Sinistrari

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Sinistrari - book excerpt

Chapter 1

COURT NUMBER ONE, CENTRAL CRIMINAL COURT, LONDON, ENGLAND

MAY 26th, 1888

PULLING OPEN THE STRINGS OF A BLACK VELVET BAG, THE JUDGE’S CLERK, withdrew a square of black silk from within and then took up station behind the chair of the judge, Mister Justice Knox-Porter. The crowded courtroom hushed in deadly expectation. Knox-Porter allowed the silence to deepen even further before addressing the prisoner at the Dock.

‘Edward James Sinistrari, this court has found you guilty of the most savage crimes, guilty beyond any shadow of doubt of the ritualistic and sadistic murders of Mary Margaret Hopwell, Alice Newton, Susan Siddons and Katherine Anne Pellew, crimes the foulness of which beggar the imagination. Do you have anything to say before the sentence of this court is passed upon you?’ His voice, strong with righteous conviction, echoed around the oak panelled courtroom.

Sinistrari contemptuously brushed at the lapels of his immaculately cut black frock coat and then consulted his heavy gold hunter pocket watch before speaking, barely deigning to look up at the judge, his voice heavy with arrogant scorn. ‘I do not recognise you. I do not recognise this court. I do not recognise the judgement of this court – whatever it may be.’

Sinistrari suddenly raised his left arm and gave the Judge the sign of the Hex, the Evil Eye, the middle and third fingers bent and held onto the palm by his thumb whilst the first and little fingers stretched out straight, pointing into the eyes of Mister Justice Knox-Porter. ‘Do your worst, pathetic fool,’ Sinistrari shouted in a ringing voice, ‘I shall see you in Hell.’

Women in the crowded balcony screamed, the high-pitched shrieks of terror searing at the nerves and many in the courtroom flinched and blanched. Another scream echoed the first. Sinistrari, his eyes flaring yellow with hate, turned to the police officer who had brought about his arrest, Detective Chief Inspector Charles Collingwood, who sat in the second row behind the lawyer’s benches and gave him the sign of the hex as well. ‘In Hell, Collingwood, I’ll see you in Hell.’

Collingwood gave no indication he had even heard Sinistrari as the Judge pounded the desk with his gavel, demanding silence as a startled buzz, tinged with fear and superstition, swept around the courtroom.

‘SILENCE! SILENCE! Silence or I shall have this courtroom cleared. SILENCE!’

A reluctant hush settled on the court, whispers dying out slowly in sibilant hisses that seemed louder than they were.

‘Silence,’ the Judge demanded again, holding up his hand as he glared around his courtroom, daring any to speak, cough, or even shuffle their feet. Sinistrari smirked in amused disdain, slowly peeling a grey kidskin glove from his hand to buff his fingernails against the lapels of his coat. Satisfied at last, Mister Justice Knox-Porter sat up straight and assumed a severe magisterial face as his clerk placed the square of black silk, the infamous Black Cap, upon his head.

‘Edward James Sinistrari, having justly been found guilty of wilful murder, it is the sentence of this court that you be taken from here to a lawful prison and thence to a place of execution and there suffer death by hanging and that your body be buried in the grounds of the prison where you are held before your execution.’ Sinistrari gazed nonchalantly up at the ceiling as the sentence was passed and then yawned extravagantly, cupping a gloved hand over his mouth as he did so.

‘And may the Lord God have mercy upon your soul.’

‘I rather think not,’ Sinistrari answered languidly, ‘I do rather think not.’

‘Take him down,’ ordered Knox-Porter, crackles of anger and frustration resonant in his voice, incensed that the majesty of the law and judiciary could be dismissed so lightly, so arrogantly.

‘Rot in hell, Sinistrari,’ someone shouted from the galley. Sinistrari’s yellow tinged eyes raked the crowd for the source of the shout and he raised his hand as if to make the sign of the hex again before the duty policemen seized his arms, ready to drag him down to the cells below. Sinistrari shrugged off the restraining hands, straightened his coat and with a last baleful hate filled glance around the courtroom made his way imperiously down the stairs, down to the tiled underground passage that led to the Saltboxes, the condemned cells of Newgate Prison, and a date with the hangman.

