My name, in those days, was Susan Trinder. Now those days all came to an end.
The police took every one of us, save Dainty. They took us, a us in gaol while they tore up the Lant Street kit, looking for clues, for stashes of money and poke. They kept us in separate cells, and every day they came and asked the same set of questions.
What was the murdered man, to you?
I said he was a friend of Mrs Sucksbys.
Been long, at Lant Street?
I said I was born there.
What did you see, on the night of the crime?
Here, however, I always stumbled. Sometimes it seemed to me that I had seen Maud take up the knife; sometimes I even seemed to remember seeing her use it. I know I saw her touch the table-top, I know I saw the glitter of the blade. I know she stepped away as Gentleman started to stagger. But Mrs Sucksby had been there,
too, she had moved as quick as anyone; and sometimes I thought it was her hand I remembered seeing dart and flash ... At last I told the simple truth: that I did not know what I had seen. It didnt matter, anyway. They had John Vrooms word, and Mrs Sucksbys own fession. They didnt need me. On the fourth day after they took us, they let me go.
The others they kept longer.
Mr Ibbs was brought before the magistrate first. His trial lasted half-an-hour. He was done, after all, not on at of the poke left lying about the kit—he was too good at taking the seals and stampings off, for that—but for the sake of some of the notes in his cigarette box. They were marked ohe police, it turned out, had been watg the business at Mr Ibbss shop, for more than a month; and in the end they had got Phil—who, you might remember, had sworn hed never do aerm in gaol, at any cost—to plant the marked notes on him. Mr Ibbs was found to have haolen goods: he was sent to Pentonville. Of course, he knew many of the men in there, and might be supposed to have had an easy time among them—except that, here was a funny thing: the fingersmiths and cracksmen who had been so grateful to get ara shilling from him oside, now quite turned against him; and I think his time was very miserable. I went to visit him, a week after he went in. He saw me, and put his hands before his face, and was in general so ged and sht down, and looked at me so queerly, I could not bear it. I didnt go again.
His sister, poor thing, was found by the poli her bed at Lant Street, while they were going through the house. We had all fotten her. She ut on the ward of a parish hospital. The move, however, was too great a shock for her; and she died.
John Vroom could not be pio any crime, save—through his coat—to that old one of dog-stealing. He was let off with six nights in Tothill Fields, and a flogging. They say he was so disliked in his gaol, the keepers played cards for who should be the oo flog him; that they flung in one or two extras above his twelve, for fun; and that after, he cried like a baby. Dainty met him at the prison
gate, and he punched her and blacked her eye. It was thanks to him, though, that she had got off from Lant Street.
I never spoke to him agaiook a room for him and Dainty in another house, a out of my way. I saw him, only once; and that was in the court-room, at Mrs Sucksbys trial.
The trial came up very quick. I spent the nights before it at Lant Street, lying awake in my old bed; sometimes Dainty came back, to sleep beside me and keep me pany. She was the only one, out