Diary of a Victorian Shopkeeper, 29th October

The Tolbooth, demolished 1890

There follows a third installment of the Victorian journal of MK – probably Margaret Kirkness, cofounder of our family business. If you have not yet read the story of this document’s discovery, I suggest you do so before proceeding. At the end of the previous transcription, Margaret, had discovered the corpse of her husband’s grandmother.

I knelt at Jean’s side, but had scarcely lifted her cold, lifeless hand when there was a commotion in the lobby, and Inspector Crambo of the Kirkwall constabulary buldered in, followed by Constable Rosey. They loomed over me.

‘I need your help,’ I cried. ‘It’s Jean, she’s…’

‘I can see very well what Mrs Groatie is,’ barked Crambo. ‘Withdraw from her immediately.

I looked up in astonishment.

‘Rosey, you know what to do,’ said the inspector.

The constable slipped, ferret-like, around Crambo’s rotund figure and laid his hand on my shoulder. ‘Margaret Kirkness, I arrest you for the murder of Jean Groatie. Rise up and accompany me to the tolbooth.’

I tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come. Rosey gripped my shoulder and dragged me to my feet, immediately pushing me towards the door – where I collided with the ample bulk of Inspector Crambo.

‘Assaulting a police officer!’ he boomed. ‘We have a dangerous customer here, Rosey. Take her away!’

As the constable shoved me roughly out the door, I saw Crambo already reaching into my delivery basket and pulling out a bag of fruit scones. ‘Those are for Mrs Norton in Queen Street,’ I called over my shoulder.

‘They’re police evidence now,’ said Crambo. ‘And I’m confiscating them.’

Outside, Albert Street was thronged with people of every age and station in life, and all stopped to stare as I was bundled past. The blood rose to my cheeks as I imagined their thoughts: ‘The respectable Mrs Kirkness! What crime has she committed?’ And then I thought of James, and his poor grandmother, and tears sprung to my eyes.

Tears of shame joined those tears of sorrow as I passed the Big Tree and a group of urchins catcalled and pointed. One of them chanted: ‘A desperate day for bad Mrs K , the bobbies will beat her and shut her away.’ The children laughed, and Constable Rosey sniggered.

‘This is a terrible mistake,’ I panted, as he dragged me onto Broad Street. ‘Please, let me go. I must inform my husband.’

Rosey snorted. ‘I doubt he’ll ken everything soon enough.’

At that moment we were indeed passing our premises. Had James glimpsed me as I was hustled by? It barely mattered. News travels so fast in this town it may have reached our shop even before I did.

We crossed the street, Rosey officiously holding up his hand to stop a dung-cart trundling towards us, and stepped onto the Kirk Green and into the Tolbooth. Immediately the clamour of the street disappeared, and a dolorous silence descended. We stopped at the high wooden counter, and a chair creaked somewhere outbye. Then the familiar face of Locky Omand appeared like a ruddy whiskered moon rising over the counter.

‘Loshans me, Margaret! What brings thee here?’ he croaked.

‘I bring her here, porter,’ said Rosey. ‘On the charge of murder.’

Locky had the good grace to laugh wheezily at this. ‘Nah nah, that can hardly be,’ he said at last.

‘I’m not here to argue,’ said Rosey. ‘I’m here to see her locked up.’

Locky looked alarmed. He beckoned Rosey towards him, and whispered something in his ear. Rosey harrumphed. ‘That is no concern of mine,’ he said. ‘To the cells with her.’

At this point, diary, my heart quailed. But I had no time to protest, for a moment later Locky was ushering me through a massive wooden door, opened with aid of the bunch of keys hanging from his weskit. At every step the darkness grew deeper, but Locky wheezed comforting words as we went. I ‘d looked after him often enough in our shop when he came for rum and plug; now, I felt, he was looking after me.

Still, I could not help but shiver with dread as he unlocked a final, iron door, and deposited me in the pitch-dark, freezing-cold, cell. The door slammed behind me, and I was alone. I felt my knees give way, and reached in the darkness for a bench or other support. And then I screamed: my groping hands had settled on a mop of shaggy hair, and a body clothed in rough fabric.

‘Tak tent lady,’ said a hoarse voice.

I stepped back, my eyes wide. Slowly I started to make out shapes in the meagre light from the barred window high up in the cell wall: a face…a familiar face. And then I must have swooned. When I opened my eyes I was looking up into a very familiar visage. That of my brother Andrew, drowned at sea twenty years ago.

To be continued.

The photograph at the top of the diary shows The Tolbooth, which stood at the corner of Broad Street and Palace Road from around 1745 to 1890. It contained the town council’s meeting room, a Masonic lodge, and the jail which MK became acquainted with. I don’t have a source for the photo., which I have had a digital copy of for years. I thought it might be from the Orkney Image Library but I can’t find it there now.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 1st November 2023. A new one appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations., and occasional small corrections or additions.