The Darkest Walk of Crime (14 page)

“Sweet God in heaven, I hadn’t
thought of that.” Eccles shook his head; after living the dream of Chartist
utopia for so long, he obviously found it hard to bring himself back to
reality. “Come on, then.” He thrust back his hand. “No, wait!”

A tall man had emerged from a
side door of the house, smoking a long cheroot.

“That’s Trafford himself,”
Eccles said, and everyone stopped to watch the man whose property they were
invading.

Dressed in a black frock coat,
Trafford swept one hand over his unfashionable mane of glossy black hair as he
looked out into the night.

“Handsome bugger, isn’t he?”
Mendick watched as Trafford finished his cheroot, flicked the butt into the
grass and sauntered casually around the building to the front door, where he
consulted the gold hunter suspended from his waistcoat. “It looks like he’s
waiting for somebody.”

“And here somebody comes now,”
Preston indicated the landau that ground up the drive, its metal shod wheels
scraping over the neat gravel. Leaving his seat, the coachman opened the door
and bowed as a woman emerged, so swaddled in a heavy cloak that it was
impossible to see her face.

“That’s him occupied for the
night then,” Eccles said. “He likes the ladies, does Sir Robert.” He looked
around at Mendick. “Especially the Dutch ones, so I’ve heard.”

There was a muted murmur of
conversation, and then Sir Robert escorted the woman inside the house, with the
front door opening smoothly before them.

“Right,” Mendick decided. “Let’s
observe for a while.”

Trafford Hall had occupied its
present site for centuries, but a succession of owners had augmented and
altered the original mediaeval building. The simple Norman keep was now only a
small part of a complex of different architectural styles, its identity lost
amidst an array of various wings. Waiting in the fringe of the trees, Mendick
watched as flickering candles signalled the progress of servants checking the
windows and closing the doors for the night.

“Will there be food in there?”
Preston wondered, and Mendick nodded.

“With a staff that large, there
will be more than enough food.”

Without a watch, it was
difficult to judge time, but he estimated that it was eleven at night before
the final yellow light died and he could creep closer to the Hall. He toured
the building, searching for an open window, but after twenty minutes he
realised that Trafford had trained his servants well.

“All the windows are locked,” he
said, “so we’ll have to break in.”

“And how do we do that?”  There
was bitter cynicism in Duffy’s voice.

“Watch and learn, my friend,”
Mendick promised.

Rounding a dark corner to one of
the projecting wings, he directed his lantern onto a low window. “We’ll go in
here,” he decided.

“Why choose this one in
particular?” Preston asked.

“It’s in the darkest corner,”
Mendick said. “Now, Preston, you keep watch for gamekeepers.” He gave what he
hoped was a reassuring smile. “You’re our ears and eyes.” There were iron bars
set into the stonework around the window, with the glass of the multi-paned
window behind.

“I thought you were a soldier,
not a housebreaker.” Eccles was watching with professional interest.

“Watch and learn, Mr Eccles.”
After hunting down some of the cleverest thieves in London, Mendick had picked
up some of their tricks. Taking a length of cord from his bag, he drew it
around the two central bars, and, using a short metal bar, began to twist,
putting pressure on the bars.

“That’s clever,” Eccles
approved.

“If you’re taking notes, Eccles,
I’ll charge a consultation fee.” He felt the cord rubbing the skin from his
fingers but continued until the bars creaked and began to move. “There we go.”
he was unsure if he felt satisfaction or relief. With both bars loosened, he
took hold and began to pull them back and forth.

“Let me!” Stretching over him,
Eccles grasped the left hand bar and hauled it free of the mortar.

“Well done. Stand aside.”

Two bars were not enough.
Mendick had to loosen the next, which Eccles also removed with a single
impressive tug, tossing the metal behind him with an expression of contempt.
The sound of iron crunching on to the gravel path seemed to echo around the
house. Mendick stiffened, and a score of bats exploded from the eaves far
above.

“Quiet!” They crouched in the
darkest shadows until Mendick was sure nobody was coming to investigate the
noise.

He cut away the putty from the
bottom window pane, thrust through his hand and flicked open the catch to ease
open the sash.

