A Coin for the Hangman

by Spurrier, Ralph

  I was too young to understand properly what my mother had felt all those years on her own. All I knew was that my father was dead and that was it. I suppose those women who said she was lucky being widowed were right in one way. She didn’t have to worry about her man being away at war and if he was still alive or badly wounded or lying dead in a ditch. There were no letters going backwards and forwards telling each other ever-dwindling news until one of them stopped bothering to write. There was no guilt about either of them enjoying other company. I understand now why my mother felt sorry for that woman who people were jeering and jostling in the butcher’s queue for taking pleasure with another. Perhaps she was even a little bit jealous? So when George came along just at the time that she was thinking about shutting up shop for good it may have seemed like the best chance she had.

  He was a charmer to the women, there’s no doubt about that, and my guess is that he saw in the shop a way of getting his feet back into civvy street. Look at the trouble some of those who came out of the army got into, especially if they had some kind of rank. All those menial clerks and factory workers dropping pens and tools in exchange for rifles, progressing through the ranks, being given authority, and then after the war being dumped back into their old jobs. It didn’t work, Reg, and George knew that better than anyone else. He was sharp, sharp as the razors in the caps of Peaky Blinders. The world had moved on and he had no particular place to live or job to go to. What better than an established town shop, living quarters and a young widow to keep him company?

  He’d tell stories. Oh, he was good at that alright. He became a regular visitor during that winter of 1946 – he’d taken up digs in the town after demob – and he’d sit at the kitchen table telling my mother all these stories. She’d sit and laugh and I’d be listening from the armchair, pretending to read but listening all the same. He’d tell how he and his army mates would climb out of the carriage window on a boring journey and stand on the outside of the train, gripping on to the door handles while the country sped past at seventy miles an hour. My mother would “ooh!” and “aah!” and pour another cup of tea and he’d slip a whiskey flask from his back pocket, putting a nip in both their cups. Her questions about his never-ending supply of things that were rationed were always met with a wink, a smile and a “You just have to know the right people, Mavis”.

  I think everyone in the town knew about the black market to a greater or lesser extent but George knew more than most. He’d talk about the Rum Row between Cherbourg and the Hampshire marshes bringing in liquor and plundered goods from the continent; about people he knew from the army days that could get their hands on anything; how the forces had warehouses of things that were no use now that most people were demobbed. Not long after he and my mother started going out together on a regular basis he presented her with three pairs of stockings. Slipped them out from under his greatcoat and dropped them on the shop counter, late one afternoon in November. I saw her face flush with excitement, Reg, the first time since dad had died. There was another woman in the shop at the time and I remember her eyes nearly fell out of her head! I mean, how silly could we all be? A few yards of nylon and, as they say, she fell for it. I guessed the gossip would be all round the town by the next day and to all intents and purposes my mother’s fate was sealed. In the early part of 1948 they were married at the Register Office. By then I had already packed my books into teachests and moved out. Tragically, it was to be a book that caused that very public row I had with my mother. That didn’t look good at all at the trial. Ironic really. All over a book.

  Well, Reg, we shall soon meet, you and I. We will meet for the first and last time and you will have no idea that for the last three weeks I have been writing this diary just for you. Isn’t that odd? I’ll be dead and these words will live on. So I have to hurry now. It is evening and I know that tomorrow is the day. It’s time for the resolution of this mystery and I hope you haven’t disappointed me and come straight to this page. A writer – any writer – writes to be read, even if it is only one person. And you are that one person.

  I used to love those scenes in the Agatha Christie novels when Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot would contrive to have all the suspects gathered together in the drawing room and, bit by bit, the plot would be cleverly and scientifically unstitched to reveal the murderer. All nonsense of course; the reality of detective work is much more mundane. Except that in this case you will see what I have to tell you will turn the judgment of the court upside down and hopefully bring the real criminal to justice. You will ask why I am sitting here on the eve of my execution and not appealing my case. Well, Reg, what is there left for me? All that I saw, all that I experienced since September 1st 1939, has led me to this destiny. My father dead, Madeleine married, my mother murdered. I wasn’t even allowed to go to my mother’s funeral, incarcerated on remand as I was. There’s nothing out there, Reg. Before I was arrested I walked the streets of Bradford and all I could see were the ghosts of the people I had known. Nothing was real.

