Gallows Thief

‘And sometimes,’ Sandman went on, ‘where there are hooks there are no eyes.’

‘Which is why I brought this,’ Sally said, dangling a frayed silk handkerchief over her shoulder. ‘Thread it through the gaps, Captain. Make me decent.’

‘So today I shall call on some acquaintances,’ Sandman reverted to her earlier question, ‘and see if they can offer me employment and then, this afternoon, I shall yield to temptation.’

‘Ooh!’ Sally smiled over her shoulder, all blue eyes and sparkle. ‘Temptation?’

‘I shall watch some cricket at the Artillery Ground.’

‘Wouldn’t tempt me,’ Sally said, ‘and by the by, Captain, if you’re going down to breakfast then do it quick ’cos you won’t get a bite after nine o’clock.’

‘I won’t?’ Sandman asked, though in truth he had no intention of paying the tavern for a breakfast he could not afford.

‘The ‘sheaf’s always crowded when there’s a hanging at Newgate,’ Sally explained, ‘’cos the folk want their breakfasts on their way back, see? Makes ’em hungry. That’s where my brother went. He always goes down Old Bailey when there’s a scragging. They like him to be there.’

‘Who does?’

‘His friends. He usually knows one of the poor bastards being twisted, see?’

‘Twisted?’

‘Hanged, Captain. Hanged, twisted, crapped, nubbed, scragged or Jack Ketched. Doing the Newgate Morris, dancing on Jemmy Botting’s stage, rope gargling. You’ll have to learn the flash language if you live here, Captain.’

‘I can see I will,’ Sandman said, and had just begun to thread the handkerchief through the dress’s gaping back when Dodds, the inn’s errand boy, pushed through the half-open door and grinned to discover Sally Hood in Captain Sandman’s room and Captain Sandman doing up her frock and him with tousled hair and dressed in nothing but a frayed old dressing gown.

‘You’ll catch flies if you don’t close your bloody gob,’ Sally told Dodds, ‘and he ain’t my boman, you spoony little bastard. He’s just hooking me up ’cos my brother and Mother Gunn have gone to the crap. Which is where you’ll end up if there’s any bleeding justice.’

Dodds ignored this tirade and held a sealed paper towards Sandman. ‘Letter for you, Captain.’

‘You’re very kind,’ Sandman said, and stooped to his folded clothes to find a penny. ‘Wait a moment,’ he told the boy who, in truth, had shown no inclination to leave until he was tipped.

‘Don’t you bug him nothing!’ Sally protested. She pushed Sandman’s hand away and snatched the letter from Dodds. ‘The little toe-rag forgot it, didn’t he? No bleeding letter arrived this morning! How long’s it been?’

Dodds looked at her sullenly. ‘Came on Friday,’ he finally admitted.

‘If a bleeding letter comes on Friday then you bleeding deliver it on Friday! Now, on your trotters and fake away off!’ She slammed the door on the boy. ‘Lazy little bleeder. They should take him down bleeding Newgate and make him do the scaffold hornpipe. That would stretch his lazy bloody neck.’

Sandman finished threading the silk handkerchief through the gaps in the dress’s fastenings, then stepped back and nodded. ‘You look very fetching, Miss Hood.’

‘You think so?’

‘I do indeed,’ Sandman said. The dress was pale green, printed with cornflowers, and the colours suited Sally’s honey-coloured skin and curly hair that was as gold as Sandman’s own. She was a pretty girl with clear blue eyes, a skin unscarred by pox and a contagious smile. ‘The dress really does become you,’ he said.

‘It’s the only half good one I’ve got,’ she said, ‘so it had better suit. Thank you.’ She held out his letter. ‘Close your eyes, turn round three times, then say your loved one’s name aloud before you open it.’

Sandman smiled. ‘And what will that achieve?’

‘It will mean good news, Captain,’ she said earnestly, ‘good news.’ She smiled and was gone.

Sandman listened to her footsteps on the stairs, then looked at the letter. Perhaps it was an answer to one of his enquiries about a job? It was certainly a very high class of paper and the handwriting was educated and stylish. He put a finger under the flap, ready to break the seal, then paused. He felt like a fool, but he closed his eyes, turned three times then spoke his loved one’s name aloud: ‘Eleanor Forrest,’ he said, then opened his eyes, tore off the letter’s red wax seal and unfolded the paper. He read the letter, read it again and tried to work out whether or not it really was good news.

