Richard Gordon: A QUESTION OF GUILT

The prison was only half a mile from Hilldrop Crescent, across the Cattle Market. It was a wheel of radiating blocks, on which the spirits of 1000 prisoners were painstakingly broken by solitude and silence. Eliot left his cab at the Balmoral Castle public house, on the corner of Brewery Road, opposite the facade of untidy classical columns rising among terraces of small, neat, law-abiding houses. A dozen plane trees fronted the high wall, behind it rose the grey, barred, slate-roofed blocks, in the middle poked a fat square chimney. The visitors' entrance was to the right of the vast oak Gothic door.

Eliot gave his name to the warder in high-necked tunic and shako, key-chain dangling against his thigh. He signed a ledger on the counter inside the gate-house, which had a good fire and a singing kettle, two other warders brewing their tea in a brown metal pot. Eliot was led across the courtyard, to a block with stylish columns between the windows of the first floor. A stone corridor with gates at each end, which his cicerone unlocked and locked behind them, led to the prison hospital.

There had been little room for Crippen in Eliot's head. He thought of him as the 26 sailors in the French submersible Pluvoise, hit by a cross-Channel paddle-steamer earlier that year, her bows above the surface but her crew doomed to die under the eyes of the world. He was shown into a small, green-painted gas-lit office, with a desk opposite the fire. On a horsehair sofa sat a woman in a serge suit, who rose as the warder left. It was Ethel.

'Dr Beckett!' She was as surprised as himself. Her large velour hat was shrouded in a motoring-veil. She looked pale. A smile flickered on her lips. Later, Eliot saw kings and queens stark naked, but never again felt as awkward.

'How is he?'

'Bearing up. Sometimes, he seems his usual self. Others, he cries.'

'I'm here to see the prison doctor. I don't know the reason.'

'He's ever so kind to Peter. So's Major Mytton-Davies. He's the governor. He's quite convinced that Peter's innocent, you know. That a man like Peter could _never _commit a murder, not in all his born days. And he's not the only one-just think, _fifteen thousand_ people signed the petition to spare Peter's life. The prison doctor's with Peter now. That's why I'm waiting.'

'Give him my-' Eliot stopped. What greeting could anyone send a man due to hang in 40 hours' time? 'Assurance that he is ever in my thoughts.'

'He's written me some lovely letters.'

She felt in her large handbag. Eliot wondered if she had the inexpressible, almost unthinkable, pride of a woman who drives a man to terrible deeds which drive himself to destruction. Delilah behind a typewriter.

'Would you like to see one?'

As she seemed eager, Eliot took the lined buff sheet, stamped with the Royal Arms and _H M Prison, Pentonville._ It was a pathetic mixture, protestations of innocence, references to a God so bafflingly reluctant to establish it, directions to Ethel about his own past business affairs and her future ones, impregnated with sentiment towards 'my own wifie dear'.

_I see ourselves in those days of courtship, having our dinner together after our day of work together was done, or sitting sometimes in our favourite corner of Frascati's by the stairway, all the evening listening to the music. I sometimes thought that a little corner of Heaven on earth.

And now my prison dinner is just waiting, and I must eat it while it is hot. Have just had a nice dinner-roast mutton, vegetables, soup, and fruit-and now back to my wifie again._

Eliot handed the letter back. A man who could write of roast mutton in the condemned cell would feel gemьtlich in the grave.

'How are you?' he asked kindly.

'Always so tired. Life's difficult in silly little ways. I have to go about in a closed cab. If people saw me in the street there'd be a riot. Mrs Jackson was very good-my old landlady, you know.' Eliot nodded. 'Of course! You met her at the house that Sunday afternoon, just after the old King died.'

Ethel stopped suddenly. Eliot had a vision of Belle's clothes. Ethel said quietly, 'But I don't want to see any of the old crowd, none of them. Never again.'

'How will you manage after-' He hesitated. 'In the future?'

'I can't stay here, can I? I'm going to America. I'm booked on the Majestic from Southampton on Wednesday, under the name of Miss Allen.'

