The Wench Is Dead (11 page)

Almost immediately he was conscious of Fiona standing beside him – the amply bosomed Fiona, smelling vaguely of the summer and strongly of disinfectant. Then she sat down on the bed, and he felt the pneumatic pressure of her against him as she leaned across and looked over his shoulder.

'Interesting?'

Morse nodded. 'It's the book the old girl brought round – you know, the Colonel's wife.'

Fiona stayed where she was, and Morse found himself, reading the same short sentence for the third, fourth, fifth time – without the slightest degree of comprehension – as her softness gently pressed against him. Was she conscious, herself, of taking the initiative in such memorable intimacy, however mild?

Then she ruined everything.

'I don't go in much for reading these days. Last book I read was
Jane Eyre –
for GCSE, that was.'

'Did you enjoy it?' (Poor, dear Charlotte had long had a special place in Morse's heart.)

'Pretty boring stuff. We just had to do it, you know, for the exam.'

Oh dear!

Crossing her black-stockinged legs, she took off one of her flat-heeled black shoes, and shook out some invisible irritant on to the ward floor.

'When do people take their shoes off?' asked Morse. ‘Normally, I mean?'

'Funny question, isn't it?'

'When they've a stone in them – like you?'

Fiona nodded. 'And when they go to bed.'

'And?'

'Well – when they go paddling at Blackpool.'

'Yes?'

'When they sit watching the telly with their feet on the sofa – if they've got a mum as fussy as mine.'

'Anything else?'

'What do you want to know all this for?'

‘If they've got corns or something,' persisted Morse, and go to the chiropodist.' ('Kyropodist', in Morse's book.)

'Yes. Or if their feet get sore or tired. Or if they have to take their tights off for some reason-'

'Such as?'

Morse saw the flash of sensuous amusement in her eyes, as she suddenly stood up, pulled his sheets straight, and shook out his pillows. 'Well, if you don't know at your age-'

Oh dear!

Age.

Morse felt as young as he'd ever done; but suddenly, and so clearly, he could see himself as he
was
seen by this young girl.

Old!

But his mood was soon to be brightened by the totally unexpected re-appearance of Sergeant Lewis, who explained that the purpose of his unofficial visit (it was 2.15 p.m.) was to interview a woman, still in intensive care, in connection with yet another horrendous crash on the A34.

'Feeling OK this morning, sir?'

'I shall feel a jolly sight better once I've had the chance of apologizing to you – for being so bloody ungrateful!'

'Oh yes? When was that, sir? I thought you were always ungrateful to me.'

'I'm just sorry, that's all,' said Morse simply and quietly.

Lewis, whose anger had been simmering and spitting like soup inadvertently left on the stove, had come into the ward with considerable reluctance. Yet when some ten minutes later he walked out, he felt the same degree of delight he invariably experienced when he knew that Morse needed
him –
even if it were only, as in this case, to do a bit of mundane research (Morse had briefly explained the case) and to try to discover if the Court Registers of the Oxford Assizes, 1859-60, were still available; and if so to see if any records of the trials were still extant.

After Lewis had gone, Morse felt very much more in tune with the universe. Lewis had forgiven him, readily; and he felt a contentment which he, just as much as Lewis, could ill define and only partly comprehend. And with Lewis looking into the Court Registers, there was another researcher in the field: a qualified librarian, who could very quickly sort out
Jackson's Oxford Journals.
Not that she was coming in that evening, alas!

Patience, Morse!

At 3 p.m. he turned once again to the beginning of the fourth and final episode in the late Colonel Deniston's book.

A bailiff was sworn in to attend the Jury, who immediately retired to the Clerk of Indictments' Room. After an absence of three-quarters of an hour, they returned to the Court; and, their names having been read over, every person appeared to wait with breathless anxiety for their verdict. In reply to the usual questions from Mr Benham, the foreman replied that the Jury was all agreed and that they were unanimous in finding each of the three prisoners at the bar GUILTY of the murder of Joanna Franks. It is said that no visible alteration marked the countenances of the crew on the verdict being given, except that Oldfield for the moment became somewhat paler.

The black coif, emblematical of death, was placed on the Judge's head; and after asking the prisoners if they had anything to say, he passed his sentence in the following awesome terms:

'Jack Oldfield, Alfred Musson, Walter Towns – after a long and patient hearing of the circumstances in this case, and after due deliberation on the part of the Jury, you have each and all of you been found guilty of the most foul crime of murder – the murder of an unoffending and helpless woman who was under your protection and who, there is now no doubt as to believe, was the object of your lust; and thereafter, to prevent detection of your crime, was the object of your cruelty. Look not for pardon in this world! Apply to the God of Mercy for that pardon which He alone can extend to sinners who are penitent for their misdeeds, and henceforth prepare yourselves for the ignominious death which now awaits you. This case is one of the most painful, the most disgusting, and the most shocking, that has ever come to my knowledge, and it must remain only for me to pass upon you the terrible and just sentence of the Law, that you be taken whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, and that you, and each of you, be hanged by the neck until you be dead, and that your bodies be afterward buried within the precincts of the prison and be not accorded the privilege of consecrated ground. And may God have mercy on your souls!'

After the trial was over, and sentence pronounced, the three men still persisted in maintaining their innocence Indeed, Oldfield's wife, who visited the prison, was so agitated by her husband's protestations that "she herself was thrown into a sore fit".

