Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery

by Andrew Pepper

  His thoughts turned to finding Cathy’s corpse in the dank passageway, a lump of waxy flesh. What had gone through her mind, he wondered, as she had drawn the razor across her wrists? The fact that her son had died? The guilt at the part she might have played in his death? And would he move her now that he knew the full story?

  Now he was there, Pyke questioned again why he had come back. What good could he do? Except it wasn’t a question of righting wrongs, he told himself. He needed to know what had happened to Felix. It was as simple as that. Pyke had no illusions any more about the law or his role in trying to enforce it.

  The interior of the Castle was cold and draughty: a fire would create smoke, would let people see that the building was occupied. He slipped quietly along the polished wooden floors from drawing to dining room. The rooms were all deserted. No sounds anywhere in the building, just the wind howling outside. He moved towards the staircase and ascended, one step at a time, careful not to make any noise. At the top of the stairs, he looked along the landing and decided to try Jonah Hancock’s room first.

  The hinges groaned as he opened the door but Pyke needn’t have worried. Jonah Hancock was lying, fully clothed, face down on his bed, an empty bottle of gin next to him. Pyke prodded him and the ironmaster grunted once but didn’t come around.

  Looking at him, Pyke felt a twinge of something, sympathy perhaps. Whatever else the man had done, he had lost his son, and Pyke knew well enough the utter desolation he must be feeling. To have something, someone, you loved snatched away from you – Jonah Hancock knew what that felt like, the hole it left.

  At the far end of the passage, Pyke tried the door to Zephaniah Hancock’s bedroom. Despite the lateness of the hour he found the old man lying in bed reading a book, a pair of spectacles perched on the bridge of his nose. As soon as he saw who it was, Zephaniah let the book fall to his lap and fumbled for something under the sheets.

  Before he could retrieve his pistol, Pyke hit the old man on the mouth, heard his jaw snap.

  ‘When did you find out that the child wasn’t Jonah’s?’ While he waited for Zephaniah to recover, he inspected the pistol. It was loaded and ready to fire.

  The answer had come to Pyke almost as soon as he’d found out that Zephaniah had ordered the assassination of the Irishman up on the mountain. Everything had followed from this simple truth: the child wasn’t Jonah’s, so Zephaniah, who had never much cared for the boy and who had another heir waiting in the wings, had devised a scheme to turn Cathy’s kidnap plot to his own advantage.

  ‘In the summer,’ the old man croaked finally.

  ‘Who was the father? Johns?’

  Zephaniah nodded. ‘I intercepted a letter she wrote earlier in the year. It confirmed what I already knew: that the boy wasn’t a Hancock – too meek, cried a lot, no backbone.’

  Pyke didn’t try to hide his revulsion. ‘The boy was only five years old. For five years, he was your grandson, your son’s son. Blood can’t change how you feel about a person overnight.’

  ‘Can’t it? That boy was an impostor. This way the estate can pass to Richard’s eldest, my other son in England. A fine chap, strong and clever as a whip.’

  The idea that Zephaniah would knowingly arrange the murder of a five-year-old boy, a boy he’d thought of as his grandson for five years, was almost too appalling for Pyke to take in. Worse still was his seeming lack of regret.

  ‘But Jonah didn’t see it that way, did he? This was your doing, not his? He loved that boy, whether he was the father or not. Right now he’s passed out on his bed, a bottle of gin at his side.’

  A frown spread across the old man’s haggard face. ‘I’m afraid my firstborn has always been a disappointment to me.’

  ‘Because he’s capable of some degree of empathy and still possesses a modicum of humanity?’

  ‘He could see the logic of what I proposed but baulked at the implementation. But he didn’t build up the ironworks to what it is today. I did – and I found out that the world isn’t a nice place. Wolves eat dogs, sir, but I’m sure a man of your various experiences knows this.’

  ‘You arranged to have a five-year-old butchered in cold blood and you imagine you can lecture me about the state of the world?’

  ‘You’re a woolly little lamb, aren’t you? Do you have any idea how many men and women died at the works last year? Because they fell or their equipment failed or due to accidents, explosions, unforeseen circumstances. Am I to be held accountable for their deaths too? If so, perhaps the works should simply close down. But if this were to happen, thousands would lose their positions and the town would go into terminal decline.’

