CHAPTER 18

Lady Roulson sent a large dinghy for us, rowed by servants who obviously were experienced watermen, and they took us at high speed along the north shore of the inlet to Lady Roulson’s pier. It was a pleasantly sunny day despite the cold wind off the North Sea. The tide was going out, and a broad expanse of mud lined the shore, but there was enough water at the end of the pier to float the dinghy. Lady Roulson’s country home was a splendid old moated farmhouse, a pseudo castle with a turret at each corner. It was roofed with pantiles—tiles imported from Holland at some forgotten period of history and used extensively in eastern England. There was a broad lawn stretching down to the water, and, off to one side, an unpopulated duck pond and a tennis court. In the rear was a large stable. Lady Roulson was a famous horsewoman.

She couldn’t have greeted us more warmly if we had been minor peers ourselves. For the moment we were her guests, and, whatever our pedigrees, she belonged to that noble rural tradition that knew only one way to treat a guest—nobly.

There was one other guest present. Lady Roulson introduced him to us as Lieutenant Juster, a naval officer. He was a man about thirty, tall and muscular, and he looked as though he climbed trees for practice when there were no masts available.

That was before Lady Roulson offered him one of her cigars. Afterward, he took on an unhealthy greenish tint and acted seasick. Charles, Rick, and I declined cigars on the grounds that we didn’t smoke, which Lady Roulson clearly considered an inadequate excuse. She suggested cigarettes and then snuff before she decided to drop the matter.

We had what Lady Roulson called a small luncheon. It consisted of roast beef, leg of lamb, pork pie, mutton chops, veal cutlets, three kinds of fish, oyster pie, and assorted vegetable dishes, all fortified with a quantity of breads, buns, and crumpets and followed by a sideboard that groaned under the weight of cakes, puddings, tarts, muffins, and fruits. Each phase of the meal was marked off with ale or wine. While we ate, Lady Roulson and Lady Sara talked about horses. From their own expertise, Rick and Charles were able to contribute occasional remarks about methods of breeding, breaking, and training horses in the Midlands. The naval lieutenant and I, having nothing to say, occupied ourselves with eating. When, immediately after the luncheon, Lady Sara called a strategy session, I felt almost too comatose to participate, and Lieutenant Juster had difficulty removing himself from the table.

Lady Sara gave me a sympathetic look. “Any meal with Lady Roulson is likely to be a feast,” she said. Then she added, “I hope Lieutenant Juster is able to function. He has been sent to help us by the Admiralty.”

“Then it is a case of smuggling,” I exclaimed.

She shook her head. “The Snells are guilty of far worse crimes than that, and they committed them on the high seas, which explains the Admiralty’s interest.”

The lieutenant studied the photographs of the Snell farm like a ship’s captain scowling at foul weather. I suspected he was having difficulty focusing his thoughts after all that food and wine. “Were you thinking of a raid?” he asked finally.

“That can be decided later,” Lady Sara said. “First we must find out what the problem is.”

Lady Roulson made certain all of us were dressed warmly enough for an excursion on the chill North Sea waters. Then Lady Sara led the way down to the pier and got everyone arranged in the dingy to her satisfaction. Rick and Charles sat amidships, each with a pair of oars; Lady Roulson and I took the bow, she with a chart and me with a lead line, a contrivance I had never used before; Lady Sara and the lieutenant sat in the stern with Lady Sara handling the tiller. There was a small mast with a single sail, but we kept the sail furled. Oars were best for the kind of mission Lady Sara had planned.

Lady Roulson’s dignified butler handed a large hamper aboard just before we started. It contained a picnic meal, but that was only for show in case we were challenged. Certainly none of us felt like eating. More to the point, Lady Roulson passed out revolvers to all of us and concealed two rifles under the decking at the bow.

She addressed the lieutenant. “What do we do if we are fired upon?”

“Over the side,” the lieutenant said, “with the boat between us and wherever the bullets are coming from.”

“Can everyone swim?” Lady Roulson asked. “Right enough. Let’s go.”

The sea inlet was a hundred yards wide at Lady Roulson’s estate. Inland, it gradually narrowed until it reached the mouth of the River Rosan at Little Helmwich. In the other direction, after a sharp bend, its width increased until it became difficult to say at what point one left the inlet and moved into the North Sea.

With only a single, narrow channel deep enough for navigation, the inlet was too hazardous for coasting ships, though the captains of the small fishing boats harbouring at Little Helmwich knew it well and had no difficulties.

We headed east with Rick and Charles maintaining a steady but leisurely pace. Lady Roulson sat poised with the chart in her lap and a pencil in her hand. Lady Sara had that look of intense concentration she always wore when she was in close pursuit of law violators. Lieutenant Juster kept looking about him as though considering the best way to maneuver two battleships of the Royal Sovereign class in that narrow inlet. When we reached the point where the inlet opened widely to the sea, we turned south. For some reason comprehensible only to sailors, the land about us was considered the north side of the mouth of the river Thames, even though that stream was as remote and invisible as the coast of Holland.

