The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) (19 page)

The Irish horse coper had been a disappointment, a
rare failure on Clapperley’s part that he was deeply conscious of – the man had
been hanged for horse-theft in his third season to a loss of five hundreds in
cash, partly offset by the seizure of a score of his van-horses, now drawing
light wagons around the town

With the surplus from Roberts that he had tucked
away, Tom had about eight thousand pounds uncommitted and separate from the
speculative funds and he felt he should get into coal to protect his interests
in the iron works; the price of coke was creeping up and there had been
occasional shortages, possibly due to fluctuations in output, probably due to mine-owners
rigging the local market. There was a small mine, no more than a drift, a
single gallery cut almost horizontally into a hillside outcropping, not more
than two miles from Roberts and close to the canal. A short spur from the
canal, needing no lock and costing a thousand at most, would provide transport
and there was flat land at the pithead where coke ovens could be built for
another couple of thousands. Expanding the mine would cost a thousand or so, at
a rough estimate, and then would fund itself from the increase in output. Say
five thousands in investment, leaving three for the initial purchase of the
three hundred acres of land and the goodwill. The land was rough, fit only for
the sheep which could not be run close to a pit – their fleece became much too
dirty for practical use; four pounds an acre, at most, leaving some eighteen
hundred pounds for the pit itself, a very thin price unless the owner could be
persuaded to leave the trade. Clapperley was investigating the possibilities,
had so far been discouraging.

“Mr Dakers is a man of uniform virtues it would seem
– I cannot discover him to drink, gamble or fornicate, which reduces the normal
avenues of approach. He is unmarried and at age fifty may be expected to remain
so. He is content with a small income, working his pit with no more than a
dozen hands and loading up a couple of wagons each day to sell coals for winter
firing to local householders; he has no ambition at all, refused out of hand
the possibility of a contract with Roberts for a couple of hundred tons a
week.”

A pity, tied into a contract it would soon have been
possible to refuse to pay a bill on grounds of poor quality and stretch his
cash-flow to breaking point.

“What does he do for his amusement, Mr Clapperley?”

“He teaches reading and writing at the Sunday School
after chapel, as do a number of other worthy gentlemen, of course, your Mr
Mason prominent amongst them. Probably every literate farmhand in the villages
learnt on Sunday, and many borrow books from the little library they keep.
Improving tomes, I understand. I expect he contributes many of the books, being
better off than most. I shall enquire – it may be a possible weakness.”

A week later and Clapperley was exultant – his
detective work had paid off, his legal training had led him in the right
direction to dig up the dirt which he firmly believed could be found in
everyone’s past and most people’s present.

“Sunday School indeed, Mr Andrews! Not quite the
three ‘Rs’ – Reading, Writing and Buggery in this case! He buys a few books for
the chapel library, but favoured boys get to visit his house and choose from
his own collection – some of them visit twice or thrice a week. I have
witnessed statements from two ten year olds, detailing exactly what was done to
them and by them, dictated in the presence of my clerk – nothing particularly
imaginative, I might add, merely the normal.”

“Not being a lawyer with your wide experience of
humanity’s frailties I am afraid I do not know what ‘the normal’ might be – and
please don’t tell me!”

Clapperley sniggered his appreciation – Mr Andrews
was such a card!

“I shall pay Mr Dakers a visit this afternoon, Mr
Andrews – I should expect him to be knocking at your door tomorrow morning.”

Clapperley was wrong – Dakers had saddled his riding
cob within minutes of their painful little interview and was stood at Roberts’
office door before nightfall.

“Is Mr Andrews at leisure the while?”

Tom came to the door, nodding the boy away. “Mr
Dakers, is it not? We met a couple of months ago when I wondered whether you
might not be prepared to sell your workings – so close as it is, it would have
been very handy. Do come in, sir. Kettle, Richard!”

Dakers allowed himself to be led inside, to take his
greatcoat off, to accept the offer of tea and to discuss the unpleasantly wet
weather, so typical of recent years.

“You say, ‘would have been handy’, Mr Andrews? Are
you no longer interested in buying your own source of coal?”

“Well, to be honest with you, Mr Dakers, I have
committed the bulk of our funds into expansion of our cotton firm – Star
Spinners – now that there is a reliable power loom available. I doubt I could lay
my hands on more than twenty-five hundreds at the moment, so it is not so much
‘not interested’ as ‘not able’.”

Dakers made a little face of dismay – he had no idea
of another purchaser and suspected that it might take weeks, months even, to
discover one, and the kindly-spoken legal gentleman who had just visited him
seemed to think there might be a public furore within days, on Sunday, in fact.
The gentleman had explained, so Dakers had thought, trying to follow his mass
of legal jargon, that he was in some way the representative of the elders of
the chapel who had received an intimation of unspecified wrong-doing on his
part; they proposed to hold a meeting of the faithful, after service on Sunday,
in the chapel, there to air any complaints there might be and to thrash out the
misunderstandings that they were certain lay at the root of the little problem
– this, after all, was the traditional way of keeping order in their flock and
it was better far to bring everything out into the light of day rather than let
grievances rankle and fester unseen.

Dakers, however, felt he would far rather not have
to stand and explain himself in public – it was not as if he had done the lads
any harm, after all, and they had always earnt a sixpence and use of his books,
but people made such a fuss about what was really a very trivial matter – look
at what had happened to poor young Jonathan Roberts, such a nice boy, only five
years before.

The office boy brought in the tea tray, with best
china cups, and made a performance of pouring, giving a couple of minutes
grace, time for Dakers to think, to decide that twenty-five hundred in the
pocket was better than a load of buckshot in the belly.

