by Robin Blake
‘You all know what’s happened,’ I said, ‘but I will summar-ize the emergency anyway. Today at about noon three masked men arrived at the house of Elizabeth’s parents and gagged them and tied them up. The leader identified himself as Jack Fingers, also known as Shamus Fingal O’Higgins, the Prince of the Nicks, the Cheshire Turpin, et cetera – you have all heard of him. Last night O’Higgins was running around town trying to recover a bag of money. This bag.’
I rose and lifted the bag of guineas from the mantel, opened it and spilled some of the coins on the table.
‘I had taken possession of the money since its origin and ownership were questionable – quite possibly it was the accumulated profits from O’Higgins’s robberies and thievery up and down the county. O’Higgins eventually came here, late in the evening, and held Elizabeth at pistol-point, in order to extort the money from me, but was frustrated and overcome. As we could not safely detain him and there was no lawful authority in the town able to do so, I was obliged to let him go, which I did after making him promise no longer to pursue this money. And now we see what his word is worth. He is using a child of not two years old to get it back.’
The rap of the doorknocker was heard and, a moment later, Pip and Barty came in, brushing off the snow. I invited them both to take their places at the table.
‘This is a council of war,’ I said. ‘Like those the Chevalier or Pretender held when he was here in Preston, it is about how to defeat the enemy, who in our case is Shamus Fingal O’Higgins, and to bring Hector back to us as soon as we possibly can. Now, we have had just one message from O’Higgins, which is this: I have him. And you have my money. I will take it back in return for him. You will receive your instructions tomorrow.’
I looked from face to face.
‘Tomorrow? Fiddlesticks! We want Hector back tonight, but first we must locate O’Higgins’s hideaway, or wherever it is that he is keeping Hector. Remember that the child is not two years old, walks unsteadily and does not talk continuous sense. Who has anything to say that might be helpful in finding him?’
Elizabeth, after the first shock, had, as I had done myself, suppressed her emotions over Hector’s disappearance in favour of the practical business of getting him back.
‘What is a highwayman going to do with such plunder as a small child?’ she said. ‘Look after it himself? I don’t think so. He’s going to find a woman, and one who knows how to do the job.’
‘That’s good reasoning, is that,’ said Furzey. ‘O’Higgins’s thieves’ hideaway, wherever it is, may not be where he’s keeping your boy. So even if we do find it—’
‘He might’ve just as well have brought such a woman in,’ said Fidelis.
‘What women do we know of who associated with O’Higgins?’ I asked. ‘I seem to recall a Molly Binks, a few years back.’
‘Binks was arrested and transported in forty-one,’ said Furzey.
‘Babs Cuffley … I remember that name too, and her sister – what was it?’
‘Annie,’ said Furzey, enjoying the chance to show off his knowledge of the lower end of Preston society. ‘Babs died of smallpox five years since. Annie Cuffley married Jeb Knights and they moved to Manchester.’
‘And there’s Fanny Garnish, so I’ve heard,’ put in Barty.
Here Furzey’s omniscience received a check. ‘That family’s hard to keep track of,’ he muttered, ‘there’s so many.’
The Garnishes lived in Back Water Street and were a well-known disorderly family with nobody knew how many members. They lived in an extraordinary house known, because of its great height above its neighbours, as Garnish Tower.
‘Thanks, Barty,’ I said. ‘Fanny Garnish looks like one possibility. What other women does O’Higgins dabble with that we know of?’
‘The man’s had scores of women,’ said Furzey. ‘Hundreds, even. Filthy beast.’
‘Well, we shall start by paying a visit to Back Water Street. Does anyone have any ideas about where else O’Higgins likes to hang his hat in town?’
Barty raised his hand.
‘There’s the Black Crow Inn on Ribbleton Lane. It’s not much better than a common mughouse, but it’s got stables of some sort and they say Jack Fingers is friends with the landlord and keeps a horse there. And sleeps there too now and then. The landlord’s Jerome Kerly. He’s Irish, like Jack is.’
‘That’s good, Barty. If one is hiding a child one has kidnapped, a closed room at your friend’s inn must be a prime choice.’
