He had given her a wooden smile. ‘Will you be coming with me?’ he had asked.
‘Where?’
‘Chicago be where I planning on going after the trial be done—I got an old mate out there.’
‘But…Hester?’
Sam had grunted. ‘She bain’t coming.’ He had looked her in the eyes earnestly. ‘Please, Ann? Nobody be knowing us there, we can be man and wife… New start.’
She had sighed, a long, drawn out exhalation of feeling and then he had taken her hand in his, leaned across and kissed her.
The freezing cold seemed to slap Ann hard across the face, bringing her sharply back to the present. Somehow, she was alone outside the court, her red shawl standing out brightly against the thick falling snow.
Chapter Thirty-Five
As Morton approached Arthur Fothergill’s bungalow, he saw the large crowd of bemused onlookers, held back behind a long line of police tape. Among their number, he spotted Clara Garrow, quietly sobbing into her hand.
Morton reached the corner of the bungalow; at least, what was left of it. All that now remained was a scorched brick shell. The roof had collapsed and all of the front-facing windows had shattered. Narrow plumes of grey smoke rose from the indescribable ruins.
He looked at Clara’s devastated face, unsure of how to approach her and what he would say, exactly.
He hesitated for a few seconds longer, then walked over to her with a concerned expression. ‘Hi, Clara.’
She took a moment to recognise him, then quickly sniffed, wiped her eyes and tried to put on something resembling a brave face. ‘Oh, hello… Sorry.’
‘No need to apologise—it must have been a big shock,’ he said.
She nodded, as she hurried to catch a tear running down her left cheek.
‘I just knew…had a feeling from what Phil said to me on the phone that he was going to do something stupid,’ she managed to say through her sobs. ‘But I really didn’t think he was capable of this.’ She nodded towards the smouldering wreck in front of them. ‘I feel so stupid. To think I let him just steal my uncle’s guinea like that and then sell it on eBay. I feel sick. My poor uncle…’
‘Yes,’ Morton said, casting his eyes over the bungalow. ‘How is he?’
‘Bewildered, but absolutely fine,’ she said, sobbing. ‘The police came and got him after I told them that I was worried Phil was about to do something reckless.’
‘And they’ve got him now,’ Morton said, a statement more than a question, Juliette having already given him a summary of what had happened.
‘Thank God,’ she said. ‘They were waiting for him as soon as he left the house, but it was too late to stop the fire.’
A pause stretched out before them, then Morton said, ‘I don’t know if your uncle is still interested but I’ve almost finished on the case…’ Given all that had happened, it sounded a slightly pathetic and ridiculous thing to be discussing.
Clara smiled. ‘Thank you. Yes, he’s still interested in it. He wants to know all about Ann and her life. It was Phil who kept pushing those blasted guineas into everyone’s face.’
‘Okay, well I’m just waiting on the DNA results, then I’ll be in touch to arrange a meeting.’
‘Thank you,’ Clara said.
Six days later, Morton was sitting in the Coach House Coffee Shop in New Romney with Clara and Arthur. On the round table in front of them was a bulging folder, filled with his report and all of its associated evidence on the Fothergill Case. He had just finished giving a brief rundown on the gang and some of their exploits along the coast in the 1820s.
‘Smugglers!’ Arthur said, clearly delighted with Ann’s association with it. ‘I’ve heard of the Aldington Gang! To think that my great-grandmother worked for them as an apothecary. Well, I’ll be jiggered...’
‘Who’d have thought it?’ Clara said, nudging Arthur gently.
‘At some point in 1825, Ann took ownership of the Bell Inn—’
‘She took the gold guineas, didn’t she? To buy the pub,’ Arthur interjected, receiving a nod of agreement from Clara. Morton guessed that it had been a much-debated topic of conversation between them.
‘Well, I’ll come to those…contentious guineas in a moment,’ Morton replied. ‘Fast-forward to 1963 when a dividing wall in the fireplace in the Bell Inn was demolished and two bodies were discovered.’
‘Oh,’ Clara said, frowning at Arthur. ‘Ann didn’t kill them, did she?’ she added with a laugh.
