Chapter 6

HMS Nimble laid her anchor in the Saint Albans channel and dropped her long boat from the port davits. As the crew made all fast, Captain Morrissey turned to his two passengers with a broad smile and indicated the dull grey shape of the island, looming in the mist. It was still very early in the morning and the two men peered at the distant island with a boding sense of apprehension.
Albert Norris turned to his taller companion and raised an eyebrow.
“What d’ya think?” he asked quietly.
Mr Christopher Dunston Stokes gazed on the ephemeral shore and pursed his lips.
“Oh, it has all the melodrama one might wish for doesn’t it?” he offered in his sardonic manner. “The grey mist shrouds the mysterious island where the savage monster roams…”
Norris did not reply. He now knew from experience that this would only provoke further sarcasm from the tall gentleman, and although he understood sarcasm, he himself had no time for it. He was a short blunt man, with close cropped hair and a thick torso and neck and large strong arms. Originally from Deptford he had grown up amongst the criminal underclass of London’s darker side, but in time had joined the navy to escape the stifling poverty of the big city, and after years of being a foremast jack, he had been selected by a former captain to act as a messenger carrying a secret dispatch to London, where upon he had been recruited by the Admiralty as a strong arm man.
This was where he had met Morgan de Hogue. The two of them had already worked together on several previous jobs, and it was there fore no surprise when he was asked by Sir Joseph to go to Saint Albans Island at once to assist his colleague in breaking a smugglers gang and solving a series of mysterious deaths.
Dunston Stokes had been a surprise though.
He’d been waiting by the dock side when Norris had arrived last night, holding a sealed letter from Sir Joseph, requesting… not ordering, that Mr Christopher Dunston Stokes be allowed to accompany him to Saint Albans, where his ‘expertise’ might be of some assistance.
During the voyage, Norris had learned just what sort of an expert Stokes was. In the tiny cabin they had shared, Stokes had produced a heavy double barrelled hunting rifle. An extremely expensive, high calibre Joe Manton, and breaking open the breech he had passed Norris one of the copper jacket cartridges.
This was a weapon beyond Norris’s experience and he had marvelled at the craftsmanship of it.
“So you’re a game hunter?” he had asked.
Stokes had regarded him with intelligent watery grey eyes.
“Everything and anything” he answered.
Norris had been a warrior all his life. He had killed his first man when he was fifteen, and for the last three years he had worked as a spy catcher and man hunter, but he had never before met any one like Stokes. The man had a chilling lack of empathy. Although he was admirable in many respects; he had a meticulous regard for details and was quite polite when it was required, it was however quite obvious that he saw himself as raised above the common man. He was some form of nobility, of that Norris was sure. He wasn’t convinced by the title Mister by which Stokes had introduced him self, even though Sir Joseph had used the same title in his letter. But all his attempts to dislodge Stokes on the matter had been deflected by the man’s constant sarcastic character.
Their conversation had ended where it begun, with Stokes very much a stranger.
As the boat crew climbed down into the barge, Norris passed his sea bag and climbed sure footed down the side. Stokes, his rifle in a protective sheath, slung across his back, followed him. Slower, but without fear, he passed down into the tossing long boat and found his seat.
“Heave ho jolly tars” he sneered to the surprise of the boat crew.
“Good hunting Sir!” Captain Morrissey called out as the long boat turned towards the island.
Stokes gave the slightest nod in return.


The day after they found Sarah Tyler and Sam Harrow, Bailey had attended the funeral of Mary Coleman. Together with de Hogue he had stood at the back of the church and sang and prayed with the others, as Reverend Butler had recounted Mary’s life to the miserable wailing of her mother and friends.
John Sheppard had abruptly left half way through the ceremony, and de Hogue had raised an eye brow, but he’d let the young man go.
Afterwards, Bailey had spent most of the rest of the day in the basement of the chapel, where the two bodies had been placed for burial preparation, with Doctor Farrell.
Farrell, though he had very little experience with such mangled bodies, had managed to ascertain two facts. The first was that two different but similar weapons had been used, in both cases. He described these weapons as similar to medieval war hammers, each a mirror of the other.
“Do you see” he asked, “how this wound is a mirror image of this one?”
Bailey had studied the triangular puncture wounds and as Farrell had said, the one was indeed a mirror image of the other.
“So the attacker, must have used two weapons, one in each hand, and then just hacked away at them?” he asked.
“So the injuries indicate.” The Doctor had said.
Bailey had tried to imagine the ferocity of a man who used two heavy spiked hammer like weapons to attack another person pulling the entrails from their bodies in his fury. In all his time in Newgate prison, he had seen plenty of mad men. Lunatics with unhinged minds who killed in sudden fits of ferocity, the doctors had used all manner of experimental brain surgery on them to cure what they described as acharnement a blood thirsty fury. The angry urge to kill another person by extremely violent means. But this had never worked. Either they had died during the procedure, or they became the living dead. Mindless and numb, staring at nothing as they drooled and soiled themselves.Many had gone straight to the gallows regardless. Their former crimes to be paid for, and they had ended their days hanging from the gallows doing the Tyburn jig to the jeers of the onlookers.