We crossed the inlet slowly with me working the lead line—awkwardly, at first, and then, with practice, a bit less awkwardly—and Lady Roulson recording my findings on her chart. The profile of the inlet’s bottom was precisely as expected. It had a channel of moderate depth in the centre, and it rapidly became shallow toward either shore.

Then we turned inland and moved quietly along the southern shore. Again the profile was as expected. No one had been secretly dredging a channel to make one of the tidal creeks navigable. Beyond mud-flats that were already diminishing as the tide turned, the shore was overgrown with a tangle of shrubs. Several creeks wound their way through the flats. At high tide, seawater would fill them far inland. We passed by the first; the second looked broad enough to be a small river.

“Possible,” Lady Sara murmured. “Definitely possible.”

But we passed it by, also, to see what the other possibilities were. We scrutinized two other creeks that meandered across the Snell farm, but neither of them interested Lady Sara, so we turned back for another look at the one she had called possible. I continued to work the lead line as she pointed the dinghy into it. There was no sign of dredging, but the creek had washed a modest channel of its own through the mudbanks. With me taking repeated soundings, we moved cautiously between overgrown banks that were a tangle of brushwood and young trees until we rounded a bend and suddenly came upon shallow water. Lady Sara turned the dinghy toward the bank, where a stretch of the brushwood had been cut away.

“Obviously they didn’t bring a sea-going ship in here,” she remarked. “Is there enough water for a heavily laden gig or long-boat?”

“They might want a bit more than this just to be sure,” the lieutenant said. “In another hour they would have no problem at all.”

Lady Sara stood up. “You can see where planks were laid to make it easier to move the casks—probably in barrows. They would want to move the wine to a place of concealment quickly, and there’s the hayrick, twenty feet away. Once the casks were safely out of sight, they could take their time moving them to the farm.”

It looked to me like a logical enough place for a hayrick. The field was a hayfield with the year’s crop recently cut. Lady Roulson scrutinized it with a scowl.

“You are right, dear. It is an odd place for a hayrick, and that isn’t hay from this year or even last year. It has been there at least three years. Why pile up hay in this damp place and not use it? They should have taken it to a pasture on higher ground or to the farm for storage.”

“Odd that it has held its shape so well,” Lady Sara said. “We’ll have a look. Do you have a yarn ready in case someone sees us?”

“Leave that to me. I know all of these people.”

Lady Sara asked me to accompany her. We circled the hayrick widely and then approached it from the rear where we couldn’t be observed from the distant farm buildings. Back at the dinghy, Lady Roulson was acting as sentry, peering about alertly with a hand shading her eyes.

As we came closer to the hayrick, I could see that the hay was old and beaten down by the weather. We moved around it slowly, pausing frequently while Lady Sara worked her hand into the hay.

“There’ll be an entrance somewhere,” she explained. “Probably on the side nearest the creek.”

We had moved halfway around it and were easily visible from the farm when she suddenly announced, “Here’s the door.”

It had a large padlock on it. The mechanism was simple, and I had it picked in an instant. As the door swung open, a section of the hayrick swung open with it. Lady Sara darted inside; I remained in the opening, looking about warily. I heard her strike a vesta, and I turned just in time to catch a glimpse of the interior before she blew it out. The hayrick had been built around and over a building made of poles and slats. The building was empty.

Lady Sara emerged at once; I closed the door and snapped the padlock, and we quickly walked away. We had almost reached the boat when a man’s voice bellowed.

Abner Snell came striding toward us with three dogs at his heels. He carried some kind of gun with a long barrel—perhaps a fowling piece. Since he already had warned me off his place, I felt apprehensive.

I need not have worried. Lady Roulson was out of the boat in a flash and striding toward him. “Hello Abner,” she called.

He came to a halt. “Oh. Hello, Lady Roulson.”

“I had no idea we’d got this far west. We were headed for a picnic on the shore, but one thing led to another. How do we get to Trigg’s meadow?”

“That’s the creek east of here,” Snell said. “There’s only one.”

“Right. We cut directly across the inlet and hit the wrong creek. Sorry to have bothered you. Give my regards to Lila.”

She returned to the dinghy, and we backed slowly down the creek to the inlet. Snell followed along. It was a tense moment. If the Snells really were murderers, and if they thought we had found them out, they wouldn’t hesitate to do it again. Lieutenant Juster had talked nonchalantly about putting the boat between us and wherever the bullets were coming from, which sounded well enough in theory, but with us trapped in the creek, Abner Snell and his five sons could easily shoot from either side.

Nothing happened, but Abner continued to follow until we reached the inlet, and he stood watching us when we turned east.

