The Hangman's Secret

by Laura Joh Rowland

  “Did he ever talk to you?” I ask.

  “He talked to everybody.” Mrs. Fry adds with distaste, “He was that sort.”

  “What did he talk about?” Hugh asks.

  “His trips around the country. The criminals he hanged. He was always hintin’ that he knew things that other people didn’t. I don’t think he really did. I think he just wanted to make himself seem important.”

  I have to consider the possibility that her assessment of Harry Warbrick could be accurate. I’m beginning to wonder if Warbrick’s murder really isn’t connected with Amelia Carlisle’s hanging. We’ve yet to find proof that it is.

  “Harry invited me to his pub,” Mrs. Fry says. “I didn’t go.”

  “It sounds as if you disliked him,” Hugh says.

  “Not enough to kill him, if that’s what you’re gettin’ at.”

  We should look for witnesses to confirm or disprove the lack of bad blood between Mrs. Fry and Harry Warbrick, but her placid manner makes her seem innocent. Maybe Hugh and I risked our lives to come here on a fool’s errand.

  “Did you see Harry after Amelia’s hanging?” Hugh asks.

  “No,” Mrs. Fry says. “The hanging was the last time I ever saw him.”

  My doubts trigger a sudden, disturbing notion: the attacks on Hugh and me might not have been instigated by one of the witnesses to Amelia’s hanging. Maybe they were personal, unrelated to those two minutes and fifty seconds.

  “Who do you think killed him?” Hugh says.

  “Likely some bloke he ticked off at his pub.” Mrs. Fry puts her knitting in the basket and stands. “I have to get back on the ward. I’ll take you to the chaplain now.”

  CHAPTER 9

  The walk with Mrs. Fry to the central prison block clears my head, invigorates me. But I’m rattled by the new ideas that have taken root in my mind, still on high alert for danger. Two wardens fall into step behind Hugh and me in the passage, the same men who escorted us earlier.

  “We’ll take ’em from here, Mrs. Fry.”

  Did they attack us? If so, on whose orders? I walk as far away from them as possible. The next push down the stairs could be fatal.

  The chapel is on the top floor of the prison, a large room where stone walls rise to a high ceiling and iron bars fortify the tall, arched windows, whose grimy panes darken the foggy daylight. It’s stark, without decorations to uplift the spirits, and cold. The air smells of body odor and stale mops. Hugh and I have been in the prison all afternoon; it’s now four thirty, and an evensong service is in progress. A huge wooden pulpit looms against the wall opposite the windows, elevated on a platform about ten feet high. Inside it stands the chaplain.

  “O God, make speed to save us.” Young, with curly light brown hair, dressed in dark clerical garb, dwarfed by the pulpit, he speaks in a cultured, nervous voice.

  Male prisoners sitting in rows of benches along the walls, behind iron grilles, recite the response to the prayer: “O Lord, make haste to help us.” Female voices issue from the two galleries, which are screened by tall boards that slant toward the pulpit so the women behind them have a view of the preacher, but nothing else. I suppose the seating arrangement prevents the inmates from flirting and disrupting the service.

  “Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” the chaplain says.

  “Amen,” some of the prisoners respond dutifully. Others mutter, joke, and chuckle among themselves.

  The organist, a wizened gray man, plays a hymn on a harmonium. Voices rise in song:

  God that madest earth and heaven,

  Darkness and light!

  Who the day for toil hast given,

  For rest the night.

  The men clown, singing the next lines in exaggerated falsetto or bass. The women giggle. The chaplain winces with pained disapproval. “Please, remember that this is a house of God!”

  The congregation only grows louder, unrulier. The organist shakes with suppressed mirth. One of the wardens escorting Hugh and me steps in. “That’s enough. It’s back to the cells for you rabble.”

  The men exit through a door behind their benches. A woman calls, “Buy me a drink when I get out, Father?” The other women titter.

  “Better show ’em who’s boss, Father, or you won’t last long here,” the warden says, then points at Hugh and me. “We’ll be waiting outside. Behave yourselves.”

