Hanging Murder

by A J Wright

  Her son thought his father was away at sea. A number of years had passed, and the boy had grown into a man, his questions about his father fading with his childhood.

  I pray every day that Alfred, my handsome, happy son, remains in ignorance, but I dread the day he discovers the truth. What would that do to him, miss?

  Maria, obviously affected by the experience, went on to describe how Alfred, the son, was indeed a fine-looking chap, resplendent in the naval uniform he wore in the photograph taking pride of place on the mantelpiece.

  Another woman described how her cousin, a young woman barely twenty, had been beaten to death by her husband, how he had left their son, five years old, battered and unconscious and how the horror of one death was swiftly followed by the horror of another, for the victim’s mother – the interviewee’s aunt – had succumbed to her grief and taken her own life, leaving her poor husband distraught.

  Imagine a pool of blood, Miss Woodruff had written. Imagine a stone dropped in its centre. See the ripples of blood flow outwards, disturbing even the calmest of places! That is the common theme with all of these acts.

  One case Brennan recognised, despite the absence of names. A woman had been murdered by her husband, whose execution was mishandled by Crosby. She left two brothers who had been arrested outside the prison on the morning of the failed execution when they heard the news that their beloved sister’s killer had somehow escaped the noose. Miss Woodruff had written of their intense grief, of how their lives were now bereft of meaning. Earlier, Crosby had spoken of the incident as a simple mistake caused by his brother’s gambling debts.

  One man, a frail, elderly sort, spoke sadly of his son, whose wife was murdered by an escaped prisoner who had broken into her home. The poor fellow came back from work to find his dear wife lying dead, their home ransacked. What made it worse was the fact that the poor woman was with child. It was little consolation, said the old man, to hear that the murderer had died on the gallows. For understandable reasons, thought Brennan, his bereaved son had flatly refused to speak with the journalist, who merely added that his photograph showed a handsome chap whose stern expression held no hint of the tragedy that would befall him.

  Yet another – a man this time, by the name of Stephen – had talked of how he relied on the good nature of his neighbours once his wife had been stabbed to death, a victim of a brawl in a gambling den that left several people injured. His wife had been serving drinks and simply got in the way. If it weren’t for the help provided by his neighbours, his children – all five of them – would even now be living in some workhouse or orphanage. The one who killed her had never been caught, he told her. No one had been hanged, no one had paid the price, and it was only the thought of his dear children that prevented him from scouring the land and finding out the identity of the one who’d wielded the knife. Maria Woodruff had described his tale as in some ways the saddest story of all. Those poor children, innocent victims of an evil act. And yet the poor man blamed himself for allowing his wife to work in such a place of sin and evil.

  The thread that linked them all, she wrote, was the overwhelming sensation of helplessness, a silent raging against a future that bore no resemblance to the one they had foreseen before a murderer struck.

  She had been careful not to mention any surnames.

  Brennan closed the magazine.

  ‘Anythin’ of interest, Sergeant?’ said Jaggery.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ came the reply. There was a look of disappointment on his face. He had hoped that somehow the face of the murderer would present itself on the page, that it would then be a simple matter of identifying the guilty one and slamming him in a cell, confession pending.

  As he thanked the assistant librarian and left the building with Constable Jaggery in tow, Brennan was deep in thought. There were certain things that niggled at him, like an itch that you couldn’t quite scratch.

  ‘Bloody musty in yonder, Sergeant,’ said his companion, misreading the cause of Brennan’s silence. ‘Comes of all them books, I reckon.’

  There was something… he thought. Something that didn’t quite fit. But for the life of him, at the moment, he couldn’t think what that something was.

  20.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon when Gilbert Crosby presented himself at Wigan Borough Police Station and asked to see Detective Sergeant Brennan. Within minutes, he was seated in Brennan’s office, his hands clasped on his chest and a satisfied smile on his face.

  ‘My brother tells me you have something for me, Sergeant.’

