The Detective Branch pm-4

by Andrew Pepper

  A little later, while tea was being served in the drawing room, Nutt took him aside and ushered him into the hallway. ‘I hear Fricker has already told you about this chap, Francis Hiley. The rector called him his odd-job man, and seemed fond of him, although I couldn’t see what the fuss was about.’

  Pyke stared into the beadle’s podgy face. ‘You didn’t like him, then?’

  ‘It’s not that I disliked him.’ Nutt lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘But he was a strange fellow, if truth be told. He never said very much but he was always around, looking, keeping an eye on things.’

  ‘How did he come to be working here?’

  ‘He was recommended by the Reverend Martin Jakes from one of our sister churches, St Matthew’s in Bethnal Green.’

  Pyke’s thoughts turned immediately to the search earlier that evening, which had been focused on the area around St Matthew’s. He thought, too, about the scavenger he’d arrested and then let go, when it became clear that the man knew nothing about the murder.

  The picture that Nutt sought to paint of the rector was one of a generous and selfless man who had given food and shelter to a lowly ex-convict, but he couldn’t really say what Guppy had hired Hiley to do, except tend the graves and keep the yard tidy, which, Nutt admitted, was also the duty of the gardener. Nutt told Pyke that he’d heard Hiley had spent time in Coldbath Fields, possibly for killing his wife, but his information was sketchy. Like Wells, he had already made up his mind that Hiley had killed the rector and was trying to push Pyke in this direction. Tapping his nose, Nutt explained that no one had seen Hiley since the murder and that they weren’t likely to. Nutt was rather less helpful in providing a motive: he told Pyke he had no idea why Hiley might have wanted to kill Guppy but suggested that some men were just predisposed towards violence.

  Back in the drawing room, Pyke asked Whicher what he’d been able to find out. Whicher said that the police constable’s description of the man he’d seen in the yard matched Fricker’s description of Hiley.

  ‘No chance the two of them could have conferred?’ Pyke asked.

  Whicher shook his head.

  It was late, already well past one in the morning, but Pyke had insisted that all of the servants and household be summoned, so that he could question them about their dealings with Guppy.

  Pyke conducted the interviews in the drawing room but no one had very much to add. All the servants, gardeners and stable-hands were polite but tight lipped about their employer, and none of them could give any reason why someone might have wanted to kill him. They were a little more forthcoming about Francis Hiley. None of them seemed to have liked him, and to a man — and woman — they backed up the beadle’s belief that Hiley was a little odd. A loner, someone said; a thief, another reckoned. When Pyke asked Matilda, the wife, about Hiley, she seized the chance to praise her husband’s philanthropy; the fact that he’d been willing to give a felon another chance when the rest of society had turned its back on him. The implication was clear: look how the scoundrel repaid his generosity. She clearly felt, as Nutt did, that Hiley had killed her husband.

  How long had Hiley been employed by her husband? Pyke asked. She’d thought about it and said since April.

  And had there been any indication that Hiley had a temper?

  No, she conceded. He had always behaved in a respectful manner.

  Later Pyke accompanied Whicher back to the church, where the body was waiting to be taken to the nearest public house for the inquest. To Pyke’s relief, Wells had already left.

  Pyke had never liked churches, their cold, draughty interiors and the hard, functional pews that people, in some instances, had to pay to occupy. Their size was supposed to convey something of God’s majesty, but standing in the aisle, looking towards the altar, all Pyke could think about was how many men had been needed to build it and the pittance they’d doubtless been paid.

  Candles had been lit and placed on the table in front of the altar, casting their flickering light upwards and illuminating the plain wooden crucifix that hung above it. It made Pyke think about the Saviour’s Cross and the three men who’d been killed in Cullen’s shop in the summer; even more so since the archdeacon himself was shortly expected at the rectory.

  ‘So what do you think, Jack?’ Pyke circled around the body, trying to keep warm. ‘Did Hiley kill him?’

  ‘People here certainly seem to think so. And I have to say, it doesn’t look good for him.’

