Chapter 20

CHAPTER TWENTY

I t proved more difficult to find Hanson than it did to persuade him that it was best to go along with the scheme. It seemed he had gone from town for a se’nnight, and once he had returned, it took three days until Oakley met him on Rotten Row and persuaded him to take a ride in his curricle with him. Thereupon, Hanson was readily convinced that the Carters were indeed searching for Beamish, and that the magistrate was hard on Beamish’s heels.

“I truly do not know where he is,” he said by way of a final protest. “Truly! I do not imagine he remains in any one place very long.”

“But you can get word to him.” Oakley said it rather than asked it.

Hanson sighed very heavily. Without any sympathy, Oakley observed his pallor and the shadows beneath his eyes. The criminal life had begun to weigh on him it seemed.

Almost as if he had heard him, Hanson said, “It was never meant to be so complicated, you know. A little lark, some might say, resolve a debt or two.”

“Theft is theft,” Oakley replied flatly. “No man is entitled to another man’s possessions.”

“Such as his wife?”

Oakley shot him a look. “Enough of that. We both know, and Beamish does too, that he is not lawfully married to Bess. In any case, I shall gladly tell him about it, see if I do not. Now, about getting word to him?—”

“What’s in it for me?” Hanson demanded suddenly and Oakley smiled. People of his ilk were so very predictable!

“Your name will be forgot,” he replied. “Neither Leighton nor I, nor our families shall remember anything about you in any of this, and if we happen upon anything with your name on it—which I think is unlikely—it will be destroyed.”

The look of relief on Hanson’s countenance was undeniable. “I shall call on you as soon as I hear back from him. It can take a week, sometimes two.”

“Get it within a week,” Oakley retorted. “I am growing impatient.”

Hanson did as he had been ordered, even if he did require eight days, perhaps merely to prove he could. In any case, a note was delivered with the direction to a tavern by Bethnal Green and instructions to meet two days hence. Kem arranged the precautions, from eschewing their own carriages in favour of a hired one, to conscripting two beefy footmen to accompany them.

Oakley saw the wisdom in such plans the moment they arrived. It was a neighbourhood of impoverished Irish weavers, a place of low, close houses slumped over tight alleys; taverns were in abundance. The driver of the hack was paid to linger while the five men stepped out, the two footmen fading into the shadows of the rabbit warren-like dwellings nearby.

The gentlemen were unblinking and unshifting as they awaited Beamish’s approach. Occasionally they spoke of some commonplace triviality, but mostly they just waited. Oakley had just begun to wonder whether they had been deceived when a man, whose ears could not be contained nor cowled by his hat, whose handsome countenance was dimmed by months of low living, came down the alley.

“Beamish,” Leighton hissed beside him. In quick paces, Oakley drew abreast of him, Leighton and Kem hard on his heels.

Beamish did not at first appear to know Oakley—their acquaintance had been scant—but he remembered Leighton immediately. “Long time no see, Brother. What do you do here?”

“I am here to meet you,” Leighton spat back in a hard voice Oakley scarcely recognised. “And pray do not insult me by calling me Brother.”

Beamish’s gaze darted among the three men. “Hanson said there were some men who wished to do business with me.”

“And here we are, Corgi ,” Oakley agreed. Beamish startled visibly at the name but said nothing, and Oakley pressed, “Shall we go inside? Privacy is for your benefit.”

Beamish was not a large man. Leighton was larger, if softer, and Oakley himself was taller but more slender. Kem was the most impressive physically, but it was the two footmen who appeared to truly make him fearful. John and Johnny, they were called; both had been attired in breeches and coats that were a mite too small so as to make the thick cords of their muscles that much more evident. The pair of them were not only strong, they were young and their blood ran hot. Surely even Beamish could comprehend that they would welcome any cause to pummel him.

Looking resigned, Beamish pointed to the door. “We can speak in there, but I agreed to meet two men, not an entire gang.”

“You are the authority on gangs,” Leighton scoffed.

“How could we come with fewer, knowing that you are capable of murder?” Oakley enquired with an easiness that belied the gravity of his words.

“Murder? I?—”

“Save your denials,” Oakley advised. “We know everything. Now let us go in there and talk about what we mean to do about it. The boys here will remain outside; the rest of us all have business with you.”

They entered the small, stinking tavern, occupied only by a toothless wench who was wiping down the bar area. She scarcely looked at them long enough to jerk her thumb towards a narrow hall, but it was enough for Beamish to begin walking that way.

“No,” Kem said immediately. Beamish gave him a look.

“We will stay out front,” Oakley agreed. “One can only imagine what you might do with us back there.”

“I am not a violent man,” Beamish protested.

“Not a violent man?” Oakley laughed. “Kem, did you hear him?”

“I did, though I suspect your uncle would have a different story, were he still alive to tell it.”

“Your uncle?” Beamish asked uncertainly. “You are…”

“Lord Oakley, yes,” Oakley replied with a smile that he hoped was menacing.

