Property of a Lady (33 page)

And at 8 a.m. on that day they will have hanged the murderer who killed his sister’s seducer in the Black Boar.

October cont’d

I am moved to copy down parts of the recipe for creating the Hand of Glory – partly so I have the information in a safe place other than on my shelves. There are several versions, but this one, from
Petit Albert
, dating back to 1722, is the most detailed.

‘Take the right or left hand of a felon who is hanging from a gibbet beside a highway. Wrap it in part of a funeral pall and, so wrapped, squeeze it well to drain all blood. Then put it into an earthenware vessel with zimat, nitre, salt and long peppers, the whole well powdered. Leave it in this vessel for a fortnight, then take out and expose it to full sunlight during the dog days until it becomes quite dry. Next, make of it a candle with the fat of a gibbeted felon, virgin wax, sesame and ponie, and use the Hand of Glory as a candlestick to hold this candle when lighted.’

The practice of hanging a felon from a gibbet hasn’t existed in this country for a century or more so I cannot follow this part to the absolute letter. But I believe – and trust – that the hand of any hanged murderer will suffice. The dog days are a difficulty – October in England can scarcely be called sufficiently hot to warrant that term; however, there is another version of the enchantment which says this:

‘If the sun be not powerful enough, dry the Hand in an oven heated with vervain and fern.’

That I can do with no difficulty.

The poet Robert Southey places the Hand in the possession of the enchanter Mohareb, when he would ‘lull to sleep Yohak, the giant guardian of the caves of Babylon’. Southey writes:

‘A murderer on the stake had died;

I drove the vulture from his limbs, and lopt

The hand that did the murder, and drew up

The tendon strings to close its grasp;

And in the sun and wind

Parch’d it, nine weeks exposed.’

Nine weeks is a long time, but everyone knows poets are given to exaggerating, so I shall accept the
Petit Albert
direction of two weeks and use the oven instead of the hot sun.

29th October 1888

In two days’ time I will be in the grounds of Shrewsbury Gaol, and it will rest on my ingenuity as to whether I can do what has to be done to the body of the hanged murderer. It seems fitting, although macabre, that I shall carry out my grisly task on the Eve of All Hallows. Will the powers said to walk abroad on that night stand at my side as I go about my work?

If ever I believed myself to have crossed the line from sanity, I think I have done so tonight. Tonight I believe I am mad.

TWENTY-FIVE

1st November 1888: 10.00 a.m.

I
have resolved to set down a clear and concise account of what has happened.

I rose early on Monday 31st and sat quietly in the room above the showrooms, looking out on to the High Street, waiting for the town clock to chime eight. I was not seeing the familiar shops and people though; in my mind’s eye was a vivid picture of the condemned man being led from his cell in Shrewsbury Gaol across the courtyard to the execution shed. It’s quite a short walk – I know, for I’ve visited the place twice with the Howard Committee. So I was able to walk with the doomed man in my imagination, my steps matching his – although when the clock finally struck the hour it coincided with Mrs Figgis, who, according to custom, had arrived to cook my breakfast. My mental images of the condemned man being lead to the execution shed became inextricably mingled with Mrs Figgis’s voluble catalogue of local gossip and the scent of bacon and eggs frying in the pan.

I made a good breakfast, though. It would not have done the man any good if I had gone hungry for the morning.

The Howard Committee set off sharp at half-past one. Measured in miles, Shrewsbury is not a very long way from Marston Lacy, but it’s not an easy journey, and so we had hired a conveyance. There were six of us in all, so it was somewhat crowded. I am not overfond of travelling – the jolting of the carriages always makes me feel sick. My father used to say it jumbled a man’s insides to travel at such unnatural speeds, and on that journey I had the feeling he might have been right, because by the time we reached Shrewsbury town I was sweating and dabbing a handkerchief to my lips. This, however, was usual for me on any journey, although I will say the knowledge of what I intended to do after the meeting would not have helped.

We toured the prison as arranged and afterwards made our representations to the governor – a very gentlemanly person he is, humane and far better than some governors we hear about. He was agreeable to our suggestions as to how prisoners might have their lives made a little easier and promised to bring our points up with his superiors.

Tea was served to us – a good blend of tea it was, none of your floor-sweepings for the Howard Committee! It was all very civilized, and I should have found it interesting and worthy if I had not been churning like a seething cauldron inside at the prospect of what lay ahead. I had a plan, of course, but of necessity it was a very sketchy one – there were so many imponderable factors. But I had already marked out one warder as having a shifty and venal eye, whom I thought might make an ally.

The morning’s execution was mentioned during our interview with the governor, of course. He said it was a sad affair – a young man’s moment of hot-temper and jealousy causing him to take a life and lose his own as a result.

I said, ‘At least there is now the long drop, which I think is believed more merciful.’

‘Indeed it is. A matter of seconds only. Yes, there have been some dreadful cases of bungling in the past – I have witnessed more than one myself.’

‘Tell me,’ I said quickly, before the conversation could drift, ‘do you still have the tradition of leaving the body to hang for an hour after the execution?’

‘Yes, certainly. A small mark of respect. The poor wretch has precious little more.’ He paused, and I willed him to go on. After a moment he did. ‘We bury them quickly enough afterwards,’ he said. ‘That man this morning, for instance. He is even now lying in the grave in the yard.’

‘And already covered with quicklime, no doubt,’ I said. My tone was so light that it could have floated away, and I do not think I betrayed how much depended on his answer.

He said, ‘The quicklime will be sprinkled over him tomorrow morning. We allow them twenty-four hours in the grave before we do that. Another mark of respect, and a purely personal one on my part. Quicklime is a vicious agent, you know.’

