The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  They travelled all the afternoon, but this time with a purpose. After long discussion they had both agreed the best way, and the quickest, would be to try for information from the source, exploiting Will’s own past as well as his knowledge of terrain. Neither was confident that it would work, and if it did not they knew it would be dangerous, although — as Samuel said — they had the benefits of Sir Arthur’s guns, and cash, and two good horses, if they did not die of chill! They made for Chichester, a busy, lively town with men of business in the streets, and merchants, traders, solid citizens of every sort. They went into an inn, paid in advance for lodging there, and let themselves be seen at backgammon in the parlour, with not a care save a steamy dampness around the shoulders of their coats. They talked about the filthy weather with their fellow guests, and reckoned winter to be earlier each year. But they asked no questions, none of any sort.

  The ride to Langstone in the morning was a hard and anxious one, but they did it boldly and their bravery paid off. At breakfast they had wondered if their plan was wrong, but Sam was an impatient man, so set a time for them of two full minutes to come up with another one. They failed — although Will suggested they might get his boat from Port Creek and go by sea — so the subject was foreclosed. They ate a solid meal, checked their saddlebags and strapped them to their waiting horses, and clopped out beneath the arch into the clean, fresh, sunny air. The main streets of Chichester were paved, and had been cleared and washed down in the night. A mile away, however, the westward road was a canal of liquid mud.

  It was crisp this morning, with white clouds blowing across a pale blue sky, but Will and Sam were sweating before much time had passed. The way was very busy, the bog-downs innumerable, and the labour to keep their horses out of the worst parts hard. Sam laughed at one stage that a boat trip would be fine indeed — except that Wills yawl was moored two miles beyond their destination. However, by sea they would have turned up like honest men, and not like two scarecrows made of mud and dung. Will further pointed out they had no idea of the state of tide, and that his yawl was in the mud eight hours out of twelve. Also, on horseback, they possibly had more chance of escape if the men they sought turned villainous. Smugglers, whatever else, were the very ace at seamanship.

  They passed through Emsworth beyond midday, which even Sam, from distant parts, knew as a haunt of the free trade. It was time to eat and wash and rest the mounts, so Will suggested Havant, a small market town just farther on, close to Langstone but not on the sea so less likely as a point of trouble. They chose a small inn in the shadow of the church, where they took a room to stow their saddlebags so they could travel light. It seemed they both still favoured going in, walking abroad, and seeing what might happen, and, strangely, it excited them, this dreadful inexperience as spies. Now it was close they relished the thought of action, any action.

  “I tell you what,” said Samuel, “I’m glad I joined the sea service, ain’t you? Much more of bouncing on a bloody leather saddle and my backside would explode. How far to Langstone? Why don’t we walk?”

  They did not, in case they needed to escape, but when they’d reached the outskirts they decided on the foreshore as the tide was low, tethered their horses, and mingled with the crowds around the Hayling Island causeway. The smell of mud from off the creek was keen, and Will snuffed at it with deep appreciation, although Sam was less enamoured. The village was a scattered one, so they strolled towards the mill and the cottages beyond, where Will had come ashore once and thought the fisherfolk — and smugglers — most likely lived. On the shingle, in fact, above high-water mark, there were some women working on nets, and one or two small children.

  Making contact, it came into them, making the first move, was going to be the hardest trick of all. The sun was out despite the cutting wind, so to begin the job they found a shingle bank above the beach, and sat. The women — three young, two older, one a matriarch — glanced at them uninterested, then ignored them, bending to their task. The children ran around about their business, and it occurred to Will that the robuster of the two young wives, aged somewhere not too far off twenty-five if he could judge, could well be Mary Broad, as he had guessed at that earlier time he’d come. What should he say or do, then? “Hallo, mistress, I knew Jesse Broad. Not only knew him but I watched him die?” In the bottom of the creek, between the island and the mainland mud, the water ruffled to a gust of breeze, and Will was cold. It was hard, so hard.

