The Darkest Walk of Crime

by Malcolm Archibald

  There was a sudden flare of light in a downstairs room, and he ducked down, keeping his head beneath the level of the sill, trying to listen to any conversation inside. He heard the low rumble of a man’s voice, punctured by a short, explosive laugh, and then Armstrong crossed to the window and looked out. Only a few inches below, Mendick could clearly hear every word.

  “It’s good to have a man with your influence on our side, Sir Robert.”

  His companion came to the window. A full head and a half taller than Armstrong and as straight as a lancer, he spoke with the unmistakable confidence of the upper class,

  “Something needs to be done about the suffering of the industrial workers, Armstrong. I only wish that these damned Whigs had not allowed things to get so bad.”

  Mendick looked up. The two men stood side by side, staring into the dark. Both held a glass in their hand.

  “I have always said that the Tories and the workers are natural allies,” Trafford said. “I have always been on the best of terms with my tenants; dammit, man, where would the estate be without them, eh?”

  “Indeed, Sir Robert,” Armstrong agreed. “It is the industrialists who are exploiting the workers, with their lust for profit and more profit.”

  “Damned upstarts.” Trafford seemed to detest the rising middle classes more than he supported the exploited workers. “But together we can put them in their place, eh?”

  “With your help, Sir Robert, we can curb their power and make the country a better place.” Armstrong spoke carefully.

  “And how much help do you expect, exactly?”

  Even from outside the window, Mendick could sense the hesitation in Armstrong’s pause. However powerful the man was amongst his peers, he still had sense enough to defer to a member of the ruling class.

  “We need arms, Sir Robert. We have men enough but we lack weapons, and the Whigs . . .”

  “Blackguard scoundrels!” Trafford’s voice contained venom equal to anything Mendick had heard from Armstrong. “How many weapons do you wish?”

  “We need as many as possible, Sir Robert.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Trafford sounded suddenly bored. “And now, if you would be so kind, I have personal matters to see to.”

  Keeping low, Mendick hurried to the front of the house, intending to resume his place on the luggage step, but Peter had parked with the horses facing down the gravel drive, and the back of the coach was in full view of the front door. It was impossible for him to climb on board. He cursed as Armstrong and Trafford came out together, speaking quietly as Armstrong boarded the coach, and then Peter flicked the reins. The coach began to move slowly over the gravel roadway with the lamplight bouncing from the shrubbery and Trafford standing watching with his glass in his hand and a small smile on his long face.

  Mendick sighed and shifted into the long loping stride that would carry him to Chartertown. The distance was irrelevant compared to the startling intelligence that he had discovered. Sir Robert Trafford, the arch Tory, was supporting the Chartists against the Whigs. He knew he could not yet return to London; nobody would believe the connection until he gathered some tangible evidence. In the meantime he had to remain with the Chartists.

  *

  “On your feet, lad!” Mendick glared as a man staggered and fell, but he knew that it was weakness of the flesh, not the spirit, that caused the stumble. He looked over his command again, seeing them with new eyes. Even in his youth, not sixteen years ago, the standard of recruits for the army had been higher; the men had been taller, broader and fitter than these products of an industrial society. Most of the volunteers were under average height, some were actually misshapen from a childhood spent crouched in unnatural positions in mills or factories; others were racked with coughs or so thin it seemed a gust of wind would blow them away.

  If these fifty men were a fair representation of the might of the Chartists, then God help Monaghan. The correlation, of course, was also correct; if this was the best that Britain could produce, then God help the nation if there was another war. In their constant quest for profit, the factory owners had brought terrible harm to the people of Britain. Once again Mendick wondered if he were fighting on the right side in supporting the establishment with their zeal for industrialisation, rather than the Chartists with their Land Plan and desire for human dignity.

  Hardening his heart and voice, he played the part of the drill sergeant, blasting the volunteers towards a standard of perfection he knew they could never attain.

  “Get those feet up, you idle blackguards! You’re moving so slowly I can see the dead lice falling from you!”

  The volunteers responded with astonishing urgency. Rather than resenting his verbal assaults, they showed a willingness curbed only by their physical weakness. Within a week Mendick had his little band at the level of army recruits of a month’s standing. Within two weeks they could march as smartly as most line regiments, within three they could advance in open order and he was teaching them how to skirmish and scout.

  He trained them in the driving rain, when every step plashed through muddy puddles. He trained them in the whispering snow, when the background trees were ghostly beautiful but the volunteers’ hands were red raw with cold. He trained them on the frosty days when his breath froze against his whiskers and every sound was magnified in the brisk air. And all the time he hoped for news from London.

  He had sent a second pigeon south with news about Trafford’s Chartist connection, and every evening he disappeared into the woods for a walk, promising Peter that he would be back within an hour. He fed his remaining pigeon, looked in vain for a reply from Scotland Yard and upon his return always found Peter waiting anxiously for him.

  Mendick had grown used to sharing the cottage with the prize-fighter. They spoke little but played cards each evening, with more equable results.

  “Peter, I’m going to take some of the men on a night exercise.”

  “Mr Armstrong won’t like that.” Peter sounded alarmed.