Chapter 2

NEWGATE PRISON, LONDON.

JUNE 16th, 1888

THICK SWIRLS OF FOG WREATHED AROUND THE LEGS OF THE HORSE and coiled between the wooden spokes of the wheels of the Hansom cab as it pulled up to the gates of the grimly foreboding prison. Although it was only mid-afternoon, the midsummer air was chill, the overcast light made gloomy by heavy mist and incessant drizzle. Jack Mawse, the cabby, huddled himself deeper into his coat and scarf as cold tendrils of rain trickled down his back. The sooty fog sat heavily into his chest, making him cough, racking him with a spasmodic hack that threatened to wrench loose his lungs and he spat a clot of raked up green phlegm out into the gutter where it nestled alongside the body of a dead rat like molten jade.

The cab lurched suddenly as his passengers, two sombrely dressed men, one tall and gaunt, the other short and thick set, disembarked. The thick set man passed up the fare to the cabby, a shilling only and no tip and with a muttered expletive the cabby spat once again into the gutter, close enough to make his point but not so close as to cause serious offence, especially since Mawse knew who the men were and what their business was.

The horse, as if in agreement with his master’s annoyance, lifted its tail and dropped a pile of steaming turds – expressing his own opinion of tight-fisted passengers. Mawse then lightly flicked his whip across the shoulder of the horse and snapped the reins, the iron shod hooves of the horse echoing metallically around the soot stained stone walls and cobbles of the street as the Hansom cab moved off, to be quickly hidden from view in the murky brume, leaving only the horse’s calling card to mark its passage.

The two men picked up their luggage and walked over to the prison gates, set deep into the fifty feet high walls that surrounded Newgate Gaol. Each man carried a small overnight suitcase and the thickset man; the leader also carried a leather holdall, much like a doctors bag, only larger.

The thickset man was Ernest Dennison, hangman; the other his assistant, Alfred Jenkins.

The fog closed in behind them, a pea-soup thick London Particular, seemingly sealing them off from the rest of the shrouded city – the pale yellow shrouded sun unable to penetrate into the murk and shadow of Newgate’s forbidding walls. A sudden flurry of rain spattered against the men, causing them to quicken their steps. At the heavy gates, Dennison pulled the bell cord; muffled tinny chimes from the bell could be heard echoing from within the prison.

A man-sized wicket door was set within the heavy studded main gate. A six inch square hatch, set at eye level, slid open with a warped grating sound and a uniformed prison warder peered out into the shadow-light murk.

‘Ah, Mister Dennison, is it?’

‘Aye, so it is.’

‘Best come on in then, Mister Dennison,’ the warder said, opening the door, ‘we’d not want to keep your customer waiting longer than needs be.’

‘He’ll be waiting long enough in Hell, I’m thinking.’

‘That ’e will, that ’e will, God rot his foul soul.’

Dennison and Jenkins both took off their bowler hats, shook the rain off them and then stepped through the wicket into the prison, following on the heels of the warder into the gatehouse where they entered their names into the visitor’s ledger. ‘Would there be a char or two in there? Dennison, said, nodding towards a steaming teapot on the blackened hob. ‘To wet me whistle and cut away the taste of the bleedin’ fog?’

‘Aye, that there would, and, mebbes a tot o’rum to warm your cockles,’ replied Richard Jacquet, the warder on duty at the desk; a heavily-paunched man, bald as a billiard ball apart from a froth of grubby white hair that sprouted above his ears like balls of cotton waiting to be plucked from the twig. Jacquet waddled slowly over towards the hob snapping at his braces as he did so, the slapping of the elastic against his drum taut belly echoing around the guardhouse like gunshots. He lifted the teapot and was about to pour when another warder scurried anxiously into the guardhouse, nervously wringing his hands in agitation. He looked towards the hangmen and then glanced nervously up at the heavy mahogany framed clock on the wall. ‘Mister Dennison,’ he said, ‘the Guv’nor’s left instructions as that you to be taken straight up to him, soon as you arrive, so, I’ll take you up now. He’s in a foul temper, worsen than usual and it’s more than my job’s worth to keep him waiting.’