The most loving relatives of patients _in extremis_ at Champette, Eliot reflected, had to plan beyond their release from the sick room.

'Then I shall go to Toronto. Peter talked so much about it on the boat. I'll start a new life.'

'I wish you all the luck in the world, Miss Le Neve.' Her interview with a new employer for the position of his lady typist was a scene beyond Eliot's imagination.

'Thank you.' She ran her tongue over her full lips. 'There's something-' She stopped.

'Yes?'

'There's something no one knows. It never came out at the trials, Peter's or mine. I can't bear keeping it locked in me, it wakes me at night. It's worse than any memory I've had of these awful four months.'

'Keeping secrets is as much second nature to a doctor as staunching blood.'

'I know that. I'd always trust you, Dr Beckett. Peter did, more than anyone he knew. The hatbox…you remember I told you that same Sunday afternoon, the doctor's hatbox was stolen on the boat? On our way across to fetch little Valentine from Boulogne-'

To Eliot's annoyance, the door was opened by a pink faced man with grey hair cut like a brush and a grey stubby moustache, wearing a blue serge suit. After him came a warder.

'It wasn't stolen,' Ethel Finished breathlessly. 'It was dropped over the ship's rail.'

She turned, nodded at the intruder, and followed the warder.

'Dr Beckett? I'm Dr Campion,' said the grey-haired man. 'Most kind of you to come. I hope that didn't embarrass you? I'd no idea Miss Le Neve was here.'

'Not at all. I've been acquainted with Miss Le Neve for a whole year.' Eliot sat facing the doctor across the desk. Ex-medical officer in the army or navy, he supposed. A good job for a man expended of ambition. He wondered what it was paid-Ј500 a year, he speculated, two-thirds the governor's salary.

'You were almost a neighbour at Hilldrop Crescent, I believe?' Campion continued in a friendly way. 'The prisoner talks sometimes as though you were close colleagues.'

'Why did you want to see me?' Eliot demanded. His thoughts were still on the hatbox. So she did know Belle was dismembered and beheaded. Before they ran away.

The doctor stared at the ceiling, rubbed his large red hands, and returned his eyes to Eliot.

'I face an awkward choice, Dr Beckett. Crippen himself is a model prisoner. Indeed, everyone has grown very fond of him. Not only the guards who must watch him day and night, but the chaplain and certainly the governor. Though he did attempt suicide,' he revealed. 'Strangely enough, I've never seen that before in condemned men.'

'I suppose they grasp at hope to the end? Like the sick the miraculous finger-tips of Jesus.'

'Last night he managed to break off the steel side of his glasses. The warder noticed it, and searched him. He'd slipped it up the seam of his, trouser-leg. He must have intended to divide his radial artery with it, under cover of his blanket.'

'He wouldn't be the first medical man. Horace Wells-the American who discovered anaesthesia-killed himself by severing a femoral artery with his razor, in the Toombs Prison one January night of 1848. He'd been run in for throwing vitriol in prostitutes' faces.'

Dr Campion paid little heed. Eliot reflected that the occupation of prison doctor gave little encouragement to the intellectual embellishment of the profession.

'My choice is between defying the Home Secretary, and possibly loosing my position, or honouring my professional principles and keeping my good name. Mr Winston Churchill is a busybody. He suddenly wants to know about the smallest items for which he nominally carries responsibility. His personal secretary sent a stiff note to Major Mytton-Davies about the procedure for executions. Everything's in Home Office Regulations, of course, but Mr Churchill demanded a simple description of a single sheet of paper the same day. He particularly wished to know if the man had anything to help him face the ordeal, more substantial than the ministration of the chaplain. He gets half a mug of rum, of course. Some refuse it. They say they want to meet their God with a clean breath. That's usually the drunkards. Mr Churchill is always straining to bring in something new-so we hear from the Home Office. I suppose he wants to appear a progressive young politician. Now he's demanding that some drug be administered, so that the prisoner may be hanged in a merciful state of coma.'