  “So we won’t tell him,” Mendick said and manufactured a grin, “or even better, you can come with us and keep an eye on me in case I find a public house and get bung-eyed, or lose the men in the dark, or run and tell a peeler all about this army that I’ve been training.”

  “No, I won’t do that.” Peter shook his head. “I know you’ll come back.”

  “I always do.” He had guessed that Peter would prefer not to enter the night-dark woods. He held out his hand. “You’re a good man, Peter, and a fellow Chartist.”

  Peter took his hand with the edge of his fingers, his face confused.

  “Fellow Chartist.”

  *

  The volunteers stood at attention in the damp gloom of the December afternoon. A persistent drizzle soaked them while the trees behind them cowered in shivering misery.

  “Right, lads,” Mendick said softly, “it is nearly Christmas and we are surviving on starvation rations. That does not seem right for the vanguard of the new utopia, so I think it is time to do something about it.” He enjoyed the surge of interest. “We’re going to combine our training with a spot of Christmas preparation. Tonight some of us are engaging in a very valuable military procedure. We call it foraging, when we rake the countryside for food,” he cheered them with a grin, “and anything else we can get our hands on.” He had expected the resulting laugh and waited until it subsided.

  “I’ve been watching you, and I know you now. I know the smart and the quick, the best at drill and those who are ready to employ sly little tricks to get off work.”

  This time the laugh was a little uneasy as the men looked at one other, wondering what he was about to say next.

  “Right. I want Preston, Eccles and Duffy.”

  He selected the most devious of his men and the ones least likely to have any scruples. Foraging was far more a matter of individual initiative than drill and discipline.

  “The rest of you are dismissed; report as normal tomorrow morning.”<
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  Even as he hefted the canvas bag into which he had packed a few useful items, he wondered about the legality of his movements. He, who had vowed to obey the laws that kept him on the side of respectability, was now not just bending those laws, but smashing them into splinters. He shook his head, grinned encouragingly to his chosen men and marched them into the darkness.

  It was strangely nostalgic to lead a small patrol again, and if Lancashire was certainly not China, the local gamekeepers were probably more efficient than the Chinese army had proved to be.

  “Keep close, lads, keep quiet and remember what I’ve taught you.” He led them through the winter woodland and halted just outside Trafford land.

  “I know this place,” Eccles said quietly, more relaxed that Mendick had ever seen him. “I used to go poaching here as a lad.”

  “So let’s go poaching again,” Mendick said, “but I want food for fifty men.”

  “That’s a tall order.” Eccles sounded doubtful as his nervousness quickly returned. “Sir Robert is careful of his property. There’s mantraps and spring guns all over the place, and as many keepers as we have soldiers.” He shook his head. ”Bastard.”

  The policeman in Mendick began to ponder. A man who put so much effort into security must have something to protect, or something to hide, which made this trip into Trafford land doubly interesting.

  “Let’s see what we can find.”

  “If you’d given me warning,” Eccles said, “I’d have made some traps and caught us some rabbits.”

  “You can have time off tomorrow to make them,” Mendick promised. “In the meantime, you can guide us in.”

  Eccles grew in confidence as he negotiated the outskirts of Trafford’s land. Using brushwood as protection against the jagged glass, he slipped over the boundary wall with ease and slithered across the bough of a tree to descend the trunk.

  “Sir Robert is careful always to lop the lower branches from any tree close to the wall,” he explained, “just in case of men like me.” His grin showed white in the gloom. “But there are always ways in.”

  Trafford’s trees were spaced out, with an occasional exotic rhododendron set between native plants.

  “Careful!” Eccles stretched out his hand. “Watch your feet here.” He pointed downward, where metal gleamed through the leaf litter. Bending down, he brushed carefully with his hand to reveal a metal plate. “Man trap,” he said, pointing to the saw-toothed jaws that were intended to slam shut on the leg of its victim. “Step on that and you’re crippled even before the beak sends you to Van Diemen’s Land.”

  As so often before during the last few weeks, Mendick wondered about his loyalties. Obviously the law of the land had to be maintained or there would be anarchy, but to allow landowners to employ such brutal devices simply to defend their game against hungry people seemed positively immoral. Trafford may be a supporter of the Chartists, but where his property was concerned he continued to act like the most selfish member of the upper class.

  “Watch for spring guns too,” Eccles warned. “The landowners rig trip wires attached to a blunderbuss or something similar. If you’re lucky you’ll only get peppered with bird shot, but a blast of that in your belly is bad enough.”

  Preston swore foully while Duffy vowed vengeance on any gamekeeper that crossed his path. They eyed the mantrap with loathing and moved ever slower as they neared Trafford Hall.

  “There won’t be much game near the building,” Eccles warned, but Mendick shook his head. “We’re not after game,” he said. “We won’t ever find enough to feed the five thousand . . .”

  “But there’s only fifty of us,” Preston said, but Duffy nudged him and explained the Biblical reference.

  “So we’re going into the house itself,” Mendick said.

  Duffy nodded his approval, but Eccles, more knowledgeable about the law, warned of the consequences:

  “If we go into the house it’s called house-breaking, Sergeant; it might mean the rope.”

