The Incendiary's Trail

by James McCreet

  ‘Sergeant Williamson sends his regards. Do not speak to me in case the turnkey is listening. In a moment, your manservant Benjamin will come with a package and instructions for you. There will be a pencil and paper if you want to write to the sergeant. In the meantime, do not fear. Everything has been planned. Mr Williamson says I am to tell you that you will be attending the bal masqué this evening, just as you planned.’

  Noah returned to the mattress, his mind awhirl. Could it be true that Sergeant Williamson – upright, rule-abiding and criminal-loathing Mr Williamson – was about to abet an escape from one of Her Majesty’s gaols? And that he had inveigled PC Cullen into the scheme? His fingertips itched with anticipation and he wondered at how the escape would be accomplished.

  The street-facing wall of the gaol was of Portland stone and the bars were quite solid, so no possibility of escape presented itself there. Likewise, the door was of oaken planks, banded with iron and locked from the outside. An eyehole covered with an iron slide could be used at any time to observe the prisoner inside, and there was a similar space at the bottom, wide enough to slide a plate of food through.

  It would also be quite senseless to be given any kind of weapon, for although it might be possible to shoot or stab the turnkey through the eyehole, he would still be locked inside the room. Perhaps Benjamin would bring enough money to tempt the warders into the cell for a moment, but Noah knew from experience that even warders are not that foolish. They would just confiscate the money and leave him worse off than before. Whatever the detective had in mind, it would have to be something very good.

  A cough from outside brought him again to the window. PC Cullen was still standing there, and Benjamin was crossing the road towards him with a package under his arm. On seeing Noah at the bars, he smiled but did not wave or make any obvious gestures. Instead, he continued to walk and handed a paper-wrapped package to PC Cullen without breaking his stride. In moments, he had gone. Although there were people in the street, the transaction had occurred just as a carriage had passed before the window and it seemed that no one had seen. The constable tucked the package under his arm and looked around to make sure.

  Then, when he was certain that there were no observers, he made a quick backwards glance and tossed the package through the bars on to the floor of the cell. Noah retrieved it rapidly and returned to the mattress, checking that none of this had been seen through the eyehole.

  He opened the package carefully, trying not to rustle the paper (and cursing this oversight on the part of Mr Williamson). Inside it, neatly folded, was a pair of his own dark-blue trousers from home, a shirt and a police tunic complete with the insignia of Lambeth division. A tiny knife with a blade of no more than one inch was secreted inside one trouser pocket, and a blank sheet of paper with a pencil occupied the other. A roughly circular muslin bag completed the package. There was no saw to cut his chain. Perplexity and anger overtook him. What kind of ridiculous charade was this? Dress as a policeman and persuade the guard that they had locked up the wrong man? Squeeze through the bars and take PC Cullen’s place?

  He snatched a letter from the folds of the clothing and read Sergeant Williamson’s regular hand. As he did so, a key wrapped in its folds fell to the stone floor. A smile appeared on his face and, as he read the letter, he had to fight the urge to laugh. The plan was sheer genius! It had potential for failure, true, but in conception it was a work of a great mind. If Mr Williamson’s life had had a similar beginning and followed a similar route to Noah’s, he might have been a criminal to rival Lucius Boyle. Only one thing was missing . . .

  And it came through the bars at that very moment: about three yards of rope and a further three yards of thin twine, all within a canvas bag. He coiled it all swiftly and put it under the mattress along with the clothes. Now would come the most difficult part of the plan: waiting.

  Henry Hawkins was also waiting. Earlier that morning, he had ventured into Mr Nathan’s Masquerade Warehouse, pretending to be one of Noah’s household, and asked if the costumes had yet been delivered. On hearing that they had not, he offered to take them himself but could not provide satisfactory evidence that he was of that household.

  So now he was waiting within sight of the house in Manchester-square for the delivery to arrive. The policeman watching the house had gone, but this made Mr Hawkins more comfortable about waiting in front of various shops. By and by, a young man with a large parcel descended from a hackney carriage and made to approach the door. In a moment, Mr Hawkins was at the young man’s side.