The Right Honourable the Viscount Sidmouth presented his compliments to Captain Rider Sandman and requested the honour of a call at Captain Sandman’s earliest convenience, preferably in the forenoon at Lord Sidmouth’s office. A prompt reply to Lord Sidmouth’s private secretary, Mister Sebastian Witherspoon, would be appreciated.

Sandman’s first instinct was that the letter must be bad news, that his father had dunned the Viscount Sidmouth as he had dunned so many others and that his lordship was writing to make a claim on the pathetic shreds of the Sandman estate. Yet that was nonsense. His father, so far as Rider Sandman knew, had never encountered Lord Sidmouth and he would surely have boasted if he had for Sandman’s father had liked the company of important men. And there were few men more important than the Right Honourable Henry Addington, first Viscount Sidmouth, erstwhile Prime Minister of Great Britain and now His Majesty’s Principal Secretary of State in the Home Department.

So why did the Home Secretary want to see Rider Sandman?

There was only one way to find out.

So Sandman put on his cleanest shirt, buffed his fraying boots with his dirtiest shirt, brushed his coat and, thus belying his poverty by dressing as the gentleman he was, went to see Lord Sidmouth.

The Viscount Sidmouth was a thin man. He was thin-lipped and thin-haired, had a thin nose and a thin jaw that narrowed to a weasel-thin chin and his eyes had all the warmth of thinly knapped flint and his thin voice was precise, dry and unfriendly. His nickname was ‘the Doctor’, a nickname without warmth or affection, but apt, for he was clinical, disapproving and cold. He had made Sandman wait for two and a quarter hours, though as Sandman had come to the office without an appointment he could scarce blame the Home Secretary for that. Now, as a bluebottle buzzed against one of the high windows, Lord Sidmouth frowned across the desk at his visitor. ‘You were recommended by Sir John Colborne.’

Sandman bowed his head in acknowledgement, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. A grandfather clock ticked loud in a corner of the office.

‘You were in Sir John’s battalion at Waterloo,’ Sidmouth said, ‘is that not so?’

‘I was, my lord, yes.’

Sidmouth grunted as though he did not entirely approve of men who had been at Waterloo and that, Sandman reflected, might well have been the case for Britain now seemed divided between those who had fought against the French and those who had stayed at home. The latter, Sandman suspected, were jealous and liked to suggest, oh so delicately, that they had sacrificed an opportunity to gallivant abroad because of the need to keep Britain prosperous. The wars against Napoleon were two years in the past now, yet still the divide remained, though Sir John Colborne must possess some influence with the government if his recommendation had brought Sandman to this office. ‘Sir John tells me you seek employment?’ the Home Secretary asked.

‘I must, my lord.’

‘Must?’ Sidmouth pounced on the word. ‘Must? But you are on half pay, surely? And half pay is not an ungenerous emolument, I would have thought?’ The question was asked very sourly, as though his lordship utterly disapproved of paying pensions to men who were capable of earning their own livings.

‘I’m not eligible for half pay, my lord,’ Sandman said. He had sold his commission and, because it was peacetime, he had received less than he had hoped, though it had been enough to secure a lease on a house for his mother.

‘You have no income?’ Sebastian Witherspoon, the Home Secretary’s private secretary, asked from his chair beside his master’s desk.

‘Some,’ Sandman said, and decided it was probably best not to say that the small income came from playing cricket. The Viscount Sidmouth did not look like a man who would approve of such a thing. ‘Not enough,’ Sandman amended his answer, ‘and much of what I do earn goes towards settling my father’s smaller debts. The tradesmen’s debts,’ he added, in case the Home Secretary thought he was trying to pay off the massive sums owing to the wealthy investors.

Witherspoon frowned. ‘In law, Sandman,’ he said, ‘you are not responsible for any of your father’s debts.’

‘I am responsible for my family’s good name,’ Sandman responded.

Lord Sidmouth gave a snort of derision that could have been in mockery of Sandman’s good name or an ironic response to his evident scruples or, more likely, was a comment on Sandman’s father who, faced with the threat of imprisonment or exile because of his massive debts, had taken his own life and thus left his name disgraced and his wife and family ruined. The Home Secretary gave Sandman a long, sour inspection, then turned to look at the bluebottle thumping against the window. The grandfather clock ticked hollow. The room was hot and Sandman was uncomfortably aware of the sweat soaking his shirt. The silence stretched and Sandman suspected the Home Secretary was weighing the wisdom of offering employment to Ludovic Sandman’s son. Wagons rumbled in the street beneath the windows. Hooves sounded sharp, and then, at last, Lord Sidmouth made up his mind. ‘I need a man to undertake a job,’ he said, still gazing at the window, ‘though I should warn you that it is not a permanent position. In no way is it permanent.’

