The Darkest Walk of Crime

by Malcolm Archibald

  “I see.” Mendick attempted indifference although Armstrong’s words hung in the air like a verbal shroud. He remembered Peter’s light tread and the width of his shoulders. Despite his obviously limited mental capacity he would be a formidable adversary. He watched as the volunteers reached the edge of the field, tried to turn and collided in a confusion of arms, legs and frustrated curses.

  “Let’s hope I come up to the mark then.”

  “Let’s hope you do,” Armstrong said.

  The volunteers straightened themselves out and reformed their lines to straggle back, with those most impatient to impress outpacing the slow and stolid.

  And now Mendick had his chance to impress. The ragged ranks halted in front of him, hoping for some magical spell that would transform them from an underfed rabble to a disciplined force capable of defeating the British Army and toppling what was probably the most stable government in Europe.

  “Right, then.” Mendick mentally pushed Armstrong’s pistol and Peter’s mighty muscles aside. “Let’s get to work.”

  The men were as enthusiastic as any recruits he had ever seen, driven by desperation to muster together and all the more determined because of the knowledge that discovery would mean certain transportation. They responded willingly to his commands, coming fiercely to attention as soon as he showed them how, presenting their puny arms with near savage force and marching with such concentration that he sighed in empathetic sorrow.

  Did these fifty forlorn men genuinely hope to challenge the government? Mendick shook his head, and his volunteers immediately looked downcast, as if they had made some cardinal error. These men were so responsive and eager to please that any line regiment in the British Army would have welcomed them.

  “There’s a sight to frighten the Whigs,” Armstrong commented sarcastically.

  “Let’s hope that they’re not spying on us,” Mendick said, sincerely. He was already growing strangely attached to his volunteers. “At least we’re secluded here.” He nodded to the trees that formed a backdrop to the field. “How far does that woodland extend?”

  “About a hundred yards, but Trafford’s policies start half way through.” Armstrong sounded casual.

  “So close?” Mendick looked around. A buzzard keened overhead, the call intensely lonely as it patrolled its territory. “Is it wise to train beside Trafford’s land? Any inquisitive gamekeeper can poke his nose in.”

  “Believe me, there is no need to worry about Sir Robert Trafford.” Armstrong smiled. “You concentrate on the training and leave the politics to us.”

  Mendick shrugged. ‘As you wish, Mr Armstrong.” If Trafford reported the Chartist gathering to the police, his job would be made much easier.

  Within a few hours most of the volunteers had the knack of marching correctly, their right arms and left legs moving in approximate unison, and Mendick called them to what they imagined was attention.

  “Right, lads, you have learned the basics of marching. Let’s try something more advanced.” He grinned at their sudden surge of interest. “Before I’m finished, you’ll know all the tricks of the soldier’s trade, and today we’ll have a small taste of skirmishing, scouting and all the excitement of standing sentinel.”

  Mendick had already decided it would be best to teach only a simplified version of each military skill, for he did not know how much time he had. The volunteers listened as he sketched the outlines, and followed his lead immediately. There was no doubting their willingness, but they lacked stamina and were pitifully thin.

  “How are they?” Armstrong had been standing at the edge of the woodland, watching Mendick’s progress.

  “Weak. They need decent food.”

  “They shall have it,” Armstrong promised, “when they have earned it.” He raised his voice. “You hear that, lads? Sergeant Mendick wants to feed you more, although there are women and children starving in the streets. Do you want to take the food from their mouths? Or do you want to take the food from the tables of the landowners who oppress our people?”

  The reply was less of a roar than a whimper, but the message was clear. The Chartist army would continue to drill on short rations and fight with hope rather than strength.

  “There you have your answer.” Armstrong sounded satisfied.

  “We’ll see,” Mendick said. He had no desire to aid the cause of revolution, but having experienced hunger, he would not see men suffer needlessly.

  Armstrong combined a sour shrug with his poisonous glare. “Will we indeed?”

  When the dull day faded into dismal night, Armstrong permitted the training to end.

  “Enough for today,” he said, and nodded to Mendick. “Come with me and I’ll show you where you’ll sleep.”

