One by one, he held up the various pieces of the hangman’s equipment as he instructed his assistant. The brown leather straps for wrists and ankles and the white cotton hood. It looked incongruous in Crean’s big hands, just like a small pillowcase.
“Why not hood him before?” asked Jones, sounding puzzled. “Before he comes in here and sees all this.”
“We used to do that, but it didn’t work so well. You wouldn’t think it, but they tend to be more frightened not knowing where they are, and so there’s more risk of them falling over. And it’d take longer. Twenty seconds from going in the cell to turning them off. Anything more is a failure. That’s what Pierrepoint used to say. And he was right.”
“Twenty seconds?” The assistant looked incredulous.
“Yes. You’ll see. Once we’re inside the cell, we’re in charge. No signals from the governor. Nothing like that. He’s just here to see it’s done right. And it will be. Believe me.”
Above the gallows, the rope hung coiled from a chain that was bolted to the ceiling, and with practised hands Crean attached a sandbag weighing just as much as Stephen to the end of it. Then he turned and removed the safety pin from the base of the operating lever behind him and pushed it forward to release the doors. The bag fell with sudden, ferocious force and jerked at the end of the rope.
Jones took a step back and almost lost balance. It was an instinctive reaction, and Crean grinned.
“You’ll be all right,” he said, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “Just you wait and see. Now, we’ll let that bag hang there until tomorrow.”
“Why?”
“It stretches the rope out. If that happens at the hanging, then the force on the neck’s less, and he’ll end up strangling to death. We’ve got to break his neck, Owen. That’s what we’re paid to do.”
Jones nodded. Somewhere inside he felt disgusted with himself, but he quickly stifled the emotion. An execution was something important. Particularly this one. Everyone was talking about it. And assisting at it made him important too. Owen Jones from Swansea puffed out his chest a little as he helped Crean turn the wardrobe back in front of the door to the gallows.
A minute later and they were gone. Stephen’s cell was just as it had been before. His black suit hanging in the wardrobe. The photographs of Mary and his mother standing on the shelf below the high window through which the bright winter sun was shining, filling the room with a transient light. It didn’t seem like such a bad place if you didn’t know what was on the other side of the wall.
“God, I feel so hot,” said Stephen, fiddling with the top button of his prison-issue blue shirt. “Are you hot, Mary?”
She shook her head. It was the end of November, and she had kept her outside coat on.
“The worst part is knowing what’s going to happen,” said Stephen. “Measuring out the time. Animals know too, you know. We’re not the only ones. People say they don’t, but they do. I remember there was this butcher’s shop in Moreton when I was a boy. Sawdust on the floor, a china pig in a blue and white apron inside the window. My mother used to buy our meat there. ‘Price and Sons, Family Butchers since 1878.’ That’s what it said over the door. I can see it now.” Stephen closed his eyes for a moment, remembering. “They did their own slaughtering in an abattoir out back. I went once with Silas. Hid and watched. The calves and cows were in these pens going from one to the other, and each one was narrower than the last, so that halfway to the shed they couldn’t turn round at all. And they knew then. I don’t know how, but I could tell they did. They were pushing and bellowing, climbing on top of each other, trying to go back, but they couldn’t. Maybe they could smell what was coming, because they couldn’t see inside. But we looked in and there was Price’s eldest son with a big white apron over his fat stomach. He had a great steel knife in his hands, and he slit this calf right down the middle. He was about ten feet away from us, and I saw the whole thing. And then I was sick. More sick than I’ve ever been. Silas had to pull me away while I was still retching, or otherwise they’d have seen us.
“And I never went back after that. I stayed in the car when my mother went meat shopping. I could see her getting served by Price’s son. He was really friendly, you know. A nice man. He always gave my mother the best cuts.” Stephen laughed hollowly. “The point is that those animals knew what was coming. I could see they did. And now I know what they felt, Mary. The walls are getting narrower all the time and every hour he’s getting closer. I can almost feel his breath on my skin.” Stephen shuddered.
“Who?” asked Mary. “Who’s getting closer?”