  The children did it for them in the end. They ran near them, a girl, two boys, in a wild and frantic chase, and one boy sprawled headlong almost at Sam’s feet. Before his screeches came, while he drew in a monstrous breath, Sam lifted him, and he did not struggle, but looked astonished for a moment, until the wail burst out for his mamma. All the women stopped as both men stood, and the boy kicked and pumped with legs and arms until the one that Will had noted walked across, not hurrying, but calm and purposeful. She had an open face, fiercely tanned from wind and weather, clear eyes and full kindly mouth. She put her hands out for the child, and he wriggled into them and bawled.

  “Thank you, sir,” she said. “Now Jem, my Jem, my little love. Come on, Mamma’s got you, where does it hurt? Your knee?”

  Jem. The name struck into Will, the memory of Jesse Broad stabbed home. He’d talked of Jem, sometimes, to soothe Will in his fevers. He’d talked of Jem, and goodwife Mary, and of home.

  “Mistress,” he said. He almost stumbled. “I think I know you, I think you are Mistress Broad. I knew your husband. My name is Bentley. William.”

  She did not start, she did not shriek or drop the child, but stared at him. She was a little taller than he was, and more robust, in dark grey wool and a dull red skirt. She held the child, and patted him and cooed, until the squall of tears passed by. The tension in the air, for Will and Sam, was extraordinary, but she was oblivious. Pats, and coos, and cuddles, and a level, daunting gaze.

  “I know your name, sir. I am pleased to meet you, after all these years. I never did expect to see you here.”

  “Mary!” called the youngest woman. “How does it with Jem? Peter wants his playmate back, he says.”

  It was a check to see she was not needful, and Mary glanced across her shoulder, smiling.

  “I must return my little boy,” she said. “Jesse’s little boy, poor mite. What do you here, sir? An accident, a passing-by, a social call? You have left the Navy, I suppose, they said that was the strongest rumour. Do you have business hereabout?”

  “Peter! Peter!” cried the little boy. “Mamma, I want to play with Peter!”

  She slipped him down on to the shingle and he scampered off. The other women were still watching, halfway to suspicious. She waved to reassure them, but was in no hurry to return. Sam, visibly, was relaxing, but William blushed furious. In all his life before he had never known women so prepared to talk out loud to men, and now it was a day-to-day occurrence. Except she called him sir, this one could have been his equal, it would seem. Yet Sam was grinning, and suddenly sprawled down to sit on the bank again, without a by-your-leave. Scandalous.

  “Mistress,” he said. “My name is Samuel Holt and I’ll level with you while Will here tries to get his knots untied. I may die for saying this because we don’t know you, but what the hell’s life for if not to take risks? Despite our togs, despite the crazy headgear, we’re in the Navy still and we sought you for a reason not your company, however excellent that has proved to be, pardon my boldness. Will knew your husband — nay, I may tell you that he loved him — and you seem well disposed to Will. We need some information, madam. Pray say you’ll talk to us.”

  Mary’s eyes were glistening, perhaps with tears. She turned to William. Who had the need for honesty, however deadly.

  “Your husband… Jesse… was a smuggler,” he said, to those unflinching eyes. “We know this, Mistress Broad, he told me, and he made me understand. We are seeking smu — We are seeking men who’ve murdered a Customs officer, and may have murdered two. It is a
matter for a friend, Sam’s unc — A friend who suffers badly from this case. Please: we need your help.”

  “The men are fishing,” said Mary, carefully. “Off the island, all of them.” Behind her the old woman was moving towards them, stooped but purposeful. Mary was aware of it. “Yes,” she said. “I have heard of what you did, sir. We do get messages from off the hulks sometimes, from those poor prisoners. I know the case, as well; the officers you’re talking of. Our men are all at sea, sir. We shall talk.”

  The old matriarch was up beside her, watching them through washed-out eyes that were as hard as pebbles.

  “These are seamen,” she said, in a voice both harsh and breathless.

  “What do they tell you, Mary? Their clothes are wrong. They’re Customs, or the Navy. They’re of the sea.”