  ‘Let me help you with that heavy package, lad. Are you going to the address here? It is the house of my master. These will be the costumes he is expecting.’

  ‘Please let go, sir. I am to deliver these myself.’

  ‘Worried about your pennies, are you? Here, take this half-sovereign and be gone. I will take the package.’

  ‘Please, sir! Let me alone.’

  ‘I have told you, he is my master. Do you understand me?’

  With these final words, Mr Hawkins jabbed the blade of a considerable dagger against the ribs of the poor man with the package.

  ‘O! You will murder me!’

  ‘No, you idiot. I will take this package and you will take the money and run back to your employer. If you go for a constable, I will come to your place of work and kill you. Now – hand me those costumes like a good boy.’

  And so it was that Henry Hawkins stood on the doorstep knocking at the large brass knocker as if he were the delivery lad from Mr Nathan’s.

  The door opened to reveal the same Negro man he had followed the day before, only he seemed much taller and sturdier close to. The black man’s eyes bore into his own as if he knew him. And a long-forgotten sensation from the prize-ring flashed into his mind, one that he had not experienced since he had first stepped on to the blood-spattered floor amid the yelling crowd: the knowledge that he had met his match.

  ‘I have this delivery from Mr Nath—’

  He did not speak further because he had just seen Sergeant Williamson appear below and behind the formidable shoulder of the Negro. The detective’s face was a mass of cuts and multi-hued bruising from the beating Mr Hawkins had administered two nights previously. But in the time it took for him to register this, a large black hand had grasped him by the jacket and jerked him into the house, whereupon a black fist exploded in his face with a force that rocked him back on his heels and knocked him clear unconscious – an impact coinciding exactly with the door slamming behind him.

  When he awoke on the parlour floor, it was to discover his hands and feet bound, and the two men looking down at him.

  ‘Well, Mr Hawkins. Our roles are now reversed,’ said Mr Williamson.

  ‘I will not say a word to you, Detective.’

  ‘You need not speak at all. Neither are you in a position to bargain. We have enough evidence against you to see you hang: your attack upon me, your murder of Reverend Archer, abetting Lucius Boyle in his various crimes . . . Yes, you will certainly hang.’

  At this realization, Mr Hawkins began to struggle against his bindings. But Benjamin stepped forward and kicked him hard under the ribs so that the air rushed out of his body.

  ‘It is a waste of energy to struggle so,’ said the detective. ‘If you persist, I will have to ask Benjamin here to render you inert once more.’

  ‘What . . . what about that five hundred pounds you promised me?’ asked Mr Hawkins.

  ‘Ah, now you want to bargain! It is too late for that.’

  ‘I will tell you where he is. It is a coal barge—’

  ‘How quickly the loyalties change. All I need to know from you is whether you have arranged to meet him again and what information he is expecting to receive.’

  ‘Ha! You will hang me anyway.’

  ‘I am not a murderer like you. I do not agree with execution. If what you tell us proves to be true, I could have your sentence commuted to fourteen years’ transportation.’

  ‘Y
ou wouldn’t. You are lying.’

  ‘It is entirely your choice, although it seems to me that there is very little choice in the matter: certain death, or the possibility of transportation. I must ask you for an instant decision.’

  ‘He will kill me.’

  ‘And so will the judge’s sentence. Choose your murderer.’

  ‘You are a heartless —.’

  ‘No, I am a detective in pursuit of a criminal who should not be allowed to survive in this city any longer. Now, what is your choice? Should I ask Benjamin to help you with your considerations?’

  Mr Hawkins looked at Benjamin, who stood over him with expressionless malice. Whatever the Negro had experienced in his life, wherever he had acquired those scars, the death of another violent white man clearly held no distress for him. He had long ago passed any threshold of pity for those who would threaten him or those he protected.

  ‘Mr Hawkins? I cannot wait all afternoon.’

