The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  Kaye said, “Hard cases make hard laws. I have something in my pocket that would convince you of the need. I will do anything to find these murderers.”

  There was a silence while all looked at him, but Kaye did not withdraw his hand. His hidden fingers worked, however, and his eyes were haunted. Nobody dared to ask.

  Ashdown said mildly, “We could maybe force our way inside, sirs, but perhaps we should not, as our two lieutenants say. There is a stronger weapon for getting out of jail though, or into one, indeed. We have it, I assume?” He glanced round the officers. “I do not mean all of us.”

  Jack Gunning laughed.

  “Aha!” he said, delightedly. “Hard cash; old Captain Bribe! Well said, Ashdown. Indeed they do have cash. They roll in it! We pay our way inside and then come out again!”

  Tom Hugg was disappointed.

  “But the ladies’ drawers brigade,” he said. “Surely that way’s better? Let’s knock the doors down and break some heads! Let’s show the namby bastards on this devil’s cowpat what English tars can do!”

  Will said, “A combination! Ashdown, how many men should go in? Too many is impossible, too few and there’ll be catastrophe. But if there was a riot going on outside… If the guards thought that they were under threat, distracted? By God, I’ll go in myself in such a circumstance!”

  Sam added: “It would give some cover to the lads who take the bribes in, too. In the excitement anything could happen. It could be hours before Marlowe’s escape was even known about!”

  Kaye said, “And then we fade away like summer snow. A fratch, a roar, a brawl – and of a sudden, nothing at all. Hugg – organise the people. Gunning, you must stay on board, of course. We’ll bring the man straight back, and then you keep him safe. Mather’s militia itself would not dare to try to come onto the ship, but if they do – well, you can shoot ’em for me, can you not? Ashdown – it is dark soon. It’s best at night I guess? You go with the two lieutenants, who will have cash. Come lads, let’s get a drink in here! Let’s knock out the details, and then let’s move! By God, I’ll show those villains! Bring drink!”

  Aha, thought everyone. So much for the new Captain Kaye, soberton. But to universal wonderment – he did not take a drop.

  *

  It fell to Ratty Baines, God spare the mark, to be the hero of the hour. Ashdown knew the jail, he knew the way that men and money worked, he knew Jamaica. But at the gates, it was Baines who knew the magic words, who chose the targets, who crossed the jailers’ palms with cash. They were big and black, Rat Baines was small and greyish, and he’d banished Holt and Bentley, squawking with derision at their hopes of anonymity. He went in through the gates and doors with no one else but Ashdown, who had no hidden weapons, and young Frenchie Amber, who did, while outside a riot grew up in the nearby streets. And in the cell, when it was unlocked and bolted, they found Marlowe, who thought maybe that they had come to hang him. As the dull lantern broke the total darkness, he appeared quite crushed and hopeless.

  “Sir,” said Ashdown. “We have come to –”

  But Ratty Baines was too impatient for genteel conversation. He wanted to get out of here, and fast, and he could not be bothered with men who would not seize a chance when offered.

  “Come on, you mangy cur!” he said. “Look lively or we’ll let them hang you like a dog! Stand up, stand up, or must I kick you? You will be free, I tell you, if you want to leave or not! Be you a coward, sir, or just a fool?”

  Marlowe rose, draped in his chains, and towered over Rat Baines in the dim light like an apparition from a tragedy, hands raised as if to strike him down. But Rat made a pass with one enormous key, rattled two others, and darted for the locks. The rebel still had not had a chance to speak when half his shackles tumbled to the filthy ground that he had lain on. Ashdown, the brains behind it all, was reduced to almost incoherence.

  “It is your right,” he said. “The laws that hold you here are infamous. We will not see you hanged, we will not have it. You may berate us if you will, but we will free you. Pray sir, give us all your aid.”

  Marlowe, dazed and exhausted though he was, and vile and stinking too, responded finally, and appeared to surge with energy. Hands free, he attacked the leg-iron locks with keys, and the two unmatched human beings, in a tangle of limbs and jerking hands, quickly cleared the remaining chains and headed for the door. Outside a jailer stood indifferent, his money doubtless in some inner pocket. They were not challenged as they went back to the street.