Dennison looked longingly at the fire that burned in the grate and at the half raised teapot in Jacquet’s hand – he would have liked the chance to sit down, have a warm and his cup of tea and tot of rum before going to see the Governor, but there was no way he could ignore a direct instruction. He shrugged. ‘Feeling extra bilious, is he, Billy Bilious? Best lead on then.’

Leaving their suitcases in the gatehouse the hangmen followed on behind the warder, although Dennison still carried his leather hold-all, at no time did that ever leave his possession when he was on a job. The warder hurried on ahead, constantly throwing anxious glances over his shoulder as if afraid that the two men might disappear into the clammy fog if he did not have them within his sight at all times. They crossed a narrow courtyard, the paving stones glistening with rain, through further heavily barred doors, down passages and up staircases, their footsteps ringing hollowly around the walls of the soot blackened stone walls of the prison. From within the depths of the prison came the heavy clash of closing doors and the shouts of guards and the rumbled muted response of prisoners.

They stopped outside a door on the second floor and the warder knocked deferentially, his hesitant taps barely audible.

‘Come,’ a voice shouted from within.

‘Mister Dennison’s here, sir,’ the warder mumbled as he opened the door a foot or so.

‘Dennison?’

‘Yes sir, Mister Dennison, the … er … he’s here to take … er, take care of Sinistrari.’

‘The hangman?’

‘Yes sir, the hangman.’

‘Well why the devil don’t you say so, man, mumbling like a fool in the door there?’

Sir William Billington, Governor of Newgate Goal was notorious for the vileness of his disposition; hence, his nickname, Billy Bilious, and Jack Dennison did not relish having to deal with him again. At the last execution he had carried out here, Billington had made him so nervous he had almost bungled the hanging, leaving the brass ring of the noose too close to the front of the jaw in his haste to get on with the job. It was only because he had also miscalculated the drop, giving him too much rope that the condemned man had died as quickly as he did.

‘Well then, man, don’t just stand there. Show him i, I’m not going to give him his instructions through the doorway. Am I?’

‘No sir.’

The warder gave Dennison and Jenkins a haunted look, nodded towards the door and scurried down the corridor, the ring of his boot heels resounding in diminishing echoes.

Dennison in turn knocked on the door, picked up his bag again and slowly pushed the door open with his foot.

‘Dennison, sir, here to carry out the due execution of Edward James Sinistrari.’

‘And about time too, Dennison. You should be here no later than 4pm on the day preceding an execution; don’t you know the standard procedures by now?’ Dennison looked up at the clock on the wall, it said 4.06 and he had been logged into the prison at 3.57, but he said nothing. He reached inside his jacket and passed papers over to the choleric Governor. ‘My Warrant of Execution from the office of the High Sheriff, sir.’

Billington barely glanced at the warrant before tossing it onto his desk. He was a big man, pot-bellied, with a scarlet nose the size and texture of a tangerine and hugely florid of face, although whether this was due to an excess of the port he was drinking or just to the general irascibility of his disposition, Dennison could not tell.

‘I must say, Dennison, I’m surprised that you have been entrusted to carry out an execution as important as this, I should have thought Berry would have taken it.’

James Berry was the chief hangman of England, but he was shortly due to retire and Dennison hoped to get the appointment as principle hangman himself. A good showing here would do his cause a lot of good. He knew however, that he could not afford another critical report from Billington and he tried to control his nervousness. ‘Mister Berry’s indisposed sir, last week when hanging Maynard Partridge at Chelmsford Gaol, ’e fell off the steps comin’ down from the scaffold and twisted his leg rather bad. ’e’s likely to be indisposed for another week or two.’

‘I see, well try not to bungle it this time, Dennison. I’ve never seen such a hash of a hanging as the last one you did. Damn near took the chap’s head clean off.’

Billington took another large swallow of port and refilled the glass to the brim again from a cut glass decanter on his desk. He did not offer any to Dennison or Jenkins. ‘I want this execution carried out properly this time, Dennison, after all, despite what crimes he is alleged to have carried out, Sinistrari is a gentleman, something which the likes of you probably don’t appreciate. Damn it, the man was even a member of my club.’

