The Daylight Thief

Northampton County Gaol, 6th November 1877

‘Move yer sen lad, we’ve gorra live un!’

Jack Wright’s eyes glinted with excitement as he thudded through the door of the warders’ room, nearly losing his footing in the process. ‘Come on then, mek haste… you’re the young ’un in this place,’ he added impatiently as he addressed the only occupant of the room. Then he was gone as suddenly as he’d appeared, leaving disturbed shadows flickering madly around the candlelit room and the door twitching on its frame.

Harry Howard dropped his mug and sprinted after the older man as fast as he could. His heavy boots clattering on the flagstones echoed uncomfortably in his ears. A rat scampered casually towards him, cloaked in the gloom by the edge of the wall. It checked in fright at the oncoming warder and fled hurriedly back in the opposite direction. The fleeing rodent led Harry out into the freezing air of the courtyard behind the gatehouse of the gaol, where the clattering echoes subsided and he stumbled to a breathless and abrupt halt. A cold breeze prickled the skin of Harry’s face. At his feet Jack Wright, together with a red-haired police constable, was grappling vigorously with a new inmate.

The three men rolled around on the floor of the cobbled yard, the prisoner kicking and pushing hard against the weight of the uniformed authority that was trying to over- power him. From amongst this melee of limbs, steam rose in twirling clouds. It mingled with the white breath of the combatants and hung over the scene like a pall. Even despite the gloom of the poorly lit yard, Harry’s attention was caught by the prisoner’s eyes. They shone out, startlingly blue, when- ever the man surfaced from the scrum, but their stare seemed unfocussed and detached from the events around them.

Harry sniffed the air, expecting to smell alcohol, but instead the clean chill of the night was soured only by the strong odour of sweat. If he wasn’t a drunk, he concluded, then the man must be a lunatic in some kind of trance, or even asleep and acting out a nightmare that was playing within the darkness of his mind. From beneath the chaos of bodies the man was also producing pitiful cries that sent a cold discomforting sensation pulsing through Harry’s frame. ‘What in the name of God …?’ he heard himself saying out loud.

Harry pitched in to the fray. He stuck to his task doggedly as he was flung back out of the fight several times, as knees, arms and cobbles tumbled around him, sometimes smacking against his face and body. Blood oozed from a cut on his lips, it coalesced with the fluid which was forced from his nose and eyes by the icy night. Then his jacket tore open, launch- ing a couple of buttons into the air. Even through sounds of the grunting, cursing and heavy breathing all around him, he heard their sharp ‘ping’ as they landed on the cobbled floor and bounced away. As he grabbed at the flailing bodies around him, he wasn’t always sure exactly who he’d got hold of as the fracas seemed to take on life of its own. Then it all ended in an unanticipated instant when the prisoner sud- denly stopped struggling. He fell limp and still, as though the curtain had closed on the nightmare and a contented sleep had finally prevailed.

The warders and policeman fell back on to the cold floor

exhausted and unable to speak for a few moments. It was Harry who eventually broke the panting silence.

‘Is he dead?’

Wright, still rasping for breath, crawled over and crouched beside the man’s body. He discharged some bloodied spit and then flicked at the limp arm of the man with his foot. ‘Dead? Nah … he’s not dead. He just knows when he’s beaten.’

Thirty minutes later Harry stood in front of the cell where the prisoner was propped up against the wall, his head tilted slightly backwards. In spite of the bone-gnawingly chilly night, Harry was uncomfortably warm and sweat still trick- led fresh down his back. He was also still damp from the tea he’d spilled over himself at the shock of Wright’s dramatic entrance. Pointlessly he patted the dark patches on his ripped and dusty uniform, cursing under his breath. Prison life was still a novelty for Harry, but even in his wildest imaginings he never foresaw that he might witness anything like the strange events he’d encountered that evening. He could feel his heart still racing and even just recollecting those unexpected min- utes made it race some more.

