The Durham deception

Execution

Tom and Helen Ansell had left Durham by the time sentence was carried out on Doctor Anthony Smight. The execution was fixed for three weeks after the end of the trial. There was no attempt at an appeal, no petition for clemency. Few new facts had been discovered about Smight and the story of the Demon Doctor faded from the front pages. The Durham superintendent who had been assigned by Chief Constable Huggins with the investigation of the murder of Eustace Flask, following Harcourt’s own death, quietly closed the file since it was obvious that the doctor had killed the medium. No one greatly regretted Flask’s demise apart, perhaps, from Julia Howlett – and she had been so absorbed in her niece’s fate that she had little time to spare for ‘poor Eustace’.

Smight had been an exemplary prisoner, in that he caused no trouble and made no requests. One day the governor of the gaol brought him a letter. It was an ill-written missive from George Forester, the man who had spied on the houses belonging to the Seldons and the Ansells in London. Forester, as Inspector Traynor had explained, could not square his conscience with his suspicions about the Seldons’ deaths and so had informed on Smight. Naturally Forester said nothing of this in the letter but he expressed his regret that the good Doctor Tony was in gaol (‘goal’ as he wrote it) and his hope that he would find comfort (‘cumfert’) in the Lord. Oh, and Annie and the kids, specially (‘spesherly’) Mike, sent their loves.

Smight glanced at the letter, then screwed it up and tossed it into a corner of the cell. He was sent no other communication apart from two proposals of marriage which he never read because the governor intercepted and destroyed them. If his sister Ethel knew of his fate, she did not get in touch. He had no visitors other than, early on, his counsel wanting to discuss an appeal. Smight rejected the proposal.

If Smight was an exemplary prisoner he wasn’t a popular one, in the way that some condemned men and women became popular by striking up a weird sort of friendship with the warders. Those assigned to guard Smight reminisced fondly about the recent occupants of the condemned quarter of the gaol, honest men brought down by drink or temper, everyday individuals who’d tumbled into murder by accident. They even had a good word for Mary Ann Cotton, who had been executed the previous year after an extensive poisoning spree. Mary was a dangerous bird all right, but she’d crack a joke with her keepers and pass the time of day with them, unlike the yellow-faced sour-guts presently sitting in the condemned cell. They said he was lucky. A few years earlier and the doctor would have been topped outside the gaol – or outside the new courthouse more precisely – for all the world to see. There’d have been a good turnout for a public turning-off, one to rival old Mary Cotton’s.

Did Anthony Smight care about any of this? He did not appear to. He read poetry! He took his twice-daily exercise in the condemned yard which, with its high walls giving a view of nothing but sky and neighbouring chimney stacks, was like a prison within a prison. If he was pining for an opium-pipe, he did not indicate it by a single gesture or word. In fact, he continued to say almost nothing.

On the afternoon before the day of Smight’s execution, the hangman William Marcraft arrived from London. He booked into one of the city’s cheaper hotels and reported to the prison shortly before four o’clock, the hour stipulated in his memorandum of conditions. There he examined the scaffold and the pit in the yard, even though he was already familiar with these items. He tested the lever and trapdoors, he peered into the brick-lined pit below. He obtained details of the condemned man’s weight and height from the prison doctor and snatched a look at Anthony Smight through a peephole in the cell door. He saw an individual stretched out on his bed, hands behind his head. He could not tell whether Smight was asleep.

Marcraft then returned to his inexpensive hotel and made a few calculations in a black-bound notebook which he kept for this purpose. He compared Smight’s physical details with those of a couple of other individuals listed in the book. Marcraft went downstairs and had a supper of steak-and-kidney pie in the hotel dining room. He drank half a pint of porter. He was a naturally abstemious man whether in his regular trade as a barber or his occasional work as a hangman. The landlord knew the reason for Marcraft’s presence in Durham as, most likely, did all of the staff, but no one said a word about it to the hangman’s face. Nor did he mention it, again a condition that was laid down in his memorandum.

