Читать книгу Gallows Thief - Bernard Cornwell - Страница 7

Rider Sandman was up late that Monday morning because he had been paid seven guineas to play for Sir John Hart’s eleven against a Sussex team, the winners to share a bonus of a hundred guineas, and Sandman had scored sixty-three runs in the first innings and thirty-two in the second, and those were respectable scores by any standards, but Sir John’s eleven had still lost. That had been on the Saturday and Sandman, watching the other batsmen swing wildly at ill-bowled balls, had realised that the game was being thrown. The bookmakers were being fleeced because Sir John’s team had been expected to win handily, not least because the famed Rider Sandman was playing for it, but someone must have bet heavily on the Sussex eleven which, in the event, won the game by an innings and forty-eight runs. Rumour said that Sir John himself had bet against his own side and Sir John would not meet Sandman’s eyes, which made the rumour believable.

So Captain Rider Sandman walked back to London.

He walked because he refused to share a carriage with men who had accepted bribes to lose a match. He loved cricket, he was good at it, he had once, famously, scored a hundred and fourteen runs for an England eleven playing against the Marquess of Canfield’s picked men and lovers of the game would travel many miles to see Captain Rider Sandman, late of His Majesty’s 52nd Regiment of Foot, perform at the batting crease. But he hated bribery and he detested corruption and he possessed a temper, and that was why he fell into a furious argument with his treacherous team-mates and, when they slept that night in Sir John’s comfortable house and rode back to London in comfort next morning, Sandman did neither. He was too proud.

Proud and poor. He could not afford the stagecoach fare, nor even a common carrier’s fare, because in his anger he had thrown his match fee back into Sir John Hart’s face and that, Sandman conceded, had been a stupid thing to do for he had earnt that money honestly, yet even so it had felt dirty. So he walked home, spending the Saturday night in a hayrick somewhere near Hickstead and trudging all that Sunday until the right sole was almost clean off his boot. He reached Drury Lane very late that night and he dropped his cricket gear on the floor of his rented attic room and stripped himself naked and fell into the narrow bed and slept. Just slept. And was still sleeping when the trapdoor dropped in Old Bailey and the crowd’s cheer sent a thousand wings startling up into the smoky London sky. Sandman was still dreaming at half past eight. He was dreaming, twitching and sweating. He called out in incoherent alarm, his ears filled with the thump of hooves and the crash of muskets and cannon, his eyes astonished by the hook of sabres and slashes of straight-bladed swords, and this time the dream was going to end with the cavalry smashing through the thin red-coated ranks, but then the rattle of hooves melded into a rush of feet on the stairs and a sketchy knock on his flimsy attic door. He opened his eyes, realised he was no longer a soldier, and then, before he could call out any response, Sally Hood was in the room. For a second Sandman thought the flurry of bright eyes, calico dress and golden hair was a dream, then Sally laughed. ‘I bleeding woke you. Gawd, I’m sorry!’ She turned to go.

‘It’s all right, Miss Hood.’ Sandman fumbled for his watch. He was sweating. ‘What’s the time?’

‘Saint Giles just struck half after eight,’ she told him.

‘Oh, my Lord!’ Sandman could not believe he had slept so late. He had nothing to get up for, but the habit of waking early had long taken hold. He sat up in bed, remembered he was naked and snatched the thin blanket up to his chest. ‘There’s a gown hanging on the door, Miss Hood, would you be so kind?’

Sally found the dressing gown. ‘It’s just that I’m late,’ she explained her sudden appearance in his room, ‘and my brother’s brushed off and I’ve got work, and the dress has to be hooked up, see?’ She turned her back, showing a length of bare spine. ‘I’d have asked Mrs Gunn to do it,’ Sally went on, ‘only there’s a hanging today so she’s off watching. Gawd knows what she can see considering she’s half blind and all drunk, but she does like a good hanging and she ain’t got many pleasures left at her age. It’s all right, you can get up now, I’ve got me peepers shut.’

