Dodger of the Dials (23 page)

The other turnkey had walked over from guarding the door now to join the conversation. ‘It was me what unlocked the door to the Frenchman’s cell on that morning,’ he said. ‘It was the day after he had battered Sessina and the man had vanished in the night. None of his cellmates would tell me how he had escaped, they all claimed he must have got out while they was sleeping. An alarm was raised but it did not take long to locate him. We found him in a right mess, lying naked on the cobbles of the press yard underneath a plank of wood and thirteen heavy bricks crushing him down. Imagine it!’

Max then changed back to his earlier jocular manner and he began poking me in the stomach. ‘So don’t you even think about getting involved with the Rum Mort, young Dawkins. Because there are even worse fates than that of being hanged inside this prison.’

I had to admit that as I thought about what that Frenchman had suffered through, as one brick after another was placed on top of
him until his whole chest had collapsed, I did start to wonder if this Rum Mort cove was better off avoided. But if he could have arranged all that in less than a day then it followed that he also had the power to get somebody onto the other side of those high walls. So I still needed to speak to him one way or another.

‘All right Max,’ I said as he began trying to get me to part with my recent winnings again, ‘I’m convinced. I am keen on an hour of female passion after all.’

‘There’s a good convict,’ he cheered before touching his nose in conspiracy. ‘You just leave the particulars to old Maxie here and I’ll see to it you have whoever you fancy. Got any ideas?’

‘I do, yes,’ I said and reached into my pocket to pull out the coins for him to see again. ‘Now that you mention it, I’ve always had a weakness for red hair.’

Max raised his bushy eyebrows and began to caution me not to make the same mistake that the Frenchman had. But before he had finished, the door to the quadrangle was opened from the inside and both turnkeys altered their manner, stood back and stiffened. However, it was not a prison superior what entered the quad but another turnkey who announced that visiting hours was now upon us.

‘Four for this lot,’ he announced and then looked to Mouse. ‘Someone’s brung your baby to see you.’ Mouse looked happy for the first time since our arrest and I patted him on the back. ‘And your mother’s returned,’ the turnkey said to another young convict. Then he checked the notepad in his hand. ‘We’ve also got Mrs Meehan and a Mrs Jack Dawkins.’

It took me a beat to make sense of that comment.

‘
Mrs
Jack Dawkins?’ I asked. ‘You sure?’

This amused the others. ‘Now, it’d be a right old comedy if she
were here for me now, wouldn’t it?’ Turnkey Max roared to the amusement of all. ‘Have you forgotten your own wife already?’

‘A Mrs Dawkins has come to see me?’ I checked with the new turnkey while ignoring the laughter. ‘She’s here in the prison at this very moment?’

‘In all her glory,’ he leered. ‘And I don’t blame you for looking happy about it neither. She’s a proper picture.’

‘That right?’ asked Max. ‘Then I wish she really was here to see me then!’

More lewd remarks followed but I paid none of them any mind as inside me every organ was flipping over each other with joy. It had to be Lily, it could be no other. She must have come with some ring on her finger or a forged marriage certificate and they could no longer refuse her the visit.

‘You’re a lucky cove, you are,’ continued the turnkey as myself and the other three visited men followed him out of the courtyard and into the corridor. ‘Well, for a man condemned to death that is.’

Chapter 15
Mrs Dawkins

Wherein my spirits are much lifted by a vision most fair

Before escorting us to the visiting chambers, Turnkey Max took Mouse and myself back to our cell after I had given him the bottle of whisky as a gratuity. I wanted to show the guards that I was someone worth doing favours for so he then allowed us to spend time at a basin to make ourselves presentable for our guests. After some washing I asked Mouse how I looked and he smiled and assured me that I looked even handsomer than I had at my own wedding. Mouse himself seemed keen to clean up for the young woman what had brought his baby and I realised for the first time that she was more to him than just the carer of his child. Then we was both taken to the place where our visitors was waiting for us.

