The switch

 

I have always had a strong imagination. I think this is important in a historian-criminologist. It's not just about the cold facts, the police reports, the evidence. You also have to be able to put yourself into the mind of the criminal; to see the world through his eyes (almost always it was he not she; to understand the culture and the times in which he operated. I can walk through a present day landscape and imagine how it was at the historic time I am researching. I can see almost like a double image how the streets would have looked at the time – the old fashioned shop fronts, the hurrying people in crinolines and top hats, the horses and carts, like a black-and-white movie overlaying the technicolor image of today. I can even move back and forth in time, fast forwarding the chiaroscuro image, back to a time of wooden cottages and dirt roads, forward to impressive facades and brick and cobbles.

So it was a real privilege to visit the actual scenes of one of the murderers I have always been interested in: Carson Ferzackerley. He was no Jack the Ripper. It was a fairly banal murder as they go, but my interest was sparked by the fact that he was the first to be executed by electric chair, in 1920s Chicago. As I looked into it, something fascinated me about it. It seemed to be a motiveless crime. His relationship with his wife previously had been idyllic and their love for each other was remarked upon. There had been no sign of mental illness – Ferzackerley lived a blameless life, he was a hard worker, a good churchman, a follower of the temperance movement. There was no evidence of gambling or debts; nor of infidelities on either side. This was Chicago in the 1920s, but there were no indications of connections with the underworld. So all the usual motivations for murder were absent. Some thought that a devil had possessed him, others that some kind of seizure had made him mad. The violence of his attack was horrific, by all accounts. But he offered no resistance to the authorities afterwards, and no explanation. In fact, he claimed not to be Ferzackerley at all, on the rare occasions when he spoke.

So with my good wife I decided to visit modern day Chicago. Olga likes to accompany me on these trips, even though I can sometimes appear to be in a dream as I wander the streets with my double exposure imagination going full tilt. The courthouse building where Ferzackerley was tried and convicted, and which housed the horrific machine that would end his life, was still there and is now a museum, although the execution suite is now normally off limits. I had been given special access by the curator, Sam Wise, whom I knew through collaborations and conferences we had both attended. So I arranged a private tour a few days after we arrived. The courthouse was quite close to the house where Carson and Marie Ferzackerley boarded, which is even now a small family-run hotel, little changed externally but with better plumbing and quite plushly furnished rooms in that characteristic American 'inn' style, and that is where we stayed. As I walked through its hall and sitting rooms I could picture how it would have looked in the twenties, somewhat faded and filled still with the heavy Victorian mahogany and brocades that survived from a more prosperous time. It would have all been threadbare but respectable: my research showed it was run as a temperance boarding house by an impoverished widow. The silent movie ran in my head, overlaying the real images as we toured the house and climbed the ornate staircase to our room. I had of course booked the room where the Ferzackerleys had lived, generously sized and now with an ensuite carved out of one corner where there would have been an overbearing wardrobe and dressing table. There was a small closet and the chimney breast of a fireplace, long since boarded up. The bed would have been a big iron-framed affair in the same location as today's twin beds.

We went out to dinner and then back in the room to read. I wanted to find all I could about the house while I was there. Olga retired early and I stayed up in a comfortable armchair, reading once more the police reports, which survived. I imagined the door opening and Ferzackerley entering from a late shift, his wife already in bed just like my wife tonight, the room cold and dark but for the flickering light of the dying embers. It was as if I could really see him now, standing there, taking off his heavy coat and his hat, brushing off a little snow on this deep winter night. He stood for a minute looking down at the bed and his sleeping wife. Then suddenly he looked up and seemed to stare right at me. I shook my head to lose the image: I had seen the police mugshot, directly into the camera, so that was the look I imagined.

I went to bed and turned out the light. The house, one of those late Victorian trophy houses, all gothic details and grey clapboard, creaked and cracked as the night temperatures fell. I fell asleep I think, because I seemed to see him again, staring at me in the firelight.

Next morning was bright and clear. Olga and I had a perfect day, walking around the city and along the waterfront. It's the thing we most like to share, exploring new places on foot, finding the little things that make a place unique.

That evening we had dinner with Sam who explained the history of the courthouse, an imposing classical edifice that had seen many a famous criminal sent down. Tomorrow the building was closed to the public but he had offered to take us round personally. It was an entertaining evening: Olga enjoyed Sam's anecdotes and decided to come with me on the tour.

We got straight to bed, ready for an early start. As I lay down, I felt decidedly chilly, even despite the late spring sunshine earlier, and decided to fetch the extra comforter in the closet. As I turned back into the room, I seemed to imagine Ferzackerley entering the room with his wife, perhaps a happier earlier occasion, I thought to myself. With these visions of the past it was always vision only, but tonight instead of the sketchy version of the mind's eye, the figures, while still black and white seemed more solid, more real. He was taking her in his arms: they seemed to be laughing wildly, whirling round and round in a mad dance, then abruptly he checked them and threw his wife roughly on the bed. Enough: my imagination was running away with me. I shook my head and thought no more about it. I went to bed and switched off the light. My wife's sleep seemed to be disturbed: she was breathing fast and shallow and moving about in her bed. I opened my eyes and looked over. I was shocked to be confronted by the vision of Ferzackerley's face no more than a couple of feet from mine, as if he was lying on top of Olga, looking straight at me, staring wildly. I jumped up and the vision was gone. My heart was beating fast and I decided I had lapsed into a dream, perhaps a little anxious about tomorrow.