We quickly picked up speed, but no one said anything. Sound carries well over water, and for all we knew, Snell was continuing to follow us along the shore. When we found the right creek, we thought it wise to go through the motions of having a picnic, hungry or no. We carried the picnic hamper to a short stretch of sandy beach and pretended to eat. It was just as well that we did so. We caught a glimpse of a skiff nosing along the shore of the inlet. Whoever was in it saw us about the same time we sighted it. It turned back before it reached open water and vanished from our sight. A few minutes later, Lady Roulson thought she saw someone—probably Abner Snell—playing Red Indian and skulking behind bushes and trees. He, too, turned back as soon as he saw what we were doing.

We didn’t discuss the hayrick until we were safely back at Lady Roulson’s house.

“What do you make of it?” Lieutenant Juster asked Lady Sara.

“Obviously the wine was brought to the hayrick in small boats,” she said. “Would the Snells have had any problem anchoring a schooner offshore at night while they unloaded it?”

“Not in good weather. Since they know the sandbanks perfectly, they could bring it in closer than most ships would dare to come. They wouldn’t even have to set riding lights—nothing would be running into them there.”

“Then they unloaded the cargo into small boats, brought it up the creek, and got it out of sight quickly by hiding it in the fake hayrick. Could five boys and the father unload a ship in a single night?”

“If they couldn’t, they could drop down to the Channel, coast until it was time to turn back, and finish the job the next night,” Lieutenant Juster said.

“Then that’s what they did,” Lady Sara said. “Once they had the wine hidden in the hayrick, they could take their time moving it to the farm—concealed under loads of hay during the day or openly at night. It’s their farm, and they have plenty of dogs to keep intruders away. They probably have a huge cellar under the farmhouse where they store the wine. This takes care of every problem except one. They still had to dispose of the ship. Would they sink it?”

“Why sink a valuable ship?” the lieutenant asked. “They could paint a new name on it and sail it over to Walcheren or the Frisian Islands, where there are markets for ships with uncertain pedigrees—or so I’ve heard.”

“Then they picked up a chunk of cash for each ship they stole, and they are gradually building a market in London for the cargoes of wine. The wine costs them nothing to begin with, so they probably clear a pound on every two dozen bottles. They may be selling a hundred dozen a week, which gives them a clear profit of fifty pounds—added to what they gain from selling the ships. No wonder Adam Snell has paid off all of the notes on his farm and begun to add land and new buildings.”

“But where are they getting the ships?” I asked.

“That is the tragedy. There is an elderly wine merchant in Edinburgh—head of a venerable firm—who believes firmly that the quality of wine is improved when it is transported in small sailing ships. The wave action keeps the wine sloshing in the casks. He imports his own wines in sufficient quantity to make up the entire cargo of such a ship. During recent years, four of these ships have disappeared.”

“Without a trace?” I asked.

“Apparently without a trace. All four were written off as having sunk. There weren’t any storms to account for it, but the east coast of England can be treacherous enough even in good weather, especially for sailing ships. It isn’t unusual to have two or three hundred ships lost each year between the Thames and the Wash, which includes this stretch of coast, so no one thought anything unusual about a small wine schooner vanishing every year or two.

“But after the last loss, a nude body washed up on the coast of Belgium. It was a middle-aged man who’d had his throat cut. By coincidence, he was recognized. He was born and grew up in the vicinity. It was the captain of a missing wine ship. Four of the Snell brothers are former seamen. My theory is that they signed on those missing ships under assumed names. They would make up the entire crew of a small cargo ship. Picking their time, they would murder the captain and mate, throw their nude bodies overboard, bring the ship here at night on a favourable tide, unload her, bring her back the next night if necessary to finish the unloading, and then sail her to wherever they could get a good price for her. Then they would return to the farm.”

I tried to envisage a quiet, clannish East Anglian farm family deliberately setting out on a program of mutiny and murder to recoup its fortunes. I found the notion staggering.

“It would take at least a rudimentary knowledge of the wine business to operate as they do,” I said. “Certainly they didn’t acquire that in Great Helmwich.”

“Of course not. One of the Snell sons worked for a wine merchant in London before he went to sea. Obviously he didn’t learn much about the quality of wines, but he learned the rudiments of handling them, and gluing labels on bottles, and filling bottles from casks. Probably he picked up a smattering of information about marketing them. Then all he had to do was build a list of small, independent wine merchants like Seth Beaton, collect their orders and money once a week, and arrange for the deliveries. Chief Inspector Mewer has found the firm that printed the wine labels for them and also the firm that sells bottles to them. Of course those four shiploads contained more than three varieties of wine, but the Snell brothers probably pay little attention to which wine goes with which label. At that price, their customers aren’t likely to complain as long as all of the wines are of good quality. Their list of agents is growing rapidly—and so is the amount of wine they sell. I wonder how long it will be before they need another shipload.”

I shuddered. Probably all of us did. The combination of cold-blooded murder and thievery, repeatedly carried out, is fortunately rare in England.

“The question is how to put a stop to it with so little evidence,” Lady Sara said. “Chief Inspector Mewer is coming this evening. We should be able to contrive something.”