Next morning at breakfast he told the landlord that he felt so much better that he was going for a walk; both he and his foreman needed some fresh air. The landlord hastened to suggest that the Cathedral square with its trees was a good place for a promenade. But the café, he said tactfully: he hoped the Signor would not visit it again ...

The day was sunny and under a cloudless sky the city of Amiens looked shabby but a little more cheerful. It would take many coats of paint on shops and houses, and the people would have to be wearing less darned clothes and at least one in a dozen needed to be smiling before Ramage would rate it more cheerful than the day he had arrived. The two of them walked until noon, when Ramage led the way back to their room-feeling considerably better: within eight or nine hours he should be reading Admiral Bruix's dispatch; in twenty or so they should all be rattling along the road to Boulogne. Beyond that he dared not think.

He was getting increasingly superstitious. Was it the effect of this damned room, was he losing his nerve? The knowledge that there was a guillotine in the north-western corner of the Cathedral square in the shade of a row of plane trees was depressing. The heavy blade was missing (presumably the executioner kept it at home, well greased against rusting) but it was still easy to see how it worked. Stafford had an unhealthy curiosity about the way the victim was 'turned off', and because Ramage would not let him betray his interest as they walked past, he checked after lunch with Louis.

The Frenchman was neither squeamish nor superstitious about ‘The Widow', pointing out that it was the régime that had killed his family, not a piece of machinery. He was proud of its sheer efficiency, pointing out that it was quicker and surer than the hangman's noose used in England, far less crude and brutal than the garotte used in Spain, and more certain than the headsman's axe previously used in France. It was not uncommon for a man to be alive ten minutes after being 'turned off' on the gallows, he told Stafford, while the garotte suffocated a man very slowly. With 'The Widow' it was over in a flash.

When Stafford began to argue the point, saying that at Newgate prison they now had a special hinged platform on which the condemned man stood, Louis silenced him with a wave of the hand. 'The noose or the axe depends on the skill of the individual executioner. If the drop is too short from the gallows, the victim strangles slowly; if it is too long, the noose just about wrenches his head off. If the axeman makes the slightest mistake, the axe can land across a man's shoulders or slice off the top of his skull, as you might cut the top off a boiled egg.'

'What you really mean is, the axeman might be drunk and miss his aim,' Stafford said contemptuously.

'Yes, drunk, nervous - or just tired.'

‘Tired?' Stafford exclaimed, 'Well, he oughter get a good night's sleep first!'

Louis said patiently, 'Mon ami, you don't understand. This morning you walked past the guillotine near the Cathedral, and I expect you thought of a man - or a woman - being executed there, with perhaps a crowd gathered round the platform.' Stafford nodded and the Frenchman continued: 'Well, try and picture the whole of that square filled with an excited, screaming mob of Revolutionaries - thousands of them, all yelling for blood. Imagine tumbrils - like hay carts - coming into the square one after another and packed full of terrified men and women, young and old, with their hands tied behind their backs and all condemned to death. Imagine the mob yelling insults and threats, throwing stones and rotten fruit at the condemned, many of whom are praying loudly, or weeping, or shrieking with fear.

'Imagine the gendarmes climbing up into the tumbrils as they come to a stop near the guillotine and pushing these people out. Because their hands are bound they lose their balance and fall, and from up on the guillotine platform, the bourreau - theexecutioner - is shouting at his assistants to hurry up as they lash the next victim's ankles together . . .

‘Two hundred people have been executed by that guillotine in one day, Stafford, all the work of one bourreau. If he still used an axe, I think he'd have been tired after the first fifty. He'd be excited, and with all that crowd, no doubt he'd be drunk. With the guillotine, it hardly matters if he is drunk ...'

‘Two hundred?' Stafford repeated unbelievingly.

'Only two hundred, because Amiens is a small city. In Paris it was nothing for a single guillotine to execute five hundred in a day. What slows down the rate is getting the decapitated bodies out of the way ...'

'Why is it called a guillotine?' Ramage found himself asking, fascinated by Louis's narrative. 'Did a M. Guillotine invent it?'

'Not exactly. A few years before the Revolution a member of the Assembly called Dr Guillotin (there was no final "e") proposed a resolution that a way of executing people should be found which was swift and avoided the risk of mistakes by an executioner. His motives were of the highest. The College of Surgeons were consulted about the swiftest and most painless method, and the decapitating machine with a falling blade was designed. When it was adopted for executions it was named after Dr Guillotin, who still lives in Paris. I heard he had a quarrel with Citizen Robespierre and was imprisoned during the Revolution, though I believe he has been set free by now.'

"Ow does it work?' Stafford asked, and Ramage knew he shared the Cockney's fascination, although it was unlikely Stafford shared his fears.

'Well, you saw how it looks: a vertical frame in which the blade falls is built at the end of a bench on which the victim lies, his head protruding over the end so that the neck is exactly below the blade.

'The neck rests in a shaped piece like the lower half of a pair of stocks, and there's an upper piece that is clamped down when the victim is in position. Some guillotines have a fixed bench so that the condemned person - who of course is bound - has to be lifted on to it. The newest ones have a bascule which pivots on an axle like a seesaw between vertical and horizontal.

'The guillotine blade (which is very heavy) has a diagonal cutting edge and is hoisted up by the bourreau - the executioner - who hauls on a rope. The rope is attached to the upper side of the blade, goes up through a pulley at the top of the frame, and comes down to a cleat at the side. There's a basket to catch the head, and a long basket to one side of the bascule for the body.

'Now, this is what happens at an execution: the bourreau’s assistants - they are called valets - seize the man. His wrists are tied behind his back, and his ankles are secured. The bascule is swung up vertically and the man is pushed against it. It is just the right length, so that he is looking over the top edge at the frame and blade.

'The valets push his shoulders so that he swings over with the bascule like someone lying on a seesaw, and is now horizontal, his neck resting in the shaped piece. The upper piece is clamped in position as though he has his head in the stocks, and the valets jump back out of the way in case they get their fingers nipped by the blade.

'The bourreau, who has already hoisted up the blade, flips the rope off the cleat and the blade falls so quickly the eye can hardly follow it. There is a thud, the head falls in the basket, and it is all over. The body is pushed sideways into the other basket and the bourreau hoists the blade again. It is kept well honed, although towards the end of a busy day it gets blunt and -'

‘That's enough, Louis,' Ramage interrupted. 'My neck feels sore already, and if Stafford can't picture it by now he never will.'

'You must admit it's interesting, sir,' Stafford said. 'You ever seen anyone get turned orf at Newgate?'