While William Marcraft was eating his pie, Anthony Smight was taking his last supper. He turned in at ten o’clock and, to those who inspected him throughout the night, he appeared to sleep soundly. So soundly that he had to be roused the next morning when the chaplain slipped into the cell, together with two warders. Smight had already rejected the chaplain’s overtures on earlier visits and he proceeded to ignore the man as he tried a mixture of prayer, consolation and conversation while the doctor ate his breakfast. Smight did not eat much but he chewed and swallowed composedly.

Shortly before eight William Marcraft entered the cell, with the governor and another pair of warders. The hangman shook Smight’s hand, a gesture that wasn’t entirely courteous since it enabled him to half immobilize the condemned man as well as to gauge his nervousness by feeling him, palm to palm. But Anthony Smight’s hand was dry as dust and he offered no struggle as his arms and hands were pinioned by two of the warders.

Then, with the neatness of a long-practised military drill, Smight was half-marched, half-escorted out of the cell and into the yard. It was already a fine morning, just past midsummer though no sun had yet reached the yard. Smight was placed between the posts of the scaffold and over the trapdoors which opened into the pit. He was permitted one final glimpse around, at the high walls, at the half dozen warders, the doleful-looking chaplain, the brisk-faced governor, the prison doctor, and William Marcraft himself.

Then the hangman drew the hood of coarse cloth over the doctor’s face and adjusted the rope about his neck. Smight was left standing alone. There was the grating sound of a lever and the abrupt swing of the trapdoors. Smight dropped soundlessly. The rope jerked to a halt after what seemed an eternity but was scarcely a second. It quivered. What happened next was the real test of the hangman’s skill. It might take minutes, even a whole quarter of an hour, for a man to die if the executioner had botched his job, signified by the continued shivering of the rope. But Marcraft was as careful in his preparations as he was restrained in his drinking habits. The rope trembled for a few instants only, and then fell still.

The witnesses crowded to the edge of the pit. Doctor Anthony Smight was dead, no question. He had died as silently as he had lived his last weeks in the condemned cell.

By half past eight the black flag had been raised above the gaol and a notice testifying to Smight’s lawful execution posted on the main gate. A crowd of people quickly gathered to read it to each other and to conclude that justice had been done.

What About the Others?

And what about the other participants in this story – or some of them at any rate? None met so grisly a fate as Doctor Smight, who after being hanged was buried by the wall of the hospital prison, to join the rest of the executed men and women. If you go to search, you will find no name to mark his grave, only the date of his execution (27th July, 1874) inscribed over a downward-pointing arrow.

Eustace Flask fared rather better, one might say. After the arrest of Smight but before his trial, the medium was interred at a quiet ceremony in a quiet church on the fringe of the city. There were several mourners, including Julia Howlett and Septimus Sheridan, with Tom and Helen Ansell to keep them company. In addition there was a small turnout of constables and Inspector Traynor. Also present was Frank Harcourt’s widow, Rhoda, who had prevailed on Traynor to escort her. She had fond memories of the deceased – all those little gifts! – and was willing to overlook the normal conventions of being in mourning for her husband to pay her respects to Flask. Then there were a few curious passers-by and droppers-in. Someone quietly but irreverently enquired, as the coffin was being borne in, whether Eustace was flinging around handfuls of flour and tambourines on the inside.

Aunt Julia had to use her influence to find a clergyman to officiate at the funeral and a cemetery willing to take Eustace’s remains. His spiritualism was not approved of by the ecclesiastical authorities in Durham and the first three clergy Julia approached had, politely, declined. But Julia was persistent, even relentless, and she eventually found a broad-minded cleric who would send Eustace packing in plain, low-church style. The oddest feature of the ceremony was the presence of a batch of paid mourners, with their professional long faces and black crepe accessories. Aunt Julia denied that she had paid for them but no one else owned up.

