The Black Hand (9 page)

“This could cave in a fellow’s skull,” I noted, hefting it.

“Not a sailor’s. They are notoriously thick skulled.”

Behind me, I heard Beauchamp chuckle.

“I shall have to practice, then,” I said. “Thanks for bringing me along. I know I’m just a landsman.”

“Shovels well enough,” Peter Beauchamp remarked. He didn’t look up, concentrating on his carving, which looked like it would eventually become a toy boat. I thought of his brood of children.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t let it go to your head.”

* * *

Dinner that evening at Mrs. Ashleigh’s estate was almost as fine as one of Etienne’s meals, but I was paying more attention to the window behind me. Barker’s prediction of a storm was on the mark. In fact, it became a full gale, the kind that buffets the south coast once or twice a year, although it took hours to develop. Soon the rain began, and was quickly followed by thunder.

The wind blew leaves and branches and lashed rain up along the broad South Downs, after gaining force over the tossing waves of the Channel. Inside the old house, most of the shutters had been fastened closed, but the panes shook. Though it was approaching midnight none of us were asleep amid the racket. A steady tattoo of raindrops beat on the glass, and the old structure groaned against the heavy wind. Sometimes, during a lull between the howling wind gusts we heard the plaintive bleat of a sheep or the neighing of a horse in a stable near the house.

Cyrus Barker was restless, which is never a good sign. We were both by an unshuttered window when we saw Beauchamp with a shotgun broken over his arm. He signaled to us, pointing two fingers at his eyes, and away toward the front of the estate. Then he trotted off.

“They’re coming,” Barker growled.

“How did they find us?” I protested. “Surely they didn’t follow us here.”

“They found us all the same. Get your pistol. We must prepare to repel all boarders.”

Suddenly, there was an exchange of gunfire by the gate. Almost simultaneously, we heard the sound of glass shattering in the conservatory, followed soon by a second crash. Someone had breached the house’s defenses.

Barker and I ran to Mrs. Ashleigh’s room and flung open the door. Inside, I saw her turn quickly. There was a case on her bed, and she held an old-fashioned ball and powder dueling pistol in each hand.

“They have come,” Barker said. “Bolt the door.”

The Guv ran down the stairs to the ground floor, and when he arrived pulled a handful of the sharpened coins he always keeps in his pockets. He threw them down the hallway as men stepped out into it from the other side. There were cries of pain and cursing, but when Barker fired his pistol at them, they scattered. I’d counted at least three.

My employer and I moved down the hall shoulder to shoulder, and when we reached the end, stood back to back. The intruders had vanished.

“You take the left, lad, and I’ll go right,” the Guv said. Before I could suggest that it would be wiser if we stayed together, he was gone. I went into the dining room, where earlier that day I’d been cosseted and cross-examined by the lady of the house. I thought the room was now empty, but as I stepped across to the parlor, I realized it wasn’t. There were too many good places to hide. When I reached the rug, I dropped onto it, looking about as the lightning illuminated the room. I could see something between the legs of the couch, and I fired at it. There was a yelp; and as fast as I could, I pulled myself to my feet, sailed over the couch back, and landed on top of him. We were a tangle of arms and legs, and then I hit him with the butt of my Webley.

My assailant looked more like a farm lad than an Italian assassin. He was stocky and unshaven and couldn’t have
been more than my age. Knowing I’d probably get in trouble for it with Mrs. Ashleigh in the morning, I cut the cording of the curtain behind me with my dagger and tied him up good and tight. Then I proceeded cautiously into the conservatory.

T
HAT WAS HOW I MANAGED TO FIND MYSELF
stepping over the shattered glass door into a darkened conservatory in the teeth of a Sussex gale. Even now it seems a bucolic place to be set upon by Sicilian assassins, but it was our presence that had brought them there. Like Barker himself, the Sicilians lived by an inviolable code. Having sent him the Black Hand note, and found it ignored, they felt duty bound to go through with the threat.