The very thought of Lily’s appearance in this horrible place was having a miraculous effect upon me. She had renewed my sense of hope and doubled my resolve to escape by coming here. As I entered the arched cell, what used to be a stable and was now one of the visiting chambers, I could feel my feet quicken to meet her. The convicts was separated from the free people by a metal grille at their end and the first person I saw was Mouse’s girl – the one from the trial with his baby in her arms. He ran towards the grille, they both touched fingers, and it looked to be a most tender scene. However, there was no sign of Lily Lennox.

I looked through to the visitors’ side to see where she could be
hiding but all I saw was one long bench where a lone woman was sat with her face down. She was playing with some child’s toy in her lap but although I could not get a good view of her I could see that she was too short to be my Lily. She wore a respectable blue dress and bonnet, her hair was all yellow curls and furthermore, she was heavy with child. I looked along the rest of the passage for my fancy woman but the only other people I could spot was talking to prisoners in neighbouring cells and so I whistled over for one of the turnkeys to tell me where she had got to. As I did this the pregnant lady raised her head, saw me and her face lit up with joyous recognition.

‘Husband!’ she cried as she attempted to lift her heavy self up from that wooden bench. ‘My darling Jack,’ she went on. ‘I thought they’d never let me see you, I’ve been waiting here so long!’

Needless to say I was much surprised by this sudden outburst of love from a total stranger. However, I kept enough wits not to show it to anyone and watched as the same turnkey what had come to inform me of this visitor walked over to the bench to help the lady up to her feet. He had been right to describe her as a picture, she was indeed very beautiful, and I was certain that I would have remembered had I ever met the girl before, let alone married her and got her into that delicate condition. As she grew closer to me I took in the scent of her rose-tinted perfume what even this musty and straw-strewn old cell could not hide.

‘Here he is, Mrs Dawkins,’ the turnkey said once they had reached the metal grille. ‘I told you we haven’t hanged him already.’ He gave a fond chuckle and it seemed as though he was most taken with her. ‘He’s been asking after you all Christmas. Ain’t that right, Mr Dawkins, sir?’

‘Jack!’ sighed the apparent mother of my unborn before I could answer. Her gloved hand reached up and our tips touched through
the barrier. ‘My love,’ she continued. ‘I’ve tried ever so hard to see you. I’ve been praying for your salvation day and night.’

‘He’s lucky to have a loving wife like you, Mrs Dawkins,’ said the turnkey with a nod. ‘Very lucky! I should be so fortunate to have so fine-looking a lady what with me being a lonely bachelor such as I am.’

I was most affronted by this cheeky chancer trying to press his advantage with my soon-to-be widow while I was still stood there before them. I was about to take him to task for his inappropriate conduct before remembering that I had no clue who she was anyway and so he was welcome to her.

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ he rapped the grille with his baton. ‘Ain’t you going to greet your poor spouse?’

I studied the face of this young lady and I could not place her. I was still trying to get over the stab I felt on realising that Lily was not coming after all and so I had not given myself a moment to imagine who it might be. And yet as I looked at her the more she began to strike me as someone I knew. Her eyes was lowered in a demure fashion but when they looked up to meet mine I saw a sudden fire in them that the turnkey did not. It was the look of an instant but it revealed all.

‘Hello, my dear,’ I greeted her and I could not suppress smiling at her disguise. I could not imagine how much discomfort poor Tom Skinner must be in, wearing that frock and wig, but I was stunned at how well she had managed to alter herself. ‘It’s so lovely to see you again, my turtledove.’

Another secret glance from her told me not to push my luck. I knew how much Tom hated to dress herself in anything feminine and so all this must have been a great indignity for her. So I could not help but feel very touched that she had put herself through such an unpleasant ordeal just to see me and my gratitude for this was
deep. Soon the turnkey announced that he would leave us alone so we could say our last farewells and she was quick to resume her part as the unassuming Mrs Dawkins.

‘Wait!’ she cried and touched his shoulder before he could walk off. ‘You can’t let me see my husband for the last time like this! Not when we can’t even hold one another as man and wife!’ The turnkey stopped in his tracks and turned back to Tom and his expression became less genial.

‘I think I can, Mrs Dawkins,’ he admonished her. ‘We can’t have married couples fondling one another in full view of everyone else. It wouldn’t be decent.’

‘Sir,’ she pleaded with a tilt of the head, ‘I want only for the father of my unborn child to lay his hands down here.’ Her free hand lowered and she touched her swollen belly. ‘So he can feel his child kick one last time.’