‘So long as nobody hears the babby crying,’ said Furzey.
‘Robert Furzey,’ said Elizabeth sharply, ‘don’t speak easy as that about my child in distress.’
It was agreed we would form three parties. The inn was a mile out of Preston, so Luke Fidelis, who had a horse young and fit enough to manage in the snow, undertook to go there with Barty. Elizabeth and I would walk the short distance to Back Water Street, which lay just on the other side of Church Gate, while Matty and Furzey formed the base party, with Pip as their messenger, staying at home in case news came from Constable Rackshaw. Both of the out-going parties carried loaded pistols.
‘These Garnishes,’ said Elizabeth as we set off. ‘The Ladies’ Committee of Relief had them on its list as being a poor family and likely to starve. But when we went there to give out our bread and pickled fish, we found them all drunk and feasting on roast stuffed chitterlings and custard tarts. We never went there again.’
‘Shall we use that as our pretext for this visit?’ I said. ‘Shall we pose as scouts for the Ladies’ Committee.’
‘I think not,’ was Elizabeth’s frosty reply. ‘This is not a laughing matter.’
‘Forgive me, Lizzie,’ I said. ‘I cover my fear because I cannot bear to look at it.’
Garnish Tower was in considerable need of repairs, both outside and in. We found it teeming not only with adults but with children – an excellent place, in other words, to hide a child, just as one hides a button in a button box, and not a biscuit box, or a hen in a hen house, and not a pigeon loft.
It happened to be Fanny who met us at the door – a pretty slattern, well rouged in the cheeks and lips, and with an alluring sway and undulation in her manner of walking. No wonder Jack Fingers fancied her, I thought. She brought us into a large room, of the kind called a hearth-room, in which all the life of the family and their friends ebbed and flowed like a great sea. There was a score and a half of people here: a fiddler with a children’s dance circling around him; games of dice and cribbage; discussions and arguments and playful mock fighting; cooking and eating, pouring and drinking. No one seemed to notice our arrival.
The heads of the household, Tom and Bridie Garnish, were holding court over this hubbub. Old Garnish was a man of the last century. He smoked a long clay pipe and wore a countryman’s smock, leather laces crossed up and down his legs and a bush of a beard that almost entirely covered his substantial rounded belly. Gold earrings pierced his broad and fleshy earlobes – a token of his time as a sailor in his long-ago youth. Neither he nor his wife looked in any danger of starving. Bridie, fat as a ball of butter, sat surrounded by a mob of her offspring, and her offspring’s offspring, with a jug of ale in one hand and a large slice of plum cake in the other, her flesh quaking with laughter at the slightest amusement.
Elizabeth asked for a word alone with Fanny and she took us through to a small inner room with nothing in it but a pair of cots in which four babies slept. None of them was Hector. Elizabeth came straight to the point.
‘I believe you know the man O’Higgins,’ she said, ‘well known for committing robberies in this part of country.’
‘I know a Mr O’Higgins. I s’pose there’s more than one.’
‘There is only one Shamus Fingal O’Higgins, and that is the one I mean.’
‘What of him?’
‘Is he here?’
‘No, he has not been here any day this month, or last.’
‘May we verify that he isn’t in the house?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘By going through it.’
‘He’s not here, I say. Who are you that’s asking?’
At this point I excused myself, saying I wanted a word with old Mr Tom Garnish. I returned to the thronged room but went nowhere near the old man. Instead, I sidled unnoticed (so I thought) as far as the stairs and crept up to the next floor. One by one I looked into its rooms, before proceeding to the rooms on the second floor. All these rooms were in a state of extreme disorder and decrepitude, inhabited only by a few sleeping infants, none of whom was Hector.
Having seen the last of these rooms, I returned to the staircase leading to the attic floor, and found two beefy young men with violently red hair waiting for me on the landing. They were clearly twins.
‘You’ve looked your fill, then, Mr Cragg?’ said one.
‘Pryers,’ said the other. ‘Nobody likes ’em.’
‘Neither do they like peepers,’ said the first.
