The Mangle Street Murders Read online

  ‘Evidence?’ My guardian swept back his hair. ‘The ramblings of an inebriate as mouthed by a prejudiced idolater?’

  ‘In view of this new allegation,’ the inspector continued, ‘Sir William has ruled that the execution be delayed until Sir Randolph has been interviewed.’

  ‘Then go ahead and interview him.’ Sidney Grice strode back to the window.

  The crowd was chanting now, ‘Ashby is innocent’, over and over again.

  ‘Where are the police when you need them?’ my guardian asked.

  ‘Standing by your fireplace,’ I said.

  ‘I mean uniformed men with truncheons on horseback to beat a bit of sense into their lice-laden skulls.’

  ‘I shall go and speak to them presently,’ the inspector said. ‘But the problem is, Mr Grice, we cannot find Sir Randolph.’

  ‘Down an alley with his throat cut, I hope,’ Sidney Grice said.

  At that moment there was a crash and a spray of shattered glass, and a brick crashed into the screen at my guardian’s side. He put his forearm up to his face.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked and Sidney Grice turned to me. There was blood on his forehead.

  ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, Miss Middleton,’ he said, ‘but only words can hurt me. Do not trouble yourself, Inspector. The cowards are dispersing already.’

  There was another crash and a stone struck him on the shoulder. I hurried to him and saw a youth running up the road. He turned and threw another stone, but it fell short and he ran away.

  My guardian rubbed his shoulder – it was the one which always troubled him – and pointed out of the window.

  ‘Those are your criminals, Inspector Pound,’ he said. ‘I suggest you start chasing them instead of hounding me.’

  The inspector reddened. ‘Would you like me to station a man outside your house, Mr Grice?’

  Sidney Grice shook his head. ‘No, Inspector. I would like you to put this matter to rest and you can start by finding Sir Randolph Cosmo Napier. I will give you two days.’

  ‘Or what?’ Inspector Pound was very pale.

  Sidney Grice flapped his hand above his head.

  ‘Two days,’ he said, and turned back to the window.

  26

  Smoke

  ‘There is a strong aroma of cigarette smoke in here,’ my guardian said as we went into the dining room. ‘I hope Molly has not been indulging in that filthy habit. She will be looking for another position without a reference if she has.’

  He had his patch on, as he often did in the evenings, to give his eye muscles a rest.

  ‘It is probably my fault,’ I said. ‘I had tea in a very smoky cafe.’

  He sniffed again. ‘Is that gin I can smell?’

  ‘Very likely,’ I said. ‘A man spilled something over me from a jug as I walked past him. I was not aware that it was gin, though.’

  The dining room was chilly. It had a fireplace but it was never made up. That would have been an unwarranted extravagance.

  ‘I would have sworn it was on your breath,’ he said as we went to our chairs.

  ‘I trust you would not have sworn in my presence,’ I said.

  ‘I only meant—’

  ‘And I am not sure that you should be smelling my breath.’ Molly brought in our dinner. ‘It hardly seems decent.’

  Molly suppressed a smile as she left. We had soft-boiled eggs and cold potatoes.

  ‘How has your day been?’ I asked.

  Sidney Grice blew down the salt cellar.

  ‘Most satisfactory.’

  ‘In what way?’

  He banged the cellar on the table. ‘You will not have forgotten that I gave Pound two days to find Sir Randolph, and he has failed to come up with a single lead.’ He salted his food. ‘So I had a chat with the Home Secretary this afternoon.’

  ‘Indeed?’

  I poured myself a tumbler of water.

  ‘Indeed.’ Sidney Grice spread his napkin over his lap. ‘I reminded him that Ashby had a fair trial, and Brewster’s rantings from the pulpit were no more than uncorroborated hearsay and cannot constitute evidence. I pointed out that public order is at stake and the matter needs to be resolved as soon as possible. Sir William agreed and the execution is to be scheduled for the day after tomorrow. He owes me a favour, anyway.’