Early next day Sam took us around the museum exhibits then into the courtroom, oak panelled and surprisingly small. He pointed out the various features – the judge's dais, the witness box, the jury bench, and the barred cage of the dock, with its stairs down to below. 'To be honest, it gives me the willies,' he said, 'every time I go down there. So if you don't mind, here's the key. Take your time down there and come up to the office when you're finished.' To be honest, I rather wanted to have some quiet time there, to imagine what it would have been like for the prisoner. I could imagine him standing there in the dock, with the officers behind him ready with their truncheons in case of trouble, hearing the dread words of the foreman as his fellows of the jury looked on – serious and upstanding gentlemen aware of their solemn duty – and then the awful sentence of the judge as the lawyers and the gawping public looked on. I saw him pleading, pointing at the jury then once again, strangely, seeming to stare directly at us, shouting something. This imagination thing was getting out of hand. I wondered how he felt as he descended the steps into the darkness below, then was led to the small whitewashed cell we found there, probably much smarter and cleaner than in his time, but still grim and dark. We walked along the corridor to a plain metal door at the end. It was heavy and creaky: it was obviously rarely opened. Quite large, with some natural light from arched barred windows high on the wall. To one side, a heavy partition with a window, through which could be seen a brighter room, with ancient electrical equipment, and a separate entrance to another circulation route. This was where the witnesses would have stood, with the executioner. In the middle of the electrical panel was a big switch, the kind that Dr Frankenstein would have used to pulse electricity into the dead body of his monster, to give it life. But here it served the opposite purpose. And in this room accessed from the cells, stood nothing but the horrific instrument of torture and death. We both shivered a little. In fact, Olga was shaking and I took her in my arms and comforted her. I could imagine the moustachioed gentlemen watching as the guards dragged Ferzackerley into the room and strapped him down. Was he terrified, was he calm? There was nothing in the record about this, just the bare fact that he was executed at such and such a time on such and such a day.

I imagined him there, scared, looking nervously over to the window as the guards left and locked the metal door, alone now. Seeing the men in the other room, looking back grim. I could see it all. He seemed to be calling out. Then the hand of the executioner moving almost in slow motion towards the switch. Then it seemed all too real for me: I could see his actual body there, as he turned and looked at me and he was mouthing – something. What was it? It looked like 'You – you!'

I hurried Olga out and back up the stairs and locked the door to the cellar behind us. 'What is it?' she said. You look more scared than me! Like you've seen a ghost.'

'Just my imagination running away with me again' I said.

'Such a sensitive creature' she said. She laughed and kissed me on the cheek.

That night we went to bed early again as we had an morning flight. I lay awake thinking about what I had seen in the execution chamber. For a minute it had seemed absolutely real. I really need to get more detachment, I thought. My eyes were just drooping shut when I thought I saw a flash of light, as if the door from the hall had opened. I sat up and looked over. There was the form of Ferzackerley, just like the first night, still wavering - but I realised that it was if he was seen in firelight – otherwise he appeared to be completely solid. I jumped out of the bed and stood at the far side of the room. He seemd so real. He brushed off the snow and took off his hat and coat again. Then he took a knife from the coat pocket, long bladed like a butcher's knife – the knife that was in the police report – and went to stand by the bed. Over the sleeping form. Was it my wife? Was it an image of his wife? It was hard to tell. I saw the old iron bedstead and the modern twin beds like a double exposure in my head. Then he lifted the knife and slowly turned to me and once again was looking directly into my eyes: into my soul.

Then he started to plunge the knife rapidly down into the body, over and over. I wasn't thinking, but just from instinct I rushed forward and tried to grab the knife, but my hands seemed to go right through him. Then there was a blinding flash. Suddenly the room was brightly lit and there was blood, bright red blood, lots of it below me. It was Ferzackerley's wife, stabbed over and over and I heard her last gasps as she expired, and almost the echo of her screams from before. And I looked down at my hand and it was bloody too, and in my hand was the knife. And I looked around and there was the mahogany and the brocade, the dowdy wallpaper of the old boarding house, just as I had imagined it. And there was a sudden banging on the door, a crash, a splintering of wood, and two men burst in and wrestled me to the ground. And they dragged me away from the bed, wrenched the knife from my hand.

'Ferzackerley, what have you done?'

Another flash. Suddenly I am in the courtroom from the morning. The judge and the jury and the counsel are all there, just as I had imagined them, but real this time, in full colour and sound. They are all looking at me sternly. Three people enter the floor of the court – strange, insubstantial people I could barely see in the glare of the winter morning. One of them was pointing around but making no sound. The other two, a man and a woman, are laughing and smiling, taking no notice of the courtroom proceedings. And now the grim-faced jury stands. And the judge says: 'Have you reached your verdict?' And one of them replies: 'Yes, your Honor. Guilty!' And there is some cheering and clapping and the judge bangs down his gavel and calls for silence. Then he sentences me to death. 'No, no, I'm not Ferzackerley,' I yell. 'Tell them!'

Another flash. I am sitting in the dreary cell. Unpainted, dirty, dank, just as I had imagined it would have been then. The man and woman appear again at the barred door hatch. They look in. They are insubstantial, like ghosts. But I recognise them.

Another flash. I am strapped into the electric chair. The guards are just closing the door. The man and woman are there in the room, black and white, flickering now, fading. I look across to the side and there are the men behind the glass; and there is the switch. I stare back at the couple. He takes her in his arms, hugs her tight, tenderly.

It is Olga – and me. Or is it? The man checks their dance, stopping facing me, staring into my eyes. It looks like my face: but suddenly it breaks into a malevolent grin. I realise now. 'You! You!' I cry. He grins wider, the embodiment of evil. Suddenly he slams her body against the wall. Olga's body. Out of the corner of my eye I see a movement behind the glass. The hand moves towards the panel and starts to close the switch.