Simon Tolkien - The Inheritance

Crean was a quiet, orderly man in his mid fifties, who took a professional pride in his work, and the thought of something going wrong was abhorrent to him. Press reporting of executions had long since been abolished, but news of a botched hanging had a way of leaking out, particularly in a case like this, where the public had got themselves so worked up about the condemned man. He was young and handsome, and the tabloid newspapers had recently taken to calling him Pretty Boy Cade. But Crean was oblivious to the character of his victim. In fact, he took pride in his detachment, knowing that pity made for hesitation and increased the risk of mistakes. In the last few moments of his life, the condemned prisoner’s best friend was a cold, quick executioner who knew exactly what he was doing.

Stephen had been weighed every day for the past week, and most mornings Crean had watched him as well, pacing up and down the condemned cell, through the enlarged eyehole in the big iron door. Now, with two days left to go, Crean was confident that the Italian hemp rope was adjusted to just the right length to do what was required of it.

Stephen had known for over a week that he was scheduled to die at eight o’clock on Wednesday morning, but he had no idea that the prison gallows were set up less than twenty feet from where he slept, divided from his bed by no more than a thin partition. He’d been moved to his new cell immediately after the trial was over, and at first he had not been unhappy with the change. It was a larger room than he had before, on the second floor of a separate block, with more of the sky visible from the high barred window. But the biggest difference was that there were no other prisoners anywhere near, so that the cell was almost silent at night, which for some reason made it much more difficult to sleep. Time passed, and Stephen remained unaware of the fact that he was now living on the top story of a death house purpose built according to standard specifications issued by the Ministry of Works in Whitehall. The wooden wardrobe on the far wall was designed to turn on its base, revealing a concealed door that led straight onto the gallows, and below the trapdoors was another room known as the pit, where Stephen would hang suspended in midair until the prison doctor pronounced him dead and Crean and his assistant came in to cut him down and take him to the autopsy room next door. The whole block was an assembly line of death, with the prisoner in his cell unaware of what lay beside and beneath him until the moment of his execution arrived.

Once the wardrobe had been turned aside, Crean wasted no further time, leading his assistant through the door in the wall and out to the trapdoors. There was a T chalked in the middle to show where Stephen would need to be positioned, with warders standing on boards on either side to hold him in place.

“That’s in case he faints,” said Crean. “They do sometimes. Anyway, I’ve already pinioned his wrists behind his back right at the start, and so this is where you strap his ankles, just like I showed you before. Quick as you can, while I put the hood over his head. Then the noose goes nice and tight under the jaw. Check everything’s okay, and I release the doors. And he’s gone.” Crean snapped his fingers to underline the quickness and totality of the fall.

One by one, he held up the various pieces of the hangman’s equipment as he instructed his assistant. The brown leather straps for wrists and ankles and the white cotton hood. It looked incongruous in Crean’s big hands, just like a small pillowcase.

“Why not hood him before?” asked Jones, sounding puzzled. “Before he comes in here and sees all this.”

“We used to do that, but it didn’t work so well. You wouldn’t think it, but they tend to be more frightened not knowing where they are, and so there’s more risk of them falling over. And it’d take longer. Twenty seconds from going in the cell to turning them off. Anything more is a failure. That’s what Pierrepoint used to say. And he was right.”

“Twenty seconds?” The assistant looked incredulous.

“Yes. You’ll see. Once we’re inside the cell, we’re in charge. No signals from the governor. Nothing like that. He’s just here to see it’s done right. And it will be. Believe me.”

Above the gallows, the rope hung coiled from a chain that was bolted to the ceiling, and with practised hands Crean attached a sandbag weighing just as much as Stephen to the end of it. Then he turned and removed the safety pin from the base of the operating lever behind him and pushed it forward to release the doors. The bag fell with sudden, ferocious force and jerked at the end of the rope.

Jones took a step back and almost lost balance. It was an instinctive reaction, and Crean grinned.

“You’ll be all right,” he said, clapping the younger man on the shoulder. “Just you wait and see. Now, we’ll let that bag hang there until tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“It stretches the rope out. If that happens at the hanging, then the force on the neck’s less, and he’ll end up strangling to death. We’ve got to break his neck, Owen. That’s what we’re paid to do.”

Jones nodded. Somewhere inside he felt disgusted with himself, but he quickly stifled the emotion. An execution was something important. Particularly this one. Everyone was talking about it. And assisting at it made him important too. Owen Jones from Swansea puffed out his chest a little as he helped Crean turn the wardrobe back in front of the door to the gallows.

A minute later and they were gone. Stephen’s cell was just as it had been before. His black suit hanging in the wardrobe. The photographs of Mary and his mother standing on the shelf below the high window through which the bright winter sun was shining, filling the room with a transient light. It didn’t seem like such a bad place if you didn’t know what was on the other side of the wall.

“God, I feel so hot,” said Stephen, fiddling with the top button of his prison-issue blue shirt. “Are you hot, Mary?”

She shook her head. It was the end of November, and she had kept her outside coat on.

“The worst part is knowing what’s going to happen,” said Stephen. “Measuring out the time. Animals know too, you know. We’re not the only ones. People say they don’t, but they do. I remember there was this butcher’s shop in Moreton when I was a boy. Sawdust on the floor, a china pig in a blue and white apron inside the window. My mother used to buy our meat there. ‘Price and Sons, Family Butchers since 1878.’ That’s what it said over the door. I can see it now.” Stephen closed his eyes for a moment, remembering. “They did their own slaughtering in an abattoir out back. I went once with Silas. Hid and watched. The calves and cows were in these pens going from one to the other, and each one was narrower than the last, so that halfway to the shed they couldn’t turn round at all. And they knew then. I don’t know how, but I could tell they did. They were pushing and bellowing, climbing on top of each other, trying to go back, but they couldn’t. Maybe they could smell what was coming, because they couldn’t see inside. But we looked in and there was Price’s eldest son with a big white apron over his fat stomach. He had a great steel knife in his hands, and he slit this calf right down the middle. He was about ten feet away from us, and I saw the whole thing. And then I was sick. More sick than I’ve ever been. Silas had to pull me away while I was still retching, or otherwise they’d have seen us.

“And I never went back after that. I stayed in the car when my mother went meat shopping. I could see her getting served by Price’s son. He was really friendly, you know. A nice man. He always gave my mother the best cuts.” Stephen laughed hollowly. “The point is that those animals knew what was coming. I could see they did. And now I know what they felt, Mary. The walls are getting narrower all the time and every hour he’s getting closer. I can almost feel his breath on my skin.” Stephen shuddered.