Case of the Dixie Ghosts Read online

  Setty was an enigma. Supposed to have lived a criminal’s life in the long ago, he was now reformed. He was full of strange and varied knowledge of the darkest London affairs, though he seemed rarely to leave cramped and squalid Seven Dials. He was certainly deep as a well, but was he somehow mixed up in the menace from across the Atlantic that threatened the diplomat Theodore Van Trask? And had he steered Dacers into a trap? No, that was unthinkable. Dacers had known him for a long time and, with his astonishing knowledge, he had proved more than useful and thoroughly trustworthy.

  The coster went out of his way to reach the edge of Bloomsbury, and obligingly dropped Dacers close enough to home for him to make only a short journey through the streets, now beginning to lighten under a rather leaden dawn. He arrived at his lodgings without incident, put his key silently into the street door, crept into the hall, taking care not to make any noise to waken Mrs. Slingsby or Emma, her maid.

  He went to his bedroom as silently as he could, collected his night clothes, and made a journey to the basement where there was a hip-bath and a copper for heating water. Working as silently as he could, he prepared a hot bath, shed his soiled clothing, examined his wound, finding that its healing condition had not been interfered with despite the wrenching it received in the tussle at the Blue Duck. He quickly but thoroughly bathed in the hip-bath.

  Then. in his night attire and carrying his muddied clothing, he silently mounted the stairs for his bedroom and slept soundly until the dawn blossomed into day.

  Always an early riser, Dacers was up at his usual time though, after his exploits of the previous night, his mattress seemed to have acquired magnetic powers over his body.

  Mrs. Slingsby noted the signs of his recent ill-usage in the form of bruises here and there on his face, but he had been under her roof for over a decade, and she knew his calling as a private inquiry agent frequently led him into rough company. She had learned to make no comment, though she had known some anxious moments, as when he recently received his severe knife wound. That morning, she saw evidence of someone having taken a bath in the basement during the night, and all the signs pointed to her lodger being involved in another of his “business affairs” into which she never inquired. She only hoped he would come out of them safely.

  After breakfasting, Dacers spent a little time looking up some reference works in the small library he kept in his room.

  In a directory of Great Britain’s landed and titled gentry, he found:

  “Vaillant, Sir Oswald Hector, Knight.” There followed details of his age—he was sixty—education, marriage, and a list of business concerns with which he held directorships or was otherwise associated. Three took Dacers’ immediate interest: “Partner, British-American Cotton Exporting Co., Savannah, Georgia; Partner, Transatlantic Steam Shipping Partnership, Liverpool; Director, Rockwell-Mersey Shipbuilders, Birkenhead”…and, after details of his various clubs, there followed his address: “Fairwinds Manor, Cardsworth, Hertfordshire.”

  In a gazetteer, he found: “Cardsworth: Hamlet, Hertfordshire, England; largely agricultural; 1 mile from township of Tringford on London-northwest railway line, Euston.…”

  Next, with sharpened interest, he consulted Bradshaw’s Railway Guide, and found that while the service between London and Cardsworth was regular and frequent throughout the day, the first train from Euston station did not leave until almost 10 a.m. and it was still only a quarter to nine.

  Dacers made a quick decision, went to his room and changed into a tweed suit and stout boots, and selected a low crowned hat. Downstairs, he told his Mrs. Slingsby that he would be away for the greater part of the day.

  A brisk walk by way of Russell Square and Woburn Place brought him to Euston Station, the first railway station to be built in London. He passed under its heavy Doric arch and entered the architect’s proud triumph: the great hall of Euston, a vast, high-ceilinged cathedral of the great steam age. It was crowded and bustling as usual with every description of passenger accompanied by every kind of baggage and the constant hissing and growling of locomotives issued from the direction of the platforms.

  Tall-hatted railway policemen prowled among the throng with eyes alert for luggage snafflers and pickpockets and a store of harsh words for the match sellers, hurdy-gurdy players, and common cadgers who haunted the place. He noticed that two constables were studiously watching a trio of overdressed loungers—swell mobsmen, chancers who practised sophisticated dodges, and the brethren of Dandy Jem and Skinny Eustis, now en route to Australia.

