Sarah was a fairly well-educated girl. At the ale-house, however, she formed an acquaintance with a woman named Mary Tracey, a dissolute character, and with two thieves called Alexander. Of these three disreputable people we shall be hearing presently, for Sarah tried to implicate them in this crime which she certainly committed alone. It is said that the Newgate officers recognized Sarah on her arrival. She had often been to the prison to visit an Irish thief, convicted for stealing the pack of a Scots pedlar.
It will be seen from Sarah's own defence how she tried to implicate Tracey and the two Alexanders:
"I freely own that my crimes deserve death; I own that I was accessory to the robbery, but I was innocent of the murder, and will give an account of the whole affair.
"I lived with Mrs Lydia Duncomb about three months before she was murdered. The robbery was contrived by Mary Tracey, who is now in confinement, and myself, my own vicious inclinations agreeing with hers. We likewise proposed to rob Mr Oakes in Thames Street. She came to me at my master's, Mr Kerrel's chambers, on the Sunday before the murder was committed; he not being then at home, we talked about robbing Mrs Duncomb. I told her I could not pretend to do it by myself, for I should be found out. 'No,' says she, 'there are the two Alexanders will help us.' Next day I had seventeen pounds sent me out of the country, which I left in Mr Kerrel's drawers. I met them all in Cheapside the following Friday, and we agreed on the next night, and so parted.
"Next day, being Saturday, I went between seven and eight in the evening to see Mrs Duncomb's maid, Elizabeth Harrison, who was very bad. I stayed a little while with her, and went down, and Mary Tracey and the two Alexanders came to me about ten o'clock, according to appointment."
On this statement the whole implication of Tracey and the Alexanders by Sarah stands or falls. It falls for the reason that the Temple porter had seen no stranger pass the gate that night, nobody but Templars going to their chambers. The one fact riddles the rest of Sarah's statement in defence, but, as it is somewhat of a masterpiece in lying invention, I shall continue to quote it. "Mary Tracey would have gone about the robbery just then, but I said it was too soon. Between ten and eleven she said, 'We can do it now.' I told her I would go and see, and so went upstairs, and they followed me. I met the young maid on the stairs with a blue mug; she was going for some milk to make a sack posset. She asked me who were those that came after me. I told her they were people going to Mr Knight's below. As soon as she was gone I said to Mary Tracey, 'Now do you and Tom Alexander go down. I know the door is ajar, because the old maid is ill, and can't get up to let the young maid in when she comes back.' Upon that, James Alexander, by my order, went in and hid himself under the bed; and as I was going down myself I met the young maid coming up again. She asked me if I spoke to Mrs Betty. I told her no; though I should have told her otherwise, but only that I was afraid she might say something to Mrs Betty about me, and Mrs Betty might tell her I had not been there, and so they might have a suspicion of me."
There is a possibility that this part of her confession, the tale of having met the young maid, Nanny, may be true.[21] And here may the truth of the murder be hidden away. Very likely it is, indeed, that Sarah encountered the girl going out with the blue mug for milk to make a sack posset, and she may have slipped in by the open door to hide under the bed until the moment was ripe for her terrible intention. On the other hand, if there is truth in the tale of her encountering the girl again as she returned with the milk—and her cunning in answering "no" to the maid's query if she had seen Mrs Betty has the real ring—other ways of getting an entry were open to her. We know that the lock of the vacant chambers opposite Mrs Duncomb's would have yielded to small manipulation. It is not at all unlikely that Sarah, having been charwoman to the old lady, and with the propensities picked up from her Shoreditch acquaintances, had made herself familiar with the locks on the landing. So that she may have waited her hour in the empty rooms, and have got into Mrs Duncomb's by the same method used by Mrs Oliphant after the murder. She may even have slipped back the spring-catch of the outer door. One account of the murder suggests that she may have asked Ann Price, on one pretext or other, to let her share her bed. It certainly was not beyond the callousness of Sarah Malcolm to have chosen this method, murdering the girl in her sleep, and then going on to finish off the two helpless old women.
The truth, as I have said, lies hidden in this extraordinarily mendacious confection. Liars of Sarah's quality are apt to base their fabrications on a structure, however slight, of truth. I continue with the confession, then, for what the reader may get out of it.
"I passed her [Nanny Price] and went down, and spoke with Tracey and Alexander, and then went to my master's chambers, and stirred up the fire. I stayed about a quarter of an hour, and when I came back I saw Tracey and Tom Alexander sitting on Mrs Duncomb's stairs, and I sat down with them. At twelve o'clock we heard some people walking, and by and by Mr Knight came home, went to his room, and shut the door. It was a very stormy night; there was hardly anybody stirring abroad, and the watchmen kept up close, except just when they cried the hour. At two o'clock another gentleman came, and called the watch to light his candle, upon which I went farther upstairs, and soon after this I heard Mrs Duncomb's door open; James Alexander came out, and said, 'Now is the time.' Then Mary Tracey and Thomas Alexander went in, but I stayed upon the stair to watch. I had told them where Mrs Duncomb's box stood. They came out between four and five, and one of them called to me softly, and said, 'Hip! How shall I shut the door?' Says I, ''Tis a spring-lock; pull it to, and it will be fast.' And so one of them did. They would have shared the money and goods upon the stairs, but I told them we had better go down; so we went under the arch by Fig-tree Court, where there was a lamp. I asked them how much they had got. They said they had found fifty guineas and some silver in the maid's purse, about one hundred pounds in the chest of drawers, besides the silver tankard and the money in the box and several other things; so that in all they had got to the value of about three hundred pounds in money and goods. They told me that they had been forced to gag the people. They gave me the tankard with what was in it and some linen for my share, and they had a silver spoon and a ring and the rest of the money among themselves. They advised me to be cunning and plant the money and goods underground, and not to be seen to be flush. Then we appointed to meet at Greenwich, but we did not go.[22]
"I was taken in the manner the witnesses have sworn, and carried to the watch-house, from whence I was sent to the Compter, and so to Newgate. I own that I said the tankard was mine, and that it was left me by my mother: several witnesses have swore what account I gave of the tankard being bloody; I had hurt my finger, and that was the occasion of it. I am sure of death, and therefore have no occasion to speak anything but the truth. When I was in the Compter I happened to see a young man[23] whom I knew, with a fetter on. I told him I was sorry to see him there, and I gave him a shilling, and called for half a quartern of rum to make him drink. I afterwards went into my room, and heard a voice call me, and perceived something poking behind the curtain. I was a little surprised, and looking to see what it was, I found a hole in the wall, through which the young man I had given the shilling to spoke to me, and asked me if I had sent for my friends. I told him no. He said he would do what he could for me, and so went away; and some time after he called to me again, and said, 'Here is a friend.'