Nightingale nodded.
Just like the investigation into the Aldington smuggling gang, it wouldn’t be especially difficult; it would just take time to gain the trust of the locals. If they could induce Mr Bull into offering a reward, all the better.
They arrived at the Red Lion Inn, on the outskirts of the town, under the welcome cover of darkness. Its location and the obscurity offered from the early evening duskiness suited Jonas; the fewer people who noticed their arrival, the better.
The two men stepped from the post-chaise with their cases and took a cursory glance at the public house. It was a typical affair, detached with Kent peg tiles on the roof and upper storey. The ground floor walls were whitewashed and, through the small windows, Jonas could make out the shapes of movement behind the glow of candlelight. This would be their home for the coming days or weeks ahead, depending on how long the case would take. With the exhaustion, which he currently felt, he was certainly in no hurry to wrap it up quickly and rush back to Bow Street.
‘Come on,’ Jonas said, moving around to the rear of the property in search of the back entrance.
They stopped at a solid oak door. Jonas tried to turn the ring handle, but it was locked. With a crooked index finger, he tapped four times. When nobody answered, he banged again, this time more loudly.
An irritated man—a good two foot shorter than Jonas—yanked open the door and glowered up at him. ‘What?’
Jonas smiled at the greeting. ‘Mr Blackwood and,’ he said, stepping to one side, ‘Mr Nightingale. I believe our appointment, via the tradesmen’s entrance, was expected?’
‘Aye,’ he said, still apparently irked, as he allowed them inside. ‘Mr Bull be here soon. He got you a private room. There be a drink each in there, compliments of Mr Bull.’ The short man pointed to a closed door to their right. ‘In there.’
‘Thank you kindly,’ Jonas said, opening the door and entering a small but comfortable room. It was wooden-panelled in dark oak, with several lit candlesticks fixed to the walls. A good fire fizzed in the hearth, which, judging by the warmth of the room, had evidently been lit for some time. In the centre of the room were three chairs, tucked under a table which was draped in a white cloth, upon which were three filled glasses.
Jonas set down his case and gratefully reached for the drink. He took a long gulp: rum, water and something bitter, whisky, perhaps. He sighed with the warm pleasure of the liquid running down the back of his throat. He took one of the other glasses and passed it to Nightingale.
‘I think,’ Nightingale said, ‘once we’ve met with Mr Bull, we should perhaps retire for the night.’
‘Agreed,’ Jonas said, not sure that he was actually enjoying the drink. The bitterness seemed to increase the more that he drank. Judging by Nightingale’s grimace, he too felt the same way.
‘Perhaps not,’ Nightingale said, setting the drink down on the table. He abruptly ran a hand to his chest and began to rub it. His face suggested that he was in pain.
Then, before Jonas could ask if he was alright, a tightening in his own chest and throat occurred. He released the glass in his hand, sending it smashing to the floor, as he reached out for the nearest chair to steady himself.
Nightingale’s terrified eyes met with his, neither one of them able to speak.
As the pain and tightening increased, so his pulse raced out of control, thundering in his chest like nothing which he had ever felt before. His breathing had reduced to a wheezing rasp and he fell to his knees.
The door opened beside him, just as Nightingale collapsed to the floor, his legs and arms jittering around of their own dancing desire.
His hands flailed between his neck and chest as he gasped for one last breath. In his peripheral vision, he saw her standing in the doorway, watching, waiting for the inevitability which was surely seconds away.
Jonas Blackwood’s final thought was to wish for the acute thrashing pain in his chest to stop.
Ann Fothergill stepped calmly into the room. Behind her James Carter hobbled on his crutch. She closed the door and ran the bolt across into the hole in the frame.
‘Gracious-heart-alive,’ James said. ‘What in the good Lord’s name did you be a-giving those men?’
‘Strophanthin,’ Ann replied. ‘A poison.’
‘Yeah, I be a-getting that, Ann.’