“Is that what they taught you in
the army?” Eccles asked. “Maybe I should sign up and thieve for Queen and
country.”

“People like me do to property
what politicians and generals do to entire countries.” Mendick did not have to
inject the bitterness into his voice. “But while we would be transported for
it, they are given titles and lands.”

Duffy looked over to him.
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you speak like that, Sergeant.”

Mendick grunted but said
nothing. He was thinking like a Chartist again.

“There’s somebody coming!”
Preston nearly shouted the warning, and Mendick quickly closed the shutter of
his lantern and squeezed into the shelter of the wall. Hearing the confident
crunch of footsteps on gravel and the patter of a dog’s paws he tried to appear
as small as possible. If a lone gamekeeper caught them, they could fight their
way clear, but with a score of servants within shouting distance, escape
through policies thick with mantraps might not be so easy. The footsteps passed
and Preston grunted,

“All clear, Sergeant Mendick.”

Mendick said nothing. He waited
apprehensively for a few more moments and then crawled through the open window
and inside the house. With his men silent behind him Mendick padded onto a
stone-flagged floor in a dark room that smelled of mould and neglect.

“Lantern!” Mendick hissed, and
Eccles obliged, directing the narrow beam around the room. Heavy wooden tables
lined three walls, while unmarked boxes sat solidly on a shoulder-high shelf.

“It’s some sort of store room,”
Duffy said.

“So I see,” Mendick said, as
Eccles flicked the light around boxes of soap and candles, polish and paint.
“No food, though.”

“That would be too easy,” Eccles
said. “Let’s keep going.”

Closing the window, Mendick
pulled a piece of dark paper from his pocket and placed it over the missing
pane.

“If anybody should look in now,
they won’t see anything or feel a draught. Now keep quiet.”

“Jesus, Sergeant, that was
impressive.” Eccles looked at him with new respect.

“Aye, we learn lots of
interesting skills in Victoria’s army.”

Their boots echoing on stone
slabs, they moved through the ground floor, with Mendick not sure exactly for
what he was searching but hoping for some sign. Duffy cleared his throat.

“Is the food not usually stored
in the cellars?” Mendick berated himself for missing the obvious.

“Find a stairway, then,” he
ordered, and within minutes Duffy was leading them down a twisting stone stair,
feeling their way along a rough wall that took them to a short corridor lined
with doors.

“Cellars. Maybe wine cellars.”
Preston licked his lips.

“They’ll be locked.” Duffy
looked to Mendick.

“Not for long.” The army had
taught him a plethora of tricks for foraging, but it was the people he had met
as a police officer who showed him how to pick locks. The cumbersome,
old-fashioned doors of this part of Trafford Hall were not even a challenge. The
first cellar contained racks of bottles, filmed with dust.

“That’ll do me.” Preston reached
for the nearest until Mendick pulled him away.

“Food,” he reminded him. “We’ve
got an army to feed.”

The second cellar was filled
with sacks of meal, interspersed with rounds of cheese and boxes of apples.

“That’s better,” Mendick
approved. “Everybody select a sack of meal, some cheese and whatever else you
fancy. I’ll see if I can find anything else.”

“Right, Sergeant.” Eccles had
already taken a huge bite of an apple and was chewing lustily, while Duffy was
sampling one of the rounds of cheese.

To the delight of Preston, the
next cellar was filled with jars of honey and jam, but the fourth was double
locked, with a massive padlock holding a heavy chain in place. Mendick frowned
as his police-trained mind switched on; what could Sir Robert Trafford possibly
have that was so valuable it merited such precautions? He selected the most
intelligent of his volunteers.

“Eccles, you lead everybody home
and for the love of God, don’t get caught.”

“Are you not coming, Sergeant?”
Eccles sounded nervous at the sudden responsibility.

“You just go ahead,” Mendick
ordered. “I’ll not be long behind you.”

Waiting until the volunteers had
slipped into the dark, he knelt down to work, but after five minutes of frantic
jiggling with the stiletto he realised that it would take an expert to pick
this padlock. He swore and then froze as voices echoed along the corridor. There
was the flicker of candlelight, a yellow glow that bounced along the wall in
his direction and a deep-throated laugh.

