Gallows Thief

‘Your servant, my lord,’ Sandman bowed, but the Home Secretary was already attending to other business.

Sandman followed the secretary into an ante-room where a clerk was busy at a table. ‘It will take a moment to seal your letter,’ Witherspoon said, ‘so, please, sit.’

Sandman had brought the Corday petition with him and now read it all the way through, though he gleaned little more information from the ill-written words. The condemned man’s mother, who had signed the petition with a cross, had merely dictated an incoherent plea for mercy. Her son was a good boy, she claimed, a harmless soul and a Christian, but beneath her pleas were two damning comments. ‘Preposterous,’ the first read, ‘he is guilty of a heinous crime,’ while the second comment, in a crabbed handwriting, stated: ‘Let the Law take its course.’ Sandman showed the petition to Witherspoon. ‘Who wrote the comments?’

‘The second is the Home Secretary’s decision,’ Witherspoon said, ‘and was written before we knew Her Majesty was involved. And the first? That’s from the judge who passed sentence. It is customary to refer all petitions to the relevant judge before a decision is made. In this case it was Sir John Silvester. You know him?’

‘I fear not.’

‘He’s the Recorder of London and, as you may deduce from that, a most experienced judge. Certainly not a man to allow a gross miscarriage of justice in his courtroom.’ He handed a letter to the clerk. ‘Your name must be on the letter of authorisation, of course. Are there any pitfalls in its spelling?’

‘No,’ Sandman said and then, as the clerk wrote his name on the letter, he read the petition again, but it presented no arguments against the facts of the case. Maisie Cruttwell claimed her son was innocent, but could adduce no proof of that assertion. Instead she was appealing to the King for mercy. ‘Why did you ask me?’ Sandman asked Witherspoon. ‘I mean you must have used someone else as an Investigator in the past? Were they unsatisfactory?’

‘Mister Talbot was entirely satisfactory,’ Witherspoon said. He was now searching for the seal that would authenticate the letter, ‘but he died.’

‘Ah.’

‘A seizure,’ Witherspoon said, ‘very tragic. And why you? Because, as the Home Secretary informed you, you were recommended.’ He was scrabbling through the contents of a drawer, looking for the seal. ‘I had a cousin at Waterloo,’ he went on, ‘a Captain Witherspoon, a Hussar. He was on the Duke’s staff. Did you know him?’

‘No, alas.’

‘He died.’

‘I am sorry to hear it.’

‘It was perhaps for the best,’ Witherspoon said. He had at last found the seal. ‘He always said that he feared the war’s ending. What excitement, he wondered, could peace bring?’

‘It was a common enough fear in the army,’ Sandman said.

‘This letter,’ the secretary was now heating a stick of wax over a candle flame, ‘confirms that you are making enquiries on behalf of the Home Office and it requests all persons to offer you their cooperation, though it does not require them to do so. Note that distinction, Captain, note it well. We have no legal right to demand cooperation,’ he said as he dripped the wax onto the letter, then carefully pushed the seal into the scarlet blob, ‘so we can only request it. I would be grateful if you would return this letter to me upon the conclusion of your enquiries, and as to the nature of those enquiries, Captain? I suggest they need not be laborious. There is no doubt of the man’s guilt. Corday is a rapist, a murderer and a liar, and all we need of him is a confession. You will find him in Newgate and if you are sufficiently forceful then I have no doubt he will confess to his brutal crime and your work will then be done.’ He held out the letter. ‘I expect to hear from you very soon. We shall require a written report, but please keep it brief.’ He suddenly withheld the letter to give his next words an added force. ‘What we do not want, Captain, is to complicate matters. Provide us with a succinct report that will allow my master to reassure the Queen that there are no possible grounds for a pardon and then let us forget the wretched matter.’

‘Suppose he doesn’t confess?’ Sandman asked.

‘Make him,’ Witherspoon said forcefully. ‘He will hang anyway, Captain, whether you have submitted your report or not. It would simply be more convenient if we could reassure Her Majesty of the man’s guilt before the wretch is executed.’

‘And if he’s innocent?’ Sandman asked.

Witherspoon looked appalled at the suggestion. ‘How can he be? He’s already been found guilty!’

‘Of course he has,’ Sandman said, then took the letter and slipped it into the tail pocket of his coat. ‘His Lordship,’ he spoke awkwardly, ‘mentioned an emolument.’ He hated talking of money, it was so ungentlemanly, but so was his poverty.

