Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007

Untying the Knot by Barry Baldwin

“Prisoner at the bar. You have been found guilty of the crime with which you are charged. Have you anything to say before sentence is passed upon you?”

“My Lord, this is one in the eye for Joe Bernstein and Harry Goldberg. I shall die. But shall I hang? Thank you.”

It was hard to tell whose voice had been the flatter, the judge’s or the defendant’s. Amid the marbles and murals of the Old Bailey, police officers and journalists and court staff winked at each other. They had heard that last kind of thing from the dock before; only its details and delivery varied. But the mention of Joe Bernstein and Harry Goldberg did produce more than a fleeting impression, not weakened by the fact that no one knew who they were. They all looked, some with less sympathy than before, others with more, at the accused with an interest they had rarely felt during his trial. Like most of his kind, he was both in demeanor and as described by others — his own voice had not been heard until now — ordinary to the point of dullness. Seasoned observers recalled those rows of nonentities with funny names at Nuremberg, whose proceedings they had helped to harden in the concrete of history a few years ago. None imagined the man in front of them would be remembered beyond the day three weeks hence when the papers would report his brief encounter with the hangman at eight o’clock in the morning in Pentonville gaol.

Some, not all, thought that if the man shared ideas for which millions had died, it was no bad thing that he should be sent to join them. The trouble was, he was not on trial for those ideas, hadn’t killed for them. To die may be accounted the best thing a man ever did. Look at what Dickens wrote about Sydney Carton. This man, though, would only be on the receiving end of death as a result of having been on the giving end of it. Yet others would have done the same, including perhaps the twelve who had just legally placed the noose around his neck, and many would agree that he did not deserve to die for this particular deed.

None of this was a concern to the judge, who was now fingering something on his desk with unfeigned concentration. He was not one of those arbiters who in certain kinds of story or propaganda enjoy passing the sentence of death, sometimes to the point of involuntary ejaculation into Saville Row — tailored dark trousers. Had there been anybody with whom to share an intimate moment, he might have mentioned that he viewed this present discharge of his duty with regret, even distaste. But only might have. He regularly defined himself in his public speeches and smoking-room conversations — between which there was not all that much difference — as an administrator of the law, an executor in two ways, if you cared for that sort of humor. His study of philosophy at Oxford had left him with a permanent distaste for Socrates and his jawing to the point where he felt a distinct sympathy for those Athenian jurymen who had dispensed the hemlock all the way back in the three hundred and ninety-ninth year before the birth of Christ.

The judge picked up the black cap, perched it upon the wig that covered his fly’s skating rink of a head, and again without inflection recited the sentence down to its hallowed conclusion: “...to be hanged by the neck until you are dead. And may God have mercy upon your soul.” After a stiff bow, stiffly acknowledged, the prisoner was stood down, taken below, and transported without fuss to the room reserved for him in Pentonville.

There, the senior of the two warders with whom he would be playing happy families until the day of the drop laid out the rules and regulations to their new guest with matter-of-fact courtesy.

“You’re more or less going to be stuck with the two of us, so we’d best get on. I daresay we shall. There’s not been any bother with our previous gentlemen. That light stays on all the time, mind, just in case. But you can have something to put over your eyes for sleeping. Otherwise, it’s all quite civilized. There are games to play. One bloke, I remember, didn’t know a king from a pawn when he arrived; he was beating us hollow by the time he had to leave. You can have a newspaper brought in, though that’s not always a good idea. The library isn’t half bad. Back in 1910, I think it was, when he was in charge of prisons, dear old Winston Churchill insisted there be some good reading. Very keen on Gibbon, he was, though he admitted that might not be ideal for short-term stays. Still, there’s lots of other stuff. You are entitled to ten cigarettes a day, or half an ounce of pipe tobacco. Also a daily pint of beer, bottle of stout if you prefer. I might suggest the stout, it keeps your strength up more. You can send and receive letters and have anyone you like to visit, within reason. Talking of visitors, the governor will pop in twice a day, and the chaplain is on call whenever you want. Any questions?”

“Do you think I stand a chance, sir?”

“You don’t have to call me that. It’s up to the home secretary. There’s always a chance. But I wouldn’t dwell on it if I were you. Not considering who was killed.”

“Years ago,” the second warder contributed, “before the war, one chap got the word in here just as they were pinioning his arms ready to haul him away. Not that it did him much good; he keeled over and died of a heart attack the very next day. Delayed reaction, the medical officer said.”

“Anything can happen. My advice is, let’s wait and see. How old are you, son?”

“Nineteen.”

The prisoner didn’t ask why this question should have been tagged on to the admonition. That was a blessing for the warder. It was one of the personal details the hangman needed to know to do his job properly. Something about the relative muscular strength between various ages. For an unexplained bureaucratic reason, he was never given this information in advance. So, when he arrived with his assistant at four in the afternoon on the day before, as per usual, he would discreetly ask questions and watch the prisoner in the exercise yard to calculate his weight. The rope would be stretched overnight by leaving a sandbag dummy on it. Hanging a man is not so easy as it looks in one of those lynching scenes in Wild West films where they just slap a noose round the victim’s neck, giddy up the horse they’ve sat him on, and that’s that. Like the judge, the hangman took no pleasure from his job but prided himself on his professionalism. There was never going to be a repetition of 1922 and Mrs. Edith Thompson: Unable to forget what had gone on, the hangman’s assistant later attempted suicide. Not to mention the way some of the Nuremberg ones had been bungled. The drop had been too short, it was more strangling than hanging; a reporter who’d been there claimed that Keitel had taken nearly half an hour to die.

The key is the C1 and C2 vertebrae, known in the trade as the Hangman’s Drops. When the spinal cord suffers a blow, these are compressed, and if proper force has been applied, fractured. The sheer force of the blow kills some nerves instantly. Then the compression causes electrical impulses traveling through nerve cells in the area to go haywire, and the overload causes many neurons to kill themselves. The dying nerve cells leak calcium, which attracts enzymes to the area that chew on the tissues. Their by-products are unstable compounds that destroy healthy cells by scavenging their oxygen. These dying cells trigger a secondary wave of destruction that sweeps from the injured area and radiates outward. Blood flow to the nervous system is slowed, immune cells flood the area and chew up damaged and healthy nerves alike. The result is gaping holes in the spinal column, and the long nerve fibers called axons that weave down the spine from the brain are stripped of their protective fatty coat of myelin, without which the nerves cannot function, and unlike the peripheral one, the central nervous system does not regenerate.

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.

It was the least the warder could do. He, too, had been on that peace demonstration, wearing a balaclava over his face, something not out of place on a bitter January morning, lots of other marchers were wearing them, though not for the same reason. As a servant of the crown he was not allowed to have public opinions. He had received several good whacks from the constable’s truncheon, including the one on the head, which still bothered him.

Since the right questions weren’t asked, the right answers weren’t given. There was some resentment, within and without the prison, that the culprit had escaped the hangman, but since he was dead anyway, this soon evaporated. The home secretary’s office announced that no last-minute reprieve had been contemplated. This was not true, but it was thought expedient to say so, to damp down public curiosity and nip in the bud any possible rumors and newspaper headlines about Fate Taking A Strange Twist.

Both warders stayed on the death cell rosters, it was not a responsibility for which there was much competition, until the hangman was put out of a job in 1965. Nothing much changed between them or inside them, except that even after chocolate rationing stopped in 1954, neither of them seemed to bring in Slam Bars to go with their tea anymore.