Death at Dartmoor Read online

  “Spare the vanquished.” The inscription might have seemed odd to a visitor unaware of the awful history of this place, but Charles knew that Britain’s most feared and hated prison had originally been purpose-built to house the vanquished: French prisoners taken during the Napoleonic wars. The men had been imprisoned for months in overcrowded, stinking hulks moored at Plymouth, and when five thousand of them left their rotting ships of death in 1809 and marched across the moor to the more commodious Dartmoor Prison, they might indeed have felt that they had been “spared.”

  But not for long. Although the prisoners of war were given the run of five large stone buildings within the wall that surrounded the thirty-acre compound, the scanty rations, the miserable damp cold, and the practice of housing men in common rooms soon took their toll. The population more than doubled as American prisoners from the War of 1812 were marched across the moors from Plymouth, and the filthy, overcrowded commons meant that typhus, measles, and smallpox quickly became epidemic, killing hundreds. By 1816, the last dead prisoner was finally buried, and the last of the living were gone, too, so that both the prison and its adjacent village—Princetown had grown up outside the walls, like a village at an abbey foregate—were abandoned to the anguish of restless, homeless ghosts.

  For a third of a century, Dartmoor stood silent, an echoing mausoleum amid the high, misty tors, and the population of Princetown dwindled to a few hardy souls. For a time, the prison was converted to a naphtha factory, for the production of which large quantities of peat were cut on Holming Beam; the company was doomed to an early death, however. The place fell silent once again, and the moor was returned to the possession of the moormen who farmed the fields around its circumference and pastured their sheep and cattle on its grassy commons.

  But the world beyond the moor was beginning to change. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Britain coped with its criminals by stuffing those convicted of minor crimes into vile and verminous urban prisons, transporting more serious offenders to the opposite ends of the earth, and hanging the rest. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, the colonies were no longer willing to serve as the Crown’s dumping grounds, and penal reform had succeeded in abolishing the death penalty for crimes such as sheep stealing and housebreaking. Some other solution was wanted, and in 1850, Dartmoor was reopened in order to house men that had been deemed unfit for society. But although the obsolete buildings were razed and new ones built, the grim old prison laid a fresh curse upon those who came through its gates. The men no longer shared the nightmare of their confinement in large common halls; now they were condemned to silent, lonely years in the granite tombs which were their separate cells.

  The wind was mild for late March, but Charles shivered. He had not been eager to undertake this project, but he and the prison governor, Major Oliver Cranford, had served together in the Sudan, and when the Home Office suggested that Dartmoor might be an ideal site to begin the national prisoners’ fingerprinting programme, Charles could scarcely refuse. After all, he had been lobbying the Yard for almost a decade to abandon its reliance on the outworn, imprecise anthropometric system of identification—the measurement of facial features that was also called bertillonage, after its French formulator, Alphonse Bertillon—and turn instead to the more scientific method of dactyloscopy. In fact, the previous year, the Home Secretary had asked Charles and Lord Belper to establish a committee to review the Yard’s use of bertillonage and compare it to fingerprinting. The committee had concluded their report with the recommendation that anthropometry be dropped and fingerprinting take its place. It was time to move into the modern era.

  The Home Secretary acted quickly, appointing Edward Henry (whose Classification and Uses of Fingerprints was the definitive work on the subject) as the acting Police Commissioner of London and head of the Criminal Investigation Department. Only two weeks ago, Charles had accompanied the new commissioner on his first official rounds at the Yard, where they saw that the fingerprint operation, such as it was, lay in a shambles. The few prints that had been collected were technically poor and pigeonholed without proper labeling in the dusty recesses of an ordinary household cupboard. At this very moment, Commissioner Henry was beginning a programme to fingerprint everyone the Yard apprehended. Charles could scarcely refuse to do his part when the Home Office proposed that he himself go to Dartmoor to oversee the implementation of the first prison fingerprinting program. And that was not his only motive for coming. There was that other business, the case of the unfortunate Dr. Spencer, which had been troubling him ever since the fellow was convicted. Altogether, he had plenty of reason to be at Dartmoor, like it or not.

