Property of a Lady

by Sarah Rayne

  A rush of relief coursed through me so fiercely I could not speak, only nod, as if the information was of vague interest. I had been prepared to dig through soil and lime – I was wearing thick leather gloves and strong boots – but it would be so much easier and safer without that layer of corrosive, burning lime.

  Even so, my courage almost failed me at that point – I wished for nothing but to return home and sit down to the supper Mrs Figgis would have left out for me. But as the group made its way through the prison, I said, ‘I shan’t be travelling back with you. I have an old aunt in Shrewsbury town I should like to visit.’

  This was seen as a perfectly reasonable arrangement. I was considered sensible to take advantage of the opportunity of being in Shrewsbury. There was some slight concern as to how I would get back, however.

  ‘I can spend the night at my aunt’s house,’ I said, ‘and walk along to the railway station in the morning.’

  It satisfied them. Shrewsbury General Station is the Shrewsbury to Chester line – part of the Abbey Foregate loop – and a great many trains go through it. I would be able to travel to the halt at Marston Montgomery. It’s a three-mile walk from there to Marston Lacy, but there are any number of drays and carters coming and going who would happily take me up.

  As we were ushered through the prison precincts, with doors and gates unlocked by the warders every fifteen yards, I deliberately lagged behind and caught the eye of the warder I had noticed earlier. A weasel-faced fellow he was, with a darting, acquisitive eye. Speaking quietly, I asked him in which direction the burial yard lay.

  ‘It’s over there,’ he said, pointing furtively. His lips formed a sly curve. ‘You’d like to take a look, sir? See where we put the murderers?’ The words were respectful, the tone was not.

  I said, ‘It could be interesting. Worth my while.’ A pause, the count of five. ‘Worth yours too, perhaps,’ I said, softly so the others could not hear.

  ‘How much worth?’

  ‘Half a sovereign.’ It was a lot, but there was no point in penny-pinching.

  ‘Souvenir of a murderer?’ he said. ‘Lock of hair, bit of shroud to brag about and make money on? Is that what you’re after?’

  I said, as frostily as I could, ‘Indeed not. But as one of the Howard Prison Reform Organization, I should like to see the exact conditions in which an executed murderer is buried.’

  ‘Call it what you want,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Listen, then. Pretend to turn your ankle on the cobbles. I’ll take you into the warders’ room to strap it up.’

  The facility with which he came up with this small plan – a much simpler and better one than my original idea of hiding and waiting until nightfall – indicated he was not unused to such an arrangement. It’s a sad reflection on the curiosity of men, but I am in no position to level criticism.

  I flatter myself I staged the ankle-turning business neatly. A stumble, a startled cry of pain, and within minutes I was helped into a small room opening off the courtyard, furnished with battered chairs and a table.

  ‘Now then,’ said the warder briskly, ‘how long d’you want?’

  ‘An hour at least. Two would be better. At a time when no one is around.’

  ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘I thought it was souvenirs you was after. In that case, half a jimmy o’goblin won’t be enough. Make it whole one.’ It was extortion, pure and simple. I hesitated, and he said, ‘You pay me that and I’ll come back later and unlock a door to get you out.’

  I had worried about this part of the proceedings quite a lot. My plan had been to remain inside the prison all night and find my way out when the morning contingent of warders came on duty. But this new twist would solve it very well for me. I briefly considered how far I could trust this man – it would be easy for him to leave me in the prison all night and deny all knowledge next morning.

  But these things work both ways, and I said, very coldly, ‘If you cheat me in any way, I shall see to it that you lose your position here and are prosecuted. I am a man of some standing, and I think my word will be believed over yours. I hope that’s clear?’

  ‘I won’t cheat you,’ he said, and I thought there was a ring of sincerity in his tone, so I nodded and handed over the sovereign.

  ‘Good,’ he said, tucking it in an inner pocket. ‘You got until seven o’clock tonight when the night guard goes round. That do you?’

  It was ten minutes to five and already dark. I said, ‘That will do very well.’