The new inmate hadn’t uttered a word since he had given up the fight on the courtyard floor. His eyes were now wide open, gazing out to somewhere far beyond the confining walls of the thirteen foot by seven foot room. He was a tall man, easily a ‘six-footer’ thought Harry. The warder guessed that he was in his early to late forties, but there were only a few flecks of grey in his dark hair. He had a large, impos- ing and somewhat serious face, which seemed to be at odds with those still bright blue eyes, and a broad scar across his tanned forehead. However, it was the eyes that told the still inexperienced Harry that this man had probably never seen the inside of a gaol before.

What he saw stoked a recollection from his first day on the job. A crusty old turn-key had told him never to feel a single pang of empathy for any one of the poor, desperate, bad to the core, or simply unlucky specimens of humankind that would pass through the doors of the gaol. Harry had usually found it easy to apply this advice, as very few of the inmates he saw merited his pity anyway. With this man, however, he felt differently. He struggled to understand why this was. Could it be that the man just seemed so oddly out of place here? Harry debated in his mind, disavowing all he had been told, whether or not he should open the door and try to speak to the man. Just at the very moment that he reached for his keys, his thought process was stopped dead in its tracks as the man’s piercing blue eyes turned towards the door, his head moving as if it were swinging slowly on a hinge. For a long moment they seemed to connect directly with Harry’s own gaze and a chill spread through the warder’s body. It was enough for him to decide to maintain a respectful distance after all and he released his grip on the keys.

Over the following days Harry learned some of the man’s story; that he had been arrested for attempting suicide and had been committed to the gaol to await his trial. Such a his- tory meant that he was put under more regular observation than the other prisoners and, during his subsequent shifts, Harry made a point of volunteering for this duty whenever he could. It was not that Harry was any more conscientious than his colleagues, it was just that this particular prisoner caused in him a lingering fascination. This was, no doubt, a legacy of the strange and frantic events of that first evening.

The prisoner still hadn’t spoken since his arrival and if he communicated at all it was with facial expressions only; a sardonic smile or the merest glimmer of pain registering on his tightening face, or just the strange stare from his blue eyes. They still just seemed to gaze out into nowhere. Neither did the man eat and as the days progressed he began to visibly wither away under the tangible pall of gloom that cohab- ited the dark space of his confinement. Harry had doggedly attempted to spoon feed the prisoner every day, but nothing, not even the thinnest broth, would pass his lips. With a guilty resignation he realised that his attempts were in vain. He persevered but, in time, he found himself just going through the motions for the benefit of his masters. A week after his arrival the man, confined to the cell’s hard wooden bed, was a shrunken figure beneath the moth-eaten blankets.

At three o’clock in the morning of the tenth day Harry was once again on his shift and he opened the peep-hole to peer into the cell. A beam of moonlight angled across the bed and he noticed immediately that the man’s lips seemed to be frozen into a sort of half smile. This had happened before, but now the man was barely conscious. Then, to Harry’s surprise, he imagined that he heard the sound of a hoarsely whispered voice coming from the bed. He wasn’t totally sure, but he quickly unlocked the door and was at the prisoner’s bedside in an instant. ‘I’m here,’ Harry said in a soft voice. ‘If you have something to say then I’m ready to hear your words.’

The prisoner’s eyes flickered as if they were hovering, undecided, between life and death. During the brief moments in which they were open, they seemed so much paler than before. His stretched skin glowed almost white in the dim moonlit room and his body had begun to shake. Harry knew that this was more than simple shivering caused by the chill of the cell. With enormous effort the man turned his head towards the warder. He wrestled for breath before forcing out the words once more in a dry, broken, rasping voice. Harry barely had time to register what he had heard before the man’s eyes closed for the final time and his head slumped gently to the left.

Later, as the afternoon became early evening, Harry found himself standing before the governor of the gaol. He was tired and his body hurt. He had not been able to sleep after the end of his last shift as his mind continually sifted through jagged fragments of recollection from the previous night and early morning. The dark and oppressive room enhanced the fatigue he was feeling after almost twenty-four hours without proper rest. The governor’s room was close to the refectory and the air was heavily infected with the smells of food being prepared, which started to make Harry’s stomach churn. He had been followed into the room by the tall red-haired policeman who was present when the prisoner had been admitted and whose head seemed uncomfortably close to the ceiling, causing him to stoop a little. The constable was nervously adjusting the ‘S’-shaped clasp on the belt around his dark blue jacket.

