The Body in the Boat

by MacKenzie, A. J.

  *

  ‘About bloody time,’ said Joshua Stemp. It was well past midnight on Sunday, and he had had begun to imagine the worst. ‘Where’ve you been, my girl?’

  The young woman was breathing hard. ‘Running,’ she said. ‘I haven’t much time. We’re miles away, over beyond Appledore, and I need to be back by dawn. She knows about the opium, and where it is. She’s coming after it.’

  ‘In person?’

  ‘No. Fisky and I are in charge, with some of the sailors. We’re supposed to raid the gaol tomorrow evening. She’s going off with Noakes and the Dutchmen on some other errand.’

  ‘What errand? Where?’

  ‘I don’t know, for Christ’s sake! I told you, she trusts no one now, not with her whole plan.’

  ‘How will you get into the gaol?’

  ‘We’ll come in quietly, if we can, through the rear courtyard. If it turns out the guards are alert, then we go in full tilt instead. Either way, we knock out the guards, load as much of the opium as we can into wagons and run it down to the beach. There we’ll light a blue false fire as a signal. A ship will come in and take us off. We’ll land the opium somewhere else along the coast.’

  ‘Just like that?’

  ‘She says it will work. I think it’s a damn’ fool scheme, and Fisky agrees. Hardcastle isn’t stupid, at least not when he’s sober. He’ll remember what happened to the gold, and he’ll have a ring of men around the prison, waiting.’

  Stemp watched her in the lantern light, dark shadows wavering and swaying all around them. ‘You can throw in your hand now and come with me, if you want.’

  ‘No,’ said the young woman. ‘I’ve sworn to help you trap her, and I will.’

  ‘What happens after you offload the opium again? Or if you can’t recover it at all?’

  ‘I’m to go to her warehouse in Hythe on Wednesday. She’ll find a way to leave a message, telling Fisky and me when and where to meet her.’

  The young woman turned for a moment, glancing at the shadows behind her, and then looked back at Stemp. ‘I reckon that’s our best chance to take her. As soon as I have her message, I’ll come again to Blackmanstone. Meet me here at dusk on Wednesday, and I’ll tell you where to find her. Tell Hardcastle to have the Volunteers standing ready.’

  ‘What about the gaol? Are you going to attack it?’

  ‘We’ll have to. Martha will get suspicious if we don’t.’

  ‘All right. But keep your head down, my girl. We need you in one piece till this is over.’

  She grinned at him. ‘As if Cole and those Customs louts could hit anything they aimed at. Don’t you worry, Yorkshire Tom. I’ll be around on the Marsh for a long time yet.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Stemp. ‘Lucky us.’

  *

  He gave the news to the rector on Monday morning. ‘I reckon she’s come up with the goods at last, reverend.’

  ‘So it would seem.’ He looked at Stemp’s face and saw how tired the constable was. ‘Are you fit to carry on?’

  ‘Don’t mind me, reverend. I’m used to short nights.’

  ‘Then go to New Romney, if you please. Give Mr Cole my compliments, warn him to expect an attack. Ask him to get word to Captain Haddock. Once the captain sees a blue light onshore, he should proceed to that spot and intercept the Hoorn. Let us have no mistakes this time.’

  ‘Very good, reverend. What about Hythe and this warehouse? Should we watch it?’

  Hardcastle thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No. If our watchers are spotted, Mrs Redcliffe will change her plans. We could lose her entirely. We could also put Miss Fanscombe in greater danger. Hard though it is, we must trust that she knows what she is doing and let her carry her plan through.’

  After Stemp departed, the rector went once again to Sandy House. Mrs Chaytor still sat in the drawing room facing the window. She did not seem to have moved since the day before.

  ‘Stemp has seen Eliza, and she is safe.’ He told her the news. She watched him, unblinking. ‘You have decided to go ahead,’ she said finally.

  ‘God help me, I have. We are thrusting her into very real danger now, but I see no choice. I have taken the responsibility for this business onto my shoulders, and I must see it through to the end.’

  He paused, looking at her strained white face. ‘If something goes wrong, and she dies; well, as you said, you may not be able to forgive yourself. But I very much hope you will be able to forgive me. For I shall be in sore and desperate need of forgiveness.’