When you meet a person (or in this case two people) for a second time, differently dressed and in a different place, there can be a blockage in the memory. I knew that I had seen these men before, but I couldn’t at first say where. Then it came back to me.
‘You two,’ I said, ‘I remember now. You’re the twins that are – or were – in service at Barrowclough Hall, yes? Well, well, this is a coincidence indeed. I am afraid I have melancholy news to tell you.’
They looked at each other, uneasily.
‘What news is that?’
‘Of your master, Mr James Barrowclough. I saw him this afternoon. He was swinging by his neck from a gibbet on the north side of the Moor.’
Again the men exchanged glances.
‘A gibbet, sir?’ said one.
‘Who was it that hanged him?’ said the other.
‘Possibly he was shot first,’ I said. ‘At all events he has suffered military execution by the rebels. They are very aggrieved at his part in the killing of two Highlanders at Barrowclough Hall on the third or fourth of November last. I wonder what you two boys know about that event?’
This set the twins aback even more. No longer interested in confronting me for nosing around their home, they were astonished at the grisly fate of their master and wondering what I knew that might lead them to suffer the same.
‘It were nowt to do wi’ us, were that,’ said one.
‘No more were it,’ said the other, standing aside to allow me to pass down the stair. ‘You’d best be off, Mr Cragg, and say no more about it.’
I rejoined Elizabeth, who was still talking with Fanny in the back room, and told her we were leaving. The girl led us back through the large room, where the uproar had not abated. For the first time, as we hurried on our way, I looked around at the company as a whole. The twins were talking, rather urgently it seemed to me, to a man whose back was turned. Whatever they said to him, his response was to raise the glass of negus in his hand and (as I thought) speak a toast before draining the glass. Then he turned slightly and I saw his bruised and swollen face.
‘I have learned a thing or two,’ said Elizabeth as we slipped and slithered away through the snowy streets. ‘Fanny feels she has been jilted. O’Higgins called her his sweetheart and the silly girl believed him. Now he won’t come near her and she is full of rage against him. He has other women, but she is too proud to tell me their names – if she even knows them.’
‘If it’s true, and the highwayman no longer comes here—’
‘Oh, I’m quite sure it’s true. The girl isn’t clever and real indignation is difficult to dissimulate.’
‘Well, it means we’re looking in the wrong place.’
‘Yes. However, Luke and Barty may not be. Fanny mentioned the Black Crow Inn as being one of O’Higgins’s favourite foxholes. She strongly insinuated he might be found there.’
‘Then let’s hurry back to Cheap Side in case of any news.’
There was indeed news. A note from Mr Rackshaw had come.
Dear Mr Cragg, My enquiries have established that there were three men in the kidnap party. All on horseback. They wore hats pulled down over their brows and neckerchiefs tied across their faces. They had pistols. Two or three saw them come up, but no one recognized them. No one saw them ride away, so I can’t tell what direction they took. The horses were nondescript bay geldings. That is all I can tell you.
‘It sounds like Jack Fingers had Joe and Stumpy with him,’ I said. ‘I am sure it is the extent of his gang, now that fat Paddy is no more. Good. Three is not too formidable a number.’
‘There may be others that you haven’t seen.’
‘Jack Fingers is not Robin Hood, leading a whole fellowship of merry men. A couple or three confederates are all that he requires.’
I sent a reluctant Pip home to his mother. We drank tea and grew anxious, but hopefully anxious, as no news came from Ribbleton Lane.
‘They must be on to something, else they’d be back by now,’ said Furzey.
Another half hour passed and midnight struck.
‘What is keeping them?’ Matty said.
‘On to something,’ said Furzey again. ‘Mark my word. On to something.’
He had no sooner spoken than we heard loud raps on the door. Matty ran to allow Luke Fidelis in.
‘We’ve seen him!’ he cried. ‘O’Higgins is stopping at the inn. I’ll warrant Hector is there too. Let us all go together and fetch him home.’
TWENTY-NINE
On his way back to Preston, having left Barty to keep a watch on the Black Crow, Fidelis had worked out a plan of attack.
