His heart was thudding loudly in his ears as Jonas stepped back to survey the scene. The dogs were dead and the troops were now silently manoeuvring themselves around the property. Jonas caught the moonlit glint of several poised pistols as the men surrounded the house.
Hellard joined Jonas outside the street door, as if they were awaiting an invitation to go inside. Jonas nodded to Hellard, who in turn gave a silent signal to two seamen, chosen for their brawn. The two stood back, lined themselves up, then ran full pelt at the door, their shoulders effortlessly smashing it to the floor inside.
Hellard ran in first, with Jonas on his heels. Inside, the house was pitch-black. They jumped over the two men who had just busted down the door, one of whom was writhing in agony and clutching his arm. Behind Jonas ran a stream of a dozen men—especially selected by Hellard for this task. The men darted in and out of the rooms downstairs, checking for people and shouting that the rooms were empty, before continuing to the next.
A loud female scream came from somewhere upstairs.
‘His wife!’ Hellard shouted, making for the stairs.
Jonas followed closely behind, leaping up the stairs and, upon reaching the landing, turned towards a room which overlooked the street.
‘In here!’ Hellard yelled, and there was suddenly the sound of multiple boots on the wooden stair treads.
A soft pool of moonlight streamed in through the window, catching Ransley standing beside his bed in a white ankle-length nightgown. Beside him stood his wife, her arms crossed protectively across her nightdress, as she looked at her husband. His drained facial expression told Jonas that he admitted defeat, that he was not about to resist or plead ignorance. He knew that his time was up and there was little point in protesting.
‘George Ransley,’ Jonas said, as Hellard handcuffed him to another brute of a man under his command, ‘I am a Bow Street Officer and I am arresting you. You must come with us.’
Ransley nodded his head and Jonas felt in that moment, as he stared at his forlorn features, that something much greater than the arrest of one man had occurred this night; something prodigious had irrevocably changed.
Under Hellard and Jonas’s supervision, Ransley had been able to dress and say goodbye to his wife. At the street door, he spotted the bodies of his four mongrels and he attempted to stop. The guards to which he had been handcuffed continued, tugging him sharply back to their sides. Ransley shouted, ‘Tarnal pigs! Do that really be right?’
‘Silence!’ Hellard ordered. ‘Unless you want gagging?’
‘Bastards…’ he muttered.
From the Bourne Tap, the body of men marched around the village to where the sentinels were keeping guard, quietly arresting the other nine men. None put up the fight which Jonas had been expecting.
Once the last had been taken captive, Hellard shook Jonas’s hand and led the party back to Fort Moncrief.
Jonas had one last visit to make.
Now that he was alone and out of the imposing presence of naval officers, Jonas walked with a much slower pace and a less military-like gait. His heart was beginning to return to its normal rhythm but with that slackening of his pulse came an acute tiredness in his legs and he could not imagine facing the nine-mile return journey tonight. Perhaps he could take a room at the Walnut Tree Inn, then get a post-chaise back to Dover in the morning. But then he remembered what he was about to do: the outcome of this and this alone would dictate the time of his return.
When he arrived, the cottage was unsurprisingly dark. He paused a moment, staring at the pale moonlight on the window panes, as he pushed away the evening’s events and focused his thoughts. He took out his pistol and loaded it with shot.
Jonas walked up the path and hammered his fist on the street door. The authority of his role returned, as he pulled in a long breath and puffed out his chest. He rapped again, impatiently.
The door was opened by Samuel, his face embodying the expected mixture of anger, curiosity and sleepiness.
Jonas pointed the pistol at him, stony-faced, realising that Samuel did not recognise him. ‘Samuel Banister, I am a Principal Officer from Bow Street Magistrate’s Court and I am here to arrest you.’
‘What?’
Jonas stepped into the house, pushing past Samuel. He sat beside the dying fire, holding in his euphoria at finally having some rest, watching whilst Samuel shut the door.
‘What on…!’ It was Hester, appearing with a tallow candle. She saw Jonas, saw the gun and gasped. ‘Oh!’
‘He be coming here to arrest me,’ Samuel said quietly.
‘Oh, merciful Lord! What do you be arresting him for?’ Hester cried.
‘The murder of Quartermaster Richard Morgan on the 30th July this year,’ Jonas said.
‘They be a-hanging him!’ Hester wailed, ‘It be just the same as my two dear brothers… What did I be a-telling you, Sam? You be a-heading for the gallows! Oh, merciful Lord…’
Samuel ignored his wife’s delirium and, as he sat at the only other chair in the room, Jonas noticed the same sense of resignation to his demeanour as he had just witnessed in George Ransley. All the bravado, all the bluster, gone.
‘What be happening now?’ Samuel asked. ‘Why don’t you be carting me off? What do you be waiting for?’
‘That all depends,’ Jonas said, deliberately cryptic. He placed one leg over the other, set his pistol down beside him and knitted his fingers together, as though himself unsure of what might happen next.
‘’Pends on what?’ Sam asked.
‘It rather depends upon what decision you make next,’ Jonas said.
Samuel snorted, casting a brief eye towards his wife. ‘What choice do I got?’
‘You can choose to die,’ Jonas said. ‘I’ve got sufficient evidence to see you
