The Hangman's Secret Read online

  “We’d like to speak with them,” Hugh says.

  Governor Piercy shifts on his throne; his hands, bony with long, curved nails, tighten on its armrests. “You would be wasting your time. They’re bound by the Official Secrets Act too.”

  “We’ll choose how we spend our time,” I say.

  “To see Sheriff Hargreaves, you’ll have to go to Old Bailey.” Piercy seems glad that at least one witness is out of convenient reach.

  “We’ll settle for the others,” Hugh says, rising.

  Piercy grimaces in irritation. “As you wish.” He tells the wardens to take my photography equipment to the vestibule, then says, “It will be waiting for you when you’re finished.”

  Dismayed, I stand between my equipment and the wardens. “It goes with us.” Leaving my precious possessions at the mercy of hostile men is unthinkable.

  “We promise not to take photographs,” Hugh says.

  “If you’re not going to take photographs, then you won’t need it,” Piercy says.

  An angry objection rises to my lips. Hugh cautions me with a glance and lies, “That equipment belongs to the Daily World. If anything happens to it, Sir Gerald will be furious.”

  “It will be perfectly safe,” the governor says, “but if you’re worried, you can leave now and take it with you.”

  Either I let them hold my equipment hostage to my good behavior or go back to Sir Gerald with nothing to report. I reluctantly nod. Watching the wardens carry away my camera, trunk, and satchel, I wonder if I’ll ever see them again.

  A man enters the office. He’s big, clad in a physician’s white coat over a white shirt and gray wool trousers. “Governor Piercy—oh, excuse me, I didn’t know the reporters were still here.”

  “That’s all right,” Governor Piercy says. “Lord Hugh and Miss Bain want to speak with you.” He turns to us. “This is Dr. Simon Davies, the prison surgeon.”

  Hugh and I gaze in astonished recognition at the man’s rugged, youthful features, at the silver-rimmed spectacles pushed atop his wavy brown hair. Dr. Davies is Mrs. Warbrick’s lover.

  CHAPTER 7

  Hugh and I hide our shock. Dr. Davies looks at us as if he’s just stepped onto ground he thought was safe, but he’s fallen off the edge of a cliff. His brown eyes are bloodshot, with puffy shadows underneath, and I see a patch of stubble on his jaw that he missed while shaving. He avoids our gazes and speaks to the governor.

  “I came to tell you there’s an outbreak of influenza on Ward Four. I can’t talk now.”

  “You will.” Governor Piercy’s tone brooks no objection. Now that he’s consented to our interviewing the witnesses to Amelia Carlisle’s hanging, he seems to have decided to get it over with.

  Dr. Davies puffs his cheeks and blows out his breath. “Yes, sir.”

  “Don’t leave them alone for even a second,” Piercy says. “They must be accompanied at all times while they’re here.” His gaze holds the doctor’s for a moment, as if to convey a warning that he doesn’t want to voice.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Piercy turns his warning gaze on us. “Don’t be tempted to wander by yourselves. Good day, Lord Hugh, Miss Bain.”

  Dr. Davies leads us down the stairs, into a labyrinth of passages lit by flames that flare from hissing gas jets mounted on the walls. Gas fumes mingle with the odors of earth, drains, and cesspools. Our footsteps ring loudly on a flagstone floor worn down in a rut in the middle. The granite-block walls seem saturated with fear, anger, misery, and insanity absorbed from inmates throughout the centuries. Voices echo from doors that lead to other passages, in which guards loiter, watching us go by. I shiver.

  The corridor is wide enough for us to walk three abreast, but Dr. Davies edges ahead, as if to outrun us. “I’m sure Governor Piercy told you about the Official Secrets Act. I can’t talk about Amelia Carlisle’s hanging.”

  “How about showing us the execution shed?” Hugh says. We need to see where Amelia spent her last moments alive; perhaps it will furnish clues relevant to Harry Warbrick’s murder.

  “I can’t take you there. It’s against regulations. And I really haven’t time to talk now.”

  “Then perhaps we could meet later at Mr. Warbrick’s house,” I say. “You must be eager to get back to Mrs. Warbrick.”