  *

  The day had been fine, but after sunset the temperature plummeted. At first the air was bright and clear, the stars brilliant in the dark dome of heaven. Dungeness lighthouse gleamed in the distance. The moon, a little past full, climbed into the sky and cast a shimmering path over the sea.

  Then the cold deepened, and the fog came. Rising from both sea and land, it rolled over the flat land of the Marsh and in an instant swallowed up the stars.

  The darkness was not complete. Moonlight filtered down through the fog, a dim, opaque light refracting off the vapour, swirling and shivering. In that uneven glow, the shadows of running men flickered for a moment, sliding in and out of vision. Boots thudded on cobblestones. The shod hooves of a horse clanked dully, leaving echoes behind them.

  In the upper windows of New Romney gaol, they saw the shadows below and took aim. Orange flashes and flares lit up the courtyard, and the crash of pistol shots reverberated in the heavy air. The running men halted and dived for cover. ‘Did you get one?’ Florian Tydde asked his brother as he reloaded.

  ‘Nah. Made him think about things, though.’ Pistols fired back from the courtyard, and a ball struck the windowsill not far from Ebenezer’s head; he jerked back with a curse, then thrust his own pistol out the window and fired again. More shots, now from the front of the building. They could hear Cole yelling, directing his men to stand to their posts.

  ‘Watch out! Here they come!’ Shadows darted once more in the fogbound courtyard. Ebenezer fired again and other pistols blazed, but the running men did not falter. Something hammered hard on the door below them. Ebenezer dropped his ramrod and cursed, scrabbling on the floor to find it. The hammering went on, men trying to batter the door down. Florian ran out of the room for a moment, then returned carrying a heavy object. He thrust this out of the window and held it for a moment. There came a splashing sound, then cursing and shouting from below. More pistols barked, and the hammering ceased.

  ‘They’re falling back! Well done, lads! We’ve held them!’

  Ebenezer found his ramrod and began belatedly to reload. ‘Flo,’ he asked his younger brother, ‘did you just do what I think you did?’

  Florian grinned at him in the wan light. ‘You mean, empty a pisspot over their heads?’ He held up the empty chamber pot. ‘Worked, didn’t it?’

  Swiftly the shadows faded through the fog. Silence fell once more in New Romney.

  *

  The fog that rose on the Marsh also flowed up over the hills of the Weald of Kent, and hung in tendrils in the trees outside Magpie Court. Had anyone been there to see it, the smoke rising from a corner of one of the big barns might have seemed to be part of the fog. Only later did a little orange glow of flame appear, creeping slowly up the wall.

  The barn was well alight by the time one of the kitchen servants, going out for a pail of water from the well, saw the blaze. She fled back inside, shouting the alarm. Parrish the butler heard her, and roused the rest of the household. Within moments Maudsley and all the servants were outside, forming a bucket brigade from the well and throwing water onto the flames. Distracted by the fire, they did not see the four men who approached the house from the far side, quietly jemmied open one of the library windows and climbed inside.

  Cecilia Munro had retired early, but woke when she heard the noise of the fire. Her room was on the opposite side of the house to the fire, and she could not see the flames. Puzzled, she went out in her nightdress to find out what was happe
ning. From the landing outside her room, a flicker of movement caught her eye. She looked down to see a dark silent figure moving up the stair.

  She did not think; she reacted. She fled noiselessly on bare feet to the nursery, where she plucked her son from his cradle and held him fast, looking around wildly for a hiding place. Inspiration came; there was a dressing chest, left over from the time when the nursery had been a bedroom. It was half-full of linen still, but there was more than enough room for a small woman and a baby to hide. She climbed inside, holding the infant, and pulled the lid down on top of her. Then she sat silently, trying to still the trip hammer beat of her heart. The child still slept; she prayed he would not wake.

  The door of the nursery opened. She heard booted feet and the sound of a man’s hoarse breathing. He was looking around the room. He was searching for the baby, or herself, or both. She held her breath, trying not to make even the slightest of sounds. She heard the booted feet move towards the chest. The child stirred, giving a little hiccuping sigh against her cheek.

