I wish I had Father’s revolver. I wish I had a warm dry cloak. I wish I had shoes!
We walked slowly in this manner for what seemed to be at least a mile passing two other side culverts like the one under Barnet House. Finally the man stopped and he began to search the wall for something. By this time my eyes had grown accustomed to the dim light and I crept a bit closer to observe more of his features. However, with his completely black attire I could discern nothing of him besides his small stature. He was quite short, being no taller than I.
With a rush of fear, I realized that my white nightdress and pale skin might be easily visible, should he take the notion to look in my direction. Terrified that I might attract his attention, I shrank myself into the tiniest ball possible while I continued to observe him. After a few minutes of searching, he found a specific crevice in the stone wall and suddenly he was gone. He had vanished into thin air leaving me in total darkness. On hands and knees, I crept along feeling the wall until I found a depression about a foot above the waterline of the river. Peering into the hole, I saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. This depression was a short tunnel about ten feet long and two feet in diameter. The small man had taken the lamp and crawled into the tunnel.
I again followed.
This opened into a small room nearly identical to the cellar room below Barnet House and the man was already stepping up a short stone stairway to stand upon a small landing. However, the landing appeared to be a dead end. Not to be thwarted, the man began removing a stone from the wall, using a tool from his bag. Placing this stone on the landing floor, he set to work removing another. Shivering, I watched him remove thirty stones over the course of the next half-hour, placing the stones on the floor in a specific pattern so he could easily replace them in the exact reverse order. Thus he created a space large enough for him to pass through. Once again he disappeared into the opening and I crept up the stairway to look closer. As before, while his dim light was gone I could see absolutely nothing until I reached the pile of stones by the hole through which he had passed. I could then see his dim light as I poked my head through the small hole.
My heart nearly stopped dead when I saw him removing a brick of solid gold from a pile on the other side of the wall. I had never before seen such brilliant pure gold, but knew instantly what it was. Then he removed another and replaced the stolen gold bars with plain stone bricks from his bag. He had obviously removed several of these on previous trips and replaced them with plain stone bricks as was evident by their positions within the pile.
With a burst of clarity I suddenly understood completely. This was not a small man at all, but rather this was Lady Ann herself. This was the source of her wealth. This was some gold reserve of a bank, perhaps the one we visited earlier in the day. This pile of gold bricks was pressed against what appeared to be a solid stone wall. However, it was not so solid at all. Her removal of the gold bars could only be detected in the rare event someone would try to pass through the tiny space between the gold bars and the wall, and only one as small as the Countess Barnet could possibly fit within that tiny space. Should ever the theft of the gold be discovered, it was unlikely that this pathway would be revealed. If an industrious detective found the flaws in the wall he would never be able to retrace the path we had taken to expose the Countess Barnet as the thief.
Instantly I knew my course of action. I would hasten my return to the ladder and climb back into the house. Finding my bobby whistle, I would await the Lady Barnet’s return and then I would blow my lungs out through the whistle to summon aid to apprehend her red-handed.
However, a hasty retreat was not all that easy. Now in total darkness, I crawled through the small tunnel and returned to the main culvert. And then I began my creeping journey between the cold stone wall and the rushing stream, back to the house, feeling my way inch by inch. My only chance to succeed was to reach the ladder before Lady Ann and her light fell upon me. My savior would be the time required for her ladyship to reassemble the stone wall to mask her entry into the bank’s vault.
Certain failure and, possibly, death will be my fate, should I misstep even a single time.
Turning my back to the rushing water, I gripped the stone wall with both hands and both feet. I moved along by shifting the position of only one limb at a time and only after I was assured that the remaining three limbs were firmly attached to the slimy wall. Each hand and the toes of my left foot would find a crevasse to grip and then toes of my right foot would inch forward searching for a new grip. Once it was firmly attached, my right hand would follow. And then my left hand would migrate. And finally, my left foot would move to complete a single step toward Barnet House and safety. Deathly chilled as I was, this was the moment I was grateful that I didn’t have shoes, as my toes were working like those of a monkey to find and grip onto secure holds.
