Hanging Murder

by A J Wright

  ‘Yes?’ said Oscar, taking a deep breath.

  ‘Are you badly?’

  ‘Certainly not.’

  ‘Well then. Are you comin’ in?’

  ‘What?’

  The man pointed to the shop door, which was propped open by a wicker basket containing all manner of footwear from slippers to shiny leather boots.

  ‘By the look of them buggers,’ said the man indicating Oscar’s laceless shoes, ‘tha could do wi’ a pair of my sturdiest. I’ve some tough buff calf inside if tha fancies?’

  ‘I haven’t the foggiest what you’re talking about,’ said Oscar.

  The man grabbed Oscar by the shoulder and brought him close to his chest before pointing to the sign above the shop entrance. ‘What does that say, pal?’

  Oscar, who could feel the man’s strength draining his own, said feebly, ‘Craddock’s Boot Bazaar.’

  ‘Bloody ’ell, it can read!’

  There were titters of amusement, and Oscar realised, with some humiliation, that a small crowd had gathered.

  ‘Now,’ said the man, who Oscar presumed was Craddock, ‘if tha not comin’ in, tha gooin’ out!’ and with a hefty push, he propelled him into the street.

  As the shop owner turned to go back inside, accompanied by several of his customers, Oscar walked back to the entrance and stood in the open doorway. ‘You do realise,’ he said in a voice loud enough to make the gathering inside turn and face him, ‘that your sign is nothing short of a lie?’

  Mr Craddock frowned. His customers watched him closely. This was an unexpected bonus, their faces acknowledged.

  ‘What did t’say?’

  ‘A bazaar is made up of a warren of streets and alleys. It is also littered with garbage of an unspeakable stench. I know, because I’ve seen more than one bazaar – more than one actual bazaar, that is – in Delhi.’

  ‘Why you cheeky little bastard!’ yelled Craddock, who picked up the nearest object he could find – a shiny ooze calf boot in the latest West End shape – and hurled it across the shop, missing Oscar’s right ear by inches.

  Before the shop owner could develop a more physical attack, Oscar decided to withdraw hastily, running across the road and causing a hackney carriage to swerve violently to avoid a collision. With the curses of Craddock and the cab driver ringing in his ears, he ran down a narrow alleyway between a bank and a public house. It wouldn’t do, he realised somewhat belatedly, to be a focus of attention now. Why, they’d have him escorted back to Haydock in a heartbeat, which would mean he’d be unable to do what he came to do.

  He pressed his hands against his chest, where the framed photograph was lodged. His father – his dead father – nay, his murdered father – would never forgive him if he failed now.

  *

  Constable Jaggery was disappointed. Not only did the manager of the Royal fail to offer them any sort of complimentary sandwich, he seemed more than a little put out, his attitude towards himself and Sergeant Brennan almost hostile.

  ‘I would never have allowed the booking if I had known!’ James Eastoe snapped as he escorted the two policemen into his office. He was a small man, smartly dressed, his hair kept in place by a judicious application of macassar oil.

  On the previous occasions Brennan had met the man, he had seemed quite affable, though staunchly defensive when it came to the affairs of the Royal Hotel.

  ‘Known what?’ Brennan asked. He had only mentioned the name of Gilbert Crosby and asked for his room number, nothing else.

  ‘A hotel is the recipient of a motley cross section of the populace,’ Eastoe began, standing at the window and gazing out onto Standishgate. ‘It’s a great pity we cannot demand a fuller profile of our guests than name and address.’ He turned round to face his visitors. ‘If I had known that the Crosbys – or shall we be more exact and say the name Mr Simeon Crosby? – if I had known his identity rather than simply his name, well then, I would have refused the booking.’

  ‘You had no idea he had been the country’s executioner?’

  ‘Crosby is not an unusual name, Sergeant Brennan. Besides, I do not have oversight on every booking made. Although,’ he added with a self-deprecating smirk, ‘I think there has indeed been an oversight of another colour here.’

  Brennan shrugged. ‘That’s as may be, Mr Eastoe, but I’m not here about the hangman.’

  At the last word, Eastoe visibly flinched. ‘I have very decided views about capital punishment, Sergeant. Very decided.’

