Sweet Smell of Murder

by Torquil R. MacLeod

  ‘It is so frustrating. We have all this vital information yet we cannot prove it has anything to do with Bowser.’ Jack’s fear was rising once more. He would see Catherine tomorrow, take her money and get out of town. Maybe he would sneak onto a ship. On such a busy river, it would surely be possible to escape unseen by Axwell and his men.

  ‘We are not looking closely enough. There must be a link to one of his businesses or his associates. He cannot have gathered all this intelligence by himself. Neither could my father have done, for that matter,’ she conceded. ‘Much of this information is written in a variety of hands.’

  ‘Bessie, we have been through every scrap of paper at least thrice. It is hopeless. We will never find anything we can use.’

  ‘Jack, you are so feeble. You give up so easily.’

  ‘It is my life we are talking about, that is why!’

  ‘All the more reason to look harder. It will be the simplest thing that will unlock the door. Something unremarkable… like these Roman numerals on this map – one, three, fifty-eight, seven, eight.’

  ‘I noticed them before. It must be a map reference.’

  ‘Well, it might give us a clue. They do not appear to correspond to anything on the map that I can see.’

  ‘Could they refer to something else?’ asked Jack absently.

  ‘A number on a house, a date, or monies owed? Oh, I do not know.’

  ‘Give me the map,’ Jack said with an abruptness that shook Bessie. For a moment he just stared at the five numbers. ‘Gadzooks! You are a clever girl, Bessie Acorn.’

  ‘I am?’

  ‘Yes. I do not know what the last two numbers signify, but the first three are a date. One, three, fifty-eight – the first day of March, this year. Bowser was most insistent that Garrick did not appear at the theatre on that night. Business, he said. Something important is happening. A meeting or…’

  ‘An invasion?’

  He dropped the map back onto the table. ‘My God, that is a thought.’

  LI

  Jack didn’t have too many moments of clarity when his mind was under pressure and his life and limbs were in imminent danger. But now the panic which had overwhelmed him before began to recede like the ebbing of the tide. In its place came calm and logical thought.

  ‘No, it cannot be the invasion.’

  Bessie appeared unconvinced.

  ‘There has been talk of an invasion for the past year. There must be spies working for the French all round our coasts, collecting facts on troops, ports, landing places – just look at these extracts from the newspapers. Maybe it is that Bowser is the spymaster for the whole of this area. If he has been gathering information, then it must first reach French hands before it can be acted upon.

  ‘There is another reason which makes me dismiss thoughts of an invasion that particular day. Bowser has gone out of his way to have Garrick brought up here. There is little point doing that if there are to be French soldiers running all over the town. I hardly think he wants to hand Garrick over to the French.’

  ‘As a hostage?’ Bessie suggested.

  Jack smiled: ‘I doubt if our unloved King George will give up his kingdom for an actor, however much he is idolised by London society. No, I think that the first of March is probably the day when all this,’ Jack waved a hand at the papers, ‘is to be handed over to the French or a go-between.’

  ‘If that is so, it is little wonder he is desperate to reclaim the tea caddy.’

  Jack rested his hand on the mantelpiece and gazed thoughtfully into the fire. ‘I still cannot fathom what he has to gain by all this, and how it is connected to your father. It is like a game of chess with some of the pieces missing, with the result that we cannot play properly or see a way to win.’

  ‘So you think the other two numbers refer to a meeting place?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A building that bears a number? Seven or eight? Or seventy-eight?’

  ‘No, the numbers are written separately.’

  ‘Of course it might not be a number, but refers to the time of the assignation.’

  ‘It is to take place at seven or eight of the clock? Yes, you could be right.’ Jack turned to face her. ‘The trouble is, where do we start?’

  The raggy-arsed urchin demanded money. Jack told him to go home, not that he was likely to have one. The breadth of abuse that followed Jack down The Side impressed as well as shocked him. No one else took the slightest notice.

  Opposite the Guildhall, his eye caught sight of a poster nailed to a tavern door. It joyfully announced that “The Greatest Thespian in the Worlde, Mr David Garrick, will be performing in Love’s Last Shift; or, the Fool in Fashion by Mr Colley Cibber, for your delight, for one night only.” Place, date, time and prices were also incorporated into Courtney’s flowery prose. Jack noted that he had doubled the entrance money. His heart sank. Bessie had persuaded him to tell Courtney that he had heard from Garrick and that he would arrive on March the second. The performance was to be three days later. An unusually excited Courtney had already taken them through their first rehearsal. At least Bessie reckoned this would keep him off Jack’s back.

  It had, but now there were only four days to go to March the first and they were no nearer to finding out when and where Bowser’s meeting was going to take place, if at all. Jack suggested that it might have been cancelled, as Bowser had lost his information. Bessie was sure he wouldn’t have had time to get a message through to postpone it. She also thought that Bowser was the kind of man who wouldn’t want to lose face. It would go ahead, she assured him.

