A Killing Too Far

by Andrew Wareham

  ‘Back door, not the front; not a true gentleman,’ Sam thought.

  “Mr Rowlands, how do ye do, sir?”

  “Well indeed, Mr Heythorne. You look well on the back of your marriage!”

  “Well and happy, sir, and I must make our thanks for your handsome present.”

  Sam wondered what it had been, but he must show willing.

  Rowlands smiled his kindest, was glad to have given pleasure. He raised an expectant eyebrow.

  “Parish business, you might say, Mr Rowlands – a pair of foolish youngsters, sir!”

  “Ah! And who might they be, Mr Heythorne?”

  Rowlands obviously had a strong suspicion of their identities and that told Sam immediately that there was no wedding on the cards. Should be make Rowlands change his mind or accept the offer of a payment for the careless girl?

  “Mrs Wenbury of Leek, Mr Rowlands. Her eldest, called Jemima, I believe. And your second boy, Richard, so she says.”

  Mrs Wenbury was too close to the genteel simply to be ignored, condemned as a feckless female who had not looked after her daughter.

  “Seen the girl – not to beat about the bush, Mr Heythorne, I heard the whisper that my Richard was interested there and made it my business to cast my eye over the lass.”

  Sam nodded, that was only sensible.

  “Pretty, but not a lot else, Mr Heythorne. Richard’s the second son and must make his own way in the world. To an extent I shall give him a helping hand, no doubt, but he needs a wife who can do more than decorate his bed!”

  “I cannot find it in me to disagree with that, Mr Rowlands. The girl is obviously somewhat careless in her ways as well, but…”

  “In the family way, is she?”

  “Her mother believes so.”

  “Damned young fool – the boy should know better than that. Told him, so I have, ‘pay for your pleasures but don’t go interfering with the daughters of the respectable’.”

  “Quite right too, sir. Any young man will have his desires, as one might say, but needs to use a little of common sense when it comes to satisfying them.”

  “So say I, Mr Heythorne. Mind you, I shall wish to be talking to him first, just to be good and sure that he is responsible for any little problem the girl may be having.”

  Sam instantly agreed – he did not know the girl and she might perhaps be putting the bite on a foolish youth.

  “Should we perhaps discuss the matter further in a few days, Mr Rowlands?”

  “I shall ride across to speak with you tomorrow, if you are willing, Mr Heythorne.”

  “I shall be available at Banfords for any time you wish to name, sir.”

  “In the afternoon, sir.”

  “Tea or wine for Rowlands when he comes, Josie?”

  Sam knew that he had much to learn socially; Josie must teach him the ways of the up and coming set she belonged to.

  “He believes himself to be a gentleman in the making, Sam. My father has Madeira in the house to entertain such as he. I shall make sure that Marston has the best glasses to hand, and some cakes or biscuits baked ready. Was he to be discussing a matter of business, then it would be tea, but wine will be better for this sort of thing. Neither business nor strictly social, one might say. Mrs Wenbury is sure that the silly girl is in the family way, Sam. She will be speaking to her tonight. She knows as well that there is small chance of her marrying Mr Richard Rowlands, whatever the girl’s ambitions may be.”

  “That is my impression as well, Josie. Foolish girl! Did she think to entrap him to the altar, do you think?”

  Josie shook her head, somewhat embarrassed by the topic.

  “I much suspect that she allowed him certain liberties and found herself to be enjoying what was happening far too much to make him stop at a particular point before it was, shall we say, too late.”

  “I cannot imagine what you mean, my dear.”

  “Then I shall explain further, sir, when we are secluded in our bedchamber, and not before!”

  He laughed, admitted that he had been teasing.

  “And that may have been the whole problem, sir!”

  He laughed again.

  Rowlands was accompanied by his son next afternoon.

  “I told him that ‘twas his taking his pleasures where he might that led to this affair, so he had as well discover just what it will cost, Mr Heythorne.”