Sandman climbed out of bed warily for there was only a limited area in his tiny attic room where he could stand without banging his head on the beams. He was a tall man, an inch over six foot, with pale-gold hair, blue eyes and a long, raw-boned face. He was not conventionally handsome, his face was too rugged for that, but there was a capability and a kindness in his expression that made him memorable. He pulled on the dressing gown and tied its belt. ‘You say you’ve got work?’ he asked Sally. ‘A good job, I hope?’

‘Ain’t what I wanted,’ Sally said, ‘because it ain’t on deck.’

‘Deck?’

‘Stage, Captain,’ she said. She called herself an actress and perhaps she was, though Sandman had seen little evidence that the stage had much use for Sally who, like Sandman, clung to the very edge of respectability and was held there, it seemed, by her brother, a very mysterious young man who worked strange hours. ‘But it ain’t bad work,’ she went on, ‘and it is respectable.’

‘I’m sure it is,’ Sandman said, sensing that Sally did not really want to talk about it, and he wondered why she sounded so defensive about a respectable job and Sally wondered why Sandman, who was palpably a gentleman, was renting an attic room in the Wheatsheaf Tavern in London’s Drury Lane. Down on his luck, that was for sure, but even so, the Wheatsheaf? Perhaps he knew no better. The Wheatsheaf was famously a flash tavern, a home for every kind of thief from pickpockets to petermen, from burglars to shop-breakers, and it seemed to Sally that Captain Rider Sandman was as straight as a ramrod. But he was a nice man, Sally thought. He treated her like a lady, and though she had only spoken to him a couple of times as they edged past each other in the inn’s corridors, she had detected a kindness in him. Enough kindness to let her presume on his privacy this Monday morning. ‘And what about you, Captain?’ she asked. ‘You working?’

‘I’m looking for employment, Miss Hood,’ Sandman said, and that was true, but he was not finding any. He was too old to be an apprentice clerk, not qualified to work in the law or with money, and too squeamish to accept a job driving slaves in the sugar islands.

‘I heard you was a cricketer,’ Sally said.

‘I am, yes.’

‘A famous one, my brother says.’

‘I’m not sure about that,’ Sandman said modestly.

‘But you can earn money at that, can’t you?’

‘Not as much as I need,’ Sandman said, and then only in summer and if he was willing to endure the bribes and corruption of the game, ‘and I have a small problem here. Some of the hooks are missing.’

‘That’s ’cos I never get round to mending them,’ Sally said, ‘so just do what you can.’ She was staring at his mantel on which was a pile of letters, their edges frayed suggesting they had all been sent a long time in the past. She swayed forward slightly and managed to see that the topmost envelope was addressed to a Miss someone or other, she could not make out the name, but the one word revealed that Captain Sandman had been jilted and had his letters returned. Poor Captain Sandman, Sally thought.

‘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.

But fifteen guineas! He could afford a meal now. A meal, some wine and an afternoon of cricket. It was a tempting vision, but Sandman was not a man to shirk duty. The job of being the Home Office’s Investigator might be temporary, but if he finished this first enquiry swiftly then he might look for other and more lucrative assignments from Lord Sidmouth, and that was an outcome devoutly to be wished and so he would forgo the meal, forget the wine and postpone the cricket.

For there was a murderer to see and a confession to obtain.

And Sandman went to fetch it.

In Old Bailey, a funnel-shaped thoroughfare that narrowed as it ran from Newgate Street to Ludgate Hill, the scaffold was being taken down. The black baize that had draped the platform was already folded onto a small cart and two men were now handing down the heavy beam from which the four victims had been hanged. The first broadsheets describing the executions and the crimes that had caused them were being hawked for a penny apiece to the vestiges of the morning’s crowd who had waited to see Jemmy Botting haul the four dead bodies up from the hanging pit, sit them on the edge of the drop while he removed the nooses and then heave them into their coffins. Then a handful of spectators had climbed to the scaffold to have one of the dead men’s hands touched to their warts, boils or tumours.

