The Body on the Doorstep

by MacKenzie, AJ

  He was uneasy about this, but he was uneasy about everything these days. ‘I will look in on them when I can. For heaven’s sake,’ he said quietly, ‘be careful.’

  ‘You are the one in greater danger, I fear. I am only a woman, they will not take me seriously. You, on the other hand, are a threat to them. Don’t go out in the evenings.’

  ‘I will not unless I must.’ He bowed and walked to the door, aware that her eyes were troubled as they followed him.

  *

  Saturday morning, 4th June, dawned quietly. A wind had risen in the night and swept the fog away out to sea, but it still hung heavy over the Channel, obscuring the coast of France. The rector walked on the beach at St Mary’s Bay, regarded the fog gloomily, and then returned home for breakfast.

  MIDDLE TEMPLE, LONDON.

  3rd June, 1796.

  My dear Hardcastle

  I am in receipt of your letter of 1st June, which was forwarded to me here. Your discovery of course puts a different complexion on the matter. I have urgent business to attend to here in London, but will come to St Mary once that is concluded. I will travel down to Wadscombe on Sunday and expect to be with you by three of the clock on Monday afternoon. We can discuss how best to take this matter forward.

  I might have known that you would disobey my instructions! But I am very glad that you did. I am greatly pleased with your conduct in this matter, and will remember it.

  Yr very obedient servant

  CLAVERTYE

  The rector’s heart sank. This letter had been written yesterday morning, at which time Clavertye had only seen the first of his recent missives. His Lordship did not at that point know about Eugénie Fanscombe’s revelations, nor the additional news provided by Eliza, or the attack upon himself. He cursed himself briefly for a fool; he had written to Clavertye at his house in Kent, but of course the letters then had to be forwarded on to London, and that took an extra day. He had no doubt that Clavertye would act swiftly once he knew the full story; but would he – could he – act in time?

  He called at Mrs Chaytor’s house after breakfast. Turner was nowhere in sight; his night vigil over, he had presumably gone home to get some sleep. He found Eugénie Fanscombe once again sitting motionless before the fire; her stepdaughter was keeping to her room, even taking her meals there. ‘She will not speak to me,’ said the older woman, and the rector saw how her small-featured face was a mask of pain.

  ‘If it is of any help, she has abandoned her romantic attachment to Foucarmont. She was all too ready to tell us everything she knew about him.’

  ‘I fear that has made her more rebellious than ever. She has another plan. She continues to see the smugglers as romantic figures, modern equivalents of your famous Robin Hood. Foucarmont did nothing to discourage her fascination with them; it is only the Twelve Apostles who are his enemies.’ Eugénie’s shoulders slumped. ‘Now that he has spurned her, she is threatening to run away and join the smugglers.’

  The thought of an eighteen-year-old girl getting caught up in the midst of a smuggling gang made him almost physically sick. He knew that decent men like Stemp and Hoad would never touch her, but plenty of others would. ‘Do what you can to keep her indoors, just for the next few days. Until that time, both she and you are in danger. Try to make her see that.’

  She nodded. ‘I shall try. What do you think will happen?’

  ‘Lord Clavertye arrives on Monday morning; in the nick of time, but it should be enough. Once I have laid the full case before him he will be persuaded, I hope, to use main force, calling out the militia if need be, to apprehend Blunt. What happens after that is in God’s hands, but I hope we shall succeed in laying this conspiracy bare.’

  He went home feeling more depressed still, drank a bottle of port and fell asleep in front of the fire in his study. He woke with an aching head to find evening drawing in, dusk coming early under the blanket of low cloud. The wind had dropped and there were patches of mist here and there.

  There came another knock at the door.

  He opened it to find Eugénie Fanscombe, breathless and wide-eyed. ‘She has gone.’

  ‘What? How?’

  ‘She climbed out of the window of her room. It must have happened some time this afternoon. I went at once to New Hall, and found that one of the grooms had seen her come in. Her horse is missing too, and she has taken one of my husband’s pistols.’ The woman was shivering. ‘She has gone to join them. I know it.’

