Shadow of the Hangman(12)

‘We’ve got them,’ he said before taking a long swig of ale.

‘I’ll drink to that, Micah.’

Simon Medlow lifted his own tankard to his lips. The two men were seated in a quiet corner of the inn. They were beaming with pleasure.

‘The trap has been baited,’ said Medlow.

‘You did well.’

‘It was costly. I had to give a large deposit to Ackford. It was the only way to convince him that I was in earnest.’

‘You’ve had ample recompense, Simon. There’ll be more money when we finally catch the pair of them trespassing in Mayfair.’

‘They’ll argue that Hobday engaged them to look after the house but he’s a hundred miles away. When he gets back, he’ll depose that he’s never seen or heard of the Skillen brothers before.’

‘Meanwhile,’ said Yeomans, ‘the other Everett Hobday has gone back to being Simon Medlow and will have disappeared from sight altogether.’ He took another sip of ale. ‘I hope you asked for both of them.’

‘I did, Micah. You’ll nab Peter and Paul Skillen.’

‘I’ve waited ages to put salt on their tails.’

‘How many men will you bring?’

‘I’ll bring plenty,’ said Yeomans. ‘I know how slippery they can be.’

The Bow Street Runner was still sorely wounded by the way that the brothers had arrested Ned Greet and claimed the reward for his capture. Determined to strike back at them, he’d hatched a plot. Yeomans had been charged with the task of looking after Hobday’s property in Upper Brook Street while the man and his servants were away in the country. He’d arranged for an old acquaintance, Simon Medlow, to impersonate Hobday and lure the Skillen brothers to the house. At a given signal during the night, Yeomans and his men would let themselves into the property and arrest Peter and Paul for trespass and attempted burglary. Medlow had been the ideal person to employ. He was a confidence trickster who owed the Runner a favour because the latter had turned a blind eye to his activities in the past. Medlow was not the only criminal with whom Yeomans had a mutually beneficial arrangement. In return for immunity from arrest, a number of them paid him a regular fee. Those who refused to do so had enjoyed no such indulgence from him and his colleagues. They were hunted down relentlessly until they were caught.

‘Gully Ackford is a wily character,’ said Yeomans. ‘Only someone like you could have pulled the wool over his eyes.’

‘He’ll be implicated as well, of course.’

‘That’s the beauty of it. Ackford will have to appear in court and admit that he was taken in by the bogus Mr Hobday. It will be a humiliation for him. When word gets out that he and his detectives were so easily taken in, people will not be so keen to engage their services and the Runners will be cocks-of-the-walk again.’

‘It’s a clever ruse, Micah.’

Yeomans smirked. ‘I swore that I’d get my revenge.’





Esther Ricks was a short, dark-haired, roly-poly woman in a plain dress that failed to conceal her spreading contours. She lived in a small terraced house off Oxford Street. When he called there that morning, Peter Skillen put her age at around forty and could see that she must have been an attractive woman when younger and slimmer. As soon as she heard that he’d been asked to investigate the disappearance of her sister, she was so pathetically grateful that she clutched his arm.

‘Oh, do please find her, sir. Anne is very precious to me.’

‘I’m sure that she is, Mrs Ricks.’

‘We lost both of our parents and have no other family beyond each other. When Anne’s husband died, we pressed her to come and live with us but she’s very independent. She preferred to rent a room elsewhere. Anne said that she didn’t want to impose on us. The truth of it is that she’d have felt too confined here.’

‘Describe her for me,’ said Peter, easing her gently away.

Given the invitation, Esther seized it with both hands, talking lovingly and at length about her younger sister. What emerged was a portrait of a hard-working woman in her thirties, turned out by the landlord on the death of her husband and forced to fend for herself. Though the menial job at the Home Office did not pay well, it gave Anne Horner an enormous sense of pride to be working, albeit in a lowly capacity, for the government. Dedicated to her role, she had never missed a day or been anything other than thorough in her duties. To the outsider, hers might seem a strange and very limited existence but it was – her sister argued – the one she chose and liked.

‘That’s why it’s so unusual, Mr Skillen,’ she said. ‘Only something very serious could keep my sister away.’