  ‘You’d let the buggers go free?’ Jaggery said.

  ‘Certainly not! Miscreants should be punished. And punished severely. But to take a life… it’s barbaric. It renders the state no better than the wretch who committed the crime.’

  ‘You wouldn’t say that if it were your missus or littlun what got done in,’ Jaggery responded. ‘You’d want to see the bugger swing to high heaven.’

  ‘I don’t think he’d swing in that direction, Constable.’ Brennan’s voice carried a sharp undertone that Jaggery recognised: he should make no further contribution to the debate. ‘Besides, as I said, we’re after a word with his brother, Gilbert Crosby. So if you’d let me know his room number? Unless he’s already breakfasted and left?’

  The manager gave a dissatisfied grunt and bade them follow him to the front desk. A few minutes later, they were standing outside Room Seven, with Eastoe tapping on the door. There was no response, so Brennan gave a nod towards the set of keys the manager held dangling from his right hand. With a sigh, he complied and swung the door open.

  It was a small room, a double bed resting against the wall shared by the neighbouring room. A small wash basin stood on a set of drawers beneath the window overlooking the main thoroughfare beyond, and a tall wardrobe stood at the diagonal between two walls. A carpet of indeterminate colour covered part of the wooden floor.

  The bed was empty, the sheets and blanket undisturbed.

  ‘This bed hasn’t been slept in,’ said Brennan, turning to the manager. ‘Unless the maid has already been in?’

  But Eastoe shook his head. ‘It’s too early. She only starts on the rooms at eleven.’ He glanced down at his pocket watch. ‘Half an hour to go.’

  ‘Had Gilbert Crosby left word that he wouldn’t be sleeping here last night?’

  ‘Not that I’m aware of. I can ask downstairs at the desk.’

  ‘Do so. Meanwhile, perhaps you could take us to Simeon Crosby’s room? He is his brother, after all.’

  ‘I am indeed, sir!’ came a voice from the open doorway. ‘What’s all this about?’

  With unseemly haste, the hotel manager mumbled something about having other duties to attend to. He offered Simeon Crosby a curt nod and breezed past him, leaving the latter with a puzzled look on his face.

  Brennan introduced himself and the three of them moved along the corridor to the next room.

  ‘My wife has taken the opportunity to go for a walk,’ he explained as they entered. ‘My colleague, Mr Batsford, has been told of your wonderful park and kindly offered to escort her. I have my speech for tonight, you see?’ He indicated a table by the window, strewn with papers. ‘Best if I’m left alone, iron out a few wrinkles.’

  Brennan saw Jaggery looking round, nonplussed. ‘And who exactly is Mr Batsford?’

  Crosby smiled. ‘A journalist of high renown. He’s providing, shall we say, technical help. I’m writing my memoirs, don’t you know? He’s making sure it’s presented tastefully.’

  Making sure you don’t overstep the boundaries, Brennan thought. A hangman’s seen much more than he can write about.

  ‘Only yesterday,’ Crosby went on, ‘your esteemed chief constable tried to have him arrested by this grand specimen. Thought he was an assassin, for goodness’ sake!’

  Jaggery coughed modestly, unaware that Brennan had taken the depiction grand specimen with an ironic pinch of salt.

  ‘I’m sure your good wife will find Mesnes Park delightful,’ Brennan said, ‘but we’d rather hoped we
could speak with your brother. He appears not to have slept in his room.’

  Was there a flicker of discomfort in the hangman’s eye? It was quickly replaced by what Brennan considered to be a forced chuckle.

  ‘I’m not my brother’s keeper, Sergeant Brennan. He’s a grown man. And grown men find unfamiliar towns have familiar attractions.’

  ‘When did you last see him?’

  ‘Last evening. Before he decided to pay a visit to the public house along the way. He’d heard there was a billiards match being played there.’

  ‘The Ship,’ Jaggery explained in a low voice.

  ‘What is this all about, Sergeant? Is it a crime not to sleep in your hotel bed?’

  ‘Not at all, sir.’ Brennan eyed the man carefully.

  There was an edge to his voice. Defensive? Of his brother or himself?

