The Hangman's Child Read Online Free PDF Page A

Babb has been suspended from his duties while disciplinary charges are considered. Should Mr Croaker learn that Sergeant Verity has passed such confidential information to other persons, he will unhesitatingly follow the same disciplinary process.
    Mr Croaker cannot determine why Sergeant Verity should calumniate a missioner who sought to bring the prisoner Rann to repentance. On inquiry, Mr Croaker finds the visitor to have been the Reverend Lewis Maybury, who sailed by appointment on the following day to join the chaplaincy to the English colony in Montevideo. The fact that Mr Maybury can no longer answer for himself in the circumstances is no reason why he should be defamed in his absence. Mr Croaker trusts that Sergeant Verity will think of this.
    The criminal conspiracy which Sergeant Verity alleges appears no more than a chimaera. The characters and records of Bragg, Nash, Mulligan, and Jenks are sufficiently documented in the files of the Detective Police, as they are in 'H' Division, Metropolitan Police, an area in which these men remain under the scrutiny of Detective Inspector Fowler and his colleagues.
    In this connection, Sergeant Verity will have the goodness to familiarize himself with Mr Fowler's promotion and substantive rank before making any further communication.
    Mr Croaker need scarcely remind Sergeant Verity that the prisoner Rann was convicted upon what the trial judge described as the plainest and most conclusive evidence. His Lordship informed the prisoner, upon conviction, that he could offer not the smallest hope that the sentence of the law would not be carried into effect. That advice was tendered to the Home Office. In such circumstances, it is not the policy of the Home Secretary to interfere with the process of the law nor the decisions of the courts.
    In conclusion, Sergeant Verity will oblige Mr Croaker by pursuing his present detachment to the river police with more diligence and effect than has been evident heretofore. The smuggling of tobacco and other contraband from vessels moored at the Thames wharves remains an affront to the commercial probity of the City of London and a criminal assault upon the finances of Her Majesty's Treasury. Sergeant Verity will look to this matter forthwith.
    H. Croaker, Insp. of Constabulary, 13 May 1860
    The dawn cloud broke into a mackerel sky, a blue vault above smoke-grey drifts. Jack Rann looked up at this distant square of light, high above the soaring granite walls of the airing-yard.
    Outside each death cell was a walled space, where a man or woman might walk without supervision. Escape through these yards was the first thought that crossed the minds of the condemned and the last hope that died. In a hundred years none had escaped from Newgate's airing-yards. Three had injured themselves in brief but futile attempts.
    From dusk until dawn, the door from the cell to the yard was locked. By daylight, Rann might walk in the paved area as he pleased. He had learnt every angle of it, every crack in the York paving, like a schoolroom map. It was twenty feet by thirty, the bottom of a towering shaft of polished stone, sixty feet high with its square of London sky. He laid his hand on the surface of the wall. Smooth as glass. No crevice nor crack, not so much as a chip in the stone that a man might work upon, even if the interval between sentence and execution allowed him time. No mortar-gap for the searching fingers, no ledge for the toes.
    He had walked here, day by day, head lowered as if resigned to death and eternity. They would like to see him penitent, if they bothered to look. The pasty chaplain might smile on him. To the turnkeys, he seemed safe enough where he was.
    Lupus had been sure to tell him a tale that Rann had heard long ago. How a poor fool, maddened by his fate, flew at the walls of the yard a few hours before they came to fetter him for the gallows. The terror of the noose, aided by smuggled hessian tied under his boots, briefly defied the