  ‘I’m off duty at seven. I’ll come back just before the hour and we’ll go out together. You’ll appear to be a visitor I’m seeing out. Simple as can be. From there on it’s your business how you get back to wherever you live.’

  Any burial ground is a grim place, but that piece of land on the side of Shrewsbury Prison is the eeriest place I have ever encountered.

  It was not very large, and although sparse grass grew here and there it had a sick look, as if there was some disease in the soil beneath. It was very dark, but a thin, cold moonlight oozed through the clouds so that I could see the outline of the newly-dug grave near one wall. It’s extraordinary how that shape strikes such terror into the heart; seeing it brought every superstition and every grisly legend ever read or dreamed or remembered into my mind. Because one should not disturb the resting place of any man, even that of a murderer, perhaps especially that of a murderer.

  The words of the Ingoldsby rhyme ran maddeningly in and out of my head as I approached the grave.

  On the lone bleak moor, at the midnight hour,

  Beneath the Gallows Tree . . .

  The Moon that night, with a grey cold light,

  Each baleful object tips . . .

  It took considerable resolve to approach the open grave and look down into it and, when I did so, I think I came closer than at any other time to abandoning the whole plan. He lay, imperfectly covered in a winding sheet, his head lolling to one side at an ugly, ungainly angle, his thick, farm-worker’s neck swollen and bruised from the hangman’s rope. His skin was the colour and consistency of tallow.

  I looked round. How likely was it that I could be seen? The burial ground was enclosed on three sides by a high wall, and there were no windows and only one door, which led to the main part of the prison. No one would see me.

  And yet I had the feeling that someone did see me – that eyes watched from the shadows and marked what I did. Nerves, nothing more.

  The grave was narrower than I had expected and also deeper – I had assumed the gravediggers would be cursory in their work, and I thought it would be possible to reach down and do what I had to do from ground level. But it was not. Even kneeling at the rim and stretching my hands down as far as possible, I could not reach what lay there. So be it: I would go down into the grave itself. The prospect made my flesh creep, but I was too close to what I wanted to give up now. Down the centuries there have been mad, wild things done in the name of love, but I wonder if there has been anything wilder or madder than what I did that night for love for Elizabeth Lee.

  I felt in my pocket to make sure I still had the knives and chisel wrapped in cotton waste, then I sat on the edge of the open grave and slid down into its depths. Showers of dry soil broke away like scabs from a wound, and I landed squarely on the body itself.

  It was dreadful. His flesh was soft and pliable in places – I could feel its softness – but in others it was hard and marble-like. I remembered the old country saying about dead men: they shall grow hard and they shall grow soft. Rigor mortis, that grotesque solidifying of sinews and flesh, wears off after several hours, and the dead become lumps of flabby meat. This body was in the halfway stage.

  I managed to move in the restricted space until I was straddling his stomach. The winding sheet fell back in the process, and the words of Petit Albert came into my mind – take the hand of a felon . . . wrap it in part of a funeral pall . . .

  It was simple to slice off a section of the thin cloth, using one of the knives I had brought, and to
fold the fragment in a pocket. But the worst was still ahead of me.

  He was, of course, lying with his hands crossed on his breast, and I reached for the right hand. It was in the same semi-hard state as the rest of him – I had no idea if that would make my task easier, but using the larger knife I began my grisly work.

  Joint, muscle, nerve . . . For the spell of the dead man’s hand . . .

  The flesh parted under the knife’s blade. No blood, of course. I sawed determinedly, and presently the knife scraped against bone. This would be the difficult part. I reached in my other pocket for the small tooth-edged saw and the chisel.

  The worst part was the noise – the rasp of steel against bone. Wrist-bones are quite small and thin, but there are joints, nubbly lumps of gristle and sinew . . . I was using the chisel by that stage, but my hands were so slippery with sweat that several times the blade slid off the bones and gouged into the chest below. But finally the hand lay free, and I lifted it and wrapped it in the fragment of shroud. It was easy enough to hide the stump of the handless arm by folding the rest of the shroud across.

