Killing's Reward

by Andrew Wareham

  The boy came close to bursting into tears. Winter was not so far off and he could now be sure that he would not freeze to death.

  “Let me see, Mr Heythorne. An old pistol, I think – I keep one to hand against need. Let us just load the piece so that it may be discharged in our vicinity and placed in the villain’s dead hand.”

  “Dead?”

  “Oh, yes, my kind sir. He is not to survive such an act of wicked betrayal. That would be quite unconscionable!”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Killing’s Reward

  Section Three - AD 1767

  The body seemed very small, crumpled in the road, facedown, one out flung hand ornamented with the old pistol. Blood had oozed from the two bullet holes in the chest, formed a small pool, rapidly soaking into the dirt of the unmade highway.

  “In the midst of life there is death, Mr Heythorne. How fleeting is this mortal coil!”

  Samuel swallowed, controlled himself, thinking it to be ill-mannered to spew on a corpse. He managed an appropriately casual response.

  “He has certainly shuffled it off, Nick. He will not be asking ‘to be or not to be’.”

  “The Bard of Avon has much to offer us in our daily reflections, Mr Heythorne.”

  Samuel agreed and turned the conversation to more mundane considerations.

  “Should we inspect the pockets to discover our money, Nick?”

  “Let the constable do that when eventually he arrives, Mr Heythorne. Palethorpe lies just inside the parish boundary of Stone and the constable must therefore take charge of unlawful corpses. The gig should be here with him inside the hour. For the while, we must guard the body from any interference.”

  They waited patiently, joined over the hour by a passing carter and two farm wagons, one loaded high with manure and perfuming the whole area. A private carriage came by but did not stop, the passengers not indulging in vulgar curiosity. The carter and farmhands were all three fascinated and determined to discover every detail in order to take the floor in their pub that night, the centre of attention; nothing as exciting to talk about as a rogue shot to death in his crime since Squire Tackenham had been found with his throat cut nearly three years previous.

  The constable arrived, finally, and heaved his old body down from the gig. Parish constables were almost always ancients given the job to keep them off the poor law; they were not expected to do anything and normally did not know how to.

  “Be that thee, Mr Nick?”

  “It is indeed, Master Constable. Mr Samuel Heythorne stands at my side.”

  The constable knuckled his forehead and waited for orders.

  “This villain is one Simon Peters, employed as a clerk to the distillery at Palethorpe. I recently discovered cash to be missing from the firm and investigated. I sent a message to Peters that he must come to me in my office, bringing his cash ledgers. He chose to run and was seen to be climbing the fence at the rear of his workplace. There is a mass of bramble just there, which he had to force his way through. I came down by the roadway, together with Mr Heythorne and we waited for the criminal to show himself. He appeared and I challenged him. He took out a pistol – which I did not know him to possess – and fired a shot at my master. I shot him down in return.”

  Nick displayed his own double-barrelled pistol.

  “Thees did right, too, Master Nick. Best to get the stiff into Stone, into the hands of the Bench there, to sit on ‘im as Crowner, like. Can’t put ‘im up into the gig and get blood on the cushions…”

  “You go back in the gig and tell Jonas Smith, the undertaker, to come out with a box to pick him up. First though, you must search the body in front of the witnesses here assembled.”

  There was a small bag on the ground, fallen from the body’s shoulder. The constable opened that first.

  “Two pair of drawers and two spare stockings. He weren’t coming back, were he? A leather drawstring bag the size of my two fists and heavy like. Can’t undo the knot, too tight for my old fingers.”

  One of the farmhands helped, pulled the bag open.

  “Cor, bloody ‘ell, mister! Full of bloody ackers ain’t it?”

  A few gold coins and a bulk of silver with a leavening of larger coppers, mostly groats.

  “The proceeds of wickedness, Constable. This money was stolen from his kind masters. It should be taken back to Palethorpe and there be counted in the presence of a witness.”

