by Robin Blake
The inebriated old codger gave us a queer, disbelieving look as we stumbled past him and attacked the door. Fidelis and I reached it together just as it was closing, and he got a boot between door and jamb.
‘What? Who’s there?’ shouted Kerly, still trying to shut the door.
‘Push!’ I said.
We shoved the door with all our weight until Kerly was forced to sprawl back and allow it to crash open. The next thing he saw was Fidelis’s pistol aimed at the bridge of his nose.
‘Furzey, Barty, your pistols,’ I said.
Barty came forward and showed me his was ready, while Furzey, delving into the folds of his greatcoat, laboriously produced his own little gun. I closed and locked the inn door.
‘Aim squarely at his heart. Shoot him if he tries to run away and give a hollo if anyone comes.’
Elizabeth, Fidelis and I crept up the stairs. Without having expressed the thought, we were doing what O’Higgins had made his career from: gaining advantage by springing a surprise. We found that the corridor ran the length of the inn and had five doors. Only one of these showed light beneath it, corresponding to the lit window we had seen from outside. We crowded around this door, Fidelis having a hand on the knob. I counted down: three, two, one. Fidelis turned his hand and swung the door open.
It was a bedchamber. The first sensation was its warmth and the second was the scent – burning pinewood from the fire and a French perfume. The woman herself was undressed to her linen and stood with her back to the door, arranging the fine tresses of her hair in a mirror. She was in the room alone
‘Shut the door, cheri,’ she said, still titivating. ‘There’s such a draught.’
And she turned round.
Surprise? I don’t know who was the more unprepared for this meeting. She gave out something between a shriek and a squeak. Elizabeth said, ‘Oh!’ and I swore. Only Luke Fidelis, who had a genius for staying cool when others were lost in shock, retained his presence of mind. He stuck his pistol into his belt and walked into the middle of the room.
‘Madame Lachatte,’ he said. ‘You will oblige us by saying where the child is.’
‘Child? Did you say child?’ said Madame Lachatte, looking wildly at each of us in turn. ‘What child? I know nothing of a child, and I don’t understand why you are here, Mr Cragg, Mrs Cragg, Doctor. Do you have business with Mr O’Higgins? He is not here. He left more than an hour ago. And anyway this is a strange time to be—’
‘It is my son, Hector, who is two years old,’ I said. ‘He has been abducted this day and we have excellent reason to believe it was done by O’Higgins. Do you mean to say you know nothing of it?’
‘Nothing at all. And nor does Jack.’
‘Hector isn’t here,’ said Elizabeth, having already looked in the bed, and behind it, and into the clothes press, and every corner of the room. ‘Not in this room.’
‘The others, then!’ I said.
In no time we had looked into the four bedrooms alongside, and found all dark, and neither with fires nor any other signs of occupation.
‘I will interrogate the landlord,’ said Fidelis, when we were back at the door of Madame Lachatte’s room. He headed towards the stairs. Elizabeth and I went back in to see if Madame Lachatte could say more. She could, but not on the subject of Hector.
‘What you did last night to the Marquis, Mrs Cragg,’ she said. ‘It was nothing short of magnificent. You fired that shot on behalf of so many women that he’s raped, or tried to rape – including myself!’
‘He attacked you?’ I said. ‘And yet you stayed with him?’
‘It was temporary. I had enough of his bullying bedroom ways a long time ago, but I couldn’t see how to leave him until now. It’s beyond belief really that I ever liked him. His fate was so perfect and just, but it needed someone with courage like you to visit him with it and put a stop to all his activities on behalf of all our sex.’
‘I didn’t do it for our sex,’ said Elizabeth briskly. ‘I did it for myself. But it seems a long time ago, now. I am thinking only of Hector. Tell us where he is, for pity’s sake.’
‘Jack did not do this thing, Mrs Cragg, Mr Cragg. He was here with me all of the day, in this room, in that bed.’
She pointed, and if one believed her, which I did, it was easy to see it all. A beautiful woman of the world flees at dawn to the bed – at a friendly inn – of a new man. This man is a rake, but no matter. His being a rake makes it all the more plausible that the pair lose no time in getting to know one another, spending the best part of the same day in that bed, engrossed in their pleasure. This vision dissolved my certainty that O’Higgins had kidnapped my son – though, if he had not, I couldn’t imagine who had. I looked at Elizabeth. She was frowning. I could see she had not yet let go of the suspicion.