  The thought crossed his mind that she had gone to track down Foucarmont, and then perhaps use the pistol. He prayed that she would be unsuccessful in her quest. ‘Help me,’ Eugénie pleaded. ‘I do not know what to do.’

  ‘Go back to Mrs Chaytor’s house and wait.’ He escorted her back through the gathering fog to Sandy House and went to knock on the doors of several cottages, rousing Joshua Stemp and Jack Hoad and three other men, all locals; he considered Turner, but the painter did not know the area and in any case he was needed to guard Eugénie. Together they went out and searched the fields around New Hall. They found the tracks of Eliza Fanscombe’s horse quickly enough, heading southeast and then south towards New Romney, but after about a mile and a half they came to a shallow sewer. There they lost the trail; the girl had clearly used the old smuggler’s trick of riding up the ditch and letting the water erase the tracks of her horse. They cast about on both banks for an hour, finding nothing. Darkness was settling, and patches of fog came drifting in off the sea.

  ‘Not much more we can do tonight, Reverend,’ said one of the men.

  The rector looked at the others, now dim figures in the gloom, and sighed. ‘I fear not. Gentlemen, thank you. It was good of you to give up your time to assist me.’

  The lights of New Romney gleamed yellow in the middle distance. ‘Ah, well,’ said Hoad. ‘We were coming down to the Ship tonight anyway, weren’t we, lads? Why don’t we go over now and wet our whistles. Care to join us, rector?’

  He was worried sick, but he was also tired and thirsty. More to the point, while at the Ship he could ask around and learn whether anyone had seen Eliza. ‘Lead the way, Jack,’ he said.

  The common room of the Ship was full of noise and tobacco smoke and people; the rector had never seen it so full. Fifty men, perhaps sixty were crammed into the room drinking and talking, all seemingly at once; the noise was like a solid wall. They pushed gently through the press to the bar, exchanging jovial greetings with the local men, and asked Mrs Spicer for beer. The rector paid. ‘And have you seen Miss Fanscombe from New Hall in the town today, or perhaps on the roads nearby?’

  ‘Why no, Reverend. I haven’t seen the lass for two or three days now.’ The look she gave him was full of strange sympathy, which he could not understand.

  He found a seat by the window and drank his beer; when it was finished, someone brought him another one. He listened to the conversation flowing around him. There was an air of celebration about the gathering in the Ship, and the rector wondered why. Then, suddenly and unexpectedly, he heard a man’s voice murmur the name of Cornewall, the Dean of Canterbury. He stared into the middle distance, affecting not to hear but in fact paying very close attention indeed. After that conversation had finished, he sat for a while with a thoughtful air.

  He asked the nearest of the New Romney men about Miss Fanscombe. ‘Haven’t seen the lass. Oh, I know who you mean right enough, but she’s not been around today.’

  ‘Strange,’ said another man, grinning. ‘Not like her to be shy when there is a run on. She’s normally prowling around, sniffing the air, so to speak.’

  ‘Sniffing something,’ said a third, a big portly man known as the Clubber, and some rather throaty chuckles followed. ‘She’s a hanger-on,’ one of the others explained to the rector. ‘She finds it all exciting. She likes to watch the runs come ashore. Fancies herself a smuggler, I reckon. Another drink, Reverend?’

  ‘She’ll get herself a smuggler too, if she carries on,’ said the first man.

  ‘Ay
e, she will,’ the others agreed, and the man who was getting the drinks in came back to the table and quipped, ‘Fine by me. She could smuggle me anywhere between them tits of hers!’ The others roared and slapped their thighs, then remembered the rector and apologised. He accepted graciously. ‘You said there was a run on. That’s not until Monday.’

  ‘Nah. Been brought forward, don’t ask me why. Run’s tonight. We’re just waiting for Yorkshire Tom to give us the signal to move.’

  There was a cheer at this and the men banged their mugs together. The rector sat smiling, his mind working furiously. He had assumed he still had forty-eight hours; in fact, he had perhaps two hours, no more. Lord Clavertye was not here. He was on his own.

  If the local smugglers were making their run tonight, the chances were that the Twelve Apostles knew of it and were also coming tonight.

