“James,” the voice was low and feminine, “James, it’s me.”
He looked up. Scott stood in the shadow of a recessed doorway, smiling to him.
“This way, James.”
“Rachel?”
“You fell asleep on me last time, James.” She shook her head, eyes mocking, “You really must avoid the drink in future.” Her smile broadened. “But there’s no drink here, James, only you and me and a host of excited delegates who cannot think of anything but power for themselves.” She moved slightly, stirring her hips suggestively.
“I must go . . .” Mendick tried to slip away, but she held him with a small hand. He stared at her, confused but not tempted, until she laughed.
“You look like a small boy in a sweetshop, James. You have seen all the treasures, but you’re undecided which one to pick first. Which is it, James, the Charter or the woman?”
“I must attend my duty.”
“Of course you must,” Rachel agreed, “but you must also admit that I attract you.” She nodded to the rapidly emptying hall. “Look at them all, James, eager to run back and start a war that may kill most of them. The Chartist symbol is the beehive, and they are just the drones, destined to work and die for others, whoever is in government.” Her contempt startled him, but he could not fault her logic. He shivered as she echoed his own thoughts from earlier.
“What does it matter to them who is in power, which voice makes the decisions, Finality Jack Russell or Vociferous William Monaghan? Whoever it is, they are destined to remain at the bottom of the heap, with or without the vote or the six points of the Charter, they just don’t matter.”
“They?” He lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t you mean we?”
Scott shook her head. “We are different, you and I, James. We don’t belong with the drones.’ She looked at him with a cynical twist to the side of her mouth. ‘The problem is, I am not sure where you belong at all.”
“I must do my duty,” Mendick repeated, and she mocked him with a laugh.
“Your duty? Duty is the old standby of the lazy and the confused. People who do their duty don’t have to think, do they? They allow other people to do their thinking for them, and thereby allow others to rule their lives.” Very deliberately, she shifted her position, thrusting that provocative hip further towards him. “Well, James? Are you going to do your duty, or are you going to do me?”
He looked at her. She had supported him when he tried to help Ogden, and had spoken up for him in front of Monaghan, and despite, or possibly because of, her mysteries, she was an alluring woman. Nevertheless, her attempt at seduction was as attractive as the hiss of a serpent. Even as a siren, she was so inferior to Emma that he would not have considered even talking to her except as part of his job.
“I’m sorry, Rachel, but I must do my duty.”
The sound of a slow handclap made him turn around, and he saw Armstrong a few steps behind him and Peter towering in the background.
“Well said, Mr Mendick, a man has to do his duty.” Armstrong stepped closer. “The only question is your duty to whom, and what exactly does that duty entail?”
“What?” Mendick looked at him, shaking his head. “I do not understand, Mr Armstrong. My duty to the Charter, of course.”
“Of course.” Monaghan slipped from a side door. “Of course.” He nodded to Scott. “Well done, Miss Scott. You played your part to perfection.”
Scott gave a graceful little curtsey as Monaghan glowered at Mendick.
“You were about to scurry to your masters in London, were you not?”
“Which masters in London?” Mendick tried to bluff, but he felt sudden sick dread. His memory of Ogden writhing on the floor was vivid. He glanced back, preparing to run, but Armstrong gripped his arm.
“Come with us, Mr Mendick; we have things to discuss.”
He shook away the hand.
“I don’t think there is anything left to say.” He stepped toward the door, but Peter was there first, balancing on the soles of his feet with his hands clenched and his head lowered like a young bull.
“Best do what Mr Armstrong says.” Peter raised his head, his eyes dazed. “Please, James, I don’t want to hit you.”
Mendick nodded; he remembered Peter’s strength and speed; he knew that he could never defeat him in a fair fight.
“You just had to ask,” he said. He glanced at Scott, who favoured him with a simpering smile. “There was no need for the subterfuge.” He nodded to Peter, who remained immobile in the doorway. “Or the threats.”