  Pyke hesitated and took a deep breath. He would never get a man like Zephaniah Hancock to examine his heart and find it wanting. What he needed to do was get him to talk about what had happened. The truth about Felix would be in there, whether Zephaniah had a direct hand in that death or not.

  ‘Perhaps you need a lesson in biology, sir,’ Zephaniah continued. ‘But the boy wasn’t my flesh and blood and therefore had no claim over my estate.’ Zephaniah must have seen Pyke’s expression because he added, ‘If you think me cold-hearted and lacking in sentiment, be that as it may. I make no apologies for who or what I am.’

  ‘Tell me, then. When did you learn that Cathy and John Johns were behind the kidnapping? Before it had even happened?’

  ‘Of course,’ the old man wheezed. ‘She should have known that nothing happens in this house without my knowledge.’

  ‘So you knew she was planning the kidnapping and you decided to turn the situation to your advantage.’

  ‘Stupid bitch thought she could get away with stealing money from under our noses.’ Zephaniah’s pink tongue brushed his dry, shrivelled lips. ‘The whore didn’t know that we knew, of course.’

  Now Pyke understood what had happened. The Hancocks had lost a son and grandson – or so he’d thought. Being victims had put them above suspicion.

  ‘So when Cathy came home that day and told you William had been snatched, you had everything in place. You were the one who sent the second ransom demand. You arranged for Captain Kent and Considine to be up on that hill, paid some poor, innocent Irishman to pick up a parcel from the cabin, sacrificed him; planted a rent book in his pocket, a few of the boy’s clothes in a house on Irish Row, and let rumour and insinuation do the rest.’

  ‘Just details,’ the old man purred. ‘You’re not able to see the whole canvas, what we’ve been able to achieve.’

  Zephaniah seemed almost proud of what he had done. Pyke had to use all of his self-control not to tear the man’s throat out with his bare hands.

  ‘You consider what’s happened in the town – the deaths, the rioting, the hatred – an achievement?’

  The old man shook his head. ‘Now you’re talking like my son, the sentimental fool. I’ll tell you what I told him – the good of the works comes first. First, second and third. Nothing else matters. Is that too hard-hearted for you? I’ll put it in plainer English. There was no way on earth I was going to allow that bastard to inherit what isn’t, wasn’t, his. Now, at least, the future of the works is assured and it will pass to someone with bona fide Hancock blood running through his veins.’

  ‘Let’s talk about the whole canvas, then.’ Pyke looked into the old man’s watery, bloodshot eyes.

  Zephaniah sighed. ‘You seem to have all the answers, sir. Why don’t you enlighten me.’

  ‘Set up the Irish as scapegoats so that when news of the kidnapping, and eventually the boy’s death, spreads, the natives will turn on them. But because you’d already cut back on the number of Irish workers, Caedraw wouldn’t be too badly affected. Not so with Morlais, though. That was the point, wasn’t it? To drive the competition out of business. Because of the rioting, the fighting, the bad blood, Webb’s been forced to close Morlais. After all, about a third of his workers are Irish. But at the same time he needs to increase his productivity – if he’s to meet this order from Russia by the
end of the year. That was the first front you opened against Morlais. For the second one you needed Sir Clancy Smyth.’

  ‘Everyone has a price, sir. Even you.’ Zephaniah managed the thinnest of smiles.

  ‘You used Smyth’s friendship with Morlais’ landowner to force up the rent. In the meantime, you got Smyth to work for you, used him to do your dirty work, with house-to-house searches of Quarry Row, stories of an Irish mob seizing William fed to the local newspaper. What did it take? How much? Ten thousand?’

  ‘As I said, everyone has their price. Smyth’s estate has fallen on hard times. But when this blows over, if it blows over, he’ll get what he wants. The troops will have brought order to the streets, the town will have been cleaned up, China a shadow of its former self …’

  All cleaned up and ready to go to the dogs again, Pyke thought. Cut off one head, two heads even, and more will appear. Zephaniah Hancock was not long for this world but Pyke knew it was a futile act, one that would have little bearing on the lives of most of the people in Merthyr. In that sense, Zephaniah was right: the ironworks did come first. And in the end men like Smyth always bent to the ironmasters’ will.

