The King's Justice

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  * * *

  —

  The next morning, Maggie went downstairs to the kitchen in her nightgown and tartan flannel robe, surreptitiously slipping the knife she’d kept under her bed back into a drawer. She looked at the clock, her mind jumping to make the calculations: It was 7:06. Less than five hours. Two hundred and ninety-four minutes, seventeen thousand six hundred and forty seconds.

  “Good morning,” Chuck said, standing at the stove. She’d already made tea, and Maggie poured herself a mug. Outside, the sky was chalky.

  “Your eyes are red.”

  “It’s all tickety-boo,” Maggie said automatically. Then, “No, not really. Not at all, in fact. I broke any number of things at work yesterday. And I cried last night. For a long time. And now I feel—just maybe—a bit better. Thawed, even.”

  “Maybe I should try that,” Chuck said. “Well, we have scrambled eggs for breakfast today,” she announced. “The girls have been laying like you wouldn’t believe.” Outside, the chickens scratched and pecked. She looked up from the frying pan once again and noticed Maggie’s arm in a cast. “Goodness gracious—what happened?”

  “Just a little accident.”

  “With your bloody motorbike?”

  Maggie dimly remembered giving it to a masked devil in Clerkenwell. “Something like that,” she said. “Although I’m done with the thing now. Going to take the Tube with the rest of London.”

  Chuck made a face. “It smells down there.”

  “Well, buses, then. Get a lot of reading done.”

  The last time Maggie had seen Chuck was the night of the ballet. It had only been two days, but felt longer. She noticed her friend still had a silk scarf tied around her neck. “Nigel’s gone, I take it?”

  “He left a few days early,” Chuck said, serving eggs onto plates. The toaster popped and she added a piece of national loaf to each. “Here’s breakfast.”

  The two sat at the wooden table and ate. “He’s not a bad person, you know,” Chuck continued. “He was having a nightmare when he did it. He wouldn’t have hurt me otherwise.”

  “He has a lot of nightmares?”

  “He does,” Chuck admitted. “He said he was dreaming of something that happened in the Middle East—something bad.” Maggie nodded, then spread margarine on toast awkwardly with her good hand.

  “Here, let me do it,” Chuck said, taking Maggie’s toast and doing it for her, then handing it back. “I’m standing by him. I promised to love him in sickness and in health. And he’s Griffin’s father.”

  “But you need to keep yourself and Griffin safe,” Maggie said, taking a bite of toast.

  “I know.” They both looked out the windows at the soft gray morning fog. Then Chuck said, “The next time he comes home, he’ll sleep in another bedroom. And we’ll talk to a doctor about it. See if there’s anything to be done. He’s not evil,” she said. “But he’s not all right.”

  “Sounds like a good plan,” Maggie said. She knew, all too well, the rage from battle that permeated civilian life. You expect it to stay behind, she thought, in Windsor, in Berlin, in Washington, in Paris, in Scotland—or in Nigel’s case, the Mideast—but it follows wherever you go.

  “I love him,” Chuck said. “And I’m going to make sure he gets all the help he needs.”

  “While keeping yourself safe.”

  Chuck nodded, fingering the scarf at her neck. “While keeping myself safe.” She took a deep breath. “And what about you?”

  Maggie sorted through what had happened and what she could tell Chuck. Then she remembered. “Well, Durgin and the Met Police caught the killer. Turns out Jimmy Greenteeth was Jenny Greenteeth. And Nicholas Reitter’s mother, to boot.”

  “His mum?” Chuck managed, trying to swallow her tea without choking. “Is that how you hurt your arm? My saints, Maggie!”

  “She was trying to outdo him. To become the greatest serial killer ever known—woman or man.”

  Chuck’s brown eyes were wide. “How—how do you feel about that?”

  “Relieved. It’s over. Nicholas’s reign of terror is finished and now his mother’s.”

  Sarah appeared in the doorway in a scarlet silk robe, her long dark hair mussed, holding a newspaper. “They caught Jimmy Greenteeth,” she said, showing them the headline. The article was written by Boris Jones. “Turns out Jimmy was really Jenny.”