‘Indeed he did,’ Witherspoon said. ‘We usually paid twenty guineas to Mister Talbot, but I would find it hard to recommend the same fee in this case. It really is too trivial a matter so I shall authorise a draft for fifteen guineas. I shall send it to you, where?’ He glanced down at his notebook, then looked shocked. ‘Really? The Wheatsheaf? In Drury Lane?’

‘Indeed,’ Sandman said stiffly. He knew Witherspoon deserved an explanation for the Wheatsheaf was notorious as a haunt of criminals, but Sandman had not known of that reputation when he asked for a room and he did not think he needed to justify himself to Witherspoon.

‘I’m sure you know best,’ Witherspoon said dubiously.

Sandman hesitated. He was no coward, indeed he had the reputation of being a brave man, but that reputation had been earnt in the smoke of battle and what he did now took all his courage. ‘You mentioned a draft, Mister Witherspoon,’ he said, ‘and I wondered whether I might persuade you to cash? There will be inevitable expenses …’ His voice tailed away because, for the life of him, he could not think what those expenses might be.

Both Witherspoon and the clerk stared at Sandman as though he had just dropped his breeches. ‘Cash?’ Witherspoon asked in a small voice.

Sandman knew he was blushing. ‘You want the matter resolved swiftly,’ he said, ‘and there could be contingencies that will require expenditure. I cannot foresee the nature of those contingencies, but …’ He shrugged and again his voice tailed away.

‘Prendergast,’ Witherspoon looked at Sandman even as he spoke to the clerk, ‘pray go to Mister Hodge’s office, present him with my compliments and ask him to advance us fifteen guineas,’ he paused, still looking at Sandman, ‘in cash.’

The money was found, it was given and Sandman left the Home Office with pockets heavy with gold. Damn poverty, he thought, but the rent was due at the Wheatsheaf and it had been three days since he had eaten a proper meal.

But fifteen guineas! He could afford a meal now. A meal, some wine and an afternoon of cricket. It was a tempting vision, but Sandman was not a man to shirk duty. The job of being the Home Office’s Investigator might be temporary, but if he finished this first enquiry swiftly then he might look for other and more lucrative assignments from Lord Sidmouth, and that was an outcome devoutly to be wished and so he would forgo the meal, forget the wine and postpone the cricket.

For there was a murderer to see and a confession to obtain.

And Sandman went to fetch it.

In Old Bailey, a funnel-shaped thoroughfare that narrowed as it ran from Newgate Street to Ludgate Hill, the scaffold was being taken down. The black baize that had draped the platform was already folded onto a small cart and two men were now handing down the heavy beam from which the four victims had been hanged. The first broadsheets describing the executions and the crimes that had caused them were being hawked for a penny apiece to the vestiges of the morning’s crowd who had waited to see Jemmy Botting haul the four dead bodies up from the hanging pit, sit them on the edge of the drop while he removed the nooses and then heave them into their coffins. Then a handful of spectators had climbed to the scaffold to have one of the dead men’s hands touched to their warts, boils or tumours.

The coffins had at last been carried into the prison, but some folk still lingered just to watch the scaffold’s dismemberment. Two hawkers were selling what they claimed were portions of the fatal ropes. Bewigged and black-robed lawyers hurried between the Lamb Inn, the Magpie and Stump and the courts of the Session House that had been built next to the prison. Traffic had been allowed back into the street so Sandman had to dodge between wagons, carriages and carts to reach the prison gate where he expected warders and locks, but instead he found a uniformed porter at the top of the steps and dozens of folk coming and going. Women were carrying parcels of food, babies and bottles of gin, beer or rum. Children ran and screamed, while two aproned tapmen from the Magpie and Stump across the street delivered cooked meals on wooden trays to prisoners who could afford their services.

‘Your honour is looking for someone?’ The porter, seeing Sandman’s confusion, had pushed through the crowd to intercept him.

‘I am looking for Charles Corday,’ Sandman said, and when the porter looked bemused, added that he had come from the Home Office. ‘My name is Sandman,’ he explained, ‘Captain Sandman, and I’m Lord Sidmouth’s official Investigator.’ He drew out the letter with its impressive Home Office seal.

‘Ah!’ The porter was quite uninterested in the letter. ‘You’ve replaced Mister Talbot, God rest his soul. A proper gentleman he was, sir.’

Sandman put the letter away. ‘I should, perhaps, pay my respects to the Governor?’ he suggested.