  ‘Smyth didn’t see you were using him, did he? That he was being lined up as someone to blame for the boy’s death in case you weren’t able to deal with Johns – or me.’

  ‘I never wanted you here in the first place. That was Jonah’s idea, a stupid one. Plenty of other people we could have given that suitcase to. Someone to blame, someone greedy, who wouldn’t think twice about running off with the twenty thousand. The public and police would need a reason why the boy was murdered. If they believed you’d absconded with the money, left the kidnappers with nothing, well, that would have been enough.’

  ‘That was why he wrote to me?’ Pyke felt sick, knowing he had been lured down there by the promise of money in the first place.

  A thousand pounds; Jonah Hancock had paid him too. Blood money. If it had meant nothing to him, he would never have come. Felix would never have come. His son would still be alive.

  ‘Offered some astounding sum, he knew you’d come here sniffing, either for Cathy or the money or both. He was right about that, but I saw straight away you’d be dangerous. I couldn’t talk him round, though. For years, he’d had to endure that bitch’s taunts – that he was a lesser man than you. This was his chance to sully your name and rub Cathy’s face in it.’

  Pyke felt himself shrivel up inside.

  ‘Jonah didn’t know I intended to kill the boy, of course. And when he found out about the death, he went berserk, threatened to kill me, kill himself. In the end, I made him understand.’

  ‘And Cathy?’

  ‘That’s where Smyth was useful to us. I wasn’t too concerned about Cathy but I didn’t want that brute John Johns coming after me. That’s why I made certain that her nanny, that Atkins woman, saw Smyth when we snatched the boy, why we let her live. Sure enough, she ran back to Cathy and Johns and blabbed, as she was meant to do.’

  ‘But Cathy must have suspected that you had something to do with her son’s death?’

  ‘Why? A woman she trusted with her life saw Smyth with her own eyes. And she knew that Smyth hated this family.’ Zephaniah grinned to reveal raw, bloody gums. ‘I was able to break the news to Cathy, tell her the boy had died at Smyth’s hands and, best of all, that you’d absconded with the ransom money.’

  ‘I found her body in the underground passageway. You as good as put the knife in her hand.’

  Zephaniah nodded blankly as though he’d just been told the latest stock prices. ‘It was Jonah who found her first. He wanted to give her a proper burial, in spite of what she’d done, what she’d been planning to do. I talked him round. Told him the rats would get her if we left her there long enough.’

  Pyke closed his eyes. So she had died believing that he had turned his back on her, sacrificed her son’s life for a tidy sum.

  ‘And William?’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Who actually killed him?’ Pyke realised that he didn’t know how the boy had died.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Zephaniah shrugged. ‘The point is, his death tipped the scales, set the fuse.’

  ‘Did Smyth ever realise you’d set him up?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘Didn’t have to have the conversation. I was going to suggest to him that he lie low for a while, perhaps go back to Ireland for a month or two, and then I heard he’d fled the town of his own accord.’

  ‘To?’

  ‘Ireland, I believe.’

  ‘Do you know why?’

  Zephaniah shook his head. ‘Perhaps he realised what he’d become a part of. It worked out perfectly for us, though. Johns went after him, of course. Johns and Smyth, both out of the way, Johns blaming Smyth for the boy’s death. The Hancock family devastated by the loss and above suspicion.’ The old man eyed the pistol in Pyke’s hand. ‘Listen to me. Why don’t you put that thing down and we can have a proper conversation?’

  Pyke watched the old man, listened to him talking, so pleased with himself and with his cunning. He rammed the barrel of the pistol into the old man’s cheek.

  ‘So why stay here? Why not get out, and come back when the dust had settled?’

