The Sea Officer Bentley Thrillers

by Jan Needle

  The nub was, when they’d talked it round and round, that a movement started many months before, resisted “on the lower deck” and fought and argued over passionately, was getting close to being clinched irrevocably. The Kent and East Sussexers would no longer be gainsaid, and the local venturers and shadows had decided to go in. There was money in the question, a mint; thirty, forty, fifty thousand pounds perhaps. In a week or two — Isa and Mary were vague on this — there was to be a meeting of the sides, possibly with a brandy run as a diversion, an enormous show of arms to discourage interference and, perhaps, to mark it as a special time. Behind the beach though, in a house they used beside the River Adur mouth, would be the highest-level business, a shaking of hands and meeting of minds among the greatest of the shadow-guard, the venturers. It was this rendezvous, and the local names behind it, that Charles Warren and Charles Yorke had uncovered or been on the point of doing, and had therefore had to die. After the rendezvous, said Mary, such sort of action, such beastliness, would spread along the coast like cancer.

  Outside, people were calling as they crossed the causeway, cows were lowing. It only served to emphasise the quietness within.

  “These men,” asked William, at last. “These local men. They are not working people, like yourselves. What kind of men are they? If we were to, somehow, get to this rendezvous… how would we know…?”

  He let the question tail, because he had a growing sense inside, a vague foreboding. But Isa Bartram, impatient, interrupted him.

  “What mean you? Get to the rendezvous? Lord, sir, there will be the wildest men to guard it in three counties, men of blood and iron. We told you, a show of force unprecedented. We did not tell you this to have you murdered out of hand! An’ you went near it you would be torn to pieces!”

  “Then what,” asked Sam, “have you in mind? You’ve told us for a reason, we are not bumpkins, are we? What is it that you hope we’ll do? And why?”

  “The ‘why’ is simple!” said Mary, passionately. “John Hardman, and Mr Yorke, and Warren! We are free traders, we earn a living, not a great one neither, and everybody knows the law is mad and breaks it at their will and buys their necessary luxuries from us! We are not savages, nor murderers, nor rich! The ‘what’ we have no real idea of, except you’re of the Navy Royal and we have trusted you. You could have us hanged, the lot of us, the moment that you go away from here. Or you can find a way to help us, if you can. Us and our country, that needs it sorely. These new ways; this greed for money. It is growing out of conscience, it is wrong!”

  Bartram, whose lean and bitter features were not prone to warmness, looked at Mary with pity and affection, and leaned to touch her arm.

  “You see,” he said, “we are not common criminals. John died for honesty, despite he took some cash for it. If you don’t have us hanged and we’re found out by the great ones we want to thwart — well then, we’ll all end up butchered too, I guess. Mary is fearful for the future of her little Jem. I too have children. I wonder who would take them in?”

  “But we are midshipmen,” said Sam. “We are the lowest of the low in some respects. If we had times and dates and places, well, perhaps we could set up a Customs force. We have been told they should cooperate, but we are Navy men, as you so rightly say, and the rivalry is bitter. Likewise if we tried to get the Navy in, what would the Customs say? In any way, we need times and places, something firm, or we will be laughed out of court. You say next week, or later. How can we work on that?”

  Bartram nodded.

  “I see your troubles, but… Look, I can try to find out more, although we are in suspicion, because of John. Can you not go away and try yourselves? Not to find out the detail, but if you can get a force? The Navy would be better because we know the Customs too damn well. Some would be bought off, some would blab your secrets to the families, and if they made the beach and the force was strong or odds too great, they’d run. Warren and Yorke, among their other annoyances, were not bribeable. The way they died will make all lesser men think hard before they copy them, I promise you. Whatever else I’ve heard about the Navy, courage is not a doubt, is it?”

  He did not need an answer, although Will’s mind, and Sam’s, slipped on to Kaye and his absurdities. But they took the point about the Customs House. This operation, if it should come, would be a facer even for the bravest men. They could call in dragoons perhaps, more like militia or the mounted yeomanry, but then again… It was not so very long ago that they’d been hunted by that sort of gallant band, and jailed. For what? For catching smugglers.

  “We will go,” said Will decisively. “We will try. If we had names, you understand; if we could name men and say that they’d killed Warren and Yorke?” He sighed. “No, it would be too easy. And even if you knew, and told, you would be done to death. But without names we can only stick our necks out and make promises, predictions. It may go hard with us to drum up a response.”

  “We do not know the names,” said Mary. “Believe us, Will. We were thorns in their side in this right from the start, and you’re right, they’d kill us. They’d kill us if they knew about your being here, if they knew the half of what we’d told you. It’s growing dark. You must wait until it’s truly black before you do set off. Isa and the friends will look out for you and set you on your way. Look, there is bread and cheese and I will mash some tea. Isa, go next door and bring your Kate and the children in, let’s have a little normality round here. And let me say that when we have a date, a fair idea, you will know of it. But we will need a go-between to get the news to you, or one of you will have to ride again. We must work that out.”

  She went and checked the kettle as it bubbled, and stirred the fire under it.