‘Well…’ Morton began. ‘In that file is a great deal of evidence—circumstantial evidence—that suggests that yes, she might have killed them.’
‘What?’ Clara said. ‘I was joking.’
‘How can you know that?’ Arthur stammered, glancing from Morton to Clara.
‘The bodies were certainly put there after 1822. Someone I interviewed, who was there at the time of their discovery, Clive Baintree, said that the bodies were remarkably intact and showed no visible signs of violence. Now, that could mean any number of possibilities, one being that the two men met their end in a non-violent manner, and yet they were clearly murdered…’
‘Poison,’ Clara intuited.
‘Exactly,’ Morton said. ‘In 1963 it was never established who the two men actually were, but in October 1826, just days after two officers from Bow Street had arrested the main culprits from the Aldington Gang, those same two men—Jonas Blackwood and Thomas Nightingale—were called out to investigate a case in Ramsgate. The person employing them was apparently a man named Isaac Bull. The two officers arrived in Ramsgate, never to be heard of or seen again.’
Arthur curled his lower lip, half-accepting Morton’s theory. Clara scowled, clearly not convinced.
‘Ramsgate was where Ann Fothergill grew up,’ Morton explained. ‘Her mother married a man by the name of Isaac Bull.’
This additional information caused both Arthur and Clara to raise their eyebrows.
‘So, Ann’s mother’s husband killed the men, then, surely?’ Clara said, sounding as though she was not quite following the story.
‘Isaac Bull had died already in 1817,’ Morton clarified.
‘Oh,’ Clara said.
‘It’s my belief that Ann poisoned the two men in the hope that it would put a stop to the trial and save her friends from possible death, or, as happened, transportation for life.’
‘But, you said that these two policemen arrived in October 1826 and that Ann had left the gang in 1825… Why did she go to such extreme lengths?’ Clara asked.
‘The evidence points to her having a desire to save one man in particular, Samuel Banister, the group’s second-in-command. Ann lived in Braemar Cottage with them…’
‘Wasn’t that where they found those wretched barrels that Phil was after?’ Arthur asked.
Morton nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘And yet you still say that Ann didn’t take the guineas herself?’ Clara pushed.
Morton flipped some pages in the folder and spun it around to face Arthur and his niece. ‘Take a read of that.’
‘Oh, I can’t get a word of it,’ Arthur said, squinting hard at the page, then giving up and sitting back.
‘4th October 1821,’ Clara read slowly. ‘Location: Aldington. Nature of investigation: Smuggling. By whom directed: Mrs. Hester Banister…’ Clara stopped reading and looked up. ‘The wife of Samuel Banister?’
‘Yes. Just a few months after the gang’s first leader, Cephas Quested, had died, George Ransley picked up the reins with Samuel Banister as his deputy. It seems, though, that Hester had other ideas and wanted to put an end to the smuggling business once and for all.’
‘That seems a bit overly harsh,’ Clara said.
‘Yes,’ Morton agreed, ‘I thought the same thing. After I discovered that particular document, I spent a bit of time looking into Hester Banister. Two of her brothers, William and James, were hanged in 1800 for smuggling and…well, her maiden name was Ransley. She was George Ransley’s cousi
n. I guess she wanted to stop the same from happening to her husband.’
‘She took the gold!’ Arthur declared.
‘I believe so, yes,’ Morton said. He turned several more pages in the folder. ‘Look here, this is essentially a Poor Law record, where the parish have to help those most in need.’ His finger settled on the upside-down entry.
‘2nd March 1821,’ Clara read, ‘Paid for coal and—candles, is that?—candles for Braemar Cottage, requested by Ann Fothergill, lodging there. 8 shillings and 4 pence.’
‘They were poor, below the breadline,’ Morton relayed, turning more pages, ‘and yet…somewhere…here, just seven months later, Hester manages to settle a thirty-five-pound bill.’ He shook his head. ‘It’s unfathomable that the money came from anywhere else. I’ve checked close family to see if perhaps anyone had died and left them money, but nothing. It’s my belief, in the way that Samuel continued smuggling, that he was none the wiser about the guineas. I think, essentially, Hester spent them all behind his back.’