Armstrong grunted and produced the pistol from within his jacket, caressing the barrel lovingly.
“No threats, Mendick, just a reminder.”
Monaghan took them to a large, draughty room immediately beneath the hall, his feet rapping on the floor of stone slabs. He scraped a Lucifer, waited until the phosphorous flare calmed down and lit a brace of candles. Yellow light immediately illuminated an oval table and a single chair, on which Monaghan sat and extended his legs.
“This was the kitchen, when the original hall was first built, and then it was used for storage before the new store rooms were built.” He glanced at Mendick. “But you know all about them, don’t you?”
Still faintly smiling, Scott took up position on one side of the huge fireplace, with Armstrong directly opposite. Armstrong tapped his pistol against the long spit that was slowly rusting against the wall.
“How should I know about the new store rooms?”
“You were there,” Monaghan said quietly. “The day that you robbed Sir Robert’s larder to feed your men, you snooped around and discovered the weapons store.”
“What?” As Mendick tried to simultaneously look confused and angry he measured the distance to the door, where Peter stood immobile with his arms folded. The muscles stood out like wire hawsers.
“Of course we knew it was you,” Monaghan said, his voice very quiet. “We always knew who you were.” There was triumph in his smile. “Why else would Miss Scott single you out at the meeting, and why else would we bring you into the fold? We played you like a fish and you bit on our bait every time.”
Mendick tried to keep the horror from his face as he edged closer to the door, but on a nod from Armstrong, Peter turned the key in the lock and enclosed it within his great fist.
Armstrong pointed his pistol directly at Mendick’s face. The barrel seemed as wide as a nine-pounder cannon.
“Show him, Miss Scott.”
“With pleasure.”
Reaching into his inside pocket, Scott withdrew a folded document, which she handed to Mendick.
The letter from Scotland Yard proclaimed his guilt with seven simple words: Chartist Rally, it read. Infiltrate and join the cause. Mendick stared, unable to say anything. The Chartists must have broken into his London home and found that. But how? The question screamed in his mind; how did they know who he was, and where he lived? Somebody must have told them, and only then did he remember that notebook of faces that Mr Smith had shown him. Somebody in Scotland Yard must have informed the Chartists who he was, there could be no other explanation.
Scott smiled to him with her head tilted on one side.
“Cat got your tongue?”
“And you thought that you were so clever, too.” Monaghan shook his head in mock sorrow. “You came here from London, inveigled yourself into our midst, and you even made a good job of training my soldiers.”
“God!” Mendick felt his mouth drop. “But . . .”
“But?” Rachel mocked him again. “But why? But why not just kill you as soon as you arrived?” Her laughter bounced around the bare stone room.
“Because if we did,” Monaghan told him, “Scotland Yard might just send somebody that we don’t know about, or even worse, somebody who was actually good at their job. This way, we could keep an eye on you and ensure that you didn’t tell your bosses anything important.”
“What’s wrong, James? You look pale.” Stepping forward, Scott stroked
his face with a soft hand. “Not as clever as you thought?”
“Pale? It must be the chill. It’s cold in here.” Mendick tried to keep his voice light as he thought furiously. His life was unimportant, but he had to escape and warn about the horrors that Monaghan was about to unleash on London. He glanced around the room. With Peter holding the key to the only door, and Armstrong cradling his pistol like a beloved baby, he only had one, very unlikely, chance.
“We’ll soon make it warmer for you,” Armstrong promised grimly, with a significant glance at Peter.
“Look on the bright side, James.” Rachel was still smiling. “At least we won’t have to question you. You don’t know anything we haven’t already told you, and you haven’t sent any information to Scotland Yard.” She leaned closer so her moist breath washed his face. “We caught all your pigeons.”
“Mr Armstrong,” Monaghan spoke in a conversational tone, “could you and Peter take Mr Mendick for a walk, please? And don’t bother to bring him back.”
