Jack Frake (16 page)

Pannell had overheard some guarded talk about Leith around Gwynnford, which heretofore Pannell had ignored because the matter did not concern him. A shadow hung over the man and Leith was not particularly liked in the town. It was said that he might have had something to do with the murder of the rector in St. Gwynn-by-Godolphin over a year ago. But other than a note written by the son of the woman to whom he was now married, there was no evidence that he had anything to do with the crime. The only witnesses who could possibly implicate Leith were gone; the boy, Jack Frake, had been kidnapped by Skelly men in the course of releasing Rory O’Such from the constable’s jail — an incident which still rankled — while Captain Venable and his dragoons had been attached to a regiment of cavalry in the Duke’s army in France. Pannell had heard recent talk in the Sea Siren that the officer, once a regular customer of Hiram Trott’s, was killed at the battle of Fontenoy.

He had Leith’s place watched, and when Leith, his new wife, and brother were all away, went into it to search it for any kind of evidence that would convict Leith of smuggling or of consorting with smugglers, and especially anything that could possibly link him to the Parmley murder. And he had found something — besides a half dozen ankers of Dutch gin concealed in a false wall in the upper floor of the man’s inn at Trelowe. He left the place as he and his men had found it.

Pannell was in no hurry, though Leith did not know this. Since his
arrival in the county two years ago, he had established an exemplary record of arrests and convictions of smugglers in Cornwall and Devon, a feat surpassing his superiors’ expectations. He had lost only one man killed in skirmishes with gangs; had lost no Revenue vessels; and had lost no men to desertion. In a time when allegiance and betrayal were almost synonymous, his men were unusually loyal to him. He saw to it that his men were paid, and paid a little better than other men in the Revenue Service, and that they promptly received their share of the appraised value of seized contraband, and of the posted rewards for wanted criminals they apprehended.

Henoch Pannell had a special interest in Augustus Skelly. Warren Pumphrett, deputy assistant commissioner of customs for Essex, was the official slain by Skelly twelve years ago, and had been a cousin of his on his mother’s side. The Pumphretts were a well-heeled family at the time, with a great house in London on the Thames — not far from the Duke of Richmond’s — and estates in Essex and Surrey. The family was even richer now. It owned a tea and spice importing concern, and had connections with men in Parliament, the Court, the East India Company and was connected, through a Pumphrett daughter’s marriage to a high French official, to the French government monopoly that bought and imported English tobacco.

The Pannells were poor, kept-at-arm’s-length relations, and were still so now. Pannell’s own father had struggled for years as a wool-factor, cursing the export ban on wool in one breath, calling for more stringent controls in the next. But the violent death of the Pumphretts’ only son had deeply affected the family. Gervase Pumphrett, the father, still offered a one hundred guinea reward for the simple arrest of Skelly, regardless of the charge or subsequent conviction. Henoch Pannell had heard from his mother that the father had bought a brace of pistols with which to shoot Skelly once he was in custody.

Henoch Pannell had never had any affection for Warren Pumphrett, nor for any of the family. During their infrequent, cool and duty-governed family reunions — his mother and aunt still had some regard for each other — Warren played cruel and often painful tricks on him. He had once gotten Henoch severely beaten with a coach-whip by both his infuriated uncle and his embarrassed father when Warren accused him of taking unseemly liberties with his sister, who had conspired with her brother to humiliate their awkward, shy, and ugly cousin. His back and buttocks still bore scars from the whipping. He had hated Warren. His motive for vengeance was wholly
mercenary.

Henoch Pannell joined the Revenue Service for Essex shortly after reaching his majority, thanks to the Pumphretts’ influence on the Customs Board. His career was unexceptional, unrewarding, but stable. He was given command of a Revenue sloop crewed by men indifferent to their jobs. He collected a salary and submitted costs, pursued only farmer smugglers whom it was easy to bully and apprehend, and would have been content to remain in that position, except that he knew that he could just as easily be reassigned or dismissed as a result of someone else’s political influence as was his predecessor. When the appointment of Extraordinary Commissioner for Cornwall became available two years since, Pannell had campaigned for it quietly but determinedly. He got it, because no one else wanted it. It had been created almost exclusively to apprehend Skelly. His friends and enemies on the Board all thought Pannell was a fool to want the post, and not without justification; he lacked wit, imagination and initiative. And, he was as avaricious as he was lazy. These were, they admitted, inadvertent qualifications for employment in the Revenue Service; it
did
attract men of a dronish mien. They could not imagine any of their officers harrying a man like Skelly, and least of all Pannell.