The coffins had at last been carried into the prison, but some folk still lingered just to watch the scaffold’s dismemberment. Two hawkers were selling what they claimed were portions of the fatal ropes. Bewigged and black-robed lawyers hurried between the Lamb Inn, the Magpie and Stump and the courts of the Session House that had been built next to the prison. Traffic had been allowed back into the street so Sandman had to dodge between wagons, carriages and carts to reach the prison gate where he expected warders and locks, but instead he found a uniformed porter at the top of the steps and dozens of folk coming and going. Women were carrying parcels of food, babies and bottles of gin, beer or rum. Children ran and screamed, while two aproned tapmen from the Magpie and Stump across the street delivered cooked meals on wooden trays to prisoners who could afford their services.

‘Your honour is looking for someone?’ The porter, seeing Sandman’s confusion, had pushed through the crowd to intercept him.

‘I am looking for Charles Corday,’ Sandman said, and when the porter looked bemused, added that he had come from the Home Office. ‘My name is Sandman,’ he explained, ‘Captain Sandman, and I’m Lord Sidmouth’s official Investigator.’ He drew out the letter with its impressive Home Office seal.

‘Ah!’ The porter was quite uninterested in the letter. ‘You’ve replaced Mister Talbot, God rest his soul. A proper gentleman he was, sir.’

Sandman put the letter away. ‘I should, perhaps, pay my respects to the Governor?’ he suggested.

‘The Keeper, sir, Mister Brown is the Keeper, sir, and he won’t thank you for any respects, sir, on account that they ain’t needful. You just goes in, sir, and sees the prisoner. Mister Talbot, now, God rest him, he took them to one of the empty salt boxes and had a little chat.’ The porter grinned and mimed a punching action. ‘A great one for the truth was Mister Talbot. A big man, he was, but so are you. What was your fellow called?’

‘Corday.’

‘He’s condemned, is he? Then you’ll find him in the Press Yard, your honour. Are you carrying a stick, sir?’

‘A stick?’

‘A pistol, sir. No? Some gentlemen do, but weapons ain’t advisable, sir, on account that the bastards might overpower you. And a word of advice, Captain?’ The porter, his breath reeking of rum, turned and took hold of Sandman’s lapel to add emphasis to his next words. ‘He’ll tell you he didn’t do it, sir. There ain’t a guilty man in here, not one! Not if you ask them. They’ll all swear on their mothers’ lives they didn’t do it, but they did. They all did.’ He grinned and released his grip on Sandman’s coat. ‘Do you have a watch, sir? You do, sir? Best not take anything in that might be stolen. It’ll be in the cupboard here, sir, under lock, key and my eye. Round that corner, sir, you’ll find some stairs. Go down, sir, follow the tunnel and don’t mind the smell. Mind your backs!’ This last call was to all the folk in the lobby because four workmen, accompanied by three watchmen armed with truncheons, were carrying a plain wooden coffin out through the prison door. ‘It’s the girl what was stretched this morning, sir,’ the porter confided in Sandman. ‘She’s going to the surgeons. The gentlemen do like a young lady to dissect, they do. Down the stairs, sir, and follow your nose.’

The smell of unwashed bodies reminded Sandman of Spanish billets crowded with tired redcoats and the stench became even more noxious as he followed the stone-flagged tunnel to where more stairs climbed to a guardroom beside a massive barred gate that led into the Press Yard. Two turnkeys, both armed with cudgels, guarded the gate. ‘Charles Corday?’ one responded when Sandman enquired where the prisoner might be found. ‘You can’t miss him. If he ain’t in the yard then he’ll be in the Association Room.’ He pointed to an open door across the yard. ‘He looks like a bleeding mort, that’s why you can’t mistake him.’

‘A mort?’