  ‘Is it usual for him to do something like this? I mean, Wigan is hardly Manchester. Or London. Public houses and music halls close at a civilised hour. Strictly overseen, I might add, by the Watch Committee.’

  And enforced with vigour by the chief constable, he failed to add.

  ‘As a matter of fact it isn’t out of the ordinary. Gilbert comes and goes as he pleases. He may have met someone, for instance.’

  He let the idea float in the air for a few seconds. Both policemen knew what he was referring to, and both realised it was indeed a possibility. The Ship, they knew full well, was a place renowned throughout the town for its prostitutes, who advertised their going rates by crudely chalked prices on the soles of their shoes. Brennan had often wondered what they did when it was raining.

  ‘But you haven’t explained why you wish to speak with my brother.’

  It was a sensible question, Brennan acknowledged. But one which should have been asked as soon as they met.

  ‘Oh, just something that came up,’ Brennan replied with annoying evasion. ‘Perhaps you might send word down to the station when your brother does turn up?’

  Crosby seemed on the point of saying something but thought better of it. Instead, he held up his hands and accepted the commission. ‘And now, I really must get back to my speech. I gather all the tickets have been sold, and I don’t wish to disappoint.’

  ‘I understand, sir. I myself will be there tonight to supervise those on duty.’

  ‘Good. I can rest easy, then.’

  He ushered them out, with Brennan sensing some irony in the man’s parting words. He shut his door with some force.

  He’s either annoyed with me for making the query or angry with his brother for being the cause of it, Brennan thought.

  As they walked back along the corridor to the stairs, he heard the soft click of another door closing behind him, but when he turned round, he saw nothing. Every door was shut, and the corridor silent.

  Had someone been listening to their conversation?

  He kept the suspicion to himself. Yet when they got downstairs, he asked Mr Eastoe, who was hovering by the main doors waiting to see them out, if he could take a look at the hotel register.

  ‘Why?’ said the manager. It seemed to be one further irritation for him to bear.

  ‘Out of interest,’ said Brennan with a smile.

  Sighing, Eastoe went behind the front desk and opened the hotel register with an angry flourish.

  Brennan gazed down at the list of names against rooms.

  ‘Might I ask what you are looking for?’ Eastoe said crisply.

  ‘The rooms on the second floor,’ Brennan began. ‘There are four of them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mr Crosby and his wife in Room Eight; Gilbert Crosby in Room Seven; Mr Ralph Batsford in Room Six. The only other room is Room Five.’

  ‘Amazing deduction, Sergeant.’

  Brennan ignored the insult and read out the name of the occupant of Room Five. ‘Mr David Morgan. Address in Chester. Who is he?’

  Eastoe frowned. ‘A delightful young man, Sergeant. A commercial traveller, in fact.’

  Brennan tapped his finger against the name and gave a nod, closing the register and sliding it across the desk. ‘Is he a regular guest?’

  ‘No, Sergeant. His first stay. He’s been here since Saturday. Lovely manners.’

  ‘I see.’

  He bade farewell and left the hotel. As they stepped outside, the sun was pale and held little warmth, the cold seeming to grow in strength as the morning progressed.

  ‘Strikes me, Sergeant, that bloke Crosby knows more than he lets on. Am I my brother’s keeper, my fat arse.’

  ‘You know who first said that, Constable? About his brother’s keeper?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘It was Cain, when God asked him where his brother Abel was.’

  ‘And where was he?’ Jaggery asked, wondering if Mickey Brennan was actually comparing himself to God.

  ‘He was dead, Constable. Cain had killed him and left him in a field.’

  ‘Bit of a bugger, eh, Sergeant?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  But as they made their way back to the station, Brennan’s thoughts weren’t on the brothers Crosby, nor on Cain and Abel. He was wondering why the occupant of the only other room on that corridor, presumably Mr David Morgan, should have been eavesdropping on his conversation with the hangman.

  8.

  Thomas Evelyne sat in the small private room he’d requested at Ringham’s Oyster Bar in Market Place and mopped up the juices of his beef and oyster pie with a wedge of crusty bread. He ate alone, preferring his own company in the hours before the storm he hoped he would unleash later in the day.

