Bloody Winter: A Pyke Mystery

by Andrew Pepper

  His mind turned to one of his recent visits to the house, Martin Knox comfortable in the presence of his two sons, his real sons, a gentle man embittered by circumstances.

  As the first skeins of milky light gnawed at the sky, Knox stumbled almost by accident on the flint track, Clonoulty just a few miles farther along.

  By the time he reached Father Mackey’s house, the sun was pale and orange in the east. He paused on the doorstep, remembering for the first time in hours that his son was gravely ill. He let himself into the house, careful not to make any noise. It didn’t matter. One of the servants met him in the hall.

  Knox stepped into the drawing room where he could hear voices. He saw Mackey first, standing by the window. Then he saw Martha, both of them up, despite the early hour. He saw her face, the deadness in her eyes, and felt his stomach lurch.

  ‘Is James … ?’

  ‘The doctor thinks he’ll make it.’ Relief flooded her face. ‘It was touch and go for a while but the fever has passed. He doesn’t think it was cholera after all, just a fever.’

  Knox went to hug her but she pushed him away. ‘I had to go through all of this on my own, Michael. Do you know how lonely I’ve been? How afraid? You said you were only going to the barracks …’

  Already exhausted, Knox blinked, not knowing what to say; how to make this better. ‘Can I see him?’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say, Michael?’

  ‘I …’ Knox wanted to tell her what he’d found out, about his father, about Moore, but the words wouldn’t come.

  When he tried to take her in his arms for a second time, tried to hug her, to comfort her, she pushed him away. ‘You just weren’t here, Michael. You haven’t been here for a while.’

  Mackey coughed and then excused himself – he couldn’t get out of the room quickly enough.

  Martha’s face was like a suit of armour. ‘Where have you been, Michael? What could have been more important than being here with us?’

  Knox felt light-headed. All he could see was his father’s face; all he could hear were the man’s sobs.

  ‘You made your choice, Michael. You chose to chase after a dead man, find justice for a corpse.’

  What he wanted to say was: there is no justice. Not at this time. Not in this land.

  ‘I don’t know you any more, Michael. I don’t know who you are, what you believe in. I want to be by myself for a while.’

  ‘But James is going to live. He’s going to pull through. Isn’t that the important thing?’

  Martha stared at him. She wanted him to say something else, to reassure her, to be the husband she hoped he still was. Knox could see this, see how much she needed him.

  I am not who I thought I was. This same thought kept racing through his mind. He tried to find the words but they wouldn’t come. A tear rolled down his cheek.

  Martha’s expression was sorrowful, yet also defiant. ‘I think you should go, Michael.’

  Knox looked at her and again tried to summon the words he wanted to say, the words she wanted to hear. None came to him.

  ‘What’s happened to you, Michael? What’s happened to all the goodness that used to be in there?’ She tapped his chest.

  His mother had always told him to be good. Never tell a lie. He could hear her say it. My good little boy. It was all a sham.

  Martha looked at him, bemused. ‘How can we have fallen apart so badly? We were always the strong ones.’

  Knox thought about all the dead bodies he’d seen, the needless suffering, the families torn apart, the lives sacrificed. What he’d done had been a protest, small and insignificant as it was, against the affairs of men like Asenath Moore. His father. The man who’d driven families from their homes and left them to die. How could Knox have sat back and done nothing?

  ‘I’d like to come back tomorrow.’ Knox tried to remember who he was, who his wife was. It was like looking at a stranger.

  She followed him to the front door, and when he had opened it and let himself out, she stood there on the step, puzzled and sad, perhaps wondering how they had been reduced to so little.

  ‘Michael?’

  He turned around and looked at her, expectant.

  She smiled, her face softening. ‘Come back tomorrow morning. You can see James then.’

  The Queen Anne mansion rose up out of the mist. Knox approached it from higher ground to the east, having to cross a bog and then the river, close to the place where they had found the body. He’d wandered aimlessly for most of the day and now it was almost dusk. The pale sun had dropped below the Galtee mountains and the temperature had fallen but Knox hardly noticed. He followed the path of the stream, the water black and empty, aware that anyone looking out of the front windows would see him. But he wasn’t con-cerned about that. Staring at the stately house, he wondered where his mother and Moore had lain together, where he’d been conceived – perhaps in the pantry next to the pots and pans, Moore’s trousers around his ankles.

  The fields to his left were barren and marshy, the wind blowing from the east, icy and insistent, carrying with it the voices of those who had fought and died; the fourteen who’d ransacked a barracks in Ballack at the end of the Napoleonic war and who’d been punished for their insurrection, the O’Dwyers of Kilnamanagh and their faithful who’d held out for days against Cromwell’s Ironsides.

  The famine dead. The fallen. Ghosts.

  Knox entered the house through the poor door and made his way up the stairs. The house felt cold and empty but he knew Moore would be there. It was dusk, which meant he would be dressing for dinner. Knox knew the man’s routine as well as his own – his family life had been determined by it. He’d always wondered why his mother had been allowed to live away from the house when the other servants, maids and kitchen-hands, lived in quarters in a nearby annexe. Now he knew why she had been granted special privileges. And wasn’t it true that she’d asked Moore to put in a good word for him with the constabulary? What Moore had given, he’d also taken away. Knox’s whole life had been shaped by the whims of this one man. His father. Knox found this notion repugnant.