‘Thank you for answering my summons Mr Howard,’ began the governor, Mr Farquerson, in a deep bass voice that captured the gravity of the moment but belied the governor’s short and squat physical stature. This air of solemnity was enhanced by a pronounced pursing of his lips and a squint, which Harry put down to the lack of light in the room. He paused for a few moments as he rifled through some papers on his desk. ‘Ah,’ he declared as if he’d just found an important piece of evidence, ‘Mr Howard?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘You will have surmised, no doubt, that this discussion concerns the unfortunate passing away of one of the fellows in our custody in the early hours of this morning?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘A fellow who was only in our custody whilst awaiting trial and was not yet judged to be a guilty man?’

Harry nodded.

‘Death casts an ill shadow upon the good work that we do here Mr Howard. This may be a new service, dare I say a new start, but there are still some at large who will see reflections of the past in it and who would love to have my guts for garters at the slightest hint of nonfeasance. I might even say they would like to “fry” them.’ He guffawed loudly but his attempt at what he considered to be a joke was clearly lost on a tired Harry; however, he persisted in the same vein. ’I hope there is no irony to be derived from your surname, Mr Howard?’ The governor flashed a very brief smile this time, but the warder’s face was still unresponsive.

‘Sir?’ Harry replied, confused by the question.

‘You are surely aware of the “Howardites”, Mr Howard! They will be hammering on my door with their wretched bibles soon enough. But no matter. You were present at the late prisoner’s end, were you not?’ Farquerson focussed his squint even harder upon the warder.

’Yes, sir … Well, I was watching through the cell door and …’

‘Yes, yes, of course you were. I am trying to establish that you happened to be there at the very moment that the fellow expired?’

‘I was, sir. I thought I’d better keep an eye on him, sir. He seemed …’ Harry paused as he searched for the right words, ‘he seemed troubled.’

‘Indeed …?’ Harry’s words clearly amused the governor. ‘I presume that is not an unusual state of being for the creatures who darken our doors is it, Mr Howard?’ The governor paused, as if waiting for an answer and looking Harry directly in the eye, before he continued. ‘I have spoken to your colleague Mr Wright, who told me that some restraint was necessary when the prisoner was first committed a few days ago. Is it your view that this action was proper, above reproach and justified on all counts?’

’Yes, sir. It is my belief that we prevented the prisoner harming his own person … as well as from doing injury to us. He did come over all calm though, sir … unearthly calm to my mind … before we moved him into the cell.’

Farquerson nodded and then deepened his squint until his eyes were almost closed, before raising his voice once more. ‘I further understand that the late prisoner did not consume any food?’

‘No, sir.’

‘We provided regular meals as per our normal attentions to the health and well-being of those who reside within our walls?’

‘We did, sir, but the prisoner showed no interest in eating them. I even tried to feed him myself on a number of occasions, but he just turned his head away. He hardly took any liquids either, sir.’

At this point the policeman raised a clenched hand to his mouth and coughed to draw the attention of the other men. The governor’s stare alighted upon him, his eyes finally widening as if noticing the constable for the first time. ‘And you, sir, are …?’

‘Jeffs, sir. Police constable third class, from the station at Brackley. I brought the prisoner in, sir.’

‘Then please continue, Mr Jeffs.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ Jeffs took a notebook and pencil from a leather pouch attached to his belt; as he did so he fumbled them and they dropped to the floor. After retrieving them sheepishly, he turned towards the warder. He cleared his throat, ‘Mr Howard. I believe that you confided to Mr Wright that the prisoner made an utterance before his demise?’

‘If you mean he spoke to me, constable, then that he did.’

The governor huffed and leaned forward a few inches in Harry’s direction, ‘Well, tell us Mr Howard. I am sure we are curious in the extreme to know the nature of this death-bed pronouncement and whether it will shed any light on this most unwelcome incident.’

‘It was spoken hoarsely, sir, so I can’t be sure.’

‘Were you able to form an impression of the words uttered?’ asked the policeman.

‘Yes, constable.’

‘Well then, spit it out man!’ the governor snapped impatiently.

Harry fiddled nervously with his cap between his hands. ‘It seemed to me that he spoke the words … “I will live on”.’