  He was surprised that so many people had turned up at the Legs of Man the previous night to hear him speak. Some might argue that the twenty or so sitting there in the upstairs room of a Wigan public house could hardly be described as the vanguard of a great movement and that the days of real protest, back before public hanging was abolished and the authorities took their justice indoors, were now over. But he really didn’t care if his audience consisted of one or a hundred and one: he felt an almost messianic desire consume him, and to have the most famous hangman in the country travelling round, promoting not only what he had been doing for the last twenty years but also garnering publicity for the book he was purportedly writing… it was an abomination.

  The man had death on his conscience – or if not his conscience, then on his hands.

  Evelyne would make the man suffer for what he had done, the taking of life, while he gloried in the title of official executioner. He had sat in the audience up in Carlisle and listened with growing fury as Simeon Crosby had positively gloried in what he’d done.

  Tonight, Evelyne mused as he dabbed at his beard with a napkin, would be different. Tonight the whole world would see. If those twenty from last night could encourage twenty more, why then it would be quite a march through the town to the Public Hall.

  He smiled to himself. He wondered if some of the more impressionable marchers might be encouraged to do more than shout and hurl abuse? A few stones, maybe, a few smashed windows. Any damage would be all to the good.

  There was a knock on the door, and the waiter, a spotty-faced youth, entered.

  ‘Anything else, sir?’

  ‘No, thank you. The pie was excellent.’

  The waiter began clearing the table when he said, ‘Oh, I varneer forgot.’

  Evelyne had spent only a day in the town, and the language of the locals occasionally flummoxed him. ‘Varneer?’

  The waiter, misunderstanding the purpose of the repetition, nodded. ‘Aye. But then I remembered. There’s a woman askin’ for thee.’

  ‘A woman? Where is she?’

  ‘In t’main room. Said it were urgent, like. Should I get her?’

  Evelyne frowned but nodded. ‘Very well. Get her.’

  The youth turned round, almost dropping the pie dish in the process and moved quickly, leaving the door open. Within a few seconds he returned, ushering a young woman into the room.

  ‘I’ll gi�
�� thee some privacy,’ said the waiter with a knowing wink before closing the door behind him.

  Evelyne stood and looked at the woman. She was around twenty-three or twenty-four, not a beauty in the conventional sense, by any means, although there was something about her bright green eyes and the way her nose seemed to turn up at its tip that gave her a sort of pert attractiveness. She stood before him in a trim grey jacket, ankle-length pleated skirt and a white blouse. The hat she wore slightly off-centre, lending a slight air of mischievousness to the otherwise staid outfit. Her hair was jet black and tied in a severe bun.

  He wasn’t used to female company, not for a while at any rate, and so he hid his nervousness behind a façade of confidence.

  ‘Thomas Evelyne,’ he said, extending his right hand.

  She gave an equally confident smile, returned his handshake and said, ‘Maria Woodruff.’

  He drew up a chair and placed it opposite his, inviting her to join him, which she did with a graceful, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And what can I do for you, Miss Woodruff?’ he asked.

  For an uncomfortable few seconds she said nothing, merely stared at him, a hesitant expression on her face. Her confident mood seemed to have faded as she searched for the right words.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said suddenly and took a deep breath, the sort you take when about to jump in at the deep end of a very cold pool. ‘You see, I’m a newspaper reporter.’ She spoke more firmly now, with a tone almost of defiance, as if daring him either to scoff or contradict.

  He did neither. ‘A growing band,’ he said. ‘Female ones, I mean.’

  Miss Woodruff, who seemed on the verge of launching into a spirited defence of the New Woman, was taken aback.

  Evelyne smiled. ‘I have seen several of Mr Ibsen’s plays. My wife insisted. And very worthy they are, too.’

  ‘You don’t agree with the view that a woman’s duty is to purify the home by her lifelong devotion to husband and children, to virtue and to self-sacrifice?’

  He gave an elaborate shrug. ‘A friend of mine – an unbeliever in your eyes – visited America last year. He told me they have female doctors and female preachers and yes, even female journalists, but what he saw little sign of was female women.’