  Hugh and I stand alone in the empty space where, in an ordinary church, the pews would be. We’re ill at ease, not only due to the possibility of another attack. Hugh hasn’t attended church since he was exposed as a homosexual and his pastor repudiated him as a disgrace to God. I haven’t attended since my father disappeared, when the folks at our parish church shunned my mother and me. I now know that they believed my father had raped and murdered Ellen Casey. The memory still hurts.

  The chaplain descends from the pulpit. “You must be from the newspaper.” Face-to-face with him, I’m surprised to discover that he’s tall and husky. His posture, hunched with self-consciousness, makes him seem smaller, frailer. He has boyish features and a prominent Adam’s apple. “I’m Timothy Starling.”

  Hugh and I introduce ourselves and shake hands with him. His hand is wet with cold perspiration, but its grip is strong.

  “How did you get yourself consigned to this hellhole, Father?” Hugh’s tone has a rude, unpleasant, and uncharacteristic edge. I think he sees every clergyman as a personification of the Church’s disgust toward him, and he’s lashing out at this one.

  The Reverend Starling has the kind of fair, translucent skin that blushes easily. Red patches bloom in his cheeks. “I volunteered.”

  “It doesn’t seem like your cup of tea.” Hugh usually hides his hurt feelings about his social ostracism, but sometimes they breach the barrier of his admirable self-control. I suppose he needs to vent them or they’ll eat away at him like acid. Still keyed up from his fight, spoiling for another, he says, “I thought perhaps that you couldn’t get a better situation.”

  “After I was ordained six months ago, I inherited the living at my family’s parish in Wiltshire.” The Reverend Starling’s blush turns even redder. “I came here because the most afflicted and desperate among us need Christian faith the most.”

  “How noble of you,” Hugh says.

  He might be jealous of the chaplain, who’s in good standing with church and society, but I don’t want him picking on a young, idealistic man who, if treated properly, might be more willing to cooperate with us than the rest of the prison staff. I touch Hugh’s arm to quiet him and say to the chaplain, “We need to talk to you about Amelia Carlisle.”

  The chaplain’s Adam’s apple jerks. “I can’t violate the Official Secrets Act.”

  “You’re not the only one who’s hiding behind it. Join the club,” Hugh says in a callous tone. “But you’re a man of God. Isn’t lying one of the seven deadly sins? You ought to make a clean breast instead of lying by omission. Did something untoward happen at Amelia’s hanging?”

  “No! I mean, I’m not saying something didn’t happen. I’m not saying it did.” Flustered, the Reverend Starling waves his hands as his blush deepens. “I’m not saying anything at all.”

  He’s a terrible liar. I feel more certain that Amelia’s last moments alive are at the root of Harry Warbrick’s murder.

  “Come on, Father, just a hint,” Hugh says. “You’ll feel better. The secret is weighing on you like a ton of bricks, I can tell.”

  The Reverend Starling backs against the pulpit as if claiming the authority of his office. “There’s no use badgering me. You might as well go home.” He sounds like a schoolboy trying to fend off bullies.

  “Let’s talk about something else.” Hoping that a gentler, indirect approach will lead us to clues, I ask the Reverend Starling, “Were you acquainted with Amelia Carlisle?”

  He hesitates, as if afraid that any word he utters will let slip a bit of confidential information. “Yes. I see each prisoner upon admission an
d discharge. And I visit them all, as often as possible, to offer spiritual advice.” He gains poise while talking about his work; his blush fades. “I pay special attention to condemned prisoners.”

  Hugh laughs. “What good can you do for people who are headed for the gallows?”

  The Reverend Starling faces Hugh’s hostility with dignified courage. “Ministering to the condemned is an ancient tradition. I help them repent of their sins and make peace with their fate.”

  “How can you manage that when you can’t even control your congregation during services?” Hugh says.

  I flash a warning glance at Hugh. “Did Amelia repent?” The newspaper stories said she expressed no remorse at her trial, and I’d like to know whether she turned over a new leaf while in prison.

