Gallows Thief

‘You’re Charles Corday?’ Sandman felt an instinctive dislike of the young man, who looked too delicate and self-pitying.

‘Yes, sir.’ Corday’s right arm was shaking.

‘Stand up,’ Sandman ordered. Corday blinked in surprise at the tone of command, but obeyed, flinching because the leg irons bit into his ankles. ‘I’ve been sent by the Home Secretary,’ Sandman said, ‘and I need somewhere private where we can talk. We can use the cells, perhaps. Do we reach them from here? Or from the yard?’

‘The yard, sir,’ Corday said, though he scarcely seemed to have understood the rest of Sandman’s words.

Sandman led Corday towards the door. ‘Is he your boman, Charlie?’ a man in leg shackles enquired. ‘Come for a farewell cuddle, has he?’ The other prisoners laughed, but Sandman had the experienced officer’s ability to know when to ignore insubordination and he just kept walking, but then he heard Corday squeal and he turned to see that a greasy-haired and unshaven man was holding Corday’s hair like a leash. ‘I was talking to you, Charlie!’ the man said. He yanked Corday’s hair, making the boy squeal again. ‘Give us a kiss, Charlie,’ the man demanded, ‘give us a kiss.’ The women at the table by the fire laughed at Corday’s predicament.

‘Let him go,’ Sandman said.

‘You don’t give orders here, culley,’ the unshaven man growled. ‘No one gives orders in here, there aren’t any orders any more, not till Jemmy comes to fetch us away, so you can fake away off, culley, you can—’ The man stopped suddenly, then gave a curious scream. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No!’

Rider Sandman had ever suffered from a temper. He knew it and he fought against it. In his everyday life he adopted a tone of gentle deliberation, he used courtesy far beyond necessity, he elevated reason and he reinforced it with prayer, and he did all that because he feared his own temper, but not all the prayer and reason and courtesy had eliminated the foul moods. His soldiers had known there was a devil in Captain Sandman. It was a real devil and they knew he was not a man to cross because he had that temper as sudden and as fierce as a summer storm of lightning and thunder. And he was a tall and strong man, strong enough to lift the unshaven prisoner and slam him against the wall so hard that the man’s head bounced off the stones. Then the man screamed because Sandman had driven a hard fist into his lower belly. ‘I said let him go,’ Sandman snapped. ‘Did you not hear what I said? Are you deaf or are you just a bloody God-damned idiot?’ He slapped the man once, twice, and his eyes were blazing and his voice was seething with a promise of even more terrible violence. ‘Damn it! What kind of fool do you take me for?’ He jerked the man. ‘Answer me!’

‘Sir?’ the unshaven man managed to say.

‘Answer me. God damn it!’ Sandman’s right hand was about the prisoner’s throat and he was throttling the man, who was incapable of saying anything now. There was utter silence in the Association Room. The man, gazing into Sandman’s pale eyes, was choking.

The turnkey, as appalled by the force of Sandman’s anger as any of the prisoners, nervously crossed the room. ‘Sir? You’re throttling him, sir.’

‘I’m damn well killing him,’ Sandman snarled.

‘Sir, please, sir.’

Sandman suddenly came to his senses, then let the prisoner go. ‘If you cannot be courteous,’ he told the half-choked man, ‘then you should be silent.’

‘He won’t give you any more lip, sir,’ the turnkey said anxiously, ‘I warrant he won’t, sir.’

‘Come, Corday,’ Sandman ordered, and stalked out of the room.

There was a sigh of relief when he left. ‘Who the hell was that?’ the bruised prisoner managed to ask through the pain in his throat.

‘Never laid peepers on him.’

‘Got no right to hit me,’ the prisoner said, and his friends growled their assent though none cared to follow Sandman and debate the assertion.

Sandman led a terrified Corday across the Press Yard to the steps which led to the fifteen salt boxes. The five cells on the ground floor were all being used by prostitutes and Sandman, the temper still seething in him, did not apologise for interrupting them, but just slammed the doors then climbed the stairs to find an empty cell on the first floor. ‘In there,’ he told Corday, and the frightened youth scuttled past him. Sandman shuddered at the stink in this ancient part of the jail that had survived the fires of the Gordon Riots. The rest of the prison had burnt to ash during the riots, but these floors had merely been scorched and the salt boxes looked more like mediaeval dungeons than modern cells. A rope mat lay on the floor, evidently to serve as a mattress, blankets for five or six men were tossed in an untidy pile under the high-barred window while an unemptied night bucket stank in a corner.

‘I’m Captain Rider Sandman,’ he introduced himself again to Corday, ‘and the Home Secretary has asked me to enquire into your case.’

‘Why?’ Corday, who had sunk onto the pile of blankets, nerved himself to ask.

‘Your mother has connections,’ Sandman said shortly, the temper still hot in him.