  Mendick was surprised at the size and quality of the cottage Armstrong had allocated to him. The spacious living room was lined with shelves for books, one of the two bedrooms even boasted a real bed, and the privy was separate and moderately clean. Emma would have loved the splendid tiled floor of the kitchen, and she would have clapped her hands in ecstasy over the magnificent Welsh dresser and pine table. The iron grate, oven and boiler for water completed what was undoubtedly the finest cottage Mendick had ever seen.

  “Impressive, eh?” Armstrong noticed Mendick’s surprise. “Mr O’Connor and Mr Monaghan want only the best for the people.”

  “Utopia indeed,” Mendick agreed. If this was the quality of life that the Chartist leaders planned for the people of Britain, it was no wonder so many gathered to the cause. “This must have cost something to build.”

  Armstrong’s response was so savage Mendick knew he had touched on something important. “That’s hardly your concern, Mendick! You attend to the training and nothing else. Do you understand?”

  “Of course,” he agreed immediately.

  “Good. You’ll be snug here,” Armstrong promised, pausing at the door with his last words, “and safe as the bank. After tonight I’ll instruct Peter to stay with you, and Eccles sends out regular patrols to make sure that no nosey gamekeepers come a-calling.”

  Or to make sure that newly arrived drill instructors did not stray, Mendick realised.

  “I’ll be back at seven tomorrow morning. Have a good night’s sleep, for I want the men hard at work by dawn tomorrow.”

  As soon as Armstrong limped away, Mendick moved to the lock-up. He could hear Peter whimpering from three yards away, and when he opened the door the ex-prizefighter scuttled out at once, his face wet with tears.

  “I’m sorry, Mr Armstrong, I won’t drive like that again, I promise, only . . .”

  “Mr Armstrong is not here,” Mendick told him. “He wants to leave you inside all night.” He watched Peter glance over his shoulder at the crowding dark. “But I don’t agree.”

  Peter looked up, his face crumpled as he waited for orders.

  “So this is what we’ll do,” Mendick told him. “I’ll let you out, and you will stay in the cottage with me tonight, but tomorrow morning, before Mr Armstrong arrives, we’ll put you back in the black hole and pretend that you’ve been there all night.”

  Peter nodded eagerly. “And we won’t tell Mr Armstrong?”

  “No, we won’t,” Mendick said, “or he’ll put us both in the black hole.” He held out his hand, knowing that if Armstrong put him in a hole, it would be with a shovelful of dirt on his face and a pistol ball in his brain.

  For a moment Peter stared at Mendick’s hand, and then he smiled as innocently as a baby and extended his own.

  “After all, Peter, we’re both fellow Chartists.” Mendick felt Peter’s paw slide around his like a huge iron glove.

  “Fellow Chartists,” Peter said, gently shaking hands and repeating the phrase he obviously liked, “Fellow Chartists.”

  Mendick smiled tautly; he had hoped to slip away during the night and find Sergeant Ogden, but his own weakness had spoiled that idea. He should have attended to his duty and left Peter exactly where he was. Now he would have to manoeuvre
his way around the giant.

  Once inside the cottage, Peter closed the door.

  “In case the night gets in,” he said and grinned. “We’ll be like brothers, Mr Mendick. Fellow Chartists.” Sitting on one of the two chairs beside the deal table, he produced a pack of cards. “We’ll play for the bed,” he said. “Loser gets the floor.”

  Glancing at the wooden floorboards with their scattering of straw, Mendick grunted. He had slept on worse, but he had never enjoyed suffering for its own sake. However, when Peter began a clumsy shuffle of the cards, sweating with the effort, and Mendick saw the breadth of his forearms, he looked again at the bed, wondered which unfortunate had last infested it and decided that it would be no hardship to lose. He would prefer a few hours of discomfort to a collection of broken bones, and anyway, he had no intention of spending the night indoors.

  “Is there anything to drink in the house?”

  In a lightning change of mood, Peter frowned at him.

  “A lush, are you? The last soldier-boy was a lush too.” He shook his massive head disapprovingly. “Tell you what, let’s share the bed and play for the blue ruin. There’s nothing better than a flash of lightning at this time of night.”