Despite the total darkness, I closed my eyes to better focus on my sense of touch. After a few steps I began to imagine that Sir Anthony was behind me with his cane ready to smack my bottom raw should I lose my mental focus and attempt to shift the position of two limbs simultaneously. SNAP! “Eyes on your work,” I remembered him lecturing me with his riding crop. SNAP! “Focus your attention. Do not attempt to anticipate.” Occasionally I brought up the image of Lucy’s welt-striped bottom to keep my focus sharply upon my task. The new skills Mrs. Davenport and Sir Anthony had taught me – to push away discomfort and pain to focus only upon the task at hand – were now saving my life.
As I inched along the pitch-black culvert, I found the two smaller side culverts and finally the third one and turned onto the final leg of my journey. Now I could move faster as this stretch contained no open water. Opening my eyes and looking back I saw the glow of Lady Ann’s lantern a hundred yards behind me. As she had the light to see by, she was moving along much faster than I was. After another seemingly endless fifty yards, a tiny beam of light falling through the hole in the floor of the house appeared to direct me toward the ladder. My plan was on the cusp of success as I climbed first the ladder and then the stairs to reenter the foyer of Barnet House.
After untying the hem of my nightdress so that it would fall back into its proper place, I took several minutes to catch my breath and warm myself from the considerable chill of the underground culvert. Then I quietly descended the stairs to my room in search of my bobby whistle. Finding it where I had last placed it within a side pocket of my valise, which was stored under my bed, I hastened to return to the upstairs and the foyer.
I did not notice that Lucy was no longer asleep.
In the darkness of the same shadows from whence I had first observed the mysterious dim light traversing into the threshold of the hidden doorway, I awaited its return. Not more than five minutes passed before the light, which I now knew to be possessed by Lady Ann, arrived and I watched her close the secret door. Holding my breath I observed as the light ascended the stairs to the upper floor and I waited until I heard her bedroom door open and close. Now, she was securely trapped with me blocking her only avenue of escape. I did not fear bodily harm should she attempt to assault me in an attempt to escape, for we were evenly matched woman to woman, yet I believed myself to be the better trained for a hand to hand fight.
I opened the front door and stepped onto the porch to blow my whistle to summon the aid of any and all bobbies within the range of my sound. The police station on Ebury Street was a short distance away across the Elizabeth Bridge. Additionally, there would be other bobbies patrolling the more immediate area. There was always one at Warwick Square and there were others at Eccleston Square, Victoria Station and the Westminster House of Correction. I put the whistle to my lips and…
That was when the iron fingers of Mrs. Davenport closed on the back of my neck, for she had been alerted to my midnight wandering of the house by Lucy. As Mrs. Davenport had done on the first day of my employment, she snatched me back inside the house and upended me over the foyer chair. Five quick SMACKS from her p
addle caused me to reflexively still my struggles and then she lifted my nightdress clear to my shoulders. Opening my drawers she pulled them down to bare my backside from knees to shoulder blades and then she continued to blister my butt with a never ending repetition of firm SMACKS.
“Madam, I am—” She pressed my face firmly into the chair seat to silence my attempt to identify myself as a London Detective.
But, the front door was still open and the bobby whistle was still in my hand. With all my might I pushed against her weight and holding the whistle again to my lips I BLEW! In nary a moment following my long tone signaling for help an answering short tone pierced the night and I blew another long tone to give the answering bobby a directional bearing.
“What in blue blazes are you about, you moronic skank?” Mrs. Davenport shouted as she snatched the whistle from my grasp before resuming her assault on my bare bottom with the hardest swats I had yet endured.
Several short answering whistle tones repeated from somewhere outside. The bobbies were seeking my position, but needed me to sound off once again to show them my location. Without the whistle, I resorted to what had introduced me to the neighborhood in the first place.
