The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7)

by Nathan Dylan Goodwin

  ‘Oh, hi,’ he answered casually. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Muddling along as usual,’ she said. ‘What about at your end?’

  ‘Great, thank you. Grace is tucked up in bed and Juliette went back to work today.’

  ‘Oh, dear. I don’t imagine she liked that,’ Margaret sympathised. ‘I was more than happy to give up work when I had the girls.’ She chuckled.

  ‘I think she went back with mixed feelings—it was her choice to go back,’ he said, feeling an odd sense of defensiveness, as though he had been the one forcing her back to work against her will.

  ‘It’s the way these days,’ she said.

  ‘Yes,’ Morton found himself agreeing, although to what, he wasn’t quite sure.

  A pause in the conversation began to swell as they both circumvented what she needed to say, and what he was waiting to hear.

  He decided to plough straight in. ‘So, have you—’ but his words collided with her saying, ‘So, I’ve made a decision…’ Another awkward pause. ‘Sorry, go on,’ he said.

  ‘I’ve made a decision about coming down,’ she repeated, before adding an unnecessary moment of suspense akin to a television talent show host on the verge of announcing a winner’s name.

  ‘Right,’ Morton said coolly, as though he had forgotten all about it.

  ‘Jim and I will be coming to Grace’s party.’

  The curdling mixture of anxiety and elation instantly returned to Morton’s stomach. ‘Brilliant,’ he replied. ‘I’m so pleased you’ll be there.’

  ‘So, we’ll be arriving at the hotel across the road from you just after lunchtime tomorrow.’

  Morton felt a cold lurch inside him as the reality of the situation dawned on him. Jack, Laura and George were arriving just after lunchtime tomorrow. He glanced at the clock in the top corner of his laptop: 8.56pm. In fact, if their flight had been on time, they would be in the air right now.

  ‘Excellent,’ Morton muttered, wondering if he should go to the hotel to greet them, or have them come to the house. Since they would be meeting at the party, he opted to plummet straight into the abyss. ‘Jack, Laura and George will be here around that time; would you like to come for dinner, as it’s Grace’s actual birthday tomorrow?’

  Margaret cleared her throat. ‘Yes, that would be lovely if it’s not too much trouble?’

  ‘No trouble,’ Morton answered.

  ‘Smashing. We’ll see you tomorrow afternoon, then.’

  ‘Great—have a good journey.’

  ‘Bye.’

  He said goodbye, ended the call and looked with bewilderment at the photograph of Jack and Margaret together in 1974, wondering what an earth kind of awkward mess dinner tomorrow night was going to be.

  ‘What have I done?’ he said to himself.

  Chapter Twelve

  26th March 1822, outside the town boundary of Dover, Kent

  The cold night sky seemed endless to Sam, as he stared up in awe at the tiny white dots littered against the pale grey backdrop. His neck stiffened, and he gently rolled his head around, grimacing at the clicking of his bones. He glanced sideways, in the direction of where Alexander Spence and Thomas Brazier had disappeared some minutes before. On this part of the coastline, just outside of Dover, nothing moved or stirred but the gentle roll of the tide. He gazed out at the erupting, cream-tipped waves, breaking a short distance from him, seemingly conjured from a dark hem sewn between earth and sea.

  He turned to stroke the horse which was tethered beside him, after it had snorted and impatiently pawed one of its hoofs on the ground.

  ‘They not be long,’ Sam said, giving a firm slap to its shoulder.

  He looked again into the darkness, but there was no sign of the two men.

  In a drunken agreement last night, Spence and Brazier had accepted Ransley’s request for two volunteers to earn extra money. Sam had brought them down to Dover in one of Ransley’s horse and carts in order to purloin as many compasses and telescopes as the two men could plunder. Sam hoped, as he searched the horizon in the direction of the moored vessels, that the fact that no ruckus or disturbances had so far occurred meant that the two men were being successful in their task. He wondered now, in chilled sobriety, how the men measured their decisions. It had been another night of liquor and debauchery at the Bourne Tap. A night which had seen several barrels of rum, ale and brandy run dry, as was becoming the custom there. At the margin of the gaiety, Sam had studied Ann closely, as she had danced merrily and without inhibition. His scrutiny of her had been laden with an unhealthy amalgam of admiration for her free spirit, an appreciation of her curative talents and, increasingly of late, growing desire. Her coquettish behaviour towards him was, like her entire demeanour, capricious and seemingly governed by whim. One moment she was pulling him into a flirtatious dance, pressing her breasts against him knowingly, while the next moment she was aloof, apathetic. It was all part of her wild existence, he reasoned, her way of resisting the normality of a staid life. Yet he could see that she was becoming restless with this way of life, too, and he wondered where her impulsive internal compass would take her next.