“The hangman. I don’t even know his name, but he knows me. Sometimes I think he’s watching me through the eyehole in the door, and I stand up against the wall so he won’t see me, but it’s useless. I can’t get away from him, and he knows that.”
“Yes, you can,” said Mary, looking Stephen in the eye for the first time since they’d started talking. “The policeman’ll find something and it’ll be okay. You’ll see. It’ll be okay.”
But Stephen didn’t seem to hear her. “I just wish I knew why,” he said with a suddenly renewed anger. “There’s someone out there who killed my father and now he’s going to kill me, and I don’t know who it is. I’ll go to my death not knowing. Every night I lie in my cell with my eyes closed, not sleeping, just thinking about the past, trying to make sense of all that’s happened. And then you keep coming into my mind for some reason. Like last night. There was a full moon outside, and it made me remember that evening when I first saw you in the cloister at New College. And you said nothing. Just stood up and walked away into the night. What were you doing there, Mary? Were you waiting for me?”
“Things don’t always turn out as we intend them,” said Mary, getting to her feet and wiping away the tears that had begun to form in her eyes. She was ashamed of herself, of her inability to say what she had come to say. “I told you, Stephen. The policeman will find something,” she repeated. “You’re going to be okay.”
“How do you know that?” asked Stephen, suddenly turning white as he began to take in the meaning of her words.
“I just know it,” she said quietly. “Leave it at that. I came here to tell you something, but I can’t seem to find the words, and I’m sorry for that, Stephen; sorry for everything I’ve done to you. More sorry than you can know. I should have stopped this a long time ago. I see that now. But what’s done is done, and now I’ve got to go. And I won’t ever see you again. Do you hear me? This is over, and it’s important you understand that. So don’t come looking for me. You’re young, Stephen. You’ll get over all this.”
It was a strange thing to say. Mary was actually a few months younger than Stephen, but now it seemed like she was years older. It suddenly seemed to him as if all he had ever really known of her was the actress.
He had sat in a state of shock while she was speaking, and it was only now, when she was almost at the door, that he made a move toward her. But his anger was too obvious, and the burly warder got up and stood in his way, pushing him back and preventing him from following Mary out of the room.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Two strong hands pushed Trave deep down into his own armchair, and a moment later the light went on overhead. Mary Martin was sitting opposite him on the other side of the fireplace with a pistol in her hand.
She held the gun trained on the centre of his forehead, but for a moment he didn’t take it seriously. It made him angry to be manhandled, threatened in his own house. It was a violation, and he started back up out of the chair in instinctive protest. But he was hardly able to take a step before the man by the door pushed him back, pinning him down with one hand while he smacked him twice across the face with the back of the other.
Trave stroked his stinging cheeks and looked his attacker in the eye. He had never seen him before. He’d have remembered if he had. Paul Martin’s narrow grey eyes were completely cold. The violence had been switched on and off quite effortlessl
y, and once it had achieved its desired effect, he returned to his original position by the door.
“I’m sorry about that, Inspector,” said Mary, glancing angrily toward her accomplice and looking genuinely pained by what had just happened. “Paul has a tendency to overreact, but he won’t touch you again, I promise, if you don’t do anything stupid.”
“What do you want?” Trave demanded, refusing to be mollified. “Why are you here?”
“Isn’t it usually the one with the gun that asks the questions?” she countered quietly. “Even if you are the policeman.”
Mary’s voice was unnaturally calm, and it struck Trave that she was in fact making a supreme effort to keep control of her emotions. However, the only outward sign of her inner turmoil was the way in which the gun shook slightly in her hand.
“All right,” said Trave, breathing deeply to regain his composure. “Have it your way. What do you want to know?”
“How was France?” She made it sound as if she was asking about a recent holiday, not a police investigation.
He didn’t answer at once, partly because he was so shocked by the change in the woman he had once known as Mary Martin. At the time of Cade’s murder she had been part of the background. Never more than that. She was obviously attractive, but she didn’t seem to have anything very interesting to say. She answered all the police questions without any fuss, but she didn’t volunteer any information. Really the most significant thing about Mary Martin had been her lack of significance, and Trave was shocked now by how stupid he had been to accept her at face value. She was an actress, and Stephen Cade was infatuated with her. That ought to have been enough to make him want to find out more, but instead he’d done nothing, seduced by the mountain of evidence against her boyfriend. What a fool he’d been!