The man unbolted the gate. ‘He looks like a bloody girl, sir,’ he said scornfully. ‘Pal of his, are you?’ The man grinned, then the grin faded as Sandman turned and stared at him. ‘I don’t see him in the yard, sir,’ the turnkey had been a soldier and he instinctively straightened his back and became respectful under Sandman’s gaze, ‘so he’ll be in the Association Room, sir. That door over there, sir.’

The Press Yard was a narrow space compressed between high, dank buildings. What little light came into the yard arrived over a thicket of spikes that crowned the Newgate Street wall beside which a score of prisoners, easily identifiable because of their leg irons, sat with their visitors. Children played round an open drain. A blind man sat by the steps leading to the cells, muttering to himself and scratching at the open sores on his manacled ankles. A drunk, also in chains, lay sleeping while a woman, evidently his wife, wept silently beside him. She mistook Sandman for a wealthy man and held out a begging hand. ‘Have pity on a poor woman, your honour, have pity.’

Sandman went into the Association Room which was a large space filled with tables and benches. A coal fire burnt in a big grate where stew pots hung from a crane. The pots were being stirred by two women who were evidently cooking for a dozen folk seated round one of the long tables. The only turnkey in the room, a youngish man armed with a truncheon, was also at the table, sharing a gin bottle and the laughter which died abruptly when Sandman appeared. Then the other tables fell silent as forty or fifty folk turned to look at the newcomer. Someone spat. Something about Sandman, maybe his height, spoke of authority and this was not a place where authority was welcome.

‘Corday!’ Sandman called, his voice taking on the familiar officer’s tone. ‘I’m looking for Charles Corday!’ No one answered. ‘Corday!’ Sandman called again.

‘Sir?’ The answering voice was tremulous and came from the room’s furthest and darkest corner. Sandman threaded his way through the tables to see a pathetic figure curled against the wall there. Charles Corday was very young, he looked scarce more than seventeen, and he was thin to the point of frailty with a deathly pale face framed by long fair hair that did, indeed, look girlish. He had long eyelashes, a trembling lip and a dark bruise on one cheek.

‘You’re Charles Corday?’ Sandman felt an instinctive dislike of the young man, who looked too delicate and self-pitying.

‘Yes, sir.’ Corday’s right arm was shaking.

‘Stand up,’ Sandman ordered. Corday blinked in surprise at the tone of command, but obeyed, flinching because the leg irons bit into his ankles. ‘I’ve been sent by the Home Secretary,’ Sandman said, ‘and I need somewhere private where we can talk. We can use the cells, perhaps. Do we reach them from here? Or from the yard?’

‘The yard, sir,’ Corday said, though he scarcely seemed to have understood the rest of Sandman’s words.

Sandman led Corday towards the door. ‘Is he your boman, Charlie?’ a man in leg shackles enquired. ‘Come for a farewell cuddle, has he?’ The other prisoners laughed, but Sandman had the experienced officer’s ability to know when to ignore insubordination and he just kept walking, but then he heard Corday squeal and he turned to see that a greasy-haired and unshaven man was holding Corday’s hair like a leash. ‘I was talking to you, Charlie!’ the man said. He yanked Corday’s hair, making the boy squeal again. ‘Give us a kiss, Charlie,’ the man demanded, ‘give us a kiss.’ The women at the table by the fire laughed at Corday’s predicament.

‘Let him go,’ Sandman said.

‘You don’t give orders here, culley,’ the unshaven man growled. ‘No one gives orders in here, there aren’t any orders any more, not till Jemmy comes to fetch us away, so you can fake away off, culley, you can—’ The man stopped suddenly, then gave a curious scream. ‘No!’ he shouted. ‘No!’