‘It comes from boiling the leaves of the Acokanthera schimperi plant found in East Africa.’
‘And where do you be getting such a thing?’ he asked.
‘My sort-of stepfather was an apothecary,’ she said simply, hoping that her answer would provide a suitable enough explanation. The real answer was protracted and not especially interesting. Herbs, spices, drugs, plant extracts came from a myriad of sources: some from the streets of the capital; some from an indirect route across the Continent. This particular plant extract had reached England via a slave ship, returning from Africa laden with tobacco and sugar, and had been dealt to Ann by the dubious gentleman, who had once supplied her stepfather.
They both continued to stare at the two bodies, half-expecting them to begin to move again. But they would not. The dosage, even if they had taken just one mouthful of the drink, had been enough to stop their hearts beating in their chests.
‘And you be thinking it might stop the trial?’
Ann nodded. ‘If they can’t testify, then there’s no case,’ she answered, hoping to goodness that she was right. ‘Let’s get them changed, so that, if anyone sees them, they won’t have the same appearance.’
James grunted, opened up his canvas bag and tipped two uniforms onto the floor.
‘What be these?’ Ann said, holding one up to view.
‘All I could be finding at short notice,’ he answered, avoiding her gaze. ‘Two men’s outfits you be saying to get… and that be what I did get.’
‘It will have to do,’ Ann acknowledged, beginning to remove Jonas Blackwood’s trousers.
‘Do it really be needed to change their costume?’ he asked, reluctantly, and with some difficulty, dropping down to the floor beside Nightingale.
Ann spoke as she worked. ‘These men will have been seen lots of times. When they don’t go back to Bow Street someone will come looking for them with a description of what clothes they were wearing.’
‘But we be about to be hiding them beneath a lot of old sacking! What devil be looking in the back of my cart?’
Ann shrugged. ‘What about at the other end? When we’re unloading them? They need to look like two drunk…coastguard officers, not two dead men wearing all this,’ she said, gesturing to the growing pile of Jonas’s clothing, ‘the very clothes what they left London wearing.’
James snorted, but carried on undressing Nightingale’s corpse.
Twenty minutes later, James cautiously opened the tradesmen’s entrance to the inn. ‘Right,’ he whispered into the room.
They needed now to move swiftly, which would not be an easy feat, given that she and a one-legged man had to transfer two hulking great dead men into the back of a cart, unseen. She had paid a vagrant to book the private room and so far, nobody had seen her or James Carter here.
Ann placed her hands under Jonas’s armpits and began to drag his dead weight through the doorway and outside. Ann dropped the body down and climbed onto the back of the cart, which James had brought practically to the door.
With some difficulty, James stooped down on his crutch and picked up Jonas’s right arm for Ann to reach. Then, with both of them heaving, the body was slowly hauled up inside the cart.
Ann hurriedly pulled a sack over Jonas, then jumped down from the cart, sweating profusely. She entered the private room once again and dragged the other officer outside in a similar fashion.
Within ten minutes, the bodies of the two Principal Officers had been concealed below a layer of hessian sacks in the open cart, and the horse began to pull it away into the night.
Ann sat in the rear of the cart with a piece of sacking pulled up to her ch
in. The realisation of what she had done struck on her when she felt the press of cold flesh against her leg. With a nauseating shudder, she yanked up her knees.
Ann closed her eyes and closed her mind for the long journey back to Hythe.
The following evening, shortly after closing the bar, Ann poured herself her second pint of rum and water, enjoying the warm lift which it provided, as she sat down beside the hearth and breathed out. It was a lengthy exhalation, which seemed a partial release in itself of all that was burdening her mind.
Beside her, a hot fire was in the process of devouring great chunks of chopped oak.
She gazed through the vaulting flames to the new brick wall behind it, which now separated the two bars. Last night, upon their arrival back from Ramsgate, James Carter had applied his trade and spent the whole night building a dividing wall with a cavity suitable for the perpetual interment of Jonas Blackwood and Thomas Nightingale.