  Pyke nodded. It was a fair conclusion, even if the investigation was still at an early stage. Since the summer, he had come to rely on Whicher more and more, and now they both seemed to feel comfortable in each other’s presence. Pyke had started to treat him as an equal rather than a subordinate, and the others in the Detective Branch had noticed this. Increasingly, they had formed their own faction, from which Pyke and Whicher had been excluded. Whicher hadn’t expressed any real concern at this situation and, in actuality, it suited Pyke very well.

  ‘Doesn’t it strike you as odd that a rector should live in such comfort? Five servants, two gardeners.’ Then, almost as an afterthought, he added, ‘And yet he still needs to employ an odd-job man.’

  ‘Apparently it’s a wealthy parish, one of the wealthiest in the city. That might explain the servants. But you’re right about the need for an odd-job man.’

  ‘What about Guppy himself? Aside from Nutt, none of the servants spoke particularly warmly about him.’

  Whicher nodded. ‘I know; and what kind of man would wear his surplice just to take the night air?’ Earlier, they’d looked for, and been unable to find, the surplice anywhere in the church or the yard.

  Pyke smiled at Whicher’s remark. ‘We also shouldn’t lose sight of the way he was killed.’

  ‘The fact that someone took a hammer and went to work on Guppy’s face until there was nothing left.’

  ‘Exactly. Whoever did it didn’t just want to kill him. If they did, they could have used a knife or a pistol.’

  ‘To be that close to someone and swing a hammer at their head: you’d really have to hate that person.’

  ‘We also don’t know what Guppy was doing in the churchyard,’ Pyke said. ‘I don’t believe for a moment he was simply going for a walk.’

  ‘It’s bitterly cold. Why would you venture out unless you had to?’

  ‘Perhaps he’d arranged to meet someone.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Pyke said. ‘Why do people meet up in places like churchyards late at night?’

  Whicher was smiling. He had come to appreciate Pyke’s dark sense of humour. ‘Maybe that’s why he took off his surplice.’

  ‘Just his surplice?’

  ‘But he was fully clothed when they found him,’ Whicher said, still smiling.

  Pyke shrugged. ‘Maybe Guppy didn’t get as far as he’d expected to.’

  When Pyke finally arrived home, he found Felix asleep in the armchair beside Godfrey’s bed, a Bible resting in his lap. Pyke’s gaze drifted between his son and his uncle, and as he stood watching them, he tried not to think about how little time he had spent at Godfrey’s side since he had collapsed two weeks earlier.

  ‘You’re up early,’ Felix said, lifting his head and forcing open one of his eyes. ‘Or back late.’

  After Pyke’s injury in the summer, there had been a rapprochement of sorts between them, but throughout the autumn the distance had gradually started to open up again and Godfrey’s sudden collapse had put them at loggerheads once more. The issue, for Felix, was Pyke’s apparent lack of concern. For his part, Pyke had done all he could; he had paid for the best doctor and a full-time nurse. Deep down, he was as desperately worried about the old man’s health as Felix, but he simply couldn’t give up his work, and Felix had started to resent this.

  Pyke took the other armchair and pulled it closer to the bed. ‘How is he?’

  ‘No better, no worse, according to the doctor.’ Felix sat up, stretched his shoulders and yawned.<
br />
  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Just that. No change in his condition. He told us to keep trying to give Uncle Godfrey food and water.’

  Pyke stared at the plate of uneaten food and the glass of water on the floor next to the bed. Since the collapse, Godfrey had said very little and had barely eaten a thing, and now the skin was hanging off his face and neck.

  ‘At least it means he’s not getting any worse,’ Pyke said, mostly for Felix’s benefit.

  He wasn’t sure how much his son knew, how much the doctor had told him, but as far as Pyke was aware, the prognosis was not good. Certainly there seemed little chance that Godfrey would make a full or even a partial recovery. Pyke looked at the bags under his son’s eyes and asked how he felt. Felix shrugged and said he was fine, even though it was clear he’d had almost no sleep. Since the collapse, Pyke had allowed Felix to stay at home, to be with Godfrey, but in recent days he’d been forced to question the wisdom of this decision. Was it healthy for a boy of his age to sit indoors all day with nothing to do and no one to talk to? Still, Pyke knew he wouldn’t be able to raise this issue without Felix coming back at him. I have to be here, because you never are.

