“Stay still,” Harry whispered into her ear.
She wrapped her arms around him tightly, and began to pray that he wouldn’t get hit.
“Are you alright?” She asked shakily after several moments when nothing more seemed to happen. She opened her eyes and looked across the garden. Cruickshank’s gun was just being removed from his desperate fingers by a determined Joseph, and Dandridge was being rolled over by Barnaby, who was threatening him with dire consequences if he moved.
“Did he hit you?” Tilly demanded as she patted his sides and back for any sign of injury.
Harry looked down at her and placed a tender kiss on her lips. “I am alright darling. I am sorry I hurt you when we fell, but there was nothing else I could do.”
“It’s alright,” she whispered, but drew in a deep breath when he immediately hauled himself to his feet.
She accepted his hand gratefully when he reached down to help her up, and turned to stare at the scuffle that had broken out between Dandridge and Barnaby.
In spite of the fact that it was clear to everyone that Dandridge was going nowhere, the man continued to struggle against the hard hands that kept him pinned to the ground. However, he was no match for Joseph and Barnaby’s strengths combined and, before long; he too was hauled to his feet before he was shoved roughly against the outbuilding wall.
“Thank heavens for that,” Tilly whispered as she watched Dandridge’s hands being tied behind his back.
Harry gave her a squeeze and winked down at her.
“Right, back to the fire,” Harry growled and, together with the others, turned his attention to putting the fire out.
Two hours later, the last of the embers finally died and everyone was able to take stock of what was left of the house.
Tilly flopped onto the lawn beside Suzanna and Zack, and shook her head in disgust at the grotesquely charred interior of the kitchen that was visible through the kitchen doorway. Cloying smoke still hung in the air, and clung to their clothing, and them.
She glanced across the lawn at Dandridge and Cruickshank, who had been forced to sit back to back, several feet away from each other, about half way up the garden. They had been joined by Mrs Dandridge, who had also been tied up and had been made to sit with her back to the house too. The three of them were being guarded fiercely by Marcus, and Joseph.
“I am going to take a look inside,” Harry announced as he squatted down before her. “Are you alright?”
Tilly nodded and smiled at him. “I am fine,” she whispered.
“Good. Stay right where you are.” He nodded to the captives several feet behind her. “They can’t hurt you now,” he declared.
Satisfaction rang clearly in his voice, and was accompanied by a rather satisfied gleam in his eye that made her smile widen.
“I won’t be long,” he promised, and followed Barnaby into the house to take a look at the state it was in.
The upper floor joists were badly damaged, and the rooms directly above the kitchen were clearly unstable. The kitchen was destroyed completely while nearly all of the downstairs rooms had been rendered uninhabitable because of the thick layer of soot that covered all of the surfaces, and the heavy odour of smoke that hung in the air.
Harry stood in the hallway and studied the mess.
“We were lucky to get out,” Barnaby growled.
“It’s desperate, isn’t it?”
Barnaby looked at Harry’s thoughtful frown. “How do you mean?”
“I can’t help but wonder what they are being paid if they would actually torch a house to get their hands on two young women, and a boy. Why those three? Why are they so determined?” He stared blankly into the sitting room while his mind raced with questions he needed to ask Dandridge.
“It’s a lot of trouble to go to, isn’t it?”
“Most criminals would have accepted defeat by now, and slunk off to hide somewhere. Especially since most of the wardens in the poor house are behind bars now. The fact that the Dandridges’ just keep coming for them means that they were either being held over a barrel by someone, or there is far too much money on offer for them to ignore.”
“There is the matter of evidence though, Harry,” Barnaby reasoned. “By setting fire to the house they can force everyone outside, and keep their attention diverted by getting their captives back while the house, which contains the evidence, is gradually destroyed.”
“God, the devious bastards,” Harry snorted in disgust.
“What are we missing?” Barnaby asked with a frown.
Harry was already ahead of him though.
