Released for Death

Book 463: Murder Room

by Henry Wade

Genres: Mystery; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

Two men in Hadestone Prison are approaching the end of their sentences for burglary and assault. James Carson is well educated but brutal; Toddy Shaw is a cheerful cockney who considers burglary a sport. Trouble flares in the chapel, and both Shaw and Carson are involved. Eventually both men are released, but old hatreds fester. Toddy gets work on leaving prison, wanting to do right by his wife and family. Carson, released later, soon comes looking for Toddy. Then a nightwatchman at a bank is murdered - a former prison guard at Hadestone - and Chief Inspector Holby will need to prove himself a match for whatever dark mind is on the loose . . .

Release date: June 14, 2016

Publisher: Orion

Print pages: 372

Sample

“Good Lord, deliver us.”

“In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death and in the day of judgment,

“Good Lord, deliver us.”

The bare walls of the prison chapel gave back the muttered responses of nearly three hundred men. The Reverend John Beckley, kneeling at the pitch-pine prie-dieu at the front of the
centre aisle, was conscious of the thrill of emotion that never failed to grip him during the reading of the Litany to this congregation. The appeal of these prayers had a reality, a force, that
was almost dramatic.

“We sinners do beseech thee to hear us, Good Lord.”

To the bulk of the congregation, Beckley knew only too well, the Sunday services, especially the compulsory ‘parade’ service in the morning, meant little more than a break in the
monotony of prison routine. The voluntary afternoon and mid-week services, with their smaller but by no means negligible attendances, carried a tone of far greater intensity, but even at the parade
services the Litany, read only once a month, did seem to evoke a genuine depth of feeling in some of the men.

How could it fail to?

“That it may please thee . . . to raise up them that fall . . .”

“. . . to show thy pity upon all prisoners and captives.”

“We beseech thee to hear us, Good Lord.”

Oh, God, have mercy on them. Oh, God, help them. In the depth of his heart John Beckley felt the surge of prayer, of appeal that could not come to his lips.

Gradually the tension relaxed, the emotion faded away, as the more formal prayers succeeded those passionate appeals. Presently, with a scraping of clumsy shoes, the congregation scrambled up
from their knees and sank back on to the wooden seats. John Beckley, returning to his reading desk, could see now the rows of grey-clad men which nearly filled the body of the chapel. At the sides
and at the back, in ordinary seats—no longer raised and facing the prisoners as in the harsher days before the war—sat the blue-clad prison officers, alert and quietly watchful.

Through the dusty windows, high up in the south wall, shafts of June sunlight struck down upon the men who now were settling themselves to listen to—or ignore—the Lesson. The
figures, grey, shapeless, immobile, were the same, but the heads above varied to an almost startling degree. Hair, short but no longer cropped, ranged from the dull grey of the old lags, through
black, brown, straw to one or two patches of cheerful red. One ray of sunlight picked out a ginger-coloured head, not bright, tending in fact to grey, but enlivened by a face of unquenchable
cheerfulness; Beckley knew the man well—Shaw, a five-year man nearing the end of his time.

How few, alas, of the other faces, reflected that cheerfulness. It would be difficult for cheerfulness to shine in those leaden complexions, sallow from monotonous food rather than from lack of
air and exercise. Lack of expression was the predominant note, but what expression appeared was sullen, hopeless, sometimes cruel, sometimes mean. What else could be expected? These, in the main,
were men who had had their chance, had been offered leniency and rejected it, had passed through the stages of probation, light sentence, local prison, and were now habitual criminals, recidivists,
convicts by their own as well as by their judges’ conviction.

From his isolated pew facing the chaplain, the Deputy Governor walked to the lectern. Major Herbert Lambe, D.S.O., D.C.M., was a short, sturdy man, fifty years of age, his dark hair tinged with
grey. A warder before the war, he had been allowed to join the army and had quickly attained commissioned rank, rising in time to be second-in-command of his battalion, with a fine record of
courage and efficiency. Naturally he had been welcomed back into the prison service when the war ended; once again promotion had followed fast. He had been Deputy Chief Officer and Chief Officer at
Dartmoor, and a year ago had come to H.M. Prison, Hadestone, as Deputy Governor.