  Sidney Grice tapped one of his eggs with a teaspoon.

  ‘You regard the hanging of William Ashby as a personal favour?’

  ‘Of course.’ My guardian scooped his eggs out on to his plate. ‘The whole thing has become an embarrassment.’

  ‘So he is to die to spare your blushes?’

  Sidney Grice nodded happily. ‘I only wish I could witness the event myself.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘If any man put William Ashby on the scaffold it is I.’ He did his horrid smile. ‘And I like to see my work completed.’

  ‘You would enjoy it?’

  ‘Why not?’ He mashed his egg into his potato, shook some pepper on top and then some more salt, sowing it up and down his plate.

  ‘But a man is to be killed.’

  ‘You give him more consideration than he gave his wife, not to mention the suffering of her mother.’

  ‘But are you sure?’

  ‘The man is a brutal murderer, March. Twelve men good and true were sure of it too.’

  My eggs had congealed into yellow strings around the pale potatoes. Sidney Grice tucked into his dinner and opened a book.

  ‘You should read this.’ He raised it briefly. ‘It is quite fascinating. Apparently an American dentist called Southwick has devised a method of executing criminals by electrifying them. That sounds rather fun.’

  I pushed my plate to one side.

  ‘You are not hungry?’

  ‘I feel sick.’

  ‘You should try fletcherizing your food. Take tiny portions and chew each one thirty times before swallowing. It will improve your digestion no end and perhaps even your temperament a little.’

  He wiped his mouth.

  ‘It is not this muck masquerading as food that offends me,’ I said. ‘It is the monster masquerading as a human being that fills me with disgust.’

  Sidney Grice put his napkin down and said almost tenderly, ‘I quite understand but try not to upset yourself, March. The world shall be rid of him in thirty-six hours.’

  I picked up my carafe and hurled it. I am a good shot as a rule but I did not take careful aim. My guardian glanced back at the shattered glass on the floor and the water on the wallpaper.

  ‘You would have done better with the tumbler,’ he said and returned to his book.

  I once saw a man hang in Bombay. My father took me. I had heard that the man was an Indian mutineer and I said that he deserved to die. He had taken an oath to the Queen and betrayed her.

  The man was brought into the square manacled and in leg chains, and dressed only in a loincloth. He shuffled to try to keep up with his escort. He was such a little man and he was crying. At the foot of the scaffold he stopped and fell to his knees. The guards put their arms under his and carried him up. He was wailing by then. They deposited him on the hatch and put a noose round his neck.

  ‘Did he deserve this?’ my father asked.

  ‘How many people did he kill?’

  ‘If it were ten did he deserve this?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I looked away but my father told me to watch, and the executioner pulled a lever and the man fell and his body jolted as the rope tightened. And then the struggles began. His hands went to his throat but the rope dug deep and he could not put his fingers under it. His legs were kicking. He swung from side to side.

  ‘Did he deserve this?’ my father asked but I could not answer.

  The man was running now, his legs pumping in the air and some of the bystanders started to laugh. He soiled himself and the laughter grew. Some mocked him.

  ‘No,’ I said.

  The hanged man tired. He slowed and slumped. Hi
s hands fell in front of him and his legs hung loosely. His chest quivered and he became limp.

  ‘He spat at an officer,’ my father said. ‘If his comrades are to be believed, he was chewing betel leaves and just happened to spit as his captain came round the corner. The men laughed and the officer felt humiliated so he pressed charges. It was the word of an English captain against that of a native private judged by English officers. I am sorry to have put you through this but you have learnt the most important thing you will ever learn. No one has the right to say another man must die. Incarcerate him if you must, but it is for God to decide his allotted span.’

  I picked up my tumbler and threw that too.

  27

  The Vigil

  Father Brewster came to greet me, clothed in long white robes with a green stole, the moment I entered the church.

  ‘I must tell you that I am not a Roman Catholic,’ I said and he smiled. ‘You are welcome all the more for that. Take a seat wherever you like and make yourself as comfortable as you can. We are in for a long night, if you choose to spend it with us.’