  In truth, as Will and Sam told it afterwards to London Jack, it was neither a noble nor a difficult operation. This Kingston jail was more a camp of brick built huts and yards then anything, and breakouts were neither uncommon nor considered of much moment. There were always other blacks to hang, and those who fled would be run down later by their fellow blacks for money, or starve, or quickly fade from legal memory. The loss of Marlowe was considered more serious than most escapes, but his time would come again, no doubt, and the senior member (black) of the guard was hanged three days later, although the poor man had not even had a bribe. The problem was, that the minor riot of the ladies’ drawers had spread great excitement to the local populace, and several other criminals had been broken out as well. The Jacquelines escaped from any blame it all.

  Back on the ship, out on her mooring in the Palisadoes, Marlowe was washed, tended and dressed by Mildred, then left to sleep on a palliasse laid on the Breton oak, the softest bed that he had had for ages.

  And the people, with the Captain’s blessing and liquor by the bucketful, celebrated. Though very few, if any, had a real idea for what.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Deb could not stay on Jamaica, that was well-known. Will though, was certain that their futures lay together, however it should come about. Which left them, hour after aching hour, turning their lives and possibilities around. It came down to this: she could not live without some way to feed and clothe herself, and William was in the Royal Navy. If she was found on shore she would be imprisoned, most probably to hang. If she were to take her chance with Mildred, with Marlowe and his people, she would be a fugitive at best, and split from Will in any case. She could not stay upon the ship; she could not go upon the land. As Deb saw it, through her frequent tears, she was lost.

  America, the Thirteen Colonies, or another island in the Carib Sea, English or maybe Spanish, Swedish, French or Dutch? How would she get there, who would meet her and protect her? Round and round and round they talked, and always ended at the starting point. They loved each other, wanted nothing else, and could see no way that it could come about. Their life was blighted. Their love was doomed.

  Dick Kaye, that strange, strange man, gave them the first hope, although it was in fact forlorn. In consultation with Captain Swift – who knew nothing of the desperate implications on board the Jacqueline – he had decided that the best place for him to be was out at sea, or at least a long way from Port Royal. The Siddlehams, though disinclined to try their luck since he had proved a lion not a sacrificial lamb, were in the background pulling strings, and there were rumours around the English maid, and even more about the breaking out of Marlowe. Alf Sutton and his boy, unpopular as ever, also bought themselves some credit with tales of Kaye’s outrageous drunkenness. Having agreed with Swift to put to sea, he suggested to Will that “Miss Tomelty” should come along.

  “We’re going west,” he said. “We’re going to the Biter wreck, for that is where you last saw signs of the Lamonts and I live in hope, however desperate thin that is. Marlowe is coming with me, and although the Suttons say that they are gone he might still get scent of them, I guess. Mildred is coming ditto, which will be a partner for your maid. It is a long shot, William; but the only one I have.”

  Will’s heart leapt.

  “How long away?” he asked. “No, that is stupid. Sir, it is fine and generous. Even any time, however short… oh, yes sir, I accept with all my heart.”

  It was the Suttons who had set K
aye onto the Biter beach as the place that might yield clues to find the Lamonts, for Marlowe, when questioned, had had no idea as to their whereabouts, and was not the man to pretend he did. Kaye had ridden back to their plantation ostensibly to thank them for the legal warnings that had saved him so much cash and trouble, and partly, too, to show off his new sobriety. At first they denied any further knowledge, but he offered money, in generous amounts, and waxed scurrilous about the Siddlehams’ secrets. He ended up with hints from the two Yorkshiremen, and nothing more. But the hints had been quite broad.

  They sailed a few days later and the people, as the people often seem to do, guessed where they were going, and ran it through the rumour mill as concrete fact. None knew that Kaye’s mind was full of murder more than treasure these days, but had they done so they must have approved. His change of heart and personality after the death of Bob had surprised them, but only in its changeability. To them, as perhaps to him, Marianne Siddleham, his hoped-for bride, may as well have not existed. She was forgotten.

  As they neared the beach however, those who knew Dick best noted a nervousness, a dread, about him. If the Scots were there, there would be killing done, it was inevitable. And even Slack Dickie could grasp that the Scots more often killed than suffered. Their first thing would be to run, but if cornered they would behave as rats, the rats they were. Dick became tense, and tetchy, and looked (men said) in dire need of “Lady Liquor.” But he did not crack; he did not drink a thing, save juice and coffee. He practised with his small-arm, though, on the quarterdeck. He had things hung from off the shrouds and yardarms, and he shot them down. His small-arm was a long one, the horse pistol he had always favoured. Within short days he was considered deadly.