  “I’m afraid not. The first step toward repentance is acknowledging responsibility for one’s sins. Unfortunately, Amelia laid the blame for hers on other people. Such as her husbands, God rest their souls.” The Reverend Starling is confident now that the conversation has strayed from Amelia’s execution. His voice gains volume and resonance. I think he would be a good preacher if he had a tamer audience. “She said her first husband should have been more careful and not let himself be buried under falling rocks in the coal mine. She said that if her second husband had been more than a clerk at the mine office, they could have lived someplace where he wouldn’t have caught the cholera. Her third saddled her with a daughter to support on her own. She seemed less grieved by their deaths than resentful because they’d left her in the lurch. If they hadn’t died, she wouldn’t have become a baby farmer.”

  It sounds as though Amelia considered herself a victim. She must have been an unpleasant person as well as a murderess.

  “The person she blamed the most was Faith Ingham,” the Reverend Starling says.

  “Isn’t that the woman who tipped over Amelia’s deadly applecart?” Hugh says.

  “Yes. She set the police on Amelia.”

  “She was the star witness at Amelia’s trial.” I recall newspaper stories I read about Faith Ingham. Her photograph showed an emaciated young woman with big, dazed eyes. A governess and unwed mother, she’d given her baby boy to Amelia. Three weeks later, she changed her mind and went back to reclaim him. Amelia gave her a baby, but Miss Ingham knew it wasn’t hers; hers had a birthmark on his leg, and this one didn’t. Then Amelia told her the baby had been adopted. She gave Miss Ingham the parents’ address, which turned out to be false. When Miss Ingham confronted her, Amelia said she’d made a mistake and gave Miss Ingham a different address. It too was false. Miss Ingham went to the police. They investigated Amelia and questioned her neighbors, who said they’d seen many babies go into her house and none come out. The police spied on Amelia and caught her throwing a dead infant in the Thames. When they searched her house, they found the two other murdered infants and cupboards stuffed with baby clothes, including a nightshirt that had belonged to Miss Ingham’s son. It’s certain that Amelia killed him and threw him in the river, but no trace of him—or the other babies she must have killed—was ever found.

  “Amelia said that Miss Ingham had no right to come back for her baby,” the Reverend Starling continues. “They had an agreement, and Miss Ingham broke it. Amelia also said that if Miss Ingham had cared about her baby, she should have kept him. If not for Miss Ingham raising a fuss, Amelia wouldn’t have been caught. Amelia even suggested that all the mothers who gave their babies to her were at fault. If not for their mistakes, there would be no baby farmers.”

  “What a sweetheart,” Hugh says.

  I’m despising Amelia more and more myself. That she would blame the mothers of the babies she’d killed!

  “Amelia wanted to sue Miss Ingham for breach of contract.” The Reverend Starling shakes his head in disapproval. “She asked me to help.”

  She was not only a blame passer; she was vindictive.

  “Why sue?” Hugh says. “Even if she’d won, she couldn’t have taken the money with her.”

  “She said it would support her daughter. To her credit, she did care about her daughter.”

  “Oh, well, that should have gotten her a pardon.” Hugh’s voice drips sarcasm.

  According to the newspaper stories, Amelia’s adult daughter, Jane Carlisle, didn’t testify at the trial and vanished afterward. Curiosity makes me wonder if she might be worth looking for. Then again, she wouldn’t know what had happened at her mother’s execution.

  “Amelia thought that if she had to be punished, so should Miss Ingham,” the Reverend Starling says. “But I think she also believed the world owed her compensation for the way her life turned out.”

  “Do you think Harry Warbrick deserved the way things turned out for him?” Hugh deftly turns the conversation to the murder.

  “No one deserved such a terrible death.” The blush spreads across the Reverend Starling’s cheeks again. Wringing his hands, he seems even more nervous than when asked about Amelia’s execution. “I shouldn’t talk any more.”

  “Why not?” Hugh says. “Harry’s murder isn’t covered by the Official Secrets Act.”

  The Reverend Starling glances at the door. “I’ve prisoners to visit.”

  “Why so jittery, Father? Did you kill him?”

  “What?” Starling is as crimson as a beet, his eyes wide. “No!”

  “Well, you look guiltier than the cat that ate the canary,” Hugh says, pleased that our investigation may be getting somewhere for our pains. “How well did you know Harry?”