Kitty Partout and Ambrose Barker did not attend Eustace’s funeral. They were afraid of provoking more interest from the police. They did not stay in Durham to read about the execution of Anthony Smight in the Advertiser. They did not even wait for the outcome of the trial. Some instinct warned them to put a distance between themselves and this city. Besides, the rent on their house in Old Elvet had run out and so they decided to try their luck elsewhere. Not in the desperate business of enticement and robbery but by using the skills which they had acquired from Eustace Flask. Kitty had enjoyed playing the part of the Indian maid, Running Brook, and believed it would be no great step to turn herself into a fully-fledged medium. She had, almost unawares, absorbed plenty of Uncle Eustace’s patter and knew the workings of the props such as the writing slate. Ambrose, glad to be reconciled with Kitty, was willing to take the more menial role of protector, carpenter and general handyman.

So Kitty and Ambrose took the train across the Pennines with their spirit cabinet and other gear stowed in the guard’s van. They arrived in Carlisle. There Kitty developed her French strain. She became Mademoiselle Kitty Partout (always pronounced Partoo) and, once she had done a little research and felt confident enough, she claimed to be in touch with the spirit of Mary Queen of Scots who was Carlisle’s most famous prisoner as well as being a French speaker. There are not many mediums who can claim to be inspired by a dead queen and she has met with some success.

Julia Howlett did not spend long in regret for the violent death of Eustace Flask but swiftly turned her attention to another object of interest. She and Septimus Sheridan were sitting quietly in the drawing-room of Colt House. Septimus was reading The Durham Advertiser while Julia Howlett was turning the pages of a quarterly called The Spiritualist Adviser.

‘Septimus, I have been thinking.’

Septimus put down his paper and looked benignly at his landlady.

‘Yes, Miss Howlett?’

‘We have known each other these many years now.’

‘Indeed we have.’

‘There was a time when our friendship – I hope I may call it a friendship – threatened to turn into something different.’

Septimus noted her use of ‘threatened’. But this was the first time she had raised the subject of their engagement since his arrival in Colt House as her lodger. His heart beating fast, he wondered whether he had the nerve to say what he wanted to say.

‘Miss Howlett, all that is so long ago I can scarcely remember the reasons why it did not, in your apt expression, “turn into something different”. But I do know that, whatever happened, it was my own fault.’

And I have regretted it ever since, he might have added.

‘Let us not talk of faults or blame, Septimus,’ she said. ‘I think the time has come to turn over a new leaf.’

Septimus Sheridan’s mouth was suddenly dry. His hands tightened on the newspaper. He could say no more than, ‘It has?’

‘Yes. I think it absurd that we should go on as we have been going on.’

Septimus made no reply. He was half afraid of what she might say next.

Was she about to ask him to leave Colt House? Was she about to make some roundabout suggestion of marriage? He could not decide which would be worse.

‘Absurd, as I say. I have been calling you Septimus for years now while you, most politely, have always referred to me as Miss Howlett. But the time has surely come when you must – when you should – call me Julia.’

Septimus realized that he had been holding his breath. He let out a slow sigh. He rubbed at his straggly white hair. He almost smiled.

‘Of course… Julia.’

‘You see how easy it is. Do not let me interrupt your reading.’

‘You are not interrupting anything. But I have just noticed an item about Major Marmont and his troupe. He is booked for a season in the Egyptian Hall.’

‘Good Heavens, he is more intrepid than I thought if he is performing in Cairo.’

‘The Egyptian Hall is in Piccadilly, Miss – Julia. It is a small theatre and it has a reputation for staging new magic tricks. At least that is what it says here in the paper. It also says: Our Durham readers will no doubt be interested to hear of the progress of Major Sebastian Marmont and his Hindoo troupe after their recent and highly successful run at the Assembly Rooms. The magical Major has now repaired to the capital and two nights ago he unveiled one of his most extraordinary feats at Piccadilly’s Egyptian Hall, a fashionable though not capacious venue for the latest acts from the conjuring world. We have heard of but never yet seen the famous rope trick, supposedly deriving from those fabulous lands in the Far East, and this is a deficiency that Major Marmont is determined to remedy, at least for the fortunate denizens of the metropolis. A correspondent tells us that any of our readers visiting London should be warned that the show is not for the faint-hearted but they may be assured, if they venture among the papyrus-leaf columns of the Egyptian Hall, of suspense and thrills a-plenty. It is to be hoped that if the miracle-working Major chooses to grace the north-east with his presence again he will deign to demonstrate the rope trick. ’

‘Not for the faint-hearted. It sounds rather alarming to me, Septimus. I think we have had enough excitement here in Durham to last us for a year or two.’