  All agreed that was only right.

  Two hours and the scene was made tidy, fresh earth turned over the patch of bloody mud and the highway available again to all users.

  “Sixty-three pounds, five shillings and eightpence, Mr Heythorne. More than two years of Peter’s wages. Such ingratitude!”

  “Base indeed, Nick. He deserves his fate!”

  “He does indeed, Mr Heythorne.”

  Samuel found that he meant his words – he had no forgiveness in him for the thief, particularly a felon who betrayed the kindness offered him. Thinking the case through, it was obvious that this killing was no murder – the villain was better dead. Nick had performed a public service on this occasion, and very probably on many another. People were too ready to condemn a man who so often provided a public service.

  “What of selling up, Nick?”

  “A word with Mr Malone first, Mr Heythorne. The distilleries must be worth ten thousand pounds between them and that is a sum of money not easy to come by.”

  The magistrates agreed that the body belonged to a villain who had received his just deserts. They confiscated his pistol, as being of a criminal nature. Then they hopefully enquired as to who might bear the expense of a committal – should the parish have to pay for a pauper’s burial?

  Samuel raised a hand, reluctantly offered to bear the cost of the plainest of interments.

  “I do not know where to put the body, gentlemen. Should such a felon lie in the churchyard?”

  They did not know. Perhaps he should be put underground at the County Gaol, in unconsecrated soil, where the murderers went after hanging – but it involved a journey and expense and inconvenience. They sent a messenger to the rector and received the charitable response that he could be put down in the corner outside the churchyard wall, in the ground reserved for suicides; there would be no need for a service.

  The undertaker dug a deep hole and lined it with quicklime and had the body removed from his plainest coffin where it had lain for the inquest, stripped the corpse of clothes with a second hand value and dumped it, covering it over first with wet clay and then with the spoil from the hole. His men then stamped the soil flat and laid turfs on top. A year and there should be no trace of the burial.

  Samuel watched in duty bound, finding the process somewhat distasteful. It smacked too much of ritual revenge for his liking, the community casting out the body of the sinner. It was not very pious.

  He shrugged. If that was what people wanted, then so be it; he was no great moral reformer to order them to mend their ways. He made his way to his little carriage and was taken into Stoke to speak with Mr Malone, as he had arranged a couple of days earlier.

  “It is my intention to dispose of the distilleries, Mr Malone. We shall remain in business, expanding indeed, in glass and pottery and predominantly in coal. In a few years, I expect, we will involve ourselves in the canal trade, but I do not see my interests remaining in gin. To be frank, sir, I have already found that our possession of the distilleries has caused potential customers to shy clear of us, as if they regarded gin as a contaminant, which, to some extent, it must be. Briefly, Mr Malone, gin is not respectable and as we grow bigger and better known, we find we must have a good name in the wider world.”

  Samuel had given much thought to his little speech. An appeal to respectability must ring a bell with Mr Malone while fear of the Revenue men might be less appealing. Mr Malone was rich and powerful, but he was not respectable, and no doubt could understand why the Heythornes might wish to be.

  “I seem to remember
that Nick manages the stills for you, Mr Heythorne…”

  “He does, Mr Malone. When we sell – and we have discussed the prospect at length with him – he will withdraw from them and will work more in his other fields of interest. He will remain, as he always has been, the very closest of my many good friends.”

  “A forthright statement of your loyalty, Mr Heythorne, and, to be sure, one that I respect.”

  It had long occurred to Samuel that Mr Malone took pains to offer the occasional Irish idiom, so as to assure his auditor that he was still the naïve country boy who had first come to town from the bogs.

  “Now, Mr Heythorne, are you in the way of asking me to purchase from ye?”

  “Not at all, Mr Malone. I am making a call of courtesy on you, no more. You have stood our friend these many years and it would be ill-mannered in the extreme not to at least inform you of our intentions.”