  “And Maggie helped,” Chuck told her.

  “Really?” Sarah’s eyebrows shot up. She got a mug, then sat down with them and poured her tea. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised,” she said, finally.

  “How did things go with what’s-his-name?” Maggie asked her. “The American?”

  “Lincoln Kirstein. I saw Freddie Ashton at the bar last night, and he says Mr. Kirstein’s the genuine article. And he has a real plan of getting me to Hollywood—to hoof in the chorus of a film—and then dance for George Balanchine in New York.”

  “But you’d have to leave London!” Chuck said. “You’re not actually taking that Yank seriously, are you?”

  “Getting out of London now would be perfect, to be frank. I could use a change of scene.” She turned to Maggie. “And you will come with me.”

  “Oh, I don’t know—”

  “You’re only going to kill yourself if you keep working on those bombs,” she said, looking at Maggie’s cast. “Which you won’t be for a while, anyway.”

  “It’s—it’s a long way off.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time to catch up.” Sarah took a sip of tea and smiled. “We can conquer Los Angeles together!”

  At that moment, K jumped into Maggie’s lap with a loud “Meh!” She cuddled him with her good hand, appreciating his warmth and the low rumble of his purring.

  “Meh, indeed,” said Chuck, spreading jam on her toast. “You know this is all very odd, yes? If you two left, Griffin and I’d be here all alone.”

  “You’d hold down the fort until Maggie got back, though, right?” Sarah said. “Like last time?”

  Chuck and Griffin had taken care of things when Maggie and Sarah had both been in Paris. “Well, of course!”

  “You two and Mr. K.” Maggie scratched the cat under his chin, and he closed his eyes and began to purr even louder.

  Sarah rose to make herself a plate of eggs and toast. “Maggie—take some time in the sunshine of Los Angeles and think it over.”

  “I can’t just…leave…London.” She put K on the floor and rose. The cat responded with a chiding “Meh!” as she headed to the door.

  “Are you going somewhere this morning?” Chuck asked. “Taking out another bomb?”

  “No, not today.” She shattered into a mirthless laugh that gave way to hiccups. Finally, she managed, “Today I’m attending Nicholas Reitter’s execution.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Wednesday, March 10, 1943

  The day of Nicholas Reitter’s execution

  Outside, the fog had burned off and wispy cirrus clouds scudded across the sky. “It was almost a year ago the Blackout Beast’s reign of terror began, brought to an end by DCI James Durgin and Margaret Hope, along with the Met Police,” said a reporter into a BBC microphone. “But today, I’m standing outside the Tower on the day of Nicholas Reitter’s execution. He’s scheduled to be executed at noon, by firing squad. No reporters are allowed inside the castle walls, but there are plenty of protesters here, as you can undoubtedly hear.”

  He turned the microphone to the crowd, where chants of “Shoot him till he’s dead!” and “Send him to hell!” clashed with “Thou shalt not kill!”

  The reporter continued, “Reitter has been found guilty of the murders of five women in the style of the infamous Jack the Ripper, and the attempted murder of another, Miss Margaret Hope, who was the woman who shot him and testified in his trial. He also killed six Metropolitan
Police officers in the raid that brought him into custody nearly a year ago.

  “Last night, in breaking news, we found out in a stunning reveal that the Blackout Beast is the son of another sequential murderer, Nicolette Quinn, the killer we’ve come to know as Jimmy Greenteeth. Quinn was shot to death by an unknown assailant yesterday afternoon escaping the scene of her latest attempted murder. Scotland Yard reported Quinn, formerly known as Imelda Reitter, was responsible for at least eight deaths and was targeting conscientious objectors. In addition, police are following up on leads that Quinn, a respected Ward Sister at Fitzroy Square Hospital in Fitzrovia, killed multiple patients over the years by lethal injection. The number of her victims could range into the hundreds, perhaps thousands.”

