Ann took another long gulp of her drink, then slowly turned to take in those around her. She viewed them with a disconcerting and unfathomable combination of pity, disgust and shame. She understood the pity: most present could not be anything other than that which they had been born to become. The feelings of disgust and shame at those vagrants, thieves and whores, took her by surprise, for she saw in them her own reflection.
Her complex sombre thoughts were pierced by a nearby conversation. The word ‘smuggler’ was said in an unfavourable tone. Ann drank more and cocked her head subtly to one side. Four men, blockade officers, were sitting behind her drinking and smoking. Without turning to face them, she tried to follow their exchange.
By the time their discussion had shifted to something else, Ann knew that what she had heard had been important: a third-rater ship, called the Ramillies, was being deployed off the coast of Deal to aid in the prevention of smuggling. The officers had spoken confidently that this new 170-foot-long boat, with its crew of more than six hundred, would bring about the end of smuggling in Kent and Sussex.
Ann left a good half-pint of rum and water in her glass and strode from the inn. She wanted to retain what she had just heard and, trying to counter the glossing effects of the alcohol, she rehearsed the information over and over, certain that it was of great import.
Chapter Eighteen
Darkness cloaked the old Volvo. It was parked, lights switched off, in the layby on Priory Road, on the outskirts of Aldington.
The dual yellow beams from a car—the first to pass in several minutes—flashed through the Volvo’s interior, illuminating its emptiness. Then, Phil sat up and switched off the internal lights which would otherwise burst into life as soon as he opened the door. He paused, before reaching into the back seat for the metal detector and climbing from the car. He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust, but after a few seconds of impatient waiting there seemed little difference, so he began to walk the lane. The hedgerow along the layby was edged by some kind of tight tall shrub with unforgiving spikes, so Phil reluctantly continued along the road, hoping that no cars would appear.
In the distance, he heard the low rumble of an engine and broke into a jog. Just twenty feet ahead he spotted a fissure in the solid line of shrubbery and began to run towards it, as the engine—a motorbike by the sound of it—grew louder and a flicker of its headlight glimmered on the trees ahead.
Phil jumped sideways through the hole, just as the motorbike rounded the corner, its headlight fanning out over where he had been standing just a second before.
Now that he was off the road, he pulled out his mobile phone. The time, appearing in large white numbers read 2:56am. Perfect, he thought, switching on the phone’s torch. The woodland around him was dense and without any sign of a footpath. Long tendrils of bramble had already reached out and snagged onto his grey tracksuit bottoms. His clothes would be ruined by the end of the night, but if he got what he had come for, then it would all have been worth it.
He began to push through the insidious undergrowth, swearing and cursing loudly every time that a strand of bramble refused to release his legs. The aerial view shown by Google Maps was of a vast oak woodland, not the veritable jungle that Phil was now struggling to traverse.
An unnoticed fallen sapling sent him crashing headfirst into a thicket of obnoxious bramble. ‘Shit,’ he cried, as pain shot through his hand from multiple locations. He picked himself up and pulled the spikes free from his hands, then continued through the woodland.
It took over thirty minutes for him to reach the low wire fencing which demarked the boundary to the Bourne Tap. Phil switched off the torch and peered down a steep tree-covered bank which ran down to the main house. He strained his eyes but he could see nothing. The house and the grounds were in complete darkness; exactly how he wished them to stay.
Slowly, he descended the bank until he reached the tennis courts. He paused there for several seconds. In front of him was a wide open lawn with no trees and no protection from being seen from the rear of the house. He studied the back of the property carefully, checking for movement. When he was sure that there was none, he ran across the wet grass.
His movement must have tripped a security light, for suddenly the whole back of the house and garden were illuminated by powerful floodlights. He had no choice but to keep on running. He made it to the small outbuilding and flattened himself against the brickwork. His pulse rate quickened as he heard a fierce-sounding dog barking from inside the house.
‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he muttered, sliding along the side of the building to the door. Luck was on his side—the door was unlocked. He opened it and slipped into the darkness, just as the barking of the dog became magnified in a way which could only mean that it had been let out.
He had no time. He switched on the phone torch and quickly scanned around the room. It was mercifully small. He could not work out what it might once have been, but now it was the repository for two broken bikes, a rotary washing-line, a stack of bricks and an assortment of children’s outdoor toys.
Judging from the sound of its bark, the dog had torn over to the tennis courts.
Phil remembered the content of the letter, which had referred to the gold guineas. Below the ground in an outhouse. The torchlight fell to the floor. Concrete. He banged his heel into the ground at various points but found it to be completely solid. If there was anything buried below ground here, then it was well and truly encased in cement.
Quickly, he switched on the metal detector which he had purchased with most of the money from the sale of the gold guinea and began to arc it above the floor in long clumsy sweeps. Nothing. Nothing at all.
From what he had seen on Google Maps, there were no other outbuildings here. He switched off the machine and crept back towards the door, aware that the barking had stopped.
He stood still. The dog, he surmised, had returned to the house. He quietly pushed open the door and stuck his head out. The security lights were off and there was no sign of the dog. It was time to leave.
Phil pocketed his phone and began to sprint across the lawn, tripping the security light as soon as he left the safety of the outbuilding.
‘Get him!’ a man’s voice yelled, making Phil’s blood run cold as he glanced over his shoulder to see the dog, an Alsatian, running at full pelt towards him, barking rabidly.
Phil ran hard towards the tennis courts, but knew that he could not outrun the dog, especially once he had reached the dark edges and wouldn’t be able to see where he was going. He ran faster than he was sure that he had ever run in his entire life, unable to pull enough oxygen into his lungs to satisfy the demands of his calf muscles.
He got to the tennis courts, certain from the bark that the dog was almost upon him.
The boundary fence was seconds away. He tossed the metal detector over and prepared himself to jump.
Then, he felt the agonising sear of teeth sinking into the Achilles tendon on his left foot, sending him hurtling to the ground. His head struck something hard, but the pain was nothing compared to the torture emanating from his foot.
Phil tried to drag himself towards the fence but the dog maintained his grip, shaking his head from side to side, just as Phil had seen lions and tigers doing with their prey on the television. He felt something in his heel snap and the pain increased dramatically. He knew that his only chance of survival was getting over that fence. He stretched out, his fingertips grazing the base of a wooden stake. He managed to shuffle himself forwards slightly, then grab on to the stake and pull himself to the fence. He knew that he would get one shot at this. Using all of his remaining energy, Phil kicked out with his right foot, catching the dog on the side of its muzzle. The dog yelped and released his left foot, allowing Phil to pull himself up and dive over the fence.
Just as he was going over, the dog bit down again, this time on his left trainer, holding it in his mouth as Phil fell onto the ground.
He crawled up the bank, his han
ds and face being cut with every inch of progress made. From down in the garden behind him, Phil was aware of shouting which was rendered inaudible by the dog barking. Then a powerful beam of light arced up from the garden, scanning the woodland around him.
Phil tucked himself behind the thick trunk of an oak tree, wincing at the pain in his foot. He reached down and felt his sock, sodden with blood.
Minutes passed before the torchlight was extinguished and the dog desisted from barking, yet Phil had still not regained his breath. Adrenalin pumped furiously around his body. He had to move on. Without doubt, the police would now be on their way.
Unable to walk on his left foot, Phil took an hour and fifty-five minutes to cross the woodland.
He saw the blue flashing lights long before he reached the hole in the hedgerow.
The police had found his car.