  Dr. Davies stops so suddenly that Hugh and I stumble to a halt behind him. He stands with his back to us, like a man afraid to face a firing squad. “What did you say?” His voice shrinks to a hushed mumble.

  “We saw you with Mrs. Warbrick,” Hugh says.

  Dr. Davies turns slowly. In the yellow light from the gas jets, his face sags with shocked realization. “That was you who called on her yesterday. I didn’t see you, but I heard you talking. Your voices are familiar.” I can tell he wants to know what we saw or heard, but is afraid to ask. He looks as though he’s crash-landed after his fall off the cliff, and he’s wondering how badly hurt he is. “She said you were from the Home Office.” Anger roughens his voice. “You lied.”

  I’m still ashamed of taking advantage of her, but we needed information from her, and we need it now from Dr. Davies. “Did Mr. Warbrick know about your affair with his wife?”

  Two guards walk down the passage toward us. They slow as they approach, eyeing us with curiosity. Dr. Davies hisses, “Be quiet!”

  They vanish around a corner. Hugh says, “How about that execution shed?”

  Dr. Davies sighs, then beckons. We follow him to a courtyard surrounded by prison buildings. I hear the everyday sounds of carriage wheels, factory machinery, and cheerful voices from the world outside Newgate. The execution shed is a house made of brick, built into a corner of the courtyard. About twenty feet wide and ten deep, it has a slanted roof, a skylight, two large wooden doors divided horizontally in half like those of a barn, and a smaller door on the left. When Dr. Davies opens the smaller door, Hugh and I hesitate because we know that, except for the grace of fortune, we might have arrived at the execution shed under different circumstances. Morbid curiosity propels us through the door. I see a large shape dangling in midair from the end of a rope.

  A hanged man!

  My heart thumps. Hugh makes a startled sound. Then we discern that the shape is a burlap sack apparently stuffed with rocks. We sigh with relief. The rope is attached to one of three heavy metal pulleys that hang from a cross beam supported by two tall, sturdy wooden posts—the gallows. Beneath the gallows is a plank floor with two rectangular trap doors, one about ten feet long and divided crosswise in half, the other small.

  “What is that?” Hugh says, pointing at the sack.

  “Weights,” Dr. Davies says. “There’s a hanging tomorrow. The rope has to be stretched the night before, with a weight equal to the prisoner’s. So that it doesn’t stretch during the hanging.”

  I deduce that if the rope stretches, the prisoner’s neck won’t break, and death will be by slow strangulation. Everything looks clean, but I smell a faint sour, foul odor, like a latrine. I remember Ernie Leach saying that hanged prisoners involuntarily empty their bowels and bladders. Hugh puts his hand on a long lever that juts from the floor near the left-hand post.

  “Don’t touch that,” Dr. Davies says—too late

  The two halves of the large trap door fall downward with a crash. Hugh and I start. The latrine odor wafts up on a cold gust from a pit that yawns below the open door. We stare down into the pit, sickened and fascinated. It’s perhaps eight feet deep with a stone floor and walls. How many humans have met their deaths suspended there? The next condemned criminal is due to follow suit tomorrow. So might we, and so might my father, eventually. Dizziness whirls my head. I grasp a post for support, and when I regain my balance, I look up to see Dr. Davies slumped against the wall.

  “Please don’t put Isabella and me in the newspaper,” he says. “It would ruin her reputation.”

  I think he’s in love with Mrs. Warbrick; their affair isn’t just a fling. They seem an unlikely couple—the refined lady who
couldn’t stomach bedding her husband the hangman, and the young prison surgeon who doctors criminals. “How did the two of you meet?”

  “On a pleasure boat on the Thames last summer.” A nostalgic smile leavens Dr. Davies’s expression. “I was with some friends from my medical school days at Oxford. She was with her neighbors. We started talking. By the time we each found out who the other was, we’d already fallen in love.”

  I know from my own experience that love can happen like that despite all the reasons against it. “Did you kill her husband?”

  Horror and revulsion show on Dr. Davies’s face. “Good God, no!”

  “With Harry gone, you can have Isabella all to yourself,” Hugh says, “and you needn’t worry about him catching on and giving you both what-for.”