  ‘All right, d— you! I am to meet him and tell him what I found at this house.’

  ‘Where and when?’

  ‘There is a marine store—’

  ‘Off Rosemary-lane? I know about it. He has been there before. What time?’

  ‘At dusk. He will not be seen during the daylight. Don’t expect me to take you there . . .’

  ‘You will do exactly as I bid you. Tell me, who is the gentleman that Mr Boyle has been blackmailing? We know that he is a policeman of some significance . . .’

  ‘I know nothing about that. He tells me nothing but what I am to do.’

  ‘Yes. You are his tool. Just a dumb animal to do his bidding.’

  ‘I am no dumb animal. My name is known across the city as a fighter.’

  ‘And now as a murderer. Soon they will whisper your name in the silent seconds before the trap falls and the rope tautens.’

  Mr Hawkins looked at the swirling scars about Benjamin’s neck and knew, finally, that his fate lay upon the gallows.

  Noah sat on his mattress in that same idol posture that Inspector Newsome and Superintendent Wilberforce had seen before. It had grown dark outside and the illumination from the gas lamps cast bars of shadow over his body. He was calm and ready. At six o’clock the turnkey would look through the eyehole and slip that evening’s meal under the door. Noah had thirty minutes to prepare.

  As quietly as he could, he used the key to unlock his ankle irons. Then he changed into the clothes brought to him by PC Cullen and used the small knife to make a slit down the entire side of the mattress. The corridor outside the cell was quiet as he began to tie the hems of the discarded trousers closed with the twine, followed by the cuffs of the shirt he had taken off.

  Casting a wary eye at the eyehole, he began to scoop the musty horsehair from the mattress and stuff wads of it into the legs of the trousers and the arms of the shirt until the empty clothes began to take on a corporeal form. When the ‘legs’ and ‘torso’ were sufficiently filled and shaped, he attached the two at the ‘waist’ with more twine. The circular muslin bag was the head: an unsatisfactory substitute, but hopefully effective when stuffed and used in concert with the rest of the plan.

  When the parts had been combined, he looked critically at the effigy of himself with disappointment. It didn’t look like it would fool a child. Nevertheless, he fashioned a noose from the rope and put it around the ‘neck’ of the horsehair Noah. He tied the whole to the bars at the top of the arched window so that, from the eyehole, the turnkey would see the clear silhouette of a hanging man when he peered through. As a final touch, Noah attached the remaining twine to the ankles of the effigy. If he jerked on the twine from his position beside the door, its legs would twitch as if in the final throes of asphyxiation.

  But would it work? From where he sat, it looked a pretty poor spectacle. However, it would make a sudden impression through the aperture in the door. Who would question the sight of a prisoner hanging in the window with his legs twitching? Who would pause to ask where the rope had come from? And if Inspector Newsome had made it explicit to all concerned that the prisoner in that solitary cell was important, wouldn’t they be more inclined to pay more attention? The effectiveness of the plan would depend on these assumptions.

  What was the time? Noah crouched beside the door with the twine in his hands. Perhaps Mr Newsome had instructed the warders not to feed him. Perhaps they would come later, after the masque ball had already started. Perhaps Mr Bryant had escaped and was at that moment reporting to an apoplectic Mr Newsome. Perhaps a passer-by would see the figure in the window and raise the alarm prematurely. Noah flexed his fingers.

  Voices. Noah heard the rattle of keys in locks and the ceramic scrape of plates going under doors down the corridor. He tautened the twine. The adjoining door rattled. He heard boots scratching outside and the iron eyehole cover slid back. He began to twitch the twine and the figure in the window jerked spasmodically as if expending the final dregs of life.

  Silence.

  It hadn’t worked.

  Noah kept jerking the twine. How many seconds had passed? One? Two? A carriage was arriving outside. Mr Williamson – or Mr Newsome?

  Then a tremendous shout:

  ‘He’s gone and hanged himself! Merrill! Come quick! He’s still alive! Smith – go and fetch the inspector!’