  That is why he had spent the last few days walking the length and breadth of Newcastle hoping to see a building that bore the number seven or eight and looked like the kind of place spies would meet clandestinely. Not that Jack had the remotest idea about what kind of places spies met in. Furthermore, his efforts had been hampered by a short, wiry man in a scruffy brown jacket and an old, battered black cocked hat, who had followed him night and day. Once or twice, he had managed to shake him off by leaving the theatre by different doors. Then he would appear again like a faithful dog that had smelt out its master. This was Bowser’s unsubtle way of telling him there was no escape.

  Jack glanced up from the poster. There he was, “Old Faithful”, as Jack had named him. Despite the man’s presence, Bessie had persuaded Jack that he must go on searching. Bowser wouldn’t do anything until he realised Garrick wasn’t coming unless, of course, Jack stumbled across the meeting place and Old Faithful reported this back to Bowser. ‘We will cross that bridge when we come to it,’ Bessie had said dismissively. Floating lifeless under a bridge was the more likely scenario, Jack glumly concluded.

  That thought had prompted him to go and see Catherine again. She was pleased that he had come and gave him twenty guineas, which he promised to pay back. She said that it was unnecessary and it had been part of a gift from Captain Hogg for new clothes. He wouldn’t miss it, she had added with a wink.

  ‘When will you go?’

  ‘Before the first.’

  ‘How will you go?’

  ‘I have not formed the details of my escape plan, though I think I will try and steal aboard a ship. Axwell probably has the all the roads watched so the river and the sea offer a better route out.’

  ‘If I do not have the chance to talk privately with you again, God be with you.’ She touched his hand. ‘It is only sad that you will not be here when your great friend Mr Garrick arrives. I am so looking forward to meeting him and acting with him.’

  Jack had torn himself away from the most wonderful woman he had ever met. She had kissed him farewell, lightly on the lips, and he had seen her close her eyes as she did so. Did she really feel something for him? He would never know. As he tried to retain that image of the final kiss, he couldn’t dismiss the thought that Garrick’s non-appearance would disappoint Catherine, too. Would she always remember him as a liar, a drunkard and a lecher? He supposed at least three bad impressions were be
tter than no impressions at all.

  LII

  After an hour wandering round the stinking, crowded, disease-ridden streets and lanes of Sandgate, Jack made his way back to Bessie’s. Old Faithful escorted him to the end of the street. He was going to have to lose his shadow if he was to escape. And that was going to be the following night. On his tour, he had overheard a sea captain talking about leaving on the late tide. His ship, the Malmesbury, was bound for Denmark, but was putting into Hartlepool first. A few guineas in the captain’s hand would do the trick. Though Jack wished the ship was going further south, beggars running away from Bowsers, sheriffs’ sergeants and hangmen couldn’t be choosers.

  Bessie was out so he went to his room and packed. He hadn’t the nerve to tell her what he was doing so he sat down to write her a letter, which he would leave for her to find. It was the coward’s way, but it was the only way he knew. If he tried to explain, she would use her feminine wiles to persuade him to stay. He had already lost Catherine. Bessie would have to be sacrificed, too. The alternative was Bowser. He quickly started to write.

  Bessie walked in on him unannounced. He dropped his quill in his fright, flicking ink across his bedding.

  ‘You look guilty,’ she teased.

  ‘You gave me a shock. I did not hear you come in.’

  ‘Quite obviously. And to whom are you writing?’

  ‘To my father,’ he stammered whilst trying to cover up the half-written letter with his cuff. ‘…to my sister,’ he bumbled on. ‘My sister… and my father. Yes, both.’

  Bessie squinted over his outstretched arm. ‘Never mind that, I have the most exciting news.’

  ‘Bowser has dropped down dead.’

  She ignored him. ‘I have found out where the meeting is to take place.’

  Jack gazed at her in disbelief. Her face was flushed with triumph, her hands placed determinedly on her hips as if she was challenging him to beat that.

  ‘But how?’

  ‘I know you have been followed by Bowser’s bloodhound,’ – not a very apt description, thought Jack – ‘so, if you found the place, Bowser would know immediately. So while I sent you out as a decoy, I have been around the town myself. And this afternoon I followed Bowser, at a discreet distance of course, and he went over the bridge to Gateshead. There are some warehouses on that side. The one he went into was the seventh along from the bridge. He owns it and it is the last one, so there is not an eighth. It must be it. What do you think of that?’

  Jack didn’t react in the way Bessie had anticipated. ‘You mean you have had me trailing all over this miserable town just to throw Bowser off the scent? You might have damn well told me.’ He was seething.

  Bessie’s eyes blazed back in fury. ‘If I had told you, you would not have been so convincingly useless!’

  ‘And what the hell do you mean by that, madam?’ snapped back a deeply wounded Jack.

  ‘I cannot imagine that you would have found the meeting place in a month of Sundays.’

  ‘Right, if that is how you feel, I had better leave,’ he said indignantly. At least the ungrateful hussy was giving him a way out. He could quit Newcastle in righteous high dudgeon instead of guiltily sloping off down to the Tyne like the rat he had felt like a few minutes before.

