A Killing Too Far Read online

  BOOK TWO

  A Killing Too Far

  ANDREW WAREHAM

  Digital edition published in 2018 by

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  A Killing Too Far

  Copyright © 2018 by Andrew Wareham

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents:

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  By the Same Author

  Introduction

  A Killing Too Far: Sam Heythorne finds the gin trade highly profitable, enabling him to expand into other dubious businesses. However, a savage attack on Uncle Abe’s son by villains of a neighbouring town upsets Sam’s comfortable world, forcing him to take murderous reprisals against those involved. He invests in the growing coal industry, but his criminal past catches up with him later in the book.

  Chapter One

  Author’s Note: I have written and punctuated A Killing Too Far in a style reflecting English usage in novels of the period, when typically, sentences were longer than they are in modern English. Editor’s Note: Andrew’s book was written, produced and edited in the UK where some of the spellings, punctuation and word usage vary slightly from U.S. English.

  A Killing Too Far

  “All just right, Mr Sam, sir. Twelve stills, all up and running, sir, first day, sir, not one of them showing a leak, sir.”

  Sam nodded thoughtfully, walking the floor of his new, third, distillery, making his inspection gravely, staring about him for any sign of dirt or soot, for the least spill that could attract vermin or for any indication at all of slackness.

  “It looks to be in good order, Timothy. I see you have just six men here, one to each pair of stills.”

  “Yes, Mr Sam. Being as we set them up with one furnace to two stills, as you saw would work, sir, we can get by with just one man to stoke outside and one to watch the process on the floor and change the collecting tubs and clean out the used-up mash and restart the still. Two more men take the full tubs out to the bottling room, sir, on their little trolleys, where the glass bottles are filled each with an exact quart as should be.”

  The furnaces were all set against the outside walls, the stills on their inside. The stokers worked outdoors, the firebox doors being out in the open air. As a result, none of the coal dust entered the building and it could be kept spotlessly clean. The six chimneys ran externally as well, keeping the smoke out. Sam was pleased to see that his idea had worked, that his gin would be kept free of the worst forms of grime.

  He made a mental note to purchase coir mats to be laid at the doors, to keep the men’s feet clean. They did not all wear boots but the skin on bare feet would be hard and could be thoroughly rubbed on the coarse matting and kept mud-free.

  “Have all of the glass bottles been delivered as contracted, Timothy?”

  “All of them, sir. In their wooden crates, sir, none broken. Chinaware plugs to the tops, sir, to be sealed with wax.”

  “Then all is well with our new endeavour, you would say, Timothy?”

  “Yes, sir. Only thing is, sir, there be stuff comin’ into town from outside, Mr Sam. From all I ‘ear, there’s a dozen of pubs what is buyin’ from out of town, sir.”

  Sam was none too concerned – he had been unable to supply every drinking house in Stoke before opening his new premises. He did not doubt that the publicans would all follow the course of wisdom and purchase from him now that he had the capacity to meet their needs.

  “Might be they chaps would want to, Mr Sam. But it might be as well that they’d find their pub burned down about their ears if so be they tried to make the change, sir.”

  “Would they now? And who might be so bold as to try that in my town, Timothy?”

  “Don’t know their name meself, Mr Sam, but the buffer down at the New Inn on the south side of town told me as ‘ow that was the way of things.”

  “Did he now? And why did he not tell me instead of you, Timothy? He should have been on my doorstep with that news just as soon as he discovered it to be so. I shall speak to that gentleman tomorrow, in the afternoon. I am too busy today to go across to him, and must speak to Miss Josephine in the morning, the final arrangements before we get wed next week.”

  “Good day to you, sor. An’ what can I do for thee, sor?”

  The barman of the New Inn evidently did not recognise Sam but saw him as out of the ordinary custom of his little beer house, dressed too costly to be one of his people. The Irish was thick in his voice, newly come across from the south of the island, at a guess.

  “I am Sam Heythorne. Are you the owner of the house?”

  “Not the owner, as such, as one might be sayin’, no sor. He is by way of bein’ me brother, that is, married to me sister, these five years, sor. He is not here, sor, as is always the case, he bein’ at the other house, bein’ in a good way of business and havin’ the two, do you see.”

  The name Heythorne meant nothing either.

  “Where might I find your brother?”

  “Well, and that might depend on just why you was wanting’ to be findin’ him, master.”

  There were just two drinkers at the bar in early afternoon, both staring in horror at the barman and winking and nodding at him to attract his attention. Sam was a little, a very little, amused at their performance.

  “Best you should tell him, lads.”

  They leaned across and whispered in the barman’s ear.

  “Is that so? An’ him lookin’ no more than a very young sort of fella!”

  They whispered again, more urgently.

  “To be sure, and if that be so, then I might be in error, as they say. Mr Heythorne, was it now?”