  Brennan reached into a drawer and took out the summons, which he handed to his guest. Crosby perused the letter and folded it before placing it in his pocket. ‘Not quite the kind of summons I’m used to,’ he said with a twinkle in his eye.

  Brennan leaned forward. This wasn’t the aggressive witness of last time.

  ‘You left the hotel this morning.’

  ‘Indeed I did.’

  ‘When I’d asked you to stay there.’

  ‘I value the open, the fresh air. Even though this town seems to be smothering itself with all manner of dust.’

  ‘It’s honest dust,’ Brennan replied. The town’s mills inevitably gave off tiny specks of cotton, and the coal mines issued their own particular type of dust. So, too, did the iron and steel works. If the air was less than pure, it at least was the product of honest toil.

  ‘Well,’ said Crosby, making to stand up. ‘If that’s all, I’ll get back to my grieving brother.’

  ‘You’ll sit down,’ snapped Brennan.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You heard me. I have some questions for you, and you won’t be leaving this police station until you answer them.’

  Suddenly, Crosby’s air of affability vanished. His expression grew dark, menacing, but he had enough sense to sit back down.

  ‘Now, Mr Crosby. Simple answer to a simple question. Where did you go on Monday night? And all day Tuesday?’

  ‘I’ve already told you.’

  ‘No, you haven’t.’

  Crosby was about to say something but remained silent.

  ‘I’ll ask again. Where did you go on Monday night?’

  ‘I went to enjoy the services of a lady.’

  ‘Which lady?’

  Crosby sighed. ‘They don’t spend time introducing themselves.’

  ‘In my experience – as a policeman who’s brought more than one of these ladies in, might I add – in my experience, they don’t spend much time doing anything other than what they’re paid to do.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Crosby with arms spread outwards.

  ‘It’s also my understanding that once the – shall we call it the transaction? – has finished, you both go your separate ways.’

  Crosby shrugged. ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘If a – shall we call him a customer? – pays handsomely enough, why, the transaction can go on for as long as the payment is valid. Rather like a train journey. You can buy a ticket for a short trip – Lancaster to Bolton-le-Sands, say. Or you can stay on board as far as Carlisle.’

  Brennan saw the man’s scar gradually developing a deeper hue. His expression, his eyes, even the contours of his mouth, exuded a calm self-control, but the jagged curve of his scar told a different story.

  ‘It doesn’t much matter how long you stayed – you are, after all, a free man.’ He laid emphasis on the final phrase, a subtle hint that, if he carried on in this uncooperative vein, he wouldn’t be free much longer. ‘But I’m conducting a murder inquiry – two murder inquiries actually – and I need to be able to place the whereabouts of everyone involved with Mrs Crosby in any way. You’re her brother-in-law. That makes you involved.’

  Crosby held Brennan’s gaze for a few seconds, evidently weighing up whatever odds he had playing out in his head. Finally, he sat back, shook his head slowly and said, ‘I can’t tell you where I was on Monday night. I don’t know the address, as I told
you the last time we spoke. I know enough about police procedure to be sure that you need nice, strong evidence before you can arrest and charge someone. You don’t have any nice, strong evidence because I know full well I am innocent of any murder. So I’m afraid I won’t be answering any more questions. You can do your worst, Sergeant Brennan.’

  Brennan nodded, stood up and went to the door. ‘Stay there,’ he said.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Crosby asked, shifting in his chair.

  ‘My worst, Mr Crosby. We’ll get you nice and arrested and nice and charged and then you can enjoy the delights of a nice little cell. As I said, stay there.’

  *

  After Brennan had seen Gilbert Crosby escorted down to the cells, he made his way upstairs to the chief constable’s office.

  Might as well get it over with, he told himself.

  Arresting the hangman’s brother – not for murder but for refusing to provide information relevant to the inquiry – wouldn’t be very well received by Captain Bell, who might be expecting more substantial progress in the two cases, but at least the chief constable could claim that an arrest had been made when he next reported to the Watch Committee.