  “You have the bed,” Mendick decided. “I just want a bottle of Old Tom.”

  Peter ruffled the cards. “You’ll have to win it, first.” His laugh was loud and unpleasant. “Come on soldier-boy; let’s see how good you are.”

  Gliding to a corner of the dresser, Peter produced a large bottle of gin and placed it carefully in front of him, where it tempted Mendick with its memories.

  “Twenty-one.”

  It was probably the simplest card game of all, and one that Mendick had played from Calcutta to Canton, but it was best not to let Peter know that. He avoided looking at the gin.

  “What are the rules?”

  “Don’t you know?” Peter emphasised his superiority with a laugh. “It’s all right, I’ll teach you.” Removing the cork from the bottle with his teeth, he took a preliminary swig while Mendick watched, fighting his desire. “The winner of each hand gets a drink.” He leaned over the table, grinning hideously, “but the loser gets nothing.”

  Mendick nodded and played deliberately poorly for the next half hour, while Peter enjoyed a winning streak that saw him empty a quarter of the bottle and grow increasingly raucous.

  “You’re useless,” he crowed as Mendick called for another card when he had a hand of nineteen, and, “Beat again!” when Mendick put down thirteen to his seventeen.

  After an hour Peter’s speech was slurred and the level of gin had lowered significantly, so Mendick slammed down his cards.

  “You can’t be this good,” he said. “You must know exactly what I’m doing!

  “What?” Peter looked up, his eyes hazed by gin. “How can I know that?”

  “By cheating.” Mendick pressed his advantage. “You must be looking at my cards.”

  “I’m not.” Peter sounded hurt by the accusation. He shook a confused head. “You just can’t play good.”

  “I know what game I can play,” Mendick said. “I’ll fight you, by God!” He rose from the chair and lifted his fists in the approved prize-fighting manner, hoping that Peter would take the bait and hoping even more that the gin had slowed the his reactions as much as his speech.

  “I would kill you.” Peter sounded amazed that anyone would willingly choose to fight him. “You’re wrong, Mr Mendick. I wouldn’t cheat you; we’re fellow Chartists, and you let me out of the Black Hole. I’m just better at cards than you; have a drink and forget about it.” He pushed the bottle across the table and spread his hands in a gesture of reconciliation.

  Mendick hit him. It was a beautiful punch, straight to the point of the jaw, but Peter merely shook his head.

  “What did you do that for? Now we will have to fight,” he said, and Mendick wondered if he had made a major mistake. He was experienced in barrack room turn-ups and in the formal affairs for which Her Majesty had paid him, but Peter was a different proposition entirely. The prize-fighter was a good five inches taller and broader than him and was trained and knowledgeable in his brutal art.

  The first punch hissed past Mendick’s head with a sound like a passing cannonball, the second numbed his upper arm and the third smashed against his chest and knocked him against the door. He lay there, stunned from the force of the blow as Peter loomed over him, gesturing for him to rise, but instead Mendick yanked open the door and fled.

  “Hey, come back, Mr Mendick! Please! If you run away Mr Armstrong will put me in the black hole! Please! I’ll let you win!”

  Mendick ran into the welcoming night, trying not to listen to Peter bellowing in his wake as he jinked into the trees that sheltered Chartertown. He winced, rubbing his chest and arm where the prize-fighter’s fists had caught him; if Peter had that sort of power when half drunk, he would be unbeatable sober.

  Within a few minutes he was struggling through brittle briars and stumbling over a half-tumbled wall as he climbed the small knoll where he had stopped only that morning. Looking back, he saw only darkness, but when he reached the summit he nodded his satisfaction. The countryside spread out before him like a black sea interspersed with the twinkling lights of cottages and villages and with one vast array of lights a few miles to the south. That could only be Manchester, and ignoring the confusion of paths Mendick struck directly across country, hoping he could find his way to Ogden’s house.