Her clothes were more expensive than he remembered-a black Chanel dress and a cashmere coat that hung down below her knees-but otherwise she was the same. Except that now, for the first time, he was aware of the force of her personality. She was no longer a shy young girl; instead she was a woman capable of premeditated murder. The change left Trave temporarily off balance, at a disadvantage in their conversation.
“All right, let me put it another way,” she said after a moment. “How much did you find out while you were away?”
“I found out who you are,” he said, rising to the challenge.
“I’m impressed. So who am I?”
“Marie Rocard. And you’re wanted for the murder of John Cade at Moreton Manor House last June.”
“Wanted for questioning?”
“That’s right.”
“Because, without my help, you haven’t got enough to save Stephen from the rope. That’s the truth, isn’t it, Inspector?”
“I don’t know,” said Trave, trying not to sound defeated. “Maybe.”
Mary looked over toward Paul, and Trave was again aware of the tension between them.
“Paul doesn’t think we should be here at all,” she said. “But don’t worry, Inspector. Paul and I have had our argument, and I’ve won the day. This is my party now. Paul’ll make us some coffee. Won’t you, Paul?” she asked, slowing down her English to speak to her companion.
Trave could sense the Frenchman’s reluctance to leave the room, but finally, without a word, he moved away from the door, and Trave could hear him farther down the hall, opening drawers and cupboards in the kitchen.
“I saw Stephen today,” said Mary, biting her lip, and Trave couldn’t help noticing the break in her voice.
“That must’ve been interesting,” he said noncommittedly.
“No, it was horrible. I’m not proud of what I’ve done to him, you know.”
“Well, I’m sure it’ll be a comfort to him to know that.”
“Don’t be stupid. Of course it won’t. He hates me now, which is as it should be, but for some silly reason I wish he didn’t. We were happy together for a while before all this happened.”
“How could you be happy? You were using him to get to his father.”
“Yes, and I don’t regret that. I had no choice. It was framing him afterward that was wrong. I didn’t realize that until after Stephen was arrested, but planning something isn’t the same as watching it happen. Paul thinks I’m crazy, but I’d give almost anything to put the clock back.”
“Would you spare John Cade?”
“No, not that. I said almost anything,” said Mary with a half smile.
“In my experience murderers always blame their accomplices,” said Trave, refusing to believe in Mary’s sincerity.
“But I’m not blaming anyone. Paul didn’t kill John Cade; I did. It had to be me, because it wasn’t a murder; it was an execution, an act of justice. If any man deserved to die, it was that bastard-surely to God you can see that.”
Mary stopped suddenly, realising that anger had got the better of her, and then breathed deeply, reasserting her self-control. “Well, let’s not quibble over words. You did well, Inspector. Better than I expected. It’s one thing to discover that my parents had a daughter, quite another to find out that she survived John Cade and turned into me.”
“I got lucky,” said Trave, making a conscious decision to be less confrontational. If Mary was here to help him save Stephen, he wasn’t going to discourage her. “Your friend in the kitchen complained about Cade to the police in Moirtier, and one of them told me about it,” he explained.
“Laroche, you mean. That was more than ten years ago, and I thought Paul gave him a false name. Still, whatever he said, he shouldn’t have gone to the police. We both realised that afterward. But it was early days, and we were naive back then. We thought somebody might help us, that the world was a fair place. And Paul thought I should have my inheritance. Not that I ever wanted it. A burnt-out house with bad memories and a few outbuildings. La belle France is welcome to it, as far as I’m concerned.”
Trave noticed the bitterness that had crept into Mary’s voice as she was speaking. It was like the cover of a deep, empty well had been momentarily removed, revealing the unplumbed depths of black cynicism that lay underneath.
