The Hangman's Secret

by Laura Joh Rowland

  Mick tugs his arm. “Come on, what’re you waitin’ for?”

  I start to step out of the shadows to let Hugh and Mick know I’m here and help them hurry the Reverend Starling, who seems to have undergone a change of mind. Then I hear the sound he’s heard: footsteps mounting the stairs, hastening toward us.

  CHAPTER 29

  Sheriff Hargreaves strides into the chapel. Governor Piercy trails him. I freeze. They stop so close to me that I can smell the damp wool of their overcoats and Piercy’s bad breath. The shadows in which I stand are so dark that they can’t see me. Hugh’s and Mick’s faces blanch with dismay.

  “What have you told them?” Hargreaves asks the Reverend Starling.

  “Nothing.” But Starling’s face is the picture of guilty fright, and I see Hargreaves and Piercy realize he’s spilled all the beans. “What took you so long?”

  Hargreaves aims an irate glance at the governor. “Piercy had second thoughts. I had to talk him into coming.”

  “We were right when we thought this could be a trap,” Mick says to Hugh. “The Rev’s in on it with those two.”

  Piercy glances over his shoulder as if he wants to turn tail and run. “This is a bad idea.”

  “This is the only way to stop their investigating,” Hargreaves says.

  Hugh speaks with regret and pity to Starling. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”

  “Rat!” Mick says.

  The chaplain hangs his head. “I’m sorry.”

  Mick turns his disgust on Sheriff Hargreaves. “You made a deal with the Baby Butcher. You killed Harry Warbrick and Ernie Leach to cover it up.” He points his finger at Hargreaves. “You think you’re so high and mighty, but you’re just a lousy, lowdown, murdering scumbag.” Triumph rings in his voice. He’s finally got the goods on his rival.

  “They know everything.” Piercy’s voice tightens with panic. “And they’re not bound by the Official Secrets Act.”

  “Sheriff Hargreaves promised that if I lured you here, he wouldn’t hurt me,” Starling tells my friends. “I was afraid to say no.” His eyes are brilliant with shame. “I told you everything because I decided that I really did want to make things right. But I changed my mind too late.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Nor does your elegantly worded opinion of me,” Hargreaves says with a mocking smile at Mick. “They won’t live to tell.” He reaches in his coat pocket and pulls out a gun.

  “The hell we won’t!” Mick says.

  Hargreaves has eliminated two people he thought likely to make his secret past public, and now it’s my friends’ turn. Terror stabs my heart.

  Piercy cowers with dread. Starling falls to his knees, raises clasped hands to Hargreaves. “Please, don’t! There’s been enough bloodshed.”

  Hugh reaches down, yanks his gun out of his boot, and aims at Hargreaves. “Drop your weapon.” Sweat gleams on his pale, sickly face, but his hand holding the gun is steady.

  “So there.” Mick grins at Hargreaves.

  The sheriff blinks in surprise, then points his gun at Hugh. “Drop yours.”

  Neither man moves. Suspense paralyzes the rest of us.

  “Where’s Sarah Bain?” Hargreaves asks.

  A skewer of fear runs through me. He plans to kill me too.

  “Safe in a place where you can’t get her,” Hugh says. He and Mick glance around the chapel, looking everyplace except where I’m hiding. I realize that they’ve been aware of my presence all along. “She knows we came to see the chaplain.”

  Disconcerted and suspicious, Hargreaves keeps the gun trained on Hugh.

  “She’s waiting for us with Sir Gerald Mariner,” Hugh says. “We were supposed to join them half an hour ago. By now they’ll have figured out that something’s wrong. His private cavalry is on its way.”

  Hugh is making up a story, telling me to run, save myself, and bring help. But it’s too late, and I won’t abandon him and Mick.

  Hargreaves responds with a scornful laugh; he knows Hugh is bluffing even though he doesn’t know I’m here. “Dream on.”

  “If you kill us, Sir Gerald will smear you in the newspaper,” Mick says, defiant in spite of his fear. “You can kiss your chances of bein’ Lord Mayor goodbye.”

  “I’ll take the risk,” Hargreaves says.

  Someone’s going to die. Hugh and Mick are counting on me, their ace in the hole.

  “Drop it,” Hargreaves says to Hugh, “or the boy’s dead.” He points his gun at Mick.

