Devil to Pay (9 page)

Mr Grindall had a great deal to say about the excise duties and the ways in which the revenue could be defrauded. He was not disinterested, as he had to admit, for his own goods were in competition against contraband. How could he be expected to sell at the same price? Take, for example, the claret they were drinking. Free traders could offer the same wine at two-thirds the price, bought at the back door rather than over the counter. The revenue cutters did their best but no vigilance could prevent smuggling. The most anyone could do was to add to the smuggler's expenses and so reduce the difference between prices as openly and privately charged. By the time they had reached the cheese Mr Grindall was wondering whether Mr Ryder would at least be able to join them over a glass of Madeira. Delancey remarked that it was snowing already which might have discouraged Mr Grindall's other guest, more especially if he had far to go. Looking out, they could see the snow blown horizontally, with vehicles and foot passengers moving as blurred shapes in the void. “A good day to be within doors!” said Mr Grindall, passing the Madeira round for the second time and calling for the boy to stoke up the fire. “A health to the preventive service!” Even young Fowler had cheered up sufficiently to comment on his pleasure at visiting The Star and Garter. He would never have dared go there in uniform—it was the lieutenants' place. “The Blue Posts is where I really belong!”

As young Fowler was speaking there was a confused noise from the street. A coach had driven up, the clatter of horses muffled by the snow, and raised voices could be heard, one of them calling repeatedly for a surgeon. Nothing much could be seen from the window but a waiter came in from the entrance hall and Mr Grindall asked him what had happened.

“There's a gentleman been set upon by some footpads who left him badly hurt by the roadside. He was picked up, seemingly, by the coach from Chichester. He'd have died else in this weather, sir, that's for sure.”

The waiter hurried out again with a bottle of brandy while Mr Grindall expressed his surprise:

“Footpads in the outskirts of Portsmouth! I never heard of such a thing.”

“Nor I, sir,” replied Delancey. “It sounds to me more like the result of a tavern brawl.”

“Go and inquire, Henry,” said Mr Grindall. “There is maybe some help we can offer.” His nephew hurried out and was gone for some minutes.

“One would as soon expect to hear a tale about highwaymen! There are a few still on the road, I suppose, but not in the approaches to a garrison town. That waiter must have been mistaken, you can depend on't.”

“I'm entirely of your opinion, sir,” said Delancey, returning to the fireside, where young Fowler presently rejoined them.

“I have the true story now,” he said. “Four sailors recently paid off mistook this gentleman for the master-at-arms of the
Royal Sovereign,
who is one of the most unpopular men in the fleet.”

“I have heard that,” said Delancey, “and his captain is a martinet.”

“The gentleman was badly beaten before the men discovered their error and ran off. It was one of them who stopped the coach, however, and told the driver where the injured man lay. He's lucky not to have frozen.”

“Where are they taking him?” asked Mr Grindall.

“The landlord has told them to bring him in.”

On hearing this Mr Grindall led the way to the front door, towards which the victim of coincidence was being assisted by a group of bystanders, some of them passengers from the coach itself. All were loud in their sympathy and comment.

“His leg is broke, Tom, that I'll swear.”

“And a rib too, I shouldn't wonder.”

“Best send for Mr Cartwright.”

“He's out of town, I hear tell.”

“There's Mr Winthrop, then.”

“Aye—someone go for Mr Winthrop!”

“Say it's a case of a broken leg.”

“And a rib too, seemingly.”

The injured man was brought in and laid on an oak settle while the apothecary was sent for. The group of sympathisers stood back for a moment, parting enough for Mr Grindall to see who it was that had been hurt.

“Why, it's Mr Ryder!” What else he had to say was drowned by a renewed babel of conversation.

Mr Grindall now insisted that Mr Ryder should be given a bedroom at the Inn. There could be no question of taking him to his home at Cowes. He felt partly responsible for the accident, he explained, as Mr Ryder was coming there at his invitation. The landlord proved sympathetic and the injured man was carefully taken upstairs. The move had hardly begun, however, when Delancey unexpectedly took his leave.