‘Just goes to show, sir, they’ll let anyone in these days,’ Dennison answered without a trace of irony or mockery in his voice.

‘Harrumph? What? Yes, well, not that I was on the election committee myself at the time, I would have seen through the blackguard and blackballed him and no mistake.’

‘Yes, of course, sir. And we’ll do our best to accommodate Mister Sinistrari in a gentlemanly fashion, sir. You have my word on that.’

‘I rather doubt that the word of a public hangman carries much weight, Dennison,’ snapped Billington rudely.

‘No sir.’

Sir William shuffled around at the pile of papers on his desk. ‘Where’s the letter from the Home Secretary?’ he barked towards Ellsworth, his perpetually harassed clerk, who came scurrying in from the office next door and took the uppermost letter from the pile.

‘Here sir!’

‘Damn it, man, what’s it doing hidden away there where nobody can see it. Blasted incompetence!’

‘Yes sir,’ mumbled Ellsworth and scuttled away again like a startled mouse.

‘The thing is, Dennison,’ Billington said, waving the letter in the hangman’s direction, ‘the Home Secretary, Mister Henry Matthews, has ordered that the execution of Sinistrari be brought forward to midnight. Midnight tonight.’

‘Midnight?’

‘Yes, damned inconvenient, but the Home Secretary feels that there is so much unhealthy interest from the general populace about this case that there might be unpleasant scenes if the hanging were to take place at eight o’clock as is per usual. He wishes to avoid unnecessary prurient interest from the commonality.’

Dennison shook his head and grimaced, sucking at his yellow-brown teeth, his moustache quivering as he did so. ‘Midnight?’

‘Yes, man, midnight. Are you deaf, repeating everything like a performing parrot? Midnight!’

‘Don’t give us too much time, I mean, we ’as to test the drop, observe the gentleman at exercise so as to h’ascertain his physique, get his weight…stretch the rope. By rights the rope should be stretched all night with a heavy bag weighing the same as the prisoner.’

‘Don’t give me excuses man, can you do it or not?’

‘Yes sir, of course. Professionals we are at our trade. Professionals!’

‘Tradesmen, especially common hangmen, do not qualify for the professional classes, Dennison,’ Billington sneered.

‘No sir, course not, what I meant was that we would do our job in a professional manner, like.’

‘You damn well better, it’s what you get paid for isn’t it? To do your job properly – you’ll get no plaudits from me for simply doing what you should in the way it ought.’

‘No, sir.’

‘One other thing, Dennison,’ Billington said, waving the Home Secretary’s letter in the hangman’s direction, ‘after the execution, the effects of the condemned man are to be burned, together with the rope.’

‘But sir, hangmen always gets to get the effects of the condemned, ’is clothes an’ that. Traditional perky-squite is that, ’as been since time immemorable.’

‘Not in this case, the Home Secretary states, and I fully agree, that there is too much ghoulish interest being shown in this case and that the common mob will only take an unhealthy curiosity in Sinistrari’ s effects. Damn it man, you would only sell the clothes to a carnival sideshow or vulgar waxworks, now wouldn’t you, hoping to make a few shillings from macabre sensationalism.’

‘No sir, ’course not,’ Dennison declared indignantly, even though he had done just that, negotiating a deal with Fred Covey, carnival and freak show owner for the sale of Sinistrari’s effects. Madame Tussaud’s Waxwork Museum had been also been after the clothes and rope for their Chamber of Horrors exhibit and Dennison had thought about trading one of against the other but Fred Cavey was not a man to be crossed and Dennison decided against it. Even now he was going to have a job explaining why the effects were not available – and repay the ten guineas advance he’d already received – and spent.

‘Don’t give me that lie, man, I know your sort, Dennison, you’d sell your own mother for a tuppence and throw in your grandmother for another farthing,’ Billington then belched, suddenly and loudly and patted his stomach in appreciation. Billington refilled his glass’

‘All right man, all right, be gone and on your way. If the preparations for your profession mean you have much to do, why are you wasting my time with your idle chatter?’ ‘Go on then man, be about your business.’