  The key clattered into the lock and the door swung open. The turnkey rushed to grasp the horsehair figure, realizing, perhaps, only when he was halfway to it that it was not a real man. By that time, he had heard a rattle of chains behind him and the door slamming, its lock clicking with the key he had carelessly left outside. He cried out:

  ‘Escape! Escape!’

  Noah raced down the corridor, the chains swinging in his hand like a life preserver. Mr Merrill, the burly turnkey, paused in surprise at the seeming ‘policeman’ rushing towards him. It was all the time Noah needed to strike the man in the throat with the chains so that he collapsed to the ground. A further guard, having seen this and heard the cries, went to grab the truncheon at his hip. Noah simply continued running and used his momentum to strike the man’s face with his head. There was a crunch of cartilage and the second man fell, clutching a bloodied nose.

  Noah dropped the chains, turned right and pulled open the street door. PC Cullen was waiting there and ran with him to the waiting carriage’s open door. They boarded, slammed the door and the horses were off with a crack of the whip and sparking hooves.

  Sergeant Williamson sat in the carriage and regarded the two new arrivals with a smile. ‘Shall we go to the ball, gentlemen? I have our costumes and masques here.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  As the carriage headed south, rocking the three men from side to side, they reflected on the manner of the escape.

  ‘I congratulate you on your criminal mind, Mr Williamson,’ said Noah. ‘And I thank you for aiding my escape.’

  ‘I thought that having you out of gaol would serve justice better than Mr Newsome using you as bait to catch Mr Boyle.’

  ‘Quite right. Where is Benjamin?’

  ‘He is waiting at your home on the chance that Mr Boyle goes there. I presume he is quite able to deal with the murderer?’

  ‘Quite able. And it is likely people will be wasting energy looking for Ben at Vauxhall. Have you learned anything more about the inspector’s role in this?’

  ‘Perhaps, but first I think there is some information that you have for me. I have signalled my good faith and risked my position on the understanding that you have the means to apprehend Lucius Boyle.’

  ‘I believe I have. He knows that I will be at the bal masqué tonight – or at least he will have surmised this. If he knew of my arrest, he will soon also hear of my escape.’

  ‘How do you know that Mr Boyle knows you will be at Vauxhall?’

  ‘The letter I had Benjamin deliver. It was addressed to Mr Hardy, the diminutive gentleman who seems to have replaced the late Mr Coggins as leader of that curious troupe. In it, I made clear that I was going
to visit him at Vauxhall Gardens tonight in order to discuss Lucius Boyle further.’

  ‘But Mr Boyle must already know that Mr Hardy is no longer resident at the house – and that the tiny gentleman has not received the note.’

  ‘Quite, but he does not know that I know that. As far as he is concerned, I will be there tonight. It is the last night of the season at Vauxhall and the human curiosities will make one final appearance. It is perhaps Boyle’s final chance to find me – and them, if he wishes them harm. And what could be a greater opportunity for him than an occasion where disguises are de rigueur.’

  ‘Still, you have no guarantee he will be there. He may perceive that it is a trap.’

  ‘No, no guarantee. And, yes, he will be aware that it may be a trap. But he was not deterred from attending the execution of Mr Bradford, was he? He is bold. Fear of discovery has made him so.’

  ‘Hmm. I still fail to see how this is a plan. He may be there, but so will thousands of others. How will we know him from his costume?’

  ‘We know that he is interested in Mr Hardy and friends, and in finding me. Thus, he is most likely to be found near that show. Also, I believe I will be able to discern his gait and presence, if not his costume. I do, however, have one concern: the possibility that he will send his lackey Hawkins in his stead.’

  ‘I do not think so. Mr Henry Hawkins is imprisoned at this very moment.’

  ‘Yes? Tell me what happened.’

  ‘It seems your plan worked. When the delivery of costumes arrived, the fool tried to pass himself off as the costumier’s boy. Benjamin dealt him a rousing blow and we questioned him. He told us about the same marine store you once searched for him at—’

  ‘But he wasn’t there.’