“I find I have to leave England, Mr Andrews. My
elder brother married an Irish lady and we lost contact with each other; I now
discover she is dead and he is poorly, in a very bad way, and they never had
children and he wishes me to visit him and inspect my inheritance while he is
still there.”

It was a very clumsy lie, Tom thought – he was sure
he could have done much better.

“As a result, Mr Andrews, I would be pleased to
accept an offer of two thousand five hundred guineas for my pit.”

“Pounds,” Tom corrected automatically, somewhat
dismayed – he had obviously been too impulsive, could probably have screwed him
for another couple of hundred; he should not have mentioned a figure at so
early a stage – he would know better next time.

They shook hands on the deal and exchanged names of
attorneys – not Clapperley on Tom’s part, it having occurred to them that it
might seem the least bit suspicious to Dakers, even allowing for coincidence in
a small town – and they agreed to press for the earliest possible payment. All
things were possible when the willingness to oblige was present, and Mr Andrews
had a name in town already as one of the wealthiest of businessmen so the
attorneys were very willing indeed and Dakers was off to Liverpool on Saturday
morning, contract signed, sealed and delivered. By noon Dakers was aboard ship
for Ireland, intending, very craftily, to instantly board another bound for
Bristol and then to take the Mail Coach to London where he would buy a small house,
much less visible than lodgings, and disappear in midst of the teeming hordes
of the Metropolis. He lasted three months in London before inviting a very
pretty, and available, boy back to his house – so much more comfortable than
the back-alley - thus revealing his address to the boy’s minder, who extracted
his remaining cash with a red hot poker before leaving him naked and dead on
the floor; there was no inquiry, the constable and magistrates content that
whatever had happened to the gentleman had probably been very thoroughly
deserved – the innocent were expected to be less lewdly displayed in death.

Tom made his entry to his pit on the Monday morning,
found there was no such thing as a foreman or underman and very little in the
way of coal or tools or carts above ground – he should have been there on
Sunday it appeared. He looked about underground and found little more than a
hole, a large cave haphazardly worked as was convenient – there were a couple
of men with a wheelbarrow pottering at the face; neither was much better than
half-witted, could answer none of his questions. He left telling them to carry
on as normal, promising to be back soon.

“George, do you know anything about mining?”

“No, Master, nor I ain’t going to, neither!”

The drop out of acquired gentility and into deep
Kentish alerted Tom to the distress his question had created, made him
instantly back away.

“Nor should you, if you do not wish, George. How
might I find a man for the pit?”

“Not easily, Master, for the pits be growing apace
and miners with knowhow are increasingly few. The stannaries, the Cornish tin
mines, are about the only place where there are mines closing down and men
looking for work, though I hear that the lead and Blue John mines in Derbyshire
are less busy than they were. On t’other hand, the pits in South Wales and the
slate in North Wales are snatching up every body they can find and the salt
digging down Cheshire way will take men out of Derbyshire, I should expect.
Coal ain’t that well-loved, Master, for men and women die too easy down the
pits and the money ain’t so good as to make it worthwhile, so it won’t be easy
to find a skilled man to do the job.”

“Then I’ll do it my bloody self, George – it’s not
what I fancy, but if you buy a place in the game then you have got to play your
part.”

Mason agreed, quietly, afraid that he was letting
Tom down, but even more afraid of going underground every day – he had gone
down one of the new pits in a previous year, out of curiosity, and would never
do so again, the black and the smell and the dirt and the noises, the creaks
and groans coming out of the very rock and the feeling of the roof pressing
down on your head… Never again!

“Let’s see – Joe’s engineer can build coke ovens for
us, and we can get a canal contractor to build the spur as a little winter job
– a few week’s work in the dead season will be welcome, I would think. We can
get everything prepared while we look about for a man to run it.”

Mason agreed.

“How’s the works going, George? Did we get that
contract for the mill roof your brother was after?”

“That and three more, sir, work night and day for
the next three months and we’re turning away customers for steel. I’ve had to
tell him to go easy or we shall be letting people down for date and quality, so
he’s got time on his hands at the moment, more’s the pity!”

“A problem, George?”

“He met Miss Roberts a few weeks ago, sir, and has
seen her frequently since.”

“Is he thinking of marriage?”

“Maybe… I don’t know, because I haven’t asked, but
it is not a family I would wish to be involved with, Master. I am unwilling to
be seen to interfere, for I do not wish to cause a breach between us – no
better way of offending a man than criticise his beloved! I have made sure that
the stories have come to his ears, but I don’t know whether he believes them -
she don’t look the sort to have killed first her brother and then her own
father.”

“Who does? Do you think she did her brother, too? I
hadn’t considered that, I must say, though, I was pretty sure she held a pillow
over the old man’s face when he was drunk in bed.”

Tom was not shocked, he found, intrigued more – it
showed a certain determination not to be shackled by the bonds of
conventionality.

“Logic, sir! Murder ain’t that common and for two in
the same family to die by two different hands, all in the same year, suggests a
bit more than coincidence to me. If she topped the one, odds are she did the
other too.”

“You could well be right, George – so if young Fred
gets involved there he would be well advised to watch his manners – she’s
likely to do more than cross her legs if she gets angry with him.”

Mason could not approve of such vulgarity but
permitted himself a prim smile – the Master must be indulged, he was still very
young.

“Perhaps, Mr Andrews, you might wish Frederick to
seek other employment in such circumstances?”

Would he? Probably, but he needed George too much to
risk losing him as well.

“No! Not at all! Where would I find a man of his
worth to replace him? In any case, his private life is no business of mine and
I believe him to be man enough to run his own affairs quite satisfactorily. No,
what I would do, I think, is offer him tenancy of the house and then set him to
work, to use that spare time you say he has. Is he interested in running part
of the works? Has he ideas of his own? Is he mechanically minded like you,
George? Do you think he could learn coal?”