  I must get on. It’s gone midnight now. One of the warders, Mr Greenslade, is asleep on my bunk and the other, Mr Wicks, is propped up on a chair reading one of my books – the Hopkins poems. I told him to read The Windhover, my favourite. He said he didn’t “get it” and what were all those words mean and why didn’t it rhyme? I didn’t explain but I am sure you will understand, Reg. Do you GET it? A morning’s morning minion, a dauphin, buckling. I shall shower sparks of light, Reg, a brightness falling from the world.

  One of the reasons I am here is that testimony of Mary Collins which linked the marshmallows I stuffed down her throat in 1938 to the murder of my mother in 1953. The marshmallows. Who would have thought it? I suppose the fact that the first incident was so well known in this small town was what did for me. That and the argument my mother and I had in the street. He was clever, very clever. It must have seemed like a perfect gift for him, something that would link me directly with the murder. And like many murderers from those detective novels, he knew his train timetables. So how do you think it was done? Listen.

  My mother got the first train out of Bradford that Saturday heading off towards London. It was on the loop from Bath to Waterloo via Westbury and Salisbury. The station master at Bradford testified that my mother was alone when she bought her ticket but that he had seen me in the town that morning on my motorbike. I was living in digs, a little out of town, and I needed a bike to get home from the cinema late at night. By chance I was out early to get my newspaper that morning and although I saw my mother in the distance I didn’t stop to say hello. We hadn’t spoken since that incident in the street. There were just two other people getting on the train that day and neither of them saw anyone get on the train with my mother. So, the prosecution’s case was that I either slipped onto the train when no-one was looking or drove to a station further down the line. I then murdered my mother somewhere en route and either remained with her until Waterloo where I disappeared into the crowd or got off somewhere else. Either way I probably returned to Bradford later that day. The trouble with this argument is that the Bradford station master never saw me return and nor did any other station master on the route. I mean, I am a little distinctive, aren’t I? It would be most unlikely that I would be missed being seen twice, don’t you think? Unfortunately I had no real alibi as I was at my digs, reading, and didn’t leave until late in the afternoon.

  So how was it done? It took me some time to work it out, but follow closely and you will understand. The murderer got on the train before Bradford. In fact just the one stop before, at Avoncliff – the unmanned station. All a passenger has to do is stick out his hand and the driver will stop. The murderer got on there and just waited on the train for my mother to get on at Bradford. He murdered her in the next ten minutes, stuffing marshmallows into her throat – just like a trained killer. Then the train arrived at Westbury where it has to wait for some twelve minutes for an incoming from Weymouth to join it. When I checked the Bradshaw timetabl
e I realized that there was a crucial gap in the timings and it was this gap that the murderer used. Take a look at that timetable and you will see that in those twelve minutes a Salisbury to Bath train arrives – on the opposite platform. It is a simple step for the murderer to open a trackside door and swing across to the other train without being seen by driver, guard or any station staff and settle himself in for the short journey back. He doesn’t get off at Bradford because he’d be seen by the station master but just carries on to the next stop, the unmanned Avoncliff. It’s only a mile-and-a-half stroll back to town along the deserted canal path. So, the only persons to see him are the driver of the London-bound train and the guard of the Bath-bound train. And neither was called to give evidence. It was just pure luck that the guard on the London-bound train had fallen asleep and the body wasn’t discovered by anyone until it arrived in Waterloo.

