The Convictions of John Delahunt (4 page)

I pulled the door on to its latch. ‘I’d be delighted.’

I hailed a hansom and assisted her within, her fingertips resting on mine. I called up to the driver, ‘Thomas Street,’ but he said crowds had blocked the roads around St Catherine’s Church. In that case, I said, as close as he could manage.

Safely hidden in the cabriolet’s enclosure, we could relax. Helen had followed Blackwood’s trial since it had commenced and was eager to discuss its intrigues and protagonists, but I had to plead ignorance of many details. She wondered how I was unaware of so many of its particulars since the papers had reported little else.

I looked out of the window. ‘Not the papers I read.’ A drift of citizens moved in the same direction. On Dame Street, people spilled from the pavements on to the rutted roadway, hindering traffic.

Helen was happy to describe the pertinent elements of the trial. Mrs Blackwood had administered tiny doses of poison to her husband for some time. He had begun showing symptoms of illness, and his death would have been attributed to that mysterious ailment but for a nauseating accident. One day, after his evening meal, the husband was tending to his animals, when the effects of the poison took hold and he emptied his stomach. One of his brothers went to clean up the mess in the yard, but he found a pig was already at work, slurping up the spillings with apparent relish. When the poor animal keeled over a few minutes later, poison was suspected and the investigation began. My nose wrinkled at some of these details. Sarah’s solution of arsenic was discovered in a drawer. Most presumed her lover had provided it but that was never proved. The husband was beyond help and died a few days later.

I told Helen if she was ever minded to murder her husband she must think of a better hiding place for the poison than her linen drawer.

She looked across to me. ‘I’ll try to remember.’

She said Blackwood’s defence claimed her husband had been abusive. Neighbours testified that they could often hear her cries at night. But all that was forgotten when the letters she wrote to her lover were produced, their contents drawled out in a thronged courtroom by an ancient prosecuting counsel. Blackwood could only sit and listen to the galleries snigger at her exposed heart. Helen’s eyes had lost some focus. ‘But the letters were beautiful.’

The congestion on the road, both vehicles and footfall, meant we moved in fits. Those in the crowd were in good spirits, anticipating the spectacle. There was a larger proportion of women than would be usual because of the female felon. Street hawkers did a brisk trade, while some pubs had set up stalls outside their doors, selling bottles of liquor to the cheery passers-by.

The flap in the ceiling was pulled up and the jowly face of the driver peered down. He said traffic was blocked completely ahead. The low crenellated spire of Christ Church was within sight so I suggested we walk. Once we had alighted, the current of pedestrians pushed us forward and I told Helen to stay close. She hooked her hand in my elbow, leaned towards me with her other hand resting on my upper arm. Beyond Christ Church the crowd was thicker and our progress slowed. We rubbed against shoulders covered in every style of fabric, and in every state of cleanliness, but Helen seemed oblivious.

The stream of people widened in the expanse of Cornmarket Square; then we were funnelled into Thomas Street and the vista before us cleared: a multitude of hats and heads jostling for a good vantage, the wide street almost completely filled for two hundred yards. The scaffold came into view and there was a murmur from those around us. Necks were craned to see the temporary wooden structure in front of St Catherine’s Church, still quite a bit in the distance. A long line of policemen kept one side of the road clear, awaiting the arrival of the leading lady. Helen walked on tipped-toes to catch her first glimpse of the twisting noose.

On the corner with Meath Street, a horseless cart was propped up so it sat flat. A large sign on white canvas was hoisted above, which read, ‘Cease to do Evil, Learn to do Well’. Two ladies dressed in what looked like mourning attire handed out printed bills, while a man stood on the bed of the cart haranguing the crowd. His clothing looked costly, but dishevelled and stained. His white hair stood on end, and the tip of his nose hung down as if tugged by a small weight. When he lurched from one end of the cart to the other he dragged his right foot, which scraped lamely along the slats. He scorned those beneath him, said we must each be examples of Christian perfection to revel in the sight of one hurried to ultimate judgement, uncalled by her maker. For a moment I thought he railed against the entire system of capital punishment, but I underestimated him.

