Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery

by Andrew Pepper

  The Englishman acknowledged his gratitude but didn’t speak for a few moments. ‘Why do you think this murder has unsettled them so much?’

  ‘I don’t know but if I had to wager, I’d say it has something to do with this man, Johns.’

  Pierce agreed. ‘You were right, by the way. Johns lives, or rather lived, in Merthyr Tydfil.’

  ‘And something brought him over here?’

  They waited while the horses were led out of the stables. ‘How much do you know about what happened in Merthyr?’

  ‘Nothing, really. Only what was mentioned in the letter.’

  ‘Which was?’

  ‘That the deceased had gone there to investigate the kidnapping of a child.’

  The Englishman stared up at the cloudless sky. ‘You might have read about it in the newspaper. Something went very wrong and the child was killed.’

  Knox thought about his own predicament. ‘You think it had something to do with Pyke coming over here?’

  ‘I think Pyke followed Johns – and a magistrate called Sir Clancy Smyth. He’s another Tipperary man.’

  ‘So was Johns involved in the kidnapping?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m guessing Pyke blamed him for what happened afterwards. After the boy was found dead.’

  ‘And what did happen?’

  Pierce didn’t answer right away. ‘You know the letter you sent to Pyke’s son, Felix, informing him of his father’s death? He never got it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because Felix had gone to Merthyr to see his father.’

  ‘What about when he returned to Somerset?’

  Pierce gave him a strange stare. ‘You really don’t know, do you?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘He never returned to Somerset.’

  TWENTY-ONE

  THURSDAY, 26 NOVEMBER 1846

  Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales

  He entered the old courthouse via the back door, which was unlocked. Inside the air smelled fetid and stale, and nothing moved. The only sound was the wooden shutters rattling against their jambs. Pyke stood at the bottom of the stairs and called out, ‘Hello,’ but no one answered. Sir Clancy Smyth had not been seen in Merthyr for a number of days, at least according to Superintendent Jones, who’d shared this information with John, the man who’d shielded Pyke from both the police and Hancock’s emissaries.

  Pausing to catch his breath, Pyke touched his wound and winced. He could walk unaided, albeit with a pronounced limp and considerable pain, but it was slow work and his recovery would be long and arduous. None of this concerned him, though, not compared to his desire to find Felix or determine once and for all that he was safe and hadn’t travelled to Merthyr in the first place. Pyke had written to Jakes in Somerset and was still waiting for a reply. In the meantime he’d scoured the town for his son. He had even tried to sneak into the Castle to speak to the Hancocks, but the grounds had been too heavily patrolled and, as he had later found out, the entire family, including Cathy, had now left Merthyr, having buried William alongside their deceased daughter at the Vaynor cemetery. They were said to be mourning in private at their family estate in Hampshire. From what Pyke had heard, the police were still looking for him in connection with the kidnapping and therefore believed he might have been involved. Pyke wasn’t concerned what the police – or the Hancocks – thought of him, but it bothered him that Cathy might think that he had knowingly put her son’s life in danger.

  Pyke ascended the staircase, listening for sounds above him, but there was nothing except the creaking of floorboards under his feet. To lose one child to illness must be hard enough, but to lose another? Pyke couldn’t comprehend her grief. Would William’s death have brought her closer to her husband? It was always possible, he supposed. They could both blame him – for running off with the money and letting their beloved son perish at the hands of his vengeful kidnappers – but to Pyke, this explanation rang hollow. He still had no idea what had happened, but he didn’t see how it would profit the kidnappers to execute the lad in cold blood, even if they hadn’t actually received the ransom money. Why not just try again? Why murder the boy and throw away any chance of getting the twenty thousand? Pyke also didn’t know what had happened to the suitcase he’d left on the train departing for Cardiff.

  On the landing Pyke paused again. Smyth had lived in this building for – what? – ten years, before moving to a bigger pile a couple of miles south of the town. The decor was dated and the wallpaper peeling. It certainly wasn’t a place to inspire envy in others, to show off the owner’s wealth and social standing. Instead it was the residence of a man who had fallen on hard times, where nothing had been attended to for years and where neglect was visible everywhere you looked; the old courthouse was no longer a functioning seat of law and the entire building conjured an air of decay.