  Did Blunt and Foucarmont know? Yes, they must. That was why Foucarmont had sent Eliza to find Blunt here in New Romney; to tell him about the change of plan. Great God! Eliza must know. She had told them everything about the plan to intercept the Twelve Apostles; everything except the changed date. The little fool had kept that to herself. She wanted to watch the run, to see the excitement, and she had lied to make sure that no one interfered with the smugglers.

  Except that Blunt would be out there on the Marsh. He was already out there, now, laying his ambush.

  What was about to happen would be mayhem, death and betrayal. His head began to spin at the thought, and he felt sick.

  He sat upright, but the sick feeling persisted. He opened his mouth to speak to Jack Hoad, and found that his tongue was so swollen that it would not answer his commands. My God, he thought, how much beer have I had? Not enough to feel like this, surely. A sudden suspicion struck him and he raised the pot of beer to his nose and sniffed. The tang of raw spirits cut through the smell of hops and assailed his nostrils.

  He wondered, through the gathering haze, who had doctored his drink. It could have been anyone, behind or in front of the bar. Whoever they were, they had poured the spirits with a generous hand. He tried to stand up, but found his legs had turned to jelly. On the third attempt he managed it. The others were watching him with some concern. ‘Are you all right, Reverend?’ asked Hoad.

  ‘Outside. Need to go outside.’ He stumbled through the press, aware that men were laughing at him; there goes the old rector again, their eyes said, drunk as a lord. Same old story. He felt anger at this, a flash of red haze, for he knew he should not have been drunk. Someone had done this to him . . .

  He staggered out into the street. Noise and laughter from the inn followed him. Stumbling, he managed to make his way along the street to a dim alley beside the inn and there he bent over and vomited profusely. It took several heaves to clear his stomach, but when he stood up again, although his head whirled, he could think a little more clearly.

  He stumbled back along the alley, a new urgency pounding in his brain. The run. The run was about to happen. Look for the signal. Wait for Yorkshire Tom. Must join the run.

  Must get to Blunt. Must stop Blunt. Must stop Blunt before he kills Amelia . . . His head spun again and he stopped, gasping, his hands resting on the wall of the nearest house.

  Something circled out of the dark and struck him across the back of the head, and he fell senseless to the ground.

  18

  The Run

  Very slowly and somewhat painfully, the rector came to his senses. He smelled horseflesh, and felt the hair of a horse’s coat under his hands, and heard the jingle of a bridle. He heard too the noise of other horses around him, and men, many men moving swiftly over the flat fields. He heard the distant rush and roar of the sea.

  He opened his eyes. He was on the back of a horse, slumped forward over its neck. All was dark, but he could make out the figures of walking men, including two leading the horse by the reins. All of the men were masked, and most carried heavy wooden cudgels in their hands. Some had pistols or fowling pieces.

  He groaned, and tried to sit up. One of the masked men at the horse’s head turned. ‘You’re awake then, Reverend. Sit still now, you took a nasty knock.’

  He recognised the voice as that of Stemp. He moistened his lips; his tongue still felt thick, and he realised the alcohol was still heavy in his veins. ‘Where am I?’ he said, his voice slurring.

  ‘With the Gentlemen,’ chuckled Hoad, the other masked man. ‘You’ll have something to dine out on now, Reverend. You’re about to see a smuggler’s run at first hand.’

  ‘Wha . . . What happened?’

  ‘You’d had too much to drink. You went outside, and there some cutpurse clouted you over the head. When Josh and I came out of the Ship he was standing over you. We shouted, and he turned and ran off. We reckoned we’d better bring you along with us for safe-keeping. You’re in no condition to go home on your own.’

  That much was certainly true; his head throbbed as never before. He sank back on the horse’s neck, every stride the beast took jolting through his body and causing blurry waves of pain to radiate from his head. He felt sick again, but this time managed to hold his stomach down.