‘It is anything but permanent,’ Witherspoon put in.

Sidmouth scowled at his secretary’s contribution. ‘The position is entirely temporary,’ he said, then gestured towards a great basket that stood waist high on the carpeted floor and was crammed with papers. Some were scrolls, some were folded and sealed with wax while a few showed legal pretensions by being wrapped in scraps of red ribbon. ‘Those, Captain,’ he said, ‘are petitions.’ Lord Sidmouth’s tone made it plain that he loathed petitions. ‘A condemned felon may petition the King in Council for clemency or, indeed, for a full pardon. That is their prerogative, Captain, and all such petitions from England and Wales come to this office. We receive close to two thousand a year! It seems that every person condemned to death manages to have a petition sent on their behalf, and they must all be read. Are they not all read, Witherspoon?’

Sidmouth’s secretary, a young man with plump cheeks, sharp eyes and elegant manners, nodded. ‘They are certainly examined, my lord. It would be remiss of us to ignore such pleas.’

‘Remiss indeed,’ Sidmouth said piously, ‘and if the crime is not too heinous, Captain, and if persons of quality are willing to speak for the condemned, then we might show clemency. We might commute a sentence of death to, say, one of transportation?’

‘You, my lord?’ Sandman asked, struck by Sidmouth’s use of the word ‘we’.

‘The petitions are addressed to the King,’ the Home Secretary explained, ‘but the responsibility for deciding on the response is properly left to this office and my decisions are then ratified by the Privy Council and I can assure you, Captain, that I mean ratified. They are not questioned.’

‘Indeed not!’ Witherspoon sounded amused.

‘I decide,’ Sidmouth declared truculently. ‘It is one of the responsibilities of this high office, Captain, to decide which felons will hang and which will be spared. There are hundreds of souls in Australia, Captain, who owe their lives to this office.’

‘And I am certain, my lord,’ Witherspoon put in smoothly, ‘that their gratitude is unbounded.’

Sidmouth ignored his secretary. Instead he tossed a scrolled and ribboned petition to Sandman. ‘And once in a while,’ he went on, ‘once in a very rare while, a petition will persuade us to investigate the facts of the matter. On those rare occasions, Captain, we appoint an Investigator, but it is not something we like to do.’ He paused, obviously inviting Sandman to enquire why the Home Office was so reluctant to appoint an Investigator, but Sandman seemed oblivious to the question as he slid the ribbon from the scroll. ‘A person condemned to death,’ the Home Secretary offered the explanation anyway, ‘has already been tried. He or she has been judged and found guilty by a court of law, and it is not the business of His Majesty’s government to revisit facts that have been considered by the proper courts. It is not our policy, Captain, to undermine the judiciary, but once in a while, very infrequently, we do investigate. That petition is just such a rare case.’

Sandman unrolled the petition, which was written in brownish ink on cheap yellow paper. ‘As God is my wittness,’ he read, ‘hee is a good boy and could never have killd the Lady Avebury as God knows hee could not hert even a flie.’ There was much more in the same manner, but Sandman could not read on because the Home Secretary had started to talk again.

‘The matter,’ Lord Sidmouth explained, ‘concerns Charles Corday. That is not his real name. The petition, as you can see for yourself, comes from Corday’s mother, who subscribes herself as Cruttwell, but the boy seems to have adopted a French name. God knows why. He stands convicted of murdering the Countess of Avebury. You doubtless recollect the case?’

‘I fear not, my lord,’ Sandman said. He had never taken much interest in crime, had never bought the Newgate Calendars nor read the broadsheets that celebrated notorious felons and their savage deeds.

‘There’s no mystery about it,’ the Home Secretary said. ‘The wretched man raped and stabbed the Countess of Avebury and he thoroughly deserves to hang. He is due on the scaffold when?’ He turned to Witherspoon.

‘A week from today, my lord,’ Witherspoon said.

‘If there’s no mystery, my lord,’ Sandman said, ‘then why investigate the facts?’

‘Because the petitioner, Maisie Cruttwell,’ Sidmouth spoke the name as though it tasted sour on his tongue, ‘is a seamstress to Her Majesty, Queen Charlotte, and Her Majesty has graciously taken an interest.’ Lord Sidmouth’s voice made it plain that he could have gladly strangled King George III’s wife for being so gracious. ‘It is my responsibility, Captain, and my loyal duty to reassure Her Majesty that every possible enquiry has been made and that there is not the slightest doubt about the wretched man’s guilt. I have therefore written to Her Majesty to inform her that I am appointing an Investigator who will examine the facts and thus offer an assurance that justice is indeed being done.’ Sidmouth had explained all this in a bored voice, but now pointed a bony forefinger at Sandman. ‘I am asking whether you will be that Investigator, Captain, and whether you comprehend what is needed.’