‘The Queen has spoken for me?’ Corday looked hopeful.

‘Her Majesty has requested an assurance of your guilt,’ Sandman said stuffily.

‘But I’m not guilty,’ Corday protested.

‘You’ve already been condemned,’ Sandman said, ‘so your guilt is not at issue.’ He knew he sounded unbearably pompous, but he wanted to get this distasteful meeting over so he could go to the cricket. It would, he thought, be the swiftest fifteen guineas he had ever earnt for he could not imagine this despicable creature resisting his demands for a confession. Corday looked pathetic, effeminate and close to tears. He was wearing dishevelled but fashionably elegant clothes; black breeches, white stockings, a frilled white shirt and a blue silk waistcoat, but he had neither cravat nor a topcoat. The clothes, Sandman suspected, were all a good deal more expensive than anything he himself possessed and they only increased his dislike of Corday, whose voice had a flat and nasal quality with an accent that betrayed social pretensions. A snivelling little upstart, was Sandman’s instinctive judgement; a boy scarce grown and already aping the manners and fashion of his betters.

‘I didn’t do it!’ Corday protested again, then began to cry. His thin shoulders heaved, his voice grizzled and the tears ran down his pale cheeks.

Sandman stood in the cell doorway. His predecessor had evidently beaten confessions out of prisoners, but Sandman could not imagine himself doing the same. It was not honourable and could not be done, which meant the wretched boy would have to be persuaded into telling the truth, but the first necessity was to stop him weeping. ‘Why do you call yourself Corday,’ he asked, hoping to distract him, ‘when your mother’s name is Cruttwell?’

Corday sniffed. ‘There’s no law against it.’

‘Did I say there was?’

‘I’m a portrait painter,’ Corday said petulantly, as if he needed to reassure himself of that fact, ‘and clients prefer their painters to have French names. Cruttwell doesn’t sound distinguished. Would you have your portrait painted by Charlie Cruttwell when you could engage Monsieur Charles Corday?’

‘You’re a painter?’ Sandman could not hide his surprise.

‘Yes!’ Corday, his eyes reddened from crying, looked belligerently at Sandman, then he collapsed into misery again. ‘I was apprenticed to Sir George Phillips.’

‘He’s very successful,’ Sandman said scornfully, ‘despite possessing a prosaically English name. And Sir Thomas Lawrence doesn’t sound very French to me.’

‘I thought changing my name would help,’ Corday said sulkily. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Your guilt matters,’ Sandman said sternly, ‘and, if nothing else, you might face the judgement of your Maker with a clear conscience if you were to confess it.’

Corday stared at Sandman as though his visitor were mad. ‘You know what I’m guilty of?’ he finally asked. ‘I’m guilty of aspiring to be above my station. I’m guilty of being a decent painter. I’m guilty of being a much better damned painter than Sir George bloody Phillips, and I’m guilty, my God how I’m guilty, of being stupid, but I did not kill the Countess of Avebury! I did not!’

Sandman did not like the boy, but he felt in danger of being convinced by him and so he steeled himself by remembering the warning words of the porter at the prison gate. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

‘Eighteen,’ Corday answered.

‘Eighteen,’ Sandman echoed. ‘God will have pity on your youth,’ he said. ‘We all do stupid things when we’re young, and you have done terrible things, but God will weigh your soul and there is still hope. You aren’t doomed to hell’s fires, not if you confess and if you beg God for forgiveness.’

‘Forgiveness for what?’ Corday asked defiantly.

Sandman was so taken aback that he said nothing.

Corday, red-eyed and pale-faced, stared up at the tall Sandman. ‘Look at me,’ he said, ‘do I look like a man who has the strength to rape and kill a woman, even if I wanted to? Do I look like that?’ He did not. Sandman had to admit it, at least to himself, for Corday was a limp and unimpressive creature, weedy and thin, who now began to weep again. ‘You’re all the same,’ he whined. ‘No one listens! No one cares! So long as someone hangs, no one cares.’

‘Stop crying, for God’s sake!’ Sandman snarled, and immediately chided himself for giving way to his temper. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.

Those last two words made Corday frown in puzzlement. He stopped weeping, looked at Sandman and frowned. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said softly, ‘I didn’t do it.’

‘So what happened?’ Sandman asked, despising himself for having lost control of the interview.

‘I was painting her,’ Corday said. ‘The Earl of Avebury wanted a portrait of his wife and he asked Sir George to do it.’

‘He asked Sir George, yet you were painting her?’ Sandman sounded sceptical. Corday, after all, was a mere eighteen years old while Sir George Phillips was celebrated as the only rival to Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Corday sighed as though Sandman was being deliberately obtuse. ‘Sir George drinks,’ he said scornfully. ‘He starts on blackstrap at breakfast and bowzes till night, which means his hand shakes. So he drinks and I paint.’