Page 39 of The Murder of Thomas Cardwell
“Oh, look!” Ruth leaned forward, staring to the right. “There’s the pub.”
They were crossing Orsett Heath, and separated from the road by a decent-sized yard, a squat, whitewashed building with multiple bay windows beneath a steeply sloping roof sported a sign across the front labeling it “The Fox.” There appeared to be two main doors, one at either end of the almost triangular façade.
“That’s a good size,” Jordan remarked, “and close to Tilbury but not within the town. I imagine that on any given night, it would host a large and varied crowd.”
Ruth nodded. “Judging by the windows, it looks to have multiple public rooms inside.” She sat back as the pub fell behind. “A crowded place with adjoining rooms. Thomas wouldn’t have found it difficult to follow and watch Gibson without being spotted by Gibson, Harrison, or Josh.”
A second later, she heaved a deep sigh. “I miss Thomas.” She looked out to the side. “He was…always there. The steady rock the rest of the family leaned on. I might be the eldest, and Gibson after me, but Thomas was our anchor, and with him gone, the family—all of us—feel…adrift.”
Jordan waited in silence. There was little he could say.
After a moment, her gaze still on the passing landscape, Ruth went on, “Bobby is still immature, and as you saw today, Gibson is also naive in many ways. He and Bobby seem to have not quite grown up—our father was like that, too. Gibson and Bobby take after him, while Thomas and I take after our mother. We’re the responsible ones, while the other two are…not bad-hearted at all but flighty. Difficult to rely on.”
We need to find another anchor.
Jordan heard the words she didn’t say. He clasped his hands firmly against the compelling urge to reach out and close his hand about hers and tell her he was willing to audition for the part.
That he felt such an impulse—heard the words ready-formed in his brain—was something of a shock. A development startling enough to make him pause and think—and then firmly set aside the issue for later examination. Regardless of what he might actually want, now was not the time to make any sort of advance.
Keeping his gaze fixed forward, he racked his brain for some innocuous topic of conversation to fill the minutes to Finsbury Circus.
Barnaby crouched beside Stokes behind a stack of crates in the dank, dark confines of the old warehouse. They’d found a spot along the front wall where the planks had warped enough to allow them to peer out and watch the track and view any activity in the yard in front of the doors. Elsewhere in the warehouse, several groups of Stokes’s men were likewise waiting in the dark.
They’d moved into position half an hour ago, along with the rest of the sizeable force Stokes had assembled and deployed, and the warehouse was now effectively surrounded while they waited for Chesterton and his drivers to arrive.
The night sky was cloudy with the moon well screened, which was a blessing. The land around the warehouse was relatively flat, with only the occasional bushes and clumps of vegetation dotted about. Nevertheless, those delegated to remain outside had found somewhere to crouch out of sight, and as timepieces ticked past nine o’clock, all were alert and growing increasingly impatient.
Barnaby glanced at Stokes, a shadowy presence in the darkness, then grinned to himself. At Penelope’s suggestion, Griselda, Stokes, and their family had joined the Adairs for dinner, arriving early enough so that the four children could take their meals together as well. After presiding over that event in the nursery, the adults had left their offspring to play and returned to the peace downstairs. They’d dined at half past six, and Penelope and Griselda had waved Barnaby and Stokes off at a quarter past seven. It had been transparently obvious that both Penelope and Griselda had wanted to come—to be there to see Chesterton captured—but they’d reluctantly accepted their lot and consented to remain in town and await the men’s return.
In truth, the only reason for Barnaby’s presence was the possibility that someone else would arrive with Chesterton, someone who might be Chesterton’s coconspirator, and legally speaking, having a reliable and unimpeachable non-police witness might be a very good thing.
Other than observing, there was little for Barnaby to do. Stokes and his men were, by now, experts in staging successful traps. In addition to those inside the warehouse, ready to witness and deal with whatever transpired, the bulk of the force had spread to right and left of the building, in position to close in once their quarry had halted before the doors, hemming them in with a ring of blue.
O’Donnell had taken on the role of primary watchman, the one with the key to the padlock on the chain securing the doors. It would be largely up to him to string Chesterton along until the drays arrived. The Commissioner wanted the entire crew taken up, not just Chesterton.
Stokes suddenly shifted, leaning closer to the wall as he peered through a chink between two planks. Following Stokes’s lead and staring out through a gap a little farther along the wall, at first, Barnaby could see nothing, then a horse materialized outof the gloom shrouding the track and came plodding toward the warehouse.
An average-sized, solidly built man swayed slightly in the saddle. Oblivious to the many eyes watching him, he rode into the yard before the warehouse doors. He halted his mount near the wall on the other side of the doors to the shack and dismounted. Dropping in rather ungainly fashion to the ground, he looped the reins through a ring set into the wall, then turned toward the shack. “Willis! Where are you, man?”
O’Donnell, garbed in civilian clothes that had seen better days, came out of the shack and stared at the man. “Be you Chesterton, then?”
Chesterton frowned. “Yes. Who the devil are you?”
“I’m Willis’s cousin.” O’Donnell came forward, pulling the padlock key from his pocket. “He’s been taken ill—the whole family, really—and he begged me to stand in for him. Just for tonight, mind. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
Chesterton huffed, but was clearly uninterested in his hireling’s health. He waited with reined impatience as O’Donnell made a performance of freeing the doors, then Chesterton seized one handle and, together with O’Donnell, hauled the doors wide open.
After kicking a stone into place to hold the door in position, Chesterton walked toward the gaping maw of the warehouse. “The drays should be along any minute. Get them to line up out here, wagon parallel to the doorway. That way, we can be quick about loading. The drivers know the drill.”
O’Donnell tugged his forelock. “Aye, sir.”
With all arranged to his liking, Chesterton strode into the warehouse.
With Stokes, Barnaby remained crouched by the front wall, screened from Chesterton’s immediate sight by a stack of crates.
They listened as Chesterton went straight to a shelf on the other side of the front wall. A lamp had been left there, along with a box of matches, and within a minute, Chesterton had the lamp burning. He picked it up, turned, and walked to the nearest crate.
Peering out from their hiding place, Barnaby and Stokes saw Chesterton smile and affectionately pat the crate on top of the first stack, then hoisting the lamp, he started walking slowly down the central aisle, counting the crates in the stacks along one side.