I screamed!
Again and again, I screamed and then the bobbies found me. Unfortunately, their initial determination was that I was a mere house servant being appropriately punished for falsely alerting them. They were delightfully entertained by the sight of my bare arse being pummeled as Mrs. Davenport continued to paddle me while she held my face firmly into the chair’s cushion, so that I could not identify myself or report my side of the story.
“Burning some buns, eh,” one of them said, no doubt thrilled at the sight of my open flaying legs exposing my cunny to their view.
The other one laughed and joined the joke when he said, “We’ll have toasted buns for breakfast.”
Just when I concluded that failure would win the day, Captain Stuart himself entered the house. As I was to learn later, upon receipt of my last report he had taken it upon himself to hold a position at the Ebury police station. His ever so keen mind had foreseen that my bravado would overtake my reason and I might end up in this predicament – being unable to identify myself to the assisting bobbies.
He had not foreseen my exact predicament; he had not been suspecting that he would find me upended with my bare fanny exposed to the wind, enduring a blistering paddling. It was my dear Captain Stuart who finally forced Mrs. Davenport to end her punishment of my tender and now extremely sore bottom flesh. And it was he who pulled me from the chair to my feet and wrapped his own cloak around my shoulders – though I did lose my drawers to my ankles in the process.
He held me in a close embrace as I pressed my sobbing face into his chest.
Through struggling gasps for breath, I explained to him, “Sir, Countess Barnet is upstairs in her room with one or more gold bars that she stole from a bank’s vault this night before my very eyes. Quick, get to her before she can affect an escape!”
He ignored my wishes as he continued to hold me close.
“Please, do not allow my plight to be for naught,” I pleaded with him.
“Here,” he pressed me into the arms of a nearby bobby, “this is Margaret Rowan, one of my finest detectives of London, and you are personally entrusted with her protection.” And then, pistol in hand, he and the two other bobbies raced up the stairs to complete the arrest of Countess Barnet.
~ 5 ~
The Proposal
Once again I am traveling the pathway known as Whitehall toward the Office of London Detectives, although this time it is a cool autumn day, and this time I am safely riding in a cab. Following the arrest of Countess Barnet, I completed and timely delivered my report to Captain Stuart.
Back in the days when kings jousted and Anne Boleyn lived, London was a mere shadow of its modern 1852 metropolitan size. Back then London existed in the space along the northern bank of the Thames River between two tributaries – the Fleet and Tyburn Rivers. As the city grew and expanded across these relatively narrow waterways, the tributary rivers were tamed and forced to flow within brick lined ditches. As the city continued to prosper and grow, with each generation building new dwellings and businesses upon the foundations of their forefathers, the street elevation of the city slowly crept upward. Eventually, the rivers’ ditches were bricked over and buried to create unseen and soon forgotten subterranean rivers along with a labyrinth of other tunnels below the city streets. Previously unknown to me, the underground Tyburn River flows almost directly under the building of my residence.
While I did not know of the subterranean rivers, the Ministry of Water Works certainly did, and after only the briefest explanation of my journey underground, they concluded that the gold did not come from any bank, but rather it could only have originated from Buckingham Palace. Interrogation of Dowager Countess Barnet revealed the rest of the story.
When Earl Randal Barnet expanded his family’s London home he was well aware of the existence of the ancient underground boat dock and access to the forgotten waterway, but this was considered to be an obstacle for his architectural design to circumvent. He was proud of how his design incorporated a secret underground storage room into the home’s architecture and one day he would marvel at this unintentional escape tunnel. He had gotten the idea from his mentor John Nash, the chief architect for the Buckingham Palace project begun in 1825. Lord Barnet had assisted Nash’s work when he had similarly been aware that the palace building’s foundation lay across the subterranean Tyburn River and he also left a 200 year old boat access to the river intact under the palace’s foundation. It is not clear whether or not Nash had intended for the royal treasury to be stored in the room on the opposite side of the cellar wall from this ancient boat dock or if this, too, would become a fortuitous unintentional consequence.