  Pyke had expected there to be servants or at least an ancient retainer, someone to keep the place from total rack and ruin, but the upstairs, like the downstairs, appeared to be entirely deserted. It was true that someone had hastily thrown white sheets over some of the furniture, but this didn’t explain where Smyth was or where he had gone. As chief magistrate, would he really have cut and run at the time when the town needed him most? When riots and rioters had necessitated calling in the army? Smyth had presented himself as someone who loved the town, despite its flaws.

  Outside, a cart clanked passed the building and farther down the street he could hear a dog barking. The army had re-established control of the town and the streets were more or less empty. Still, the damage to property was extensive and people had been killed – Pyke didn’t know how many. Workers from Caedraw and Morlais had turned on one another, but mostly the violence had been sectarian, Welsh against Irish, Protestant against Catholic. Pyke had witnessed the aftermath: shops destroyed, churches burned to the ground, homes ransacked.

  He tried the first door off the landing, peered into the gloomy room. It was a study of sorts and like the rest of the building it was unoccupied.

  ‘Smyth?’ His voice echoed off the walls.

  The next door he tried was a bedroom; the curtains were drawn but a few cracks of light seeped in around the edges. Pyke saw the dresser first and caught a glimpse of the bed in the looking glass. Feet on the bed. Quickly he crossed the room and tore back the curtains, let the daylight flood in; he turned and saw a figure sprawled on top of the bed, fully dressed. It took his eyes a few moments to adjust to the light; blinking, he moved towards the figure, panic rising in his chest. Standing over the bed, Pyke stared down, open-mouthed, at Felix.

  A hot spike of bile spewed from his mouth. Instinctively he reached out and shook the boy; his son’s skin was as cold and stiff as marble. At once he knew; he didn’t need to check for a heartbeat. There wouldn’t be one. Felix had been dead for a while, at least a day. The body didn’t even look like his son; the cheeks were pale and wax-like, the eyes like those of a dead fish. Pyke opened his mouth and fell to his knees, but what came out was more of a strangled cry than a scream. His son was dead; Felix, dead. He could see the truth of the words but he couldn’t accept them, accept that Felix would never walk or smile or talk or argue with him ever again. Pyke fell on top of his son, enveloped his body in his arms, his cry becoming a sob, and he imagined just for a moment that he was dreaming, that none of this had actually happened. But Felix was real, his son’s corpse was really in his arms, and then it struck him, the finality of it, that Felix wasn’t ever coming back.

  Numb and sobbing, Pyke lay on top of Felix’s lifeless body, hugging it, hugging him, no longer sure how long he had been there, time a blur. This was the moment he had been dreading ever since Felix was born, that his son would die first, that he would have to bury the lad and live the rest of his life knowing that he had somehow let Felix down; that he had, wittingly or otherwise, caused his son’s death, either through neglect or as an unintended consequence of the way he lived his life, the kind of universe he existed in, a
sordid, violent world in which life was cheap.

  A while later, Pyke laid Felix down on the bed. How had the lad died? Pyke’s mind was working like a policeman’s, almost in spite of himself. There was no blood, no obvious wounds. Had he died on the bed or had someone carried him there? It took Pyke five minutes to remove Felix’s clothes, the body limp and pathetic on the bedcovers. There was bruising around the neck but not the kind that would indicate the boy had been strangled. The room continued to spin around Pyke, all of it unreal, the fact that he was in Merthyr, far from home, staring down at his beloved son’s naked corpse. Pyke had long since reached the conclusion that God was little more than a fancy but Felix had given over his life to the Church and this was how he had been repaid. Hands still trembling, Pyke dressed Felix again, as best he could.

  Briefly his thoughts turned to his long-deceased wife, Emily, and the day she’d given birth to Felix. He was aware of the fact that he, the most unworthy one, had outlived them both, and was now totally alone. He felt his legs buckle, and had to take a few deep breaths, the physicality of his pain almost too much to bear. Again he stared down at his son’s corpse and realised that he was still crying, tears that were hot and salty and full of such utter desolation that he wanted nothing more than to curl up next to the lad and take a knife to his own wrists, to let the blood seep out of his wounds until he drifted out of consciousness.