‘We cannot attempt the rescue while the inn is full of customers. We must go there at closing time and, if possible, have more guns than O’Higgins can muster.’
I showed him the dispatch from Rackshaw in Broughton.
‘According to this, O’Higgins had two men along with him when he came for Hector. Is it the extent of his power now?’
‘There was no sign even of those two at the Black Crow,’ said Fidelis. ‘If we take Furzey and Barty both armed, we will be four against one at the worst.’
‘No, we will be five,’ said Elizabeth. ‘I’m coming with you. Hector will need me.’
‘Must I stay in this house alone?’ wailed Matty.
‘Someone must,’ I said. ‘And there may be more pistol play there, Matty. You will be better out of it.’
Between Fidelis and me there were four full-sized pistols, but I had another pair of pocket guns, which I loaded, giving one to Elizabeth and the other to Furzey. My clerk treated his piece with the caution of somebody handling a polecat.
‘Have you ever fired a pistol?’ I asked him.
‘No, and I always hoped to die before I have to. If I must shoot tonight, it will be to stop myself dying.’
‘That is a good policy.’
We put on cloaks and hats against the weather – the snow had stopped but the wind was icy – and at the last minute I grabbed the bag of money, Hector’s ransom, and packed it securely in Jones’s saddle bag. Fidelis put Furzey up behind him, while I took Elizabeth on the rump of Jones.
‘So, what happened?’ I asked as we rode down Church Gate, past the Bull Inn, the church itself and Patten House dark and shuttered. ‘Tell how you saw O’Higgins.’
‘We went in like two thirsty passers-by. It was busy, being a Friday night. The landlord looked suspicious and at first didn’t want to serve us, but I insisted. After we’d been sitting for a while at the back of the room with our ale, O’Higgins came bouncing down the stairs, as bold as you like, and into the room. He was calling out to Kerly and greeting one or two other drinkers without a trace of fear. You would think he was at home. No one would guess there was a price on his head. But I did notice Kerly calling him over and whispering to him, tipping his head towards us.’
‘Does Kerly know who you are?’
‘No. I’ve never met him before.’
‘What did O’Higgins do after they’d spoken?’<
br />
‘Went out immediately.’
‘Without recognizing you?’
‘I think not. I was sitting in the shadow. And he would not have left if he knew I was there. He would have confronted me. He must have seen us as what we pretended to be – passers-by.’
By half past twelve we had gone through Church Gate bar and were well on our way. I was giving Fidelis an account of the Garnish house and my meeting with the two footmen from Barrowclough Hall. Before I reached the point where I spotted Abel Grant, he interrupted me.
‘There’s the Black Crow up ahead,’ he said.
The inn was set back from the road, sheltered within a stand of trees. The windows were still lit up, but customers were leaving now, calling out their goodnights, their voices slippery with ale just as their feet slid precariously on the packed snow.
‘Look!’ Elizabeth pointed to one of the curtained upstairs windows, which was lit. A shadow passed across the drapes – a human figure, so it seemed.
‘Oh!’ she said. ‘Please, Jesus, let Hector be all right!’
We dismounted within the trees where Barty, shivering and rimed with frost, greeted us.
‘Has O’Higgins come back?’ I whispered.
‘Not a sign of him,’ said Barty, his teeth chattering like a ratchet. ‘I stood at the side of the house watching both doors, front and back.’
‘Good lad,’ I said, and handed him one of my pistols. ‘Now, we must wait until the last of them comes out and Kerly’s ready to lock the door. Then we go in. Furzey!’
I gestured for him to go forward and spy through the parlour window, but he looked at me, appalled.
‘What me? By myself?’
‘Yes!’ I hissed.
His body gave an ungainly jerk in the direction of the inn, as if he wanted to go but could not. Then we all heard Kerly’s voice booming across the snow.
‘Out you go! You’re the last and d’you think I’ve got all night to lock up?’
A befuzzled old drinker staggered out, impelled by Kerly’s hand on his back.
‘Come on!’ I said, starting immediately forward. ‘Before he turns the key!’