A rush of relief coursed through me so fiercely I could not speak, only nod, as if the information was of vague interest. I had been prepared to dig through soil and lime – I was wearing thick leather gloves and strong boots – but it would be so much easier and safer without that layer of corrosive, burning lime.

Even so, my courage almost failed me at that point – I wished for nothing but to return home and sit down to the supper Mrs Figgis would have left out for me. But as the group made its way through the prison, I said, ‘I shan’t be travelling back with you. I have an old aunt in Shrewsbury town I should like to visit.’

This was seen as a perfectly reasonable arrangement. I was considered sensible to take advantage of the opportunity of being in Shrewsbury. There was some slight concern as to how I would get back, however.

‘I can spend the night at my aunt’s house,’ I said, ‘and walk along to the railway station in the morning.’

It satisfied them. Shrewsbury General Station is the Shrewsbury to Chester line – part of the Abbey Foregate loop – and a great many trains go through it. I would be able to travel to the halt at Marston Montgomery. It’s a three-mile walk from there to Marston Lacy, but there are any number of drays and carters coming and going who would happily take me up.

As we were ushered through the prison precincts, with doors and gates unlocked by the warders every fifteen yards, I deliberately lagged behind and caught the eye of the warder I had noticed earlier. A weasel-faced fellow he was, with a darting, acquisitive eye. Speaking quietly, I asked him in which direction the burial yard lay.

‘It’s over there,’ he said, pointing furtively. His lips formed a sly curve. ‘You’d like to take a look, sir? See where we put the murderers?’ The words were respectful, the tone was not.

I said, ‘It could be interesting. Worth my while.’ A pause, the count of five. ‘Worth yours too, perhaps,’ I said, softly so the others could not hear.

‘How much worth?’

‘Half a sovereign.’ It was a lot, but there was no point in penny-pinching.

‘Souvenir of a murderer?’ he said. ‘Lock of hair, bit of shroud to brag about and make money on? Is that what you’re after?’

I said, as frostily as I could, ‘Indeed not. But as one of the Howard Prison Reform Organization, I should like to see the exact conditions in which an executed murderer is buried.’

‘Call it what you want,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Listen, then. Pretend to turn your ankle on the cobbles. I’ll take you into the warders’ room to strap it up.’

The facility with which he came up with this small plan – a much simpler and better one than my original idea of hiding and waiting until nightfall – indicated he was not unused to such an arrangement. It’s a sad reflection on the curiosity of men, but I am in no position to level criticism.

I flatter myself I staged the ankle-turning business neatly. A stumble, a startled cry of pain, and within minutes I was helped into a small room opening off the courtyard, furnished with battered chairs and a table.

‘Now then,’ said the warder briskly, ‘how long d’you want?’

‘An hour at least. Two would be better. At a time when no one is around.’

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I
thought
it was souvenirs you was after. In that case, half a jimmy o’goblin won’t be enough. Make it whole one.’ It was extortion, pure and simple. I hesitated, and he said, ‘You pay me that and I’ll come back later and unlock a door to get you out.’

I had worried about this part of the proceedings quite a lot. My plan had been to remain inside the prison all night and find my way out when the morning contingent of warders came on duty. But this new twist would solve it very well for me. I briefly considered how far I could trust this man – it would be easy for him to leave me in the prison all night and deny all knowledge next morning.

But these things work both ways, and I said, very coldly, ‘If you cheat me in any way, I shall see to it that you lose your position here and are prosecuted. I am a man of some standing, and I think my word will be believed over yours. I hope that’s clear?’

‘I won’t cheat you,’ he said, and I thought there was a ring of sincerity in his tone, so I nodded and handed over the sovereign.

‘Good,’ he said, tucking it in an inner pocket. ‘You got until seven o’clock tonight when the night guard goes round. That do you?’

It was ten minutes to five and already dark. I said, ‘That will do very well.’

‘I’m off duty at seven. I’ll come back just before the hour and we’ll go out together. You’ll appear to be a visitor I’m seeing out. Simple as can be. From there on it’s your business how you get back to wherever you live.’

Any burial ground is a grim place, but that piece of land on the side of Shrewsbury Prison is the eeriest place I have ever encountered.

It was not very large, and although sparse grass grew here and there it had a sick look, as if there was some disease in the soil beneath. It was very dark, but a thin, cold moonlight oozed through the clouds so that I could see the outline of the newly-dug grave near one wall. It’s extraordinary how that shape strikes such terror into the heart; seeing it brought every superstition and every grisly legend ever read or dreamed or remembered into my mind. Because one should not disturb the resting place of any man, even that of a murderer, perhaps especially that of a murderer.

The words of the Ingoldsby rhyme ran maddeningly in and out of my head as I approached the grave.

On the lone bleak moor, at the midnight hour,

Beneath the Gallows Tree . . .

The Moon that night, with a grey cold light,

Each baleful object tips . . .

It took considerable resolve to approach the open grave and look down into it and, when I did so, I think I came closer than at any other time to abandoning the whole plan. He lay, imperfectly covered in a winding sheet, his head lolling to one side at an ugly, ungainly angle, his thick, farm-worker’s neck swollen and bruised from the hangman’s rope. His skin was the colour and consistency of tallow.

I looked round. How likely was it that I could be seen? The burial ground was enclosed on three sides by a high wall, and there were no windows and only one door, which led to the main part of the prison. No one would see me.

And yet I had the feeling that someone did see me – that eyes watched from the shadows and marked what I did. Nerves, nothing more.