  His reveries were interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a pistol firing.

  Sam’s heart kicked into a higher rhythm as he scanned the coastline for the location of the gunfire. He couldn’t be completely certain, but it had come from the approximate direction in which the two men had headed.

  ‘Damn it,’ he cursed, withdrawing his own pistol and beginning to load it. He held the weapon unsteadily in his weak right hand and began to jog towards the gunfire.

  Another shot resounded loudly.

  He was getting close now and so slowed his pace to steady his breathing. A dragging sense of inadequacy diminished his valiant dash towards the confrontation, as violent shaking in his right hand forced him to switch the pistol to his left.

  Muffled grunts and the sound of tussling were emanating from the shingle just up ahead. Silhouetted figures—at least four of them—were brawling and shouting at one another.

  Sam crouched down and took a moment to allow his eyes to discern any detail from the darkened scuffle. He flinched as another musket pierced the air. Then he saw what looked like a gun tumbling to the ground, then another.

  The behaviour of two of the men, whom Sam could now identify as Spence and Brazier, suddenly slackened into compliance, becoming submissive to their captors.

  Sam needed to act now to save them or it would be too late.

  Something—whether pure cowardice, an unfavourable appraisal of the potential outcome, or the flashing into his mind of images of his family—entrenched him, making his breathing heavy and his hands tremble.

  The striding crunch of the men’s boots away from him chimed perfectly with the weakening of Sam’s resolve to act to save them.

  He watched as their shadows melded, shrank and then vanished.

  An overpowering shudder coursed across his flesh and he dropped his pistol to the ground.

  Sam stood quietly staring into the impenetrable oblivion of where the men had disappeared, as if he could somehow will them to return. But they did not and another shudder, this time streaked with the cold night air, ran down his body.

  Stooping to pick up his pistol, Sam turned and slowly trod back to the horse and cart.

  The revelries at the Bourne Tap were continuing when Sam descended from the horse and strode into the warm room. Richard Wire was playing on his violin and several dancers—their faces glazed with sweat—were making merry under the gapes of the ale-swigging men and women stood at the edges of the room. Various games of dice and dominoes were taking place on candlelit tables.

  ‘Oh, look what be here!’ Ann shouted, tossing her head this way and that.

  Sam nodded embarrassedly, not liking the eyes of the place upon him.

  Ann twirled over to him clumsily, lifted her hand to his face and ran the backs of her hot fingers down his cheek. ‘What be the matter with your cruppish face, Samuel?�
�� she asked.

  ‘They be captured,’ he answered quietly. ‘Brazier and Spence.’

  Ann’s gaiety dissipated instantly, and he could tell by the change in atmosphere around him that others had heard it too and were now affected in their movements and conversations.

  ‘What plaguesome news be this, Sam?’ It was Ransley, stomping in from outside.

  Sam forced himself to meet Ransley’s glowering face. ‘Preventative Officers tooked Spence and Brazier.’

  ‘Starf take those tarnal men!’ Ransley bellowed. He blew his cheeks out, sending a mist of fine spittle over Sam. He turned his face and yelled into the corner, ‘Wire! That be enough of that damned infernal racket. All of you—’ he gestured wildly to the room, ‘—be getting on your way.’

  The unspoken truth that had existed since the very first days of the Aldington Gang was that the death of a smuggler was infinitely more preferable to capture. A dead tubman or batman could be replaced by any one of a number of eager farm hands; a captured tubman or batman, however, who might be strong-armed into turning King’s evidence could bring down the entire enterprise.