Sandman nodded. ‘You wish to reassure the Queen, my lord, and to do that you must be entirely satisfied of the prisoner’s guilt.’

‘No!’ Sidmouth snapped, and sounded genuinely angry. ‘I am already entirely satisfied of the man’s guilt. Corday, or whatever he chooses to call himself, was convicted after the due process of the law. It is the Queen who needs reassurance.’

‘I understand,’ Sandman said.

Witherspoon leant forward. ‘Forgive the question, Captain, but you’re not of a radical disposition?’

‘Radical?’

‘You do not have objections to the gallows?’

‘For a man who rapes and kills?’ Sandman sounded indignant. ‘Of course not.’ The answer was honest enough, though in truth Sandman had not thought much about the gallows. It was not something he had ever seen, though he knew there was a scaffold at Newgate, a second south of the river at the Horsemonger Lane prison, and another in every assize town of England and Wales. Once in a while he would hear an argument that the scaffold was being used too widely or that it was a nonsense to hang a hungry villager for stealing a five-shilling lamb, but few folk wanted to do away with the noose altogether. The scaffold was a deterrent, a punishment and an example. It was a necessity. It was civilisation’s machine and it protected all law-abiding citizens from their predators.

Witherspoon, satisfied with Sandman’s indignant answer, smiled. ‘I did not think you were a radical,’ he said emolliently, ‘but one must be sure.’

‘So,’ Lord Sidmouth glanced at the grandfather clock, ‘will you undertake to be our Investigator?’ He expected an immediate answer, but Sandman hesitated. That hesitation was not because he did not want the job, but because he doubted he possessed the qualifications to be an investigator of crime, but then, he wondered, who did? Lord Sidmouth mistook the hesitation for reluctance. ‘The job will hardly tax you, Captain,’ he said testily, ‘the wretch is plainly guilty and one merely wishes to satisfy the Queen’s womanly concerns. A month’s pay for a day’s work?’ He paused and sneered. ‘Or do you fear the appointment will interfere with your cricket?’

Sandman needed a month’s pay and so he ignored the insults. ‘Of course I shall do it, my lord,’ he said, ‘I shall be honoured.’

Witherspoon stood, the signal that the audience was over, and the Home Secretary nodded his farewell. ‘Witherspoon will provide you with a letter of authorisation,’ he said, ‘and I shall look forward to receiving your report. Good day to you, sir.’

‘Your servant, my lord,’ Sandman bowed, but the Home Secretary was already attending to other business.

Sandman followed the secretary into an ante-room where a clerk was busy at a table. ‘It will take a moment to seal your letter,’ Witherspoon said, ‘so, please, sit.’

Sandman had brought the Corday petition with him and now read it all the way through, though he gleaned little more information from the ill-written words. The condemned man’s mother, who had signed the petition with a cross, had merely dictated an incoherent plea for mercy. Her son was a good boy, she claimed, a harmless soul and a Christian, but beneath her pleas were two damning comments. ‘Preposterous,’ the first read, ‘he is guilty of a heinous crime,’ while the second comment, in a crabbed handwriting, stated: ‘Let the Law take its course.’ Sandman showed the petition to Witherspoon. ‘Who wrote the comments?’

‘The second is the Home Secretary’s decision,’ Witherspoon said, ‘and was written before we knew Her Majesty was involved. And the first? That’s from the judge who passed sentence. It is customary to refer all petitions to the relevant judge before a decision is made. In this case it was Sir John Silvester. You know him?’

‘I fear not.’

‘He’s the Recorder of London and, as you may deduce from that, a most experienced judge. Certainly not a man to allow a gross miscarriage of justice in his courtroom.’ He handed a letter to the clerk. ‘Your name must be on the letter of authorisation, of course. Are there any pitfalls in its spelling?’

‘No,’ Sandman said and then, as the clerk wrote his name on the letter, he read the petition again, but it presented no arguments against the facts of the case. Maisie Cruttwell claimed her son was innocent, but could adduce no proof of that assertion. Instead she was appealing to the King for mercy. ‘Why did you ask me?’ Sandman asked Witherspoon. ‘I mean you must have used someone else as an Investigator in the past? Were they unsatisfactory?’