  ‘Oh, Jack, why do we quarrel so? I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt your feelings.’

  He had his chance and he must take it. ‘It is a trifle late for that now, Bessie. I have done much for you. Put myself in constant danger. Though I do not want to go, you have left me with no alternative.’ He wasn’t about to let her off the hook. ‘I will pack my things.’

  He got up. ‘Please Jack, I beseech you, I am truly contrite. You know I did not mean what I said.’

  By the time he had stormed over to his small trunk, he realised he had made a mistake. The lid was open, his clothes already packed.

  Bessie noticed, too. Then she glanced at the half-written letter he had stupidly abandoned on the table.

  ‘You rat!’ At least her description matched his own. ‘You were going anyway. And by the look of this, you did not have the courage to tell me.’

  What could he say? A pathetic grimace wasn’t calculated to extract a sympathetic response.

  ‘I misjudged you, Jack. I thought you would stand firm by me.’ If she had shouted, it would have been easier to take, but she spoke with genuine sadness. ‘You have been my constant support since my father’s death. I could not have coped without you. I have relied on you, Jack. I believed you cared for me enough to see this business through. Oh, Jack,’ and a sob came into her voice, ‘you have betrayed me.’

  Jack shuffled uneasily. God, she knew how to turn the knife.

  ‘Go, Jack. That is what you want. I will not stand in your way.’

  There was no possibility of him leaving now. He knew it. She knew it.

  LIII

  Jack hesitated outside the stout front door of Captain Hogg’s cousin’s house. Though apprehensive, he didn’t wait long. He had managed to give Old Faithful the slip in the crowded Flesh Market; his sinister shadow would already be suspicious of the bundle Jack was carrying – it was imperative that he didn’t find out his destination.

  Jack was shown into the drawing room by a sniffy servant (weren’t they all?). This one obviously hated having to wait on someone as low on the social scale as an actress, even one with the outstanding charms of Miss Balmore. He had offered to take Jack’s parcel, but Jack had fiercely hung on to it. With an audible sigh, he had stalked out of the room saying that Miss Balmore would be down presently.

  The room was pleasantly furnished, though rather old-fashioned. Years ago, when someone cared, it would have been considered smart. There were sufficient paintings, some passable landscapes among the obligatory portraits, to stop one lingering on the faded state of the walls and furniture. The room smelt musty, testimony that Hogg’s cousin was not a regular visitor to Newcastle.

  How would Catherine react to seeing him again? At the morning rehearsal, she had whispered ‘God speed’ as they left the stage. She must have thought that it was the last she would ever see of him. There had been too many people about for him to say that he needed to speak to her urgently. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to involve Catherine in this business any more. Surprisingly, it had been Bessie’s idea. He had told Catherine about his various suspicions all along. But he had done so for self-serving reasons, giving himself an excuse to talk to her, share his secrets, to be near her. This was different.

  Catherine was taken aback when she entered the room. ‘Jack, I did not think to see you again. Have you come to say one last farewell?’

  ‘No, Catherine.’

  ‘Surely you are going, are you not?’

  ‘Circumstances have changed.’ Bessie had seen to that. ‘I cannot leave yet.’

  A troubled expression crossed her beautiful face. ‘Is it wise for you to stay? Is it that you require more money?’

  ‘Dear Catherine, that is not it. However, I need your help and I need it urgently.’

  ‘If there is anything within my power, please ask.’ She indicated that he should sit, and she gracefully took a chair opposite him.

  ‘I need you to speak with Captain Hogg on my behalf.’

  ‘Can you not speak to him yourself?’

  ‘It would be too dangerous, and it might show Bowser the hand that I am playing.’ He might as well take the credit as Bessie was not here to contradict him.

  ‘I do not understand, Jack.’

  Jack opened up the bag and carefully brought out the tea caddy. ‘This is what I took from Bowser’s home.’

  ‘A tea caddy!’ Catherine exclaimed with a tinkle of laughter. ‘He must prize his tea greatly if he goes to such lengths to retrieve a caddy.’

  ‘It is not the tea he is missing,’ said Jack removing the two compartments full of tea leaves. ‘It is these papers underneath. They prove beyond doubt that our Mr Bowser is in league with the French.’

 
; Catherine gasped in disbelief. ‘Jack, you have told me some extraordinary things, which I believed for your sake, but this accusation is just too fanciful to be true.’

  She took some persuading that Bowser was indeed in league with Britain’s deadliest enemy. She examined the notes, newspaper stories, the lists and the maps. ‘Has this anything to do with Mr Acorn’s murder?’ she asked eventually.

  ‘Something, though I am unclear as to exactly what, sparked off the killing. There is no doubt that Bowser did it. What is more pressing is that all this information needs to be shown to Captain Hogg.’

  ‘Why not to Sheriff Ridley?’

  ‘The town authorities are idiots; they would mess matters up. Anyway, if I told them how I had got hold of the caddy, I would be admitting to a hanging offence. No, Captain Hogg must act. You see the numbers on this map? Well, I worked them out. The first three refer to a date – the first of March.’