But Skelly’s “free-trading” activities in Cornwall were a source of hushed scandal on the Board, more so than was the county’s reputation for ordinary smuggling. Skelly meant something more to the inhabitants than acting as a cornucopia of undutied goods. He was an enigma, a legend, an inspiration — a rebel, a kind of Robin Hood who robbed the Customs and excise and split the profits between himself and the poor. Nervous Board members had nightmares of him leading a march of “free-traders” on London, followed by half the countryside, setting fire to the Parliament buildings and besieging St. James’s Palace. So any man who wished to tackle the problem of outwitting and jailing Skelly — no matter how dull-witted or unlikely a nemesis he might be — was given the Board’s blessing. It was more a fancy than a hope which moved them to present Pannell with an extraordinary commission, exquisitely printed and weighted with the King’s seal and the signature of the First Lord of the Treasury, to “take whatever lawful measures necessary to check and bring about the cessation of smuggling and free-trading in Cornwall and adjacent counties.”

Henoch Pannell was a career man, sincerely dedicated to preserving the solvency of His Majesty’s and Parliament’s coffers. From these could come a comfortable pension and many profitable perquisites, few requiring
effort or even interest. But a sensational action was needed to guarantee his future retirement. The capture and certain execution of Osbert Augustus Skelly would secure the gratitude not only of the Pumphretts, but also of the Duke of Cornwall — a son of the King — as well as that of the Board and of other powerful persons. He would be able to choose any position in the Service; Deputy Collector for London had always whetted his appetite, as had Surveyor-General of the Customs for any county (save Kent and Sussex, for these were worse centers of smuggling than Cornwall).

It had been easy to exact cooperation from Leith. There was the pair of silver candlesticks he had found elsewhere in Leith’s room in Trelowe and taken away with him. Inscribed on the undersides of their bases were Parmley’s brother’s initials. Pannell had dropped in one evening when the man’s inn was deserted, asked for a gill of brandy, and while Leith was busy with a glass and bottle, removed the items from an oilskin bag, and set them upright on his table. Leith gasped when he saw them, dropped both the bottle and glass, and collapsed onto the other bench, his head in his hands. Pannell sat down opposite him at the table, and took a pistol from his coat. “We won’t discuss the gin which was found in ankers of distinctly Dutch manufacture, Mr. Leith,” he said. “I know that they are Dutch, for I impounded hundreds like them in Essex. Now,” he said then, tapping a candlestick with the barrel of the pistol, “one would have thought that after
these
items were taken first from Parson Parmley, then from the original and deceased thieves and murderers — Mr. Oyston and Mr. Lapworth — they would have traveled far and wide in the market for such merchandise. They might have ended by gracing the mantel of a lord in London, or the boudoir of a chevalier’s mistress in Fontainebleau. Instead, here they are,
still
, and no more than a few miles from their original domicile, hidden under the floor of an untidy room in a common cloth sack, one coated with rat droppings. How did they come to be there, Mr. Leith?” He sat back on the bench, pistol still at the ready.

Leith raised his head. “I bought them in Falmouth for a song,” he said with defiance.

“From whom?”

Leith pounded a fist on the table. “You had no right to search my place!” he cried.

“Perhaps not,” said Pannell, shrugging and crossing his legs. “I grieve over my indiscretion. However, while the magistrate is sure to tweak my nose for my
unwarranted
action, he is sure to snap your neck.” He paused
to grin in surprise at his own jest, and looked at Leith to see if it had registered with him. Leith’s expression indicated that he was not at the moment receptive to humor.

Pannell grunted and went on. “Moreover, Mr. Leith, I have found a witness who places you, Oyston and Lapworth at the rector’s home that dreadful day. Oh, what a plum case the prosecutor will have! You alone, or you and your late partners, murdered the poor parson, and then you murdered them!” It was not true that he had found a witness, but his possession of the candlesticks lent, as he knew it would, credibility to his bluff.