  Some three hours later, having toured the prison, Charles was sitting in Major Cranford’s dreary office in the Administrative Block, which like everywhere else in this dreadful place, was saturated with the stale, acrid smell of perspiring bodies, bad sanitation, and leaking gas.

  “I won’t ask what you think,” the major said candidly. He sat down in a leather chair on one side of the fire, motioning Charles to take the other. “I can read the disgust on your face.”

  “I don’t understand how they stay warm, Oliver,” Charles said, stretching out his feet to the blaze and thinking that it might be more comfortable out-of-doors than inside the prison’s thick stone walls, which kept out the sun’s warmth as well as the wind. “Those old coke stoves in the center of each hall give out nothing but noxious fumes. Can’t you put individual gas fires in the cells?” He caught himself, thinking of the plank beds and wooden stools and the mattresses and pillows stuffed with coconut fiber, all combustible. “No, I suppose you can’t,” he said regretfully. “It would be much too dangerous. One careless move—or a vindictive one—and the place would be filled with smoke.”

  “Exactly,” the major said. “We can’t even put gas lighting in the cells. Perhaps, if the prison were to be electrified ...” He took the tongs and added a few more lumps of coal to the fire. “But that will never happen, just as it will never be properly plumbed. Some of these men are no better than animals. Can you imagine what they would put down the pipes?” There was a tap at the door. “Ah, that will be our luncheon,” he said. “Come in, Richards.”

  An orderly entered, carrying a tray covered by a white cloth and fine china serving dishes. He put it down on the table between the two men, opened a bottle of wine, and poured. Charles helped himself to a roast beef sandwich and a pickle.

  “Forget the plumbing and the fires,” the major said, putting a spoonful of seafood salad on his plate. “Fingerprinting, now—that’s a task we can accomplish, Charles. Knowing you as I do, I’m sure you have already organized the whole thing in your mind. I suppose you’re ready to move forward with it. What can I do to help?”

  “Police Commissioner Henry and I have drafted a set of instructions for those who will be implementing the system,” Charles said. He unfolded a snowy white napkin across his knees. “As important as collecting the prints is their labeling and cataloguing, which ought to be consistent across the Empire.”

  “The Empire!” The major raised his eyebrows. “Well, well. You are up to something, old chap.” He held up his wineglass, scrutinizing the color. He took a sip, smiled, and took another.

  “It’s extensive but manageable,” Charles said mildly, around his sandwich. “If all do their individual parts.”

  “Which won’t be done as eagerly you imagine, of course.” The major set down his glass. Under his fastidiously trimmed mustache, his smile was dry. “There’ll be plenty of foot-dragging. Prison officials are not known for being open to change, you know. We’re a conservative lot—much worse than the police.”

  “Of course,” Charles said. “But we must make a start.” He was not in the habit of blaming people for being unwilling to adapt to new ideas. But as police collected fingerprint evidence and prosecutors began to use it in obtaining convictions in court, it was only a matter of time before everyone involved would be forced to a
ccept this new and virtually foolproof method of identification. “This afternoon,” he added, “I should like to meet with your deputy governor and the guards he’s selected to do the actual work.”

  “Very good.” The major finished his salad and took a sandwich. “One or two may be a bit late, however. A missionary from the Salvation Army Prison Gate Mission is here to distribute Bibles to the Scottish inmates.” He grinned. “We can threaten their souls with the fires of Hades, even if we can’t warm their shanks. Since most of the men are illiterate, however, I doubt that a Bible or two will make much of a difference.”

  “Speaking of Scottish inmates,” Charles said, “I wonder what you might know of Dr. Samuel Spencer, who arrived here fairly recently.”

  “November, I believe.” The major chewed and swallowed. “I spoke with him myself. A well-educated, thoughtful fellow. But he’s in the right company. At last count, we are housing two other inmates who are here because they bludgeoned their wives to death.”