Phil sank down onto the cold ground and closed his eyes. His clothes were shredded and his hands and face bleeding profusely from multiple cuts. He withdrew his mobile and dialled 101. ‘Hi, yes, I’d like to report that my car’s been stolen, please…’
Morton was sitting in his study, alone in the house. Jack, Laura and George had gone to London for a daytrip and Juliette had taken Grace to the playpark. He was trying to shift his thoughts from the meal last night back onto work. He opened his laptop for the first time in two days to the 1842 Tithe map for Braemar Cottage, Aldington. He remembered that he had just been about to print it out when his Aunty Margaret had phoned to say that she would be coming to Sussex. Those two days had felt more like two weeks. Yesterday had gone better than he could ever have hoped or imagined. Soon after the meal had been over, George had gone to bed with a headache, and Jim and Margaret had also left soon afterwards, she taking the three letters with her. Jack had read Grace a bedtime story, then the four of them had adjourned to the lounge with another bottle of wine. Their conversations—on a range of subjects—had been thankfully relaxed and enjoyable. Maybe the alcohol, which he had consumed, now obscured any trace of there having been an awkward silence throughout the evening, but he certainly was not aware of one.
Morton smiled as he recalled some of the anecdotes and stories shared by Jack and Laura. He wondered when—or even if—he would ever reach a point when he stopped learning about his family’s past. He doubted it.
He printed the Tithe map, then took it to his investigation wall, where he attached it close to the piece of paper, which had been mysteriously torn, and ran a red string line from the words ‘gold guineas’ across to the map of Braemar Cottage, not really sure why he was bothering to even consider the absurdity of where barrels of gold guineas might have been buried almost two hundred years ago.
Morton crouched down and looked at the timeline of Ann Fothergill’s life. She had been resident with the Banister family in February and March 1821 but had moved to the Bell Inn, Hythe by August 1825. Just one month prior to that, her son, William had been baptised in Aldington Church, although that did not necessarily mean that she had been living in the village at the time.
His eyes moved around the investigation wall, settling on the word ‘Smuggling?’ He was certain of her connection to the Aldington Gang, but could not quite join the dots together. What need did the group have of her? In her role from mid-1825, as landlady of a pub on the Kent coast, it was easy to imagine her use. Morton had read several accounts of how pubs had been the meeting point for smuggling runs, as well as being a storage location and, obviously, an outlet for the smuggled goods. But Ann’s usefulness to the group prior to 1825 was a mystery.
He returned to his desk and flicked through his notepad to his research into the Aldington Gang, re-reading them for any clue which he might have overlooked. One thing he soon spotted: ‘Ashford Museum—exhibits & artefacts for Aldington Gang.’ Pushing the pad to one side, he ran a quick Google search for the museum and found, among their list of exhibits ‘Smuggling and the lives and demise of the ‘Aldington Gang.’ And they were open right now. Perfect.
Within ten minutes he was on his way to Ashford.
Despite being just a stone’s throw away from Ashford’s busy main shopping thoroughfare, the museum was situated on a quiet square which bounded St Mary’s Church. The building was red brick and appeared to Morton, as he entered it, like a Victorian former school.
‘Good morning to you, sir,’ a red-faced, elderly man greeted through an open internal window. ‘Welcome to our humble museum.’
‘Good morning,’ Morton replied, taking a quick scan around the room. It was small and dominated by a model train track on the opposite wall to the counter behind which the man was sitting. Each wall was adorned with various pictures, paintings and plaques and a glass cabinet to one side appeared to contain war artefacts. Morton could not immediately see anything related to that for which he was searching and asked, ‘I’m looking for information on the Aldington smuggling gang.’
‘Upstairs. Right above where we are now,’ the man explained. ‘Go left along the corridor–’ he pointed through the open door beside him, ‘—then up the stairs. Then it’s the first door on the right.’