  Samuel, who had stood at her approach, removed his hat and bowed.

  “Aye,” he said. “Well spotted, mother. Sam Holt’s my name, midshipman. My friend is Will, Will Bentley.”

  She uttered a harsh sound, that might have been a laugh almost. She gripped her stick and forced her head back so she could see him better.

  “God’s blood,” she said, “God’s blood and bones. We were going to have you killed, young man, one day. Well, here’s a fine one to come calling, isn’t it?”

  *

  The talking took three days, by the end of which Will felt that they had scratched the surface and Samuel that they had got much farther. The first evening they talked solely to the women, and rode the long road back to Chichester to sleep in safety, but by the second they were confident enough to stay in Havant, at the inn. They did some local travelling from the second day, escorted by men of the fraternity to visit other men, but it was all by water, and over short distances. The man who seemed the leader of the Langstone crew — although leadership was not a notion they would allow in their secret trade — was called Isa Bartram, and was the husband of Mary’s friend and neighbour Kate. He was a lean and dour sort, with beetle’s eyebrows, who was not disposed to openness with them, or to trusting anyone outside the tight-knit fellowship of men who used the twin havens joined by the drying creek he lived on. Two of the meetings indeed, so great was his suspicion of the landbound, were held on a fishing lugger off the East Winner shoals. And fishing did go on, too authentically to be just done as cover. William almost lost two fingers to a skate, and Sam was seasick.

  The first talk, soon after the introductions on the beach, was in some way a false dawn. Mary, it appeared, was as strong a person as Jesse Broad had been, who handled the old woman with grace and firmness. She introduced her as Seth Hardman’s mother, Hardman having died, she said, with her eyes on William, the night the Welfare’s men had pressed her husband. Murdered, she then added, another intelligence that had come from the incarcerees inside the prison hulks in Fareham creek. In the nature of a rebuke it was sufficient to satisfy the old woman, then Mary rebuked Samuel openly — but with equal kindness — for using words like “midshipman,” and Will Bentley s name, in front of people he did not know. Even in a village as small as Langstone, she pointed out, not everyone was to be trusted, and Widow Hardman — said with delightful humour — could have been a spy.

  Within five minutes the old one was back on the foreshore overseeing, while Mary, Kate and a young woman introduced as Sally, dark-complexioned with a tendency to silence, conducted the men into a nearby house. There was a kettle on the hob in the small, lightless kitchen-parlour, and very soon all were drinking tea. A turn-up for the books, thought William, and wondered idly if it would be of the finest sort, supped on by smugglers as normal perquisites, no duty paid. But it was dark and bitter, well below the leaf drunk in his father’s house, although Samuel relished it and smacked his lips for more, low swine.

  Mary was exceeding open with them, not overawed one whit by their presence and proximity, and she set out by explaining what Widow Hardman had meant by her earliest remarks. First news when Welfare had returned to England, long before the court martial on the Admirals flagship, had indicated Will Bentley as one of the chief villains, nephew and henchman to the unconscionable Daniel Swift. There had indeed been talk of assassination in the first months afterwards, and not just of him. But it was mainly wildness, was her opinion, engendered by frustration, drink, and anger that the Navy saw no ill in any but the common sailor, nor brooked suggestion that ills could be wider spread.

  “The thought of you lying in your sickbed, helpless in your father’s house near Petersfield, pretty undefended, struck some hotheads as enticing,” she said. “Not a worthy thought for men despising tyranny, but not unnatural, I suppose. There are such hotheads, we have some even in the local band.” She and Kate shared a smile. “John Hardman, let us say; who you will meet.”

  “Hardman?” said Sam. “What, the old dame’s son, is it?”

  “Her third,” said Kate. “The youngest. Seth died at the Navy’s hands, and Joseph, who was oldest, was lost at sea. John is not twenty years yet, Ma Hardman had but three but spread them out.” The amusement shared with Mary grew. “John came beyond a natural age, people round here insist. She’s a witch, no question of it.”