  A scream from below; the voice of one of the maidservants, discovering the intruders. Another cry from near at hand; the wet nurse, who must have come out of her own room next to the nursery, aroused too by the noise. A hoarse male voice below shouted something in a language she could not understand. The man in the nursery hesitated, then hurried out of the room. She heard his boots thundering on the stair, and then the crash of the front door being flung open as her father and his men came pounding into the house, shouting.

  *

  The Faversham family had left the scene of the tragedy in Rye and retreated to their small country house a few miles north of the town. There Charlotte joined them, rushing back from Shadoxhurst when the news came. She found her family crushed. Her father, a shadow of the elegant, flamboyant man he had once been, sat staring into space; her mother, when not in a laudanum-induced sleep, was tearful and incoherent. Grebell had been her oldest child, and her favourite. Rafe, her younger brother, was silent with shock.

  They passed the evening in the drawing room, sitting by the fire. Few words were spoken; no one knew what to say. Charlotte felt as if the light and warmth had gone out of the world. She had never known anything except a cheerful, frivolous life of pleasure; she had never expected to know anything else. Her friend Sissy’s widowhood had been a jolt, to be sure; but her own world, her own bubble, had remained intact.

  Now she felt sick, unable to think, half-paralysed by sorrow and shock. Why? she asked herself over and over again. Why, why did he do it?

  Grief led inevitably to exhaustion. Her mother took another dose of laudanum and retired early. By the time the clock chimed ten Charlotte’s body was weak and she could no longer think at all. She kissed her father and brother and then went wearily upstairs to bed, her limbs feeling like lead. She crawled into her nightdress and lay down on the bed, feeling her heartbeat thudding, a sick taste still in her mouth. She was worn out, but she could not sleep. Dimly in the distance she heard her father come up to his room, and a little later her brother.

  The house had a small central section with two short wings. Her parents and brother slept in the centre of the house, but she liked her room in the east wing because it had a window that gave a view down the hill and out over Romney Marsh to the sea. She lay there now in the silence of the night, staring at the ceiling. After a while some of the lassitude passed, and she rose and went to the window and stood looking out. She saw how fog covered the Marsh and lapped around the foot of the hill, glowing white in the moon.

  From somewhere in the house came a bump, like a door shutting hard. The servants locking up, she thought. The night air was cool, and she shivered a little when she climbed back into bed. Suddenly she was very tired once more, and she closed her eyes.

  When she opened them again, there was a shadow over the bed. A moment of incomprehension; then she realised the shadow was a cloaked and masked man. She opened her mouth to scream, but a gloved hand clamped over her mouth. The blade of a knife flashed in the moonlight. ‘Lie still,’ the man hissed.

  ‘Here,’ murmured another voice. ‘Give her this.’

  Strong fingers pulled her jaws open. Suddenly her mouth was full of liquid, flowery and spicy but with a foul, cloying taste beneath. She tried to spit it out but could not. Eventually, in order to breathe, she had to swallow. Almost at once she felt the torpor spreading out across her body and rising up to smother her brain. The last thing she heard was the distant sound of a dog, barking.

  *

  Triumphant and sleepless, Humphrey Cole knocked at the rectory door on Tuesday morning while the rector was at breakfast. ‘We held them off, without loss to ourselves. I didn’t pursue them, as the fog was thick and I didn’t want to fall into an ambush.’

  He’s learning, the rector thought. ‘Well done. And the ship?’

  ‘The Dutchman might have slipped past Stag in the fog. But no blue lights have been reported, so I reckon the smugglers retreated without summoning the ship at all.’

  ‘That means Mrs Redcliffe’s men are still somewhere on the Marsh. I’ll send the Volunteers to track them. Maintain your guard on the gaol, if you please. It is possible that they will make a second attempt.’

  ‘If they do, we’ll be waiting for them.’ Cole was fiercely exultant. The humiliation of the gold was long forgotten now.

  And then, the messages came.

  The first was a note in Maudsley’s hand, describing quickly the attack on the house. The fire in the barn was meant to lure him out while the raiders kidnapped Cecilia and her baby, and only the young woman’s quick thinking had prevented them from doing so. Maudsley had called up all his able-bodied tenants, left half to guard the house and set off with the other half and a pair of bloodhounds to track the raiders. He would report, he said, if there was any news.