  ‘Seriously, you look terrible,’ Pyke said. ‘Go and lie down. I’ll sit with him for a while.’

  ‘You don’t look too good yourself. What kept you up all night?’

  ‘Work.’

  Felix rolled his eyes and they sat for a while in silence, both staring down at Godfrey’s sleeping form.

  ‘I see you’ve been reading the Bible.’ Pyke gestured at the book, which had fallen on to the floor.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I didn’t know you’d embraced religion.’

  ‘I haven’t embraced religion.’ Felix sighed. ‘I was just reading aloud to Godfrey. Where’s the harm in that?’

  Pyke considered this for a short while. ‘I’m sure Godfrey appreciates what you’re doing for him but I know he’s never found solace in the Bible.’

  Felix reddened slightly. He went to retrieve his copy of the Bible and held it closely to his chest.

  ‘Did they give you that at school?’

  It was a trick question and Felix knew it. ‘You know they don’t teach us the Bible, so why do you even ask?’

  ‘So where did you get it from?’

  ‘Believe it or not, Pyke, the Bible is freely available.’ Defiantly, Felix held his gaze. ‘I pray for Godfrey to get better. What’s so terrible about that?’

  ‘And you think it’s in God’s power to make Godfrey better?’ Pyke paused. ‘He’s a very old, sick man.’

  ‘I know he’s sick. Remember, I’m here. I’m the one tending to him.’ Felix stopped, sensing he’d said too much, and then shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Pyke. I didn’t mean… I know you’re as upset as I am.’

  Pyke went over and put his arm around his son’s shoulders and to his surprise Felix did not push him away.

  ‘I’m scared, Pyke. I’m scared he’s going to die.’ Suddenly there were tears in his eyes. ‘Aren’t you scared, too?’

  Pyke was mute but just about managed a nod of his head. He had known that this time would eventually come, that Godfrey couldn’t live for ever, but now it was here he felt as lost and frightened as a boy.

  SEVEN

  ‘ I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, sir, but Guppy was a rather objectionable creature; the kind who’d refuse to feed a starving man because he hadn’t washed his hands.’

  Martin Jakes’s whole house could easily have fitted into Isaac Guppy’s drawing room, and the study, where they were now sitting, their knees almost touching, was not quite as large as the cupboard under Guppy’s stairs. The fact that Jakes had found himself at a church like St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, at the age of fifty, rather than serving out his days in the country, struck Pyke as something to be admired. It suggested Jakes hadn’t bothered to cosy up to men like the archdeacon. Jakes had an open, honest face and wasn’t shy about speaking his mind. Pyke cast his eye up at the books on his shelves and saw Marcus Aurelius and Blake there, as well as Erasmus and St Augustine. Jakes’s features were weathered and craggy; he was interesting to look at and this told Pyke that he had lived a life; that he hadn’t tried to hide behind the robes of office.

  ‘Please don’t misunderstand me,’ he said, after he had given Pyke his impression of Guppy. ‘I was shocked, horrified even, when I first heard the news and I’m desperately sorry he’s dead. His wife, Matilda, is a fine woman. She’ll take this very badly.’

  ‘But you didn’t like him as a man?’

  ‘It’s not that I liked or disliked him.’ Jakes loosened his collar. ‘It’s just… how can I put it? St Botolph’s is one of the wealthiest parish churches in the whole city. I would guess it raises in excess of two thousand a year from the rate alone. Now, I know a healthy proportion of that goes towards maintaining the rectory and its grounds…’

  ‘But you just get the crumbs from the table?’

  Jakes winced slightly. ‘I don’t know how knowledgeable you are about parish arrangements. St Botolph’s is our mother parish; all of the rate goes there. To make ends meet, we have to rely on what we can earn from funerals and marriages.’

  ‘St Botolph’s gets the oysters, you get the shells.’

  Jakes smiled at Pyke’s analogy. ‘We try to do as much charitable work with the poor as we can. Offer them food, hot soup in the winter. Coal and firewood if we can afford it.’

  ‘But you could do more if you were given more.’

  ‘ So much more,’ Jakes said, emphasising each syllable.

  Pyke glanced around the cramped, dusty room and thought about the accommodation at the rectory attached to St Botolph’s. It was easy to see why Jakes might be frustrated with the situation.