Morton thanked him, then followed the instructions. As he had suspected, the building was the former Ashford Grammar School and, as such, came with a veritable labyrinth of narrow corridors, winding staircases and many small interlinking rooms. Upstairs, he found the room, which might once have been a master’s bedroom, its being much too small for a classroom. On one wall was a large display cabinet, beside which stood a mannequin, dressed as a smuggler, holding a wooden bat and an oil lamp. Opposite to the cabinet were three chairs and a series of watercolour paintings depicting smuggling runs. It was the display cabinet which most interested Morton and he took his time examining and photographing the exhibition. Sitting at the bottom of the display, on a bed of purple silk, were various objects pertaining to smuggling in general: a cutlass, a pistol, a barrel of rum, a model galley, an example of smuggled lace. On the back-left side of the cabinet was pinned the Ransley family tree. It appeared that, at some point after George Ransley’s transportation, his wife and children had followed him out to Tasmania. On the right-hand side was the Quested family tree and below it, was a tiny wooden shoe, the caption reading: ‘Made by Cephas Quested. He was hanged in 1821 following a battle. While he was in prison he made this little wooden shoe for one of his children.’
Morton read the explanations on the gang, inexplicably typed in the hard-to-read Old English font. Much of it he had already learned from the internet, but then he read a list of ‘Known Aldington Smugglers & Their Associates.’ The list was unsurprisingly headed by George Ransley. Below his name was Samuel Banister, suggesting to Morton that he might have held a senior role in the gang. The names of more than a dozen men were followed by a short gap under which appeared the names of the gang’s associates: ‘Langham and Platt, Solicitors. Doctor Ralph Papworth-Hougham, Surgeon. Ann Fothergril, Apothecary.’ Her name had been misspelled but it was undoubtedly her. Morton smiled. Here was the evidence which not only provided the link between Ann and the Aldington Gang, but also answered Morton’s previous question about what function she had performed for the group.
He photographed the list, then read the final piece of information: the demise of the group, which, as he had read online, came as a direct result of the murder of Ramillies’ Quartermaster, Richard Morgan in 1826.
Taking one final glace around the room, Morton made his way back downstairs.
‘Did you enjoy our little display, sir?’ the man behind the front desk asked.
‘Yes. It was very helpful and interesting, thank you,’ Morton answered, dropping some loose change into the donations box.
He left the museum, deep in thought. He rested his elbows on the black metal railings which separated the churchyard from the footpath which bounded it, thinking about what he should do next. Now that he knew for certain of Ann’s involvement with the group, he needed to obtain as much information as possible on the gang’
s activities. A good starting point, he reasoned, would be the local newspapers for the time, which were not currently available online. He remembered then that the knowledgeable American lady in Dover Library had told him that they had copies of a contemporaneous newspaper on microfilm. He looked at the time. He still had a couple of hours before he needed to be home in order for Juliette to be able to go to work. Just enough time, he thought, marching with purpose back to his Mini.
‘You’re back!’ the American declared from behind her desk, when he arrived at the family history section of Dover Library.
Morton smiled and looked at her lanyard to remind himself of her name: Amber Henderson. ‘Yes, more research.’
‘Into the bodies?’ Amber asked with a grin.
‘Well…sort of,’ he answered, vaguely. ‘Which newspaper did you say you held here for the 1820s?’
‘That would be the Cinque Ports Herald,’ she answered, standing from her desk. ‘Any year in particular?’
‘I’d like to say 1820 to 1827, but I don’t have the time,’ he answered. ‘So, 1826, please.’
‘I’ll go get it right now. Take a seat at the reader and I’ll be right over.’
In the time that it took Morton to switch on the film reader and get out his notepad and pencil, Amber had arrived with the little white box labelled Cinque Ports Herald 1825-1827. ‘Here you go.’
‘Thank you,’ Morton said, removing the film and threading it into the machine.
As the first edition appeared in front of him, he realised how grossly he had underestimated the enormity of the task. As was the case in most newspapers from this period, it was densely packed with small print and very few headlines separating individual stories. To search every edition for the two years on the roll of film would take hours and he had one hour and forty-five minutes until he had to leave. He would have to return next week, if necessary, but for now Morton decided to prioritise with the death of Richard Morgan.
The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) Page 18