Major Lambe, however good an officer, however wise a Governor, was no public reader. His voice was harsh and unsympathetic; he read, obviously, as a duty and no sense of feeling quickened the
words—the lovely words of the Song of Deborah—that came from his mouth. Scraping of shoes, coughing, restlessness, recorded the reaction of his hearers. The chaplain, eyeing his
congregation, saw boredom on the sullen faces; but he saw more—to his astonishment he saw on some expressions that seemed like anger, even hatred. He must be mistaken; it must be the harsh
light giving a false interpretation to customary sullenness and momentary irritation.

Beckley writhed inwardly. Why should the effect of the Litany, which he felt certain had touched some of these calloused hearts, be spoilt by this inept performance? Why should the Lesson be
read by a man who could not read?—who did not feel or love what he read? Why, in any case, should the Lesson follow the Litany?

John Beckley had only been appointed to Hadestone three months previously and though he disliked much of what he found there affecting his own department, he had been reluctant to appear too
quickly as a new broom. Hadestone, the oldest as well as the smallest of the three great recidivist convict prisons of England, had ways and traditions of its own. The Governor, Captain Furber, had
been there a long time and would soon be retiring, so that immediate changes would be ill-timed. None the less, some of these traditional idiosyncrasies irritated Beckley. This Lesson-after-Litany
business, for instance; what was the point of it? Could it be that some former chaplain had thought that the men would be bored by the Litany and that it was best to get it over early in the
service while they were comparatively fresh? Bored by it! The Litany! John Beckley found himself snorting with indignation.

And why should the Lesson be read, as a matter of course, by Governor or Deputy Governor? If he, the Chaplain, needed help in taking the service, surely it was up to him to ask for it?

“Here endeth the Lesson.”

And a good job, too, thought Beckley, who was still young enough to be human. He rose to his feet and gave out the hymn—there were more hymns than canticles in the Hadestone
services—“No. 255. Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”

The men sang well. It was one of the few chances they got to make a noise, to let themselves go. They knew that if they made too much noise, shouted, bellowed, ‘ragged’ the singing,
it would be stopped, so they sang well—as well as they could, anyhow. There was a choir to lead them, a choir of convicts who volunteered for the job and were liberally appointed to it unless
they were too hopelessly incompetent. Beckley did not altogether like the choir; he could not avoid the feeling that the bulk of them were sycophants; he knew that they were disliked by the best
men in the prison—who were usually the hardest. He had an uneasy feeling, too, that sycophancy was not the most unpleasant of these choristers’ attributes. But he had to make the best
of them; he had to use the material that offered.

But when the congregation as a whole liked a hymn, not much was heard of the choir; the harmony of the few was swamped by the unison of the many. And they seemed to like this hymn, rather to
Beckley’s surprise, though it was a favourite of his own. The volume of sound seemed to swell with each verse, with a crashing emphasis in the last line:

“O Lamb of God, I come.”

Ah, that explained it, of course; a childish allusion to the Deputy Governor’s name.

Beckley remembered similar jokes in his school days, though he was too young to have heard the classic:

‘When comes the promised time,

That WAR shall be no more;’

wherewith Eton boys delighted to bear false witness to their real sentiments for the great Headmaster.

Anyhow, it was harmless enough; John Beckley chuckled inwardly at the sight of the Deputy Governor’s ‘stuffy’ face.

But at the end of the fifth verse, something happened that changed the Chaplain’s tolerant outlook. In the little pause that followed the end of the verse there came from the back of the
chapel a faint but distinct bleating cry . . . baa.a.a.a.

There followed a moment’s silence, the civilian organist—if such a title can be applied to one who plays a harmonium—hesitated. Beckley, after a first gasp of surprise, nodded
sharply to the man, who broke into the tune again just as a titter of laughter, punctuated by muffled guffaws, ran through the crowded pews. Major Lambe stared angrily in front of him, his mouth
twitching with annoyance; the prison officers peered at the faces round them, trying to detect an offender. John Beckley led the singing of the last verse with the full power of his lungs and was,
for the nonce, glad of the choir’s help. The verse—and the hymn—ended without further unseemly interruption and the congregation sank once more to their knees.