Less than ten minutes later, I stood in the shattered greenhouse drenched with rain and bleeding freely from the face. At my feet lay the Sicilian intruder I had encountered there, pierced through the heart with a dagger. My dagger. He had sliced open my cheek but, in doing so, had left himself exposed and I had struck as Gallenga had trained me to do. When the opening appeared, I’d thrust a knife into his vitals without thinking and without hesitation. I stood over him, my heart pounding wildly.

“Thomas!” Barker’s rough voice bellowed over the crashing of the storm.

“Here, sir!” I called.

“Are you all right?”

“I think I’ve killed one of them.”

“Stay there,” he called. “I’ll come to you.”

About a minute later, there was a yellow glow that eventually resolved itself into an oil lantern Barker was holding aloft. My employer bent and rolled the slack body onto its back. The assailant was a thin, hawk-faced fellow with thick stubble. This was no farm boy here. I recognized a true Sicilian by now.

“One blow to the heart dead-on. He’s one of the Sicilian dockworkers, by his clothes. Mr. Gallenga would approve, though the fellow seems to have opened your cheek.”

“I’ve got another man tied up behind the sofa, sir,” I said.

“Have you, then?” he asked in wonder. “Good work, lad. You’ve outdone yourself tonight. I’ve got two of my own. Mrs. Ashleigh will be pleased, though not, I suppose, by the sight of her conservatory glass.”

“Not my doing, sir,” I said. “It was the Sicilian.”

“A good thing, too, for both our sakes.”

Barker helped me back into the relative safety of the house. I was shivering and the front of my shirt was covered in blood. Mrs. Ashleigh came down the grand staircase sans pistols, and hurried over to me, touching my shoulder.

“Oh, Thomas,” she said gravely.

“Philippa, do you think you can sew his cheek?” the Guv asked. “I doubt we can get a physician in here before the morning. In fact, I prefer not to send a man out for one, conditions being what they are.”

“Of course,” she said, hurrying back up the staircase, while Barker sat me down in a chair.

“I’m all right,” I answered. “A sight better than the blighter in there.”

“I did not expect them to actually follow us here,” Barker said. “I misjudged them, something I will not do again.”

“Perhaps they didn’t follow us. Perhaps they followed Juno.”

“Take my handkerchief,” he said. “Yours is sodden.”

Beauchamp came in just then, as soaked as I, though he wore a sailor’s cap and pea jacket. He took one look at my cheek and gave a short whistle.

“They broke in, then,” he stated.

“Yes, but we’re alive,” the Guv said. “We’ve got three men tied up and one dead. How are your men?”

“A few injuries. The gang that tried to break in was the Garrison boys, a family of local ne’er-do-wells that hire themselves out for crimes like this. We’re guarding six more.”

“I imagine they were the diversion. The one Llewelyn killed in the conservatory is a Sicilian by the look of him. He’s got nothing in his pockets.”

Beauchamp raised an eyebrow in my direction, and I tried to look as if I dispatched assassins every day. Mrs. Ashleigh returned with a bottle of alcohol, needles, and thread while the Guv poured a tumbler full of whiskey and put it in front of me. I almost preferred the needle to the whiskey.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t wait until morning, when Doctor Bales can come?” Mrs. Ashleigh asked.

“Best to get it over with,” Barker replied. “Drink up, lad. We haven’t got all night.”

I tossed the burning liquid down my throat, and then my employer had the nerve to fill the glass again. I hate whiskey
and vowed as I downed the second glass that I would never drink the horrid stuff again. Meanwhile, Mrs. Ashleigh was threading the needle. I gritted my teeth as it pricked the skin.

The local inspector, or to be more precise, the inspector for the part of East Sussex from Lewes to the Channel, was named Marsden, a man approaching or retreating from sixty, who looked like a prosperous farmer or a country squire. A square of sheepskin was pinned to his tweed jacket with hooks and fishing flies nestled in it. I expected him to clash with Barker, as nearly every inspector I’d ever met before had done, but he seemed to take Barker in stride. A patient inspector, I thought. The country needed more of them.