  Sam grinned and agreed that it made sense.

  “Do come inside, sir, and you, Mr Richard.”

  They sat and then stood to greet Josie and to admire the wine and the glasses it came in and to thank her for the tasty little cakes that arrived too. She withdrew and they set to business.

  “Well, Mr Heythorne, it seems that the girl may well be increasing, from what Richard admits.”

  “Her mother talked to her last night and is now certain of the case, Mr Rowlands.”

  “So be it. No reason to suppose that the girl has been readily available in the locality, sir? Richard thinks not, but he would hardly know at his age.”

  “I have not heard that her name has been bandied about, Mr Rowlands.”

  “Fair enough. I do not want her in a cottage close to hand, Mr Heythorne, where Richard might come calling every night. Distant a few miles is my stipulation.”

  Sam agreed that to be sensible – out of harm’s reach was far the most sensible disposition of the foolish young lady.

  “Derby way would be best, I suspect, sir. A day’s ride from here and out of sight. Close to a large town as well, with opportunities for a young ‘widow’ lady.”

  “So be it, Mr Heythorne. A cottage, in freehold, and ten bob a week, and that will keep her and the child alike, and generous, too.”

  “Will you make the arrangements, Mr Rowlands?”

  “I can easily, Mr Heythorne. I shall give my attorney the word and he will do all for me.”

  They had another glass of wine on the strength of that and changed the topic, now the best of friends.

  “What have you in mind for your son, Mr Rowlands?”

  “I am thinking about that now, Mr Heythorne. Have you a suggestion?”

  “I intend to put a bit of cash into the coal trade, sir. A young man who had his letters could be useful to me.”

  “Tell me what you intend and when and I shall push him your way, Mr Heythorne, so long as I have found nowt else first.”

  Richard listened in silence as his future was disposed of.

  Abe sent word on the Monday morning that they should discuss a matter that had arisen in Stoke over the weekend.

  “The Bench and His Worship the Mayor are somewhat distressed, Sam. The weekend was more than normally boisterous, one might say. There are suggestions that the increased availability of strong waters is the cause. Mr Parsons is inclined to be upset, in fact.”

  “Mr Parsons will do as he is told, Uncle Abe. You know of the letter he sent to the Pretender? He is aware that Rufus showed it to me and may well believe that I now have it in my possession. That letter could still take his head was it to come to the surface.”

  Abe was almost unable to comprehend such foolishness.

  “Why a letter, Sam? If he found himself moved to support the Princeling, then why not send a messenger, carrying the money and offering his loyalty verbally? A letter is so permanent a piece of evidence, Sam, liable to come back twenty years later attached to a hangman’s noose. Stupidity!”

  “One must never put such a commitment into writing, Uncle Abe. Most unwise. What is His Worship’s particular concern that has caused him to complain to you?”

  Abe demurred, it was not so much a complaint as a moan, an expression of despair at the fecklessness of the lower orders.

  “Most of the businesses in and around Stoke pay their men at the end of the working week, at six o’clock on Saturday. A seventy-two hour week is the normal in the potteries, apart from the men actually working the kilns as stokers. They work eighty-four hours, night shift and day, so as not to waste c
oals by allowing the kilns to cool and then to be reheated. Whichever, all of the shifts receive their pay at the same time. Some of them take the money home to their families, in the nature of things; more of them go to the beerhouse first. The nightshift men go in the morning when they knock-off work. Some of the owners pay in the bar of public houses which they themselves own. Saturday night and Sunday morning are, shall we say, busy times around the boozers.”

  None of this was new to Sam.

  “Many of the wives and children meet their men at the beerhouses and join in the carouse, Sam.”

  “’Wives’, Uncle Abe?”

  “Well, who is to split hairs about their absolute status, Sam? More or less is good enough for that sort.”

  Sam agreed – the tricks that the lower orders got up to were their business – men of affairs need not concern themselves with the doings of lesser mortals.

