The Man From Hell

by Barrie Roberts

  Lord Patrick turned the bundle in his hands. ‘The seals are his,’ he confirmed, ‘and it bears a superscription in his hand – “For my son, Patrick”. What is it, Predge?’

  ‘I have no idea, Your Lordship. It was given to me by your father exactly as it is now. That was some six months ago and at the same time he altered his will so as to require that the packet be handed to you on his death. By doing so – and by making you aware of the other provisions of the will – I have, I hope, discharged my obligations in full.’

  ‘I am sure you have, Predge,’ said the young Lord. ‘Now this looks as if it requires reading. If you will be kind enough to ring for the butler, Predge, I suggest that the rest of you take a little refreshment while I take this to my study and see if it throws any light upon my father’s death.’

  He stood up and Lady Patricia rose as well. ‘I do not think I fancy any refreshment,’ she said. ‘If you will all excuse me I think I shall take a little fresh air in the park. I am sure that Patrick will let me know if there is anything of consequence to me in the document. Good afternoon, gentlemen.’

  As Lord Backwater left us he turned in the doorway. ‘Mr Holmes,’ he said, with a half-smile, ‘you have not told us how you knew the name that my father wished to be buried under. Do you, by any chance, know what this document contains?’

  ‘I would be guessing if I were to claim so,’ replied Holmes. ‘While I can tell you the gist of it, and that it will go a long way towards solving the mystery of your father’s death, I do not pretend to know the details. Nevertheless, I suspect you should be prepared for some startling revelations, Your Lordship.’

  Eight

  AN ORPHAN’S NARRATIVE

  It was two hours before Lord Backwater returned to us, a thoughtful expression on his face. He held the unsealed bundle of papers in his hand.

  When he had poured himself a large brandy he turned to us. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘Mr Holmes was right on the two points he made. This document has startled me and it does, I believe throw some light on the death of my father. I believe you should all know what it contains. Perhaps you will excuse me if I do not read it to you, but I admit that a first reading of it has disturbed me. Predge, I wonder if you would be so kind?’

  ‘Oh, of course, Lord Patrick,’ said the little solicitor. Taking the document and adjusting his spectacles he began to read it. Through Lord Backwater’s kindness in allowing me access to the manuscript at a later date, I am able to reproduce here the narrative exactly as we first heard it that afternoon:

  My dear son, if this document comes into your hand it will be only because my death has prevented me from explaining to you matters which, perhaps, I should have laid bare much earlier. Certainly it is my intention, if I am spared and if certain plans are successful, to broach these matters with you in person but they are of such importance that I must not gamble against fate.

  You will, by now, be aware that you are one of the wealthiest men in England, and I have no qualm in leaving in your hands the disposal of the vast sums that I was fortunate enough to accumulate. I know that you will conduct yourself as I would wish and that those whom I sought to assist will not suffer at your hands. However, you must know that among the many accounts which you now control is one which is not yours to dispense. It is held by Barings who are thoroughly reliable and you will find it identified in my ledgers as the “Black Queen” account. At the time of writing it stands at more than four-hundred-thousand pounds and you will see that many charitable donations have been drawn from it. Nevertheless, it was never mine and it is not yours. You must not draw upon that account unless and until the circumstances which I shall set out occur when there will be one at hand to instruct you as to the proper disposal of the funds.

  To explain that embargo it is necessary for me to reveal a number of matters that may shock and distress you, but they are, nevertheless, matters that you have always had a right to know. If I have kept them from you it was because I would not burden you and later because the secret was not mine to reveal. Before my marriage I made a clean breast of these things to your mother, for it would have been wickedness to do otherwise. She accepted them with that calm that was her hallmark and agreed that they should lie between us alone until you were of age to share the burden.

