Property of a Lady(81)

The Moon that night, with a grey cold light,

Each baleful object tips . . .

It took considerable resolve to approach the open grave and look down into it and, when I did so, I think I came closer than at any other time to abandoning the whole plan. He lay, imperfectly covered in a winding sheet, his head lolling to one side at an ugly, ungainly angle, his thick, farm-worker’s neck swollen and bruised from the hangman’s rope. His skin was the colour and consistency of tallow.

I looked round. How likely was it that I could be seen? The burial ground was enclosed on three sides by a high wall, and there were no windows and only one door, which led to the main part of the prison. No one would see me.

And yet I had the feeling that someone did see me – that eyes watched from the shadows and marked what I did. Nerves, nothing more.

The grave was narrower than I had expected and also deeper – I had assumed the gravediggers would be cursory in their work, and I thought it would be possible to reach down and do what I had to do from ground level. But it was not. Even kneeling at the rim and stretching my hands down as far as possible, I could not reach what lay there. So be it: I would go down into the grave itself. The prospect made my flesh creep, but I was too close to what I wanted to give up now. Down the centuries there have been mad, wild things done in the name of love, but I wonder if there has been anything wilder or madder than what I did that night for love for Elizabeth Lee.

I felt in my pocket to make sure I still had the knives and chisel wrapped in cotton waste, then I sat on the edge of the open grave and slid down into its depths. Showers of dry soil broke away like scabs from a wound, and I landed squarely on the body itself.

It was dreadful. His flesh was soft and pliable in places – I could feel its softness – but in others it was hard and marble-like. I remembered the old country saying about dead men: they shall grow hard and they shall grow soft. Rigor mortis, that grotesque solidifying of sinews and flesh, wears off after several hours, and the dead become lumps of flabby meat. This body was in the halfway stage.

I managed to move in the restricted space until I was straddling his stomach. The winding sheet fell back in the process, and the words of Petit Albert came into my mind – take the hand of a felon . . . wrap it in part of a funeral pall . . .

It was simple to slice off a section of the thin cloth, using one of the knives I had brought, and to fold the fragment in a pocket. But the worst was still ahead of me.

He was, of course, lying with his hands crossed on his breast, and I reached for the right hand. It was in the same semi-hard state as the rest of him – I had no idea if that would make my task easier, but using the larger knife I began my grisly work.

Joint, muscle, nerve . . . For the spell of the dead man’s hand . . .

The flesh parted under the knife’s blade. No blood, of course. I sawed determinedly, and presently the knife scraped against bone. This would be the difficult part. I reached in my other pocket for the small tooth-edged saw and the chisel.

The worst part was the noise – the rasp of steel against bone. Wrist-bones are quite small and thin, but there are joints, nubbly lumps of gristle and sinew . . . I was using the chisel by that stage, but my hands were so slippery with sweat that several times the blade slid off the bones and gouged into the chest below. But finally the hand lay free, and I lifted it and wrapped it in the fragment of shroud. It was easy enough to hide the stump of the handless arm by folding the rest of the shroud across.

I was shaking badly by the time I clambered out of the grave to wait for the warder’s return. As I sat on the diseased grass, I was painfully aware of what lay underneath it. All those bodies of men hanged for murder – probably most of whom had gone to their deaths terrified and struggling, blinded by the hangman’s hood, fighting every inch of the way . . . Small wonder the atmosphere of this place was so thick with emotion. Fear, despair, loneliness – they were all here.

It’s a vicious thing, quicklime, as the governor had said earlier. It burns and eats its way through flesh and bone, through heart and liver and kidneys . . . When it came to Resurrection Day, there would be precious little left of the killers who lay in this poisoned earth. A few crumbling bones to struggle towards the Lord when he called to them, shreds of hair and flesh holding the bones together.

I make no apology for that dark rhetoric, for in a murderers’ burial yard a man may surely become fanciful and see a few ghosts.

1st November cont’d. Evening.

I have followed the instructions of all the recipes as exactly as I can. I have scraped fat from under the skin of the hand and preserved it in a sealed jar. (I took the jar from Mrs Figgis’s larder; it had contained potted meat. I washed it very thoroughly, of course.)

The hand is packed in an earthenware pot with the other ingredients and the whole is in the stove in my workshop. And at this time of year I keep the stove lit.

I shall count the next fourteen days very anxiously.





15th November


Today I withdrew from my oven the earthenware pot. The hand is dried and shrunken – the surface resembles old leather and the nails have cracked in the heat. It’s repulsive to the touch, but if it gains me my heart’s desire . . .

And now, in this secret room, I shall create the candle out of the fat squeezed from the hand. Tomorrow night I shall go to Mallow House. But tonight my thoughts and my dreams are filled with her – with Elizabeth.