  “Suffice it to say, Sam, that streets where most of the beerhouses are to be found are not the prettiest of sights after the men receive their pay. Mr Parsons thought that things were worse this weekend than even is normal. I believe there are five corpses to be disposed of this morning, four of them certainly having experienced a violent ending.”

  “I have never seen the streets myself, Uncle Abe. Does the Mayor believe that I have a responsibility for them?”

  “You are now the sole supplier of gin, Sam, and you distil far more than was used to be available.”

  “Oh, come now, Uncle Abe! I force no man to tip my gin down his throat. If he, or she it would seem, drinks to excess, it is none of my affair. What a man does with the money he earns is his business, and none of mine.”

  “I quite agree, Sam. It might be as well if you were to actually see for yourself the state of the town on a Saturday night. I believe that the scene is of degradation beyond most men’s imagination.”

  “Next Saturday, Uncle Abe. I shall show willing – to keep Mr Parsons happy.”

  Sam did not expect to be amazed – he had a fairly active imagination.

  Chapter Three

  A Killing Too Far

  “The spire, Mr Heythorne, gives a view of the main street and yet is safely removed from it. I can assure you, sir, that safety is not an unimportant consideration!”

  Sam smiled and nodded, sure in his own mind that the rector was a panicking old woman, shocked at the sight of the most minor drunken outburst. Mr Porter, present in his persona as His Worship the Mayor, wearing his chain of office, took pains to calm the vicar.

  “I am sure, Reverend Smart, that we are both thankful to you for your consideration for our well-being. We are both men of the world and have experience, I dare to say, of looking after ourselves, in a fashion that must be unknown to a pillar of the church such as you must be. Mr Heythorne has, after all, served his king as a soldier, and I have been about the world a little.”

  Mr Porter did not specify what that little might be and neither Sam nor the vicar asked him for detail. It was possible, Sam thought, that Porter had come into contact with his Jacobite acquaintances while travelling in France as a younger man – many of the gentry indulged in foreign travel, he had been told. Better that was kept quiet, until it became convenient and profitable to threaten to resurrect such treacherous dealings. For the while they must keep the reverend calm.

  “I am quite certain, Reverend, that we could traverse the streets of our town in safety, but you are quite right to ensure that we do not have to.”

  It was cold up in the spire, looking out of its small, unglazed windows, nearly a hundred feet above the roadway. Sam took a sip from the glass of brandy the vicar had provided, appreciating its warmth and easily able to distinguish between enjoying a refreshing glass and indulging in vicious drunkenness. It was a few minutes before six o’clock on a summer’s evening, light for at least two more hours, and he could see the length of the street clearly. He attempted to total the number of inns, public houses, beerhouses and handcarts selling cheap own-made alcohol. He lost count in the distance, having topped fifty.

  Reverend Smart agreed there was a detestable proliferation of houses of ill-repute, of all types.

  “I hear tell, Mr Heythorne that the whaling ports have a greater density of public houses even than this. Poole in Dorset, which fishes the South Atlantic, and Lynn Regis and Whitby who serve the Greenland Fishery, are said to have whole streets in which the liquor sellers crowd shoulder to shoulder with no other houses or shops in between.”

  Sam had yet to see any of those towns but replied that he had some intention of visiting Lynn Regis on business in the near future. No doubt he would discover the reality then.

  The clock above them gave six measured strokes on its bell.

  “The revelry will soon start, Mr Heythorne. The bulk of the men from the nearest kilns will arrive within minutes and will queue up for their money in their employer’s favoured location. Some will have been paid at their site of employment and will not have to delay their drinking to fill their pockets.”

  Reverend Smart made his next pronouncement in a doom-filled voice.

  “You may observe, Mr Heythorne, that there are now females in the street.”

  “The men’s wives, I presume, Reverend?”

  “Too often an unfounded presumption, sir. I fear that many of the unfortunates we see before us are of the lowest order of womanhood!”

