The Death Chamber (33 page)

But this afternoon he had only brought the scullery key, although he did not think he would even need that. He went around the outer walls and opened the door into the burial yard. The latch
crackled as he pushed it, like dead finger-bones in a coffin, the flesh eaten away by burning lime . . .

Lime.
Lime
.

The burial yard was dank and sunless, and Calvary’s darkness seemed to lie heavily over it so that for a moment it was difficult to breathe. Was this how it had felt for all those men and
the few women who had died here? This choking constriction? It would have been a very bad thing to die here.

Yes, it was, it was . . . To die here was a very bad thing, Vincent.

On his right were the burial plots of all the murderers executed here: the men who had strangled or shot their wives; the wives who had poisoned or stabbed their husbands; greedy nephews or
nieces who had wanted rich aunts or godfathers out of the way so that they could inherit . . . The traitor Nicholas O’Kane was here. Vincent glanced across at O’Kane’s grave.
There was a story that he had gone to his death reciting poetry, which Vincent thought affected, but people had remembered him for quite a long time. ‘Nick O’Kane,’ they said in
the bitter hating way they were later to say, ‘Adolf Hitler’, or ‘Saddam Hussain’. Often, they added, with contempt, ‘O’Kane was the man who sold England’s
secrets to the Kaiser and who quoted Tom Kettle’s poetry on the gallows.’

But O’Kane had been almost forgotten by now and the poem he had clung to in the last moments of his life had also been forgotten, which just went to show that affectation and poetry
availed you absolutely nothing in the end.

In one corner of the burial yard was a second courtyard, almost hidden from view by a jutting piece of wall, but opening into another small courtyard. Set against the main prison wall was a
jumble of what, in a house, would be regarded as outbuildings: little more than lean-to structures with rather flimsy doors. Two were open and clearly empty, but two were padlocked. One of the
padlocked doors had a sheet of corrugated iron across it and Vincent regarded this with a thump of anticipation. The lime store.

This was a door that would have been kept firmly locked all down Calvary’s history, and it looked as if it was still locked today.

It was important not to get too carried away because there were two very negative possibilities here. The first was that there would not be any limestone left. The second was that even if there
were, after so many years it would have lost its effective properties. Vincent was not very well up on chemical matters but he knew that in Calvary’s hanging days, lime had been burnt in a
massive kiln a few miles outside Thornbeck village, after which the rocks had been brought to the burial yard and stored. When there was a hanging, the warders shovelled the lime into metal buckets
and then added water after which they simply tipped the steaming, smoking, corrosive lime straight into the grave. Vincent had an idea that in later years they had not always bothered with the
slaking but had just poured the dry lime in. But people did not have much use for lime these days, although Vincent thought farmers still used slaked lime putty as a wash for outbuildings.

The door had a bolt across it, held in place by a small padlock, and Vincent inspected this carefully. It was very rusty: it looked as if it could be snapped off easily.

As far as possible, he had come prepared to tackle the lime store – he had certainly come prepared to make a small experiment on it – but he was not going to take any risks. He wound
a thick scarf around his neck, and put on a rainhat of the oilskin sou’wester kind used by fishermen, and dark glasses. He was wearing gloves which came well over his wrists, and he had again
brought the Southend Bachelor’s very useful shooting stick. Keeping to one side of the lime store, he reached this across to the padlock. A sharp blow knocked it to the ground, the door gave
a little sighing groan, and an inch of blackness showed around the rim where it had sprung slightly open. As easy as that.

Still standing at arm’s length, he levered the end of the shooting-stick into the gap and coaxed the door open, taking his time so that there would not be any sudden gusting out of
anything noxious. The hinges creaked, but eventually Vincent had pushed the door all the way back to the wall.

A thin wisp of something like pale smoke curled up from inside the open stores and he instinctively stepped back. A little gust of wind blew in and there was a faint pallid flurry from within.
Keeping his face well covered, Vincent looked inside. It was quite a small place: not much bigger than the coalhouses that used to be attached to quite ordinary houses. The lime blocks were
irregularly shaped lumps of rock of various sizes, but here and there were mounds of chalky powder where some of it had crumbled.

The lime was still here, it was
still here
. But how harmful might it be? After so many years the chances were that it had completely dried out. It might sting the skin a bit if someone
were shut in here for any length of time, but it would not actually kill. And in any case, it was not necessary for Georgina to die. Or was it? Mightn’t that be the safest thing?

Could the lime still be slaked? Made to fizz up into a hissing corrosive mass? Vincent was prepared to make a small and careful experiment, but if it succeeded, how would he then manage things
out here? How could he carry enough water all the way out here, and how would he activate the lime without getting burned?
How?
It was unlikely that the water supply was still connected to
Calvary, although he could try the taps in the stone sink in the mortuary.

He would not need to try any taps! There, just a few feet away, was an old rain-water butt, three quarters full! Vincent stared at it, his mind working. Water. Water all ready to hand. There was
a tap near the bottom – it looked very corroded, but it might still turn. He studied the courtyard afresh, seeing with a tiny thump of excitement that the surface of the courtyard was not
entirely level: it dipped slightly near the row of outbuildings. Was there a gap at the bottom of the lime store’s door? Yes. After heavy rain, surely the water butt would overflow and flood
beneath the door? Ah, no, there was a small drain about a foot away; that would take the overflow. But what if that drain were to be blocked or covered? An ordinary plastic bag, a supermarket
carrier held down by a stone, would do it.