‘Mister Talbot was entirely satisfactory,’ Witherspoon said. He was now searching for the seal that would authenticate the letter, ‘but he died.’

‘Ah.’

‘A seizure,’ Witherspoon said, ‘very tragic. And why you? Because, as the Home Secretary informed you, you were recommended.’ He was scrabbling through the contents of a drawer, looking for the seal. ‘I had a cousin at Waterloo,’ he went on, ‘a Captain Witherspoon, a Hussar. He was on the Duke’s staff. Did you know him?’

‘No, alas.’

‘He died.’

‘I am sorry to hear it.’

‘It was perhaps for the best,’ Witherspoon said. He had at last found the seal. ‘He always said that he feared the war’s ending. What excitement, he wondered, could peace bring?’

‘It was a common enough fear in the army,’ Sandman said.

‘This letter,’ the secretary was now heating a stick of wax over a candle flame, ‘confirms that you are making enquiries on behalf of the Home Office and it requests all persons to offer you their cooperation, though it does not require them to do so. Note that distinction, Captain, note it well. We have no legal right to demand cooperation,’ he said as he dripped the wax onto the letter, then carefully pushed the seal into the scarlet blob, ‘so we can only request it. I would be grateful if you would return this letter to me upon the conclusion of your enquiries, and as to the nature of those enquiries, Captain? I suggest they need not be laborious. There is no doubt of the man’s guilt. Corday is a rapist, a murderer and a liar, and all we need of him is a confession. You will find him in Newgate and if you are sufficiently forceful then I have no doubt he will confess to his brutal crime and your work will then be done.’ He held out the letter. ‘I expect to hear from you very soon. We shall require a written report, but please keep it brief.’ He suddenly withheld the letter to give his next words an added force. ‘What we do not want, Captain, is to complicate matters. Provide us with a succinct report that will allow my master to reassure the Queen that there are no possible grounds for a pardon and then let us forget the wretched matter.’

‘Suppose he doesn’t confess?’ Sandman asked.

‘Make him,’ Witherspoon said forcefully. ‘He will hang anyway, Captain, whether you have submitted your report or not. It would simply be more convenient if we could reassure Her Majesty of the man’s guilt before the wretch is executed.’

‘And if he’s innocent?’ Sandman asked.

Witherspoon looked appalled at the suggestion. ‘How can he be? He’s already been found guilty!’

‘Of course he has,’ Sandman said, then took the letter and slipped it into the tail pocket of his coat. ‘His Lordship,’ he spoke awkwardly, ‘mentioned an emolument.’ He hated talking of money, it was so ungentlemanly, but so was his poverty.

‘Indeed he did,’ Witherspoon said. ‘We usually paid twenty guineas to Mister Talbot, but I would find it hard to recommend the same fee in this case. It really is too trivial a matter so I shall authorise a draft for fifteen guineas. I shall send it to you, where?’ He glanced down at his notebook, then looked shocked. ‘Really? The Wheatsheaf? In Drury Lane?’

‘Indeed,’ Sandman said stiffly. He knew Witherspoon deserved an explanation for the Wheatsheaf was notorious as a haunt of criminals, but Sandman had not known of that reputation when he asked for a room and he did not think he needed to justify himself to Witherspoon.

‘I’m sure you know best,’ Witherspoon said dubiously.

Sandman hesitated. He was no coward, indeed he had the reputation of being a brave man, but that reputation had been earnt in the smoke of battle and what he did now took all his courage. ‘You mentioned a draft, Mister Witherspoon,’ he said, ‘and I wondered whether I might persuade you to cash? There will be inevitable expenses …’ His voice tailed away because, for the life of him, he could not think what those expenses might be.

Both Witherspoon and the clerk stared at Sandman as though he had just dropped his breeches. ‘Cash?’ Witherspoon asked in a small voice.

Sandman knew he was blushing. ‘You want the matter resolved swiftly,’ he said, ‘and there could be contingencies that will require expenditure. I cannot foresee the nature of those contingencies, but …’ He shrugged and again his voice tailed away.

‘Prendergast,’ Witherspoon looked at Sandman even as he spoke to the clerk, ‘pray go to Mister Hodge’s office, present him with my compliments and ask him to advance us fifteen guineas,’ he paused, still looking at Sandman, ‘in cash.’

The money was found, it was given and Sandman left the Home Office with pockets heavy with gold. Damn poverty, he thought, but the rent was due at the Wheatsheaf and it had been three days since he had eaten a proper meal.