  Moore’s bedroom was at the back of the house: Knox had ceased to think of him as Lord Cornwallis. Without knocking, he entered and found the man half undressed, sitting in front of a looking glass. A fire crackled in the grate. Moore saw Knox’s reflection in the mirror and turned around.

  ‘What’s the meaning of this, boy?’ His expression was indignant but Knox could see he was worried.

  ‘I’ve just come from visiting my mother.’ Knox held the aristocrat’s stare. ‘She told me the truth about my parentage.’ He approached the dresser where the older man was sitting.

  ‘What’s all this about, boy? You’re talking a load of damned nonsense. Barging in here like this. I’ll have you whipped if you’re not careful.’

  Undeterred, Knox said, ‘My mother was a fine-looking woman. She still is, in fact. It’s no wonder she caught your eye.’

  In that instant he could see that Moore knew. The bluster left him and he was quiet. Knox thought about the times he’d been cowed by Moore’s rank and status, the things he hadn’t said.

  ‘You may have lain with my mother but you’ll never be my father, at least not in the proper sense of the word.’ As he said this, Knox thought about the man he’d always looked to as his father and wondered what this new revelation made him.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about …’

  Moore had turned around and Knox slapped him once across the cheek. He saw the shock register on the aristocrat’s face, the fact that a man of Knox’s status had insulted him in such a manner.

  ‘You sired another child with my mother. His name is John Johns. He was brought up by your gatekeeper. But none of this is a surprise to you, is it?’

  Moore sought to recover lost ground. ‘You’ll go to prison for this. The scaffold even. Don’t think I wouldn’t do it. Even if you are …’

  ‘Even if I am … ?’


  ‘What is it you want, boy? Some money perhaps, to get yourself back on your feet? All right, I’ll let you wet your beak.’

  ‘Money? You think I’d touch your money? Tainted with the blood of all those people you’ve allowed to die?’

  ‘What poppycock …’

  Knox had heard enough. He grabbed the old man’s throat, pressed his fingers into the wrinkly flesh, and began to squeeze. It felt good, better than he had expected. ‘Say it,’ he hissed.

  It was hard to let go, to stop. Eventually he did. Moore was spluttering, his face the colour of beetroot. ‘Say what, you fool?’

  ‘How many times did you fuck my mother? Twice? More?’

  ‘What do you want me to say, boy? That I loved your mother? Well, I did. There. I was young, she was beautiful, but poor, a servant. There was no way we could have made a life together. But what’s done is done. I looked out for you, didn’t I? I got you your position and Johns a commission in the army.’

  Knox stood there, hardly able to fathom the self-justification coming from the man’s mouth. ‘You evicted my family from our home. My son caught a fever and nearly died. And I’m supposed to feel grateful?’

  Moore didn’t have an answer. Perhaps for the first time, Knox saw something resembling contrition in the man’s face. His voice was suddenly quiet. ‘I was hurt, boy, hurt that you’d gone behind my back. I thought you of all people would obey me …’

  ‘Because I’m your son?’

  Moore wouldn’t look at him.

  ‘I want only what you took from me; nothing more, nothing less.’ Knox waited. ‘I want my position back at the constabulary – a promotion to head constable – and I want you to rebuild my cottage, the one you had Brittas tear down.’

  Moore straightened up, all his indignation gone. ‘And you’ll keep your mouth shut?’

  Knox nodded, but he still didn’t know whether he’d abide by any agreement they reached. ‘The man who was killed, the police detective from London …’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘Why did he come here?’

  ‘Something had happened in Wales. I don’t know what. Johns didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask. Johns came here begging for money – said there was a policeman looking for him. He said he wouldn’t come back, that he had a debt to settle in Lisvarrinane, and after that, he promised to disappear for good.’

  ‘When you laid eyes on the body for the first time, you were taken aback. Someone said your eyes nearly popped out of their sockets.’

  ‘Johns came back to see me that night. He told me what had happened; that there had been a struggle – that he’d stabbed and killed this man, a police detective from London. But he didn’t say where the struggle had taken place. I was shocked when I heard how close the body was, when I saw it with my own eyes.’

  Knox stared down at the old man’s rheumy eyes and hairless, oval head and tried to see something of himself in his face.

  ‘So when the body was eventually discovered, you decided to ask for me, demand that I take charge of the investigation, to make sure nothing ever came to light about your link with the murderer.’

  The old man nodded. There was nothing else to say. It was just as he had supposed. Moore had hand-picked him for the task because he knew that Knox and his family were beholden to him.

  For what he’d done, for his callousness, his indifference to the suffering of others, Moore deserved to die, but Knox wasn’t a murderer, didn’t want that on his conscience as well. And he needed what Moore could give him: his former position and his home.

  As he left, again using the poor door, he wondered where his mother was, whether she was working in the kitchens. And he wondered whether he would ever see her again.