Ann bit her lip, as she mulled over her actions. She could justify them, to herself at least, provided that what she had done had spared the Aldington Gang from the gallows. Specifically, that it could prevent Sam from having to leave.
She thought, with a profound sense of regret, of her little boy, sound asleep upstairs. She did not know down which of the many potential paths in front of her the course of life would now run, but one thing that she did know, was that William was destined never to know his father. She could never even tell William about him or supply him with the simplest of detail—his name—for she did not know it herself; it was one of two men who stood on either side of the giant chasm called the law.
She sipped more from her drink and cried. As the hot painful tears ran down her cheeks, she realised that it had been the first time that she had cried since her mother had died.
Chapter Thirty-Four
1st February 1827, Maidstone, Kent
Despite the freezing temperatures and dusting of snow outside, the inside of the court was unbearably suffocating. Ann loosened her red shawl, struggling to draw breath in the airless room, thick with the odour of dozens of people wanting to be present when the judgement was passed down on the now infamous Aldington Gang. Ann had travelled up to Maidstone several days ago, taking a seat in a private wagon amongst thirteen strangers, all keen to be present at the closing of this famed trial. She had feigned sleep for much of the journey, in order to avoid the almost continual chatter about the smugglers and what would become of them. If the men’s fate had lain in the hands of those with whom she had shared the journey, they would all be swinging by their necks. Ann had struggled to find accommodation in the busy town, the trial having drawn people from way out of the town and county. Eventually she had found a room in the Royal Oak, intending to remain in the town until the verdict had been delivered.
Now she was standing, with barely a view of the judge, crushed between two stinking labourers.
‘Ransley be sure to hang,’ the one to her left said, his breath marginally worse than his body odour. His head was turned in her direction, but he seemed to be offering his opinions to any who might be interested.
Ann craned her neck around, pretending to search the crowds for someone. She looked at the great number of people gathered here. Many were outsiders, come from far and wide to catch sight of the notorious gang; others she recognised from in and around Aldington. Intermingled with the curious visitors were the smugglers’ wives and family, along with many uniformed men from the Blockade Service.
At last the judge, Justice Park, a large man whose uncompromising face scowled into the court room, blustered for complete silence. When his instructions had been obeyed, a quick jolty nod of his head to a guard protecting a side entrance brought about the quiet scuffling of boots against the floor and a clinking of metal, as the prisoners were led inside.
Their arrival caused a general stir amongst the crowd; heads twitched from side to side, necks were angled, calves were strained as folk pushed up onto tiptoe—anything for a better view of the gang.
With a slight raising of her head, Ann could see some of the men shuffling in, each wearing a smock-frock, and each having their feet chained together. The men, whom she could see, appeared fatigued in their features, although surprisingly calm.
The judge spoke only to open the conclusion of the case trial which, he stated, would be brief, delivering the men to their fate.
The Solicitor-General, Sir John Singleton-Copley, took the stand. He cleared his throat and set his chin onto a heavy dewlap, before nodding deferentially to the judge and jury. ‘My Lord, members of the Grand Jury. The prisoners, having pleaded guilty to the charges brought before this court, have forfeited their lives to the laws of the country. However, it is not my intention to offer any evidence against them on the charge of murder. I cannot say that their lives may be spared, but, as my recommendation to His Majesty goes, they should have the benefit of it.’
A wave of incoherent murmurings and mutterings shuddered around the room before the judge demanded silence once again. He paused, then faced the prisoners. ‘You have pleaded guilty to an offence of a most heinous nature, the commission of which struck terror into every well-disposed mind. You have assembled in numerous bodies to aid in the running of uncustomed goods, and in so aiding had fired upon persons who were only doing their duty. Your offences were so serious against the laws of man, and a breach of the laws of man is also an offence against the laws of God; and smuggling led to the commission of the greatest crimes, even the crime of murder. If the mercy of our gracious sovereign were extended to you, I trust you would receive it with due gratitude, and be still more grateful to your God, whom you have all so very grievously offended.’ Here the judge stopped and cast his eyes carefully over the court, before returning them to the prisoners. ‘Given that you have pleaded guilty to a capital offence, I have little alternative but to serve upon you all a sentence of death.’
