'I'm not inthane,' shouted the Bishop.

'I haven't come here to be inthulted,' said Mr Jackson.

'I'm thorry,' said the Bishop. 'I mean I'm sorry.'

'I shall change the plea,' said Mr Jackson finally. 'Inthanity it ith.'

'I suppose so,' said the Bishop.

'It'th better than being hanged,' said Mr Jackson. They went back into the courtroom.

The trial proceeded rapidly. By the end of the afternoon the prosecution's case had been presented and Mr Jackson had made no attempt at a reasoned defence. He was relying on the leniency of the court in the face of the accused's obvious insanity.

In his summing-up to a jury handpicked from close relatives of the murdered policemen, Judge Schalkwyk spoke with a brevity and degree of impartiality quite unusual for him.

'You have heard it said,' he mumbled, though it was certain that thanks to his own deafness he hadn't, 'by the prosecuting counsel that the accused committed these crimes. You have seen the accused's confession with your own eyes, and you have heard the defence counsel's plea that his client is insane. Now you may think that there is something to be said for the hypothesis that a man who murders twenty-one policemen and then signs a confession saying that he has done so is manifestly not of his right mind. It is my duty however to point out to you that to plead insanity in the light of the overwhelming evidence against him is not the action of an insane person. It is a highly rational action and one that indicates a degree of perception only to be found in an intelligent and healthy mind. I think therefore that you can disregard the question of insanity altogether in your deliberations. You need only concern yourselves with the matter of guilt. There is in my mind no shadow of doubt that the defendant committed the murders of which he is accused. He possessed, as we have heard from the expert evidence presented by the prosecution, both the opportunity and the means. He was found in possession of the murder weapons and in the act of disposing of them. His wallet and handkerchief were found at the scene of the crime, and he has given no adequate explanation of how they got there. Finally, he has admitted in a signed confession that he was responsible for the murders. I think I need say no more. You and I both know that the defendant is guilty. Now go away and come back and say so.'

The jury filed out of the courtroom. Two minutes later they returned. Their verdict was unanimous. Jonathan Hazelstone was guilty of murder twenty-one and a quarter times over.

In passing sentence Judge Schalkwyk allowed himself to depart from the lack of bias he had shown in his summing-up. He took into account a previous conviction which concerned a motoring offence. The convicted man had failed to give adequate notice of intention to make a left-hand turn at an intersection and as the Judge pointed out, this threatened the very existence of the South African constitution which was based on a series of consistent moves to the right.

'You are a threat to the values of Western civilization,' said the Judge, 'and it is the duty of this court to stamp Communism out,' and he ordered the prisoner to be taken from the court and hanged by the neck until he was dead. He was about to leave the courtroom when Mr Jackson asked to have a word with him in private.

'I would like to draw your Honour'th attention to a privilege which belongth to the Hazelthtone family,' he gurgled.

'The Hazelstone family doesn't have any privileges any more, I'm glad to say,' said the Judge.

'It'th a prerogative of long thtanding. It dateth back to the dayth of Thir Theophiluth.'

'Long standing, what do you mean? There's no question of his standing long. He'll be hanged shortly.'

'I mean the privilege of being hanged in Piemburg Prithon. It wath conferred on the family for perpetuity,' Mr Jackson tried to explain.

'Mr Jackson,' the Judge shouted, 'you are wasting my time and that of this court, not to mention that of your client who has little enough left of it as it is. Perpetuity means the quality of preserving something from oblivion. The quality of the sentence I have just passed is in intent quite the opposite. I think I need say no more, and I should advise you to do the same.'

Mr Jackson made one last effort. 'Can my client be hanged in Piemburg Prithon?' he shouted.

'Of course he can,' the Judge yelled. 'He has to be. It's a long-standing privilege of the Hazelstone family.'

'Thank you,' said Mr Jackson. As the court was cleared Jonathan Hazelstone was taken back to his cell in a state of numbed shock.

Chapter 17

It was with something of the same sense of shock that Governor Schnapps learnt that it had fallen to him to preside over the first hanging Piemburg Prison had seen for twenty years. Not that he was in the least squeamish or upset at the thought of having to attend an execution. He had in his time as a prison officer attended any number of hangings, mostly unofficial ones carried out by black convicts anxious to escape once and for all from the regime he had prescribed for them, but none the less hangings and the prospect of having at least one official execution to his credit filled him with a feeling of satisfaction. The sense of shock stemmed from quite other considerations.

There was for instance the question of the gallows which had not been used for twenty years except as a convenient place in which to store odds and ends. Governor Schnapps inspected Top himself and, from the little of it he could see across the buckets and garden rollers that were packed inside, came to the conclusion that the scaffold was in no shape to hang anyone. The same might well be said of the prospective executioners. The old warder volunteered to advise whoever was chosen as hangman but adamantly refused to attend the execution in person on the grounds that the Death House was unsafe, and the Governor's attempts to persuade one of the other warders to accept the job of executioner met with no success. No one it seemed was anxious to join Jonathan Hazelstone on his last walk if this entailed climbing the rickety steps up to Top.

In desperation Governor Schnapps telephoned the official executioner in Pretoria to ask him if he could come down to Piemburg for the day but the executioner was far too busy.

'Out of the question,' he told Schnapps, 'I've got thirty-two customers that day and besides I never hang singles. I can't remember when I last did one man. I always do mine in batches of six at a time and in any case I have my reputation to think of. I hang more people every year than any other executioner in the world, more than all the other executioners in the free world put together as a matter of fact, and if it once got about that I hanged a single man, people would think I was losing my touch.'

As a last resort Governor Schnapps raised the question of privilege with the State Attorney.

'I can't see why this man Hazelstone should be privileged,' he said. 'Everyone else is hanged in Pretoria. It seems wrong to me that a fellow who knocks off twenty-one policemen should be entitled to privileges which are denied to ordinary common-or-garden murderers.'

'I'm afraid there's nothing I can do about it,' the State Attorney told him. 'Judge Schalkwyk allowed the privilege to stand and I can't alter his decision.'

'But how did the Hazelstone family ever get the right to be hanged in Piemburg in the first place?'

The State Attorney looked up the records.

'It dates from the speech made by Sir Theophilus at the opening of the prison in 1888,' he told the Governor. 'In the course of that speech Sir Theophilus said, and I quote, 'Capital punishment and flogging are essential to the peace and tranquillity of Zululand. They confer upon the native races a sense of the innate superiority of the white man and in declaring this prison open I should like to say that it is my considered opinion that the very future of white civilization in this dark continent depends, one might almost say, hangs, on the frequent use of the scaffold we have been privileged to see here today. It will be a sad day for this country when the gallows trap falls for the last time and one that I trust no member of my family will live to see.' Unquote.'