Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

He stood up and stretched his legs. The cudgel, jemmy, knife, chain and padlock were laid out on the bench. He put the cudgel in his pocket and took the chain and padlock over to the door that Morel-Roux, a turnkey and the ordinary would use to enter the chapel. There was just enough chain to wrap around both door handles. He practised this a few times, snapping on the padlock at the end, and once he was happy that he could perform this exercise in just a few seconds, he went over to the table by the altar and, as quietly as could, dragged it across the stone floor to the main door.

Pyke checked his pocket watch for the fourth or fifth time since he’d woken. The time was a quarter past five. He had less than three hours to wait.

At half-past seven Pyke gathered himself and took up his position by the door. By now Morel-Roux would have been pinioned and handed over to the sheriffs and under-sheriffs and the slow walk to the scaffold would soon begin. The procession would include a turnkey at the front, closely followed by the sheriffs, under-sheriffs, the governor, the ordinary and, of course, the dead man walking. It would pass by the steps leading up to the chapel before continuing its path through the prison and down into the subterranean walkway that connected the prison and the Sessions House; a passage that would eventually bring them up into a room behind Debtors’ Door. Pyke hoped they wouldn’t get that far.

Even in the chapel, he could feel the expectation of the masses gathered in the streets outside the prison. For his part, he could hardly breathe, and his heart was thumping against his ribcage. He went across to the window and checked the rope for the third or fourth time that morning. One way or another it would soon be over.

The last thing he did was put on a black hood so that no one would be able to identify him.

At eight Pyke listened for the chimes of St Sepulchre’s bells. The procession would be moving through the press yard. Any moment now, he hoped, Morel-Roux would break down and plead for a private audience with the ordinary. That would cause some delay but there was always a chance the sheriffs wouldn’t allow him to confess in the chapel. It was five minutes past eight. He could hear something now, raised voices in the yard; footsteps coming towards him up the steps to the chapel. He heard someone insert a key into the door and turn it. The lock sprang open; the door opened inwards and light flooded into the chapel. The turnkey was first, closely followed by Morel-Roux and then the ordinary. Just the three of them. Pyke waited for the ordinary to close the door and heard him say, ‘Why’s the table by the door?’ He gripped the cudgel in his right hand, and appeared suddenly from behind the door, knocking the turnkey out with a single blow to his skull. The ordinary shouted for help. Pyke brought the cudgel down on his head and pushed the table over to block the door. It took him just a few seconds to wrap the chain through the brass door handles and snap the padlock closed. Taking out his knife, Pyke cut through the leather restraints binding Morel-Roux’s arms; there was nothing he could do about the chains around his ankles.

Morel-Roux hobbled towards the window; Pyke ran. He could hear shouting from the yard. Shinning up the rope, he waited on the ledge for the valet to do the same. Precious seconds ticked by. There wasn’t much strength in Morel-Roux’s arms and it took longer than Pyke expected for him to reach the ledge. The shouts from the yard were louder and the banging on the door became more violent. The chain wouldn’t hold for much longer; he pulled up the rope and fed it through the open window. Morel-Roux, who hadn’t spoken a word, looked out of the window and down into the garden below. It was a sheer drop of about fifty feet.

‘I’m terrified of heights,’ he said, holding on to the wall with both hands. He was having difficulty breathing.

Pyke ignored him; he didn’t take this warning seriously. ‘Follow me.’ He climbed out of the window and started to shimmy down the rope towards the ground. He let it slide through his hands, ignoring the pain. When the rope ran out, he prepared himself for a moment and let go, landing cleanly on flagstones in the yard. He looked up, expecting to see Morel-Roux almost at the bottom of the rope, but the valet was still up on the ledge. His whole body was shaking. He looked down at Pyke and screamed, ‘ I’m scared of heights.’

‘ Move.’

Then Pyke saw other faces at the window, hands grabbing the valet, pulling him back into the chapel.

He ran to find the coat and hat he’d thrown from the roof and made for the gate at the far end of the wall.

Pyke didn’t witness the hanging but later he read accounts of it by Thackeray and Dickens and he overheard people talk about it in taverns and ginneries; how Morel-Roux, suited in black with his shirt open and hands tied in front of him, had walked firmly across the scaffold and without being told had positioned himself under the beam; how Calcraft had put the night cap over the valet’s face and head; how the plank had been kicked away from under him; how it had taken some time for Morel-Roux to die and how Calcraft had had to seize his quivering legs and pull them down until the quivering stopped. Thackeray had used his column to underline his bond with the ‘gentle, good-natured’ crowd, attack the debauched profligacy of those occupying the better vantage points in the upstairs of shops and public houses, affirm the ‘wise laws’ that encouraged forty thousand people to witness the execution, attack Dickens for his ex parte truth-telling about criminals and prostitutes and record his horror and shame at witnessing another man’s death. Pyke preferred Boz’s account: it didn’t dwell on the details but mounted a coruscating assault on the evils of capital punishment and asked the question that Pyke had posed to himself: what was actually gained by watching another man die? But even this piece was dry and reflective: it didn’t capture what Pyke had felt, his anger at Morel-Roux, his disgust at the law and his guilt at still being alive. He could have done more; he could have lobbied harder; he could have found out who’d really killed Bedford earlier; he could have acted more decisively. He should have seen it earlier; what had really happened; who was to blame. He felt weak and powerless. For weeks after it happened, he lay awake and imagined the moment when Calcraft had seized the valet’s legs and pulled.

At ten thirty Pyke presented himself to one of the red-coated porters at the entrance to the Bank of England on Threadneedle Street and was escorted from there, across a small, well-kept courtyard and past the Rotunda, to the interconnecting meeting rooms occupied by the Bank’s governor and directors. He found Tilling in the main saloon and saw, from the look on his old friend’s face, that something had gone wrong.

‘Crane and five of his accomplices have just been moved to the City of London’s chief police office at Guildhall.’

‘Isn’t that good news?’

Tilling waved at someone on the other side of the room and indicated he’d join the man presently. ‘The soldiers didn’t wait as they’d been instructed to, so Crane and the others were still in the vault.’

Pyke felt his stomach tightening. It was the one glaring weakness in his plan — that the soldiers would grow impatient and strike too soon. The hole from the sewer emerged directly outside the guards’ room — which was why Crane had picked that night, when he’d been told that all the soldiers would be patrolling elsewhere. ‘But they were all caught in the vault, right? That’s enough to lock them away for years, isn’t it? At least for treason?’

‘I’m afraid it gets worse.’