In any event, when King George IV died in 1830 John Nash fell from the favor of the royal court. He was stripped of his title and land holdings to live out his days in poverty in retribution for what the new king considered to be Nash’s fraudulent influence over King George IV during the construction of the lavishly expensive Buckingham Palace. Perhaps Nash had foreseen this inevitable day or he had simply been the beneficiary of good luck, but he remembered the aforementioned architectural oddities and initiated his own plan to rob the treasury. During the summer dry season, he used a raft to navigate down the Tyburn River tunnel to the location under the palace. He carefully removed the grout holding the stones to open an access through the wall and removed two gold bricks from the treasury. He resealed the wall and departed down river to the Thames, never to return, as he reasoned that he was merely recovering the wealth that the royals had stolen from him.
In 1835 John Nash died and then, in 1848, two events occurred to set the course of the remaining proceedings. First, Lord Barnet fell victim to a bad investment in which he lost his wealth and second, Nash’s widow found what remained of the stolen gold and, not knowing to be secretive, she sold it on the open market. The attention of the constabulary became focused upon this seemingly impoverished widow possessing and selling gold and she was arrested on suspicion of having stolen it. While she was eventually exonerated, the event came to the attention of Lord Barnet and he deduced the true source of the gold. For a paltry sum, he purchased the books and notes of John Nash from his widow and used the old drawings to locate the hidden access into Buckingham Palace. Earl Barnet also removed two gold bars.
Then a year ago, when his young second wife inquired as to the source of their new wealth, he told her the history of the tunnel access. The Countess Barnet insisted that her husband show her the pathway and, after they together removed two more gold bricks, she promptly shot him with his own hunting gun, claiming to the police that he had accidentally discharged the weapon himself while cleaning it.
Countess Barnet freely told this tale to avoid the hangman’s noose. The court of Queen Victoria intended to keep the location of the treasury
and, most certainly the theft, secret from the public. So they advanced the option for her ladyship to be stripped of her title and quietly shipped to the penal colony in Australia if she, in return, would tell how she came to know of the underground access to the palace.
I certainly encouraged her, wishing to keep my humiliating experiences a secret.
The five men she and I visited were men proposing to purchase the stolen gold, although they knew nothing of its origin or of each other. Lady Ann had told each of them that she desired to sell some damaged gold jewelry that had been partially melted to remove valuable stones. Then she intended to melt one of the gold bars into five indistinct lumps. The Countess Barnet planned to save the second gold bar for a rainy day. These five men escaped prosecution as an effect of the royal family’s conspiracy to keep the whole affair secret.
Likewise, there was no interrogation of the household staff or any attempt to identify and locate Sir Anthony. In an effort to retrieve some of their wealth, the royal family had the house stripped of everything of monetary value and then sealed the subterranean access before returning it to the young Earl Barnet. He promptly sold the house to get what value he could derive.
While I had no interest in having any of the Countess Barnet’s household staff working for me or even knowing of my true nature, I did secretively use Lady Ann’s seal to draft letters of reference for them – even Mrs. Davenport – and they have all been placed with new employment.
As for myself, Captain Stuart and I were summoned to the office of the Home Secretary Lord Palmerston, where he presented me with a letter written over the seal of Queen Victoria thanking me for my diligent service. I was offered a substantial reward upon the condition that I never speak of the affair. I quickly seized the opportunity to agree with this plan, and while the reward sum along with my stipend were not sufficient to create in me a lady of leisure, they certainly ensured many years free from financial worry. I moved my residence into a two bedroom flat within the same building and employed a girl to work fulltime as my cook and maid. I have treated her with the fullest respect possible from her first day of employment.
Miss Rowan Learns Her Lesson (Lady Detective Book 1) Page 6