Clara found this last assertion amusing and laughed out loud. ‘My goodness!’
‘What I can’t account for in official documentation,’ Morton said, ‘is why Hester terminated the case. My best guess, though, would be that her husband found out, or that he was so embroiled in the gang that to bring them down would mean sending her own husband to the gallows.’
‘Well…’ Arthur said. ‘Where the blazes did Ann get the money to buy the pub, then?’
‘I think she simply saved for it or took out a mortgage: she was clearly an astute woman. Look at what she had in her name when she died. She educated herself, ran successful businesses and raised a son by herself. Frankly, given her upbringing, she’s to be applauded.’
Arthur cocked an eyebrow, seeming not to like this modest explanation.
‘Overlooking the minor issue of her being a murderess, of course,’ Clara reminded him with a wry smile.
‘Yes…’ Morton grinned. ‘In that respect, Ann failed slightly in this inspiring rags-to-riches story. The trial happened, the men were transported and Samuel Banister essentially went into a self-imposed exile.’
‘Do we know where he went?’ Arthur asked.
‘Chicago… Never to return. He was given a share of the reward money and I found his passage out of the country two days after the trial ended. He went out under the pseudonym of John Fothergill.’
‘Well, what does that tell you?’ Arthur muttered.
‘That they were much more than just smuggling friends?’ Clara suggested with another titter.
‘It certainly looks that way, yes,’ Morton agreed. ‘But, it seems Ann’s love life was a little more complex than that. As you know, I was waiting for the DNA results to come through. It took quite a lot of work to separate the various strands of your DNA, Arthur, but, using various online family trees and making links with some of your distant relatives on the Lost Cousins website, I’ve managed to identify the father of Ann’s baby.’
‘Well, go on!’ Clara encouraged. ‘Don’t keep us in suspense.’
Morton felt as though he should be asking for a drumroll, seeing the eagerness in their eyes. ‘His name was Jonas Blackwood—’
‘Oh, my goodness! The Principal Officer conducting the smuggling and murder investigations. So, he was one of the two…bricked up in the chimney…’ Clara said.
‘Yes, I’m afraid I believe so,’ Morton confirmed.
Morton closed his front door behind him with a sigh. He was grateful to be home, and grateful to have closed the Fothergill Case.
Juliette appeared from the lounge with Grace in her arms.
‘Dadda!’ Grace yelled.
‘Watch this, Dadda,’ Juliette said, taking a few steps backwards and placing Grace on the floor, standing. ‘Walk to Dadda.’
Grace smiled knowingly and, with deep concentration on her face, took six tentative steps into Morton’s outstretched arms.
‘Good girl, Grace!’ he said, planting a big kiss on her lips. ‘Well done!’
‘Wine?’ Juliette offered.
‘Absolutely,’ he replied.
‘No,’ Grace said.
Epilogue
21st July 1827, Hythe, Kent
Ann ran the bolts across the door, closing the inn for the night. Carrying a tallow candle in her hand, she walked slowly around the bar, extinguishing those candles affixed to the walls, leaving just the dying fire in the hearth. She exhaled as she climbed the stairs, and at the top, she paused outside of William’s room and listened for a moment to his soft wheezy breathing. She smiled and continued into her bedroom, where she placed the candle on the table beside her bed, the light illuminating the letter which had arrived that morning. With a sigh, she picked it up and re-read it. ‘My dearest Ann, I have found decent lodgings in the city—it be such a different place what can’t even be described. I have found work in a gentlemen’s stables, earning a decent wage. Ann, I beg you again to bring William and come and join me out here. Nobody knows nobody and asks no questions. There be folk here from all around the world. We could be having such a life here—man, wife and son. Think proper on it, Ann. Could I be asking another question of you, my dear Ann? Before the Great Trial you be saying that the barrels of guineas did exist, but they be long gone. Where do they be and how do you be knowing it for certain-sure? I will close now, dear Ann and say again my desire for you and William to be coming here. Your loving Sam.’