  “That is good of you, sir. I must say I have no interest in owning your fine distilleries. It is not impossible that some of my acquaintance might have the desire to do so, however. Do you have an inkling of a price you might ask, Mr Heythorne?”

  “The books show an income of between eighteen hundred and two thousand for each of the last few years, Mr Malone.”

  “Was it land we were talking of, we would say a price of not less than forty thousand pounds, sir. But a manufactury demands far higher returns than the land, of course.”

  “It does, Mr Malone. I would look at between thirteen and eighteen per centum, depending on risk.”

  “Six or seven years purchase, in fact, Mr Heythorne. Say not less than eleven thousand nor more than fourteen.”

  “Exactly so, sir. The difference perhaps to reflect on the means of payment.”

  “Gold coins or Bills of Exchange; cash on the nail or instalments over two or three years – all might affect the price agreed.”

  Samuel smiled and bowed his understanding.

  “Can you leave the matter in me hands for a few days, Mr Heythorne? I may well be able to discover an acquaintance who could be of interest to you. It might well be felt wise to form a consortium in fact.”

  “The advantage of speaking to an experienced gentleman, Mr Malone. I had not thought of such a course.”

  Mr Malone smiled in his turned and bowed to the compliment.

  It was all most gentlemanly, Samuel reflected as he made enquiries about family and their health and told Mr Malone that they had not heard yet from his brother, it was too soon.

  “I believe your sister has set up household as a farmer, Mr Heythorne. An unusual course in a young lady.”

  “She loves the countryside, Mr Malone. It is her intention to create orchards and a small park. I suspect she will purchase a dog. She has almost done so several times over the years. She has a lady companion hired to give her company.”

  Mr Malone thought it very strange but could say nothing without being impolite. They parted with great civility, each showing a respect for the other.

  “Well, Mother, I have spoken to Malone and he wishes to purchase, though he denies that to be so. He is delaying with the pretext that he is to discover a consortium. I expect an offer next week.”

  “Will he deal fairly with you, Samuel?”

  “He must, Mother – he cannot afford to be known as a hard-dealing man with an old friend. He will offer eleven thousand, more or less, and I shall accept with thanks for his courtesy in making the arrangements for me. We might be able to squeeze a few hundreds more, but we are not in the way of doing so with him, I believe.”

  “Many men live on less than one hundred pounds a year, Samuel. It is rather arrogant simply to dismiss ‘a few hundreds’ more or less. There are paupers – as we well know – who would welcome a few hundred pennies, let alone pounds.”

  “There are indeed, Mother, but they are not named Heythorne, I believe. It is to our advantage to be financially superior to Mr Malone. He is in so many ways more powerful than us that it is almost essential we show away to him, that we almost express disdain for the mere lucre which is so important to him. I would be more than a little concerned was he to gain the impression we were passing on a rather dubious gift. Was he to imagine that we were getting rid of a dangerous liability, not simply changing the focus of our endeavours, then he might be much upset. Better far that he is so pleased with his bargain that it does not occur to him to look our gift horse in the mouth.”

  “Do you think it so very perilous a business, Samuel?”

  “I do, Mother! While we are into gin, our whole prosperity lies in the hands of the Wakerley family. If Captain Sir Charles dies, then who is to say that his heir will recognise an obligation to us?”

  “But he is not so old a man, surely, Samuel.”

  “A whiff of the spotted fever and any man can die, Mother, at any age. Or, of course, he might offend a gentleman of Nick’s ilk, and then where would he be?”

  “In Heaven or in Hell, and who could guarantee which, my son?”

  “Our Divines seem to think they can, Mother. I have my doubts, I must say. But then, of course, I am English and I do not believe we have much to say to any of the breed. There were, as I understand the matter, very few willing to rise for the Young Pretender mainly because he carried too many priests in his train.”

  Josie had to admit it to be true and that the country seemed none the worse off for having empty churches.