  Pushing his way through the crowd, he made for the window where tickets were dispensed, and when he was in sight of it, he saw two men walking away from it obviously having just bought tickets. They had the look of businessmen in dark frock coats and stovepipe hats. Each carried a dispatch case. One was taller than the other with a blue powder burn plainly visible under his right eye. His companion was slightly shorter but stolidly built with the look of a bruiser—Fairfax and his friend who had given him such a rough handling at the Blue Duck!

  Dacers supressed a chuckle. He had timed everything just about right; the pair were apparently on their way to Cardsworth by the same train as himself to keep their appointment with Sir Oswald Vaillant.

  Although the two Americans passed quite close to him, they never looked in his direction and, since they had encountered him only in the dark when he was garbed in a fustian suit, it was unlikely that, had they seen him, they would recognise him now in brighter light and different clothing.

  He reached the window, bought a second-class return ticket to Tringford, then walked quickly towards the platforms, hoping to catch sight of the pair and follow them. He saw their twin tall hats bobbing through the crowd, and he walked behind them, keeping them in view until they came to the platform where the hissing and steaming locomotive of the north-bound train waited with its string of carriages whose design showed their descent from the old stage coaches, made obsolete by the railways.

  Knots of passengers were struggling through the narrow doors of the carriages and, seeing the pair he shadowed enter one close to the engine, he made for one nearer the rear. A few minutes later, wheezing, snorting, and chuffing, the train jerked into motion. Dacers settled down to a ride of small comfort, crammed between a fat man who looked like a farmer, and a middle-aged woman whose expanse of crinoline took up more than her ticket’s worth of space. Mercifully, it was a short journey to Tringford, and when a porter on the platform called out the name of the station, Dacers stumbled over an assortment of feet to reach the door. He was the only passenger to depart.

  Cautiously, wary of the two Americans in the carriage ahead, he stepped down to the platform of a modest country station. With a corner of his eye, he saw the two dark clad men with their stove pipe hats alighting. Both did so without looking his way, and they and Dacers were the only ones to get out of the train. The two walked off towards the end of the platform close at hand to them, where there was a gate which seemed to open up on to a road. He slipped behind a building housing a waiting room to keep out of their sight, and made a business of fumbling in the pocket of his top coat as if seeking his ticket to give the two time to leave the station.

  When the pair were out of sight, he took his time in walking along the platform towards the gate, and recalled what he had learned of the locality from another reference in his library, a large-scale map of the country within a wide range of London. The hamlet of Cardsworth was shown a short distance along a country road, a continuation of the main street of Tringford on which the railway station was situated. Just before it was reached from the station, a symbol denoted a substantial building marked Manor House, some distance from the road and in spacious lands. Plainly, it was Fairwinds Manor, the residence of Sir Oswald Vaillant. It was an easy walk from the station.

  The station gate opened on to the sleepy-looking, unpaved principal street of Tringford, obviously a market town, probably attractive in summer but uninspiring on a wintery day. Many of i
ts cottages were old and thatched. Outside the station stood a horse and trap of the kind commonly for hire at railway stations, with a driver who looked at Dacers expectantly. Dacers shook his head, he had no intention of hiring a vehicle, knowing that his destination was within walking distance. Then, at the further end of the street, he saw another trap progressing out of town in the direction of the hamlet of Cardsworth. The tall hats of its two passengers told him that his attackers of the previous night, now looking so staid, were calling on Sir Oswald Vaillant in a style suggesting blameless respectability.

  As the hired trap disappeared around a bend at the end of the street, Dacers set off walking in the same direction. The little town was soon left behind, and he was walking along a broad lane with thick hawthorn hedges on its margins. Remembering the outlines of the map, he looked out for landmarks, and eventually, away to his left, he saw the tall chimneys of a large house on a hill. He soon passed a set of tall iron gates over which ornately fashioned letters read Fairwinds Manor, and a wide gravel drive led from them in the direction of the mansion. Doubtless, the two Americans had reached the manor by now.