‘He needed you, though. He needed a woman to look after the little boy. Is that not why he lured you to him?’
‘No, where do you get that idea from, Mrs Cragg? I was his fancy; that is the only reason why. And he, of course, was mine – as soon as I saw him. There was nothing about looking after a child – not his, nor yours, nor anybody’s!’
‘She is telling the truth, Elizabeth.’
The speaker was Fidelis, who now strode back into the room. With him was Shamus Fingal O’Higgins, wearing a somewhat smug smile.
‘I regret you’ve come here on a fool’s errand,’ the latter said. ‘I had nothing to do with any of this.’
‘Jack!’ cried Madame Lachatte, flinging herself at him to be enfolded in an embrace that lifted her clean off the floor.
‘I should have seen it,’ said Fidelis. ‘A fool’s errand is right, and the fool is me.’
‘But the kidnapper said he was you,’ objected Elizabeth, pointing her finger at O’Higgins. ‘He admitted it.’
‘He was lying,’ O’Higgins said, releasing Madame Lachatte at last.
‘Yes! Yes! Of course he was!’ I saw it all myself now. ‘He borrowed the identity because he knew you had a claim on that money. It was so easy to do, and he knew everyone would believe it.’
‘So who is he?’ said Elizabeth, giving us all a sweeping, challenging look. ‘And where is Hector?’
I glanced at Fidelis. Of course he had the answer; but now so did I.
‘Come on,’ I said. ‘We can still get Hector tonight.’
‘I am coming too,’ said O’Higgins. ‘No man borrows my name without charge, and I will see him pay.’
‘Where are we going, Titus?’ said Elizabeth, as I pulled her up behind me.
‘Where we have already been once this evening,’ I said. ‘We’re going back to Garnish Tower.’
Madame Lachatte said farewell to us with a great show of sincerity.
‘I hope your boy is safe, dear Mr and Mrs Cragg. And do make sure you lay that knave by the ears, Jack, for there is no excuse for using a little darling in that horrid way.’
The road was deserted at this late hour. Its surface of compacted snow made for easy enough riding and O’Higgins, Fidelis and Furzey set off at a smart pace on their young horses. Elizabeth and I went more slowly on Jones, while Barty ran alongside, so that by the time we passed through the bar, up Church Gate and into the maze of little back streets and alleys on its south side, I had explained the whole plot to Elizabeth.
O’Higgins had already used his skills and let himself into the house by a window. We three latecomers found the door unlocked and were able to walk inside. We found the place very much quieter. Most of the company had left or gone to bed, though two or three members of the family lay around the hearth-room snoring in chairs and on settles. The fire had fallen into ashes. Three or four candle stumps still burned.
I heard low voices from a small back room, the one in which Elizabeth had earlier held her conference with Fanny Garnish. The girl was there now, in her night-dress, having been fetched down by O’Higgins (he knew where she slept) in order to assist in the plan of attack. She was looking at her former lover sulki
ly, but also longingly. There was just enough longing in it for her to cooperate.
Furzey gave me the gist of what had been said so far.
‘The house has twelve bedrooms. That’s why we need Fanny to guide us. She says Abel Grant is in one on the attic floor, where you never had a chance to look when you came earlier. The Garnish twins are his accomplices. They sleep on the second floor. We don’t know which room your lad is in, but as you never saw him when you searched, it stands to reason it’s also the attic.’
‘Doesn’t Fanny know which room it is?’
Fanny shook her golden locks.
‘Abel Grant is a rat, so I keep clear of his business,’ she said. ‘My cousin Sarah’s up in the attic, and she gets on with him, God knows why. Happen it’s her that’s got the little one in her bed with her.’
‘So how are we going to do this?’ I asked.
‘The advantage we have is that we’re in the house and nobody but Fanny knows it, because they’re all asleep,’ said Fidelis. ‘So we have surprise on our side.’
‘Let’s hope it’s all on our side, unlike last time.’