  What can I say of Joseph and Elisabeth Keep, the childless cobbler and his wife who gave us a home? Simple and humble folk though they were, they raised us to be honest and hardworking and gave us a childhood such as any man in England might envy. Their little cottage was always warm and clean, ripe with the scent of Aunt Lisa’s cooking, and if we were not richly clad we were cleanly and decently dressed and well-shod by Uncle Joe’s craft. Nor were our souls neglected, for as we grew we learned that our Aunt and Uncle expected nothing less than honesty, kindness and courage of us in all our dealings. A truthful admission of error would bring only a reprimand from Uncle Joe, but a lie would result in a strapping.

  If I have done any good with my life it has been through the example of that gentle, Christian couple and it has always been my sorrow that their great kindness ended in tragedy and that I brought them, albeit innocently, to grief and to an early grave. When my years of wandering ended and I returned at last to Backwater I wept to see their unmarked graves. I could not do them honour without revealing my shadowed past and I hope that they will forgive the artifice by which I managed to raise a proper memorial to them.

  Through ten years of my childhood I and my orphan friend were nurtured by Joseph and Elisabeth Keep, growing in those years to be as much to each other as any brothers. The woods and fields were our playground in all seasons, even the Squire’s lands were open to us as the result of an incident which, though of no great matter at the time, was to end our happiness and the lives of our good foster-parents.

  My foster-brother, perhaps because he came of a tribe of acrobats and tumblers, grew into an active, sporting boy who outpaced the village boys in running, swimming and many other activities. He was no less able with his fists and grassed much older boys in bouts fair and otherwise and he had that Irish temperament that will neither be put upon itself nor see another ill used. In our days at the village school no child needed to fear the attentions of a schoolyard bully, for my friend’s fists were always at the disposal of those less able than himself.

  Squire Varley’s only heir was a boy of my friend’s years, though nowhere near so robust. Rupert Varley was a slight youth whose appearances around the village provoked jeers from the rougher element among the local boys. On one occasion my companion and I surprised a group of such youths who were making their cruel sport of young Varley. With a very little assistance from me, my friend delivered them such a drubbing as they would not soon forget and sent them on their ways.

  Whether from genuine admiration and gratitude or merely from a sense of self-preservation, after this episode the Varley boy attached himself to us at every opportunity. This might have been an embarrassment had he not proved fully willing to join us in those forbidden activities of boyhood such as poaching and scrumping. In the event, as I have said, the companionship of the Varley boy opened to us the whole of his father’s lands with but one exception.

  Backwater Manor Farm was kept in those days by a man named Wells, a surly individual who bore a bad name in the district for his hard usage of his labourers and servants and his rude and crafty dealings with the world at large. My foster-brother and I had long ago determined to give his land a wide berth, having been many times warned off it with threats and curses. Rupert Varley was always attempting to lead us on to Wells’ property by way, I believe, of establishing that the Squire’s son could not be gainsaid. That might have been true, but we commoners did not care to chance Wells’ anger.

  There came a day, in the summer of 1842, when our landed companion was home from his school but was not accompanying my foster-brother and me. I cannot recall now how we passed that day, presumably in the usual aimless pursuits of country boyhood. Ther
e was then no reason to mark the day and since then the recollection has been deeply overlaid. Had we known that it was to be the last day of our carefree youth we should have paid more mind.

  We returned home from our pastimes in the late afternoon. As we entered our foster-parents’ little cottage we saw Mr Stanley, the parish constable, seated at the table. Uncle Joe sat in his chair, his face grim and pale, and Aunt Lisa hovered between, her eyes red.

  ‘Well, at last,’ said Mr Stanley, and rose from his seat. ‘I am afraid’, he said to our foster-parents, ‘that these two must go with me to the lock-up.’

  We were dumbfounded. For once we knew of no offence of ours, large or small, that had gone undiscovered, but the constable soon threw us into further confusion and great fear.

  ‘Come, my lads,’ he said. ‘I must take you into custody on suspicion of the unlawful firing of a rick of hay.’