  Ransley was breathing noisily, impatiently, whilst he waited for the room to clear. When it was, he spoke quietly to Sam. ‘We be needing to get them out.’

  ‘From Dover Gaol?’ Sam questioned.

  ‘That be right. Be thinking on it,’ he said, patting Sam on the shoulder.

  Sam said goodbye and strolled back out into the night, his conscience all the heavier for not having offered or received any blame in the night’s unhappy conclusion. As he walked home, he replayed the events in his mind, wondering if he might have been up to the job of shooting the Preventative Officers. Perhaps, he considered, merely stepping forward and outnumbering them might have been enough to have saved the two men.

  When he reached Braemar Cottage, he found Hester and Ann in the parlour, obviously waiting for what news he brought.

  ‘What be a-happening?’ Hester demanded.

  ‘Two men be captured down Dover,’ he answered.

  ‘The two what you carted down there?’ she asked, her voice faltering with something Sam guessed to be somewhere between anger and incredulity. He nodded his agreement and her face knotted in utter exasperation. ‘You buffle-headed fool, Sam Banister! When do you be a-learning?’

  ‘What would you be having me do?’ he shouted back. ‘I bain’t even able to lift a shovel on the parish farm.’

  ‘We be a-managing,’ she replied, a hint of understanding finally creeping into her voice. ‘We a-done it before, Sam…’

  ‘That were different,’ he countered, ‘that were an ‘andful of days without labour; I can’t be working, Hester, in no other job. It be this or the poorhouse.’

  Hester rolled her eyes and he could see her on the verge of daring to say that the workhouse might be preferable. He stiffened himself to rebuke her, but she did not speak; Ann did.

  ‘What be happening to Spence?’ she asked, quickly adding, ‘And Brazier?’

  Sam knew that Ann had become friendly with Spence since she had helped to heal the rope burns on his hands. He gave a churlish shrug, borne out of his jealousy for their friendship.

  ‘Happen you should rescue them, case they be getting jawsy,’ Ann said pointedly.

  ‘Happen we might be,’ Sam replied, on his way to the stairs. ‘I be going to bed.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  9th August 1822, Dover, Kent

  The horse-drawn coach arrived at Dover Quay, pulling up beside the Gun Inn—an untidy amalgamation of one small squat building and one very thin narrow one, sandwiched between a long run of warehouses.

  Ann Fothergill stepped down from the coach wearing a straw bonnet over her curled hair, which she wore from a central parting. Without asking, she had borrowed Hester’s best outfit: a striped open gown with fitted bodice and elbow-length sleeves.

  She breathed deeply, drawing the warm blended smells of the bustling quay to her nose. She savoured the sour mixture, separating them into their individual scents of tar, rope, fish and sea salt. She inhaled deeply, as she took in the humming quay: merchants were busy trading; cargo was being loaded onto the abundance of moored vessels; sweaty fishermen were heaving great crates of mackerel, plaice and cod into stacks on the wharf; ragged women and children were running handcarts of wares from a Dutch luger into waiting wagons.

  A hint of a smile crept onto Ann’s face at being back in the town and remembering her time here—so very different from her existence in Aldington village. Then she recalled the purpose of her visit here and her smile faded and the melancholic veil, which had been present for these last weeks, returned to her shoulders.

  With a briskness which she hoped might restore her doughy heart, Ann marched into town. The notion of unusual business which she had detected on the outlying streets became undeniable when she reached the Charlton High Road in the centre of town. Great swathes of people from the lower echelons of society jostled at the edges of the road; ostlers, brewers and labourers stood elbow-to-elbow with prostitutes, vagabonds and thieves.

  Ann pushed unapologetically through the crowds, receiving the curses and devil-looks from those into whom she ran.

  The crowds on Black Horse Lane were an astonishing seven or eight deep; she had no hope of getting anywhere near to the front.

  Turning sideways, Ann attempted to edge her way between the two men in front of her. They turned simultaneously and scowled at her. ‘Watch it, lady,’ one of them growled.

  ‘He be my brother,’ Ann lied, with a sniff. ‘Please be letting me through.’

  One of the men remained resolute, the other huffed, then stepped aside to allow her to squeeze into the gap. ‘Hey, be letting this lady through—she be his sister,’ the man said, tapping the shoulder of the person in front of him.