  PART III

  *

  Requiem –

  n. a song or hymn of mourning composed or

  performed as a memorial for a dead person

  TWENTY-TWO

  SUNDAY, 13 DECEMBER 1846

  Merthyr Tydfil, Wales

  It was Sunday morning and Market Square was deserted, just a few soldiers standing outside a tent, blowing into their hands to keep themselves warm. Everyone else was at church or at home. The previous night had been quiet, with hardly anyone on the streets. The violence had dissipated, the need for retribution giving way to collective revulsion.

  The wind was blowing off the mountain, an easterly blast that rippled the tops of the puddles. Next to the police station-house was a grocer’s and farther along was the undertaker where, two weeks earlier, Pyke had taken his son’s corpse. He told them to preserve it as best they could, and make a coffin, so that he could accompany his beloved son back to London and bury him in Bunhill Fields next to his uncle. It was hard to remember everything through the fog of grief, a pain so unbearable that Pyke had thought, more than once, about turning his pistol on himself. Each morning, when he woke up, there it was, a canker that made it difficult for him even to move. He had wept during the funeral, a short service attended by a handful of people, but not since, as though a veil had come down, shielding him from his grief. Martin Jakes had wanted to bury Felix at Keynsham but Pyke had refused to sanction a Christian burial even though it was what Felix would have wanted. There was no way Pyke could listen to Christian homilies about God and the afterlife. Jakes had come to the funeral in London because he was a good man and he had loved Felix, but they hadn’t spoken after the ceremony.

  Pyke had been waiting on Graham Street for two hours and he was finally rewarded for his patience when Superintendent Jones emerged from the station-house and headed in Pyke’s direction.

  Jones didn’t notice him until Pyke fell in beside him. ‘I heard you have John Wylde in custody. I need to see him.’

  It took Jones a few seconds to realise who was standing next to him. ‘Pyke.’ He didn’t seem to believe Pyke was there.

  ‘I want to see Wylde.’

  ‘I didn’t think we’d see you again, at least not here, not after what you did.’ Jones glanced nervously up and down the street.

  Pyke didn’t respond immediately but it confirmed that people still assumed he’d taken the twenty thousand pounds and left the Hancock boy to his fate.

  ‘What I did?’

  Jones shook his head. His brow was beaded with sweat, despite the cold.

  ‘I was shot.’

  ‘Shot?’

  ‘By Wylde.’

  Jones regarded him carefully but said nothing.

  ‘I was told by one of your clerks, Jim Massey, that my son had arrived and taken a room at the Southgate Hotel. I went to meet him. Wylde and his men were waiting there to ambush me.’

  ‘Massey’s dead.’

  ‘I know.’

  Ostensibly he had been another victim of the violence that had briefly spiralled out of control. His body had been found in Glebe town two weeks earlier.

  ‘Do you want to know what I think?’ Pyke looked up at the snow-covered mountain. ‘If they’d killed me, buried me in an unmarked pit, it would have been easy to blame me for running away with the ransom money.’

  ‘Public opinion has tried you in your absence and found you guilty.’

  ‘I didn’t come back here to defend myself.’

  ‘Where have you been?’ Jones shot him a sceptical look. ‘Apart from recovering from your so-called pistol wound?’

  Pyke unbuttoned his greatcoat, peeled back his frock-coat, and pulled up his shirt, to expose the scar, which was still raw. ‘Satisfied?’

  ‘If you didn’t steal the twenty thousand, why wait so long to come forward?’

  ‘I had to go back to London.’ Pyke hesitated, trying to decide whether or not to tell him the truth. ‘I went home to bury my son.’

  Just saying the words made Pyke wince. He had come back to Wales and now all he felt was the crushing sense of his own failure. Whereas once upon a time he’d trusted in his ability to turn any situation to his advantage, now he realised how impotent he really was and how little he could determine his own fate. Felix was dead; so was William Hancock. Many others had been killed in the rioting – and for what? The blast furnaces were still burning. And when it was all over the dead would be forgotten about by everyone except their close family. And the town would still be in the grip of men like the Hancocks and Josiah Webb.