  “You think he’s guilty, then?”

  “Guilty?” The major licked his finger. “I hadn’t given it much thought. He pled guilty, didn’t he?”

  “If he was guilty, why didn’t he hang?”

  The major frowned. “Dash it all, Sheridan, you know why he didn’t hang. A petition was got up by his friends in Edinburgh, fifty or sixty names—”

  “Four hundred,” Charles said.

  “Four hundred, then.” The major sounded cross. “And then that magazine, Truth, began needling the home secretary, who knuckled under and commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.” He put down his plate with a clatter. “If you ask me, Spencer ought to be grateful for all that’s been done on his behalf.”

  “Has he said whether he’s guilty or innocent? Since he arrived at the prison, I mean.”

  “He told the court that he’s guilty, and that’s enough for me,” the major replied, taking a slice of cheese.

  Charles contemplated the fire in silence for a moment, then remarked, “The reason some signed the petition was that the only evidence of his guilt was circumstantial, while others felt that he pleaded guilty in order to protect the real killer, who was known to him. As for myself, I am interested in the bloody handprint that was found at the scene of the crime. According to the police, Spencer’s hands did not have blood on them when he was discovered with the victim.”

  “Handprint?” The major frowned. “I don’t believe I heard—”

  “It was not entered into evidence,” Charles said. “It played no role in the police investigation, and I don’t suppose that Spencer’s solicitor would have given it a second thought, even if he had been aware of its existence.” He stared at the play of the flames. “I should not have known of the print if it had not been for Police Commissioner Henry. He discovered a photograph of it during a visit to the Edinburgh police and brought it to my attention.” He reached into the pocket of his coat and took out a large envelope. He opened it and handed several photographs to the major.

  The major studied the photographs, scowling, then handed them back. “I suppose you are raising this matter because you want to have a go at the fellow.”

  “Something like that,” Charles said. “But there’s no special hurry, I suppose.”

  “Quite right,” the major said. “No hurry at all. The man isn’t going anywhere.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Salvation Army Mission has facilities for visiting prisoners in gaol and it welcomes them on their discharge into its homes in order that they may work out their social redemption. It has its Prison Gate Mission, which has the proud distinction of having been served as missionaries by seven ex-criminals who themselves were in durance vile for an aggregate of 210 years.

  “Missionary London,” in Living London, 1902 Alec Roberts

  “Miss Lucas!” The young orderly raised his voice.

  “The chapel, it’s this way, miss.” He motioned down an intersecting hallway that led, like a dark stone tunnel, deeper into the prison and into an even deeper gloom.

  “Oh, of course.” Charlotte Lucas (the name she had given to the deputy governor) straightened her shoulders. She must pay closer attention. “I’m sorry. I was distracted.”

  “I s‘pect it’s the smells,” the orderly confided in an understanding tone. He shifted the box of Bibles from one arm to the other. “Ladies doan’t much like ’em.”

  Charlotte Lucas smiled gently. “But we in the Prison Gate Mission are used to such things. This is the third prison I have visited in as many weeks.”

  “I’m shure,” the young man said respectfully. “An’ all the pris‘ners, they looks forward to seein’ a lady. We doan’t have many here’bouts.” He motioned with his head. “If ye’ll follow me, I’ll lead ye t’ the chapel. The men’re a-waitin’.”

  Charlotte inclined her head, clasped her hands at her black-clad waist, and followed the lad down the long hallway. The smells were indeed appalling, and the silence, but it was more the weight of the place .that afflicted her. It was as if the tragic lives of the doomed prisoners had been added to the eternal substance of the ancient stones, all of it pressing down upon her shoulders, an impossible burden of hardship and suffering and human sorrow. What she had told the boy was not exactly true but close enough, for she had visited most of the prisons in England over the past year, making extensive notes on matters that had to be attended to if prison life were ever to be humane. Here at Dartmoor, for instance, many things were necessary: improved heating and plumbing and food. And especially improved treatment by the guards. Although she would not be allowed to visit the punishment cells and see for herself the penalties imposed on those who had attempted to escape or had been caught in possession of prohibited articles, she knew what they were like from the reports of men who had survived their solitary, lightless, airless incarceration there, on a diet of bread and water. Charlotte shuddered and put these unthinkable thoughts out of her mind. She would have to concentrate on today’s mission, which was different and quite special and required all her attention.