  There were probably two hundred people seated in the pews already, most of them poorly dressed, and the majority were women, several with children.

  I sat on the end of a pew at the back by myself. A grandfather clock had been set up before the altar. It was five minutes before twelve. Father Brewster went back to the front and bent to speak to somebody and, when she stood and turned, I saw that it was Grace Dillinger and that she was coming, tall and elegant, straight towards me. She was still in mourning, with no hat but a black gauze over her head hanging below her eyes, though her white face was still clearly visible.

  ‘Miss Middleton.’

  I stood and she took my hand and gave it a little squeeze.

  ‘March.’

  ‘Please call me Grace, and thank you for coming.’

  There was a bleakness in her eyes that I had only seen in people before at the moment of their own deaths.

  ‘I was not sure that I would be welcome after what my guardian has done and the part I played in persuading him to do it.’

  Grace Dillinger touched my arm. ‘You are always welcome. What you did was done out of kindness.’

  A poorly dressed man in his twenties came in and dropped a coin through the slot of a black iron box.

  ‘Is there an entrance fee?’ I asked and she shook her head.

  ‘He is lighting a votive candle. It is a small offering to the church and God for a special intention.’

  ‘May I?’

  I put a sixpence in the slot.

  ‘A penny would have done,’ Grace said.

  ‘Then perhaps you will light one with me.’ The candles were about the size of crayons, and as we held the waxed wicks into the flame I saw her hand shake and put out mine to steady it.

  ‘Oh, March.’ Her voice faltered. ‘I am so frightened for him.’ Her eyes closed briefly, then glistened through her veil in the yellow flicker. We pushed our candles into pronged holders on the stand, and she swallowed and said, ‘Will you sit with me a while?’

  ‘I feel I am intruding.’

  ‘You are a good person and we have need of goodness tonight.’

  We walked down the aisle. All eyes turned towards us as I slid into the front pew and Grace sat beside me, opening a prayer book on a page marked with a red ribbon but staring through it into the wastelands of all human suffering.

  The clock stuck midnight and on the last chime Father Brewster said, ‘One thousand, eight hundred and forty-nine years ago another innocent man awaited execution. He asked his followers to stay awake and pray. Was it possible, he begged, that the chalice of suffering be taken from him? If it were not possible, then he would bow to his Father’s will. He did bow and through his death redeemed our souls. And so now we beseech thee, Father, God of infinite mercy, though we cannot see your will, if it be possible, to save our poor brother in Christ, William Ashby, from such a cruel fate. Just as Jesus enjoined his disciples in Gethsemane, let us, in obedience to his holy will, stay awake and say the rosary together.’

  Many of the congregation brought out rosaries with crosses hanging from them and began to recite a prayer to Mary. Ten times they said it, then the Lord’s Prayer but with the end omitted, then a short prayer starting with Glory Be, and then they began again. I sat quietly and watched the hands that counted the beads and the hands that counted the minutes and I listened to the chanting, and I was not even aware of falling asleep but I awoke with a start to see Jesus Christ hanging from the cross, his body pierced and twisted but his expression serene, high above the altar and a candle in a red glass cup.

  ‘My brothers and sisters in Christ,’ Father Brewster was saying, and I saw the hands at seven. ‘We are past dawn.’

  The morning was glowing through the round stained glass of the great east window. It cast its colours over the upturned faces.

  ‘And, as we have had no news, we must accept that the deed has been done.’

  Grace was on her knees beside me, her head resting on her intertwined hands.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘Please God. No.’

  ‘I have put aside the green of hope,’ Father Brewster said, and I saw that he had changed his vestments, ‘for the purple of the passion of our Lord, for we must now accept that he has taken William Ashby into his Father’s house.’

  The quiet was torn by a choked wail.

  ‘No.’ Grace Dillinger raised her face to the ceiling.

  ‘And we must commend his soul—’

  ‘No.’ She flung her missal skimming towards the altar.