‘Right sir,’ answered Dennison, barely able to keep the outraged indignation out of his voice.

‘And for goodness sake man; get it right. Get it right.’

*

THE THREE-INCH THICK OAK DOORS OF THE SCAFFOLD DROP opened and instantly fell away as Dennison threw the lever that operated the release mechanism. The crash as the doors hit the side of the pit echoed like distant thunder through the bricks and stone fabric of the prison. The hempen rope suspended from the hook in the crossbeam above quivered under the load that had plummeted into the pit eight feet below. In the exercise yard, Edward Sinistrari looked up and stopped his steady pacing as the sound boomed dully across the narrow court. A slow smile of satisfaction crossed his face.

‘Keep on moving Mister Sinistrari, if you please,’ called Bartholomew Binns, one of the prison officers on death-watch duty, ‘We wouldn’t want you to take on a chill and catch your death of cold, now would we?’

Sinistrari turned to Binns, his eyes flaring with anger, as if about to say something. Binns reached for his truncheon, ready to subdue Sinistrari if he turned violent, but then Sinistrari bared his teeth in a grimace and hissed, like an angry cobra and Binns felt a chill of horror down his spine. ‘Right, well. Move on,’ he mumbled but without conviction.

Some minutes earlier, Dennison and Jenkins had watched Sinistrari from a window above the exercise yard. He had been the only prisoner in the yard, briskly pacing around the well beaten circle as though out on his morning constitutional across Regents Park instead of a condemned man taking his final exercise before execution. Dennison was gauging the condemned man’s height and physique, his general demeanour and stature, essential if he were to calculate the drop correctly and ensure that death occurred instantly from dislocation of the vertebrae. Too little drop and Sinistrari would slowly strangle at the end of the rope, too much drop and they risked tearing off his head, a messy business, but not unknown. Only three years previously, in 1885, the head of Robert Goodale, executed by James Berry at Norwich Castle, had been ripped clean off his shoulders.

‘Wotcha fink, Jenks?’ Dennison asked his assistant, making notes in a small pocket notebook.

‘He’s tall, very tall, six foot four or so and well built. But slender necked, should be easy to snap on a regular drop.’

‘The medical officer said ’e weighs twelve and half stone, give or take a pound or two.’

‘He’ll not ’ave fattened up a deal while he’s been in here.’ ‘Right, twelve and a half stone, tall but slender necked,’

Dennison muttered as he consulted his ‘drop tables’ in a battered leather bound notebook. ‘That’s ’ow many pounds, twelve and half stone? Fourteen times twelve is?’ He scribbled the calculation at the edge of his notebook. ‘Two times four is eight; four times one is four, making forty-eight. Carry over the nought, one times twelve is twelve, so that’s 120 plus 48 is … 168. Add another seven for the ’alf stone gives

175 pounds. Right?’

‘If’n you say so.’

There was a formula devised to ensure the fracture and dislocation of the neck, but it was too complicated for Jenkins who had difficulty counting anything at all once he had run out of fingers and toes.

Dennison studied his tables again, chewing on the end of his pencil as he did so. ‘175 pounds? For 175 pounds it says five foot two inches ’ere. Not enough by bleedin’ alf, ’cos ’e’s tall an’ all. We got to add a bit more for his height so let’s give ’im five foot ten inches. Or should it be less for ’is height?’

‘Has to be more – stands to reason ‘cos he’s closer to the crossbeam.’

‘Aye, let’s give him a drop of five foot eleven?’

Jenkins shrugged, not committing himself. If the hanging went wrong and the drop found to be incorrect, he wanted to be sure that no blame could be attached to him. Dennison was the number one on this job; let him take the responsibility. That’s what he got paid for.

‘Five foot fucking eleven it is then,’ muttered Dennison, aggrieved that Jenkins had been so unhelpful and made his way back to the execution shed.

Book Details

AUTHOR NAME: Giles Ekins

BOOK TITLE: Sinistrari

GENRE: Horror

PAGE COUNT: 420

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