CHAPTER TEN
Lancashire: March 1848
The knowledge that he had only one slender chance to escape before Peter’s iron fists closed on him awoke a long dormant madness; Mendick feinted joyously for Armstrong’s eyes, watched him jerk backward and swung a savage uppercut to his groin. For a second he relished Armstrong’s high squeal of agony, and then he swept his hand sideways at the candles. The first went out immediately, but the second rolled along the table top casting dancing shadows until he snatched it up and rammed it against Monaghan’s face. Monaghan screamed and all light was extinguished.
Mendick hoped Peter would be so petrified by the sudden darkness that he would remain static, blocking the door. There was only one other exit from the windowless room, and he gambled that nobody had even considered it. Pushing past the still yelling Monaghan, he ducked under the chimney breast and thrust his head up the flue. The once familiar smell of soot and the cool downdraught from outside spurred him onward and upward, blessing his luck. In choosing the old kitchen for his interrogation, Monaghan had given him the widest chimney in Trafford Hall.
Generations of soot had coated the stonework, but there were still sufficient hand and footholds to pull himself upwards. He was suddenly grateful for his childhood years as a climbing boy, spent clambering up and around choking flues with his master lighting straw in the grate to encourage greater speed. He remembered that most of these old buildings had their chimneys placed in stacks where the flue was common to two or more fireplaces.
As a child he could have scrambled straight up and out the topmost chimney; although he was now far too large for that route, the lower part of the flue was still spacious enough to accommodate him. He pushed upward, feeling the stonework rough under his hands, coughing as soot dribbled down upon him.
“Where is he?” A sliver of light glinted from below, and he heard the distorted echo of Armstrong’s voice. “Where in hell’s name did he go? He must have sneaked past you, Peter, you useless bastard!” There was the sound of a slap and of Peter whimpering.
“He didn’t get past me, Mr Armstrong, I swear. I was here all the time. He must be a ghost.”
“Some ghost.” That was Scott’s voice, taut with fury. “He’s gone up the chimney!”
Mendick stopped moving, clinging on with his fingertips and the toes of his boots. He had hoped to escape through the fireplace of the great hall, one floor up, but the flue was more restricting than he had expected.
“I can’t hear him!” That was Monaghan’s voice. “It’s so bloody dark I can’t see anything up there either. Are you sure that’s where he is?”
“He can’t be anywhere else,” Scott told him.
“I’ll get the bastard!”
Mendick cringed from the deafening crack of the pistol; the ball smashed against the wall of the flue a few inches away from his leg, dislodging a torrent of soot.
“For God’s sake, Josiah!” Scott’s words halted in a bout of coughing, and Mendick hoped that she choked to death. “You’re as stupid as Peter!”
“Fetch a glim!” Armstrong’s voice echoed up the chimney.
Mendick could feel his fingers slipping on the soot-smoothed ledge and knew that if he did not move soon, he would fall. There was cold air and faint light coming from above, but it was impossibly far away, and he knew he could not squeeze through the narrowing passage. He had trapped himself. He saw a yellowish flicker from below as somebody thrust a candle up the chimney.
“Is that him?” Armstrong must have stepped into the fireplace. “Mendick, you bastard, come down!”
With his fingertips trembling from the strain, Mendick kept still. He knew how hard it was to make out bodies against a dark background and hoped that Armstrong would give up and try the door.
“I can’t see a bloody thing up there.” The light withdrew, and Mendick heard scrapings from the room. He eased himself further up, but the movement dislodged more soot, which showered down onto the fireplace below.
“There! I hear him! He is up there! Light a fire on the grate and we’ll smother the bastard!”
For a second Mendick was a child again, balancing on a tiny ledge while his master lit a pile of straw. He remembered the feeling of utter panic amidst the suffocating smoke, and the pain of scorched feet as he had danced to keep away from the rising sparks. He would not allow himself to be roasted alive half-way up one of Trafford’s chimneys.