‘Where is the noose for the adulterer, the idolater, the violator of the Sabbath?’ The zealot said we were each as guilty as she who would swing, and he began to point into the crowd. He pointed to a spectacled man, a clerk in a pinstriped suit. ‘You are as guilty.’ He pointed to a gypsy woman carrying a liquor bottle, her face red and hardened. ‘You are as guilty.’ And then he fixed me along the length of his crooked finger and gnarled knuckle. He trained his extended arm on my movements; his eyebrow arched and his fervent eye flashed. This time he spoke in a hoarse whisper. ‘And you are guilty.’

Helen looked up at me, delighted. I tore my gaze from the evangelist, shrugged and said, ‘I think he was pointing at you.’

Cheers and loud laughter made us both turn. A fat drunkard had lowered his britches, bent double in proud display to those in and around the cart. The preacher gazed down in revulsion at the ample white flesh and its dark heart, all his opinions of human baseness confirmed. Helen laughed through a hand that covered her mouth. She looked rather more closely when the man immodestly bent back up and struggled to fix the front of his trousers. I tugged at her arm. ‘Let’s keep moving forward.’

Helen was adept at spotting gaps in the crowd; she would take my hand and bustle through the press. Eventually, we reached a good vantage point about a hundred feet from the gallows. A looped rope hung suspended from a simple frame on a high wooden platform. A large drape concealed the space beneath the stage and trapdoor. The backdrop was the front of St Catherine’s Church, with its classical entablature and squat bell tower. The shopfronts on Thomas Street were shuttered, but faces appeared in every one of the upper-storey windows. The owners hired out the rooms to wealthy spectators on days such as this. They looked down, with wine glasses and cigars, as if from the boxes in a theatre.

Then a cheer rolled through the mob, heralding the arrival of the prison convoy. Two horse-drawn carriages led the way. The prisoner followed in a covered cart. We couldn’t see the woman being taken out, but a hush had fallen over the people as the guards prepared to bring her up the steps. Jeers rang out a moment later when the masked hangman emerged on to the platform. Even Helen hissed as he walked over to examine the noose and the lever that operated the trapdoor. He was joined by a number of prison guards and a priest who intoned prayers while holding a bible before his chest.

The woman stepped up and the crowd fell silent once more. Her dark hair was tied back, and I wondered if the ponytail would interfere with the slipknot. Flyaway strands rose in the breeze as she gazed across the assembly, her gaunt face pale against the dark prison garb.

A gasp went up when her knees gave way and she fell forward in a faint. Her hands were tied so she would have suffered injury if a guard had not caught her in an awkward embrace. Perhaps it would have been more humane to take her senseless to the rope. Instead a medic was called for, and he tended to the doomed woman until she revived.

Once beneath the gibbet, her shoulders stooped and head bowed. The hangman bent down to tie a restraining belt around her shins for the sake of modesty. It caused the skirt to billow about her knees. He then withdrew a hood that had been folded in his pocket, daintily snapped it so it unfurled and pulled it over her face. Helen’s hand squeezed mine and she stood closer. The rope was lassoed about Blackwood’s head and tightened beneath her chin like a necktie. The slack drooped down beneath her shoulders.

Just as the hangman stepped back there was consternation as the woman fainted again. This time the noose checked her fall and she was in danger of strangling herself before they were ready. Two guards rushed forward to take her weight as the hangman tried to loosen the rope. There were groans from the crowd. Women blessed themselves. A man behind us called for them to just pull the bloody lever. When the woman once more stood unaided the executioners acted quickly. All guards stood back. The hangman looked to an official at the edge of the platform who gave a nod, and without further hesitation the lever was thrown.

I often try and imagine the events of that day from Blackwood’s perspective. To ascend the stage and be the focus of every eye. The sea of faces framed by the gibbet and noose. The steadying hands of the prison guards. The hangman restraining my legs, his face covered like a coward. I just hope my knees don’t weaken, though I fear the mob will not be kind. Not if the one at my trial was any indication.