  The first men trickled into the street, most heading straight into a barroom. Sam saw a few to stop and talk to women, mostly with children at their sides and presumably wives in this case, for he saw some hand over money before turning away to quench their thirst. He watched carefully and estimated that fewer than one in ten of the men passed any of their money to their womenfolk. The fortunate few who had received part of their men’s wages fled the scene, presumably before they could be attacked and robbed.

  “Most will give their wives anything they have left when they finally reach home, Mr Heythorne. Too often they will have empty pockets.”

  Sam saw none of the men who were paid inside the pubs come out and hand over any part of their wages.

  He watched a few of the men chaffer with women in the street and go off with them for a few minutes, mostly into run-down boarding houses but not infrequently into back-alleys.

  “I have been forced to lock the church doors of a Saturday evening, Mr Heythorne, though God’s House should ever be open for prayer, for discovering the use the pews have been put to.”

  Sam was surprised, even, he had to admit to himself, shocked at that disclosure.

  Mr Porter was inclined to be ribaldly amused.

  “Tuppence, they tell me, is the going rate, Mr Heythorne, with another penny on top for those who require the comfort and privacy of a bed.”

  “Dear me! I fear I have led a sheltered life, Mr Porter. Even as a soldier I was not aware of such goings on.”

  Sam did not ask how Porter came by his knowledge. He did not wish to know.

  The clock struck the half hour. The street was heaving with men pushing their way into the boozers, many of them extra thirsty for having walked a mile and more into town from the outlying potteries. The noise had become a roar of shouting, yelling voices. The first fight started, fifty or so yards distant, close enough for Sam to see three men attacking a fourth, knocking him down and kicking viciously.

  The Reverend had seen worse before, he said.

  “Lucky for him they have bare feet, Mr Heythorne. He is slightly better dressed, a foreman perhaps. Unwise of him to show his face to his men, if that is so. Possibly here to pay the men and an argument arisen about piece-work or deductions for careless or shoddy work. He may yet rise from the ground and make his way home.”

  The crowd ignored the victim, motionless in the mud, walking by uncaring.

  “Over in the alley, look, Mr Heythorne.”

  Sam followed Porter’s pointing finger, saw half a dozen urchins gathering and then running across to the prostrate figure. They grabbed hold of him and pul
led him back to their little lane.

  “That was good of them. Do they expect a reward… Oh!”

  They watched as the man was stripped, pockets turned inside out and everything he possessed taken from him. The biggest of the boys tried his boots for size, found them too large, kicked the body in disgust. They ran off, taking their booty with them.

  “Straight to the pawnshop, Mr Heythorne. They will get a few pennies for his clothes and boots, and if they are lucky, a shilling or two for the contents of his pockets. He was not wearing a ring, I saw none of them cut a finger off to take it.”

  “My God!” Sam was truly shocked.

  The Reverend announced his despair, yet again.

  “God is not to be found on these streets, sir.”

  The first drunks were being thrown out of the bars now, some reeling off homewards, most collapsing where they landed.

  “Will the street urchins be back for those?”

  “No. The bouncers in the bars will have dipped their pockets before they threw them out. Most of those are the hopeless, the ones who tip half a pint of neat spirits down their throats in the space of five minutes. I am told that they will normally have been drinking on tick throughout the week and will have paid off their slate before they are allowed to buy more – they probably were down to their last sixpence anyway.”

  “They are animals, not human beings, Mr Porter.”

  “Many of them, I must agree, Mr Heythorne. They are beyond our understanding, outside our comprehension. There are a few females, such as that over there, searching for their men, hoping to drag them home before they have lost all of their wages. They waste their time, for such men are valueless. Foolish women! There is one who has her children at her side – how she hopes to keep them safe at this time of night, I cannot imagine. There, look! Two of the men in the street have grabbed hold of her little girl, are taking her away, poor mite. She is crying for her mama but will not be seen again.”