Rider Sandman had ever suffered from a temper. He knew it and he fought against it. In his everyday life he adopted a tone of gentle deliberation, he used courtesy far beyond necessity, he elevated reason and he reinforced it with prayer, and he did all that because he feared his own temper, but not all the prayer and reason and courtesy had eliminated the foul moods. His soldiers had known there was a devil in Captain Sandman. It was a real devil and they knew he was not a man to cross because he had that temper as sudden and as fierce as a summer storm of lightning and thunder. And he was a tall and strong man, strong enough to lift the unshaven prisoner and slam him against the wall so hard that the man’s head bounced off the stones. Then the man screamed because Sandman had driven a hard fist into his lower belly. ‘I said let him go,’ Sandman snapped. ‘Did you not hear what I said? Are you deaf or are you just a bloody God-damned idiot?’ He slapped the man once, twice, and his eyes were blazing and his voice was seething with a promise of even more terrible violence. ‘Damn it! What kind of fool do you take me for?’ He jerked the man. ‘Answer me!’

‘Sir?’ the unshaven man managed to say.

‘Answer me. God damn it!’ Sandman’s right hand was about the prisoner’s throat and he was throttling the man, who was incapable of saying anything now. There was utter silence in the Association Room. The man, gazing into Sandman’s pale eyes, was choking.

The turnkey, as appalled by the force of Sandman’s anger as any of the prisoners, nervously crossed the room. ‘Sir? You’re throttling him, sir.’

‘I’m damn well killing him,’ Sandman snarled.

‘Sir, please, sir.’

Sandman suddenly came to his senses, then let the prisoner go. ‘If you cannot be courteous,’ he told the half-choked man, ‘then you should be silent.’

‘He won’t give you any more lip, sir,’ the turnkey said anxiously, ‘I warrant he won’t, sir.’

‘Come, Corday,’ Sandman ordered, and stalked out of the room.

There was a sigh of relief when he left. ‘Who the hell was that?’ the bruised prisoner managed to ask through the pain in his throat.

‘Never laid peepers on him.’

‘Got no right to hit me,’ the prisoner said, and his friends growled their assent though none cared to follow Sandman and debate the assertion.

Sandman led a terrified Corday across the Press Yard to the steps which led to the fifteen salt boxes. The five cells on the ground floor were all being used by prostitutes and Sandman, the temper still seething in him, did not apologise for interrupting them, but just slammed the doors then climbed the stairs to find an empty cell on the first floor. ‘In there,’ he told Corday, and the frightened youth scuttled past him. Sandman shuddered at the stink in this ancient part of the jail that had survived the fires of the Gordon Riots. The rest of the prison had burnt to ash during the riots, but these floors had merely been scorched and the salt boxes looked more like mediaeval dungeons than modern cells. A rope mat lay on the floor, evidently to serve as a mattress, blankets for five or six men were tossed in an untidy pile under the high-barred window while an unemptied night bucket stank in a corner.

‘I’m Captain Rider Sandman,’ he introduced himself again to Corday, ‘and the Home Secretary has asked me to enquire into your case.’

‘Why?’ Corday, who had sunk onto the pile of blankets, nerved himself to ask.

‘Your mother has connections,’ Sandman said shortly, the temper still hot in him.

‘The Queen has spoken for me?’ Corday looked hopeful.

‘Her Majesty has requested an assurance of your guilt,’ Sandman said stuffily.

‘But I’m not guilty,’ Corday protested.

‘You’ve already been condemned,’ Sandman said, ‘so your guilt is not at issue.’ He knew he sounded unbearably pompous, but he wanted to get this distasteful meeting over so he could go to the cricket. It would, he thought, be the swiftest fifteen guineas he had ever earnt for he could not imagine this despicable creature resisting his demands for a confession. Corday looked pathetic, effeminate and close to tears. He was wearing dishevelled but fashionably elegant clothes; black breeches, white stockings, a frilled white shirt and a blue silk waistcoat, but he had neither cravat nor a topcoat. The clothes, Sandman suspected, were all a good deal more expensive than anything he himself possessed and they only increased his dislike of Corday, whose voice had a flat and nasal quality with an accent that betrayed social pretensions. A snivelling little upstart, was Sandman’s instinctive judgement; a boy scarce grown and already aping the manners and fashion of his betters.