  Things happen in a rapid blur of motion, all at once—I don’t know which first. Hargreaves pulls the trigger. Mick dives behind the harmonium. I see flashes of light and hear gunshots—I can’t tell how many or who fired. I fling myself on Hargreaves, knock him off balance. He shoves me. Reeling, I trip on my skirts; I fall with a crash that jolts my aching head. I look up to see Hugh lying facedown on the floor, Piercy straddling him. Hugh curses at the pain from the pressure on his burned back. His gun lies a few feet from them. Mick dashes toward it, but when he bends to pick it up, Hargreaves aims his gun at Mick and says, “Back away.”

  Mick obeys, scowling. As Hargreaves picks up Hugh’s gun, Starling moans and runs toward the door. Hargreaves fires Hugh’s gun at Starling, who screams, falls on his face, and lies still. Blood from the bullet wound in his back spreads in a dark puddle on the floor.

  The others and I stare in horrified shock. Piercy climbs off Hugh and asks, “Why did you do that?”

  “Loose lips.” Hargreaves is as nonchalant as if he’d swatted a fly.

  I run to Starling, kneel beside him. I touch his soft, downy cheek and cry his name. His lips, pressed to the floor, don’t move in response. His one eye that I can see is open but lacking any spark of animation. My chest heaves with grief for this idealistic but weak young chaplain who had the misfortune of crossing paths with a condemned murderess and a corrupt man desperate to hide his guilty connection with her. If only Starling had revealed what had happened at Amelia’s hanging and exposed Sheriff Hargreaves sooner! His conscience won out over his fear of violating the Official Secrets Act too late to save his life.

  Piercy looks aghast; he didn’t realize the extent of Sheriff Hargreaves’s ruthlessness. Hugh, gasping and prone on the floor, yells, “Sarah, run!”

  I lurch to my feet. Hargreaves aims Hugh’s gun at me. “Don’t even try.” Despair sickens me because I’ve let my friends down, and we’re all doomed.

  Footsteps pound up the stairs. Two wardens who must have heard the shot rush into the chapel. They gape at Starling’s dead body. “What happened?”

  “He shot the chaplain.” Hargreaves points at Hugh.

  “It wasn’t me,” Hugh says, indignant. “You did.”

  Unfazed, Hargreaves says, “He tried to force the chaplain into confessing to Harry Warbrick’s murder. I took the gun away from him. Governor Piercy and I will handle this. You can go.”

  The wardens hesitate, then leave.

  “Bastard!” Mick says to Hargreaves.

  Getting Piercy on our side seems the only way to save our lives. “If you help him, you’ll be an accomplice to murder,” I say.

  “That’s as good as if you pulled the trigger yourself,” Mick says.

  “Do you think you can kill all three of us and get away with it?” Hugh says. “Come on, man, use your head!”

  Piercy stares, appalled by his dilemma. Hargreaves says to him, “Either we put a lid on things right now, or you’ll go down for killing Harry Warbrick and Ernie Leach.”

  Piercy, astonished, says, “But I didn’t kill them.”

  “We went to the pub that night because you said we should warn Harry to keep quiet about Amelia’s execution,” Hargreaves says.

  “It was your idea to go. Not mine!”

  Hargreaves speaks as if he hadn’t been interrupted. “Harry was drunk and belligerent. You got in a fight with him, and you strangled him.”

  “I didn’t strangle him—you did!”

  I believe Piercy. I see w
hat Hargreaves is doing—he’s spinning a version of the murder that casts Piercy as the killer and exonerates himself.

  “It seemed like an accident at the time,” Hargreaves says, “but later I realized you deliberately instigated the fight, and you meant to kill Warbrick.”

  Piercy gapes, bewildered. “Why would I?”

  “To make me a party to a crime and put me in your power.” Hargreaves sounds so sincere, I would believe it if I didn’t know he’s a former star actor. “When I’m Lord Mayor, I’ll have lots of favors to grant, and you wanted some.”

  Enlightenment dawns on Piercy like the sunrise revealing a wrecked ship. “I suppose you’re going to say it was my idea to make Harry’s death look like suicide.”

  Hargreaves nods. “It was a good idea, but too bad Harry’s head came off. That was quite a mess.”

  “And you’re going to claim you protected me by helping me hang him instead of calling the police.” Anger kindles in Piercy’s expression.