  I’m clutching at straws, thought Brennan as he knocked on the great man’s door.

  Once he was admitted, he got the bad news out of the way first. Then Captain Bell, leaning in his chair behind the large table, listened as he went through the progress of his investigations so far. When he’d finished, his superior said something quite unexpected.

  ‘As far as the arrest of Crosby is concerned, I don’t think you could have done anything else, Sergeant, given the circumstances. Well done.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Nor can I find fault with the way you have directed your inquiries.’ He invited his detective sergeant to sit down. ‘Now, this escaped lunatic – Pardew?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘You tell me he was in the thick of the action in King Street?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was actually Pardew who caused it in a way.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was at the back of the crowd as they entered King Street, then as the ones at the front got near to the Public Hall, he suddenly started running, pushing his way through and yelling out Simeon Crosby’s name.’

  Brennan watched as Captain Bell reached forward and peered at something that lay on his table. It seemed to be a telegram, a rather long one at that, but as to its purport, he had no idea. After apparently reading it for a while, the chief constable gave a satisfied grunt and leaned back again.

  ‘Would you say that the disturbance was deliberately caused by the madman?’

  Brennan thought for a time. ‘I’m not sure, sir. It did cause the disturbance, there’s no doubt about that. But as to whether Pardew intended it to be the consequence, I can’t say. He is, as you say, an escaped lunatic.’

  Again, Captain Bell leaned forward, this time lifting the letter from his table and placing it to one side. Brennan saw there was something else lying beneath where it had been. It was another telegram.

  ‘Mr Flynn, the medical superintendent at Haydock Lodge Lunatic Asylum, from where Pardew made his escape, has sent me a most interesting telegram concerning the man. The place is a private asylum, you know, and Pardew’s family are paying six guineas a week – six guineas! – to help care for him and hopefully restore him to his senses.’

  Brennan wondered what this was leading up to.

  ‘According to Mr Flynn, Pardew has shown most encouraging signs of improvement. He was in the Indian Civil Service, you know?’

  Brennan nodded. This was getting close to the matter. Captain Bell had served in India, and sometimes to hear him talk, there was almost a mystical attraction to the place.

  Captain Bell gave a small cough. ‘In your preliminary report, you have written that the man had apparently cut himself that night.’

  ‘Yes, sir. His hands had been bleeding.’

  ‘Surely not from the murder? The poor woman was strangled or choked with a rope, was she not?’

  ‘Indeed, sir. But Maria Woodruff, the second victim, had her head smashed against a brick wall. A lot of blood, sir.’

  ‘According to the police surgeon who bandaged the fellow, his wounds were filled with glass. Something about a framed photograph.’

  ‘Pardew says that when he was in King Street, he was attacked by one of our constables and it smashed the glass frame of a photograph he always held close to him. It was a photograph of his father’s corpse.’

  Captain Bell’s eyes widened. ‘Dreadful practice. Nothing but morbid nonsense. And some people have the nerve to sneer at the customs of the sub-continent!’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘So there’s really no reason to keep Pardew here in the cells any longer, is there?’ said the chief constable, as though his statement flowed logically from what they had just been discussing.

  Brennan moved awkwardly in his chair. ‘I’d rather keep him here for a while, sir. He’s still a suspect. And he can’t tell me where he was immediately after the skirmish in King Street.’

  ‘But the man’s a lunatic, Sergeant!’

  ‘Lunatics have murdered in the past, sir.’

  ‘Yes, but surely both of these murders suggest a cunning, a… an intelligence? Paying some lower-class urchin to hurl a brick through a window? Entering the hotel unseen? Tapping gently on the poor woman’s door and persuading her to let him in? Making good his escape once the deed was done? Then, instead of escaping from the town where he’d committed such foul murder – twice if we accept the second murder was by the same hand – he goes and breaks into the Lamp Room of the Railway Station and sleeps there until woken in the morning? Really, Sergeant!’