  ‘I was told you recommended an odd-job man to Guppy.’ Pyke waited, and studied the vicar’s reaction. ‘A former felon, by the name of Francis Hiley. Is that correct?’

  ‘It is, indeed.’ Jakes’s expression was earnest. ‘Can I enquire why you’re asking about Francis? Has something happened to him?’

  ‘Not as such. But it would seem that he packed up and left just before or after Guppy was murdered.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’ Jakes’s expression darkened. ‘And everyone at St Botolph’s believes Francis killed the rector.’

  ‘Is that such an unreasonable conclusion to reach? Given Hiley’s sudden flight?’

  ‘No, I suppose not,’ Jakes said, sighing. ‘It’s true that Francis is a deeply troubled man. Nonetheless, I don’t doubt that some people have been more than forthcoming about his past.’

  Pyke couldn’t help but smile at Jakes’s insightful reading of the situation. ‘I was told he served time in Coldbath Fields.’

  Jakes nodded. ‘I first made his acquaintance when I moved here from St Luke’s, Berwick Street. He was a bright lad, and always showed a keen interest in the Bible, but he was let down by his temper. He found out that his wife had been unfaithful to him; they fought and she fell down the stairs. The jury returned a verdict of unlawful manslaughter but when it came to his trial, the magistrate was lenient. Francis hadn’t contested the charges and anyone could see how distraught he was. He liked a drink but that doesn’t make him a bad man, does it? I enjoy a tipple every now and again myself. So I spoke up for him at the trial and the magistrate gave him two years. After Francis had served his sentence, he came here and offered to help out, in return for his room and board. I had to go to Guppy to gain his consent and initially he was hostile. He warned me about the dangers of consorting with hardened criminals.

  ‘In the end, and after a great deal of posturing, Guppy gave me his consent. I offered Francis a bed in this house but he insisted on sleeping in the church. And he proved to be a useful man to have around. I’m not as young as I used to be, and he would fetch and carry things for me; mend what needed to be mended. And when I did my rounds, I felt safer when Francis was with me. As you might expect, the church is not universal
ly liked in a district like this one. In the past, I’ve been pushed to the ground and spat on, but with Francis at my side, no one bothered me. You see, he was big, a physical man. Folk around here respect that more than the word of God.’

  ‘So how did Hiley come to work for Guppy?’

  Jakes adjusted his position in his armchair. ‘About seven or eight months ago, Guppy came to see me here at St Matthew’s, which was a rare enough occurrence, as he would usually summon me to St Botolph’s. I could tell something had upset him but he refused to take me into his confidence. For him, that would’ve been an admission of weakness. But he’d heard all about Francis; the fact that people in the parish respected him on account of his size and physical presence. He told me he needed someone to keep an eye on the church and he offered to take Francis off my hands; that was the phrase he used. He even promised to pay him a wage.’

  Pyke tried to weigh this up against the sense he’d got from the churchwarden and the rectory servants that Francis Hiley had been an unwanted presence at St Botolph’s and that he’d been spoiled or indulged by an overly generous rector. He put this view to Jakes.

  ‘As I said earlier, life at St Botolph’s is comfortable, respectable. Francis comes from rough stock. It’s no surprise that most people there would have taken against him or been suspicious of him.’

  Pyke rubbed his chin and nodded. ‘And how did this arrangement work out? Was Hiley happy with it? Was Guppy?’

  ‘Guppy never complained, at least not to me.’

  ‘But Hiley did?’

  Jakes sighed. ‘Guppy promised to feed him and pay him a wage but more often than not Francis would turn up here hungry and looking for food.’

  ‘You’re saying that Guppy didn’t honour his commitment?’

  ‘Francis was grateful for the work and even more grateful for the chance to atone for his sins. He never criticised Guppy directly.’

  Pyke was about to ask another question when a younger woman put her head around the door. Honey-coloured hair surrounded her pale, pinched face. She wasn’t unattractive, he decided, but there was something unsettling about her. Perhaps it was just that she was so thin. She was introduced to Pyke as Kitty, but Jakes made a point of describing her as his ward. It made Pyke wonder whether Jakes was married or not.