Ann’s gasp was lost among a dozen other similar reactions, mixing in with an unholy cacophony of jeers, roars, and shouts for clemency.
‘You will be duly executed on the fifth day of this month,’ the judge shouted over the din.
All the individual sounds around Ann melded into one deeply penetrating shrill, and she threw up her hands to cover her ears as she looked over to see the reaction of the Aldington Gang to their fate. Ransley turned to Richard Wire, who was standing beside him. The two men looked bizarrely accepting and simply shrugged. Ann leant to her right and saw a look of disbelief on the next man, Charles Giles. His disbelief turned to an angry shout, which was lost in the noise around the court. She was unable to see the rest of the gang and could only imagine their reactions at being told they had less than one week to live.
The men were going to hang. Sam would be sent away forever. Her despicable actions to stop the trial had failed colossally. In fact, the absence of Jonas and his colleague had only merited a minor mention at the beginning of the trial, when counsel for the prosecution had said that, although it was usual for the Principal Officers to deliver their own evidence, the two men had undertaken their investigation with such diligence that the Crown could muster some seventy-three witnesses to testify against the gang.
Ann found herself moving, being pushed along in a mass of unfamiliar faces, towards the rear of the court.
Her jumbled thoughts returned to her last conversation with Sam. He had arrived unannounced at the Bell Inn a week after the arrests had been made, somehow changed. He had looked drained and haggard, his eyes bloodshot and puffy, that much had been clear, but, as he had sat beside the hearth shivering, there had been something more than that, she had quickly realised, something much more profound, like a degradation of his very spirit.
He had sat beside her, clasping a glass of brandy in front of the fire, although the shivering had refused to stop for the entire time, during which he had been with her. He had explained in a low, monotone voice that he had given evidence to a man named Lieutenant Hellard and another man—a solicitor fro
m the Admiralty—of every smuggler whom he had ever known, and of every smuggling run which he could remember ever having taken place.
‘I only ever be doing it to keep us from the poorhouse,’ he had said several times, staring into the fire.
Ann had not been sure if he had been talking to her or to himself, but she had agreed.
Then, Sam had laughed. It was a strange hollow laugh, one that Ann had never heard from him before. ‘Do you be remembering that night what we met?’
Ann had nodded. ‘Yes, I do. You were feverish, nigh-on dead,’ she had said.
‘Gold,’ Sam had remembered.
‘Pardon?’ Ann had said.
‘Two barrels of gold guineas underneath his aunt’s pigpen—that be what old Quested be telling me.’ Sam had snorted and drunk more of his brandy. ‘What life might’ve bin were that true…’
‘It was true,’ Ann had found herself saying, ‘but they’re gone now—empty.’
Sam had shot her a look of shocked disbelief. ‘What?’
‘The guineas—there were two barrels full—now they’re empty.’
‘Did you…?’
Ann had shaken her head vehemently. ‘No—not me.’
‘Who?’
‘It doesn’t matter, now…’
Sam had either accepted her flimsy assertion, or had not the energy to counter it, for he had nodded in acceptance and gazed at his dwindling drink. ‘No, what matter do it be to a condemned man?’
‘You might yet be spared the trial,’ Ann had said.
Ann’s eyes had darted to the new wall in the hearth, then she had chosen her words carefully, turning to face Sam. ‘You don’t yet know that there will be a trial—anything might happen.’
‘Yeah,’ he had said, ‘Happen I grow a pair of wings and be flying away.’
‘I’m serious, Sam,’ Ann had pushed.
The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) Page 33