  Maggie’s taxi pulled up in front of the entrance gate. She was immediately surrounded by journalists, some snapping photographs, others shoving microphones in her face. “Miss Hope! Miss Hope!” she heard. “Look this way! What can you tell us about Jenny Greenteeth? Is it true you found her?”

  The BBC journalist shouted, “Miss Hope? Anything to say?”

  Maggie was dressed from head to toe in black, her face pale. “Justice will be done.”

  “But why are you here? What made you decide to come today?”

  Maggie was about to pull her hat’s black veil down over her eyes but stopped; she wanted to see things clearly. “I have no comment,” she said, meeting the eyes of every reporter, “except that my thoughts are with the victims and their families.” Two Yeoman Warders escorted her inside, away from the throng.

  * * *

  —

  While it looked like any pub in London, the Yeoman Warders Club—known informally as “The Keys”—was actually built into the fortress wall of the Tower. Inside, it was smoky from cigarettes and cigars, with red-leather benches, dark wood tables, whitewash, and wood paneling. Most of the twenty or so men present were Yeoman Warders, wearing their formal red-and-gold Tudor state dress uniform, the design virtually unchanged since 1549. The air was filled with nervous chatter. When a glass fell to the floor and shattered, there was a moment of tense silence, then a few awkward laughs.

  Maggie found her way through the crowd of Warders and Met Police officers, recognizing Warder Bertie Boyce and Raven Master Arthur Mattock. She caught sight of Durgin, sitting alone at a table near the window, staring at a cup of steaming tea. “Imagine meeting you here,” she said when she reached his table.

  Durgin looked up and smiled tentatively. “Maggie—how are you?” He looked at the cast on her arm. “Wrist all right?”

  “I’ll live,” she said, before realizing how it sounded on execution day. “I mean, it’s fine.” She looked at the grandfather clock against the wall and unconsciously did the calculation: One hour, sixteen minutes, forty-three seconds.

  “Come, sit down.” He slid over. “Staunton’s here as well. Gone to get himself a pint.”

  Maggie looked over to see the carroty-haired detective at the long bar. One of the Warders was tending bar, and Maggie could see taps marked YEOMAN 1485 and BEEFEATER BITTER. On the mirrored shelves behind the bar were various bottles of spirits, as well as rows of Beefeater gin. Outside, a gardener cutting the thick grass was singing:

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed.

  Here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

  Chip chop, chip chop, the last man’s dead…

  “Not sure if that’s quite appropriate today,” Maggie said as she settled on the bench. She unbuttoned her coat and put down her handbag as the gardener’s voice faded in the distance.

  She looked up at the wall over Durgin’s head, where a Yeoman Gaoler’s ax hung. Next to it was a framed signature of Clara Hess, former German opera star as well as imprisoned Nazi, on official Tower of London stationery. Maggie looked away. “Milo? How is he?” she asked.

  “They say he’ll make a full recovery.” Durgin lowered his voice. “I also heard when his mother reached him in the hospital and figured out what had happened, she nearly murdered him herself.”

  Maggie stopped herself from snorting, imagining Giulia Tucci’s wrath. “Well, he won’t be doing something like that ever again.”

  To see another suffer is pleasant, Maggie remembered Nietzsche writing, but to make another suffer is still more pleasant. She looked around at the various faces—some eager, some pale, some sickened.

  Is this punishment of death a kind of redemption? she wondered. The German word Schuld means both guilt and debt. There is, as Nietzsche pointed out, a mathematical accounting: a crime creates a debt, the criminal becomes a debtor, the victim his creditor, whose compensation is the particular pleasure of bearing witness to punishment. One primary meaning of the word redemption is the sense one can buy the debt back—every injury has some equivalent of pain or sacrifice. But the sentence should be for justice, not revenge.

  Is executing Nicholas Reitter justice? Will I have the urge to cheer, to jump up and down when he’s shot? If I could watch him suffer in all the ways he made those he killed suffer or, better yet, cause that suffering myself? If I could grind him down with my rage until there was nothing left of him?