‘I didn’t do it!’ Corday protested again, then began to cry. His thin shoulders heaved, his voice grizzled and the tears ran down his pale cheeks.

Sandman stood in the cell doorway. His predecessor had evidently beaten confessions out of prisoners, but Sandman could not imagine himself doing the same. It was not honourable and could not be done, which meant the wretched boy would have to be persuaded into telling the truth, but the first necessity was to stop him weeping. ‘Why do you call yourself Corday,’ he asked, hoping to distract him, ‘when your mother’s name is Cruttwell?’

Corday sniffed. ‘There’s no law against it.’

‘Did I say there was?’

‘I’m a portrait painter,’ Corday said petulantly, as if he needed to reassure himself of that fact, ‘and clients prefer their painters to have French names. Cruttwell doesn’t sound distinguished. Would you have your portrait painted by Charlie Cruttwell when you could engage Monsieur Charles Corday?’

‘You’re a painter?’ Sandman could not hide his surprise.

‘Yes!’ Corday, his eyes reddened from crying, looked belligerently at Sandman, then he collapsed into misery again. ‘I was apprenticed to Sir George Phillips.’

‘He’s very successful,’ Sandman said scornfully, ‘despite possessing a prosaically English name. And Sir Thomas Lawrence doesn’t sound very French to me.’

‘I thought changing my name would help,’ Corday said sulkily. ‘Does it matter?’

‘Your guilt matters,’ Sandman said sternly, ‘and, if nothing else, you might face the judgement of your Maker with a clear conscience if you were to confess it.’

Corday stared at Sandman as though his visitor were mad. ‘You know what I’m guilty of?’ he finally asked. ‘I’m guilty of aspiring to be above my station. I’m guilty of being a decent painter. I’m guilty of being a much better damned painter than Sir George bloody Phillips, and I’m guilty, my God how I’m guilty, of being stupid, but I did not kill the Countess of Avebury! I did not!’

Sandman did not like the boy, but he felt in danger of being convinced by him and so he steeled himself by remembering the warning words of the porter at the prison gate. ‘How old are you?’ he asked.

‘Eighteen,’ Corday answered.

‘Eighteen,’ Sandman echoed. ‘God will have pity on your youth,’ he said. ‘We all do stupid things when we’re young, and you have done terrible things, but God will weigh your soul and there is still hope. You aren’t doomed to hell’s fires, not if you confess and if you beg God for forgiveness.’

‘Forgiveness for what?’ Corday asked defiantly.

Sandman was so taken aback that he said nothing.

Corday, red-eyed and pale-faced, stared up at the tall Sandman. ‘Look at me,’ he said, ‘do I look like a man who has the strength to rape and kill a woman, even if I wanted to? Do I look like that?’ He did not. Sandman had to admit it, at least to himself, for Corday was a limp and unimpressive creature, weedy and thin, who now began to weep again. ‘You’re all the same,’ he whined. ‘No one listens! No one cares! So long as someone hangs, no one cares.’

‘Stop crying, for God’s sake!’ Sandman snarled, and immediately chided himself for giving way to his temper. ‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered.

Those last two words made Corday frown in puzzlement. He stopped weeping, looked at Sandman and frowned. ‘I didn’t do it,’ he said softly, ‘I didn’t do it.’

‘So what happened?’ Sandman asked, despising himself for having lost control of the interview.

‘I was painting her,’ Corday said. ‘The Earl of Avebury wanted a portrait of his wife and he asked Sir George to do it.’

‘He asked Sir George, yet you were painting her?’ Sandman sounded sceptical. Corday, after all, was a mere eighteen years old while Sir George Phillips was celebrated as the only rival to Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Corday sighed as though Sandman was being deliberately obtuse. ‘Sir George drinks,’ he said scornfully. ‘He starts on blackstrap at breakfast and bowzes till night, which means his hand shakes. So he drinks and I paint.’