  Dr. Davies flushes and hangs his head. “He’d already caught us. We thought he’d gone to Manchester for a hanging, but it was postponed. He was angry and threw me out, but nothing came of it. I think he preferred to let it go rather than divorce Isabella or make trouble for me. We had to work together.”

  Hugh and I look at each other, unconvinced. “Where were you the night he was murdered?” Hugh says.

  “Here at Newgate. I had some seriously ill prisoners at the infirmary.”

  “And you couldn’t let them die before they finish serving their sentences,” Hugh jests with a straight face.

  Dr. Davies frowns, offended. “They deserve the same treatment as any other patients—my best. I came in at eight that morning and didn’t leave until nine the next. The nurses and the wardens can vouch for me.”

  By nine, Harry Warbrick’s remains had already been removed from his pub. I wonder if Dr. Davies slipped out for several hours during the night when everyone thought he was on duty. “So you have an alibi. Does Mrs. Warbrick?”

  “She’s innocent. You leave her alone!” Fist balled, muscles bulging, Dr. Davies suddenly looks bigger, stronger. I’m uncomfortably aware that Hugh and I are alone in the execution shed with a man who may have hanged and decapitated Harry Warbrick. If he did, he may be ruthless or insane enough to kill us here inside Newgate and throw our bodies in the pit.

  Hugh cranks the lever and closes the trap door. “Let’s make a bargain. You tell us about Amelia Carlisle’s execution, and we won’t plaster your affair on the front page of the Daily World.”

  Dr. Davies’s anger gives way to fearful obstinacy. “I can’t.” The shed is cold, but his face gleams with sweat. “You know I can’t.”

  “If you do, what could happen to you that’s so bad?” Hugh says.

  “At best, I’ll lose my post.”

  “What would be so bad about that?” Hugh’s gesture encompasses the entire prison. “This ain’t exactly Buckingham Palace.”

  “I wouldn’t be able to get another one.”

  “Oh, come now—you’re an Oxford man.”

  Dr. Davies colors. “Not quite. I was sent down. I finished my education here in London.”

  “Sent down?” Hugh says, alert for scandal. “What for?”

  “I was caught with a girl in my room. She was drunk and unconscious. Later she said I took advantage of her, which wasn’t true. She was willing.” Chagrin tinges Dr. Davies’s self-defense. “It didn’t help that she was the dean’s daughter.”

  “Well, that was a mistake,” Hugh says, “but surely it won’t affect your prospects now?”

  “I got into a little more trouble on my first posting, at the Royal Hospital,” Dr. Davies says sheepishly. “There were these female patients …” He sighs. “They made me resign.”

  He has a pattern of compromising affairs with women. Mrs. Warbrick is but the latest in the series.

  “If I leave this post under a cloud, I could lose my medical license.” Panic gleams in Dr. Davies’s bloodshot eyes. “You’re not going to print any of this in the newspaper, are you?”

  “Not if you tell us what happened at Amelia’s execution,” Hugh says.

  “Have a heart! I could go to prison!”

  That’s a serious penalty worth avoiding, but I say, “It could be worse. If something happened during Amelia’s hanging, and one of the witnesses killed Harry Warbrick to keep it secret, then the other witnesses are in danger. That includes you.” Unless he’s the murderer.

  Dr. Davies clenches his jaw and glares, adamant in his refusal to violate the Official Secrets Act.

  I seek another route to the truth. “Did you meet Amelia Carlisle before the day she was hanged?” Perhaps the time she spent in Newgate can shed indirect light on the critical two minutes and fifty seconds.

  “Yes.” Dr. Davies looks relieved to change the subject, but still on his guard. “I examine all the prisoners upon their admission to Newgate.”

  “What were the results of your examination of Amelia?” Hugh says.

  “She was in good health.” Dr. Davies seems determined to reveal as little as possible.

  “How did she behave?” I say.

  Dr. Davies hesitates. I watch him decide that if he cooperates with this line of questioning, perhaps we won’t resume the other. “She was very agitated. This was before her trial, but she knew she was going to be convicted. The evidence against her was overwhelming. She didn’t want to be hanged. She pleaded the belly.”

  “The law prohibits executing criminals who are with child, I understand,” Hugh says.