  Dacers wanted to learn something of Sir Oswald Vaillant as much as he desired to know what business the tall-hatted pair had with him, but he knew how strangers in remote, tight-knit communities attracted attention and were remembered. He would need to guard against being too persistent and asking too many questions if he had contact with any of the local people. That was, if he met any. On the walk along the lane he had not encountered a single human being. Attuned to the pace of crowded, hurrying London as he was, he found the stillness and emptiness of this rural retreat almost eerie.

  Then, a short way past the gates of the manor, he came upon a little cluster of small cottages, probably centuries old, obviously the hamlet of Cardsworth. More prominent was a taller building at the end of the row of dwellings: an inn with a black-and-white frontage suggesting Elizabethan origins. Its sign bore a heraldic device and the legend: The Vaillant Arms. So the Vaillant family were long rooted in the region and, clearly, major landowners.

  A tavern was always a good place to seek local knowledge, but caution would be required if he was not to make himself too conspicuous. It was close to noon, and the need for sustenance gave him an excuse to enter the hostelry.

  The interior had low beams of stout oak, a general air of antiquity, and the welcome sight of a fire blazing in the grate. It was empty save for a plump, jovial-looking man behind the bar, without question the landlord, who greeted Dacers cheerfully with an observation on the brightness of the day, even though it was cold.

  “Cold but healthy enough, I think, landlord. I’ll have a pint of ale, if you please, and can you provide any bread and cheese?”

  The landlord beamed. “I can, sir, and capital cheese at that, churned by my own wife.” With the inquisitiveness of a countryman encountering a stranger in his village, a kind of inquisitiveness of which Dacers was wary, he asked: “You going far, sir? I see you’re afoot.”

  “Quite right. I don’t run to a fancy coach like a gig or even a modest pony and trap, I fear. I’m just a toiler, tied to a desk in London nearly all year round. I have a couple of free days and decided on a stroll away from the city smoke. I was always fond of Hertfordshire, but I don’t know this part very well.”

  “Oh, it’s a pleasant place, sir. At its best in summer, of course, but, on the whole, as comfortable a spot as any.”

  “Much like your own excellent premises,” Dacers said, seating himself at an oaken table near the fire.

  The landlord served him with a tankard of ale, disappeared into the inner regions of the premises, then emerged with a plateful of bread and cheese. He occupied a chair opposite his guest, obviously in the mood for a chat. “I hope you don’t object to my company, sir,” he said. “Things are always slack this time of year and it’s pleasant to have a visitor.”

  “Not at all,” said Dacers, disguising his wariness. Then he ventured: “I noticed a handsome-looking house yonder on the hill.” He hoped he did not sound like a London criminal “casing” the opulent-looking mansion as a “crib” to be robbed.

  “You mean the Manor. That’s the home of Sir Oswald Vaillant, who’s more or less our squire. The family’s been here all through history, and own nearly all Cardsworth.”

  “Is he a good squire?” asked Dacers.

  The landlord made a sour face. “That’s a matter of opinion. He’s our leading magistrate, and a man in my trade can’t criticise magistrates too much. They have too much power over licensing. But I must say Sir Oswald is hard in the punishments he hands out. He hates the local poachers, and they hate him in return. He has a foul-tempered gamekeeper, and vicious mantraps on his land to keep poachers away. And there’s other things about him that some folk ain’t happy with. He has big stakes in shipping and shipbuilding and American cotton. Well, you know how them rebel states in America had raiding ships built on the sly here in England that set off and sank United States’ ships all around the world?”

  “Of course: the Shenandoah and the famous Alabama and many others.” Dacers felt his heart leap at this mention of the American war. Once again, this recent upheaval of a nation was coming into the picture.