Stepping cautiously inside the store, avoiding the powdery heaps which might cloud upwards into his face, he took from his pocket the small metal box he had brought. It had belonged to the
Bournemouth Major who had used it to store the cigars he was not supposed to smoke. The box was barely six inches square, but it was big enough to hold a small piece of rock on which to experiment
in the privacy of Vincent’s garden shed. In his other pocket were tongs from his kitchen, and, using these, he picked up two chippings and dropped them in the box. Then he closed the lid
tightly and wrapped the whole thing in several folds of a garden refuse bag.

As he walked back down the slope, not troubling to be furtive, simply being a local man out for an innocent walk, the thump of excitement was still with him because all the details of his plan
were coming together beautifully. A corroded tap that had finally broken away from its moorings and caused an old courtyard to flood . . . a drain that had not dealt with the flood because a
plastic carrier bag had blown into the courtyard and stuck across the grid . . . and as a result, water trickling across the old stones and seeping under the door of the lime store . . . all he
needed to do now was make sure the lime could still be activated.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Georgina had recklessly bought Camembert and Brie and some sinfully rich pâté, together with ruinously expensive avocados and olives for the salad. She had set it
all out on the little gateleg table by the window with the breathtaking sweep of Torven beyond. There would not be room at the table for everyone, but they could have their lunch buffet-style,
which would be easier anyway.

She had expected to feel slightly disconcerted by the presence of Chad Ingram and the other three in the tiny Caradoc House flat, because although she was perfectly used to talking to people
about how they could furnish their houses or offices or showrooms, she was not at all used to talking about disinterred fragments of her family’s past. She was certainly not used to
television presenters or journalists who had been spectacularly blinded in the Middle East. David would have said, ‘Oh dear, George, this isn’t your kind of thing at
all
, is
it?’ and Georgina would instantly have thought that David was quite right, concluded she was going to make a fool of herself, and abandoned the whole project.

But so far nobody had said anything disagreeable or confidence-shrivelling: on the contrary, they were all completely friendly and seemed genuinely interested.

She saw what Drusilla meant about Jude not making any concessions. He treated the blindness as an inconvenience, only occasionally displaying a flash of anger if he had to be helped to do
anything. Georgina had gone downstairs to unlock the street door to let them in, relieved Vincent did not seem to be around to muscle in on the party, and the eager young Phin Farrell had guided
Jude up the narrow staircase in a very understated way. When they sat down to eat, Georgina simply put Jude’s hand on one of the chairs by the table and left him to sit down. It ought to have
been a completely detached manoeuvre but, incredibly, she felt a brief prickle of electricity spark between them. This was disconcerting and startling, and she had no idea if he had felt it as
well.

She said, ‘The food’s on the table and the papers are on the floor in the middle of the room. It’s mostly articles about the Caradoc Society – psychic research journals
from when the Caradoc Society came into being as far as I can see. Walter took over as Calvary’s doctor from a Dr McNulty—’

‘McNulty was the Caradoc Society’s first chairman, I think,’ said Chad. He was eyeing the papers with a light in his eyes.

‘Yes, he was,’ said Georgina.

‘Your great-grandfather probably inherited a lot of material from him. It’s how things often happen. Really useful bits of history get stuffed into cupboards for decades. Are any of
the articles illustrated at all?’ He sat on the floor and immediately began to sort through the nearest pile. Phin sat opposite to him, cross-legged, a notebook open on his knee, the quiff of
hair tumbling forward.

‘There are one or two photos of McNulty,’ said Georgina. ‘I’ve only just identified him, actually. I’d have to say he looks very earnest and humourless, although
that might just be the photographic techniques of the day. Dr Ingram—’

‘Chad.’

‘Chad, I told Drusilla to copy anything that might be useful.’

‘We’ll probably want to copy quite a lot of it,’ said Chad, in an absorbed voice.

‘And then make use of it,’ said Jude.

‘The thing I thought you’d want to see above the rest,’ said Georgina, scooping up portions of salad and pâté, and handing the plates round, ‘is something my
great-grandfather seems to have called an Execution Book. It’s a record of everyone who was executed while he was there. Dates, names, times, and so on. Height and weight. Amazingly, there
are photographs for most of them.’

‘Mug shots,’ said Drusilla.

‘I read up on that,’ said Phin. ‘You had an Act of Parliament passed – uh, I think it was about 1870 – that ordered the gaols to keep registers of all the inmates.
Some of the prison governors saw that as meaning photographs as well, although I guess that varied a good deal. By Walter’s time it would have been standard procedure.’

‘The book’s a bit battered,’ said Georgina, producing it. She glanced uncertainly at Jude, and then said, ‘And the binding’s come loose all down the spine.
It’s got a sort of suede leather cover, and the photographs are just pasted onto thickish paper inside, with names and dates handwritten underneath, but it’s perfectly
legible.’

‘I don’t know about legible, it looks impossibly grisly.’

‘Other people have ancestors who leave jewellery or photographs or medals,’ said Georgina. ‘My great-grandfather left me a record of all the hanged murderers he attended. But
the thing is that there’s a name in the Execution Book that jumped straight up off the page – partly because of
Talismans of the Mind
,’ said Georgina, and looked at Chad.
‘I’m hugely enjoying reading it, by the way. You wrote quite a lot about a couple who held fake seances during the First World War.’

‘Bartlam and Violette Partridge,’ said Chad, smiling.

‘Yes. But did you know that one of them ended up in Calvary Gaol?’

‘Good God, no, I didn’t. Which one?’

‘Bartlam,’ said Drusilla at once. ‘I knew he’d come to a bad end, the old goat.’

‘No,’ said Georgina, ‘it wasn’t Bartlam. It was his wife, Violette. She was hanged in Calvary on the first day of 1940.’