  Knox walked from Dundrum to Clonoulty; his mind was clearer now that he had stood up to the aristocrat and watched him cave in, his father who wasn’t his father. With each step, he felt a sense of perspective return. James was alive and that was all that mattered. Martha still loved him and he loved her. She would forgive him for abandoning her. He knew she would; she had a good heart. They would rebuild their lives and there would be nothing more that Moore could do to harm them.

  The journey from Dundrum took hours but Knox didn’t care. He would’ve walked to Dublin if he had to. It was still dark when he arrived in Clonoulty and he didn’t bother to knock when he got to Mackey’s house.

  Despite the lateness of the hour, candlelight was visible in the front window. Opening the front door, Knox entered the hall. He found his wife sitting in the back room. She didn’t look up when he entered. He sat down next to her on the bed and sighed.

  ‘I’m sorry, Martha. I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you, that you’ve had to endure this on your own. I don’t have the words you need to hear, there are no words …’ Knox paused. ‘But James is going to get better. We can rebuild our lives. Isn’t that what counts?’

  Martha didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. They sat next to one another, each contemplating their situation in silence.

  ‘There’s nothing left for us here, is there?’ Martha’s voice cracked as she spoke. ‘I’m so grateful that the Lord spared our son but there’s nothing left for us in this place, is there? Here, in this land, our country.’

  Nothing left for us. Our country.

  Knox reached out, put his hand on hers, and squeezed it. Martha didn’t take it but she didn’t spurn it either.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  MONDAY, 4 JANUARY 1847

  Dundrum, Co. Tipperary

  Dundrum High Street was a collection of four or five buildings on either side of a mud track; the only place to stay was a ramshackle inn where the landlord rented him a simple room for a few shillings. Pyke didn’t intend staying any longer than necessary.

  He had travelled from Merthyr to Newport and from there to Cork City by ship. The crossing had been quiet and the ship nearly deserted. No one wanted to travel to Ireland. On the ship, he heard stories of destitution and loss, heartbreaking stories, villages wiped out by starvation and disease. From Cork, he journeyed by mail-coach to Cashel and from there he walked the remaining ten miles to Dundrum. The journey had taken a week and then it had taken him another week to track down Johns to a cabin between Dundrum and Oughterleague. That night he had followed Johns to the village’s great house and watched from the stables as Johns slipped into the house via the servant’s entrance.

  Pyke had found the travelling arduous but comforting; the notion of going somewhere at least gave his existence some purpose, time spent on trains, boats and stagecoaches affording him the opportunity to think about Felix, to grieve: not simply to berate himself, but to remember his son. Now he just wanted to find out how Felix had died – he owed his son that much. Johns was his last chance for enlightenment. Before coming to Dundrum, Pyke had also made the journey to Lisvarrinane to confront Smyth, but evidently Johns had beaten him to it. He had been told that a fire had ripped through the big house and that the master, who’d only recently returned from Wales, had perished in it.

  At just ten years of age, Felix had taken one of Pyke’s pistols and used it to scare a boy who had been terrorising him, waved it in his face, finger poised on the trigger. The pistol had been loaded. Pyke tried, in vain, to reconcile this memory of his son with a more recent one, the Bible open in front of him, talking about forgiveness, contrition and God’s grace. Perhaps you quite simply couldn’t reconcile such things, Pyke decided. You just accepted that you couldn’t reduce people you loved to one thing or another, that they would always go ahead and surprise you.

  At bottom, he couldn’t believe that Felix was dead. He would wake up each morning and, in those few seconds before consciousness seized him, he could still entertain the fantasy that Felix was alive, that he had his whole life in front of him. But as he opened his eyes, reality would invade the space of his dreams and the edifice he’d constructed in his mind – the hope, the yearning – would crumble. In those moments, he would experience a level of r
age and self-loathing he’d never known, even after Emily’s death, and nothing, not gin nor laudanum, could alleviate the pain.

  Pyke also thought about his own life, what he had left to live for. After the burial at Bunhill Fields, he’d gone home and told the housekeeper, Mrs Booth, that he no longer needed her services. Then he’d taken his pistol into the garden and finished off his two pigs, one at a time, and buried them next to their sty. That just left Copper but Pyke couldn’t consign his beloved mastiff to the same fate. Instead he had taken the three-legged dog to Jo, Felix’s former nursemaid, now married with children of her own, and persuaded her to take him.

  As Pyke stared up at the windows of the mansion, the curtains drawn inside, he wondered about Johns’ connection to the man who lived there, a tyrant by all accounts.

  The night was clear and bitterly cold. Since arriving in Cork, he’d seen death everywhere and he had found it hard not to think about how needless it was, how easily relief could have been provided, and therefore how deliberate it was too: a decision made somewhere by grey-haired men with full bellies and bulging purses to teach the poor a lesson. Free will and free trade. Let the market decide who lives and who dies. Pyke had passed putrefying bodies but he hadn’t stopped to bury them. No justice for them. Not in this land. Not in these times. What could one man do in the face of so much horror, so much death?

  Half an hour after Johns had entered the house, he appeared through the same door. Pyke was waiting to the right of the driveway, closer to the river than the stables now, and he didn’t make his move until Johns was almost alongside him.