This is just some of what a conscientious hangman needs to know. Prison guards do not; and for the hangee, ignorance is bliss. When the warders had got their charge bedded down for the night, they settled themselves, less comfortable than him in their upright wooden chairs, to assess the situation. The senior man was now a good deal less composed than before. His partner reflected that he’d been up and down like this since that never clearly explained injury nearly a year ago.
“Reprieve? Fat chance. They never let you off for killing a police officer. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have got away with manslaughter, no question. Especially as he was only there by accident.”
“All that violence on a peace march. It doesn’t make sense.”
“Nothing has made sense since the war, if you ask me.”
The second warder wasn’t going to ask him. Not about that, at any rate. “That stuff he came out with in court. Do you reckon he will try to top himself?”
The other laughed knowingly. “Not on your nelly. Half of them say that just to create an impression. It’s never happened yet.”
“There’s always a first time. Hermann the German got away with it at Nuremberg.”
“Yes, well, his guards must have been asleep on the job. Yanks! Anyway, Goering had plenty of friends in high places.”
“I read in Titbits once that he hid his capsule inside the cavity of an old scar on his belly until the night before.”
They both glanced across to the apparently sleeping prisoner. “Titbits,” scoffed the senior warder, “that’s a right scholarly journal, I don’t think. Still, it wouldn’t do any harm to check him over in the shower tomorrow morning. You can look up his backside, since you’re such an expert on cavities.”
“That gives me something to look forward to. But it’s our arses on the line if anything were to go wrong.”
“All right, you’ve made your point, and I agree, we can’t be too careful. But where would sonny boy over there get himself a cyanide capsule? Think about it. You can’t just walk into Boots and buy them like a packet of Dispirin. It might happen in one of your magazine stories, but not in real life.”
The other still considered raising the possibility of somebody importing a poison, but decided against it. He didn’t want to push the senior man over the edge. As it turned out, this was never an issue. The whole time he was there, the prisoner did not have a single visitor.
“Don’t you have anyone at all, son?”
“Like it came out in court, my mother and father were killed in the Blitz, and if they had any relations I’ve never seen them. Everybody reckoned it was a miracle I wasn’t blown up as well. The priest was sure it meant God had spared me for some higher purpose.”
That was right enough in a way, thought the second warder, gallows in mind.
“Our chaplain’s C of E, of course, but he takes on all comers. If you really want a proper priest, I could send word to the governor.”
The prisoner said politely that he didn’t want any kind of priest, proper or otherwise. Can’t be much of a Catholic, the senior warder decided, but then neither could his parents have been, what with them only having the one child. This theological musing led him to another question.
“Not thinking of trying anything silly, are you, son?”
“How do you mean?”
“That business in court about doing yourself in.”
“I only meant I might be taken before the day. You never know.”
True enough, both warders thought, for different reasons. But neither pursued the point, either with him or each other.
“Mind you,” the senior warder said neutrally, “you didn’t do yourself any favors coming out with that remark about Joe Bernstein and Harry Goldberg. What with all that’s happened in the world, there’s no profit to be had from taking that line anymore.”
I wouldn’t be too sure, the second warder thought.
“I wasn’t taking any line. Joe Bernstein and Harry Goldberg were two lads in our class. Nobody liked them. They had more pocket money than we did and made a lot more out of a kind of school newspaper they ran. They once made fun of me in a thing they wrote, said it would be the first and last time I’d ever be in the papers for anything.”
Words mean what they say but do not always say what they mean. “The rest of the world thinks he’s a suicidal anti-Semite, and only us two know different.”
“Though he wasn’t on oath when he said any of that.”
He was a model prisoner. Too much so, for their liking. They were almost glad of the one time he gave them a scare, staying too long in the lavatory, but when they charged in he just looked embarrassed and said he was having trouble going. You’ll not have that problem on the day, the second warder thought. He didn’t take advantage of the drink or tobacco rations. He never asked for a newspaper, or to visit the library. He declined to play any of their games, though did ask to use the pack of cards, with which he played a variety of patience neither of them knew. When he wasn’t doing this, or enduring his exercise periods, he seemed content to lie on his bed, not ever making use of the bandage for his eyes.
Apart from the cards, the only thing he asked for was chocolate. “Slam Bars, those are my favorite.” This was a bit of a poser, chocolate still being in short supply. But the senior warder spared him a few from his own precious rations, though the other one never did, and when he mentioned the prisoner’s sweet tooth to the governor, the latter said he’d see what he could do.
Even though they should have been used to him after three weeks, the two warders were still impressed when on his last night on earth their prisoner said he didn’t want anything special for the traditional last breakfast, just one more Slam Bar would do, turned in early, and went to sleep almost at once.
“Rummest cove we’ve ever had in here, that’s for certain.”
“If anything is.”
“Might have been different if the person being beaten up had testified.”
“Never testified because never found. Wouldn’t have done any good. He killed a constable who right or wrong was only doing his job.”
“That’s what that lot at Nuremberg said.”
Had things gone to plan, the hangman and his assistant would have arrived the next morning at 7:56 precisely, on the customary signal given by the sheriff. Instead, they were already on their way home, cheated of a fee. Inside the cell, one warder was copiously using the lavatory. The other was stolidly fending off icily polite questions from the governor while trying to avoid getting elbowed by the chaplain flapping around the bed on which lay the prisoner, dead as the proverbial doornail. There was no rigor mortis to speak of. It had been a warm night outside, the cell was stuffy, and he was in the regulation heavy pyjamas. According to the medical officer, for whom this was a very different kind of body from his usual ones, it was a simple case of myocarditis, brought on by the heat of the night and the stress of the occasion, especially a stress that he gathered had been so tightly compressed. No, he told the board of enquiry, there was no trace of any pills or poison in his system, and there was nothing untoward about the state of the bed.
If cell walls could talk, they would not have agreed. At about two in the morning, one of the warders, saying he would have his later, which he never did, had passed to the other a mug of tea from the thermos flask he always brought in, though this was the first time its contents had ever been laced with laxative. When the latter was on the second or third of his sudden dashes to and protracted stays on the bowl, thinking about nothing or nobody else, the other crossed over to the bed, took the chosen object from his pocket, and with it choked the prisoner who, deceptively or not, lay there looking as though butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.