  “You are, I must suppose, right to say that we must get rid of the stills, though I am unwilling to make the break with the very foundation of your father’s prosperity. Times change, Samuel, and there is small gain in looking backward. There is a new day dawning tomorrow, and who is to say what it will bring with it? What do we do with, say, eleven thousand pounds?”

  “Why, Mother, we purchase land, very carefully. We must calculate where the new canal will run when it comes. There may be a few locations where there is no alternative route and where fifty pounds spent to purchase a very few acres must result in a substantial profit inside a few years. Either we have land which will be well-placed to situate wharves, or the canal builders themselves will need to purchase from us, at our price. Ideally, the latter, Mother.”

  She could not understand why the short-term profiteering might be more desirable than the many years of income wharves might provide. Samuel explained that the original owners of the canal must be burdened with debt and that an unforeseen extra expenditure might drive them over the edge.

  “Then, Mother, we and probably Mr Malone, buy from them at a knockdown price and have a canal that can run at a profit, unburdened by debt repayment and interest charges. A second-hand canal may well be a blessing to us. We shall not, of course, wish to be involved in the original cutting of the canal, except possibly as creditors who can push for their bankruptcy. We must not be owners, Mother!”

  Josie was not convinced that her son’s proposals were entirely ethical. They might even create a bad reputation for him. It seemed likely that they might be highly profitable. She gave her blessing.

  Two weeks and Mr Malone came back with the offer of eleven thousand three hundred pounds. Samuel accepted on the spot.

  “You will know the market price far better than I, Mr Malone. I am not to set my wisdom against yours, I believe. What is your proposal for the payment?”

  “Cash, Mr Heythorne, on the nail. Gold coins, sir, as must be between friends.”

  Samuel bowed his acknowledgement of amity.

  “I believe I shall bring Nick with me as bodyguard when settling day comes, Mr Malone. That is a worryingly large sum!”

  Mr Malone laughed and said that he would not be coming alone to his attorney’s office.

  Samuel spent a few days riding out, penetrating the roads and alleys nearest the Trent and trying to identify properties in the town that must be profitable for their proximity to the new canal. He discovered there were too many – if one location was to be taken then the canal could shift its course. His idea simply would not work,
which was an annoyance. There was no easy fortune for the grabbing.

  He did pass any number of small and larger potteries, not all of them seeming well-run. The purchase of two or three would be well possible. Then to install efficient managers would not be too difficult, particularly as he had Nick available to encourage them to be hard-working, efficient, reliable employees. He might build new and establish his own concern, but it seemed wiser to profit from the endeavours of other men. He thought long about the possibilities, walking his horse behind an overladen coal wagon crawling behind a sway-backed pair on their last legs. If potteries could be poorly run, then so could pits and he thought he might prefer to expand in coal. He changed his daily rides to the mining areas.

  It was still the case, he found, that many of the pits were small, worked by a family, once farmers, now turned to more profitable labours. Typically, they would dig out a simple quarry but sooner or later would find themselves needing to go underground, to turn to mining. When that day came, they found themselves to lack the knowledge of what to do next and very often to have spent their past income and not have the money to cut and prop their tunnels and adits and coal faces.

  In the space of a week he made three loans to small pits, none greater than two hundred pounds, to be repaid at the end of the year at ten per centum, a very low rate. Failure to repay – a most unlikely event, he laughed - must result in a sequestration, the loss of the pit to Mr Heythorne. He took some pains to explain the inevitable consequences of failure as he countersigned the contracts his attorney drew up for the purpose. The terms were open, fair, honest - and inexorable.

  A while later, riding the open hillsides in the Cheadle area, south of Leek, where the land rose up into the moors, he came across a tiny working on a large exposed seam, a single elderly farmer and one labourer cutting coals and loading a farm tumbril.

  Initially, he played the innocent.

  “Good morning, sir. Am I right in following this path I am riding? Is this a highway or have I strayed onto a farm track?”