“I am sorry to desert you, sir, but I have some business to which I must attend. I thank you for your hospitality and hope that we may meet again. I am sure that Mr Ryder is in good hands.” With a few hurried words of farewell Delancey had gone, Mr Grindall wondering a little at his guest's abrupt departure. “Strange that he left us so suddenly. There is little after all, that a half-pay lieutenant has to do!” But his further reflections were interrupted by the arrival of Mr Winthrop, the apothecary, a small man with a portentous manner. He finally gave it as his opinion that Ryder had broken a rib as well as his leg, would be off duty for several months and was lucky, indeed, to be alive at all.

On leaving the Star and Garter, Delancey hurried to the Sally Port and looked around for a boat. There was none there, the weather being so discouraging, and he went back to the Point. This time he was in luck. There was a man-of-war's longboat alongside the jetty and an officer just about to embark. Lieutenant Bentley of the
Venerable
(74) was somewhat the worse for liquor, having dined ashore with the military, but he was in an amiable mood and accepted Delancey as a brother officer. The
Venerable
was at Spithead and he saw no reason why the longboat should not land Delancey at Ryde. Cowes was out of the question in an easterly wind—the boat would not return until next day—but Ryde was almost opposite where the
Venerable
was at anchor.

The boat pushed off into rough water and the coxswain steered into a darkness which was only relieved by the white foam on the wave tops. The snowstorm had passed but spray came over the bows at each plunge, slapping on the tarpaulin and forming a pool under the floorboards. The oarsmen pulled well, however, and Delancey duly landed at Ryde and, his luck still holding, he even found a farmer who could drive him to Cowes. Before ten that night he was knocking at the door of Mr John Payne's house. An impatient voice from a first floor window asked him what he wanted.

“Mr Ryder has been badly hurt and will be off duty,” said Delancey briefly. “I am a naval officer and I have come to offer my services as temporary commander of the
Rose.”

It took Mr Payne some minutes to pacify his wife, put on an overcoat over his nightshirt, light a candle and wake his manservant. There was eventually the sound of the chain being unfastened and the bolts being drawn. The door finally swung open to reveal the deputy collector of customs, pistol in hand, supported by an elderly servant armed with the poker. When finally reassured about his visitor's respectability, Mr Payne showed Delancey into the study and told his man to make up the dying fire while he himself brought out a decanter and a couple of glasses. He heard the details of the affair without comment and sighed deeply before taking another sip of port. “You have had a rough passage, sir, and a cold journey,” he concluded. “Why could you not have left it until tomorrow?” “Because,” said Delancey, “the kind of man who leaves things until tomorrow would not be an ideal commander for the Rose.” Mr Payne smiled briefly, nodding to himself and there was a minute's silence before he replied. “The
Rose
has had no ideal commander since she was built. William Ryder is not of the same calibre as the late commander, Francis Buckley.”

“Mr Buckley commanded the previous cutter of the same name?”

“He did, sir, and with great success. Willis did almost as well with a smaller cutter, the
Nancy.
Between them they nearly brought smuggling in this vicinity to a standstill. Buckley was killed in action against a French privateer in 1793 and Ryder has recently become a Methodist. Since then the smugglers have flourished, sir; not around the Isle of Wight, to be sure, but elsewhere along the coast. Fortunes are being made from contraband and we have taken nothing for months past.”

“But why should the smugglers benefit from Ryder being a Methodist? I should have thought, sir, that he was the more to be relied upon as an opponent of the liquor traffic.”

“An opponent he certainly is but so much so that he gains no intelligence. Mr Buckley was often at the Rose and Crown—sometimes even at the Pig and Whistle. He met the known smugglers ashore and talked with them. He was sometimes present when they had drunk to excess. He knew a dozen informers, bad characters and go-betweens. His plans were based upon the gossip he heard. Since his conversion Ryder will not be seen in the haunts of sin. He even prevents his men from going to the alehouses which the smugglers frequent. As for the women of the town, he will never keep company with them, nor would he hear the end of it if he did. Things were different in Buckley's time. He knew what he was about.”

