The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) by Nathan Goodwin (types of ebook readers TXT) 📕

Ann caught the first glimpses of the horse and cart making its way up the street to the taunts and jeers of the crowd. Looking back up to the window, there was no sign of the man, with whom, Ann now knew with certainty, she had chatted at the Bourne Tap, despite his almost complete alteration in appearance. It was the same man whom she had witnessed handing money to Hester in the parlour of Braemar Cottage, and whom Hester had named as Jonas Blackwood. He had recognised her, too, and had now vanished.

By now the people around Ann had worked themselves into a near-frenzy at the sight of the approaching horse and cart.

Ann’s breath caught in her throat when she took the sight in fully. Sitting beside the driver was the fat heavy-faced executioner, the rope coiled portentously in his lap. At the rear of the cart, sitting upon what would be his own coffin, was Alexander Spence. He was sitting, legs apart with his head facing downwards and hands tied behind his back. Next to him stood a vicar, eyes closed, muttering a prayer.

The driver brought the cart to a standstill, before expertly manoeuvring the open rear so that it slid precisely underneath the gallows.

A lavish carriage drew to a halt beside the cart and out stepped the town mayor, Henshaw Latham, and several other dignitaries whom Ann had seen at previous executions. They all wore fine top hats, lavish long coats, high collars and the regalia of their respective offices. The crowd greeted them with a muddled chorus of cheering and heckling, as the line of four illustrious gentlemen entered the Black Horse to take the prime seats in the upstairs window.

The executioner loafed over to Alexander and hoisted him up under the armpits, so that he was directly below the end of the horizontal beam.

Ann called out his name but her words were lost in the excited commotion of the mob around her.

Alexander nodded respectfully to the uniformed man who had risen onto the gallows beside him: the Preventative Officer whom Alexander had repeatedly attempted to shoot dead.

‘Be saving him!’ Ann shouted at the officer, knowing full well that even if he had heard her, and even if he had been so minded, the decision to execute Alexander was sealed. Appeals for clemency at sparing this twenty-two-year-old man were rebutted and Sam’s attempt back in April to break him out of Dover Gaol had failed when Alexander had been captured attempting to flee across the Channel to France. This was it. She was witnessing the last moments of his life.

The din from the thronging mass around her crescendoed to a new height, as the hangman raised a grubby hessian hood to Alexander’s head. He took one final fleeting glance at the crowd, his eyes momentarily locking on to Ann’s. ‘Goodbye, Alexander,’ she whispered hopelessly, the acute stab of guilt that had brought her here lancing at her heart. Naively believing that she had stood a chance with the widowed doctor, she now regretted the way that she had dealt with Alexander at the Bourne Tap back in November, having barely acknowledged him since. But now, with the news having reached her that Ralph Papworth-Hougham had married a girl from Folkestone, she could see her foolishness set out clearly before her.

She watched as the hood was pulled down over his face and the executioner slung the looped rope over the beam, tightened it, then pulled it down over Alexander’s head.

The vicar gently touched his fingers to Alexander’s elbow, then opened a small black bible, from which, above the riotous clamour of the crowd, he conveyed the last perceptible words that Alexander would hear.

As the hangman strode to the front of the cart, about to drive the horse forward and remove the footing from beneath Alexander, the crowd began to clap and cheer. But, to Ann’s horror, Alexander did not wait and kicked himself off the back of the cart, much to the hangman’s disgust.

She watched as the rope snapped tight and his legs began to kick wildly.

As usual, the hundreds who had gathered to witness his death screamed and shouted with delight—even the injudicious number in her immediate vicinity who believed Alexander to have been her brother.

Inexplicably, as she continued to watch him die, she thought of the moment when he had accepted her advocated remedy for his rope burn injuries and his hands were covered in viscous bubbling snail trails.

Ann looked over at the windows of the Black Horse Inn. The seated men were smiling, nodding and talking animatedly to each other, but without taking their gaze from Alexander’s writhing body. There was still no sign of Jonas Blackwood and doubt began to skulk into Ann’s mind that she had been correct in her identification. What on earth would a smuggler be doing dressed up like that and in the company of the upper classes? It surely hadn’t been him, she began to tell herself.

A disappointed groan and an instant disbanding of the crowd told Ann that Alexander had finally died. She remained still while the masses bustled around her. Quickly, she was left almost alone.

The body stopped twitching and swaying; the driver pushed the cart back below him once again. Taking Alexander by the hips, the hangman tossed him onto his shoulder before expertly loosening the noose and, freeing Alexander from the gallows, dropped him roughly into the coffin. She watched the vicar utter another prayer, the words ‘forgive’, ‘wretched’ and ‘soul’ reaching her ears.

The hangman placed the lid on the coffin and shouted for the driver to move on.

Within a minute the cart was out of sight and the street had returned to normality.

Ann held her attention on the door of the public house opposite, watching as the line of dignitaries streamed out. Even if she had