  “Yes,” Dr. Davies says. “Convicts can plead the belly to delay their executions until after the child is born. It buys them a few more months on earth, as well as sparing the life of the innocent child.”

  “There was nothing in the papers about Amelia pleading the belly,” I say.

  “The information was never released to the press,” Dr. Davies says. “Amelia was kept under observation after her trial. During that time, I obtained proof that she was not with child. She was hanged ten days after she was sentenced to death.”

  “What other information wasn’t released to the press?” Hugh asks.

  Dr. Davies clams up, aware that Hugh’s question refers to the taboo subject of Amelia’s execution. I say, “Why is the prison surgeon required to be present at executions?”

  “Good question,” Hugh says. “It’s not as if you’re supposed to mend the broken necks.”

  “I verify that death has taken place,” Dr. Davies says.

  “Do you perform the autopsy?” The period that led up to Amelia’s death seems devoid of clues about Harry Warbrick’s murder, but I’m hoping the period afterward will provide enlightenment.

  “There is no autopsy after a hanging unless the coroner specially requests it. In Amelia’s case, he didn’t.”

  “Does that mean her death was straightforward, no unusual circumstances?” Hugh says.

  Dr. Davies frowns at Hugh’s ploy to make him talk about the hanging. “There was no autopsy,” he says in a flat voice.

  If Amelia’s corpse harbored any clues, it took them to the grave.

  “We need something to publish in the paper,” Hugh says. “If we can’t get anything about the execution, it’ll have to be a story about you and your checkered past and Mrs. Warbrick.” He speaks reluctantly; I know he doesn’t like threatening another man with the scandalous exposure that he himself suffered.

  Resentful obstinacy joins fear in Dr. Davies’ expression. “Publish what you will.”

  “You care more about your job and your professional status than about Mrs. Warbrick?” I think him a selfish lover as well as cowardly. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  Dr. Davies glowers, refusing to take the bait. Hugh says, “When the story comes out, both you and Mrs. Warbrick will become suspects in Harry’s murder.”

  “You’re out to ruin people’s lives for the sake of selling newspapers. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”

  I flinch as Dr. Davies’s accusation hits home. I can rationalize my motives however I please, but I work for Sir Gerald, whose motive is making money, and by investigating the hangman’s murder
, I’m protecting my own livelihood.

  Hugh looks chastened but says, “This isn’t all about the newspaper. It’s about justice for Harry Warbrick.”

  “Harry Warbrick, a total stranger to you,” Dr. Davies says. “Spare me your holier-than-thou attitude.”

  “Harry Warbrick, the husband of your mistress,” I say, goaded by my discomfort with my own dubious position and a sense of responsibility to stand up for Harry Warbrick. He seems a victim of his own tendency to brag—a human flaw that didn’t merit his brutal death. “The husband who had a very generous burial insurance policy.”

  I watch Dr. Davies comprehend my hint that he and Mrs. Warbrick conspired to murder her husband for the insurance money. Dismay and dread cross his features in rapid succession. Then his gaze hardens, his posture straightens, and he speaks in a cool, steady voice. “I’ve nothing more to say to you except ‘Go to hell.’ ”

  He seems suddenly older, more the master of himself—the real man behind the overworked doctor and the foolish lover, a man dangerous to cross.

  “Before we go to hell, we’ll stop and see the matron and chaplain,” Hugh says.

  “So that you can ruin their lives as well?” Dr. Davies regards us with contempt, then opens a door at the back of the shed.

  As he leads us along a stone-walled passage, a breathless guard appears around a corner and says, “Dr. Davies, an inmate is having a fit in Ward Two. Come quick!”

  “Stay with them.” Dr. Davies points at Hugh and me, then tells us, “Wait here. I’ll be back soon.” He hurries away.

  A moment later, the lights go out, plunging the corridor into darkness.

  CHAPTER 8

  Hugh and I exclaim in surprise. All I can see is the pale after-images of the flames from the gas jets on the walls. I don’t hear the gas hissing; it must have gone off. With my vision disabled, my other senses sharpen. I hear quiet footsteps, detect the faint, tingling warmth of other human presences nearby. I feel hands groping me at the same time a scuffle erupts. I cry out, alarmed.