Sandman backed into the corridor to escape the smell of the unemptied night bucket in the cell. He wondered if he was being naïve, for he found Corday curiously believable. ‘You painted in Sir George’s studio?’ he asked, not because he cared, but because he wanted to fill the silence.

‘No,’ Corday said. ‘Her husband wanted the portrait set in her bedroom, so I did it there. Have you any idea how much bother that is? You have to take an easel and canvas and chalk and oils and rags and pencils and dropcloths and mixing bowls and more rags. Still, the Earl of Avebury was paying for it.’

‘How much?’

‘Whatever Sir George could get away with. Eight hundred guineas? Nine? He offered me a hundred.’ Corday sounded bitter at that fee, though it seemed like a fortune to Sandman.

‘Is it usual to paint a portrait in a lady’s bedroom?’ Sandman asked in genuine puzzlement. He could imagine a woman wanting herself depicted in a drawing room or under a tree in a great sunlit garden, but the bedroom seemed a very perverse choice to him.

‘It was to be a boudoir portrait,’ Corday said, and though the term was new to Sandman he understood what it meant. ‘They’re very fashionable,’ Corday went on, ‘because these days all the women want to look like Canova’s Pauline Bonaparte.’

Sandman frowned. ‘You confuse me.’

Corday raised suppliant eyes to heaven in the face of such ignorance. ‘The sculptor Canova,’ he explained, ‘did a likeness of the Emperor’s sister that is much celebrated and every beauty in Europe wishes to be depicted in the same pose. The woman reclines on a chaise longue, an apple in her left hand and her head supported by her right.’ Corday, rather to Sandman’s embarrassment, demonstrated the pose. ‘The salient feature,’ the boy went on, ‘is that the woman is naked from the waist up. And a good deal below the waist, too.’

‘So the Countess was naked when you painted her?’ Sandman asked.

‘No,’ Corday hesitated, then shrugged. ‘She wasn’t to know she was being painted naked, so she was in a morning gown and robe. We would have used a model in the studio to do the tits.’

‘She didn’t know?’ Sandman was incredulous.

‘Her husband wanted a portrait,’ Corday said impatiently, ‘and he wanted her naked, and she would have refused him, so he lied to her. She didn’t mind doing a boudoir portrait, but she wasn’t going to unpeel for anyone, so we were going to fake it and I was just doing the preliminary work, the drawing and tints. Charcoal on canvas with a few colours touched in; the colours of the bed covers, the wallpaper, her ladyship’s skin and hair. Bitch that she was.’

Sandman felt a surge of hope, for the last four words had been malevolent, just as he expected a murderer would speak of his victim. ‘You didn’t like her?’

‘Like her? I despised her!’ Corday spat. ‘She was a trumped-up demi-rep!’ He meant she was a courtesan, a high-class whore. ‘A buttock,’ Corday downgraded her savagely, ‘nothing else. But just because I didn’t like her doesn’t make me a rapist and murderer. Besides, do you really think a woman like the Countess of Avebury would allow a painter’s apprentice to be alone with her? She was chaperoned by a maid all the time I was there. How could I have raped or murdered her?’

‘There was a maid?’ Sandman asked.

‘Of course there was,’ Corday insisted scornfully, ‘an ugly bitch called Meg.’

Sandman was totally confused now. ‘And, presumably, Meg spoke at your trial?’

‘Meg has disappeared,’ Corday said tiredly, ‘which is why I am going to hang.’ He glared at Sandman. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? You think I’m making it up. But there was a maid and her name was Meg and she was there and when it came to the trial she couldn’t be found.’ He had spoken defiantly, but his demeanour suddenly changed as he began to weep again. ‘Does it hurt?’ he asked. ‘I know it does. It must!’

Sandman stared down at the flagstones. ‘Where was the house?’

‘Mount Street,’ Corday was hunched and sobbing, ‘it’s just off …’

‘I know where Mount Street is,’ Sandman interrupted a little too sharply. He was embarrassed by Corday’s tears, but persevered with questions that were now actuated by a genuine curiosity. ‘And you admit to being in the Countess’s house on the day she was murdered?’