“I’ll take charge of the Garrison boys, if you don’t mind, Mr. Barker,” he said. “This is new ground for them. Normally, they deal in nothing more felonious than poaching and smuggling. I suppose they were hired for the work by the dead fellow there. They’d never be brash enough to enter an estate this large on their own. Did you know this person, Mr. Barker?”

“No, sir, but we have recently been threatened by Sicilian criminals. I assume he was sent by them to oversee the operation.”

“Did you kill him?” he asked, looking down at the body.

“I killed him,” I spoke up. I knew Barker would try to take the blame for it. “He attacked me in the conservatory during the height of the gale. He did this to me.”

Marsden nodded. He pushed around the shards of bloody glass until he uncovered the second blade, the first being still in the young man’s chest. “Do you always carry a dagger, Mr. …?”

“Llewelyn. Only since this case began.”

“Blood being on both knives, and him being here to break into the house, I’m prepared to consider this self-defense and not arrest you. I’ll take the boys with me and question them thoroughly. Would you be good enough to call at the constabulary later, sir?”

“I’ll be there,” Barker stated.

“Then I’ll not detain you further. Do you think Mrs. Ashleigh will mind if we borrow a trap? It’s a bit of a walk back to Lewes.”

The vehicle was soon fitted out and Marsden left in his own gig while the constables and prisoners filled the other to overflowing.

“I’d have taken the blame, lad,” the Guv murmured.

“I am responsible for my own actions, thank you, sir,” I said.

Breakfast was a makeshift affair in the kitchen. A large farm table was laden with scones, crumpets, rolls, ham slices, eggs, kippers, tea, and coffee. There was no want of good food down here. Beauchamp’s men entered in shifts, jesting with one another while filling gilded plates worth a week’s salary. The storm and the danger had passed.

Beauchamp entered last and looked about. He passed the Guv and said a word or two in his ear. Both nodded and went their way. My cheek felt stiff and sore. I contented myself with eggs and coffee, carrying the plate into the dining room, where Mrs. Ashleigh was seated.

“Finally, a bit of excitement last night,” she said, putting a brave face on it. “Things are generally deadly dull around here.”

“I regret your broken panes, Philippa,” Barker said, sitting down beside her.

“I’ve sent for a glazier. The problem is easily remedied, though if such nightly diversions become a habit, I should consider some reinforced ironwork. I suppose it is rather silly to have only two glass doors between the outside world and all my favorite things.”

Around noon, we rode into Lewes on Juno and a chestnut Thoroughbred gelding. Barker did not look as comfortable on horseback as he did at the helm of the
Osprey
, but he did not complain. He looked relieved, however, when we alighted in front of the constabulary.

Inside, Barker shook Marsden’s hand and soon each of us was seated in a swaybacked chair with a cup of tea the size of a soup bowl.

“The lads confessed right off,” Marsden said. “The Sicilian’s name was Venucchi, and he told them he was working for a man in London. The plan was to create a diversion while Venucchi broke in. They received fifty pounds for the work.”

“Did he say what would become of us?” my employer asked.

“Venucchi told them he had his instructions, but he didn’t say what they were.”

“Did you ask them when he arrived?”

“Oh, we talked about a lot of things. The Sicilian arrived three days ago.”

The Guv turned his head my way, looking at me. Venucchi had arrived before we had. He could have attacked while we were still in London. It also meant the Sicilians already suspected that Barker wouldn’t back down when given the
note. In the silence, there was a crackling sound. It was Barker’s hand squeezing the armrest of his chair.

“Are we free to return to London, Inspector?” my employer asked.

“I have no objections,” Marsden said. “It’s been a rare treat for something to happen down here, but t’will be nice to go back to judging marrows at the county fair and tracking down stolen public house signs. Mr. Barker, I know I cannot tell you not to come back. Mrs. Ashleigh is an important part of our community and you’ve been coming to see her for many years. I ask only, as a favor to me, that you do not bring your work with you. And don’t bring this mad killer along with you next time, or I’ll arrest him for sure.”