  I was shaking badly by the time I clambered out of the grave to wait for the warder’s return. As I sat on the diseased grass, I was painfully aware of what lay underneath it. All those bodies of men hanged for murder – probably most of whom had gone to their deaths terrified and struggling, blinded by the hangman’s hood, fighting every inch of the way . . . Small wonder the atmosphere of this place was so thick with emotion. Fear, despair, loneliness – they were all here.

  It’s a vicious thing, quicklime, as the governor had said earlier. It burns and eats its way through flesh and bone, through heart and liver and kidneys . . . When it came to Resurrection Day, there would be precious little left of the killers who lay in this poisoned earth. A few crumbling bones to struggle towards the Lord when he called to them, shreds of hair and flesh holding the bones together.

  I make no apology for that dark rhetoric, for in a murderers’ burial yard a man may surely become fanciful and see a few ghosts.

  1st November cont’d. Evening.

  I have followed the instructions of all the recipes as exactly as I can. I have scraped fat from under the skin of the hand and preserved it in a sealed jar. (I took the jar from Mrs Figgis’s larder; it had contained potted meat. I washed it very thoroughly, of course.)

  The hand is packed in an earthenware pot with the other ingredients and the whole is in the stove in my workshop. And at this time of year I keep the stove lit.

  I shall count the next fourteen days very anxiously.

  15th November

  Today I withdrew from my oven the earthenware pot. The hand is dried and shrunken – the surface resembles old leather and the nails have cracked in the heat. It’s repulsive to the touch, but if it gains me my heart’s desire . . .

  And now, in this secret room, I shall create the candle out of the fat squeezed from the hand. Tomorrow night I shall go to Mallow House. But tonight my thoughts and my dreams are filled with her – with Elizabeth.

  In two days’ time shall I have finally slaked this burning desire that has constantly gnawed at my heart and my loins all these years?

  17th November

  It’s unlikely that anyone will ever read these pages, just as it’s unlikely anyone will ever know the part I played in what has happened. But just in case—

  I set out for Mallow House shortly before midnight. With me I had the objects fashioned in the secret library – the dried hand, the candle. A tinder box so I could light the candle. And the chant that seemed to me, from my readings, to strengthen the spell.

  (Have I just written those words? Have I really admitted to believing I created a spell . . . ? The words are imbued with madness. If I was mad on the night I made the decision to do all this, I was certainly mad last night.)

  No one saw me slink through Marston Lacy, of that I am sure. It’s a quiet place in the main – that violent death in the Black Boar was a very exceptional case indeed. Once clear of the houses I turned into Blackberry Lane and, as I did so, I heard a church clock chiming. Midnight. The keystone of night’s black arch. The sound came clearly across the fields and, as the last chime faded, in a nearby tree an owl gave a soft hoot and I heard its wings beating on the air as it went in search of prey. Was the midnight chime the spring that had released it from a daylight spell?

  As I drew level with what had been the carriageway to the old manor house, I was startled to hear soft sounds very close by. They unnerved me for a moment, then I thought it must be the wind sighing in the trees, or the owl again, or a fox – they sometimes give strange cries, foxes. But once past the ruined road to the old manor, I realized with a sick jolt that the sounds were of my own making. I was singing, very softly, the old Ingoldsby rhyme.

  ‘Open lock to the dead man’s knock . . .

  Fly bolt, and bar, and band . . .

  Nor move, nor swerve, joint, muscle or nerve,

  At the spell of the dead man’s hand!’

  The rhyme meant nothing, and it possessed no power. It was simply old Richard Barham’s mischievous version of the real spell. But I found it comforting to murmur the words and hum the cadences it seemed to form. It felt like having a companion, and midnight’s a desperate and lonely place when your mind is cloaked in madness.