  The men, fewer than a dozen of them, all wearing their coarse uniforms with the distinctive broad-arrow stripe, their shaved heads bare, were already seated when Charlotte was escorted inside. The room itself was quite plain, with rows of wooden benches instead of pews and “Prince of Peace” emblazoned over the pulpit, which was backed by three tall stained glass windows and a mural painting of Christ ascending into the heavens. In fact, one might even forget that this was a prison chapel, if it were not for the tall stools on which the guards sat, strategically placed around the walls.

  Charlotte walked down the aisle and stood at the side of the altar. She unloaded the books from the box held by the orderly and arranged them in two neat piles beside the altar.

  The chaplain stepped forward. “Miss Lucas,” he said in a low voice, bowing. “I’ve had the men assembled, although I must say that yours was a rather unusual request. Only Scotsmen, as I understand it? Something about a bequest?”

  “Yes,” Charlotte replied. She adjusted her Army bonnet, which had a way of going askew when she turned her head. “The Mission receives gifts of this sort from time to time. In this case, the donor who provided the funds through his will to purchase the Bibles left quite specific instructions for their distribution.” She looked out over the small group and was satisfied.

  “I see,” the chaplain said. “Well, then, shall we begin?” He stepped forward and raised his voice. “Attention, men. This is Miss Charlotte Lucas, of the Salvation Army’s Prison Gate Mission. She is here to distribute Bibles to men of Scottish descent, carrying out a special bequest from an anonymous donor. We will stand and repeat the Lord’s Prayer in unison. Then you will file forward and she will give each of you a Bible.”

  The men stood, bowed their bare, shaven heads, and dutifully mumbled the prayer. Beneath her lashes, Charlotte stole a glance at them. One in particular—a slender man with a sensitive mouth, a stubble of reddish beard crusting h
is prison pallor, and the number 351 sewn on his prison jacket—was watching her longingly, his feelings so evident that it was all she could do to keep from gasping aloud. She lowered her head and laced her fingers to keep them from trembling. The man wasn’t the only one staring at her, of course. All of the men were starved for the sight of a woman, and her heart went out to them. Whatever their crimes, a sentence to Dartmoor was a sentence to a living hell.

  When the prayer was finished, the men stood and came forward, one at a time, as the guards looked on watchfully. Charlotte took the small leather-bound Bibles one at a time from the pile, presenting one to every prisoner. “God bless you,” she said, looking into each face as she pressed their hands, murmuring the number of a verse to each. John 3:16, or Romans 8:28, or some other, each one different. Most of the men did not answer or return her glance, keeping their eyes averted from hers as if they did not want to risk her seeing into the darkness of their souls—all but two or three, whose looks were bold or insolent or frighteningly direct. To these, she gave a small smile as well as a blessing and a verse.

  When number 351 stepped up to her, she turned to her left as if to check the empty box. As she turned back to face him, she brushed one of the piles, knocking one book off with a thud that echoed through the chapel. Impulsively, several of the men still in line started forward.

  “Stand fast,” the guard barked. Number 351 had already bent to pick it up, and when he rose, their eyes met, his questioning.

  As he replaced the Bible on the stack, she handed him the one she was holding. “Bless you,” she said.

  When each man had received his Bible, the guards climbed down from the stools. “Form up!” came the command, and the men fell into a single line. “Forward!” The group marched away in a shuffling lockstep.

  “Thank you, Miss Lucas,” the chaplain said, taking Charlotte’s black-gloved hand. “I know the men are grateful for the interruption in the monotony of their days, if nothing else. You’re going directly back to London? You’ll see Commander Sloan on your return?”