by Peter Murphy
Billy looked down uncomfortably.
‘Mr Davis said it’s up to Mr Henry Brooke now,’ he replied. ‘He can stop them from hanging me. Mr Davis has given him some papers, and my second barrister Mr Schroeder has looked at them as well. And Mr Sydney Silverman, the MP, said he would help. He is going to talk to Mr Henry Brooke.’
‘He hasn’t got much time left, has he?’ she said, without thinking. ‘What I mean is, Billy, I hope he’s getting on with it quickly. Is he?’
‘Yes, of course he is,’ Billy replied hurriedly. ‘I’m expecting to hear from him this evening.’
She nodded.
‘That’s good, Billy,’ she said. ‘Even so, you will be here in prison for a long time, won’t you?’
‘Yes. It looks like it,’ he replied.
‘So you won’t be back to work. Not unless they can prove you didn’t do it after all.’
‘No. Not unless they can prove that.’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t give evidence for you, Billy,’ she said suddenly. He saw tears in her eyes.
‘No. You mustn’t worry about that,’ he replied. ‘My main barrister, Mr Hardcastle, told me we didn’t have to. He said it was our best chance not to say anything.’
‘He was wrong though, wasn’t he?’ she replied. ‘I could have said you were at home all night.’
He leaned forward in the hope that the officer would not hear. If the officer was listening, he gave no sign of it. He was staring away from them across the room, as if he was unaware they were even there.
‘They would have asked you about us,’ he said.
‘I would have told them,’ she replied. The tears were in full flow now. ‘I wouldn’t have cared. What difference would it have made? What would it have mattered?’
He shook his head.
‘It wouldn’t have done any good,’ he said. ‘He was my main barrister. We had to trust him.’
He waited for her to dry her eyes. It took a long time for her to compose herself.
‘Is the River Board still making sure to cut back the rushes?’
‘Yes. They do it every week,’ she replied. ‘A man comes. He’s very nice. Fred, he’s called.’
‘Because if you don’t do it at least once a week, it gets out of hand, and it’s the devil’s own job to get it clear again once it gets away from you.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said.
She suddenly stood.
‘I’m going now,’ she said. She stood, walked around the table and kissed him once on the cheek.
‘Billy,’ she said. ‘Tell me the truth. That cross and chain you gave me. Where did it come from?’
‘I told you,’ he replied. ‘I found it.’
She was looking straight into his eyes.
‘Did you?’ she asked. ‘Did you, Billy?’
He looked down at the table and said nothing. She walked slowly to the door, turned, and faced him.
‘You were always good to me, Billy,’ she said, as she left the condemned cell. ‘Thank you for that.’
‘Goodbye, Eve,’ he said, long after she had closed the door behind her.
60
Barratt Davis had asked Ben to come to his office in Essex Street for what he called ‘the wake’ by 6.30 that evening. The application for leave to appeal to the House of Lords had been dismissed two days earlier. When he had found out Ben had called Barratt, who sounded distracted, but not particularly surprised. Ben had always known that that result was inevitable, but the receipt of the formal notice from the Appeals Committee had still felt like a hammer blow. He had been sitting in his room, fretting helplessly, for most of the afternoon, despite Harriet’s best efforts to distract and calm him. At 6.25 he gratefully set out for the short walk up Middle Temple Lane. He arrived exactly on time.
Barratt’s office, when Ben entered, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the scene of a wake. Papers and books were scattered over his desk and, on the two small side tables, even more were piled on chairs. Barratt was in his shirt-sleeves, the sleeves rolled up. Jess also looked as though the day had been a frantic one. Her hair was coming down and her blouse was uncharacteristically crumpled. John Singer alone seemed calm and somehow removed from the fray. He was sitting quietly, wearing his suit jacket and with his tie firmly in place, on Barratt’s sofa.
‘Welcome, Ben,’ Barratt said. ‘Excuse the mess. We have been going over the paperwork, just to see if we have missed anything. I don’t think we have. If we find anything now, it would have to be sent over to the House of Commons without delay, but we can arrange that. John was kind enough to take everything over there for Sydney Silverman this afternoon. Just as you saw it. We haven’t changed anything.’