‘Barty and I will deal with the twins,’ Fidelis went on. ‘You and O’Higgins, with Furzey and Elizabeth, go up to the attic. The first thing is to find Hector and make sure of him. Then you arrest Abel Grant.’
That was to be the regulation. The reality was a little different. First, the twins were not sleeping in the same room, each having bedded down with a young lady in a different apartment. As Furzey was unprepared to act on his own, O’Higgins agreed to get one twin, while Fidelis dealt with the other, both men having been equipped with lengths of cord that Fanny had found for them. From the second-floor landing, Fanny peeped with a candle into each room and discovered which ones contained the twins. While the rest of us waited near the foot of the narrow attic stairs, Fidelis went into the first one with Furzey as a candle-bearer, crossed to the man’s side of the bed and gently whispered into his ear until he rolled on to his stomach. He then put a knee into the small of the man’s back and lashed his wrists together, the awakening and howls of protest being muffled in the pillow. The gin-drunk naked girl beside him hardly stirred as Fidelis used a second length of cord to secure a balled handkerchief as a gag in the fellow’s mouth, and finally bound his ankles and secured them to the bed rail. So far, so good.
O’Higgins had a greater struggle. With Barty holding the light, he entered to find the girl lying wide awake beside her lover and was obliged to whisper threats of immediate death to prevent her from screaming. She still managed to kick the man next to her awake under the covers and he, thinking his girl was being seduced away from him, reared up and attacked the highwayman. Their noisy fight, which O’Higgins eventually finished by knocking the other man out cold with the butt of his gun, did not go unheard by other residents of the household. A girl came down the attic stairs – Sarah evidently. And then a different door opened on our landing and the bearded, night-gowned old patriarch wandered out, scratching himself under his beard.
‘What’s goin’ off?’ he wanted to know, muzzy-voiced. ‘Noisy for night-time, i’n’t it?’
‘Someone’s having a nightmare,’ I said.
‘Oh, aye,’ he mumbled, ‘is that a fact?’
He turned about and wandered back to bed, leaving his door open. Seeing Fidelis and O’Higgins had emerged, having trussed up their respective twins, I was about to head on up the stairs when a small figure tottered out of the old patriarch’s room, clutching a tattered piece of old blanket. I was taken so unawares that I gasped and accidentally blew the candle out. I’ll never know how but, in spite of the darkness, the child knew we were there.
‘Mama! Papa!’ said Hector.
THIRTY
Elizabeth gasped and ran forward. Hector held up his arms, spread them wide, took two steps forward and crashed into his mother, winding his arms around her legs. She sank to her knees and hugged him. I joined them, enfolding them both in a hug of my own.
Then Elizabeth wriggled out of our embraces and began running her fingers over Hector’s face and body.
‘He seems well. I can’t find anything wrong. I’m taking him home. Nothing else matters now.’
In one way she was quite right. While our son was beyond our sight, held in unknown hands and exposed to an infinity of dangers, nothing was more important than to find him and make him safe. But for me, now that he was safe again, there was another need, which felt as strong. Not having a mother’s single-heartedness, I was filled with a father’s desire for justice, for the punishment of the black-eyed murderer who had tried to use my helpless young son for his own avaricious ends.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘You must get him out of this infernal house as quickly as possible, but I have to stay and deal with Grant.’
I crossed the landing to speak to Furzey.
‘Will you walk Mrs Cragg and the child back to Cheap Side? Then get yourself home. I’ll come with you as far as the street.’
Furzey was only too pleased to do so, and when I thanked him for his loyalty and help, he said, ‘What my mother will say when I come drabbling in at half past three in the morning I don’t like to think about. But I’m right glad we got your boy back. It’s been a good night’s work, has this.’
I watched them on their way to the end of Back Water Street, with Furzey leading and Elizabeth carrying Hector wrapped in a blanket. Just as I swung round to go back upstairs, I heard a single pistol shot, several cries and screams, and a hoarse male voice shouting.
By this time the house was generally roused. Gathered on the second-floor landing was a small mob, in which it was hard to tell members of the family from remnant guests. Not that it signified anything, except that our attempt to capture Abel Grant had long ago lost any secrecy and surprise.
‘Who fired?’ I asked, shouldering my way with difficulty through the onlookers. ‘Is anyone hit?’