  Would it really be satisfying, though? Would there be a release? A relief? A catharsis? What exactly is justice supposed to feel like? If Reitter suffers, will my own built-up rage defuse?

  No, Maggie realized. I don’t want him dead. I want him to admit all the things he did, in public, and then to spend the rest of his life in service to other people. She leaned back in her seat. I don’t want his name remembered. I want it forgotten, while we remember the names and lives of the women and men he killed.

  That’s the ending I want. Because more violence only creates more pain, sometimes generations of pain and more violence and more suffering. It amplifies injustice rather than cancels it out. It’s not about him but about me. I want to let go of my rage and terror and pain. I want to feel it, have it run through me, and then let it go. The ending I need is inside.

  Staunton came over with his pint and sat down. “May I fetch you anything, Miss Hope? Bit of ale, perhaps? Might help your nerves?”

  “No, thank you, Detective Staunton.” She was done numbing her feelings with drink.

  Colonel MacRae entered the bar, the empty sleeve of his formal uniform hemmed. “Good afternoon, everyone,” he told them.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” was the rumbled response.

  “Please finish getting your drinks and take a seat.” His voice was measured and even. “It’s now almost eleven o’clock.” Maggie looked up to the clock on the wall. It was the shape of a Warder and painted with the same red the officers were wearing. The arms of the Beefeater were the hands of the clock.

  “The prisoner is in his cell, awaiting his last meal. After that, he will be given clean clothes. After he’s changed, he’ll be handcuffed, and then led, by no fewer than four Warders, down the stairs and across Tower Green to what used to be the Scaffold Site. Because the prisoner has chosen death by firing squad, there is a wooden chair, facing away from the onlookers, already set up. He will be tied to it and blindfolded. At twelve P.M., the Warders will do their duty.”

  He looked around. “Many of you here were present for the execution of the Nazi spy Jakob Meier last year—this one will proceed in exactly the same manner.

  “When our doctor, Dr. Taylor, pronounces him dead, you will return here.” He looked around. “Any questions?” There were none.

  The Colonel exited. The group sat, checking their watches and sipping their beers. They were now silent and avoided eye contact—as if by not acknowledging one another, they could somehow ignore the morbid reason they were assembled.

  * * *

  —

  As Boyce brought in his last meal, Reitter was singing an old English folk song, called “The Cruel Mother.” His tenor voice was clear and dulcet:
/>
  There was a lady dwelt in York:

  Fal the dal the di do,

  She fell in love with her father’s clerk,

  Down by the green wood side.

  She laid her hand against a stone,

  Fal the dal the di do,

  And there she made most bitter moan,

  Down by the green wood side.

  She took a knife both long and sharp,

  Fal the dal the di do,

  And stabb’d her babes unto the heart,

  Down by the green wood side.

  Boyce banged on the bars. “All right, Frank Sinatra. We have your requested last meal.” He slid it under the bottom bar of the cell.

  Reitter had chosen rice pudding and a cup of coffee. While some of the guards expressed disbelief about his choice, Boyce thought it was smart. “Sweet and easy to swallow, right?” he said. “It will probably stay put, too. Some of them order things like oysters and roast beef and gravy.” He shook his head. “Never stays down—and then we’re the ones cleaning it up.”

  Reitter picked up the tray and carried it to the table. Boyce remained standing at the bars of the cell, looking in. “May I enjoy my last supper in peace, or must you stare?”

  “I’ll be back with fresh clothing,” Boyce said, then added, “Need anything else? Bit of whiskey, perhaps?”

  Reitter shook his head. “But there is one thing.”

  “It’s your day, mate.”

  “Would you please check if Miss Margaret Hope is here? And would you ask her to come see me? I’d like to say goodbye.”

  “Can’t make any promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Thank you. You’re a good man, Bertie Boyce. Always polite. Always courteous.”

  “I’m a professional, Mr. Reitter.” When the guard had gone and Reitter could hear his tread on the stairs, he picked up a spoon and dipped it into the pudding.