  No lights showed in Mallow House – I was glad of that. The gate made a faint rasp as I pushed it open – a scratchiness that sounded like a hoarse voice whispering. Beware. The gardens were silver and black from the moonlight, and the house itself was drained of all colour. I looked up at it, wondering which window was Elizabeth’s, then went round to the back. I did not know, not for sure, that there would be a garden door or a kitchen door, but a house of this size would not have just one entrance.

  The paths were dry and soft, and my feet made no sound. Once something scuttled across my path, and I started back, and once I thought there was a movement at one of the downstairs windows, but it was only my own reflection in the glass.

  The door I sought opened on to what looked like the sculleries. I felt for the handle and tried it. Locked, of course, and very firmly. My heart was beating so fast by this time that it would have been almost audible to anyone in earshot, but no one was there to hear. No one was there to see, either, when I drew the hand of glory from my pocket and set the candle in its wizened grasp. When I lit the taper it crackled sullenly, then finally flared into a thick, unpleasant-smelling light.

  I took a deep breath, lifted the hand aloft, and very softly began to chant the spell. And now it was not Barham’s light, mocking parody I had sung in the lane, it was the real thing. The ancient, powerful sorcery from the time when the world was still cooling from the fires in which it had been forged. The language and the music of gods and daemons.

  Sweat prickled my whole body, and for a moment it seemed that nothing was going to happen. Sick disappointment flooded me. The spell was an empty charm, a blown egg, the enchantment was husked dry, and the sorcery that was to have given me that precious hour with my lady had frayed to cobwebs and vanished.

  And then there was a soft click, and then another, and the sound of a steel bar being drawn back. The door of Mallow House swung ajar.

  TWENTY-SIX

  As I stepped across the threshold, the smeary light from the candle fell across the stone flags of the scullery floor. I lifted it aloft, and the light washed over a large dresser set against the wall. There was a big range, faintly glowing with heat, and a rocking chair in one corner with a rag rug in front of it. It was a kitchen that might be found in any fair-sized house in any part of the country – but it was her kitchen. She would often be here, ordering meals, supervising household tasks. Somewhere over my head she would be lying in her bed. Sleeping? I wanted her to be asleep. I wanted them all to be asleep. I believed myself beyond sanity, but not so far that I wanted to inflict hurt on anyone.

  I went out of the kitchen to the big oak-floored hall where William Lee had me
t me that morning. A copper jug filled with chrysanthemums and dahlias stood on a low chest, and I imagined Elizabeth picking the flowers and arranging them. My heartbeat increased to a painful intensity.

  It was very quiet. Through the half-open door of the library I could see the dull glow of a fire with a guard in front of it. There was a faint scent of woodsmoke, and I remembered how Lee had told me he liked to sit in his library in the evenings. Was he there now? If he was not, my plan would crumble into nothing, for I would not dare enter Elizabeth’s bedroom with him there. I tiptoed forward. Let him be there, please let him be in his library, asleep over his books. It was only a little after midnight, not a late hour for scholars . . .

  At first I thought the library was empty, then I saw the slumped outline in the big wing-chair near the fire. I watched him for a moment. If he slept the normal sleep of a man nodding over a book in a warm room he must surely sense the presence of an intruder. The shrivelled hand felt warm now to my grasp, and once the foetid tallow dripped on to my skin, making me gasp. But William Lee did not move. Dear God, it was working, the ancient shred of sorcery was actually working.

  I went from the room and began to ascend the stairs. The light came with me, the grisly lump of flesh taken from the burial ground shivering and sending shadows chasing across the walls. Did I sing at that point? Truly, I have no idea, but I could hear the chant clearly inside my head.

  At the head of the stairs was a large landing, L-shaped, with doors opening off and two windows with low sills, partly curtained. Which one was hers? I chose at random, moving softly, still not knowing who else might be in the house – a servant, a cook, someone to look after the child.

  The first room was empty, but comfortably furnished as a guest room. Did they have guests to stay – his family, hers? Friends? Bitter jealousy rose up at the thought of them smiling and welcoming people into the house – of Elizabeth preparing this room, planning meals . . .