  He had memorised the address Smith had shown him and had spent the train journey north perusing a map of the Manchester area, but Armstrong's carriage had driven for a good hour beyond the town, which Mendick estimated would be around six miles. He would have to find the city first and then work out where Ogden lived. Mendick hurried, using the infantryman’s quick marching pace and hoping that he was moving in the right direction as he repeated the instructions he had been given.

  Sergeant Ogden lives in White Rose Lane in the northern outskirts of Manchester. He is in a cottage within a walled garden with a single brick shed.

  The urban build-up began gradually, a cottage here, a cluster there, and Mendick moved rapidly, searching for names and landmarks, thankful that his night vision had always been good. Pushing through a belt of trees, he slipped over a gate in a hawthorn hedge and stopped at a tall stone wall. The name was painted white on a square piece of wood: White Rose Lane. Mendick sighed his relief.

  It was a village of well-kept cottages with gardens front and back. Fruit trees told of a rural past, and geese honked a warning behind closed doors.

  There were two buildings standing side by side, but whilst one looked neglected, the other had a crisply painted front door and an immaculate garden, just what Mendick would expect from the orderly mind of a police sergeant. Taking a deep breath, he tapped on the door and flinched when even that small sound set a dog barking.

  A heavy chain stopped the door from opening more than an inch, and a whiskered face peered at him inquisitively.

  “Sergeant Ogden?”

  The whiskered face nodded suspiciously. “Yes?” The long barrel of a shotgun thrust through the gap between door and wall.

  “I am Detective James Mendick from Scotland Yard.”

  There was a second’s silence before the man spoke.

  “Scotland Yard! Creation! Come on in, man!” The shotgun withdrew, the chain dropped, and Ogden threw open the door. He looked about thirty, a few years younger than Mendick had expected, but already a paunch pushed at his long nightshirt. Despite the shotgun he looked more surprised than aggressive.

  “What a time of night to come!”

  “Who is it? Nathaniel, who is it?” A woman’s voice floated from the upstairs room. “Shall I set the dog on him, Nathaniel?”

  “No you shall not, Jennifer; it’s a gentleman from Scotland Yard.” Sergeant Ogden smiled to Mendick. “That’s my wife. You’ll have to forgive her; she can be a bit emotional sometimes.”

  Mrs Ogden
appeared with a candle in her left hand and a border terrier on a lead in her right.

  “Scotland Yard?” She was slender, with her hair in papers and her worn nightdress flapping over bare feet. “Well, shall we bring him in and feed him, Nathaniel?” She smiled uncertainly, hauling back the terrier which seemed more interested in sniffing at Mendick’s boots than in any sort of household defence.

  “Come in, man, and welcome.” Ogden opened the door wider and stepped back to allow Mendick access.

  “Scotland Yard in my house?” Mrs Ogden glanced at her husband as if for approval. “That’s a rare honour, a rare honour indeed, sir, and you are most welcome to stay the night.”

  “I thank you for the invitation, Ma’am.” Mendick felt himself bowing, happy to be among people with whom he could relax. “But I am afraid I do not have the time. I must spend a few minutes with your good husband and then return to my duties at once.”

  “Duties!” Mrs Ogden shook her head understandingly. “Of course, men must always perform their duties.” She glanced at her husband and smiled, slightly timidly. “Nathaniel is just the same. You will stay for a jug of ale, though, and maybe some bread and cheese?”

  Suddenly Mendick realised he was hungry. He nodded.

  “The bread would be most welcome, Mrs Ogden, but I must decline the ale; perhaps a cup of tea, if you will be so kind?”

  While Mrs Ogden busied herself in the kitchen, Ogden unhooked a lantern from behind the door and ushered Mendick into the back garden, where a brick-built shed stood immaculately to attention. The interior smelled of fresh soil and stored vegetables, with a slightly musty odour that Mendick could not identify.

  “We’ll get some peace out here,” Ogden said, “and I have a number of items that you might find useful.” Twirling a large finger through his whiskers, he sat heavily on a wooden stool. “I’m glad you came along, Detective Mendick, although I’m not at all sure what you can do alone.”

  “Call me James.” Mendick had already formed a liking for this couple. “And I am not sure either. There are a lot of angry people up here.”