It had seemed reasonably clear, from various statements including those of Oldfield and Musson that Towns had been somewhat less involved in the happenings on the canal journey than the other two. It was no surprise, therefore, that some members of the legal profession now thought there was a case for the last-minute reconsideration of the sentence imposed upon Towns; so a letter setting forth their agreed view was taken to London by a barrister, and a special interview with the Secretary of State was obtained. As a result of such representations, Towns was reprieved at (almost literally) the eleventh hour. The good, news was broken to him as the three men were receiving for the last time the Holy Sacrament from the Prison Chaplain. Towns immediately burst into a flood of tears, and taking each of his former associates by the hand kissed them affectionately, repeating "God bless you, dear friend!" "God bless you, dear friend!" He was later transported to Australia for life, where he was still alive in 1884 when he was seen and interviewed by one Samuel Carter (like Oldfield and Towns, a citizen of Coventry), who took a lively interest in local history and who wrote of his experiences on his return to England the following year.
^[4]

Oldfield and Musson were duly hanged in public at Oxford. According to the newspaper reports, as many as ten thousand people were estimated to have witnessed the macabre spectacle. It is reported that from an early hour men sat high on walls, climbed trees, and even perched on the roofs of overlooking houses in order to obtain a good view of those terrible events. A notice-board placed by the Governor in front of the gaol door stated that, the execution would not proceed until after eleven o'clock; but although this occasioned much disappointment among the spectators, it did not deter their continued attendance, and not a spare square-foot of space was to be found when, at the appointed hour, the execution finally occurred.

First to appear was the Prison Chaplain, solemnly reading the funeral service of the Church of England; next came the two culprits; and following them the Executioner, and the Governor, as well as some other senior officers from the prison. After the operation of pinioning had been completed, the two men walked with firm step to the platform, and ascended the stairs to the top without requiring assistance. When the ropes had seen adjusted round their necks, the Executioner shook hands with each man; and then, as the Chaplain intoned his melancholy service, the fatal bolt was drawn, and in a minute or two, after much convulsion, the wretched malefactors were no more. The dislocation of the cervical vertebrae and the rupture of the jugular vein had been, if not an instantaneous, at least an effective procedure. The gallows appeared to have sated the sadistic fascination of the mob once more, for there are no reports of any civic disorders as the great throng dispersed homewards on that sunlit day. It was later disclosed, though it had not been observable at the time, that Oldfield's last action in life had been to hand over to the Chaplain a post-card, to be delivered to his young wife, in which to the very end he proclaimed his innocence of the crime for which he had now paid the ultimate penalty.

Locally produced broadsheets, giving every sensational detail of trial and execution, were very quickly on sale in the streets of Oxford – and were selling fast. They were even able to give a full account, with precise biblical reference, of the last sermon preached to the men at 6 p.m. on the Sunday before their hangings. The text, clearly chosen with ghoulish insensitivity, could hardly have brought the condemned prisoners much spiritual or physical solace: 'Yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck: they did worse than their fathers'
(Jeremiah,
ch. 7, v. 26).

The horror felt by the local population at the murder of Joanna Franks did not end with the punishment of the guilty men. Many, both lay and clerical, thought that something more must be done to seek to improve the morals of the boatmen on the waterways. They were aware, of course, that the majority of boatmen were called upon to work on the Sabbath, and had therefore little or no opportunity of attending Divine worship. A letter from the Revd Robert Chantry, Vicar of Summertown Parish, was typical of many in urging a greater degree of concern amongst the boatmen's employers, and suggesting some period of time free from duties on the Sabbath to allow those having the inclination the opportunity of attending a Church service. Strangely enough, such attendance would have been readily possible for the crew-members of the
Barbara Bray
had Oxford been a regular port-of-call, since a special 'Boatmen's Chapel' had been provided by Henry Ward, a wealthy coal-merchant, in 1838 – a floating chapel, moored off Hythe Bridge, at which services were held on Sunday afternoons and Wednesday evenings. For Joanna Franks, as well as for her sorrowing husband and parents, it was a human tragedy that the sermon preached to the murderers on the Sunday prior to their execution was perhaps the first – as well as the last -they ever heard.

But it is all a long time ago now. The floating chapel has long since gone; and no one today can point with any certainty to the shabby plot in the environs of Oxford Gaol where notorious criminals and murderers and others of the conjecturally damned were once buried.

Morse was glad that the Colonel had ignored Doctor Johnson's advice to all authors that once they had written something particularly fine they should strike it out. For Part Four was the best-written section, surely, of what was proving to be one of the greatest assets in Morse's most satisfactory (so far) convalescence; and he turned back the pages to relish again a few of those fine phrases. Splendid, certainly, were such things as "sated the sadistic fascination"; and, better still, that "ghoulish insensitivity". But they were
more
than that. They seemed to suggest that the Colonel's sympathies had shifted slightly, did they not? Where earlier the bias against the boatmen had been so pronounced, it appeared that the longer he went on the greater his compassion was growing for that disconsolate crew.

Like Morse's.

It was such a good story! So it was no surprise that the Colonel should have disinterred the bare bones of this particular one from the hundreds of other nineteenth-century burial-grounds. All the ingredients were there for its appealing to a wide readership, if once it got its foot wedged in the doorway of publicity. Beauty and the Beasts – that's what it was, quintessentially.

At least as the Colonel had seen it.

For Morse, who had long ago rejected the bland placebos of conventional religion, the facility offered to errant souls to take the Holy Sacrament before being strangled barbarously in a string seemed oddly at variance with the ban on the burial of these same souls within some so-called 'holy ground'. And he was reminded of a passage which had once been part of his mental baggage, the words of which now slowly returned to him. From
Tess of the d'Urbervilles –
where Tess herself seeks to bury her legitimate infant in the place where 'the nettles grow; and here all unbaptised infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others… ' What was the end of it? Wasn't it – yes! – 'others of the conjecturally damned are laid'. Well, well! A bit of plagiarism on the Colonel's part. He really should have put quotation marks around that memorable phrase. Cheating just a little, really. Were there any other places where he'd cheated? Unwittingly, perhaps? Just a little?