  Hargreaves smiles. “We’re friends. That’s why I haven’t told anyone that you sneaked into Ernie Leach’s house and turned on the gas.” His accusation against Piercy is tantamount to a confession that he himself murdered Leach.

  Piercy doesn’t bother to refute it; we can all see that Hargreaves isn’t going to change his tune. “And this is how you repay me for helping you cover up Harry’s murder—by turning things around to make me look guilty.” Bitterness permeates Piercy’s voice.

  “Yeah,” Mick says. “So wise up. Don’t go along with him anymore.”

  “Call the wardens and tell them to fetch the police,” Hugh says. “Turn Hargreaves in.”

  Even as Piercy glances toward the door, Hargreaves says, “It will be your word against mine. Do you really think that anyone who matters will believe you?”

  Piercy bites his lips; his gaze skitters.

  “There’s the three of us to back you up,” I say.

  Hargreaves eyes us with disdain. “The sodomite, the street urchin, and the woman behind the Amelia Carlisle hoax.” He strides over to Hugh and kicks his leg. “Get up. We’re going for a walk.”

  Despair crushes my heart. There seems nothing we can say to make Piercy our ally or change Hargreaves’s intentions. Hugh grits his teeth, clambers to his feet. Hargreaves says to Piercy, “I’ll take him. You take the other two.” He offers Hugh’s gun to Piercy.

  Piercy reluctantly reaches for the gun. My last hope vanishes. In the moment while the gun changes hands, Mick picks up a chair and flings it at Hargreaves. The sheriff dodges, bumps into Piercy. Piercy stumbles.

  “Run, Sarah!” Mick says.

  “Bring the cavalry!” Hugh says.

  The force of their commands propels me toward the door against my will. Hargreaves says to Piercy, “Catch her!”

  Piercy chases me as I bolt down the stairs. Hargreaves calls, “Bring her to the coal room under Old Bailey.”

  It sounds as though Hargreaves doesn’t intend to kill anyone right away, but is there enough time to fetch help? From the bottom of the stairs, I race to the main door. Piercy shouts to the wardens loitering in the hall, “Don’t let her out.”

  They block the door. I turn and run through the prison, down dim passages. Voices and footsteps pursue me. I hear a distant gunshot and can’t tell where it came from. Is Piercy shooting at me? Has Hargreaves killed Hugh or Mick? I round a corner, and a warden grabs my arm. As I struggle to free myself, he opens his mouth to yell that he’s caught me. Then he flinches as if someone jabbed him from behind. His grip on me loosens. I pull away, see him spin around, and hear the meaty thump of a blow. He grunts, doubles over, and falls at my feet, curled up and wheezing. Above him stands Barrett.

  I exclaim in shock. He steps over the warden, then his arm is around me and he’s hurrying me along the passage.

  “What are you doing here?” I say, relieved to have him yet hardly able to believe that his presence isn’t just another illusion.

  “Ask questions first, thank me later,” Barrett says with a wry smile. “I followed you.”

  “How—?”

  “After you went in your house, I stood outside for a while.” Sheepish, Barrett admits, “I was hoping you would come back and ask me in. A few minutes later, you rushed out the door in such a hurry that you didn’t see me. I thought you’d decided to go off on some secret mission, and you didn’t want me around.”

  He still doesn’t trust me. Whatever else has changed between us, that has not.

  “I was curious about what you were doing. I hid in the fog and got in the train car behind you.”

  Of course I can’t blame him. Only three days ago, I’d tried to do exactly what he suspected me of tonight. Now I have to be thankful for his distrust.

  “When we got to Newgate, along came Inspector Reid. He was working late, just brought a criminal to jail. He asked me where the hell I’ve been. By the time I got rid of him, you were inside. I’ve been looking all over for you. Now let’s get out of here. You can explain later.”

  “We can’t go. Something bad has happened.” I spill a rapid, confused account.

  “Sheriff Hargreaves can’t just shoot Hugh and Mick in here,” Barrett says, trying to reassure both of us. “That plus the chaplain would be a lot of deaths to explain.”

  “He’s taking them to the coal room under Old Bailey.”

  “Oh, God.” Barrett breaks into a run.

  Panting to keep up with him, I say, “What is it?”

  “There’s no time to talk.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sorry that he’ll be caught up in whatever calamity he’s foreseen.

  “No time for sorry either.”

