thus yielded neither a simple acquittal nor capital condemnation. The jury returned a verdict that Robert was “guilty of the act, but being insane at the time”; the judge ordered that he be kept in strict custody at Holloway as a criminal lunatic, until Her Majesty’s pleasure should be known. The Crown having offered no evidence against Nathaniel, the jury had already acquitted him; Fox was likewise discharged. The record breaks off with this adjudication and indicates nothing of his subsequent confinement. It leaves behind an inquiry wherein the deed was fixed upon a child, whilst the condition of his mind, the precise day of the demise, and the extent of Fox’s knowledge remained separate enigmas. A court of law might sever them by its decree; it could not, of itself, resolve them all.