So Mrs Sucksby told it; and every time, though her voice would start off steady it would end up trembling, and her eyes would fill with tears. For she had waited for my mother, and my mother had not come. What came, instead, was awful news. The job that was meant to make her fortune, had gone badly. A man had been killed trying to save his plate. It was my mother''s knife that killed him. Her own pal peached on her. The police caught up with her at last. She was a month in prison. Then they hanged her.
They hanged her, as they did murderesses then, on the roof of
the Horsemonger Lane Gaol. Mrs Sucksby stood and watched the drop, from the window of the room that I was born in.
You got a marvellous view of it from there—the best view in South London, everybody said. People were prepared to pay very handsomely for a spot at that window, on hanging days. And though some girls shrieked when the trap went rattling down, I never did. I never once shuddered or winked.
''That''s Susan Trinder,'' someone might whisper then. ''Her mother was hanged as a murderess. Ain''t she brave?''~本~作~品~由~思~兔~在~線~閱~讀~網~友~整~理~上~傳~