“Dear God.” He glanced behind
him to where the corridor ended abruptly in a brick wall that blocked any
prospect of escape. There remained only the food cellars, so he slid into the
nearest just as two figures loomed at the far end of the corridor. Closing the
door with his foot, he crouched in the dark and cursed again when the lock
failed to connect and the door creaked open. With no time to close it a second
time, he could only hide and hope that nobody noticed.

He looked around, momentarily
panicking as he realised how vulnerable he was. The cellar was a place of
stone. Stone walls sloped upward to a groined stone ceiling, while deep stone
shelves held various sacks and boxes. Where was best to hide? Ducking down, he
crawled into the lowest and furthest away shelf, dragging a sack of meal in
front of him for additional concealment.

There were two voices; one
belonged to Sir Robert Trafford, and the other to a woman who shared his
confident, educated upper class accent. No doubt she was the same woman who had
arrived in the landau. Why were they down here at this time of night?

The voices became louder until
it sounded as if they were just outside the storeroom, then they abruptly
stopped. Mendick tensed, wondering if he had been seen, but just then he heard
the rattle of a chain and realised Trafford was entering the neighbouring
cellar. Silence stretched for long moments, but as Mendick crawled out of his
hiding place Trafford began to speak again.

The acoustics of the cellar
created a frustrating echo; Mendick only caught the occasional word, but
Trafford appeared to be an entertaining speaker for the woman was laughing. The
sound was distinctive, with a curious whoop of breath that he had heard before,
although he could not recollect where. Weighing the fear of discovery against
his duty to ferret out information, he peered through the gap between the door
and the wall.

Trafford was locking the padlock
and speaking with the woman, who had one hand on his arm in a most
companionable fashion. He seemed to listen with only half his attention, but
then he smiled to her, bent closer and kissed her briefly on the lips.

Mendick choked back his surprise
as the lantern glow fell fully on the woman. Last time he had seen her she was
dressed in worn clothing and had the rough voice of a mill worker; now she wore
a fashionable dress and her accent was entirely upper class. The woman who
returned Trafford’s kiss was Rachel Scott.

Lancashire: December
1847

“Oh, Robert, how forward you
are.” Scott pressed against him, hands moving down his flanks and on to the
hips of his skin-tight trousers, and then she smiled, said something in a
harsh, foreign language and pushed him away.

“Speak English, at least,”
Trafford commanded; Rachel Scott shook her head.

“If the Germans are good enough
to pull you out of a hole, Robert, you could have the courtesy to learn their
language.”

“Courtesy be damned, woman!
Ernie’s not pulling me out of any hole. He’s using my misfortune to set his
damned white horse galloping all over his cousin.”

“Temper, temper, Robert. That’s
no way to speak of kind Uncle Ernie.” Scott’s tone was mocking, but Mendick
sensed the steel behind the words. “Don’t forget what will happen if he decides
to withdraw his offer.”

“I won’t forget, but damn you,
Rachel, you know that I’m right.” There was almost a whine in Trafford’s voice
as Scott again gave that curiously indrawn laugh and slapped his arm teasingly.

“Oh, Robert, don’t be so
serious.  Just do what Uncle Ernest wants, and everything will be fine again.
Think of the money, and remember I’m here to help you.”

Trafford’s laugh was loud but
unconvincing.

“Of course you’re here to help
me, Rachel, but . . .” His tone changed from cajoling to sudden anger, “Damn
these idle servants! Look at that, the blasted door is open, despite my
explicit instructions!”

Mendick shifted back, trying to
merge with the shadows and not make any noise as Trafford put his hand on the
door handle.

“I’ll have somebody’s job for
this.”

Scott laughed again, “Luckily,
it was
that
cellar.”

“Only I have the key for the
other,” Trafford said, as their footsteps receded. “It’s an inconvenience,
though, all this sort of thing.” His tone changed again and he seemed to be
confused. “We’re damned odd bedfellows, don’t you think? Us and the Chartists?”