‘I agree with you, Julia.’

Septimus had recovered from the business of Eustace Flask’s death. He had told no one apart from Julia and Superintendent Harcourt that he had been near the scene of the murder and, in any case, nothing had come of that since, with the arrest of Smight, the investigation came to an end. Septimus returned to his work in the cathedral library, the slow-developing study of the patristic fathers, and did his best to forget about the last few weeks. He was pleased that she was encouraging him to call her Julia. Now he had no other ambition than to be allowed to remain in Colt House as Miss Howlett’s – Julia’s – lodger or, perhaps more accurately, her companion.

‘I’m sorry, Julia, were you saying something?’

‘I too have been reading,’ said Julia, indicating her copy of The Spiritualist Adviser. ‘Although poor Eustace Flask has crossed over to the other side, the cause continues. It grows, it strengthens.’

‘Of course it does, Miss – Julia.’

‘I know that I am talking to a sceptic, Septimus. But even sceptics may be won round. I read in The Adviser of a new movement which is beginning in America, in New York. A woman called Madame Blavatsky has established a ‘miracle club’ there. It will provide clear proof that miracles can happen. The article says too that Madame Blavatsky is a Russian. She is investigating the secret lore of the Hindus, the Buddhists and the ancient Greeks, and will shortly announce the formation of a new religion.’

‘A new religion? But I cannot see what is wrong with the old one.’

‘Oh Septimus, you are such a stick-in-the-mud.’

Inspector William Traynor remained in Durham until a couple of days after the conclusion of Smight’s trial. He did not wait for the execution. His presence wasn’t necessary and he was no ghoul. He had moved out of Inspector Harcourt’s house in Hallgarth Street since it would have been improper to continue to lodge with a fresh – and not unattractive – widow. Rhoda Harcourt was adequately distressed by her husband’s death and, for months afterwards, she pored over the album of newspaper cuttings which she had compiled, cuttings describing the true-life drama in the Palace of Varieties. Rhoda became both tearful and proud at the references to her late husband as ‘selfless’ and ‘heroic’. But she was not, potentially, inconsolable. For example, she was drawn, quite drawn, by the detective from Great Scotland Yard. She was aware of his bachelor status. She had even ventured to ask, in a slightly flirtatious way over the supper table, whether he was a bachelor by – how could she put this? – by conviction, or a bachelor by circumstance. Frank looked sharply at her but the Inspector did not seem put out by the question. In fact he hinted that, yes, although he might once have been disappointed in love he was now perfectly happy with his single existence.

Then the dreadful thing happened and Rhoda donned her widow’s weeds, and Inspector Traynor moved into a hotel. But the Inspector uttered many kind and appropriate words after Harcourt’s death. She prevailed on him to escort her to the funeral of Eustace Flask since, she said, the medium had been a good friend to both of them (Traynor was surprised to hear this).

At some point Rhoda mentioned having a sister in London, one to whom a visit was long overdue. As soon as a decent period of mourning had elapsed she might consider such a visit. William Traynor, quick to take a hint, said that if she did come to London, he could offer her a most satisfying afternoon. He explained that there was an area where prisoners’ confiscated property was stored near the Yard in Whitehall Place. These were notorious prisoners, convicted of the worst or most curious crimes, and in this museum – he might go so far as to call it a museum – was a display of poisoners’ phials, the spades and picks belonging to various resurrection men, the death masks of the more famous customers of the hangman, and so on. As a policeman’s widow, she would surely be interested in a private tour of these criminal effects. This might not have been Rhoda Harcourt’s idea of an enjoyable excursion but she put a good face on it. She promised to write to William Traynor as soon as she was free to visit London. Perhaps she was thinking of her promotion too, from a Durham Superintendent to a Great Scotland Yard Inspector.