  “Did not even bother with a man to help her get him,” said Mary. “Now there’s proof! There’s an old chap down Bedhampton way who’s very fond of widows, but that don’t come into it, except with spoilsports! Want more tea?”

  Sam did, Will did not. When the fun had died down, Mary carried on.

  “In any way,” she told Will, “it was not long beyond that when better stories began to come out of the hulks. There was a man called Tobin, and a man called Harry Wilson, do you remember them? They told first how you were a friend of my Jesse, and fought with him and Mr Matthews at the end. Then that you refused to testify against the rebels, and others told us why. Wilson and Tobin, they got life, and Tobin later died of fever. But they’ve helped you, haven’t they? For folks round here will talk to you. If you had come alone, sir, on such a mission” — this to Samuel — “you’d likely have been killed. There’s no one more hated round these parts than Customs men, or those who give them aid.”

  Dark Sally gave a little chuckle, in her corner.

  “Unless it be the Press,” she said.

  Will was brooding on the fact he did not remember the two men who’d spoken up for him, or possibly had never even heard their names in all the crush of sailors on his uncle’s ship, either way a cause for shame. But Sam had picked up on Sally’s voice.

  “Ah, the Press,” he said. “A necessary evil some would say, but hated wherever seamen go, I will not deny. Your accent, maid. Or should I call you mistress? You’re not from here, I would guess?”

  “Nor am I married, sir. Your ear is quick. I come from Guernsey. I lived there till some years ago. French influence on my voice. Most people do not hear it.”

  “Least of all in so few words,” said Kate, gaily. She stood and walked across the kitchen, blocking Sally’s corner from their view, almost as if on purpose. She opened a small window, leaning out to listen, then stooped back.

  “Just play,” she said. “I thought I heard Jane bawl. My little one. But sirs, you’ve only hinted so far, Mary’s only sketched us in. My husband’s in the trade, I may be frank with you she says, but what exactly do you here? She says it is the matter of those spies. Cannot you tell us more? I fear you must.”

  Sam, with his nerve of iron, plunged in to tell them briefly and succinctly about Sir A and his lost nephew, and his agony of unknowing now Charles Warren had been found. There were so many mysteries to the case, he said, it was so unlike any normal run of war between the Customs and the so-called free trade, that Sir A was fearful he might never know the truth.

  “‘So-called?’” said Mary, mildly. “You might take care with words like that in certain quarters, I should say.”

  “Madam,” Sam answered, “I am a Navy officer, so everybody knows my public duty. I take your point though, and thank you for it. I suppose what I was
hoping to convey was the most unusual level of violence involved, the barbaric depths these people went to. Charles Warren’s body, I am told, was burnt, abused, dismembered. Pray God that is not normal in such cases in these parts.”

  From outside came the sound of children, and the higher screams of gulls. Inside, no one stirred.

  “Sir,” said Mary, finally. “It is not. I cannot go into details with you, you must understand our difficulties here. We live in fear of death ourselves, either from a bullet from a riding officer or the rope, and one man or woman cannot talk for all the others, least of all to officers of the Crown. Our menfolk will not get to shore until the early hours, or may decide to fish another tide. Until we’ve spoke to them we can go no further. Except to say, in part way if not all, we do agree with you. We know of it, we are not party to it, and it is a most dreadful case, inhuman, horrible. There. I have spoken. You must return tomorrow after we have conferred.”

  “You are the leader, aren’t you?”

  Sam let it out as an expostulation, which made Will jump. But Mary shook her head, unflustered. To Will she said: “I’d take him home now, Mr Bentley, his mouth is far too big for safety. Come back tomorrow when the men, I hope, will be here. It has been, I promise you, some sort of pleasure to me to have made your acquaintance at last. My Jesse was a fine man, and I mourn him still.”

  She stood, they all stood save for Sally, and Kate said, mildly but with purpose: “But realise the details of this talking will be passed on the instant you are gone, and will reach the men if… well, if by some sad chance you were acting to a purpose we know not.”