  “Well,” continued the landlord, “you’ll know how pots of money from our wealthy business people went into those schemes, particularly from shipbuilders, shipping firms, and the cotton men up north who were starved of raw cotton because the Northern navy had blockaded the Southern ports, stopping exports. It was all secret at first, but word leaked out. Sir Oswald was very much in on supplying money and shipbuilding facilities, propping up the cause of the Confederate States. That was all wrong, in my opinion.”

  “You’re uncommonly well informed,” observed Dacers, recalling his own acquaintance with such matters and his trip to Liverpool with Theodore Van Trask but keeping his own counsel.

  “Oh. I’ve always watched the ways of the world, always read the newspapers, even if I do live in a little place like this,” said the landlord proudly. “I don’t like to be thought an ignorant yokel. Don’t get me wrong about them Southern states. They fought bravely for what they believed in and their people suffered awful hardships. But it was slavery that I disagreed with. It couldn’t be right to work people as if they were animals, and to buy and sell them in the way farmers deal in cattle.” The landlord paused and gave Dacers a dubious look. Even in an England that had abolished slavery in its own territories long before, there were divided opinions on the subject. Many English families of importance owed their wealth to generations of slave trading, supplying the American plantations with captive Africans.

  Septimus Dacers caught the meaning of his pause. “Oh, I agree with you wholeheartedly, being of a radical turn of mind myself,” he said.

  The landlord looked relieved. “It’s the way I was brought up, you see. My old father was a Chartist and I took after him. You know how the People’s Charter called for a fairer deal all round for ordinary people. It’s a great pity the Chartist movement failed.”

  On finishing his refreshment, Dacers thanked the landlord for his hospitality, praised the excellent quality of his wife’s cheese, then departed the Vaillant Arms, hoping that the landlord did not notice that he followed the route that brought him to the hostelry: in short, he was returning to Fairwinds Manor, highly grateful for the intelligence his host at the tavern had imparted.

  He reached the manor just as the early gloom of a winter’s day set in. Again, the laneway outside the gates was quiet and minus any sign of pedestrians or vehicles. Having come this far, he wanted his trip into the country to yield something fruitful, and he thought of prowling around the house to try to catch some knowledge of what went on between the local squire and his American visitors. The thought of bone-crunching mantraps and a fierce gamekeeper and, doubtless, one or more dogs, caused him to pause, but they were surely hazards to be encountered in the manor’s surrounding, poachable agricultural lands. He
could see through the bars of the great metal gates that the wide drive led through a spacious, well-cultivated garden where any such dangers would be unlikely.

  Just as he was wondering about his chances of entering the manor’s grounds, he heard the smart tramp of hoofs and the rumble of wheels approaching from the direction of the town. Instinctively, he dived into the dry ditch alongside the blackthorn hedge very close to the gates. He crouched in the ditch, trying to make himself as small as possible.

  Peering gingerly over the verge of the ditch, he saw a horse and trap, probably one of those available to passengers arriving at the railway station, coming along the lane. It contained one top-hatted passenger, whose style echoed that of the two already at the manor.

  Sure enough, as the vehicle drew nearer, Dacers recognised the driver who had looked at him, hopeful for his patronage, when he arrived at the station. So, a third visitor had arrived by train and was bound for Fairwinds Manor, it seemed.

  He crouched lower in the ditch as the vehicle drew nearer and, just before he did so, the trap drew near enough for him to have a fuller if fleeting view of the passenger. He was a small man with a distinct hump on his back. Could this be the Fortune of whom he had heard mention? And, surely, he was the hunchback whom Roberta Van Trask had glimpsed as the carriage sped away from outside her home.

  The vehicle halted at the gates of the manor and the driver left his seat, walked to the gates, and drew back a bolt then shoved the heavy gate open. The operation surprised Dacers; he had expected a servant to appear from somewhere and attend to that chore. So now he knew the gates could be operated from the outside. The trap was now near enough to the ditch for Dacers to see that the hunchback had a large black box on his knee.

  The driver returned to his seat and urged the horse forward and the trap rolled through the gates. It stopped again, the driver descended and closed the gates. Dacers waited until the sound of the wheels on the driveway died away, then came out of the ditch.