  “It is.”

  “My brother, sor, is to be found at the First In Last Out public house, on the road leading south, perhaps two furlongs from here, sor. A little larger than this house, sor. He will be there for sure, at this time of day. Mr Malone, he is by name, sor.”

  Ten minutes saw Sam at the First In Last Out, reflecting that there must be a pub with that name in every town in England. He walked through the open door, saw that this was a more prosperous sort of place, possibly with pretensions to becoming a respectable inn. There was a large man behind the bar, a good six inches taller and probably four stone heavier than him.

  “Mr Malone? I am Sam Heythorne.”

  “I know the name, and I am Daniel Malone. I was expecting ye here before now, Mr Heythorne.”

  “I have this week brought my new distillery into production, Mr Malone. Until now I could not supply every house in town. I can now.”

  “Then, Mr Heythorne, there
is a problem. I am buying from Smith – or so he names himself – who has a pair of stills out on his farm, just two miles down the road from here. Should I turn to buying from you, Mr Heythorne, then I suspect he would be upset with me, and that would mean a flaming torch in the thatch in short order. I have no wish to stand against you, sir, for I know that to be a most unwise act, but I have no desire to have my house burned down around my ears either.”

  Sam nodded and gave a cursory smile. He was trying to win people round rather than kill them out of hand these days. He was puzzled that his policy was so far less than wholly successful.

  “That is fair. I will demand of no man that he should be killed or his business destroyed for buying my gin. I shall see you again in a few days and make the arrangements then. When does Smith next deliver to you?”

  “He does no such thing, sir. I must take the trap to him every week and purchase at his door. And I must thank him kindly for the chance to do so, sir.”

  “When next do you go to him?”

  “On Friday, that being my day, sir.”

  “Well, we shall see what you may discover when next you go to him. You know where to find me, if you should run short for having no supplier?”

  “I do, sir, and must say how sorry I am to be putting you to inconvenience.”

  “Bullshit, Malone! My name is not Smith. You do not kiss my boots, or any other part, for that matter!”

  Sam stamped out, angry that he might be compared with a very unsavoury sort of bully. He might, he accepted, occasionally kill people – but only if they deserved it – but he did not trample roughshod over his inferiors. He would never threaten and terrify the owners of beerhouses into buying from him, though he might well ensure that there was no other source they could buy from. He made his way back to the new distillery and the office he had installed in a pair of rooms built on at the back.

  “Timothy! Send Jacky to me for first thing in the morning.”

  Sam had hired on a pair of hard men to assist in the maintenance of a peaceful society in his locality. Jacky was senior of the pair and controller of his younger, retarded and not entirely sane brother, Happy Henry. Happy Henry stood more than a fathom tall and was almost as broad across the shoulders as he was high; he talked only with difficulty and normally stood silently where Jacky placed him, seemingly almost asleep. When Jacky gave him the word Happy Henry would commit the most horrifying acts of violence, uncaring of retaliation. Sam had seen him with a knife sticking out of an arm and still pushing forward, swinging a club into the middle of a drunken mob of rioting labourers who had been dismissed from their employment in one of the pottery kilns; the mob had broken and run, most of them leaving town and never returning. Labour unrest had ceased after that.

  “Jacky, there is a man who calls himself Smith who runs a pair of stills a couple of miles south of town. It seems that he has threatened to burn out any beerhouse owner who will not continue to purchase from him. I would be obliged if you would join me as I persuade him to close down his stills and leave the trade entirely.”

  “That can be done, Mr Sam. Today?”

  “By the close of business on Thursday, of a certainty; best this afternoon, in fact. When we are done, I might wish you to take a pint in the First In Last Out in Stoke – paid for – and inform the landlord, in politest fashion, that Mr Smith will not threaten again to burn him out. If you and Happy Henry will take the cart, I shall join you on the road by Smith’s farm, in, what, two hours?”

  “Make it three, if you would, Mr Sam. I must fetch the nags in and harness up and then gee Henry into motion and it will be a slow old walk down, the roads being muddy and the horses not the best.”

  “So, at two o’clock this afternoon, or close to.”

  Jacky walked briskly out to the paddock, brought the cart horses in to the yard and put them to the shafts before pulling his brother out from the chair by the fireplace in their shared cottage and pointing him in the right direction and then up and onto the bench of the cart.

  Sam told Timothy he would be ‘out’ for a few hours and then made his way to his own rooms in the expanded White Horse Inn and opened the locked cupboard. He loaded the pair of dragoon pistols and put them into their holsters and then the two double-barrelled pocket murderers and tucked them away out of sight.

  He went through to the bar area, found his Uncle Abe busy, as he had expected.