John Beckley, disconcerted by the incident, which, however trivial in a school chapel, was startling and ominous in a prison, found it difficult to concentrate his thoughts on the prayers that
followed. He was conscious of a restlessness that was unusual; the officers were acutely on the alert, the men were shuffling about as they knelt; the Deputy Governor was still staring in front of
him, frowning concentration on his face; evidently he was trying to decide how to act if there was any repetition of the disturbance. It was difficult for the chaplain to think about what he was
reading.

“. . . we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men . . .”

Baa-a-a-a. Baa-a-a-a. Baar-ar-ar—

The bleating cry of the lamb was taken up instantly all over the chapel and, mingled with the deeper note of the old sheep’s call, swelled to a volume of sound as menacing as the cry of an
angry crowd.

The convicts still knelt with their hands before their faces, so that it was impossible to detect the offenders. Only the men next to the prison officers were palpably silent. Major Lambe, his
face livid with anger, sprang to his feet.

“March back to halls, Mr. Patten!” he snapped.

The Chief Officer, who had been waiting for this, barked out his orders. The congregation scrambled to their feet and began to file out of the big hall, led by prison officers whose faces were
red or white according as they were angry or frightened. Except for an occasional sharp word of command there was silence now—silence, and the shuffle, shuffle of feet.

John Beckley, bewildered and miserable, remained for a time on his knees, then rose to his feet as his congregation left him. Major Lambe was the last to go, not by the Governor’s door but
following the men out into the exercise yard. Left alone, John sank back on to his knees. . . .

Out in the hot sunshine Major Lambe stood watching the convicts, now split up into separate files, making for their own halls—the five blocks of cells which formed the administrative units
of the prison.

“Close up there.” “Get moving.” “Keep closed up, will you.”

The voices of the officers were harsh with anxiety.

“Silence there. Keep closed up.”

The crunch of gravel gradually died away as the grey files wormed their way into the halls.

Major Lambe’s face began to clear. Once in their cells the men could do no serious harm; as long as they were outside, in a mass, whether in chapel or in the yards, there was always
potential danger. He turned to the Chief Officer who, stolid and imperturbable, stood just behind him.

“Confine to cells for the rest of the day.”

The sharpness of the order barely concealed the relief in the speaker’s voice.

“Sir.”

“Find out who was at the bottom of this. I want at least four names. A sharp example is the only way to deal with it.”

“Sir.”

Mr. Patten hesitated a moment, then:

“It won’t be easy, sir; that noise was coming from all over the chapel; it was impossible to . . .”

The Deputy Governor cut him short.

“I don’t need anyone to tell me what’s difficult or what’s easy in the prison service”, he snapped. “I want four names. Get them.”

“Sir. Do you wish the Governor notified?”

Major Lambe hesitated.

“No,” he said. “I’m not going to spoil his leave just because these swine make fools of themselves.”

At the far side of the big yard the last file was disappearing into D block. The last man in the file was a big, blond fellow with a stupid, grinning face. Evidently he had not sense enough to
keep his expression under control; this was no moment for grinning if one wanted to avoid trouble. Still, all might have been well had the grin not developed into a chuckle and the chuckle not
mingled with a pocket of air that at the same moment forced itself up from the man’s stomach, still inflated by an ill-digested meal. The result was a raucous belch closely resembling the
sound for which the warders, their nerves tense with anxiety, were listening. As the sound burst from the big man’s lips the officer behind him snatched a short stave from the inside pocket
of his tunic and swung it blindly at the head in front of him.

The convict uttered a cry of pain, staggered, swung round, one arm across his head, the other clutching blindly for support. Again the blow fell, this time upon the outstretched arm. There was a
hideous crack, audible right across the yard; a yell of agony burst from the injured man and he sank first to his knees and then collapsed upon the gravel.

There was a rush of blue figures to the spot. The convict just in front of the stricken man had turned at the sound of the first blow, had seen the second. He was a broad, thickset man with
tremendously long arms and a dark, cruel face. For a moment it seemed as if he would attack the officer who had struck the blow; he half crouched, drawing back his hands. But before he could move
the other warders were upon him, swung him round and hustled him through the door of the hall.

On the hot gravel lay the unconscious figure of the big convict, a bloody patch on the side of his head, his left arm crooked at a hideously unnatural angle. Above him stood the prison officer,
his sallow face a picture of mingled triumph and fear.