Kem leant towards Beamish in a way that was definitely menacing. “We think you murdered Damian Richmond, Beamish, and so do the guards at the gaol who saw you that day. So, in fact, we think you are capable of nearly anything and trust you with nothing. Is that clear enough?”

With eyes narrowed to mistrustful slits, Beamish walked over to a table nearby, the three others joining him in sitting. Oakley was relieved to see they remained within easy distance of the door.

“We do not have a great deal of time, and even less inclination to be in your company,” Leighton began. “We know what trick you played on my sister, and that you have swindled my father out of her fortune. We know about the jewels, the forgeries, Damian’s betrayal and by extension how you cheated the Carter gang. And we have witnesses and testaments to all of it, well prepared to see you into the King’s custody. I hear he gives a special collar to his honoured guests like yourself, though one only gets to wear it once.”

Beamish crossed his arms over his chest. “You would not want me hanged, surely. The scandal would curse your family for generations to come.”

“Absolutely true,” Oakley agreed. “Quietly letting the Carters take care of matters would certainly be better, would it not?”

“From what I understand,” Leighton put in, “when the Carters take care of things one scarcely hears a whisper. Men simply disappear in a puff of smoke. No scandal at all.”

“The Carters are in Kent,” Beamish replied. “In the time it would take you to get a letter to them, I could be long gone.”

“Save for one thing,” Leighton replied.

“Several, in fact,” Oakley corrected him with a smile, and Leighton tipped his head in acknowledgement.

“Several,” Leighton said with a nod. “Johnny and his friend and a few other of their friends mean to watch you every minute. They are the Carters’ men and pride themselves on having never lost their quarry.”

Oakley gave Leighton a small smile. He was a gentle sort and had been concerned about all the cock and bull required to get Beamish well and truly on his way, but Oakley was well-versed in the art of the bluff, thanks to his mother and aunt’s rapacity for whist. He had coached Leighton, and coached him well it seemed, for the words tumbled flawlessly from his lips.

For himself, he was well prepared to do anything necessary to set Bess free, even if he had to lie to this Friday-faced goose-cap for a week complete to do it. He leant forwards. “There is no escape for you, Corgi, except the escape we offer you. Death of another sort than the one that awaits you at the hands of the hangman or the smuggler.”

“And what might that be?”

“Passage to America where you will live out your days under a different name. Mr… What is your given name?” Oakley enquired.

Beamish frowned and worked his mouth a moment before admitting, “Beauregard.”

“French,” Leighton scoffed.

“An old family name,” Beamish threw back.

“And none the more distinguished for it,” Kem retorted.

“In any case…” Oakley held up his hands to stop them. “Mr Beauregard Beamish shall be declared dead, thus freeing his widow, and his estate, of any obligation to him.”

“You expect me to give up my estate?”

“By all accounts, you will be giving up little more than a mountain of debt. Besides, I should think your ill-gotten gains sufficient to buy a new one,” Oakley replied levelly. “In America. And in any case, a dead man has no use for an estate, and whether it is King or Carters who get to you first, a dead man you assuredly shall be.”

“We offer you more than you deserve,” Leighton added. “I personally would have much preferred to beat you within an inch of your life and then surrender you to the Carters, but Oakley here is far more merciful than I.”

“And in return, I am…exonerated?”

“You would be declared dead,” Oakley replied. “Declared and duly recorded in your parish. Dead men hold no burdens.”

Beamish tapped his fingers on the rough-hewn table while he considered it. In truth, there was not much to consider; he needed only to recognise the hopelessness of his situation, and in short order, he did, agreeing with a reluctant, “I daresay those Americans cannot be nearly so savage as the Carters, can they?”

The Thames, they decided, would be too risky. One word amiss and they would have mudlarks all about searching for Beamish’s ‘dead’ body. No, Oakley and Leighton would pose as a group of friends en route to Wales who ran into a bit of trouble while fishing.

The strong currents of the River Severn were well known to all which was why, Oakley told the magistrate, they had begged their dear friend Beamish not to take the boat out. “We urged him to stay on the river shore angling with us, but he assured us he would be perfectly safe,” Leighton informed the man sadly. “He was determined to have a Severn chub.”

“For what?” The man gave a little shake of his head. “No good to eat.”

“Just what we told him,” Oakley replied.

In truth, Mr Beauregard Beamish, now in possession of a character that would establish him as Mr John Smith, was well on his way to America at the time of his ‘death’. Both Leighton and Oakley had watched him board the ship the day prior. They had then watched the ship as it began to move away with Beamish saluting them from the deck. It was not until the ship itself had been well out of sight that they both breathed a sigh of relief.

“What I shall do is write a letter for you that you can take to his people, have it all recorded properly in his own parish,” the magistrate informed them. “It is how they do it when people die in places they did not belong.”

“We will see to it that the right people receive and record it,” Leighton promised. “It is the least we can do for the fellow.”