Gallows Thief. Bernard Cornwell
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was a thin man. He was thin-lipped and thin-haired, had a thin nose and a thin jaw that narrowed to a weasel-thin chin and his eyes had all the warmth of thinly knapped flint and his thin voice was precise, dry and unfriendly. His nickname was ‘the Doctor’, a nickname without warmth or affection, but apt, for he was clinical, disapproving and cold. He had made Sandman wait for two and a quarter hours, though as Sandman had come to the office without an appointment he could scarce blame the Home Secretary for that. Now, as a bluebottle buzzed against one of the high windows, Lord Sidmouth frowned across the desk at his visitor. ‘You were recommended by Sir John Colborne.’
Sandman bowed his head in acknowledgement, but said nothing. There was nothing to say. A grandfather clock ticked loud in a corner of the office.
‘You were in Sir John’s battalion at Waterloo,’ Sidmouth said, ‘is that not so?’
‘I was, my lord, yes.’
Sidmouth grunted as though he did not entirely approve of men who had been at Waterloo and that, Sandman reflected, might well have been the case for Britain now seemed divided between those who had fought against the French and those who had stayed at home. The latter, Sandman suspected, were jealous and liked to suggest, oh so delicately, that they had sacrificed an opportunity to gallivant abroad because of the need to keep Britain prosperous. The wars against Napoleon were two years in the past now, yet still the divide remained, though Sir John Colborne must possess some influence with the government if his recommendation had brought Sandman to this office. ‘Sir John tells me you seek employment?’ the Home Secretary asked.
‘I must, my lord.’
‘Must?’ Sidmouth pounced on the word. ‘Must? But you are on half pay, surely? And half pay is not an ungenerous emolument, I would have thought?’ The question was asked very sourly, as though his lordship utterly disapproved of paying pensions to men who were capable of earning their own livings.
‘I’m not eligible for half pay, my lord,’ Sandman said. He had sold his commission and, because it was peacetime, he had received less than he had hoped, though it had been enough to secure a lease on a house for his mother.
‘You have no income?’ Sebastian Witherspoon, the Home Secretary’s private secretary, asked from his chair beside his master’s desk.
‘Some,’ Sandman said, and decided it was probably best not to say that the small income came from playing cricket. The Viscount Sidmouth did not look like a man who would approve of such a thing. ‘Not enough,’ Sandman amended his answer, ‘and much of what I do earn goes towards settling my father’s smaller debts. The tradesmen’s debts,’ he added, in case the Home Secretary thought he was trying to pay off the massive sums owing to the wealthy investors.
Witherspoon frowned. ‘In law, Sandman,’ he said, ‘you are not responsible for any of your father’s debts.’
‘I am responsible for my family’s good name,’ Sandman responded.
Lord Sidmouth gave a snort of derision that could have been in mockery of Sandman’s good name or an ironic response to his evident scruples or, more likely, was a comment on Sandman’s father who, faced with the threat of imprisonment or exile because of his massive debts, had taken his own life and thus left his name disgraced and his wife and family ruined. The Home Secretary gave Sandman a long, sour inspection, then turned to look at the bluebottle thumping against the window. The grandfather clock ticked hollow. The room was hot and Sandman was uncomfortably aware of the sweat soaking his shirt. The silence stretched and Sandman suspected the Home Secretary was weighing the wisdom of offering employment to Ludovic Sandman’s son. Wagons rumbled in the street beneath the windows. Hooves sounded sharp, and then, at last, Lord Sidmouth made up his mind. ‘I need a man to undertake a job,’ he said, still gazing at the window, ‘though I should warn you that it is not a permanent position. In no way is it permanent.’
‘It is anything but permanent,’ Witherspoon put in.
Sidmouth scowled at his secretary’s contribution. ‘The position is entirely temporary,’ he said, then gestured towards a great basket that stood waist high on the carpeted floor and was crammed with papers. Some were scrolls, some were folded and sealed with wax while a few showed legal pretensions by being wrapped in scraps of red ribbon. ‘Those, Captain,’ he said, ‘are petitions.’ Lord Sidmouth’s tone made it plain that he loathed petitions. ‘A condemned felon may petition the King in Council for clemency or, indeed, for a full pardon. That is their prerogative, Captain, and all such petitions from England and Wales come to this office. We receive close to two thousand a year! It seems that every person condemned to death manages to have a petition sent on their behalf, and they must all be read. Are they not all read, Witherspoon?’
Sidmouth’s secretary, a young man with plump cheeks, sharp eyes and elegant manners, nodded. ‘They are certainly examined, my lord. It would be remiss of us to ignore such pleas.’
‘Remiss indeed,’ Sidmouth said piously, ‘and if the crime is not too heinous, Captain, and if persons of quality are willing to speak for the condemned, then we might show clemency. We might commute a sentence of death to, say, one of transportation?’
‘You, my lord?’ Sandman asked, struck by Sidmouth’s use of the word ‘we’.
‘The petitions are addressed to the King,’ the Home Secretary explained, ‘but the responsibility for deciding on the response is properly left to this office and my decisions are then ratified by the Privy Council and I can assure you, Captain, that I mean ratified. They are not questioned.’
‘Indeed not!’ Witherspoon sounded amused.
‘I decide,’ Sidmouth declared truculently. ‘It is one of the responsibilities of this high office, Captain, to decide which felons will hang and which will be spared. There are hundreds of souls in Australia, Captain, who owe their lives to this office.’
‘And I am certain, my lord,’ Witherspoon put in smoothly, ‘that their gratitude is unbounded.’
Sidmouth ignored his secretary. Instead he tossed a scrolled and ribboned petition to Sandman. ‘And once in a while,’ he went on, ‘once in a very rare while, a petition will persuade us to investigate the facts of the matter. On those rare occasions, Captain, we appoint an Investigator, but it is not something we like to do.’ He paused, obviously inviting Sandman to enquire why the Home Office was so reluctant to appoint an Investigator, but Sandman seemed oblivious to the question as he slid the ribbon from the scroll. ‘A person condemned to death,’ the Home Secretary offered the explanation anyway, ‘has already been tried. He or she has been judged and found guilty by a court of law, and it is not the business of His Majesty’s government to revisit facts that have been considered by the proper courts. It is not our policy, Captain, to undermine the judiciary, but once in a while, very infrequently, we do investigate. That petition is just such a rare case.’
Sandman unrolled the petition, which was written in brownish ink on cheap yellow paper. ‘As God is my wittness,’ he read, ‘hee is a good boy and could never have killd the Lady Avebury as God knows hee could not hert even a flie.’ There was much more in the same manner, but Sandman could not read on because the Home Secretary had started to talk again.
‘The matter,’ Lord Sidmouth explained, ‘concerns Charles Corday. That is not his real name. The petition, as you can see for yourself, comes from Corday’s mother, who subscribes herself as Cruttwell, but the boy seems to have adopted a French name. God knows why. He stands convicted of murdering the Countess of Avebury. You doubtless recollect the case?’
‘I fear not, my lord,’ Sandman said. He had never taken much interest in crime, had never bought the Newgate Calendars nor read the broadsheets that celebrated notorious felons and their savage deeds.
‘There’s no mystery about it,’ the Home Secretary said. ‘The wretched man raped and stabbed the Countess of Avebury and he thoroughly deserves to hang. He is due on the scaffold when?’ He turned to Witherspoon.
‘A week from today, my lord,’ Witherspoon said.
‘If