  They were passing through the dunes. They were at the edge of the sea. Torches burned here, rows of them thrust into the ground; there was no attempt at concealment. A dozen big boats had been run up onto the shore, and men splashed bare-legged in the surf, carrying boxes and casks ashore. Pack horses were already being laden for the journey inland. The rector tumbled off his horse and lay for a while on the sand at the foot of the dunes, watching the men move to and fro in the lamplight. They laughed and shouted and sang as they carried their burdens. Their fee for this run would be a tiny portion of the value of the cargo they carried, but it would still be enough to keep them and their families in comfort for some time.

  To and fro the smugglers passed, shouting to each other, taking their burdens from the boats and dumping them on the sand. Some of the brandy had already been opened and bottles were passed around as they worked. Down the beach went other men, masked too but with inventories rather than weapons in their hands, checking that all the cargo had landed and no items were missing. ‘Come on, lads!’ called one of these. ‘Shift yourselves. We’ve half an hour before the boats must be away.’

  ‘Ah, keep your wig on, Clubber!’ They laughed again, and shouted and sang and drank and carried their loads through the blazing dark. Against his will, the rector felt their mood seeping into him. There was something wild about the scene; the running figures seemed to dance in the flickering torchlight, and their songs roared in the air. He sat up, feeling his own pulse pounding, and looked around.

  Where were they? The coast looked the same as the rest of the shoreline of the Marsh, flat beach backed by a line of dunes tufted with coarse grass. He remembered the sound of the sea as he had lain on the back of the horse; it had come from the left for most of the way, and then from straight ahead. That meant that they had travelled south from New Romney, skirting the lagoons that lay inland of Greatstone, and then turned east towards the coast. They must now be east of Lydd, a mile or more south of Greatstone.

  Greatstone was where the Twelve Apostles had planned to land; and somewhere between there and the Isle of Ebony, Blunt was lying in wait. He wondered if he could slip away, and whether he could get to Greatstone in time.

  ‘All right, lads, that’s the last of it ashore! Get them horses loaded! Porters, see to your own loads! Sorry, Reverend, you’ll have to walk this time. We need the horses.’

  ‘Go on without me,’ protested the rector. ‘I’ll make my own way.’

  The masked and hooded head shook with mock severity. ‘It’s dark out there, Reverend, and there are salt marshes and bogs so deep that if you fell in them you’d still be sinking in a hundred years. You stay with us, sir. We’ll look after you.’

  The boats pushed off and vanished out to sea. The men formed up in a column, packhorses at the head and masked porters carrying their loads slung over
their shoulders following behind. As he stood up, the rector saw that there were scores of men, perhaps two hundred in all. No wonder they felt invulnerable.

  The column began to wind its way back through the dunes. The rector found himself among the porters, burly men with kerchiefs around their heads and masks on their faces. He stumbled among them, feeling sick again, and they jeered at him; by their accents they were men from Lydd, not his own people. He fell back through the press of men, hoping to find them. The column had crossed the dunes and now their boots splashed in shallow water. Around him voices roared, singing out of tune, hilarious with drink and excitement.

  Here’s to the maiden of bashful fifteen,

  Here’s to the widow of fifty!

  Here’s to the flaunting extravagant quean,

  Here’s to the housewife that’s thrifty.

  Let the toast pass! Drink to the lass!

  I’ll warrant she’ll prove an excuse for a glass!

  Fog drifted across the Marsh in patches; the column went from clear starlight into dense fog that dampened clothes and draped itself in clammy skeins around their faces.

  Let her be clumsy or let her be slim

  Young or ancient, I care not a feather.

  So fill up a bumper, nay, full to the brim!

  And let us all toast them together.

  Let the toast pass! Drink to the lass!

  I’ll warrant she’ll prove an excuse for a glass!

  Then the fog parted again and in the distance more torches sprang into light and a faraway voice cried, ‘Halt! In the name of the King!’ In response the column around Hardcastle exploded into laughter. ‘Why, it’s Juddery! Brave old Juddery! Come and have a crack at us, you Excise pimps!’ Further along the column there were flashes and bangs as fowling pieces were discharged; distant flashes showed that Juddery’s men were firing back, but at this range it would be an extraordinary fluke if anyone hit a target. Deep in the rector’s fuddled brain an idea emerged, and crawled to the surface. Juddery. Must get to Juddery.