“Well, sir,” said Delancey, “will you appoint me to the command for the period of Ryder's absence? The smugglers will reckon that the coast is clear, the
Rose
in harbour and everything in their favour. That will give me the chance to surprise them.”

“But how will you set about it?”

“By going, as a stranger, to the Rose and Crown. No one in Cowes has ever seen me before. No one saw me enter your house tonight. I shall appear as one who is in the trade, an agent from England.”

“So far your plan is possible. . . . It seems, indeed, to offer some chance of success. Very well, sir, the appointment is yours. You will be sworn in as a deputed mariner before the
Rose
puts to sea. Make your inquiries in the meanwhile and delay our first official meeting until— shall we say?—Monday next. I shall instruct the mate, Mr Thomas Lane, to prepare the cutter for sea while letting it be known that she is not to sail in Mr Ryder's absence.”

There was some further discussion about terms of employment, finally, “Thank you sir,” said Delancey. “I shall do my best to show that your confidence is not misplaced. May I ask your help before I go? Can you give me the name of a free trader of some note on the main-land—a man whose agent I might be?”

“That at least is easy. Your man would be John Early of Milton Abbas near Dorchester.”

“Thank you. Does he pass as a merchant?”

“No, sir. He is an attorney.”

“Can you give me the name of one of his men—the shipmaster who actually handles the cargo?”

“Yes—Jack Rattenbury of Lyme Regis. He used to own a lugger called
The Friends,
that is until she was taken by the
Nancy.”

“And where can I spend the night before joining those who have landed by the morning ferry boat from Portsmouth?”

“In your place I should seek shelter on board the cutter
Nancy
alongside the Customs wharf. She is about to be broken up but her deck will still provide some shelter.”

“Good. One last favour, sir. I could find good use for a flask of brandy.”

“You shall have it and of the best quality, costing no less than nine shillings a gallon at the Customs House Sales.”

Mr Payne produced the flask and showed Delancey to the door. A few minutes later he was explaining to his wife what had happened to keep him from bed. “An odd sort of man, my dear, who had come to tell me about Mr Ryder being assaulted by some ruffians and seriously hurt: a sad business, it would seem, and likely to keep him ashore for some time. This will give the smugglers their best opportunity for years.”

“How do you know that this man is not a smuggler himself?”

“Well, come to think on't, I don't know but what he isn't. He would gain nothing, though, by deceiving me about Mr Ryder's injury for I shall hear about it, anyway, in the morning. I think he is an honest man, though. He offers to serve without pay so as not to deprive poor Ryder of his livelihood!”

While Mr Payne went to bed, Delancey was walking down to the harbour. Snow had stopped falling earlier in the night but the wind was still cold and the going unpleasant. He had much to think about and he realized, as he walked, how little he knew about the smuggling business. He had known something about the smugglers around Guernsey but suspected that the Guernseymen were not in the same line of business as the men of Hampshire and Dorset. Their task had usually been to bring the goods from France to Guernsey—a trade which was not even illegal until war began and it meant trading with the enemy. Between Guernsey and England was a different business. He remembered hearing that some Dorset free traders—”moonlighters” were they called?—no, “moonrakers” (whatever that meant)—used big and well-armed craft and traded to Roscoff. They were laden with spirits and tobacco, their cargoes being taken inland and distributed from some suitable town—hence Mr Early having his home near Dorchester. He would be a landowner, most likely, as well as an attorney, a friend of the gentry and perhaps himself a justice of the peace. To succeed against a man like that would mean persuading someone to turn King's evidence. That would be possible only for an officer with a thorough knowledge of the smuggling art, just such a knowledge as the late Mr Buckley had possessed. Delancey cursed himself for his ignorance, realising that he must have forgotten half the facts he had been told. One thing he knew and had remembered was that the smugglers were among the best seamen in the country. They were used to bad weather and dark nights. So, presumably, were the men who served in the revenue cutters, but about them he knew next to nothing. They were exempt from impressment, as he had explained to many a press-gang, but that was almost all he knew about them. They tended, he thought, to wear red flannel shirts and blue trousers. . . .