Maria never took up her pen. She was well, she was elsewhere, she had written letters that had gone astray, or perhaps her ailing hand prevented her from writing at all: William Corder possessed an explanation for every fresh apprehension. What was wanting, and what her family perpetually awaited, was a single line in her own hand. For months, he occupied the entire expanse between the young woman and those who sought her. He brought them intelligence of which he was likewise the sole guarantor.
In the cottage we picture at the close of one of these visits, Thomas Marten remains standing after Corder’s departure. His wife puts away a teacup whose contents no one has finished. They have promised each other, yet again, to wait; each wonders which of them was the first to accept the visitor's answer. The chair is empty, the door shut fast, and the words of their guest, so reassuring whilst he spoke them, falter before the silence that follows.
The Raiment of Departure
Maria Marten had quitted Polstead on the 18th of May, 1827. Corder was to marry her in Ipswich. To reach a barn known as the Red Barn unobserved, she had donned male attire; she carried her own garments with her, intending to change before continuing their journey. The singular nature of these preparations had not hindered her departure. When a promise has long been deferred, fresh impediments may easily be taken for mere precautions necessary to its fulfilment.
Corder had spoken of a threat of apprehension hanging over Maria on account of her children born out of wedlock. He represented the promised union as a means of removing her from harm’s way. This alleged warrant belongs to his own assertions; it is by no means established here that any such order ever existed. It was enough, however, merely to invoke it to quicken her movements, discourage inquiry, and turn a departure requiring deliberation into an urgent business to be settled before any could intervene.
Maria and William had had a child who died shortly after birth. The circumstances of its burial would later furnish the most damning narratives against Corder; yet no evidence consulted warrants adding the murder of this infant to the crime for which he stood trial. Before the disappearance, there was above all a young woman waiting for a pledge to be redeemed, and a man whose means, standing, and words held out the prospect of a shared household.
The family preserved the memory of the suit, the shoes, and the small effects she had carried away. A comb, a pair of earrings, a straw hat: none of these seemed then destined to occupy a place one day in a court of assize. These objects were meant merely to accompany Maria. They were to return without her, charged with restoring to her a name.
He Who Answered in Her Stead
Corder reappeared. The marriage had encountered an obstacle; the papers required a delay; Maria was lodging with a person whom he named. Later, she was doing well, but her hand would not permit her to write. To other questions came other replies. The narrative published by Curtis in 1828 preserves these successive explanations through the depositions of her kin. Their very variety eventually formed what each, taken separately, was calculated to conceal: the complete absence of any verifiable word.
The man had not vanished immediately after her. He continued to show himself in Polstead, which lent his assurances an air of naturalness. A guilty man, it might be thought, would have taken flight. He traded on that convenient notion that fear must always wear the same guise. He departed afterwards, and letters maintained the bond with the family. Distance allowed him to prolong his pretexts without having to endure their gaze.
In our winter scene, Thomas brings a letter close to the candle. He knows it almost by heart, yet still searches for some passage he might have read too hastily, some clue that might tell him where to address a few lines to his daughter. Ann, Maria’s stepmother, bids him begin anew. They have exhausted the sense; they now scrutinise the manner of its phrasing. The paper, once welcomed as a living presence, becomes an exhibit to be weighed.
Ann Marten related that she had dreamed that Maria lay buried in the barn. Early accounts do not agree upon the number or the precise season of these dreams. In the testimony recorded by Curtis, she places one before Christmas and another after; the Newgate Calendar constructs a sequence of three consecutive nights. The fact material to the inquiry is that she urged her husband to search. Her account of these dreams reflects the recorded disquiet of a mother; it constitutes no proof of supernatural intervention.
Beneath the Barn Floor
In April 1828, Thomas undertook the search. The earth in one quarter of the barn proved looser; upon clearing it away, a body was reached. A shred of cloth first raised the dread that Maria lay there. The identifications that followed rested upon her garments, her personal effects, and certain peculiarities of her teeth. The hope of receiving a letter ceased to give meaning to their vigil. It was now necessary to comprehend what had been done to her.
Officer Lea came upon Corder near Brentford. He had married another woman, a schoolmistress, and was living in circumstances where Maria’s name held no place. According to the early chronicle, the officer presented himself under the pretext of seeking a boarding school for his daughter in order to gain entrance to the house. There were thus two families between whom Corder had divided two different lives, and each was to learn of the other’s existence through an arrest.
He was conveyed back to Suffolk. His explanations, which had circulated for months without meeting a contradictor, were now confronted with a corpse and with witnesses. The trial opened at Bury St Edmunds in August. The crowd was eager to hear the matter; it already had its convictions, its images, and its shuddering thrills. Those who had known Maria were obliged, amidst this vulgar curiosity, to resume the far barer and far more precise recital of a departure whose every detail they remembered.
Ann identified the comb and the earrings. The judge asked to inspect the latter, satisfying himself that they formed a pair. The neckerchiefs, the shoes, fragments of apparel were submitted in turn to questioning. Curtis records the anguish of the family during this examination. The gown that had been prepared for another day returned in shreds, tendered to strangers who were to extract evidence from it. For her kin, knowing to a certainty what Maria had worn had become an added ordeal.
The Final Account
Corder contended at first that Maria had taken her own life following an altercation. He asserted that he had found her dead upon returning to the barn and had concealed the body for fear of being accused. This defence admitted the burial whilst attempting to sever the man who had interred her from the one who was alleged to have inflicted death. The decisive act was thus ascribed to the young woman by the sole survivor of the encounter; his deceitful letters became, in his telling, merely the consequences of panic.
The jury rejected this explanation. Corder was convicted. Prior to his execution, he admitted having fired upon her, though he still described a struggle in the course of which the weapon was discharged by his hand. This confession does not substantiate the entire sequence of events he offered, nor does it establish any responsibility on Maria’s part for her own death. It altered, above all, one capital point: the man who had spoken of suicide now acknowledged himself to be the author of the shot.
He was hanged on the 11th of August, 1828. The case became a public spectacle, a traffic in broadsides and relics, a tale that strangers fancied they knew because they had heard tell of the barn and the dreams. The violence done to Maria ran the risk of vanishing behind the singularity of her discovery. The name of the murderer and the place were readily retained; it was far less easy to picture those long months during which a family had been kept from the truth.
In our final scene, Ann comes upon a scrap of paper left beside the light. Thomas no longer needs to re-read Corder’s letters to seek his daughter within their lines. She gathers them up without opening a single sheet, then withdraws from the packet the one that bore the most definite promise of a return. A space remains upon the table, just broad enough to lay down a comb. Maria knew how to write; through all that time, it was another who had spoken in her name.