The Five Insides

The Five Insides by Bernard Capes

The narrator visits a ninety-year-old lady whose memories link her to a vanished age. Recalling a snowy winter when Commander Playfair was delayed after his ship was paid off, she asks him to shoot a woodcock so that they may celebrate the anniversary with Madeira. Unable to find one, he meets William keeper, who sends him to warm himself at his father’s cottage and says that the old man’s practical link with the past is the story of a robbed mail coach. William’s father, once guard of the Globe coach between London and Brighton, keeps his old key-bugle and beaver hat as memorials of the event that lost him his position but won him the Captain’s support and later employment as gamekeeper. On 15 December 1813, the coach carries a locked box belonging to Messrs. Black, South, and Co., containing £4000 in Brighton Union notes, cash, and securities. The passengers appear unrelated: a fierce gentleman travelling with a timid lady and a young man; a fat, cheerful man; an apparently paralysed old invalid; and Cato, a black servant seated outside. The fierce gentleman quarrels with the newcomers, especially Cato and the invalid, but the fat man calmly insists that he has booked three seats for himself and his companion. During the journey Cato drums, scrapes, and sings with his feet, irritating the other passengers. The guard inspects the area near Cato’s boots but finds nothing suspicious. At Cuckfield, the fierce gentleman, lady, and young man leave for a waiting chaise. He mockingly warns the fat man that the invalid’s snores might wake the dead. Near Brighton, a disturbance arises: the fat man claims his companion is dying, and Cato runs supposedly to fetch a doctor. At the New Inn the fat man also runs away in search of one, leaving the motionless invalid in the coach. A doctor eventually examines the figure and reveals that it is a wax dummy. Behind it, the guard finds a hole cut through the cushions and panels into the fore boot containing the bankers’ box. The robbery is later explained by one of the gang. All six supposed passengers had been accomplices. The fat man was a ventriloquist, creating the dummy’s groans and speech. After the coach left London, the gang cut into the boot and passed a boy through the opening beyond Croydon. The boy, disguised as the innocent young gentleman, sawed through the roof beneath the driver’s seat, lowered the cash-box, opened and emptied it, and replaced it. Cato’s noisy movements on the roof concealed the sawing, while the stolen money was removed at Cuckfield with the departing party. William returns with two plump woodcocks, and the narrator takes them back in pleasure at the old man’s vivid link with the past.

By Bernard Capes · First published 1911 · Genre: Historical Crime Fiction, Crime Fiction, Mystery Fiction · 4,845 words

First lines

I'll example you with thievery. -"Timon of Athens. "

The dear old lady was ninety, and it was always Christmas in the sweet winter of her face. With the pink in her cheeks and the white of her hair, she came straight from the eighteenth century in which she was born. They were not more at odds with nature than are the hips and the traveller's joy in a withered hedge; and if at one time they paid to art, why it was a charitable gift to a poor dependent-nothing more, I'll swear.

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historical crime fiction · Regency England · 1813 · London to Brighton · mail coach robbery · coach travel · bank robbery · criminal conspiracy · ventriloquism · wax dummy · disguise and deception · confidence trick

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The Five Insides is listed on Textopian as a short story by Bernard Capes, dated 1911 CE.

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