‘The Keeper, sir, Mister Brown is the Keeper, sir, and he won’t thank you for any respects, sir, on account that they ain’t needful. You just goes in, sir, and sees the prisoner. Mister Talbot, now, God rest him, he took them to one of the empty salt boxes and had a little chat.’ The porter grinned and mimed a punching action. ‘A great one for the truth was Mister Talbot. A big man, he was, but so are you. What was your fellow called?’

‘Corday.’

‘He’s condemned, is he? Then you’ll find him in the Press Yard, your honour. Are you carrying a stick, sir?’

‘A stick?’

‘A pistol, sir. No? Some gentlemen do, but weapons ain’t advisable, sir, on account that the bastards might overpower you. And a word of advice, Captain?’ The porter, his breath reeking of rum, turned and took hold of Sandman’s lapel to add emphasis to his next words. ‘He’ll tell you he didn’t do it, sir. There ain’t a guilty man in here, not one! Not if you ask them. They’ll all swear on their mothers’ lives they didn’t do it, but they did. They all did.’ He grinned and released his grip on Sandman’s coat. ‘Do you have a watch, sir? You do, sir? Best not take anything in that might be stolen. It’ll be in the cupboard here, sir, under lock, key and my eye. Round that corner, sir, you’ll find some stairs. Go down, sir, follow the tunnel and don’t mind the smell. Mind your backs!’ This last call was to all the folk in the lobby because four workmen, accompanied by three watchmen armed with truncheons, were carrying a plain wooden coffin out through the prison door. ‘It’s the girl what was stretched this morning, sir,’ the porter confided in Sandman. ‘She’s going to the surgeons. The gentlemen do like a young lady to dissect, they do. Down the stairs, sir, and follow your nose.’

The smell of unwashed bodies reminded Sandman of Spanish billets crowded with tired redcoats and the stench became even more noxious as he followed the stone-flagged tunnel to where more stairs climbed to a guardroom beside a massive barred gate that led into the Press Yard. Two turnkeys, both armed with cudgels, guarded the gate. ‘Charles Corday?’ one responded when Sandman enquired where the prisoner might be found. ‘You can’t miss him. If he ain’t in the yard then he’ll be in the Association Room.’ He pointed to an open door across the yard. ‘He looks like a bleeding mort, that’s why you can’t mistake him.’

‘A mort?’

The man unbolted the gate. ‘He looks like a bloody girl, sir,’ he said scornfully. ‘Pal of his, are you?’ The man grinned, then the grin faded as Sandman turned and stared at him. ‘I don’t see him in the yard, sir,’ the turnkey had been a soldier and he instinctively straightened his back and became respectful under Sandman’s gaze, ‘so he’ll be in the Association Room, sir. That door over there, sir.’

The Press Yard was a narrow space compressed between high, dank buildings. What little light came into the yard arrived over a thicket of spikes that crowned the Newgate Street wall beside which a score of prisoners, easily identifiable because of their leg irons, sat with their visitors. Children played round an open drain. A blind man sat by the steps leading to the cells, muttering to himself and scratching at the open sores on his manacled ankles. A drunk, also in chains, lay sleeping while a woman, evidently his wife, wept silently beside him. She mistook Sandman for a wealthy man and held out a begging hand. ‘Have pity on a poor woman, your honour, have pity.’

Sandman went into the Association Room which was a large space filled with tables and benches. A coal fire burnt in a big grate where stew pots hung from a crane. The pots were being stirred by two women who were evidently cooking for a dozen folk seated round one of the long tables. The only turnkey in the room, a youngish man armed with a truncheon, was also at the table, sharing a gin bottle and the laughter which died abruptly when Sandman appeared. Then the other tables fell silent as forty or fifty folk turned to look at the newcomer. Someone spat. Something about Sandman, maybe his height, spoke of authority and this was not a place where authority was welcome.

‘Corday!’ Sandman called, his voice taking on the familiar officer’s tone. ‘I’m looking for Charles Corday!’ No one answered. ‘Corday!’ Sandman called again.

‘Sir?’ The answering voice was tremulous and came from the room’s furthest and darkest corner. Sandman threaded his way through the tables to see a pathetic figure curled against the wall there. Charles Corday was very young, he looked scarce more than seventeen, and he was thin to the point of frailty with a deathly pale face framed by long fair hair that did, indeed, look girlish. He had long eyelashes, a trembling lip and a dark bruise on one cheek.