  ‘To God’s eternal boundless love.’

  Grace Dillinger rose. Her face was fixed in unutterable despair.

  ‘God damn them all,’ she said and swept away.

  I rose to follow but Father Brewster put up his hand.

  ‘God will find and comfort her and bring her back,’ he said, but I could not reply for the disgust that filled my throat.

  28

  The Hanging

  Sidney Grice was out when I got home. He had left early, Molly told me, following some information about a stolen racehorse. Her apron was smudged with blacking.

  Would I like breakfast? I would not.

  I had a cup of tea and went into the small courtyard garden and sat for my first cigarette under the cherry tree. I put on my cloak and walked to Tavistock Square and smoked another cigarette there, until a scandalized gentleman in a tall top hat told me not to. I wandered to Brown and Sons and bought a packet of Willet’s Empires.

  ‘’Orrible ’angin’,’ the news vendor called. ‘’Orrible ’angin’. Get all the gruesome details. See the artist’s pictures. ’Orrible ’angin’.’

  I had not a penny on me for the paper but if I had a hundred sovereigns in my purse, I should not have bought it. I hurried up Torrington Place and back along Gower Street, just in time to catch a glimpse of my guardian climbing out of a cab and walking briskly up the steps.

  Molly was still taking his coat when I went into the house.

  ‘Bring me a pot of tea,’ he told her, ‘and make it a strong one.’ And, tossing his cane into the stand, he marched straight into his study.

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘What a waste,’ he said. ‘The bunglers who stole Nightjar broke his leg and he had to be destroyed.’

  He flipped through a pile of letters on his desk but did not open any. Two were tossed straight into the bin.

  ‘You worry about the life of an animal on such a day as this?’

  ‘There were fifty guineas in it for me if he had been alive.’

  ‘And one hundred and twenty-five pounds to send William Ashby to his death,’ I told him, and swept out of the room.

  I was halfway up the stairs when I heard a voice and turned to see Inspector Pound coming into the hallway. His face was grey as Molly took his things, and he did not even glance up as he went into the study.

  The door was closed, but I was do
wn and into the room just as the inspector slumped into an armchair. He stood and greeted me.

  ‘You look rather pale, Inspector,’ I said.

  ‘He was just about to tell me about the fuss at the hanging,’ my guardian said.

  ‘Why? What happened?’

  ‘A botched job.’ The inspector tugged at his moustaches. ‘The worst I have ever witnessed and I have seen a few poor ones. To give Ashby his due, he stepped on to that trap with as much quiet dignity as any man could muster. He was much the worse for his gaol fever but he walked and stood unaided to the spot. All the usual stuff about being innocent of the crime, of course, but you expect that. The Chaplain said his prayers. The sentence was read out. Everybody stood back and the hangman pulled the lever but nothing happened. The trap would not open. The hangman stamped on it. They even made Ashby jump up and down, but it was well and truly jammed.

  ‘They took him off and brought in a carpenter. The wood had warped and he had to shave it down. Then the hangman started an argument. He had been delayed and relied on his assistant to assess the condemned man, but apparently Ashby had a stouter neck than he had been led to believe and he did not think the rope was long enough. There is a conflict at present between the short-drop stranglers and the long-drop neck-breakers. The hangman wanted a quick death and insisted on a longer rope, and it took twenty minutes to produce one, and all that time Ashby had to stand and listen to them quarrel while the carpenter planed the planks and tested the lever.

  ‘Eventually they got him back on the trap and put the noose round his neck and the padre repeated his bunkum, and they all stood back and the lever was pulled and the trap dropped, but only by a foot. Ashby stumbled and was choking with one leg jammed in the gap, so they hauled him up by the neck and called the carpenter back to saw a larger piece off. Then they put Ashby back on the trap, by which time the observers were incensed and saying that his sentence should be commuted to life imprisonment, so the governor sent out for further instructions and Ashby stood another hour or more while Vernon Harcourt, the Home Secretary, was found riding on Rotten Row.