MRS. HORBOROUGH stood at an open window of the Medical Officer’s house, listening to the clamour that came from within the
prison. Not far away she could see little groups of women at doorways or in the gardens of the subordinate officers’ houses, women with anxious faces, women talking, silent, wondering. All
the afternoon that horrible noise had been going on. It had begun soon after the dinner hour, a sound of shouting, of incoherent cries, of banging—wood on wood, wood on stone, wood on tin,
tin on tin, tin on stone—all the noise-producing processes at which convicts were so adept. The banging was bad enough, but it was the shouting that frightened the doctor’s wife, the
harsh, angry cries of cruel voices, all the more terrible because no words were distinguishable.

Mrs. Horborough had known that something was wrong long before the noise began. Soon after chapel her husband had been sent for. He had returned very late for luncheon and had sat down in
silence to the meal, answering curtly when she questioned him; there had been an accident, an arm broken—yes, one of the convicts. That had been all he would tell her and as soon as the meal
was over he had returned to the prison.

And now this noise. It meant trouble. All the women, wives of officials and of subordinate officers, knew that it meant trouble. The memory of the Dartmoor mutiny was still fresh in their minds,
though it had been forgotten quickly enough in the country. But these women knew that trouble meant danger for their husbands. To the general public, prisoners were helpless men locked into tiny
cells, incapable of being dangerous. But these wives knew that prisoners were not always in their cells and that if trouble, bad trouble, came when they were out in the yards, in mass, the mere
handful of officers, armed though they might be, would be helpless in face of a mob of several hundred angry men.

Mrs. Horborough was afraid. Her husband, of course, was ‘neutral’; if there was fighting his work would be with the injured, regardless of which ‘side’ they belonged to.
But he would be in the thick of it and, though the majority would respect his neutrality, in that mass of evil men there were a number little better than wild beasts, who would stop at nothing in
their thirst for bloody vengeance against society.

Of course all these fears of hers might be exaggerated. The doctor’s wife knew that noisy frenzies sometimes seized the inmates of a prison without discoverable cause, that they generally
died away as quickly as they had begun and with as little reason. She had herself heard them before . . . but each time they happened she was afraid.

Presently, to her intense relief, she saw her husband come out of the prison gate and walk towards the house. Dr. James Horborough, at fifty-five, looked more like a soldier—or, at least,
an officer—than either Captain Furber or Major Lambe. The Governor was thin and stooping, the Deputy Governor had what might be described as a sergeant’s figure—too much chest and
bottom. Dr. Horborough, though he had never served in the army, even in the war, was erect and slim, his grizzled moustache was close cut, his grey eyes clear and unflinching. He had been in the
prison service for twenty-five years and would not have exchanged it for Wimpole Street for the most fashionable income.

Mrs. Horborough left her window and, slipping out into the small garden at the back of the house, began to trim the sweet peas which were her special joy, on their tall bamboos. Presently her
husband came out and, strolling up, pipe in mouth, stood watching her for a time in silence.

“I asked Beckley to come in for a cup of tea”, he said at last.

“Oh yes, dear; how nice.”

Mrs. Horborough went on with her task.

Another pause.

“He’s a bit . . . upset. I thought it would take his mind off his troubles.”

Anne Horborough’s heart beat faster.

“Has he got any troubles, dear? He’s not married, is he?”

This was a standing joke between them. The doctor laughed.

“Not that sort, but every man thinks his own job is the most important in the world—if he’s worth anything. If anything goes wrong with it . . . well, that’s trouble to
him.”

Mrs. Horborough looked at her watch.

“I’ll go and make some sandwiches”, she said. “What has gone wrong with Mr. Beckley’s job?”

Her husband grinned.

“What about those sandwiches?”

“Don’t be so tiresome, Jim. Tell me what’s the matter.”

Dr. Horborough looked about him. Nobody was within earshot.

“There was a spot of insubordination in chapel this morning—the old silly game of bleating to irritate Lambe. Nothing serious in that, though I gather it was a good deal worse than
has happened before. But naturally it upset the padre, happening in chapel. He’s new to a convict prison; there’s very little organised trouble in local prisons.”

“But all that noise? That wasn’t just ragging Major Lambe?”

Horborough frowned.