  The news that the condemned man’s sister was in the crowd rippled through, magically opening a narrow gap through which Ann could push to the front. Though this was far from the first time that she had witnessed a hanging, she gasped when she saw the wooden gallows just opposite her. From the large windows of the Black Horse Inn, directly behind and facing them, Ann ruefully spotted the better-classed spectators—seated men in fancy coats and breeches, who had paid more than one pound for the privilege of a front row seat. In the main central window four seats had been left vacant. She scanned across the faces of the other men and saw someone whom she thought that she recognised. She pushed herself forward, squinting hard. He was standing behind one of the chairs, chatting to the Preventative Officer seated before him. The man was tall and handsome with a neat dark moustache and dressed in an expensive-looking coat. She was staring hard at him, trying to pull information from her mind as to from where she knew him. Perhaps it was here, at a previous hanging where she had seen him. He certainly was distinguished-looking and someone whom she might have noticed. The man suddenly shifted his attention and began to glance down at the crowd. Ann went to look away but it was too late; their eyes locked and certain familiarity dawned on the pair of them simultaneously.

  The seated Officer in front of him pointed down the street and the rest of the men beside him suddenly became agitated. The crowd, too, erupted in heightened, excited conversation and Ann heard a chorus of shouts to the effect of ‘There he is!’

  Ann caught the first glimpses of the horse and cart making its way up the street to the taunts and jeers of the crowd. Looking back up to the window, there was no sign of the man, with whom, Ann now knew with certainty, she had chatted at the Bourne Tap, despite his almost complete alteration in appearance. It was the same man whom she had witnessed handing money to Hester in the parlour of Braemar Cottage, and whom Hester had named as Jonas Blackwood. He had recognised her, too, and had now vanished.

  By now the people around Ann had worked themselves into a near-frenzy at the sight of the approaching horse and cart.

  Ann’s breath caught in her throat when she took the sight in fully. Sitting beside th
e driver was the fat heavy-faced executioner, the rope coiled portentously in his lap. At the rear of the cart, sitting upon what would be his own coffin, was Alexander Spence. He was sitting, legs apart with his head facing downwards and hands tied behind his back. Next to him stood a vicar, eyes closed, muttering a prayer.

  The driver brought the cart to a standstill, before expertly manoeuvring the open rear so that it slid precisely underneath the gallows.

  A lavish carriage drew to a halt beside the cart and out stepped the town mayor, Henshaw Latham, and several other dignitaries whom Ann had seen at previous executions. They all wore fine top hats, lavish long coats, high collars and the regalia of their respective offices. The crowd greeted them with a muddled chorus of cheering and heckling, as the line of four illustrious gentlemen entered the Black Horse to take the prime seats in the upstairs window.

  The executioner loafed over to Alexander and hoisted him up under the armpits, so that he was directly below the end of the horizontal beam.

  Ann called out his name but her words were lost in the excited commotion of the mob around her.

  Alexander nodded respectfully to the uniformed man who had risen onto the gallows beside him: the Preventative Officer whom Alexander had repeatedly attempted to shoot dead.

  ‘Be saving him!’ Ann shouted at the officer, knowing full well that even if he had heard her, and even if he had been so minded, the decision to execute Alexander was sealed. Appeals for clemency at sparing this twenty-two-year-old man were rebutted and Sam’s attempt back in April to break him out of Dover Gaol had failed when Alexander had been captured attempting to flee across the Channel to France. This was it. She was witnessing the last moments of his life.

  The din from the thronging mass around her crescendoed to a new height, as the hangman raised a grubby hessian hood to Alexander’s head. He took one final fleeting glance at the crowd, his eyes momentarily locking on to Ann’s. ‘Goodbye, Alexander,’ she whispered hopelessly, the acute stab of guilt that had brought her here lancing at her heart. Naively believing that she had stood a chance with the widowed doctor, she now regretted the way that she had dealt with Alexander at the Bourne Tap back in November, having barely acknowledged him since. But now, with the news having reached her that Ralph Papworth-Hougham had married a girl from Folkestone, she could see her foolishness set out clearly before her.