  Brennan wasn’t really paying attention. His eyes had drifted to the first telegram that lay on the chief constable’s table, placed askew now so that he could read at least some of what was written there. He could make out a few phrases:

  …eternally grateful if you could… no wish to impose such a burden on our friendship… pray for the day poor dear Oscar is returned to… only the fondest memories of your kindness in Limerick…

  The wily fox knew the family! They’d sent the message as soon as Pardew had been found in Wigan. The asylum had been quick in letting them know and the family even quicker writing their telegram and making pointed references to a past acquaintance.

  ‘I’m sure we’re close to solving the murders, sir. It wouldn’t look good for the police force if we released someone who has no alibi while at the same time incarcerating another man for exactly the same reason. Would it, sir?’

  Captain Bell pursed his lips. His eyes had suddenly narrowed. He’d been outfoxed.

  It was only when he got outside the man’s office that Brennan felt that familiar sensation tugging at his brain. Something the chief constable had said in there had been of some significance, something that needed to be investigated. But now it was out of his grasp.

  If only he’d been paying more attention when the man had launched into his staunch defence of the lunatic!

  *

  Brennan, who didn’t believe in coincidences, was forced to accept that the incident that followed his meeting with Captain Bell might well be designated as such.

  Ten minutes after he’d returned to his office, he heard a commotion from down the corridor. Some shouting, the sound of boots clattering in haste down the steps that led to the cells, a door slamming.

  When he stepped out and followed the sounds, he saw three constables standing in the doorway of an open cell door, looking inside at whatever was taking place there.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Brennan asked the constable nearest to him.

  ‘That bloody looney, Sergeant.’ He nodded and stepped aside so that Brennan could get a clear view of what was happening.

  The desk sergeant was kneeling beside Oscar Pardew, who was lying on the damp cell floor, writhing in apparent agony, his eyes wide open and starin
g wildly around the cell.

  ‘Get a doctor. Quick!’ said the desk sergeant. ‘I think he’s havin’ a bloody fit!’

  The constable beside Brennan immediately turned and ran back upstairs.

  ‘You!’ the desk sergeant shouted at the constable closest to the door. ‘Get in here and grab a hold! He’s all over the bloody place!’

  The young constable did as he was told. Brennan, too, rushed in and grabbed hold of Pardew’s legs, which were thrashing around as if he were drowning in some imagined sea-storm.

  After several seconds of such convulsive horrors, the man’s agitations gradually subsided, and finally, he lay still, his eyes tightly closed as though the anguish of the convulsions was now continuing inside his head.

  Twenty minutes later, after the nearest doctor to the station, whose surgery lay in Darlington Street a quarter mile away, had tended to him and recommended he be transferred immediately to Wigan Infirmary for close supervision, Brennan stood on the steps of the station and watched the horse ambulance begin its journey through the streets and up the incline towards the infirmary to the north of the town. Pardew had remained in his semi-unconscious state, and it had taken two constables to lift his dead weight and place him on the bed inside the ambulance. He had insisted on Jaggery accompanying the patient in the ambulance, despite the big constable’s mumbled objections that seemed to offer a dark diagnosis of demonic possession.

  ‘At least with Freddie Jaggery beside him, there’ll be no shenanigans, eh, Mickey?’ the desk sergeant had whispered in Brennan’s ear as they watched the horse ambulance turn right into King Street. ‘Pardew might be daft, but he’s not stupid.’

  The desk sergeant was wrong.

  *

  It started as the ambulance negotiated the turn from King Street into Wallgate. Not only was it a sharp turn, the road also suddenly began to rise as it led towards Market Place. Jaggery, keeping a keen eye on the still-slumbering prisoner, held onto the side of the ambulance as it took the right turn. He leaned down to peer through the gap in the side of the carriage, and when he returned his gaze to Pardew, he saw, with some astonishment, that the man’s eyes were now wide open and staring at him with such intensity, it caused him to swallow nervously.