The Wicked Boy by Kate Summerscale

Author:Kate Summerscale [Summerscale, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-05-13T22:00:00+00:00

14

TO HAVE YOU HOME AGAIN

Among the papers that the police found on the writing desk in 35 Cave Road on 17 July 1895 was a letter written by Emily Coombes to her husband. It was composed on Sunday 7 July, the older Robert Coombes’s fifty-first birthday and the day before Emily’s death.

Although Coombes had left home as recently as 4 July, the postal services were so swift that Emily had already sent him a parcel and received a note in return. She probably sent the parcel to Gravesend, in Kent, where his ship stopped on its passage out of the Thames. She had addressed her latest letter to the pier in New York at which the France would dock more than two weeks later. It was not read out in any of the court hearings because it had no direct bearing on the case, but it had probably been read by Robert, who wrote his own letters at the same desk in the ten days after his mother’s death. When the Coombes boys were charged with murder the letter was copied for the West Ham magistrates’ court and retained in its files. The transcriber could not make out all of Emily’s last written words, and many of the allusions are in any case unclear: it was a hurried note, an instalment in a conversation. Yet the letter casts some light on the younger Robert Coombes’s story – not so much on the mystery of why he killed his mother as on the mystery of how he might recover from having done so.

My Darling Husband,

I received your welcome letter from ? and pleased you received the things safe. Robert I do miss you. Emily was down and was not doing anything and no money for rent. I don’t know what they will do. I gave her the coat I could not help doing so – young Robert did not like to see her crying not like some one told me – never mind Robert don’t go away by thinking there is some one comes to your house far from it. I am quite surprised at you – after all these years and the nice little home you have got it takes keeping up also your boys are not the same – they can eat more than you can but my love you don’t look at that. Well did you find your ? I wish you all the love and Good wishes and long life on your birthday and only wish you had been home for it – never mind. I trust you will soon xxxx. I have not seen anything of your mother or Annie. I am writeing to Mrs Cooper – going there this week if she at home. Robert I have sent you the paper mind and will send next Sunday also for you – not quite so bad never mind write untill you get the next one. I can just see you having a fine lark. Well dear

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