‘This afternoon?’ Ben asked. ‘Isn’t that a bit…?’
Barratt nodded.
‘Yes. It is a bit late by normal standards. Usually the Home Secretary’s people want it all several days in advance. But in this case Brooke could not meet Sydney Silverman until this afternoon. Sydney asked us to leave the paperwork with him so that he could take the Home Secretary through it personally. We have to rely on him as our guide, of course. It’s not exactly voluminous, so it won’t take him all that long to go through it. Sydney believes Brooke to be conscientious. He will read every word before he makes a decision. It may be late this evening, but better late than never.’
Ben turned to John Singer.
‘Did Silverman make any comment on the papers?’
‘No. Not really,’ Singer replied. ‘Not surprisingly.’ He paused. ‘I mean, let’s be honest, we’ve done our best. But we are not dealing with Derek Bentley or Ruth Ellis, are we? Today, if we had one of those cases, in the context of what’s happening now, we might…’
‘Yes, point taken,’ Barratt agreed.
‘I had hoped to come up with something useful in St Ives,’ Singer continued. ‘I spoke to everyone I could find – teachers, people who knew him on the river, his sister Eve, of course. They all seem to agree that he’s not the brightest candle on the altar, but there’s nothing about his mental state which cries out for a reprieve.’
‘I’m sure Sydney is pinning most of his hopes on the abolition argument,’ Barratt said.
‘Well, we have given him plenty of ammunition for that,’ Ben said. ‘He’s got the whole parliamentary history, current legislative plans, and a lot of evidence of how many MPs would support abolition if it came up before the House of Commons tomorrow.’
‘It’s the House of Lords you have to worry about when it comes to abolition, more than the Commons,’ Singer observed.
Barratt nodded.
‘Well, in any case we have done what we can,’ he said. ‘At a certain point you have to stop or you risk weakening your case by diluting good arguments with bad ones. Essentially, I think Sydney is going to plant in Henry Brooke’s mind the thought that he does not want to wake up two years from now with a guilty conscience, after the country has repudiated the death penalty and he could have spared one of its last victims. That’s not an easy task, of course, given the uncertainty. But if anyone can do it, I fancy Sydney can.’
‘That’s what we have to hope for,’ Ben replied. He lowered himself into an empty armchair. ‘How do we find out?’ he asked. ‘Does John have to go back to the House of Commons?’
‘No,’ Singer replied. ‘Silverman said the usual protocol is that the Home Secretary communicates with the condemned and his solicitor – Barratt, that is – in writing. But in this case, because we are getting down to the wire, Brooke has agreed to have his Permanent Under-Secretary call Barratt here when they have a decision.’
‘At which point,’ Barratt said, ‘we will hold a celebration or a wake, whichever is appropriate. Meanwhile, all we can do is wait and be prepared to spring into action if Brooke needs more information.’
John Singer stood.
&
nbsp; ‘Well, Barratt, I’ve made the only contribution I can and, to be honest, I don’t have the stomach for waiting around under these circumstances.’
‘No, of course,’ Barratt replied. ‘You’ve done all you could, John, and I really appreciate it. Take yourself off home. We will be in contact, of course, once we know.’
Singer picked up his briefcase and began to walk to the door. Then he hesitated.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘there is one other thing I have to tell you. I wish I could avoid it, but I’m afraid it’s going to be in all the papers tomorrow, and I would rather you heard it from me, unpleasant as it is.’
The room suddenly grew silent.
‘Nothing to do with this case. You remember the Reverend Ignatius Little, I’m sure.’
Ben and Barratt exchanged smiles.
‘Who could forget?’ Barratt asked.
‘I got a call while I was at Silverman’s office this afternoon,’ John continued. ‘The Diocese of Ely transferred him after the trial. I don’t know whether you knew that?’
‘No, I don’t think so,’ Barratt replied.