‘I was there just before she was murdered!’ Corday said. ‘There were back stairs, servants’ stairs, and there was a knock on the door there. A deliberate knock, a signal, and the Countess became agitated and insisted I leave at once. So Meg took me down the front stairs and showed me the door. I had to leave everything, the paints, canvas, everything, and that convinced the constables I was guilty. So within an hour they came and arrested me at Sir George’s studio.’

‘Who sent for the constables?’

Corday shrugged to suggest he did not know. ‘Meg? Another of the servants?’

‘And the constables found you at Sir George’s studio. Which is where?’

‘Sackville Street. Above Gray’s, the jewellers.’ Corday stared red-eyed at Sandman. ‘Do you have a knife?’

‘No.’

‘Because if you do, then I beg you give it me. Give it me! I would rather cut my wrists than stay here! I did nothing, nothing! Yet I am beaten and abused all day, and in a week I hang. Why wait a week? I am already in hell. I am in hell!’

Sandman cleared his throat. ‘Why not stay up here, in the cells? You’d be alone here.’

‘Alone? I’d be alone for two minutes! It’s safer downstairs where at least there are witnesses.’ Corday wiped his eyes with his sleeve. ‘What do you do now?’

‘Now?’ Sandman was nonplussed. He had expected to listen to a confession and then go back to the Wheatsheaf and write a respectful report. Instead he was confused.

‘You said the Home Secretary wanted you to make enquiries. So will you?’ Corday’s gaze was challenging, then he crumpled. ‘You don’t care. No one cares!’

‘I shall make enquiries,’ Sandman said gruffly, and suddenly he could not take the stench and the tears and the misery any more and so he turned and ran down the stairs. He came into the fresher air of the Press Yard, then had a moment’s panic that the turnkeys would not unbolt the gate that would let him into the tunnel, but of course they did.

The porter unlocked his cupboard and took out Sandman’s watch, a gold-cased Breguet that had been a gift from Eleanor. Sandman had tried to return the watch with her letters, but she had refused to accept them. ‘Find your man, sir?’ the porter asked.

‘I found him.’

‘And he spun you a yarn, I’ve no doubt,’ the porter chuckled. ‘Spun you a yarn, eh? They can gammon you, sir, like a right patterer. But there’s an easy way to know when a felon’s telling lies, sir, an easy way.’

‘I should be obliged to hear it,’ Sandman said.

‘They’re speaking, sir, that’s how you can tell they’re telling lies, they’re speaking.’ The porter thought this a fine joke and wheezed with laughter as Sandman went down the steps into Old Bailey.

He stood on the pavement, oblivious of the crowd surging up and down. He felt soiled by the prison. He clicked open the Breguet’s case and saw it was just after half past two in the afternoon; he wondered where his day had gone. To Rider, Eleanor’s inscription inside the watch case read, in aeternam, and that palpably false promise did not improve his mood. He clicked the lid shut just as a workman shouted at him to mind himself. The trapdoor, pavilion and stairs of the scaffold had all been dismantled and now the tongue-and-groove cladding that had screened the platform was being thrown down and the planks were falling perilously near Sandman. A carter hauling a vast wagon of bricks whipped blood from the flanks of his horses, even though the beasts could make no headway against the tangle of vehicles that blocked the street.

Sandman finally thrust the watch into his fob pocket and walked northwards. He was torn. Corday had been found guilty and yet, though Sandman could not find a scrap of liking for the young man, his story was believable. Doubtless the porter was right and every man in Newgate was convinced of his own innocence, yet Sandman was not entirely naïve. He had led a company of soldiers with consummate skill and he reckoned he could distinguish when a man was telling the truth. And if Corday was innocent then the fifteen guineas that weighed down Sandman’s pockets would be neither swiftly nor easily earnt.

He decided he needed advice.

So he went to watch some cricket.