‘Very well, Mrs Dawkins,’ he sighed as he led her over to the small doorway built within the grille and fumbled for whichever key might open it. ‘Let’s take you and your husband here somewhere more private, shall we?’ He threw a less kind glance in my direction. ‘For his final kiss.’

We was then led away from the other visitors and towards a smaller hold what was known in Newgate as the Grate. It was called this on account of its large cross-barred window what looked out onto the street outside and from where debtors was sometimes allowed to beg for alms. The interior of the hold was bare save for a short wooden bench and another chair and the turnkey said that we had less than five minutes.

‘I won’t wander far though, Mrs Dawkins,’ he promised and then looked down to the small wooden doll she was carrying about with her. ‘Planning on giving him that are you? I’ll need to inspect.’

Tom handed him the doll, what was of a frightening figure of a man in black clothes but with red paint on its hands, and I could see that it was very much like those what Dick the Dollman of Clerkenwell was known to manufacture.

‘Ugly article,’ chuckled the turnkey who was feeling it for sharp edges. He held it up so he could view it next to me. ‘Much like its model.’

‘Is that meant to be me?’ I asked in disgust and looked to Tom. She beamed back as though she expected me to be flattered by the travesty.

‘It’s a gallows doll,’ she said. ‘For the crowds on Execution Monday. You’re a celebrity.’ The turnkey gave the doll a shake but it did not rattle. ‘There are some made of Mouse too. Dick the Dollman says he’ll have done scores of you both come the day of your hanging.

‘Scores, eh?’ I replied and I found my revulsion being replaced by queer pride. It was like discovering that someone had built a statue in my honour. ‘I’ve been immortalised,’ I said and smiled at it.

‘Five minutes, Mrs Dawkins,’ said the gaoler. ‘No longer.’ Then he tipped his grey gaoler’s cap to us and shut the door so we could have some matrimonial privacy.

I at once crossed over to the grated window, to see if I could effect my escape through it. There was a small gap in the steel bars for outsiders to slip money through to a begging debtor but I could see it would never grant me my freedom. Tom, meanwhile, had plonked herself down on the bench and kicked off her dainty shoes.

‘That disgusting creeper,’ she whispered in her truer, less simpering voice, ‘took all sorts of liberties with my person. If his hand had touched my rump once more I’d have grabbed it and
broken his fingers.’ Although we had heard the turn of the bolt, she still had to be careful not to drop her charade too soon. There was a small square gap in the door through which a turnkey could spy on us.

‘And you a married woman with a child growing in you,’ I tutted with one eye still fixed upon that square as I moved over to her, ‘the disgrace of it.’ I saw the turnkey’s head still hovering around outside and so I continued to play the part of a grateful husband, bent down on my knees in front of her and kissed her on the hand. ‘Thank you for coming,’ I said and lowered my head down so my ear was pressed against her belly.

‘Lay yourself here,’ Tom said in her wifely voice and began guiding my head across to the desired spot on her big bump. I had to admire how authentic it appeared and I wondered what she had stuffed in her dress to achieve the look. My ear then fanned over the spot on her belly where she was directing me and I could feel something metal. ‘Touch him with your hands,’ she said and I lifted my head and felt for where the item was stuck inside her dress. There was a very discreet slit in the bump and I was able to dip into the dress. Within was an iron file small enough not to be noticed by the guards. I hid this up my own sleeve and then Tom leaned forward as if she was going to whisper sweet love-talk into my ear. ‘And there is a map of the prison inside the doll,’ she said. ‘An old lag I know who now lives in Clerkenwell drew it out from memory though. So it might not be as reliable as all that.’

She leant back again and I glanced over towards the square in the door to see that the turnkey was no longer watching us. ‘You need some air,’ I said, in case he was still out there. ‘Let’s get you over here to this window, Mrs Dawkins.’ My delicate bride got to her feet and I dragged the wooden bench to the far end of the Grate and we sat down together. We could now converse with greater
confidence if we kept our voices down and I took Tom’s left hand in my right and stroked it most tender. Tom lowered her chin down and whispered in her natural voice.