“It cannot be allowed to come to court.”
“I understand,” replied the lawyer, gravely. “No man of parts would wish his reputation sullied in such a manner.”
James lifted his eyes from the parchment scroll, his fingers playing idly with the red ribbon that was used to tie the brief. “I was thinking of Lady Farrar.”
The lawyer opened his mouth to speak, to say that her reputation was already too tattered, but one look at his client’s face stopped him.
“We will have to come to some accommodation,” said James.
The attorney sat back in his leather chair. “Then may I counsel delay, sir. Lord Farrar’s debts increase by the hour, as does the pressure from his creditors. It is only this case, and the prospect of payment, which prevents them from slinging him into a debtors’ prison.”
James smiled grimly. “I know the gentleman better than you. As his debts increase, so will his price. He spent his own inheritance, then married Lady Caroline with the sole intention of spending hers. Since he is being dunned by his creditors, that means he has succeeded.”
The lawyer frowned, unhappy that his client intended to ignore his advice. But the forms had to be observed. “I will, of course, obey any instructions you care to give.”
James just nodded. “I want you to offer Lord Farrar the entire sum.”
Lawyers don’t gasp with surprise, they’re trained not to. But James saw the cheeks depress as his attorney sucked in a silent breath.
“It is conditional of his granting his wife a divorce, with another five hundred guineas if he will stand as the guilty party.”
“He would be ridiculed for such a course of action!”
James snapped, his voice angry, for his patience was thin, both with the case and his lawyer. “There is only one form of ridicule for such a scoundrel, and that is the inability to lay a coin on a card table.”
The lawyer did not recoil from this outburst, for he was trained to avoid that too. “You know the gentleman better than I.”
“Good,” said James quietly, his anger evaporating as quickly as it had surfaced. “I also want you to initiate discreet contact with Lady Farrar.”
“I must point out that such a course would be most unwise.”
James ignored him. “She will be more strapped for funds than her husband. Get hold of her bills, then contact her creditors and assure them that any debts directly due to her are safe, and that her credit is sound.”
“That is bound to surface, Mr Ludlow. It will make negotiations much more difficult.”
“I don’t want negotiations, sir. I want conclusions.”
It was as though he’d never been away. Ten minutes off the coach and Pender was back in that twilight world he knew so well, a world of narrow stinking alleys and grim hovels. Many an eye was cast at his fine boots, but the club he carried in his hand, as well as the direct way he returned their stares, told all who contemplated theft that the attempt would be a painful business. He was recognised, of course, by some people. But there were no shouts of welcome, merely discreet nods. They were as cautious as he. To call his name, which was known to carry a price, could send some rat scurrying to the Beak looking for a reward.
Pender weaved his way through the whole area. He kept going for two reasons. One, he wanted all those who knew him to be aware he was back. But he also wanted to be sure this area was safe. Pender was not the type to place two feet anywhere, even in his own backyard, until he tested the waters with a cautious toe. It was that attitude that had allowed him to survive this long free from arrest or pain in a world where a man could die and never be missed.
Satisfied that he was safe, Pender began to acknowledge those whom he’d recognised and started to ask questions. The answers he got showed that the earlier reserve had not just been discretion. Those who knew him were reluctant to talk, waving vague hands as he enquired about his wife and children. But he located their whereabouts eventually, and taking a firmer grip on his club he set off to find the spot where they now lodged.
“Captain Latham is not here, sir,” said Cath Hogbin, leaving Harry in no doubt from her tone that she found it hard to bear. “But I expect him back for dinner.”
“Then bespeak us a table, Cath, and dig out something special from the cellar, for I owe the good captain a princely feed.”
Her eyes sparkled as she replied. “There never was a man who deserved it more, Mr Ludlow. He is indeed a prince.”
The bustle in the street seemed greater than ever as Harry made his way along the Beach Street to Sandown Castle. The tide was high and the waves now cascaded against the fortress, hammering at the walls relentlessly, as if trying to dislodge them stone by stone. The battery of 42-pounder guns was still manned, but in a lackadaisical manner, without sentries. No one challenged him as he made his way through the postern gate. The artillerymen had appropriated the chambers on the inland side of the castle, leaving the outer rooms, where the sea pounded on the outside wall, for the Preventative Service.
Braine, well wrapped against the cold air and damp walls, sat at a desk near a red-hot stove, with Sniff curled up in his lap, writing in a ledger. His mittened hand stopped and he reached for his sword as Harry’s footsteps echoed on the bare flagstones. It stayed on the hilt as Harry approached, and the look in the man’s eyes was exceedingly unfriendly. Behind him, so tattered it was barely readable, was a poster offering a reward for information leading to the arrest of the men who’d murdered Charlie Taverner.
“I require a list of printers,” said Harry. His voice sounded ethereal in the vaulted stone chamber, louder and more peremptory than he’d intended.
“You can get that anywheres,” growled Braine.
“True,” said Harry, nodding towards the grubby poster. “But since I presume you have some idea who owned the press, you will save me a great deal of foot-slogging if you point me in the right direction.”