  Behind us as he shepherded us out Aunt Lisa wailed helplessly.

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  Author's notes on this chapter

  Nine

  VICTIMS OF THE SYSTEM

  The horror that seized our young minds when we learned that we had been taken up on suspicion of a capital offence was beyond imagining. Every child throughout the West knew the dreadful stories of the fate of the rick-burners of ten years ago, how few had hanged but the Special Commission that sat at Winchester had transported hundreds to Van Diemen’s Land, never to see their homes and their loved ones again.

  In that summer of ‘42 the mining and manufacturing districts were in a state of unrest. The Militia were out in the Midland counties against the coal and iron-workers. In the Western counties the authorities believed that the poor labourers had been so cowed by the fate of the Winchester transports that the region would remain quiet, but some suspicious magistrates rode the lanes day and night with their constables, seeking any sign of disaffection.

  Constable Stanley lodged us in his lock-up and would tell us nothing of the reasons why we were taken in. His good wife, who had ever before been a friend to us, fed us and wept each time she saw us, calling us ‘poor doomed orphans’ and praying aloud for us, which did little to calm our fears.

  It was not many days before we were brought before three of the magistrates for the division, one of whom was Squire Varley. He had always treated us in a distant but kindly enough fashion and we looked for nothing but fair play at his hands. Constable Stanley had explained, to us that we should now hear the evidence against us and that the Squire and his colleagues would decide whether a case had been made out against us, so that we were both fearful of the proceedings but also hopeful that our ordeal would soon end when the truth was heard.

  Farmer Wells was called to the Book and sworn. As I have said, he was a man who owed nobody goodwill, and he soon set out a tale of our incursions upon his land and the many times he had driven us off. In answer to a question from a Justice he was honest enough to admit that he had not seen us on his property in nearly two years, but suggested that as we grew older we had grown craftier and less easy to spot.

  He told of conversations in the village inn that seemed to him to be treasonable, and of his fears that the industrial unrest would spread to the countryside and barns and ricks would burn as they had ten years before, and finally he told how, on the day we were taken up, he had been told by Rupert Varley that his big rick in Backwater Bottom was afire. He had hastened there with his men, but the fire had got too good a hold and most of the stack had been destroyed.

  Now I know that much of Farmer Wells’ testimony should not have been heard, but neither the Justices nor their clerk made any move to stop him. Had we but a lawyer at our side short work might have been made of his story. True, when the clerk told Uncle Joseph that he might question the farmer on our behalf, Wells acknowledged that he had never seen us on the day in question and that he did not know, of his own knowledge, how his rick came to be fired or by whom.

  This answer heartened us and we were further cheered when the next witness was sworn, for it was Rupert Varley. He owed us fair play and knew how we had long avoided the Manor Farm and now we expected to hear our innocence established.

  We were cruelly disappointed, for Rupert Varley took his oath that my friend and I had sworn vengeance on the farmer after being driven off his lands. I can see him still, standing as innocent as an angel before his father’s approving eye. They say that those who know the truth can smile at lies, but we could not smile as that wretched boy spilled out his lies. He told how we had asked him to join us among the ricks to smoke a pipe of tobacco, that he had not been willing but was afraid of my foster-brother. So he had gone to join us, but late, and on his way there had seen us both, daubed with smoke and fleeing from the rick which was then beginning to burn. He had run straight away for Farmer Wells in hope that the rick might be saved.

  Uncle Joseph questioned the liar in vain; Rupert stood by his falsehoods in every particular and left the witness box with the thanks of the Justices for his part in the affair.

  Constable Stanley was the last witness, and it must be said that he spoke only the truth of how he had come to arrest us, going so far as to remark that neither of us nor our clothing bore any mark or smell of smoke when we had come home. Even so the clerk interrupted him to ask if we might not have cleaned ourselves in some stream or pool before returning and the constable had to say that we could have done so. The Justices nodded at that and our hearts sank.