  Will and Deb, like star-crossed lovers, swooped from depths to happiness and back again ten thousand times. Will, I love you; but what is love? Must I run with Mildred as a fugitive, or fly to Virginia as a farmer’s servant-slave once more? I am on the wrong side, I must go, my presence is a weight around your neck, your life. But if you go, Deb, you go to – what? Some sort of death? Some sort of death in life? Is there not Stockport, if all else fails? But is not anything better than Stockport, Will? What, whoring? Servitude? At times they even laughed, so impossible had their love become. Sometimes Slack Dickie laughed, thinking of Bob and the Scotchmen. But for all three of them, the world was passing bleak.

  As they rounded the point into Biter Bay, it looked obvious through glasses and through naked eye that there was no one there. No smoke, no rafts or boats, no men, no movement in the trees. Marlowe, on the quarterdeck like an invited officer, was taught to use a telescope and found it extremely fine. But neither he nor Mildred saw anything that they might recognise. Except, as the Jacqueline drew closer, a something on the beach, a pile of something or some things. Some things that might be human bodies.

  They dropped anchor close in, and three boats were racing for the sand before Jack Gunning declared her holding fast. Dick Kaye’s, by an effort from his crew that was superhuman, crunched down first, and Kaye was already in the air, sprung off the stempost. There was a smell, a rotten smell, a stink of filthy, rotting flesh, but Kaye rushed into it, and up to it, like a man who had to be there first, a man who had to know. As Will and Sam forced their feet through the thick and yielding sands behind him, a strangled cry came back, a shout of joy and horror. When they came up to him, he looked almost happy.

  “It is them,” he said. “Look Will, look Sam. Someone has cut their throats.”

  More than that, the men were butchered. Their throats were cut and crawling, their eyes already eaten. Wee Doddie’s teeth were gone, his jawbone broken. Angus was disembowelled, Rabbie sans testicles. All three were blanketed by flies, that rose and fell at every interruption, pulsing like the violent, violent stench. Marlowe, who had come in Bentley’s boat, called from the blackened stumps of the old stockade.

  “More men dead. Bakra men, no nigger.” He grinned, ebony split by a gash of white, then laughed. “I think Chattel very rich! I think he take the treasure when they get it up at last. Then thank him white masters like good slaveman, huh? Like man of Africa! I think slave drivers they go lose them whip! And them silver.”

  When the searching teams spread out, indeed, they found several open holes. They found depressions ringed and littered with coins, they found ingots here and there. Will said in wonder at one point: “They said they didn’t want the treasure, but they’ve surely taken it. It was a game. A waiting game.”

  Sam said, “But they didn’t want it like they should have done, did they? Would we have left all this stuff about? White robbers? No, we’d do a proper job. Jem, stop those bastards picking up gold coins. Jem!” He stopped, amused. “Oh bollocks to it, Slack Dickie can get it off them himself. They’re welcome to it for my idea, most welcome.”

  There was much to do, and much to find, and the Scots and their henchmen – Fat Mickie Carver, Chris Thompson and the rest – to give good Christian burials to, as far as Mr Grundy could manage that. And Dick made it clear he wanted searches made, in case there was more gold buried, or in case they could come up on Chattel and his gang, and he wanted diving done, even at this late stage, in case there was more stuff to be brought up. Will scorned this, but it suited him as well. More time with Deb, more time to let their hearts and bodies speak. They had decided that they would not part. They had decided that they could not. They would separate, they would have to, but they would wait always to be rejoined. Sam was in on it, and he agreed. They would find a way.

  In the meantime, they were together. And on the third night something happened. Richard Kaye had gone on shore. Even the captain of a Navy ship cannot be alone on board in any real terms, so he was rowed to the sands, and left there, and faded into the blackness, like a wraith.

  And out of it, to him, came a smaller wraith, and it was Bob. He had escaped, the bones and teeth were not his, merely the Lamont’s jest. He had escaped, and so observed the cruel aftermath, the sly brilliance of Chattel’s night-time killing spree, brought down on men who had not the least idea that they were even hated. And he watched Chattel and his cohorts bring Marlowe’s hidden boats around, and fill them with the treasure they’d dug up – and slip away.

  Strangest of all was the sight that met the sailors when Dick hailed out from the shore to be picked up. As they approached, through pale moonlight, they saw the big man and the little boy, and they were hand in hand and smiling at each other. Black Bob this time, it seemed, really had come home.

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