“There is more to this than meets the eye,” he mused. “I mean, if Tilly, Suzanna and Zack are so valuable, and the Dandridges’ knew that they had this money coming from trading them, why were they stealing the housekeeping money and ornaments from me?”
“The woman,” Barnaby snorted in disgust.
“We need to find out who she is, what their connection is, and where to find her,” Harry growled and shared a look with Barnaby before he hurried out of the house.
“What do you want to do with these two?” Marcus growled as Harry approached.
“Bring him around the front. We need to question him.”
“I am telling you nothing,” Dandridge snarled.
“You will do as you are bloody told,” Harry growled. “Or you will go to prison and never see daylight again.”
Dandridge lapsed into silence, and was all but dragged several feet away from his co-conspirators. Once there, he was forced to sit on the ground to wait to be questioned.
Harry studied him for several minutes. Although Dandridge’s face was full of bitter resentment and even anger, fear was visible in the shadows of his eyes and emphasised by the deep, worried frown that marred his brow.
“Stepney Mallett is your destination. Who is your contact?” He growled, but knew from the look in Dandridge’s eyes that the man wasn’t going to tell them anything willingly just yet.
“You do know that people smuggling can result in death by hanging, don’t you?” Barnaby lied blandly. He had no idea whether it was or not, but Dandridge didn’t need to know that. He watched the man’s eyes widen in alarm for a second before all trace of emotion vanished, and was replaced with wariness.
“Kidnapping, false imprisonment, theft, mugging, arson, people trading,” Harry reported. “The list is endless, Dandridge. Someone would think that you were either an extremely hardened criminal, or someone had incriminating evidence on you, and was blackmailing you into it.”
He knew from the way that Dandridge’s eyes widened that he had hit the nail on the head, and it was immensely satisfying to know that he had the advantage.
Harry turned to Joseph. “Would you go to Battlington to fetch the jailer’s cart?”
“It will be pleasure,” Joseph replied with a firm nod, and hurried off to saddle his horse.
Harry turned his attention back to the Dandridges’. “Where is she?”
Dandridge stared at him for a minute. “She is there,” he growled, and nodded toward Tilly.
“No. Where is your boss? We know she lives in the big house across town. Where is she?”
Dandridge studied him calculatingly for several moments. “If I tell you what I know, do I get let off some of it? For helping you, like?”
Harry slowly shook his head and pursed his lips. “Afraid not. You have kidnapped, taken part in falsely imprisoning many people, who were then sold on like chattel. Nobody would ever consider letting you off any of it. However, if you tell me what her real name is, and where to find her, you get the satisfaction of knowing that you are not the only one in jail. She will be serving a longer sentence than you.”
“Who are you?” Dandridge demanded with a scowl. “You are no nabob. I know you work for the government, but doing what? Who are you to question me like this? You are not the magistrate round here.”
“No, I am not. I work for His Majesty’s Government. That is all you ne
ed to know, Dandridge,” Harry drawled carefully. “Now, who is she? I don’t think that she is really called Mrs Bolsworthy.”
Dandridge stared thoughtfully at him. His gaze ran over the assorted people in the garden, and he seemed to realise that the men were more than just magistrate’s men. The men Harry called friends had a commanding air of almost arrogant authority about them that was more than a little worrying.
“Mavis Johnson,” Mrs Dandridge snapped suddenly. “Her bloody name is Mavis Johnson. He won’t tell you because he is sleeping with her. But I have no such affiliation to that damned woman. She has ruined my life. I owe her nothing.”
“Shut up,” Dandridge growled.
“Shut up yourself,” Mrs Dandridge snarled.
Harry turned his attention to Dandridge’s suddenly talkative wife. “What does she have over you? Is it the money, or has she caught you with your hand in one of her accounts books?”
Mrs Dandridge started at him in shock and Harry immediately pounced, and took advantage of her stunned surprise.