  So all the case against us was the farmer’s ill-will and Rupert’s lies, but it took Their Worships little time to decide that we should stand trial and we were taken away to the county gaol.

  If we had been miserable in Constable Stanley’s lockup we thought we had now descended to the lowest pit of Hell. Chained at the ankles we were flung into a common cell of forty or so prisoners. Many of our nights passed sleeplessly, with me huddled in my foster-brother’s arms weeping from terror of the future and him roundly cursing Rupert Varley for his treachery.

  As the weeks passed we grew ever more like the wan and tattered creatures around us and ever less hopeful of our case. God bless our Aunt and Uncle that never a week passed but they made the long journey from Backwater on the carrier’s cart, to bring us hope and encouragement and small gifts of food and goods that eased our hardships a little. On one such visit, when Aunt Lisa was unwell and Uncle Joe came alone, he confided to us that he was contemplating the sale of his little shop to provide funds for a lawyer when we came to the Assize, but we both told him that he must not do it. So much sorrow had come from his kindness to us that we could not see him lose his livelihood over us.

  ‘But a lawyer might make all the difference,’ he said. ‘And he might not if Rupert Varley clings to his lies,’ said my foster-brother, ‘and if he does, we shall hang and you would be mourning us in the workhouse. No, Uncle, you must not.’

  Our trial came up in the winter and on a cold, dull day we were taken to the Assize Hall. We had by then been months in gaol and wretched specimens we must have seemed, though our dear foster-parents brought us new clothes that we might not stand before our Judges in the rags we wore in gaol.

  Our Aunt and Uncle tried to inspire us with hope of release, but we had lain too long among those who had experience of the courts. We had none to speak for us and we should not be allowed to speak for ourselves. Both of us knew in our hearts that, if the tale was told as it had been before the Justices, our only hope lay in being transported and not hanged.

  Our trial done we waited hopelessly for the verdict. All had proceeded as in the lower court and again we had no lawyer to speak for us and could not speak for ourselves.

  At last the jury returned their verdicts of guilty upon us both and now all that was left was to know if we were to live in misery or die.

  The Judge looked down on us from beneath the painted and gilded arms of England and I was sure he was for hanging us. I recall little of his words, but I shall never forget his face. As he came to pronounce sentence on u
s his eyes glittered and he wet his lips. I have seen that look often since, in the faces of those who are about to order the death of a man or the flogging of a child or the chaining of a woman, and I do not doubt that the evil that lit that Judge’s eyes shines in the eyes of all who punish misfortune and innocence, whether gaolers, Judges or Ministers of the Crown.

  ‘So it is ordered and adjudged by this court that each of you be transported upon the seas, beyond the seas, to such place or places as Her Majesty, by the advice of her Privy Council, shall think fit to direct and appoint, for the term of fourteen years. Take them down,’ he commanded, and we were hauled below and fettered to the wall to await the cart that would take us to the hulks.

  We lay, most of that winter, in a rotten old hulk upon the mudbanks by Portsmouth, and even there our faithful Aunt and Uncle came to us as often as they might. There, too, we sank into a lower circle of “the System”, being now convicted and confined among others awaiting transportation.

  At length a rumour passed among us that we were to be part of a ship-load of boys loading for Port Arthur in Van Diemen’s Land. For all we knew or understood of our destination we might as well have been bound for the moon. All we could hear of it from our fellow prisoners was that it was called “the Gates of Hell”.

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  Author's notes on this chapter

  Ten

  TO THE GATES OF HELL

  On a dreary March day, with rain shrouding the land, we were taken from the hulk and sent aboard the transport Henrietta. Hardly were we below decks and the gratings closed above us than we heard the rattle of her anchor chains and felt the Henrietta move out into the Channel. So we were deprived of even a farewell glimpse of our native land, let alone a farewell to our loved ones. We were well away from land before the gratings were raised and our ankle-irons struck off.