  “I am off into Stoke, sir. Well, a couple of miles out on the road south, in fact, to remonstrate with a man called Smith. He is a distiller who has been making wild threats to all and sundry, it would seem.”

  “Oh dear, has he? We cannot be having that, Sam. Our little town is to be a peaceful, law abiding sort of place. We have no use for bully boys hereabouts and so I trust you will inform him.”

  They kept the most serious of faces as they went about their separate business.

  The road south followed the low ground between the Pennines to the east and the Welsh hills to the west, was as busy as any to be found in the county. It was the main artery for trade overland between Liverpool and Manchester to the north and the growing town of Birmingham well to the south, passing through Stoke and the little town of Stone before reaching Stafford. Despite its importance it was little more than a rutted mud bath, barely wide enough for two carts to pass each other and good for walking pace only. A rich man’s coach might make fifty miles in a summer’s day, changing horses five or six times to achieve so much; a carrier’s cart might travel half so far on the driest of days. Sam was ninety minutes walking his horse the seven miles to his destination; he joined the cart and its two men waiting by a crossroads where a narrow lane turned off toward the eastern hills.

  There was a hedge pub at the crossroads, as was usual, with a copse of scrub trees sheltering it and providing firewood. The ground was low and wet, a morass that could not be farmed, as a road would not be permitted to waste good growing land.

  “Buffer in the pub says as how Smith’s place be a furlong up the slope and round the first bend on the track, Mr Sam. I’ve kept an eye out and he ain’t sent anybody up the track to warn ‘im since I spoke to ‘im.”

  “Then let us give Mr Smith a little surprise, Jacky. If he raises a fist or club, deal with him. If he should be so unwise as to display a gun or knife, then I will see to the problem.”

  “I got a pair of shovels up in the cart, Mr Sam, if they should be needed.”

  They laughed and set off along the track.

  The farmhouse was old and small, no more than four rooms up and the same down, plaster infilled timber under thatch, creeper and rambling roses along the walls and with a single brick-built barn to the side.

  It was normal enough, Sam thought, for the barn to be sturdier than the farmhouse, for being the more important. He sniffed the air, picking up the whiff of sour old mashes thrown out carelessly to rot at the side of the yard.

  “Slack sort of fellow. No attempt to hide what he’s doing from the Revenuers if they should ever come to call.”

  “Maybe he’s paid them off, Mr Sam. Perhaps he just don’t care because he’s got a good friend with money who will keep them away.”

  “Possibly he intends to shoot first if a pair of Revenuers turn up in his yard. Can you see anybody hiding up with a fowling piece, Jacky?”

  “Nothing in sight, Mr Sam.”

  They stopped outside the barn, tied the horses to the rail there and looked about them.

  “Take a look inside the barn, Jacky. I’ll go over to the house.”

  There was a shout as soon as they started to move.

  “That’s my bloody barn! Get you noses out of it. What you want here?”

  Sam spotted a figure half hidden at the side of the house, come round from the back door and choosing not to show himself.

  “Mr Smith?”

  “So what if I be?”

  “My name’s Heythorne. I wish to speak with you.”

  “Well you can bugger off. I ain’t got noth
ing to say to you, Sam bloody Heythorne!”

  “You would be wise to listen to what I have to say.”

  “Don’t think you can threaten me, Sam Heythorne. I got friends, I ‘ave.”

  Smith walked forward, planted himself four-square in front of Sam. He was a small man, shorter than Sam, and not especially sturdy, but he was waving a most belligerent fist.

  “Mr Smith, one last chance to listen. You have said that you will burn out any man who ceases to buy your gin. You must not do that.”

  “I’ll do what I bloody wants! I got friends, I ‘ave!”

  “You have enemies too, Mr Smith. I think you would be well advised to stop and think for a minute.”

  “I done all my thinkin’ already. Get off my land!”

  “On your own head be it. Why should I care about your friends? Who are they?”

  “You’ll find out if you don’t get out now.”

  “Oh, sod this, there’s no talking with you, man.”

  Sam’s patience, never a quality he was remarkable for, had run out.

  Sam pulled the pistol from the left-hand pocket, kept butt forward so that the locks would not snag in the cloth of his coat. He cocked both locks and thrust the barrel into Smith’s belly, pulled the triggers. Both barrels fired, to his pleasure – there was always a chance that a flintlock would flash in the pan – and two and a half ounces of buckshot did its work. Smith fell, a fist-sized hole punched out of his back.

  “Take a look inside his house, Jacky.”

  Ten minutes and Jacky was back.

  “Empty, Mr Sam. Can’t ‘ave been farming, not without a missus. No sign of anything written down. Not a book in the house.”

  Like three quarters of the rural community, Smith had been illiterate. Nothing unusual but it meant there were no letters or other indications of who his ‘friends’ might have been.

  “Anything valuable?”