Ann stared at the letter, which, judging by the handwriting and some choices of words, Sam had clearly asked somebody else to write for him, wondering how she would respond. The answer to the first part—his offer for her to go out to him in Chicago—was easy: there was no way such a thing was going to happen. She felt reciprocal feelings for him and, were that the end of the matter, she might well have gone to him. What she had here, though, her own life and business, was too much to surrender. That, coupled with the secret buried in the fireplace, which she could not risk anyone discovering, made the decision firmer in her mind. Ann also knew that part of Sam’s desire for them to join him stemmed from his believing that he was William’s father, something which, from the child’s appearance of late, she now doubted very strongly. Her actions and the effects of smuggling would forever hold her in the Old World, whilst Sam had a fresh start in the New World.
And what could she say to the second part of his letter, about the guineas? That she had known of their location since 1821? When, in his feverish delirium, Sam had told her and Hester that they had been buried beneath Widow Stewart’s pigpen, something which Ann had dismissed at the time as the fantasy of a hallucinating mind. It had only been by chance on the night of the arrests that Ann had seen Hester appearing from the outbuilding at the rear of Braemar Cottage, carrying a handful of gold guineas. Ann had realised that at some point—and God only knew how—Hester had found them and had had them moved to Braemar Cottage. Ann had slipped unnoticed into the outbuilding, discovering two barrels beneath the floor, one entirely empty, the other with just a thin scattering remaining. Ann had taken two coins of her own, as evidence: one she had thrown at Hester; the other she now looked at on the table beside her bed.
She would write a letter to Sam in the morning, but she knew somehow that she would never post it.
She blew out the candle, picked up the guinea and lay on her bed, turning it over repeatedly, wondering at what might have been.
Historical Information
I had known for a number of years that a story about smuggling—so intrinsically linked to the counties of Kent and Sussex, in which this series is set—would be an inevitable addition. Having undertaken some basic research into the various smuggling gangs in operation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, I settled on basing this story around the exploits of the Aldington Gang. Then, when I read in Kent Smugglers’ Pubs that in 1963 two skeletons had been found during building works at the Bell Inn, Hythe, I knew that I had found my prologue. The story, as expanded upon in several other lo
cal history books on Hythe, went that a local builder had discovered two full human skeletons when working on the pub’s chimney. The skeletons—identified as Revenue Officers by their outfits—were sent to the local coroner’s before being buried locally. However, none of the books referring to the story gave specific details, including the actual date of discovery. So, I undertook my own research, contacting local churches and cemeteries, the coroner’s office and making lengthy searches of The Folkestone, Hythe and District Herald at Folkestone Library. What I had found by the end of my research was that in late March / early April 1962 the fireplace of the Bell was indeed opened up, revealing a small quantity of beer mugs, keys and pig bones. Unfortunately, to-date I have found no official record of the two skeletons. My findings were later confirmed by a local historian, Sean McNally, who had also been simultaneously researching this curious apocryphal tale.
The Aldington Gang were a real smuggling group, operating a large-scale enterprise which ran from Rye in East Sussex to Walmer in Kent. In its heyday, the group could muster between two- and three-hundred local men. Its first leader was Cephas Quested, who was captured at the Battle of Brookland on the 11th February 1821, as described in this story. The records held at the Kent History and Library Centre, in which Morton locates overseers’ help being given to Cephas Quested, are real. His apparent poverty in early 1820 is the likely reason for his seeking extra income from smuggling. I took the liberty of bringing forward the date of his execution. In fact, he was hanged at Newgate on the 4th July 1821. His five-month incarceration was owed to the hope that he might give up the names of the rest of the gang before going to the gallows, which he did not. Following his death, officials wanted to hang his body from chains in Brookland as a deterrent to other would-be smugglers, but, following the intervention of the local magistrate, Sir Edward Knatchbull, he was returned to Aldington for burial in the parish church. A small wooden shoe, carved by Quested, is on display in the smuggling room of Ashford Museum, along with a letter dictated by him from his gaol cell.
The Wicked Trade (The Forensic Genealogist Book 7) Page 34