“It’s all a lie!” protested Leith, pounding the table again, furious with himself for having kept the candlesticks from out of all the loot he had disposed of — he had planned to sell them later if he needed to — and unnerved by Pannell, who had formerly impressed him as a slow-thinking man whom he could fool. He began to rise, but stopped when the Revenue man raised the pistol. “What witness?” demanded Leith.

“Silly question, Mr. Leith. No, that person’s identity will remain a secret, until your trial.” Pannell had sighed. “Or, perhaps… forever.”

It took some time for Leith to absorb the meaning of the man’s last words. Then his features relaxed, and he asked, “Forever?”

“Forever — if you get me good and timely information about Skelly.”

Leith sat up and frowned. “Why
me
?”

“Because in the fraternity of dishonest and doubtful men in this community, I judge you to be the most worthy candidate for cooperation.” He reached over with one hand and toyed with one of the candlesticks, turning it around on its base.

“I can’t do it!” said Leith. “I can’t spy on…
those people
or anyone else who knows ’em!”

Pannell shrugged. “Would you care to name a substitute?” He smiled. “It hardly matters to me, though it needn’t be
you
that turns informer, Mr. Leith.”

Leith said nothing. He sat straight, both his hands flat on the table. What Pannell was proposing was just as dangerous and risky as turning informer himself. Pannell knew that.

Pannell grimaced. “Why you, indeed! That should be obvious by now.” He angrily toppled the candlestick so that it almost hit Leith’s hand. “Listen to this fantastic arithmetic, Mr. Leith!” With his pistol, he knocked over the other candlestick, which rolled off the table to the floor. “There should be a truppence difference between the duty on tea at four shillings nine pence
a pound, and what Mr. Rudge, the grocer in Gwynnford, charges for the same thing! But Mr. Rudge is charging, not five or six shillings, as is the custom elsewhere in the kingdom, but only
three
shillings a pound! That should represent a loss to him of at least one shilling nine pence. Mr. Rudge sells prodigious amounts of tea. His account books contradict his prosperity. They say that he paid the price reflected in the original purchaser’s paid duty, not including conveyance costs from Bristol. But that cannot be, for he sells his tea — and, I might add, his coffee, his peppers, his raisins, his tobacco, his candles, his brandy, his sugar — at an unconscionable loss! He is a fat, jolly gentleman with a merry wife and three charming children, and is a respected man in that town — when, by all that is right in God’s eyes, he should be in the workhouse, or at least accepting alms from the parish!”

Pannell sat back and glowered at Leith. “A similar paradox surrounds the situation of most of the merchants in this immediate vicinity. They are buying contraband, Mr. Leith. They are regularly provisioned. I know by whom. I want to know how. Who speaks for them? Who acts as their carter? Who is their middleman?” He suddenly leaned forward, raised the pistol and jammed the barrel hard against Leith’s forehead. He cocked the hammer. Leith’s eyes widened in paralysis as the Revenue man’s bulged in anger. “Miracles occur here daily, Mr. Leith, but no one boasts of performing a single one!”

Leith could only gulp.

Pannell left the inn that evening, taking the candlesticks with him, and leaving instructions on how to contact him. They had had many meetings since then. At each one Leith told him about a planned landing of contraband. And in every instance, Pannell and his men, armed to the teeth, and once even accompanied by a party of dragoons, were too late. This had gone on for months.

Leith could not breach the code of silence about the “free-traders” in Gwynnford or any other nearby town. He had been able to report only hearsay and rumor. He had always been on the far receiving end of whatever contraband he managed to buy for his inn, and so he was not sure whether he was kept out of the circle of information by rules of the Skelly gang, or for the same reasons Pannell had approached him with his blackmail. He did not like it that Pannell had summoned him this time for a meeting here, at the Sea Siren. Customers would see them together, and would think the worst.

“You must not
wait
for information, Mr. Leith,” said Pannell. “You must ferret it out. You must exhibit some discreet curiosity.”

“It ain’t possible to do that!” said Leith. “You’d find me stuffed down a well if I went about direct-like askin’ how to talk to Skelly!” He tried to drink his ale, but could not. “Look, Mr. Pannell, sir, all I can tell you is what I hear. And all I hear is where smugglers’ batmen and tubmen are supposed to gather for a landin’, and I have to practically use an earhorn for that information! People stop talkin’ when I’m clearin’ a table or servin’ ’em!”