  He hurries me through a passage so narrow we have to walk single file. White brick walls with grimy mortar close us in. We pass through a series of low archways, each narrower than the previous one.

  “Where are we?” I say.

  “This is the old route that prisoners used to take to the gallows when hangings were public. It connects Newgate with Old Bailey. Hurry!”

  In a labyrinth of eerie tunnels that reek of cesspools, gas lamps at long intervals illuminate exposed pipes like black snakes on the low ceilings. Barrett leads the way down a stone staircase that angles ten, then twenty, then forty feet into the bowels of Old Bailey. At the bottom is a room like a vast underground cavern. I taste bitter coal dust and sulfur. Light shines in the distance beyond large bins of coal. Barrett puts a finger to his lips. We advance on tiptoe.

  “You really don’t need to kill us.” Hugh’s jaunty tone doesn’t hide the terror beneath it.

  “We’ll have to agree to disagree on that,” Sheriff Hargreaves says.

  “So you’re in a jam—you’re an intelligent chap; you can find another way out of it.”

  “Save your breath.”

  Barrett and I hide behind a coal bin and peer at Hugh, Mick, and Hargreaves. They stand near the brick wall in a small space lit by a flaming gas jet that casts their shadows on the dirty floor. Hargreaves, his back to us, points his gun at Hugh and Mick. Barrett makes a move to step out from behind the coal bin and rush Hargreaves.

  Hargreaves turns slightly toward us. The sputtering orange light gives his features a feral aspect, as if it’s burned off the urbane, charming, human mask. Barrett freezes. My terror mounts, for I know he’s not going to spare Hugh and Mick.

  “Governor Piercy ain’t coming,” Mick says, and I hear hope and desperation in his voice. “Sarah musta got away.”

  “If Piercy has half a brain, he’ll get away too,” Hugh says.

  “They know what you done,” Mick says. “They’ll tell.”

  “I’ll be tupping Catherine tomorrow night.” Hargreaves bares his teeth in a wolfish smile.

  “You sonofabitch!” Mick lunges at Hargreaves, but Hugh restrains him.

  Without turning away from us or taking the gun off Hugh and Mick, the sheriff moves toward the wall. There, shovels, crowbars, and other tools hang on hooks. He takes down tw
o thin objects, each about the length of his forearm, and slides them across the floor to Hugh and Mick. They make a metallic rasping sound. They’re iron shafts with a ring on one end and notches at the other.

  “What are these, the keys to the kingdom?” Hugh says.

  “Pick them up. Slowly,” Hargreaves says.

  With no other choice but immediate death, Hugh and Mick obey. Hargreaves moves so that he’s facing Barrett and me. Hugh and Mick are between us and Hargreaves; we’re all in his line of fire. Barrett and I exchange despairing glances. Hargreaves points with his free hand at the floor, at a metal trapdoor about three feet square with two holes on opposite edges.

  “Put the keys in the holes.” When Hugh and Mick hesitate, Hargreaves says, “Do it!” They insert the keys. “Turn them and pull.” They obey. The trap door lifts. “Set it aside.”

  Hugh and Mick drop the metal panel on the floor, the keys stuck upright in it. From the space below issues a fetid reek and the sound of water rushing.

  “Pee-yoo!” Mick gazes into the square hole. “What’s that?”

  “The River Fleet,” Hargreaves says.

  I recall that the Fleet once flowed through London, but it became so polluted that the stench was terrible and it was covered over; it now runs beneath the city. Horror fills me as I realize what Barrett deduced earlier about Hargreaves’s intentions.

  “You’re going for a swim,” Hargreaves says.

  “If you think you can make us disappear, think again.” Hugh’s voice is reedy with panic. “Our bodies will float up in the Thames. That’ll raise some serious questions.”

  “I’ll worry about it later.” Hargreaves steps closer to Mick, lashes out with the gun, and hits him on the temple.

  Hugh shouts. Mick goes limp, unconscious. Hargreaves shoves him, and he falls into the hole. Hugh and I cry, “Mick!”

  I hear the distant splash of his body hitting water. Barrett and I launch ourselves toward Hargreaves. Hugh is in the hole, descending a ladder mounted on one side of the shaft below. Hargreaves aims the gun at us. The bang deafens me. Sparks from the muzzle sear my vision. The bullet whizzes between Barrett and me and shatters against something in the darkness.