‘Yes, well, it was with his full agreement. We all felt it would be best for him to make a fresh start somewhere else. The Diocese of Chester agreed to take him, and they gave him a curacy there, with a living in sight after a year or two if everyone was happy.’
‘But I take it not everybody is happy?’ Ben asked.
‘The Queen versus Ignatius Little, number two?’ Barratt asked. ‘Isn’t Chester off circuit for you, Ben? Could you venture into the frozen north? Do you need permission from the powers that be?’
John Singer took a deep breath.
‘He was arrested last night in Liverpool for importuning a 12-year-old boy in a public lavatory. What Little failed to appreciate was that the boy’s father was waiting outside and, as it turns out, he is a police officer – off duty at the time, but that didn’t stop him making an arrest.’
‘God Almighty,’ Ben muttered.
Barratt shook his head, smiling grimly.
‘But there won’t be a trial in Chester – or anywhere else,’ Singer added. ‘He was held in custody overnight before being brought before the magistrates this morning. But he never got that far. An officer found him when he took his breakfast into the cell. He had hanged himself with a couple of sheets they gave him for his cot.’
The room fell silent again. Jess collapsed on to the sofa.
‘Has anyone told Joan Heppenstall?’ she asked quietly.
‘I don’t imagine so,’ Singer replied. ‘The Liverpool police would have no reason to know about her. I’m not sure what information his Bishop has. I suppose that is one more unpleasant job for yours truly.’
‘I would like to tell her myself, if you don’t mind,’ Jess said. ‘I should try to speak to her before the press gets hold of it.’
‘I would be very grateful to you,’ Singer said. ‘I’m going to be fending off the Diocese of Chester for a few days, and it would be a blessing not to have to deal with her too.’
He left. Ben and Barratt looked at her.
‘I was the one who talked her into giving evidence for him,’ she said simply. ‘I owe it to her.’
Quietly, she left the room.
‘Surely to God,’ Ben asked, after some time, ‘it is not possible to have two clients hang in the same week?’
‘That would have to be something of a record, wouldn’t it?’ Barratt replied. He walked over to Ben’s chair and put both hands on his shoulders.
‘Ben,’ he said. ‘Listen to me. Not even you can blame yourself for the hanging of Ignatius Little.’
* * *
The call from Henry Brooke’s Permanent Under-Secretary came at 11.15.
‘I see. Thank you,’ Barratt said, replacing the receiver.
He turned to Ben and Jess, who were sitting, their nerves long since torn to shreds, on the edge of their seats.
‘The Home Secretary regrets that the law must take its course,’ he said.
He walked behind his desk, opened a drawer, and took out a bottle of a fine whisky. In one fluent, violent movement he swept every last sheet of paper off his desk on to the floor.
‘I hereby declare the wake to be formally open,’ he said, unscrewing the top of the bottle. ‘Glasses, Jess, if you please.’
The wake passed with little conversation. Ben would later remember a fragment, during the early hours, as he drifted somewhere between sleep and wakefulness.
‘Barratt, why are we having this wake?’ he had asked.
Barratt had taken some time to reply.
‘Where do you stand on capital punishment, Ben?’ he asked.
‘I never thought about it much before this case,’ Ben admitted. ‘Now, after this case, if I was ever in favour of it, I have turned against it.’
‘Good,’ Barratt said.
He stood and re-filled all the glasses, though Jess was asleep.
‘I know this is your first time – and hopefully it will be your last. But we have the wake in the interests of our reformation, our welfare.’
‘Reformation?’
‘Yes. We are a bit like Scrooge, Ben. During this night we will be visited by three spirits. For me, the Spirit of Executions Past and the Spirit of Executions Present. For you, mercifully, just the Present.’
He took a long drink.
‘The only good news in this miserable bloody drama,’ he said, ‘is that, very soon, they may have some trouble casting the part of the Spirit of Executions Yet to Come.’
He raised his glass.
‘Let’s drink to that thought, anyway.’
‘I can’t do another of these, Barratt,’ Ben said.
‘That’s what I always say,’ Barratt replied.