  “Now, tea,” she said.

  *

  Before they left, three hours later when it was pitchy dark, Mary took some trouble to speak to Will alone. Sam had gone outside to see the horses and talk to Isa and the others, with whom he was much easier now all the cards were out. Will would have gone, but Mary held him with a look.

  “A word,” she said. “I hope we meet again, but if we don’t, I wish to say farewell, and properly. I need to thank you face to face for trusting me. And say sorry if I’ve used deceit.”

  Will protested, but she shook her head.

  “Céline,” she said. “Young Sally, who we told you was a Guernsey maiden. She’s not as you now know, and her usual job, that I so gulled you on, is to get Frenchmen back to France, man-smuggling, under the Customs’ very noses. And yours, I suppose, the Navy’s. I’m sorry.”

  Sorry for what, he wondered. For deceiving him? But what about her patriotic duty, the treachery involved? He caught her gaze and found his mouth was open. He had been about to speak, but no words had come.

  “You take it very light,” he said. He faltered. “But Mistress Broad; our countries are at war!”

  She hastened to explain then, and he tried hard to take it in. Firstly, she said, Céline brought Englishmen across the Channel too, it was a both-ways trade. She was French, yes, and they were the enemy, but not many years ago they had been allies against the Dutch or Spanish, and would doubtless be again. Sometimes she worked with Englishmen, on the same boats, sometimes exchanging prisoners in mid-sea. Sometimes it turned out that the Frenchmen she took back were English in reality, going to be spies she guessed, and she it was who had been tricked — except that Englishmen she brought were sometimes French.

  “It is a job like any other for a smuggler,” she said. “Frowned on by authority, deep against the law, but there to make the wheels go round. Céline would tell you, if she were here, she would explain to you. Vive la commerce would be her motto — long live business.”

  Will wrestled with it, but sensibly he was shocked. Later, as they picked slowly through benighted countryside, he wondered if he should bring it up with Sam but decided, on the whole, it would be better left unsaid. When his friend raised the subject on his own account, as they sheltered under trees during a heav
y downfall, he was non-committal, but not surprised by Holt’s vehemence. Of all the parts of the free traders’ story, Sam averred, it was the one he hated most. But when he’d raised it with Isa on the Langstone foreshore, the dour smuggler had only laughed.

  “They don’t take it serious at all,” he added. “He says it’s part of normal intercourse between countries at war, else all the jails would burst. He says she’s working now, down at the Medway, there’s a ship expected, a rendezvous set up, he was as open as a drunkard’s cellar door. The only trouble is, he might be joking me, it might be another strand he’s laying up to tie us with. Dear God, I wish we had the picture laid out straight, don’t you?”

  William felt the chill rain dripping down his neck, but could not reply. He was tired, rather lonely, getting cold. They had only been abroad two hours, and there were many hours more. He thought of bed and thought, inevitably, of Deborah. Beneath him, his horse blew through its nostrils, noisily.

  “They’re using us,” Sam said. “They’re using us unmercifully, you understand that much, don’t you, my friend? My feeling is the French maid may be the real heart of it, but my trouble is I can’t be sure. I can’t make up my mind if we should be aiding them at all, I only know they’re using us, unmerciful.”

  Will wrestled with that too, but had to ask, at last. How using them, did Samuel not believe there was a meeting coming off, that a force to shatter it might not bring off a fairly mighty coup? But yes, Sam did believe it, but then again he thought it half the story, half or even less.

  “We’re being used to save the locals’ bacon, that’s what I think,” he said. “They talk of rich shadows and a ruthless gang, but what it boils down to is they’re being took over by a bigger ‘family,’ God spare the word and me for using it. They want to stay small and masters of themselves, don’t they? To do mayhem, to murder, and to thieve. While Sally/Céline sells our country down the river.”

  “But don’t you believe they’re sickened by the last few weeks? By Yorke and Warren’s deaths? By John? Hell, Sam, I can’t think Mary’s acting it! Nor Isa for that matter. He seems an honest man.”

  “Aye! For a smuggler! For a merchant in cold steel and instant death! Nay, Will, don’t look so glum, my opinion’s not so far from yours, in actual. They’re using us, I guess, because there is no other way, and who knows, we might even bring it off. I wish they’d tell us who the ‘shadows’ were, though. Not the murderers, I believe them when they say they do not know. But these rich venturers, around Hampshire and West Sussex and so on. It is the way they looked at us when they did not give us names. Ah well, a different kind of power, I suppose. The sort of respected gentlemen who threw us into jail in Kent. It is a murky bloody game they play, when all is said.”

  At any rate, they both agreed, as they shook rain from off their hats and cloaks and prepared to set out along the sodden track now the worst of the storm was done, there was no fault in breaking up a smuggling gang, even if by doing so they helped another thrive. Their first move, after going to Sir A to tell the latest, should be to tempt Slack Dickie with it as a plan, which neither of them guessed as easy.