  ‘You’re a funny fellow, aren’t you? Leave? When there’s business to be done? Last week I met with the Russians, promised them the iron, the full order, as Morlais won’t be able to produce it in time. When the deadline elapses, the Russians will tear up their contract with Webb and come over to us. Our iron is ready and waiting. Morlais will be forced to close, at least temporarily. But once Webb has gone, the works will reopen under new owners, us, and Caedraw will become the biggest ironmaker in the world.’ The old man took a breath. ‘It’s why money isn’t an issue. I’ll give you whatever you want. Let’s say fifty thousand, to make you go away?’ He seemed certain that Pyke would agree to his price or name a higher one.

  ‘I want to know about my son.’

  ‘Your son?’

  Pyke tried to assess whether the bluff was genuine; whether Zephaniah really had no idea about, and therefore no hand in, what had happened to Felix.

  ‘My son arrived in Merthyr on or around the twenty-third of November to visit me. A few days later, I found his corpse laid out on a bed at the courthouse.’

  This was another thing he hadn’t been able to work out – why someone had left Felix’s corpse for him to find, rather than burying it in an unmarked grave up on the mountain. It was almost as if someone had wanted him to find the body.

  Doubt had crept into the old man’s eyes. This was something he hadn’t expected, something that altered the balance of negotiations. ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘Felix would have gone to the station-house to find me. I’m guessing Smyth snatched him and took him to the courthouse.’

  ‘I had no idea you even had a son.’

  ‘Smyth didn’t share this information with you?’

  Zephaniah tried to swallow. ‘Not with me, not with my son.’

  ‘I buried my son in London and I’ve come back here for answers.’

  ‘As I said, Smyth has fled to Ireland.’

  ‘Then I want the address of his estate.’

  Zephaniah looked at the pistol, still in Pyke’s hand. ‘His family own land in Tipperary, near a place called Lisvarrinane.’

  ‘And Johns?’

  ‘All I know is that he grew up on an estate in Dundrum.’

  ‘Nothing else?’ Pyke took the pistol, aimed it at Zephaniah’s head and waited.

  ‘That’s all I know.’

  ‘Then it looks like our business is done.’ He lowered the pistol, and tucked it into his belt.

  ‘You’re going to let me live?’ There was a hint of incredulity in Zephaniah’s voice.

  ‘Did I say that?’

  Turning suddenly, Pyke clenched his fist and smashed it against the old man’s face, felt his bones crumble under the impact. Zephaniah passed out.

  Down
stairs, Pyke found a tin of lamp oil in the pantry and took it upstairs to Jonah’s room. He doused the curtains with half of it, and took the other half to Zephaniah’s room and did the same. Then Pyke lit a match and tossed it on to the curtains. Flames shot up the fabric. In Jonah’s bedroom, he did likewise and waited to make sure the flames spread.

  By the time he’d retraced his steps down to the cellar and out through the passageway, smoke was pouring out of the upstairs windows, and when he’d climbed up the mountain and turned around to inspect his work, flames had engulfed an entire wing of the Castle, plumes of orange lighting up the night sky.

  As he stood and watched the fire, Pyke tried to feel something, anger, despair even, but nothing would come. He would go and find Captain Kent.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  WEDNESDAY, 3 FEBRUARY 1847

  Clonoulty, Co. Tipperary

  Knox had wandered for most of the night, not really knowing where he was, where he was going, only vaguely aware that he was heading north and west in the direction of Clonoulty. The sound of his father’s sobs echoed in his ears, except that he wasn’t Knox’s father, Asenath Moore was. At one time, his mother had willingly lain down next to the man and had borne him two children – John Johns, who she had given up to the childless gatekeeper, and him, the child she’d kept. Time and again, he thought about his childhood, his mother keeping him close to her, protecting him against his father’s drunken rages, his mother the saint, his father the devil, all of it now turned upside down. As he walked, Knox saw his father through new eyes; he understood his anger, his hatred of his wife, his self-hate, his self-pity. Knox hadn’t asked about his two brothers but he didn’t need to. They looked like their father and it was clear he loved them; loved them in a way he had never loved Knox. But how could he have loved another man’s child? His father had suffered in silence, drowned his anger in alcohol, taken it out on him and his mother, a broken man before he had become a broken father. How had it been for him, knowing that each day his wife went to work in the kitchens of a man she had slept with, a man whose children she had secretly given birth to?