Fidelis and O’Higgins were guarding the bottom of the stairs that led to the attic.
‘It was Abel Grant’s shot,’ said Fidelis. ‘O’Higgins tried to go up, but Grant was watching the stairhead.’
‘He missed me,’ said O’Higgins, ‘but I didn’t linger for his next shot. We need a stratagem. He is up there alone now, but who’s to say how many firearms and how much powder he has?’
I took a look at Grant’s accomplices, the two redheads. Barty had them both under his eye now, trussed up in the same way and in the same room. Their female bedfellows had joined the throng on the landing.
‘Let’s clear these people downstairs and out of the way,’ I said.
We shooed and shepherded them down to the floor below.
‘All of you!’ I said. ‘Keep away. There may be more shooting. Don’t come up any higher than this, not until we’ve taken him.’
I took a lantern into the old man’s room, the one from which Hector had emerged. It had once been quite grandly appointed, but now everything was peeling, threadbare, damp-stained. Tom Garnish was lying in his bed under a mound of covers, apparently asleep. I pulled away his blankets and shook him until his eyes, watery and bloodshot, sprang open.
‘It’s Titus Cragg, the Coroner,’ I said to reassure him.
‘Eh?’ he said. ‘What dost yer want? I’m deaf, young man. Tha’s to speak up.’
I repeated myself louder and closer to his ear.
‘I mind your dadda,’ he said. ‘He never did me a favour and I never did him one.’
‘A missed opportunity on both sides,’ I said. ‘Tom, listen, I’m here because on the floor above us you have a desperate and dangerous fugitive, Abel Grant, and he is armed.’
‘Armed, you say?’ said Tom, heaving himself up and balancing on one elbow and blinking. Then he began to issue a wheezy kind of laugh. ‘You’ll be telling me next he’s got legs an’ all.’
I ignored this.
‘We must take him, Tom. He kidnapped my son – that’s the infant you had in your room just now.’
�
��That little lad? Your son?’ He tugged his beard, giving the momentary appearance of seriousness. ‘But Abel told me it were his boy, and he put him to sleep wi’ t’other lads in my room because … because … I don’t know why else it’s that the house is full of folk and I’ve got the last truckle with any sleeping room in it. It’s that one over there.’
He pointed to the bed against the far wall. Two boys, older than Hector, slept peacefully in it. I went over and shook them awake.
‘Please tell me about the attics, Tom,’ I said. ‘Is there any other way of getting up there?’
I pulled both boys out of the bed and pushed them across the room to the door.
‘Yer what?’ said Tom.
I returned to him and raised my voice.
‘The attics, Tom. Excepting the stairs out there, how else can a man get up there?’
‘He can’t. Unless he wants to go down through the roof.’
‘There’s a trap-door giving on to the roof?’
‘It’s a trap all right. It’ll probably kill you getting up there.’
He began to wheeze out another laugh as I left him. I ushered the two boys down the stairs, where their anxious mother claimed them.
‘It seems we have a simple choice,’ I said to Fidelis and O’Higgins, when I was back on the landing. ‘We can try to storm him, and risk getting shot, or we can wait it out.’
‘A siege?’ said Fidelis. ‘We have him bottled up?’
‘In effect. There’s a hatch that opens on to the roof. But this house is that much taller than the ones on either side. If he gets out there, he’s got nowhere to go unless he can fly.’
‘We might negotiate. That’s the best way with an impasse.’
‘Negotiate?’ said O’Higgins. ‘He won’t. I’ll show you.’ He went halfway up the stair and shouted roughly, ‘Grant! You might as well come down. We’ve got you in a corner like the rat you are. What’s your answer?’
From out of the darkness above a wooden stool came bouncing down, which O’Higgins barely dodged.
Fidelis took the stool and sat on it while O’Higgins paced up and down. Half an hour passed, and then another, during which old Tom Garnish wandered out of his room, saying he was damned if he could sleep. It was near six o’clock. I guided him down the stairs and told him to go and find Bridie. Of the members of the household that had been gathered on the landing below, I found that some had now gone back to bed, while others sat on the floor, huddling for warmth, to await developments. I smelled smoke and was told a few had returned to the hearth-room, stoked up the fire and were toasting bread on it. It was still dark, but the day was beginning.