“Oh, I know all about your little scheme. I know that you have helped yourselves to ornaments from around the house and pawned them. I also know that you have altered the figures in the accounts ledgers. Once you have another job lined up somewhere else, you help yourself to the coinage that is available, steal the most expensive ornaments you can pawn, and then vanish. By the time anyone does discover your crimes, you are already long gone and are never to be seen or heard from again. It is ingenious really because, over the course of a couple of years, you could help yourselves to as much as fifty pounds and, unless someone got wind of what you were up to and studied the accounts books from the very start, nobody would be any the wiser.” Harry sighed and shook his head “It takes guts. I will grant you that. It is also incredibly risky because you had to rely upon your employer not noticing the changes. A pound here and there, amended in the book, minus a pound out of the safe, or the housekeeping funds. It’s all cut and dried, and really difficult to prove as theft. Unfortunately for you, when you were in your last employment, you got a little greedy, didn’t you? You couldn’t help yourselves, and just had to take more than you should have. You were also clumsy doing it though, because you didn’t realise that the figures you put into the accounts book didn’t match the amount you took out of the house before you left.”
“Do you work for her?” Mrs Dandridge asked with a frown.
Harry shook his head but didn’t expand.
Mrs Dandridge stared at him for several long minutes.
“I think you had better explain,” Harry murmured darkly.
Mrs Dandridge considered him for a moment, then threw a look at her husband, but made no attempt to deny that was what they had done. She heaved a sigh.
“We took jobs with her, Johnson, about five years ago.” Her voice was low and almost monotone as she spoke, as though her mind was buried deep in the past. “Everything was fine to begin with. I enjoyed it there. Then he started to gamble, but he lost more than he won. We had to take a bit out of the housekeeping to cover his debts, but didn’t have enough. As the butler, he had access to the study and, one day, saw the accounts books open on the desk. He took a couple of pounds out of the tin, amended the figures in the book and left. Nobody suspected a thing. We should have left it at that, but he wouldn’t stop gambling. He took a bit more about a month later, and a bit more after that. It soon mounted up. I kept telling him to stop, but he refused to listen to me. Johnson, our employer at the time, must have cottoned on somehow and started to keep an eye on him. He didn’t realise, and got caught with his hand in the tin.”
“So she threatened you with arrest.”
“She asked us to do a job for her. She said she would turn a blind eye to our theft if we did the job, but we wouldn’t get paid for it. If we didn’t agree, she said she would make sure that we never worked anywhere again because she would tell the magistrate and ensure that we were arrested for our crimes. We had no choice but to agree. She told us to make sure that a girl who had arrived in town had her bags stolen. Johnson said she didn’t care how it happened; just that we were to take the bags and make sure that they were never found.”
“Was this is in Tooting Mallow?” Barnaby asked with a frown.
“No, it was in Hipton in Somerset.”
“You were working for Johnson then?”
Mrs Dandridge nodded. “Johnson was always a bit odd. She used to disappear for days on end, and came and went at all hours of the night. She entertained men frequently; one man in particular.” She glanced over at her husband. “Him too; when he wasn’t too drunk and could manage it.”
Barnaby shifted his weight. “So what happened to the girl who had her things stolen?”
“She was left destitute and had to go to the poor house. To begin with, we had no idea what had happened to her. She just vanished from the village. We assumed that she had found her way home and didn’t think too much of it. Then, about a month later, another girl arrived. We were told to do the same thing. I didn’t like it. If we got caught, we would have been arrested for stealing but, before the girl could report it, she vanished too. I told him we had to stop but he was too busy tupping Johnson to listen to me.”
“You made a mistake in Cornwall,” Harry growled, and watched her eyes widen.
“How did you know we lived in Cornwall?”