Mrs Blackwood fell through the hole in the platform to the level of her navel before her jarring stop, like a conker dropped from a string. Her neck didn’t break. Helen’s hand came up on impulse to the skin around her throat. In the hush, the creak of the rope could be heard, as well as the far-off voice of the preacher drifting over the crowd. The woman continued to kick for about a minute. Several people around us began to look away, but not Helen. Her fingernails dug into my knuckles and her shoulders rose as she held her breath. Finally Blackwood’s agonies ceased and she came to rest, though she rocked back and forth somewhat, like a pendulum.

Smatterings of applause broke out in the crowd, and some cheers; above all there was just a resumption of conversation. People began to drift away. I spoke Helen’s name. When she continued to look towards the scaffold I touched her shoulder, just where the skin met the wide neckline of her dress.

My final-year examinations were imminent. A few days after Mrs Blackwood’s hanging, I was studying in my room, skimming through a tattered edition of Lloyd’s
Treatise on Light and Vision
. But my mind was elsewhere.

As a prospective suitor I had little to offer. If I attained my degree perhaps I could find work as a research assistant in the college, or at Hamilton’s observatory, but my income would be paltry. Helen’s father would not consider me an option.

Miss Joyce knocked on my chamber door and said, ‘John, may I speak with you a moment?’

‘Just a minute.’

I looked at the damp brown patch in the corner of the ceiling. It had seeped into the stucco work and over the cheek of a plaster cherub, like a birthmark, or a bloodstain. The mosaic tiles in the hearth were cracked and their colours faded. The wallpaper by the window box had begun to peel away, revealing an old pattern which had not been put up in my lifetime. Mr Stokes would not permit his daughter to live here.

Miss Joyce knocked again. ‘I really must speak with you.’

I walked past the door to place Lloyd’s volume on my shelf, then thought again, and clasped it beneath my elbow.

When I opened the door, Miss Joyce glanced down at the book. ‘I’m sorry to disturb your studies.’

‘Not at all.’

‘I wanted to tell you that I have dispensed with the services of your father’s physician.’ When I said nothing she added, ‘He isn’t making him any better.’

Dr Moore had been a mainstay of our house for much of my life, attending when anyone in the family suffered from poor health or infection. He had nursed my mother through her final illness. I remembered overhearing a conversation he had held with my father on the landing outside their room, telling him there was no longer any hope. I was only ten, and sat perched on a step out of sight beyond the return. I recall holding my breath so as not to betray my presence.

I could have argued against Moore’s dismissal, but I didn’t wish to become embroiled in my father’s care. ‘Whatever you think best.’

Miss Joyce had already hired two new doctors – Blythe and Warren – who, she claimed, had managed to cure her sister’s rheumatism after years of suffering. They were both homeopaths, and immediately put my father on a course of infinitesimal prescriptions. I occasionally bumped into them as they prepared tonics in the kitchen. Their meticulous measurements, with phials, tinctures and droppers, reminded me of the experimental workbenches in college.

Arthur Stokes was a medical student, and I spoke to him about the treatments one evening in the Eagle. He looked at me with concern. ‘I fear if your father has stopped receiving care from allopathic doctors then it’s inevitable he will suffer a decline.’

I wasn’t sure what to make of that. That the current ministrations might hasten my father from the world wasn’t all that troubling. Rather, I feared the new doctors would prove adept at keeping him alive until his money ran out.

Soon enough, every spare penny in the house was going towards the new medical bills. A meagre allowance that I received each month was halted, and for the first time in my life I was penniless. Of course I wasn’t destitute – my college fees were paid up, I had several rooms in the house in which I lived undisturbed and could survive on the provisions brought in. However, I could no longer buy new books, or a bottle of wine, or a bouquet of flowers.

Seeing Helen again became a preoccupation. I skipped afternoon lectures to walk home by Merrion Square, aware that she took a stroll in the enclosed park each day with her elderly governess, Mrs Bruce. The red-brick terraces of the square hem in a large and rambling pleasure garden, with tall trees, manicured lawns and serpentine paths. I had no key, so could only skirt the iron rail, but occasionally I caught Helen’s eye as she walked within.

One afternoon, a woman with an infant in a baby carriage approached the gate from the inside. She withdrew a key from her apron and attempted to back out, but the sprung hinges of the gate closed against her. I took hold of the railing and said, ‘Allow me, madam.’ She thanked me, called me a gentleman, and didn’t mind that I walked past her into the garden.