61
6 August
At precisely three minutes to eight, Arthur Ludlow had stopped outside the door of the condemned cell. He was formally dressed in a dark grey suit and a blue tie, and he had the white hood which would shortly be fitted over Billy Cottage’s head tucked away neatly like a fluted handkerchief in the top pocket of his jacket – the refinement introduced to the trade by the legendary Tom Pierrepoint. He held the strap with which he would pinion Billy’s arms in one hand behind his back. His number two stood at his side, wearing a suit of a lighter shade and holding his leg strap behind him. Ken was a good lad, Arthur reflected. It was a pity, with all this talk of abolition, that Ken might never get the chance to act as number one. He was well trained and had good nerves; number one material, no doubt in Arthur’s mind. But he was running out of time. That was the way of things now. Change; always change; the end of a way of life. Executions would be consigned to history if that man Silverman and the like had their way. Behind the executioners was the assistant governor holding the small cup of brandy that would be offered to the condemned in case of need – a modern concession, perhaps, to the historic practice in the days of public executions of allowing the condemned’s friends and relatives to supply him with enough drink to induce a state of intoxication during the long last journey by cart from Newgate Prison to Tyburn. Time to focus. Arthur knew exactly what he would find when he entered the condemned cell.
As he heard the church clock sound the first stroke of the hour, signalling 8 o’clock, Arthur entered the cell briskly. As he expected, two prison officers stood poised by the large wardrobe. The chaplain, book in hand and fully robed, stood at Billy Cottage’s side. Arthur’s only concern about chaplains was that they had a habit of getting in the way. It was not deliberate – not these days, although the Pierrepoints had told some stories about chaplains in Ireland who clung to the condemned as he walked to the drop, in the days when they conducted executions there. Now, in England, it was just because they did not always react quickly enough when the executioner entered the cell. You couldn’t blame them.
It was Arthur’s job to deal with the problem if it arose. But this man evidently had every intention of keeping well out of the way. As Arthur entered he moved sharply away to the side of the cell. Arthur approached Billy, bringing the hand which held the strap round in front of him. At the same time, the prison officers were moving the wardrobe aside, and opening the door.
Billy stared at Arthur, wondering who he was. Then it came to him. Of course.
When I was bound apprentice in famous Lincolnshire
‘Mr Brooke?’ Billy Cottage asked. ‘I was wondering when you would come.’
Arthur thought he detected something of a smile on Billy’s face. He wondered briefly why this man thought his name was Brooke. But he dismissed the thought, as he had trained himself to dismiss all extraneous thoughts when he was working. You had to. You had to stay focused. You had to tune out whatever the condemned had to say. You never knew what it would be. Some said nothing at all. Some confessed to their crimes at the last moment. Some said things that did not make sense. Usually it wasn’t hard to let it pass by. Only when the condemned protested his innocence did Arthur need a moment to readjust. That would not be the case today.
Full well I served my master for nigh on seven years
‘Turn around please,’ Arthur said, although he was already turning Billy, holding him by his right shoulder. He brought Billy’s hands around behind his back and pinioned them in a flash. He looked up. The wardrobe was gone and the path to the drop was clear.
Arthur turned Billy again and positioned himself in front, as Ken fell in behind Billy with the assistant governor bringing up the rear. The two officers who had moved the wardrobe were now stationed on either side of the drop, just in case of trouble. Their presence was reassuring, but Arthur sensed that there would be no trouble today. Not with this one.
‘Follow me, please.’
Till I took up to poaching as you shall quickly hear
The walk to the drop was a matter of a few feet. As Ken moved swiftly to his position behind the huge metal trap doors, Arthur walked Billy on to the drop, where Billy saw the rope, ending in a noose, at his side, at head height. What was that for? They wouldn’t need that unless they were going to… Something had gone wrong. Perhaps this man was not Mr Brooke. Perhaps none of these people was Mr Brooke. He had to tell these people that something had gone wrong. But the words would not come. Where was Mr Davis? Where was his main barrister? Where was his other barrister?