The sound of fresh, more numerous footsteps, reverberating off the walls, made him turn. Braine was looking past him towards the open door, his expression still grim. Two men, clad in ill-fitting worn blue coats, had come into the room. They had a skinny youth, in a tattered blood-stained shirt, manacled and bowed, between them. The boy had received some stout blows, judging by his posture, not to mention the bruises which covered his face.
“He won’t admit to no more,” said one of the men in the doorway. “Says he brought the brandy over hisself.”
“See this specimen, Mr Ludlow,” said Braine, pointing a mittened finger at the youth. “Name’s Digby Cavell. This streak of piss, who couldn’t lift his arse off a privy unaided, has owned to shifting thirty hogsheads of Genever gin all on his own.”
Harry walked over to the doorway and lifted the boy’s head. He looked about twelve years of age, though he was probably older. His listless eyes were blackened and his lips encrusted with dried blood. Lumps covered his face where he been slapped or punched. Braine was still listing his crimes in the background as Harry felt his anger rise.
“Shipped them in from Holland he says, in a rowboat, one at a time, and stored them in the cellar where we found ’em.”
“This is an outrage,” hissed Harry.
“It’s a downright falsehood an’ no mistake,” replied Braine, who could not see the look in Harry’s eye. But the men holding the boy could, and they stepped back a pace. “But it was ever the same. As I told you, the true culprits always stick up a shaver like Digby to take the blame.”
“More than blame,” said Harry angrily as he turned round. For the first time Braine saw the look in his eye and realised that his visitor was less than impressed with his methods.
“By what authority do you beat this boy?”
“None that you can question, sir,” snapped Braine, half rising from his chair. The dog Sniff slipped off his lap, waking instantly and landing on all fours.
Harry’s voice rebounded off the walls, adding to their effect. “What you are doing is contrary to the law,
sir!”
“Don’t you presume to come in here and lecture me, Ludlow,” shouted Braine. “I suppose you’d have me feed this turd red meat while I question him?”
“You have no right to use violence, Mr Braine.”
“Tell that to those who murder my men, sir!”
“It is your duty, once you’ve apprehended a felon, to hand him over to a magistrate.”
“A magistrate. Let me tell you that Mr Temple treats me with no more respect than he extends to you, sir.”
“If this is the way you present the accused, I’m not surprised,” replied Harry coldly, before Braine’s words had sunk in. “Besides, how do you know the way he treated me?”
Braine must have realised he’d stepped too far and said more than he intended. He tried to bluster his way out. “Temple treats everyone the same, sir, for he is hand in glove with crime.”
“Then he must be hand in glove with you, sir,” yelled Harry, who now had two good reasons to be angry, for he realised that he’d missed a vital point after the attack on the house.
Braine must know who’d tried to drown them. Perhaps Temple did too. Indeed, it was possible that every smuggler in Deal had an inkling, if not certain knowledge, of the man’s identity. That attack on Cheyne Court had not been mere coincidence, nor could he mistake the leader, for he’d heard the man’s voice as plain as day. Yet he wasn’t local. A man who didn’t know the Kellet Gut couldn’t find his house without a degree of assistance. His earlier assumption that there was no local connection was being discarded as he spoke.
He’d already established in his own drawing-room that a direct enquiry addressed to Braine would produce no result. The man wouldn’t even tell him the location of the printers. He realised now that he had to get those posters down, since he had no idea of how much their presence had contributed to events. Anyone wishing to inform would have done so by now. Leaving them could only add to his problems. But he had no intention of departing without the Cavell boy.
“I intend that you release this youth in my custody, for if you do not I shall be obliged to ask the officer in charge of this castle to afford me a file of soldiers.”
Braine’s mouth flew open, and he let out a great rush of air, which passed for a laugh. “Then you’d best send to Portobello Court, sir, for that is his normal location. He’s never out of the whorehouse.” He sat down, looking at his ledgers as he continued, as if to inform him that he was of no more account than his sums. “You may accompany my men if you wish. I was just on the point of ordering them to take him to Temple.”
Braine looked past Harry to his two ill-kempt assistants. “Do as I say, then get along to Farrier Street. I want that cellar filled to the brim.”
“We ’as been up the whole night,” whined one of the men.
“And by the look of you all the gin in them hogsheads wasn’t poured away,” growled Braine. “Get some rest if you must, but I want that job done sharp, so the bastards know we mean business.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE CROWDS that gathered along the beach road did not differentiate between Harry and the two guards as they marched Digby Cavell towards Mr Magistrate Temple’s residence. They booed and hissed at him with the same fervour they aimed at the Preventatives. The mud from the side of the road, mixed with animal droppings, started to fly, causing the party to break into an ignominious trot. They hurried along, the youth stumbling in their midst, arms held up to ward off the worst of the flying filth.
Temple, fetched from his office, didn’t seem the least bit surprised at the lad’s physical condition. He had a cell for confining prisoners and the boy was despatched there with no ceremony. While he filled in the details of the charges in a great leather-bound book, Temple seemed far more interested in ensuring that the charge for transporting this boy to the Sandwich Assizes should fall on the Preventative Service rather than St George’s parish. Having also recognised Harry as the man who had traduced him, he was very unforthcoming when the subject of printers and Wentworth’s poster was raised.