“We know all about you,” Harry replied. “I was sent here to gather the evidence of your stealing from your employers. Unfortunately for you, an inventory of the house was taken before you arrived. The inventory that was taken only a couple of days ago, unsurprisingly, doesn’t match the list of contents in the house as of yesterday. I have found the pawn shop you used, and we have managed to buy back the items you stole. Your description was given to me by the pawn shop owner.” Harry sighed and shook his head. “It seems a lot to do for just a few pounds. What has she got over you to lure you to continue, not only to steal, but to force people to go to a poor house, for God’s sake?”
“We can’t work anywhere else. She has said she will write to anyone else we go to work for and make sure that they are aware of our thieving. Besides, him and Cruickshank have been sleeping with her. They won’t leave. She has got those idiots to do more and more for her over the last six months or so. They just won’t stop doing whatever she asks.”
“So, she goes out, finds the ideal people, namely young girls with little or no family, and who come from impoverished backgrounds. She then lures them to the town with the promise of jobs which don’t exist. Once they are away from the protection of their loved ones, they are rendered destitute in one way or another, and are either forced to go to the poor house, or are kidnapped and taken there, where they are left and ignored until you are ready to move them to the people trader in Stepney Mallet.”
Harry shook his head and felt a little sick. He had only ever heard of cattle being treated in such a way; never people. It made him indescribably angry and, for a moment, he had to fight the urge to punch Charles Dandridge right in the face.
Roberta Dandridge shrugged unconcernedly. “They pay good money. Cruickshank has been paying the wardens in the poor house to look the other way. They get extra pay for not asking questions. Mrs Taylor loves being able to control the residents. It was easy to persuade her to ignore their pleas to go home. She is a weird one, that one. Johnson herself paid Cragdale handsomely to look the other way. When the trade was arranged, the women were removed from the poor house and taken to Stepney Mallet. The man then takes them on to their new homes, I think. I don’t know for definite. Our involvement ends once we hand them over.”
“Where is Johnson now?”
“Gone off to find another one probably. She is due to leave this morning.”
“Where for?”
“How the hell should I know? Cruickshank usually drives her, or that useless idiot.” She threw her husband a dark glare.
“If you are on her payroll, why are you still th
ieving?”
Mrs Dandridge looked a little melancholy. “I don’t want to carry on. He does. We agreed that if we keep adjusting the accounts and helping ourselves, we can get enough money together to be able to move away and leave Johnson behind.” She threw a dark look at her husband. “Or I would anyway. He agreed to help me so long as he could keep gambling.”
“So you have your wages, your thieving and employment from Johnson.”
Mrs Dandridge grinned proudly at him. “Made sixty pounds last year,” she chortled.
Thoroughly disgusted, Harry leaned forward, and watched her smile dim. “You are selling people.”
“Who cares?” Mrs Dandridge challenged clearly unconcerned at the damage she had done to the women concerned, and their families.
He ran a weary hand down his face and stood upright. “She wasn’t there yesterday. Where did she go?”
Mrs Dandridge looked at him. “She is – or was – sleeping with Cragdale too.”
“She sleeps with a lot of men,” Harry challenged. He couldn’t help but wonder if the woman was a little unhinged, or was just jealous of Johnson’s conquests.
“She is a whore,” Dandridge declared flatly.
“So how does she come across the people she lures here?”
Dandridge shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t care either. I just know that Cruickshank drives her wherever she needs to go but, sometimes, she drives herself. She can be gone for days at a time.”
“You don’t know where she goes?”
Dandridge shook her head.
“What are the women traded for?” Tilly asked with a frown. She looked at Harry, who appeared decidedly uncomfortable.
Mrs Dandridge grinned snidely at her. “You are young. Lots of use in you,” she laughed.
Tilly looked at Suzanna, and felt her skin crawl at the lecherous meaning hidden in the suggestive way Mrs Dandridge’s gaze ran over the length of her.
Tilly quickly averted her eyes and struggled to keep her face blank. It was a little sickening to think of what might have become of her if she hadn’t met Harry. Then, she considered Zack beside her, and truly began to feel sick.
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