intervene.
‘Come now, Mrs Sach,’ she said, gently but firmly removing the hands that clung pitifully to Celia’s dress. ‘You haven’t touched your breakfast. Try and eat something.’
‘Can’t we give her something stronger than bread and tea?’ Celia asked angrily. ‘What use is that to her now?’
The older woman shook her head and glanced quickly at her watch. ‘There’s no time,’ she whispered. ‘It’s nearly nine.’
As though to prove her point, there was a noise in the corridor outside. Like most prisoners, used to spending so much time waiting and listening to events which could not be seen, Sach was quick to hear the approaching footsteps and eager to guess at their meaning. As they stopped outside the cell, then moved on again, the flicker of hope on her face was unbearable to Celia, who knew that only half the execution party had walked past; the other half would be just outside, waiting for the governor’s nod. Staring at the door, she saw the slightest of movements as the hangman moved the peephole cover to one side to assess the mental state of the prisoner and then, after what felt like an interminable wait, the chime of the bells from the church next door signalled nine o’clock. Celia counted two strokes before she heard the rattle of the keys in the lock, three before the heavy iron door opened, and then the small group of men was in the cell, setting in motion a relentless sequence of events from which there was no escape, which could never be undone.
The hangman moved swiftly across the cell and began to pinion Sach’s hands behind her back. As soon as she felt the leather straps against her skin, she seemed to lose what little strength she had left. Celia stepped forward to prevent her falling to the floor, whispering words of comfort, but they seemed to have the opposite effect and Sach had to be half-led, half-carried out into the corridor. A few feet to their right, at the door to the adjacent cell, a similar scene was being played out, but the contrast between the prisoners could not have been more marked. Annie Walters was a short, grey-haired woman in her early fifties, as sturdy and homely-looking as Sach was delicate, but it was their demeanour that set them apart, not their build or their age. The sight of the other woman only increased Sach’s distress until it bordered on hysteria, but Walters remained cheerful and talkative, swapping casual remarks with the second hangman as if oblivious to the fact that these were her final moments. Looking at the two women now, brought face to face for the first time since their sentencing, it was hard to believe that they were conspirators in the brutal murders of babies—as many as twenty, some said, and most only a few days old.
Everything happened quickly from then on. The first hangman steadied Sach and prepared her for the short walk to the gallows. With a wardress on either side, the prisoners followed the chaplain towards the double doors at the end of the wing and into the newly built execution shed. It was only a dozen steps or so, but far enough for Celia to notice that the prison seemed unnaturally quiet, almost as if a collective breath were being held. For three weeks now, the Holloway women had been restless and uneasy; the inevitable mixture of distress and sensationalism which greeted the sentence had been replaced by an angry helplessness, and everyone was touched by it, staff and prisoners alike. Celia knew she was not alone in longing to move the clock forward or back, to exist anywhere but in this present moment.
And then they were inside. Two nooses hung straight ahead of them, one slightly higher than the other, and the prisoners were led swiftly on to the trap. The executioners dropped to their knees to fasten the leg straps, their movements perfectly synchronised. Celia looked at Sach through the oval of rope, willing her ordeal to be over and refusing to look away in the face of death; it was the only help she had left to offer, and she held the woman’s terrified gaze as a white cap—kept like a foppish handkerchief in the hangman’s top pocket—was placed over her head and the noose adjusted. All the time she could hear the low, steady voice of the chaplain chanting out the service for the dead, but the words were indistinct. As the executioner moved across to the lever, the only thing she could focus on was the small circle of cloth moving in and out over Sach’s mouth.
Afterwards, Celia could not say for certain if she had heard Walters calling out a goodbye to Sach shortly before the trapdoor opened, or if it had just been her imagination. But what she did remember of the seconds that followed—and she was sure of this because it came back to her sometimes, even now, in the early hours of a winter’s morning—was the silence.
Chapter One
Josephine Tey picked up an extravagantly wrapped hatbox and used the perfect Selfridge bow to hook it on to the rest of her parcels.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to have that delivered for you, Madam?’ the assistant asked anxiously, as if the hat’s independent departure from the shop were somehow a slur on her standards. ‘It’s really no trouble.’
‘Oh no, I’ll be fine,’ Josephine said, smiling guiltily at the group of young girls behind the counter. ‘Carrying this will stop me going anywhere else today, and that’s probably just as well—if I send many more packages round to my club, they’ll be charging me for an extra room.’
Balancing her recklessness as best she could, Josephine took the escalator down to the ground floor. Its steady, sedate progress gave her plenty of time to admire the vast, open-plan design of the store, a look which was still so different from what most of London’s shops had to offer. The whole building seemed to sparkle with an innate understanding of the connection between a woman’s eye and her purse; even the prominent bargain tables were neatly stacked with beautiful boxes that gave no hint of their reduced price. December was still a week away, but staff were already beginning to decorate the aisles for the festive season and the familiar department-store smell—plush carpets and fresh flowers—had been replaced by a warm scent of cinnamon which only the drench of perfume from the soap and cosmetic departments could keep at bay. As a ploy to make Christmas seem closer than it really was, it seemed to have worked: even this late in the afternoon, the shop was packed with people and Josephine had to fight her way past the make-up counters to the main entrance and out into the bustle of Oxford Street.
She turned left towards Oxford Circus, following the long stretch of glass frontage to the corner of Duke Street. The shop windows were full of wax models, each a variation on the theme of Lot’s wife, forever stilled in the midst of a gesture. Some beckoned to the curious to step inside, others carried on with their imaginary lives, oblivious to the flesh-and-blood women who studied every detail, but all were arranged against a background of light and colour which had been as carefully designed as any stage set. Josephine paused by a particularly striking bedroom scene. A ravishing wax figure, dressed in a crepe de Chine nightgown, stepped out of a nest of silken sheets and pillows. Her pink foot rested lightly on the floor, and she stretched a perfectly manicured hand over to her bedside table, which held a morning paper, a novel—
The pavement was only just wide enough to accommodate a double flow of pedestrians, and Josephine walked on slowly, recognising herself in the women from provincial towns who seemed utterly engrossed in their business, determined not to miss a thing. It was after five o’clock and, in the last hour, the pinks and oranges of a winter sunset had quickly given way to a sky the colour of blue-black ink. An unbroken line of streetlights stretched ahead of her like pearls on a string, drifting into the distance and relieving the mile-long stretch of shops—ladies’ mile, as it was known—from the ordinariness of the day. Some of the smaller branches had already closed, emptying more workers out onto the streets, and a few shop-girls stopped to gaze wistfully into the windows of the larger stores, a long day on their feet having strengthened their desire to stand for once on the other side of the counter; most, though, headed quickly for the underground or for bus queues which grew longer by the second,