“An incitement, sir, and nothing less. We have riots, murder, vice, and immorality, and now you add this. If I could find an offence with which to detain you, there would be two felons on the way to the Assizes instead of one.”
Harry gave as good as he got, but he took good care that no one else heard him. “If you wish to fill a coach with crime, Mr Temple, you could do no better than secure your own passage.” He was out of the door before the magistrate could reply, but the blood that suffused his face was satisfaction enough. The first of his posters greeted him on the wall by the house, pasted to the brickwork, almost lost amongst those from naval ships offering great rewards and much glory for signing on to take the king’s bounty. He tore it off and began his search for the source. Using information he gleaned at the Three Kings to aid him, he struck lucky at the second business he visited. The printer cast his eye over the poster, as though he was checking for errors.
“I most certainly did print that, sir, an’ I have a stack of the same in the back of my shop.”
“Then do me the honour of burning them,” said Harry.
“How could I countenance such waste, sir?” replied the printer. “Besides, it was a Mr Ludlow that instructed me, an’ I can only accept an order to desist from him.”
“I am Mr Ludlow,” said Harry tersely.
The printer looked up at this. The doubt as to his visitor’s identity was plain in his red-rimmed eyes.
“You may well be Mr Ludlow, sir, but you are not the Mr Ludlow who ordered these. Not only did he specify that they should go out in quantity, he bade me commission a lad to ensure that those torn down were replaced.” He lifted an inky fingertip and pointed to his glasses. “A printer has eyes, sir, and a memory. Not that he would need to exercise it over such a short span of time. You are not the gentleman who represented himself to me.”
“That was a Mr Wentworth,” snapped Harry.
The printer blinked and his crabbed face showed a trace of anger. “That is a very hectoring tone, sir, if I may make so bold as to check you. Do not presume to name my clients to me. The order for these was placed by a Mr Ludlow of Cheyne Court, and that, sir, is where I’ve been instructed to forward the account.”
“What account!”
“That seems to me a damned silly question, sir. Accounts are what people pay for services rendered.”
“Mr Wentworth didn’t pay you?”
The printer’s hands were on his counter, and he leaned forward, poking his inky finger, in an aggressive way that sat ill with his slight stature. “I have already informed you, sir, that I do not know the name Wentworth.”
Harry, in his frustration, had a sore temptation to grab him and fetch him a good shake, but it was Wentworth who was at fault. He’d obviously used his name and committed his purse to this idiotic venture. Patiently Harry explained, aware that the printer was suspicious. His earlier angry tone had not inclined the man towards him, but the information that he might go without payment really made the smaller man concentrate.
“Not paid, sir!” he yelped. “I cannot abide the expression, let alone the deed.”
“Since I am the real Mr Ludlow,” sighed Harry, “I will have to pay you.”
The man’s manner changed abruptly. All his aggression and suspicion evaporated. He reverted to the shopkeeper concerned for his bill, seeming to shrink to even smaller dimensions in the process. Two inky fingers tugged at his sparse hair.
“How is a man to tell, if’n a gentleman lays a shilling on the counter and says his name.”
“I’m surprised he bothered,” said Harry, wearily reaching for his purse.
The burly drunk tried to hit Pender the minute he came through the ragged curtain. But the club which he had behind his back proved its worth. Pender was not by nature an aggressive man, but his anger was so great that the swinging blow nearly took his opponent’s head off, sending him crashing to the floor unconscious. His ragged children, th
eir skin and protruding bones a mass of sores and bruises, had been softly crying from hunger when he entered. Now they added fear to their moans, and their thin voices rose in a piteous wail. His wife, slumped on the floor in a corner, looked at him through a gin-soaked haze, a stupid smile on her aged countenance. Her emaciated face had the look of a woman who’d suffered no end of beatings and her clothes were soiled with the contents of her own body.
He stood in the middle of the room, trying to make some sense of the scene before him. He’d always looked after his wife and children, indeed the advent of his first born had turned him to crime to feed and clothe the girl. Success at thieving and his habit of selling the goods back to those he’d robbed had ensured that his family never went without, just as it had also guaranteed that he suffered from little interference, for a good number of years, from the law. But success breeds jealousy: someone who lacked his skill had fingered him whilst he still had the goods in his possession. It did no good to plead that he’d never laid a finger on anyone, unlike most of the other local thieves, who delighted in assaulting their victims. British justice held that assault on the person was less of a threat to society than an assault on property. Nor would a plea of necessity evoke sympathy. Judges would rather see dead children in the street than condone theft. With what he’d done, and with the evidence on a table in the same court, he would have been dangled from a rope for sure.
He moved forward towards his children, who’d been pink-faced and healthy when he left. The shock as they cowered away brought tears to his eyes. They would not bear to let him touch them, so he turned to his stricken wife, pulling the stone jug of gin from her bony fingers and leaning forward to look into her face.
Hanging Matter Page 17