After an hour wandering round the stinking, crowded, disease-ridden streets and lanes of Sandgate, Jack made his way back to Bessie’s. Old Faithful escorted him to the end of the street. He was going to have to lose his shadow if he was to escape. And that was going to be the following night. On his tour, he had overheard a sea captain talking about leaving on the late tide. His ship, the Malmesbury, was bound for Denmark, but was putting into Hartlepool first. A few guineas in the captain’s hand would do the trick. Though Jack wished the ship was going further south, beggars running away from Bowsers, sheriffs’ sergeants and hangmen couldn’t be choosers.
Bessie was out so he went to his room and packed. He hadn’t the nerve to tell her what he was doing so he sat down to write her a letter, which he would leave for her to find. It was the coward’s way, but it was the only way he knew. If he tried to explain, she would use her feminine wiles to persuade him to stay. He had already lost Catherine. Bessie would have to be sacrificed, too. The alternative was Bowser. He quickly started to write.
Bessie walked in on him unannounced. He dropped his quill in his fright, flicking ink across his bedding.
‘You look guilty,’ she teased.
‘You gave me a shock. I did not hear you come in.’
‘Quite obviously. And to whom are you writing?’
‘To my father,’ he stammered whilst trying to cover up the half-written letter with his cuff. ‘…to my sister,’ he bumbled on. ‘My sister… and my father. Yes, both.’
Bessie squinted over his outstretched arm. ‘Never mind that, I have the most exciting news.’
‘Bowser has dropped down dead.’
She ignored him. ‘I have found out where the meeting is to take place.’
Jack gazed at her in disbelief. Her face was flushed with triumph, her hands placed determinedly on her hips as if she was challenging him to beat that.
‘But how?’
‘I know you have been followed by Bowser’s bloodhound,’ – not a very apt description, thought Jack – ‘so, if you found the place, Bowser would know immediately. So while I sent you out as a decoy, I have been around the town myself. And this afternoon I followed Bowser, at a discreet distance of course, and he went over the bridge to Gateshead. There are some warehouses on that side. The one he went into was the seventh along from the bridge. He owns it and it is the last one, so there is not an eighth. It must be it. What do you think of that?’
Jack didn’t react in the way Bessie had anticipated. ‘You mean you have had me trailing all over this miserable town just to throw Bowser off the scent? You might have damn well told me.’ He was seething.
Bessie’s eyes blazed back in fury. ‘If I had told you, you would not have been so convincingly useless!’
‘And what the hell do you mean by that, madam?’ snapped back a deeply wounded Jack.
‘I cannot imagine that you would have found the meeting place in a month of Sundays.’
‘Right, if that is how you feel, I had better leave,’ he said indignantly. At least the ungrateful hussy was giving him a way out. He could quit Newcastle in righteous high dudgeon instead of guiltily sloping off down to the Tyne like the rat he had felt like a few minutes before.
‘Oh, Jack, why do we quarrel so? I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt your feelings.’
He had his chance and he must take it. ‘It is a trifle late for that now, Bessie. I have done much for you. Put myself in constant danger. Though I do not want to go, you have left me with no alternative.’ He wasn’t about to let her off the hook. ‘I will pack my things.’
He got up. ‘Please Jack, I beseech you, I am truly contrite. You know I did not mean what I said.’
By the time he had stormed over to his small trunk, he realised he had made a mistake. The lid was open, his clothes already packed.
Bessie noticed, too. Then she glanced at the half-written letter he had stupidly abandoned on the table.
‘You rat!’ At least her description matched his own. ‘You were going anyway. And by the look of this, you did not have the courage to tell me.’
What could he say? A pathetic grimace wasn’t calculated to extract a sympathetic response.
‘I misjudged you, Jack. I thought you would stand firm by me.’ If she had shouted, it would have been easier to take, but she spoke with genuine sadness. ‘You have been my constant support since my father’s death. I could not have coped without you. I have relied on you, Jack. I believed you cared for me enough to see this business through. Oh, Jack,’ and a sob came into her voice, ‘you have betrayed me.’
Jack shuffled uneasily. God, she knew how to turn the knife.
‘Go, Jack. That is what you want. I will not stand in your way.’
There was no possibility of him leaving now. He knew it. She knew it.