  Starling raises his chin in an attempt at defiance. “I don’t have to answer your questions. You’re just reporters, not the police.” He turns to walk away.

  “Would you rather talk to the police?” I say.

  “When they read in the paper tomorrow that you got all het up when you were asked about Harry, they’ll be on you like a dog on fresh meat.”

  Starling freezes, then turns to face us, his cheeks flaming. “I’m innocent. If you accuse me, you’ll look awfully foolish when it turns out that someone else killed Harry.” His voice resounds with conviction that his color belies.

  Hugh sneers. “Next you’re going to tell us that you hadn’t any reason to kill Harry because the two of you were best chums.”

  Starling is silent while his Adam’s apple jerks.

  “Hah, my instincts were right on the money,” Hugh says. “You did have reason.”

  I’m excited by the possibility that we’ve identified the killer, but not ready to believe it’s Starling. “What happened between you and Warbrick?”

  Cornered, Starling responds as if in the hope that if he spills the beans, we’ll leave him alone. Or maybe he’s succumbed to an urge to unburden himself. “All right. I didn’t like Harry. He was the reason I got off on the wrong foot at Newgate. The first time I witnessed a hanging, I got sick after I left the execution shed. Harry saw me. He laughed and said I needed to develop a stronger stomach. Then he told some of the wardens. Pretty soon it was all over Newgate. Nobody who works here respects me. Neither do the prisoners. And Harry ribbed me whenever he saw me. At every hanging he did, it was, ‘Are you going to lose it again this time, Father?’ ” Misery, resentment, and humiliation shine in Starling’s brown eyes.

  Hugh grins with satisfaction. “Sarah, remember that crime scene we photographed at the Wapping Docks? One longshoreman had killed another for bullying him on the job and turning their colleagues against him. Sounds like we’ve a similar situation here.”

  “No. It isn’t,” Starling protests. “I would never kill anyone, no matter how he treated me.”

  “Oh, right—‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ” Hugh says.

  I remember that motive is only one element of a murder. I feel sorry for Starling because I was bullied at boarding school due to my shy, solitary nature. Furthermore, I can’t credit that the murder had nothing to do with Amelia Carlisle’s hanging.

  “If you have an alibi for the night of the murder, you’ve nothing to worry about
,” I tell Starling.

  I didn’t think he could blush any redder, but he does, as if all the blood has risen to his head. Hugh walks closer to Starling and says, “Just as I thought—no alibi. My instincts are in tip-top form today. Sarah, I bet we can find a witness who’ll place the good father at The Ropemaker’s Daughter that night.”

  Backing away, the chaplain blurts, “He was alive when I left him.”

  My mouth drops. The chaplain has dug himself a deeper hole by admitting he was at the scene of the crime.

  Hugh advances on Starling. “Do you expect us to believe that you went there for a nice, friendly drink?”

  “I did!” Desperate and pleading, the chaplain is physically taller than Hugh but shrunken smaller now by fright. “I thought that if I had a chat with him, I could get him to like me and stop teasing me.”

  Now I’m amazed by his naivety. I learned as a child that efforts to ingratiate oneself with bullies only earns more scorn.

  “Did it work?” Hugh asks, doubtful.

  Pinned against the pulpit, Starling speaks with rancor. “No. He told everyone in the pub how I got sick after the hanging.”

  “He impugned your honor in public. I wouldn’t blame you if you stuck around until after closing and put a noose around his neck.” Hugh thrusts his face at Starling. “Why don’t you just confess? Isn’t it supposed to be good for the soul?”

  “Leave me alone!” Without warning, Starling punches Hugh in the jaw.

  Hugh yelps, reels backward against the harmonium, and slides to the floor.

  “Hugh!” I rush to him and help him to his feet. Although he provoked this second attack of the day, I turn to Starling, ready to do battle.

  Starling gazes at Hugh, appalled by his own actions. “I’m sorry.”

  “No need to apologize, Father.” Hugh laughs, sheepish yet triumphant. “I deserved it for needling you. I’m sorry about that. And you told me exactly what I wanted to know—you’ve a motive for murder, an opportunity to commit it, and no alibi. Oh, and a violent streak. That’s worth a little tap on the jaw.”