  Jones hadn’t known about Pyke’s son. No one had known.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Jones’ concern appeared genuine. ‘How did he die?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Closer inspection had revealed bruises on his hands, neck and chest, but Pyke still had no idea how Felix had sustained his injuries.

  ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘The old courthouse.’ Pyke paused, let the implications of this information sink in. ‘In one of the upstairs rooms. Someone had laid him out on the bed.’

  ‘The old courthouse?’ Jones shook his head. ‘Sir Clancy hasn’t been seen for two or three weeks.’

  Making the obvious connection between the courthouse and Smyth, just as Pyke had done.

  ‘I went to his house, Blenheim, down in the valley. His butler told me Smyth has left for Ireland.’

  ‘He never told me he was going.’ Jones gestured towards the soldiers huddled outside their tent. ‘Sir Clancy abandoned the town to the soldiers. Now a captain called Kent is in charge. We weren’t able to keep a lid on things. Kent’s taking orders directly from Sir Josiah Webb.’

  Pyke didn’t know for sure whether Smyth knew about, or had been responsible for, his son’s death, but he had fled the town suddenly without revealing his plans to anyone; and that, to Pyke at least, indicated a troubled state of mind.

  ‘I need to know what happened to my son.’ It was why he’d travelled back to Merthyr and was the only thing that got him out of bed in the morning.

  Jones nodded, the suspicion returning to his eyes. ‘I bet Jonah Hancock feels the same way.’

  ‘What happened to his son, to mine, it’s part of the same thing.’

  ‘And you think John Wylde has the answers you need?’

  ‘There’s only one way to find out.’

  Wylde was sitting on the floor of his cell, back against the wall, arms curled around his knees. His wounded hand was swaddled in a bandage.

  After the door had swung open, Pyke entered the cell, closely followed by Jones. The bully glanc
ed up, saw who it was, and his upper body stiffened, although there was nowhere for him to go.

  ‘Who gave the order to assassinate me?’ Pyke could feel the anger building inside him, a knotted ball in the pit of his stomach which was hard to distinguish from his grief.

  He listened while Jones translated but the superintendent’s words made no impression on the bully. When he didn’t answer, Pyke said, ‘Who told you to go to the Southgate Hotel?’ Again Jones translated but received no response.

  This time Pyke went across and knelt down next to Wylde, almost gagging from the smell of him. Before Wylde could react, Pyke grabbed his bandaged hand and squeezed it hard. A sickening yell echoed around the tiny room.

  ‘I want to know how you knew that I was going to turn up at the Southgate Hotel.’

  Pyke didn’t expect Wylde to answer but almost immediately the bully looked at Jones and rattled off a few sentences.

  ‘He says he received an anonymous letter telling him you would be there,’ Jones said.

  Pyke regarded Wylde, trying to anticipate what the man would say next. ‘And you just decided to go there and kill me?’

  Wylde looked at him, sullen, and barked a few words at Jones, then held up his bandaged hand.

  ‘He says he knows it was you who shot off his hand and then robbed him.’

  ‘Who told him that?’ Pyke knelt down again and this time hit Wylde around the face. ‘Who?’

  This time the bully didn’t need a translation.

  ‘The same letter.’

  Standing up, Pyke turned to Jones. ‘He’s lying. He knows who gave the orders.’

  Jones glanced down at the prisoner, suddenly uneasy. ‘Is he telling the truth? Was it you who shot him?’

  Ignoring Jones, Pyke reached down and grabbed Wylde’s throat, pressed him against the wall. ‘Who?’ But he hadn’t counted on the bully’s strength, his speed, and didn’t react quickly enough. Wylde lunged, his mouth open like a rabid dog, and bit Pyke on the hand. Pyke gouged his thumb into the bully’s eye. Wylde’s jaw went slack and as Pyke pulled out his thumb, wet with blood, the bully began to convulse. But Pyke hadn’t finished. Instead he felt his fingers around Wylde’s throat and he kept on squeezing, shouting at Wylde to tell him about his son, anger and grief pouring out of him until he was hardly aware of what he was doing.