“You see, neither of us understood back then that my nonexistence was my greatest advantage. Cade never knew about me until the second before he died. I hadn’t been thought of when he first came to the house, and my mother was upstairs, seven months pregnant, when he came back at the end of 1938 and my father kicked him out.”
“But what about in 1944? What happened then?” asked Trave.
“I was in the church tower, and so they didn’t see me watching them. Cade and Ritter and stupid Jimmy Carson. If they’d asked questions afterward, people would’ve said I died in the fire with sweet old Marguerite. That was the story my friends spread about. But they had no reason to ask questions. Not then and not later. Cade always thought it was Carson who took a shot at him in 1956 and sent him that blackmail letter a year later. He never knew it was me because I didn’t exist. My birth certificate was destroyed by the Germans when they attacked Rouen, and there was never a death certificate because I didn’t die. It was easy. Stephen’s lawyers never found out about me either. They sent a man out there to ask questions, but I guess he didn’t get lucky like you did.
“Anyway, from the church, I got as far as a friend’s house, and he sent me on to Paul’s father. Hundreds of miles away. I wasn’t even six, but I didn’t forget. And Paul looked after me after that. He made me what I am.”
Trave decided against asking Mary whether she thought this was a good thing or a bad thing, because Paul was back now, leaning against the wall by the door, and although he continued to remain silent Trave had no idea how much he understood of the conversation.
“What do you want me to do?” Trave asked.
“Write my statement over at that table,” said Mary. “Then when we’re done, I’ll sign it, and you can take it up to London in the morning. Give it to Stephen’s barrister. He’ll know what to do. They can’t hang Stephen if I’ve confessed.”
>
Trave wasn’t so sure, but he picked up the mug of black coffee that Paul had put in front of him and went over to the table where he’d got slowly used to eating his meals alone in the months since Vanessa left him. Just as he’d finished sitting down, the telephone rang. Instinctively he put out his hand to answer it, but Mary’s voice stopped him.
“I’ll shoot you, Inspector, if you do that,” she said in a flat, hard voice. “I don’t want to, but I will.”
Trave wasn’t sure he believed her, but there was no way he was going to put her assertion to the test. Not with the cold-eyed Frenchman standing behind him. The telephone rang on unanswered for nearly a minute, and then, when it had stopped, Paul put pen and paper in front of him, and Trave began to write down what Mary was telling him. After a few sentences she gave the gun to Paul and began walking up and down the room as she dictated her statement, speaking quickly and with little hesitation. It seemed obvious to Trave that she had prepared a great deal of what she had to say in advance, but a growing passion that crept into her voice as she told her story made him realise that she’d been waiting for this moment for a long, long time.
“My name is Marie Rocard,” she began, “and I was born on January third, 1939. My parents, Henri and Mathilde Rocard, were killed by John Cade and Reginald Ritter on August twenty-eighth, 1944, at Marjean Church in Normandy. There was a third man called Carson who kept watch outside. They killed our servants, Albert and Marguerite too, and they set fire to our house, and then they blamed it all on the Nazis, who’d been using the chateau as a headquarters since 1942. Cade believed that there were no survivors because he never knew that my parents had a child.
“Afterward, with the help of friends, I escaped to another part of France and took on a new identity, and then, when I was old enough, I planned out how to punish John Cade for what he’d done. For as long as I can remember I thought of nothing else, but I also knew it wouldn’t be easy. In 1956 I enticed him to Marjean and shot him with a rifle but he recovered from his wound, and after that I couldn’t find a way to get him to leave his house, however hard I tried. He was a rich man who lived behind high walls and electronic gates, and a break-in was simply not practical. I had to get close to him to make sure he died, but that meant that someone else in the house would have to take the blame for the murder. I decided on Cade’s son, Stephen, who was a student at Oxford University. He would be my passport into Moreton Manor House, and then the state would hang him for what I’d done. Back then I held the whole Cade family responsible for the father’s crime. But I was wrong. I wish now that I acted differently after the murder, that I didn’t stand aside and watch Stephen suffer as he has. But what’s done is done. I cannot make amends. All I can do now is save him from the gallows.”
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