  I wondered about the box of marshmallows that was found on the carriage rack and what it was doing there. Did the murderer put it there? Useful that it was in an old Eastman box, wasn’t it, and not one with the Tanner’s name? Without the name of the shop on the box it could have been days before the identity of my mother had been uncovered, but it brought the police around to the shop late that same afternoon. Once they had heard about the incident in the playground all those years before they quickly put two and two together and made the leap to five. Never underestimate the ability of the police to make the evidence fit the suspect and in this case they went on to compound error after error. That’s why I’m here and he’s out there, smiling and laughing. Why would George be carrying around a picture of a German girl – someone called Steffi? I found it tucked away inside a little clock that George had brought back from Germany, a trophy of war. There’s that little message – forget me not is what it says, Reg. Vergissmeinicht. I like the play on words with the picture of Steffi with her forget-me-not threaded into her hair. Clever, isn’t it? I enjoy word tricks like that.

  Time is ending, Reg. You are coming to meet me. All’s gone silent. Bent over this paper, my punskill making these words, scratching away for all eternity. I had it all. The earth was mine. The seas, the light and the lofty skies were mine. The birds of the air and the sun and stars were all mine. Lost now, all lost. This river is run.

  Listen! Listen!

  Here Comes Executioner.

  Henry Charles Eastman.

  I can hear a voice. I can hear a voice singing, Reg. I’m sure it’s my mother, calling me. I’m slipping. Falling away. Mother: your Caliban, this Prospero, your Humpty, this Finnegan, your immortal diamond, my ending.

  I am lost to the world and lost for words.

  And she turned out the light – (and then put out the light)

  and closed the door –

  and that’s all there is –

  there isn’t any more.

  Reg Manley

  Reg read the final words of Henry’s diary, squinting at the diminishing lines as they dropped away to the bottom of the page. He had slammed the diary shut and stuffed it back into the box after reading the opening lines outside the prison gates on the morning of the execution. It had taken him some weeks to bring himself to read the whole thing. During that time the Home Office notified him that he had been temporarily removed from the list of approved executioner’s pending an enquiry. Now, he closed the book with a trembling hand and looked up at his wife who was sitting by the fire. She was concentrating on her knitting, tossing the ball of wool away from her lap from time to time to loosen up the strands. Reg reached for the box that had accompanied the diary. He lifted the flap and pushed back the decorated greaseproof paper that covered the contents. For a moment he was puzzled and then the realization came as a thunderbolt.

  “Oh, Christ Almighty!”

  His wife stopped and turned quickly in her chair. “Reg! Language!” The strange look on his face brought her up short. “Whatever’s up?”

  Reg stared down at the book and the open black box that sat on the table in front of him. “Oh, Christ-all-fucking-mighty!”

  She was frightened now. In their life together she had hardly ever heard him swear. “Reg, what is it? For heaven’s sake, what is it! Tell me!” She dropped her knitting on the floor, catching her foot in a strand of wool that unravelled behind her as she quickly moved to the table where her husband held his head in his hands. She gently touched his shoulders. “Whatever is it?”

  Reg’s trembling fingers reached down and touched the diary, his thumb resting against the tea-stained edge of the pages. His voice, a whisper. “I think we’ve…” he stopped, took a breath and added “…I’ve just hanged an innocent man.” He gave the box a nudge with the back of his hand. “What d’you see, love?”

  She bent over the table and looked into the box. In five neat rows were pink and white marshmallows. On the one at the very centre of the box sat a single, shiny sixpenny piece.

  “What’s this mean, Reg? I don’t understand.” She looked at her husband and was startled to see tears brim at the edges of his eyes. “Oh Lord, Reg. What does it mean? What have you done? Tell me!”

  Reg pointed to the sixpence at the centre of the box and looked up at his wife. He said nothing.

  “What?” She was becoming impatient with him, nudging his shoulder. “What, Reg? It’s a sixpence. What’s so special about that? You have them in your pocket every day. It’s just an ordinary tanner.”

  Reg picked up the lid, his hand trembling, and carefully put it back on the box, looking up at his wife. “Yes, love, that’s right. A coin for the hangman – a tanner.”