  The rector was still digesting this when the second message arrived from Rye, full of horror. Charlotte Faversham had been taken from her bed. A note had been left on her pillow, just three words: Punishment for traitors.

  Stemp arrived at the rectory a few minutes later, in response to the rector’s urgent summons. ‘What is it, reverend?’

  Hardcastle showed him the messages. Stemp read them, his pocked face quiet and still. ‘I don’t understand,’ he said at the end. ‘These young women are innocent.’

  ‘Not in Martha Redcliffe’s eyes,’ said the rector. ‘Do you recall what Dr Mackay said about paranoea? She has decided that all her partners have betrayed her, even Maudsley. Two are now dead, and her intention is that Faversham and Maudsley should suffer as well.’

  He thought of how Martha Redcliffe had befriended Sissy Munro, visiting her and offering comfort to the widow of the man she had killed. Had this been her real purpose, to survey the house and prepare for such an attack? He repressed a shudder.

  ‘They may also use Charlotte Faversham as a hostage,’ he said. ‘If we get too close to the gang, they might threaten to kill her.’

  ‘Then I hope they rot in hell,’ said Stemp.

  ‘They will, Joshua, because you and I shall send them there. Maudsley, thank God, has kept his head. He is on their trail, and has dogs. I shall send every man I can to join him. I want every justice of the peace, constable, Volunteer and Preventive man out searching for Charlotte Faversham. I shall ask Dobbs for help as well; damn the county boundaries, this is a Rye girl that’s been taken. And I shall send to the magistrates of Ashford and Dover, too, and ask for help.’

  ‘What about Lord Clavertye, reverend?’

  ‘By the time our esteemed deputy lord-lieutenant stops playing politics in London and gets down to the Marsh, it will be too late. Go to New Romney and tell Cole these are my orders. He is to leave a small guard on the gaol, and get the rest out onto the Marsh. I shall go to Juddery, and Captain Austen.’

  ‘And if the smugglers do come back, reverend?’ Stemp asked. ‘Suppose the kidnapping is a ruse to draw our men away while they come back and attack the gao
l again?’

  ‘I rather think it was the other way around. The attack on the gaol was never meant to succeed, whatever Eliza may think; it was a bluff, to concentrate our attention on New Romney while the gang’s real purpose was elsewhere. I may be wrong, but it’s a chance we have to take. Charlotte Faversham’s life is more important.’

  All through that bitter, fogbound day they searched, and searched in vain. Trackers from Rye picked up a trail on the Walland Marsh but then lost it in the bleak wastes south of Midley. Cole and Juddery, working together for once, set up cordons between Midley and the sea, sweeping the ground and looking for more tracks, but although they found a few footprints that might or might not belong to the kidnappers, each trail soon petered out again in the water and shingle beyond Lydd. Maudsley’s bloodhounds traced the Magpie Court raiders down onto the Marsh as far as the big sewer east of Newchurch, but there the scent ended. The gang must have waded or swum down the sewer to throw off the dogs. Austen’s men, alerted, combed both banks of the sewer looking for tracks where the men might have come out of the water, but they too found nothing.

  The day drew to its grim end, dusk falling across the empty fields. ‘By now, they’re hours ahead of us,’ said Edward Austen in a moment of despair. ‘They could have doubled back into the hills; they could be in Hythe; they could be in hell, for all we know.’

  ‘Can your men continue?’ asked Hardcastle.

  ‘No one is going home, sir, until that young woman is found.’

  ‘Good. Send for torches, and carry on.’

  Dawn on Wednesday found them all haggard and cold, standing on top of the dunes south of Dymchurch and looking out over a rolling grey sea. The fog had gone, and a harsh wind came sweeping out of the north. A mile away the sails of a ship could be seen, cream-white against the dark water; the Stag, keeping patiently on her station.

  The wind roared in the air around them. The clouds on the horizon were low and dark, promising rain. ‘What are your orders?’ asked Maudsley. It was the first time he and Hardcastle had spoken since that painful day in late August.