  “What do you think they’ll do when they find you drilling and planning a revolution?”

  “Sweet God in heaven, I hadn’t thought of that.” Eccles shook his head; after living the dream of Chartist utopia for so long, he obviously found it hard to bring himself back to reality. “Come on, then.” He thrust back his hand. “No, wait!”

  A tall man had emerged from a side door of the house, smoking a long cheroot.

  “That’s Trafford himself,” Eccles said, and everyone stopped to watch the man whose property they were invading.

  Dressed in a black frock coat, Trafford swept one hand over his unfashionable mane of glossy black hair as he looked out into the night.

  “Handsome bugger, isn’t he?” Mendick watched as Trafford finished his cheroot, flicked the butt into the grass and sauntered casually around the building to the front door, where he consulted the gold hunter suspended from his waistcoat. “It looks like he’s waiting for somebody.”

  “And here somebody comes now,” Preston indicated the landau that ground up the drive, its metal shod wheels scraping over the neat gravel. Leaving his seat, the coachman opened the door and bowed as a woman emerged, so swaddled in a heavy cloak that it was impossible to see her face.

  “That’s him occupied for the night then,” Eccles said. “He likes the ladies, does Sir Robert.” He looked around at Mendick. “Especially the Dutch ones, so I’ve heard.”

  There was a muted murmur of conversation, and then Sir Robert escorted the woman inside the house, with the front door opening smoothly before them.

  “Right,” Mendick decided. “Let’s observe for a while.”

  Trafford Hall had occupied its present site for centuries, but a succession of owners had augmented and altered the original mediaeval building. The simple Norman keep was now only a small part of a complex of different architectural styles, its identity lost amidst an array of various wings. Waiting in the fringe of the trees, Mendick watched as flickering candles signalled the progress of servants checking the windows and closing the doors for the night.

  “Will there be food in there?” Preston wondered, and Mendick nodded.

  “With a staff that large, there will be more than enough food.”

  Without a watch, it was difficult to judge time, but he estimated that it was eleven at night before the final yellow light died and he could creep closer to the Hall. He toured the building, searching for an open window, but after twenty minutes he realised that Trafford had trained his servants well.

  “All the windows are locked,” he said, “so we’ll have to break in.”

  “And how do we do that?” There was bitter cynicism in Duffy’s voice.

  “Watch and learn, my friend,” Mendick promised.

  Rounding a dark corner to one of the projecting wings, he directed his lantern onto a low window. “We’ll go in here,” he decided.

  “Why choose this one in particular?” Preston asked.

  “It’s in the darkest corner,” Mendick said. “Now, Preston, you keep watch for gamekeepers.” He gave what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “You’re our ears and eyes.” There were iron bars set into the stonework around the window, with the glass of the multi-paned window behind.

  “I thought you were a soldier, not a housebreaker.” Eccles was watching with professional interest.

  “Watch and learn, Mr Eccles.” After hunting down some of the cleverest thieves in London, Mendick had picked up some of their tricks. Taking a length of cord from his bag, he drew it around the two central bars, and, using a short metal bar, began to twist, putting pressure on the bars.

  “That’s clever,” Eccles approved.

  “If you’re taking notes, Eccles, I’ll charge a consultation fee.” He felt the cord rubbing the skin from his fingers but continued until the bars creaked and began to move. “There we go.” he was unsure if he felt satisfaction or relief. With both bars loosened, he took hold and began to pull them back and forth.

  “Let me!�
� Stretching over him, Eccles grasped the left hand bar and hauled it free of the mortar.

  “Well done. Stand aside.”

  Two bars were not enough. Mendick had to loosen the next, which Eccles also removed with a single impressive tug, tossing the metal behind him with an expression of contempt. The sound of iron crunching on to the gravel path seemed to echo around the house. Mendick stiffened, and a score of bats exploded from the eaves far above.

  “Quiet!” They crouched in the darkest shadows until Mendick was sure nobody was coming to investigate the noise.

  He cut away the putty from the bottom window pane, thrust through his hand and flicked open the catch to ease open the sash.

  “Is that what they taught you in the army?” Eccles asked. “Maybe I should sign up and thieve for Queen and country.”

  “People like me do to property what politicians and generals do to entire countries.” Mendick did not have to inject the bitterness into his voice. “But while we would be transported for it, they are given titles and lands.”

  Duffy looked over to him. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you speak like that, Sergeant.”

  Mendick grunted but said nothing. He was thinking like a Chartist again.

  “There’s somebody coming!” Preston nearly shouted the warning, and Mendick quickly closed the shutter of his lantern and squeezed into the shelter of the wall. Hearing the confident crunch of footsteps on gravel and the patter of a dog’s paws he tried to appear as small as possible. If a lone gamekeeper caught them, they could fight their way clear, but with a score of servants within shouting distance, escape through policies thick with mantraps might not be so easy. The footsteps passed and Preston grunted,

  “All clear, Sergeant Mendick.”

  Mendick said nothing. He waited apprehensively for a few more moments and then crawled through the open window and inside the house. With his men silent behind him Mendick padded onto a stone-flagged floor in a dark room that smelled of mould and neglect.