  2006

  “A coin for the hangman.” Jim Lees settled back in the chair in the corner of the visitor’s lounge, his age-spotted hands gripping the ends of the wooden arm-rests. “What a joke, eh? And so typical of Eastman’s little game.” He peered at me with eyes that carried an opacity that comes with failing sight but which also had the disturbing effect of someone looking right through you. “Of course, the affair did for Reg – and it did for me as well. We were removed from the Home Office list pretty pronto and were never asked to perform duties ever again. I didn’t really blame Reg, not really…” He tapped the arm-rest with fingernails that needed a good trim. He hesitated for a moment before continuing, “But Reg was too cocky, way too cocky for his own good, and the way he cheeked up the governor on that morning before the execution only served to dig his own grave, as it were.”

  “Did Reg ever do anything about the diary? Did you ever get to read it?”

  Jim Lees pursed his lips and shook his head. “No, never saw the inside of the diary but Reg told me all about it and, of course, he handed it over to the authorities.” Jim suddenly coughed and sat upright, sucking in air before another coughing fit overtook him. I’d been interviewing him off and on for a couple of weeks and I’d noticed a marked deterioration since my last visit. I was all too aware that if I was going to find out what occurred after the execution it would be now or never.

  “Do you need a drink of water, Jim? Can I get you anything?”

  Jim shook his head, waving his hand in a gesture of dismissal. With a final, barking cough, he settled back against the chair cushions. It was a couple of minutes before he was able to continue.

  “Of course, no-one was going to own up to making a mistake, were they? There were already rumblings about the Timothy Evans case and with Reginald Christie being dropped just a few weeks after Eastman, the anti-hanging brigade were out in force. Can you imagine the outcry if it got out that another ‘innocent’ had been topped? Nah. I think they made quiet enquiries about George Tanner, probably wheeled him into the local nick and asked him a few awkward questions but what I heard was that his alibi was watertight. Couldn’t pin a dickey-bird on him. Everything went hush-hush, the diary was handed back to Reg and he was told to keep quiet.”

  “Do you know what happened to George Tanner?”

  Jim shook his head. “No idea.”

  “And Reg?” I added.

&nbs
p; He peered at me as if seeing me for the first time. “The poor devil had what I suppose they call a nervous breakdown these days. His wife called me just the once – the very last time I had any contact with the Manleys – to let me know that he’d been taken off the list and that he’d also lost his job at the engineering firm. I got the distinct impression she was partly blaming me for it all but from what I knew of her – remember Reg and I spent a few nights together pre-execution and he wasn’t backward in telling me things – she was pretty vindictive towards him. I don’t think there was much love to lose there.”

  Our conversation came to an end. I had all I was going to get from Jim Lees and the background to the story was now in my notes. I left him there that day with a promise that I would come and visit again soon but I looked at him and he looked at me with a faint smile and I guess we both knew that there would be no “next time”.

  “Are you going to make a story out of all this?” Jim had asked me early on in our conversations, waving his hand towards my notebook.

  “I don’t know yet. Maybe. It would be a shame to get this far and not know the real truth, wouldn’t it?”

  I remembered Jim laughing and shaking his head. “You’ve been fooled, son, fooled as much as poor old Reg was. Thought he had strung up some innocent. Pah!” A fleck of spittle clung to his lips. “Eastman was guilty as hell. He was just a clever bullshitter and you’ve been taken in, just like Reg was, hook, line and sinker.”

  These words still reverberated in my head a few months later when I drove down to Bradford on Avon. I was actually on a buying trip to one of the Bath auction houses where a half-decent collection of crime fiction was coming under the hammer but I took advantage of the trip to check out some of the sites that Henry had mentioned in his diary. I’d never been to Bradford on Avon before but here it was, all laid out almost exactly as I had seen it in my mind’s eye while reading the diary and from what Madeleine Reubens had told me. The bridge over the Avon with its curious lock-up cell hanging over the river, the station where Henry had stood on the bridge to watch Madeleine go off to Bath and the soldiers and sailors returning from the war, and the terraced houses and gardens of Tory where Henry had sat and watched an airman drop into an outhouse.