The first object to break the surface of the water was the tip of a boot. A neighbour caught the leather with a boat-hook and drew up a scarlet stocking, presently revealing the corpse of Oliver Norris lying in St. Catherine’s Ditch, hard by the Thames. His throat was cut from ear to ear; his coat and waistcoat were nowhere to be found. On the previous evening, he had been seen beneath the roof of Michael and Katherine Van Berghen. At the trial, every piece of evidence pointed back to that house; yet the confession that ought to have illuminated the whole dark business stood utterly at variance with the physical traces recounted by the witnesses.
On the 24th of June, 1700, Michael Van Berghen, his wife Katherine, and their servant Gerrard Dromelius were placed upon their trial at the Old Bailey for the murder and robbery of Norris. Neighbours related having heard a commotion within the house during the dead of night. In the grey hours of morning, certain persons beheld Michael and Dromelius returning from the direction of the ditch; a candle had flitted from chamber to chamber. When the premises were searched, officers found almost nothing: merely a small smear of blood behind a door, within a room that bore all the marks of a recent and thorough scrubbing.
The trail of Dromelius led across the river. A waterman had ferried him over toward Rotherhithe in possession of a hamper. The men who searched his lodgings there came upon a hat, a periwig, a coat, and a waistcoat belonging to Norris, every piece stiffened with blood. That discovery transformed a disappearance into an enquiry for murder: the victim’s garments had been stripped from him, concealed within a hamper, and carried off into another dwelling.
The Van Berghens’ maidservant described Norris’s final evening. He had entered the house in liquor and sat drinking wine. Toward eleven o’clock, he expressed a desire to return home. Katherine sent the maid out to hire a coach, yet whispered in her ear on no account to bring one back. When the girl returned empty-handed, Norris offered to walk, but soon burst back inside, loudly accusing the household of having picked his pockets. He raised an uproar, demanding satisfaction. Katherine thereupon bade him step into a private room that the matter might be settled. The master, his wife, and Dromelius shut themselves in with him. The maid received orders to go to bed.
Once abed, she heard a violent tumult on the floor below. Katherine presently appeared carrying a candle and took away a hamper. The maid offered to rise, but her mistress commanded her to remain beneath the counterpane. In the morning, the room where she had left Norris had been washed down—a circumstance wholly out of the ordinary. Katherine then set her to scouring a bench near the door, upon which the young woman perceived stains of blood. When she ventured to ask what had become of Norris and Dromelius, she was bade hold her peace: their very lives, she was told, hung upon her silence.
These particulars satisfied the jury, who found all three prisoners guilty of wilful murder. At first, all denied the crime. In the days preceding their execution, Dromelius at length declared that he alone had slain Norris. He claimed he had been escorting him toward the inn where the victim lodged; Norris, he said, had turned aside into an adjacent building and attempted to draw his sword upon Dromelius. The servant professed to have run him through with the weapon, then cut his throat to stifle his groans lest the watch should take alarm.
This confession, however, failed to resolve the contradictions. The Ordinary of Newgate, who ministered to the condemned, pointed out that rain had fallen that night: had they scuffled upon the ground he described, their clothes must have been fouled with mud. Moreover, the wounds upon Norris did not pierce his clothes, which suggested he had been stripped before the fatal blows were struck. Dromelius answered that blood had indeed flowed, though none had marked it, and that he had stopped the gashes with the victim's shirt. This explanation flatly contradicted the witnesses, who had found no visible marks near the spot where the body was taken up.
Dromelius persisted in taking the whole guilt upon his own head. The Ordinary asked what such a tale could now profit him: his master and mistress stood condemned alongside him. He then brought up the man's illicit familiarity with Katherine, warning him of eternal damnation should he persist in falsehood upon the threshold of eternity. According to the account, the servant wept and lamented, acknowledged their carnal intimacy, and wished he had longer to live. Yet he would not alter his story. The divine who sought his confession might urge his salvation; he could not wrest from him the words he desired.
Michael, who possessed little English, answered in Latin, denying that any murder had taken place beneath his roof. He declared that Dromelius had wakened him after the fact, saying he had wounded a man and begging for assistance to fly. Michael maintained he had then given him money to pursue the murderer. Borrow’s narrative casts doubt upon this version, observing that had it been offered at the bar, it might well have served Michael’s cause. Yet this remark is the chronicler’s own; the reader possesses no independent record by which to verify its truth.
Katherine likewise insisted that the murder had not occurred within her walls, and that she had known nothing of it until the deed was done. She conceded, however, that Dromelius had come up to her bedchamber to announce he had killed Norris, whereupon she had fetched the hamper to hold the bloody clothes and assisted him to escape. She protested that she had acted only as was customary in her own country. While this admission incriminated her as an accessory after the fact, it left unanswered the question of what she had known before Norris met his death.
At the place of execution, near the Hartshorn Brewhouse in East Smithfield, the Van Berghens joined in prayer and sought the comfort of ministers from their native land. Dromelius was questioned once more. He reiterated that he had killed Norris unaided, then exhorted the bystanders to shun violent passions. All three were turned off. The bodies of the two men were hung in chains between Mile End and Bow, while Katherine was committed to the earth. The maidservant had spoken of a scrubbed chamber and a command to keep silence. To the last question put to him before he died, the servant clung to a narrative that left both unexplained.