Throwing himself upwards, he searched for handholds, trusting as much to luck as anything else as he clambered up the flue. Coughing, he swallowed soot, feeling the stonework tearing his clothes and ripping the skin from his body as he frantically tried to escape. He had gambled on this chimney being connected to another in the room above, but he could not see any opening in the unrelenting black stone, and the flue was becoming progressively narrower. Soon he would not be able to climb further; he would either have to stay and be suffocated, or return and face whatever ugly death Armstrong had in mind for him. The finality of death did not matter with Emma waiting, but the knowledge of defeat did.
Voices echoed hollowly. “Break up the chair and throw it on; if we get the old soot on fire, we’ll roast the peeler’s flesh from his bones!”
“Jesus!” He remembered Restiaux’s prayer as he had waited outside the Holy Land, “Lord, I shall be very busy this day; I may forget thee, but do not forget me.” The words did not give him any comfort as he heard the crackle of flames, and felt the heat beat on to the soles of his feet. He coughed desperately; the smoke was burning his lungs and stinging his eyes, but he also noticed that the smoke was not rising straight up; it was veering to the left a few feet below him. If the smoke was moving in that direction, there must be an alternative passageway, hidden in the black of the flue. He edged down, towards the leaping flames and heard Armstrong’s triumphant laugh.
“Come down and burn or stay there and smother, you peeler bastard!”
Something large was thrown onto the fire, sending an array of sparks upward; he flinched but continued to inch downwards, seeking the outlet that was redirecting the smoke. Beneath him the sparks lengthened and slid to one side, and he felt them scorching his legs and smelled his trousers burning as he eased himself lower, towards that elusive gap in the stonework, towards the fire.
He gasped as a tiny flame licked up the calf of his trouser leg, but even that small flaring light revealed the break in the flue, an opening barely wide enough for him to squeeze into. It was still beneath him, closer to the dancing flames, but with no choice he edged down, choking in the smoke, wincing as the torrent of sparks smouldered through his moleskin trousers, burning his calf and spreading onto his thigh. He chewed his lip, unwilling for Armstrong to hear him groan as the biting pain halted his downward progress.
He glanced toward the tiny opening, blocked as it was by a spiral of sparks and the lick of yellow flame. If he descended further, he would be within the fire, but to remain was to roast slowly; he had to go down. Retching, wi
th his lungs a smoke-filled agony and the flesh of both legs now smouldering, Mendick forced himself further down. Knowing that Armstrong and Monaghan would be standing close to the fireplace as they listened for his agonies, he kicked violently, sending red-glowing soot showered down towards them, and then suddenly he was level with the opening.
Close to, the gap looked even smaller, and he was unsure where it would lead, but he knew he had to try. The alternative was a terrible death.
Thrusting his head into the reeking darkness, he wriggled his shoulders, felt his jacket tearing on the stonework, felt something ripping at his skin but pushed desperately onwards. The heat of the walls was intensifying by the second, while the smoke was so dense that every breath was a searing agony.
He heard a new terrifying roaring and knew immediately what it was. Unswept for years, the soot coating the flue had caught fire and was flaring upwards. It would only take seconds for the flames to reach him, and then he would die in slow agony. The flames would scorch away his flesh and race on upwards, leaving him flayed and trapped to die screaming in the dark. The heat increased, roasting his legs, driving the air from his lungs. He gasped, coughing furiously as every whooping breath increased his torment.
“Burn, you bastard!”
The voice came from beneath him as he writhed. He thrust himself into the narrow gap heedless of the pain as skin and flesh was flayed from his shoulders and burned from his legs.
There was cool air on his face as he scraped forwards, and then his hips jammed. In front of him was a small square where the blackness lightened to gray, but the narrowness of the opening stopped him, and he screamed, giving way to the pain of the flames that tormented his feet and legs.
“Jesus, help me!” Mendick felt panic overcome his sanity, remembering the terror of his childhood years, and sobbing with desperation he hauled himself on, shrieking at the combined agony of fear and fire and ripped skin.
The Darkest Walk of Crime Page 16