  Helping the Customs would not appeal at all, except there was a clear chance to beat them at their own work and show them as incompetents, and a battle on a beach would be a hard and bloody venture, with long odds. Sir A had said keep clear of him as well, advice they both agreed was only good. But with the dearth of concrete facts they knew, with a venture based on speculation only, they could hardly dare to try for other Navy aid. Lord Wodderley had issued firmer orders now, Sir A had promised, and Kaye could not refuse them, despite he’d scorned instructions once. They could but go and try, in any case. If he spurned them, they would have to think again.

  “I know the Adur well where it goes into the Channel,” said Sam, “it is my patch. There are not many houses it could be, I have a fair hazard already as to which. If all else fails we could go down there on our own account and watch it happening. We might even recognise some of the perpetrators! The sort of men like Chester Wimbarton, no doubt. Somehow, we might even spot the murderers.”

  This sounded ludicrous beyond belief, but Sam insisted it could be done if need be. The ideal thing, he said, would be to use a small press-gang as cover, a band with horses searching for seafarers as they were supposed to do, not hunting or expecting to have stumbled on a free trade game. If they saw crowds but played dumb and accosted no one, no one would accost them probably, and they could run at need. At very least, he added, seeing Will’s dubiety, he ought perhaps to spy out the land himself alone beforehand, or any band they brought or ship that landed men would face a rout. With stealth and his local knowledge that should be quite possible.

  They were close to Langham Lodge by this time, and looking forward to their beds, when ahead of them in a lucky shaft of moonlight they saw three men on horseback. They both reined in precipitately, but even before the flash of light was gone they knew it was an ambush. “Left!” bellowed Sam, then kicked out to steer him to the right. As they left the track and got on to the soft, in pitch dark once more mercifully, there came a smaller, redder flash ahead of them, followed by a loud report, a scattergun or blunderbuss with heavy charge. Shortly there was another gun let off, a musket crack this one, then they heard shouts and imprecations. The ground beneath their horses quickly became too soft for speed or safety, so they got back on the road, though very fearful. Within two minutes they were under threat, and going at top speed, and praying there were not more villains waiting up ahead.

  The chase went on, on highway and down by-ways that Sam knew, for more than twenty minutes, although none of the shots that they heard fired came close. They had come from Emsworth at a slack pace, stopping to watch for followers and to shelter frequently, and Sir Arthur’s horses were of the best. After an hour — miles past Langham Lodge — they drew in rein behind thick undergrowth, and watched and waited for another hour. Then it was a case of finding the London road once more, and keeping out a constant weather eye. To east the sky was lightening, and market traffic from farm and dairy soon started to build up. By the time they reached the London Bridge, full dawn was wanting half an hour. Hungry and tired as they were, they did not use the Bear’s Paw at Southwark. Whoever their attackers had been — just highway rogues or part of some conspiracy — they knew where Sir Arthur Fisher lived, it seemed, and might know more. It was Will’s idea to try the rendezvous, not take a boat so far downriver as the Biter, because it was unlikely Lieutenant Kaye would deign to share quarters with a dockyard crew. He’d be asleep and snoring at the Lamb; and there would be a better breakfast there.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The great surprise, when they faced Kaye across a table, was the change in his demeanour and his attitude towards them. They had slept a while, after some bread and bacon, but left instruction that they must be called when the lieutenant rose. They approached in trepidation as he sat with meat and coffee in the best parlour room, feeling and looking like two rather weary tramps. They had thought and talked themselves to stalemate before sleep had come to them, they had assessed their chances with increasing gloom. On appearances alone he could have turned them out, let alone when they broached their thorny subject. He could have turned them out, he could have shouted, he could have used them with his customary contempt. Instead a broad grin stretched his face, and he gestured them to sit.

  “Lord, lord,” he said. “So we’ve quit the service, have we? Two proper long-togs, who could use a wash and wigs. By the walks, you’ve got sore arses, too. Have you ridden far?”

  As they sat he called a boy across, for coffee cups and plates and irons. He was beaming, in a fine good humour. They mumbled pleasantries, but he brushed off their apologetics.

  “I did not thank you, friends, before you left the other night,” he said. “Rude oversight but you will bear with me I hope. It is not every day one lands to be arrested! That gallows lawyer, and Oxforde who strikes as a cadaver! You stood up t
o the questions like a pair of Trojans, and you saw them off most capitally. My deep appreciation, sirs.” That was not as they remembered it, but never mind. For whatever reason — and there would be reason, surely — it appeared their task might not be so hard at all, leastways not in the broaching and the explication. Their cups were filled, and the waiter brought an enormous plate of new hot rolls, with butter. Will took his cue from Sam, whose actions matched his landsman clothes — legs stretched, back arched outwards to ease the aches, and crunching like a lawyer’s clerk. If Kaye intended to be pleasant for a change, then hallelujah, let’s have some of that!

  He told them, in the next few minutes, that he’d had more information about their “strange activities” and knew, at least while Biter stayed in the dockyard, he was at liberty to let them have their heads. He did not wish to pry, but might he know if they had “further jaunts” in view, and if he might be, somehow, of any small assistance?