“Ah, you heard that, of course. No, I’m afraid that was more than ragging. Unfortunately, as the men were being marched back to their halls one of them did something . . . I
haven’t discovered what . . . that upset one of the officers—that nasty fellow, Fettle. Fettle beat him up . . . it was Petersen, the Swede I told you about, a great simple oaf with no
real vice in him and no moral sense either. Some of the lags saw it happen and a lot more heard Petersen cry out. It upset them. Wild stories have gone round the prison—you know how they do,
even though the men are locked in their cells. They’re in an ugly mood, but it’ll all die down in a day or two; it always does. If there was leadership it would be another matter, but
there isn’t, there can’t be. All the same, I shall be glad when the Governor gets back.”

The last sentence was spoken rather to himself than to his wife, but Mrs. Horborough heard it. It re-awakened anxiety in her mind.

“But Major Lambe’s a good man, isn’t he?” she asked.

“Oh yes; he’s a fine fellow—in his way. But if there’s bad trouble I like to see a sahib in command.”

What simple creatures men were, thought Anne Horborough. All that mystery at luncheon and the babble about Mr. Beckley’s little troubles . . . and now giving the show away like this.
Obviously Jim was badly worried and before long would want to tell her all about it—‘get it off his chest’. Well, she would rather know the worst. In the meantime, those
sandwiches.

The sandwiches were barely ready when John Beckley appeared. Mrs. Horborough saw him as he approached the house, saw the look of worry on his face. But, as she went out into the hall to greet
him that look was wiped out by a boyish smile that was, she thought, his best feature. The new chaplain was, in Mrs. Horborough’s eyes, a plain young man—well, hardly young; getting on
in the thirties, perhaps, but that seemed young to a woman of fifty. His nose was snub, his hair mouse-coloured with a tendency to curl that was kept under rigorous control by close cropping. It
was in his brown eyes that his attraction lay, especially when they brightened with the smile that came readily to them.

“How are you, Mr. Beckley? Tea’s just ready. Jim’s in the garden; will you bring him in?”

That gave the men a chance of a word together if they wanted, but there was not going to be any shop talked round the tea-table. Both men would be the better for a change of thought and, in Anne
Horborough’s opinion, if wives had one job more important than another it was to take their husbands’ minds off their business or official troubles.

So she gradually edged the talk on to cricket, in which she knew they were both interested, and soon had the pleasure of hearing them deeply engaged in the rival merits of Allen, Farnes and
Gover as England’s fast bowler. Thank goodness for sport as a thought distraction, anyway, however boring it might be for a woman to listen to.

After tea, Dr. Horborough took his guest out into the garden, sat him down on the bench which was clear of all possible ear-shot, lit a pipe, and prepared to listen to his troubles. After a
moment or two of fidgeting, out they came.

“I can’t understand why the men should have done that”, Beckley exclaimed. “I thought . . . I suppose it’s my failure in some way, but . . . I thought the services
were going pretty well—especially the voluntary ones. This morning, during the Litany, I had the feeling that there was real sincerity in the responses. I was . . . well, I was feeling very
happy about it, and then all of a sudden that appalling outburst of profanity.”

“Not profanity, padre; bad manners.”

Beckley shrugged his shoulders.

“Bad manners in the house of God is profanity, in my view”, he said. “But why should they have done it?”

“That bleating? You understood the allusion, of course; the Deputy Governor’s name?”

“Oh, yes; I saw that. It began when we were singing that hymn—‘O Lamb of God’—exaggerated stress on the word Lamb, and a bleat from someone . . . well, perhaps that
was funny in a way. But the rest of it wasn’t funny at all. It was while I was reading the prayers, and to make that horrible noise then was grossly rude to me—quite apart from the
question of profanity. I don’t want to seem egotistical, but I should like to know why they should have attacked me in that way; surely they can’t have got anything against me—in
so short a time?”

Dr. Horborough pressed the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe.

“Nothing to do with you”, he said curtly. These parsons, he thought, always considered themselves the centre of the universe. Egotistical—the word Beckley had used himself.

But the chaplain was not so easily comforted—or snubbed.

“I can’t quite see that”, he said. “Of course I understand that the allusion was to Major Lambe, but if it was really directed against him why wasn’t it done when
he was reading the Lesson? Even during the hymn it was so slight that one might call it good-humoured. But . . .