Pyke watched her from the other side of the bed. It was at moments such as these, he mused, that you realised what people meant to you. He had experienced a similar blind panic when Emily had almost died while giving birth to Felix. She had lost consciousness for a few days and Pyke had remained at her bedside for the entire time, trying to keep her alive with the strength of his will.
In the intervening years, he had often wondered why she hadn’t conceived again. The first time, it had happened quite quickly, within a year of the marriage, allaying fears carried over from a former attachment that he might be infertile. But Emily’s recovery had been long and slow and it had taken a full year before she had been ready to try for more children. The physician who had treated her said there was no reason why this shouldn’t happen, but for some reason it never had and, in recent months, they had stopped talking about it as a possibility.
Pyke looked down at his uncle’s sleeping face. ‘Apart from Felix, the only people that matter to me are right here in this room.’
Emily squeezed his hand and smiled gently. ‘Do I detect a subtle rebuke in your tone?’
‘Captain Paine may want to improve the lot of the poor and destitute. I just want to keep my family safe.’
It seemed to amuse her. ‘Is that what you were doing the other afternoon when we visited Granby Street?’ She hesitated, licking her lips. ‘Or why that little girl is in one of the rooms at Hambledon?’
Pyke took her hand and waited for a few moments. ‘The other night, just before I found Godfrey in his shop, I turned the tables on this man who’d been following me. I chased him into St Paul’s where he killed one of the priests. You might have read about it in the newspaper. Just before he escaped — he was holding a knife to the priest’s throat at the time — he made a threat against you.’
‘What kind of a threat?’
‘His exact words were, “Tell that bitch of yours to watch her back.” Pyke stared at her across the bed. ‘Why would he say something like that?’
Emily shrugged. ‘You don’t know who he was and why he was following you?’
‘No.’ He didn’t want to tell her about the glass-eyed man’s brutality and unnecessarily scare her but he wanted her to know that his threat was a serious one.
‘Then I don’t see what I can do about it.’
Pyke let go of her hand and glanced down at his uncle. ‘Perhaps you should think twice about maintaining such a public presence.’
‘You want me to stop doing what I do?’ A hardness had entered her voice.
‘I don’t know what you’ve been doing,’ Pyke said, losing his patience. ‘That’s my point. If I did, I could judge the potential threat to your safety.’
‘And how about what you do? Have you thought to tell me about the problems you seem to be facing?’
‘We can talk about this another time,’ Pyke said, noticing that Godfrey had stirred ever so slightly. ‘But for now, promise me you’ll take extra precautions. I’m being deadly serious, Emily. This man was not someone to be taken lightly. I just think you should lie low for the next week or so, while I see if I can turn up any information.’
Emily left shortly after that, saying she wanted to get back to Hambledon in time to say goodnight to Felix. Pyke asked her to send Felix his love and make sure that Milly was all right.
It was only on the third day after the attack that Godfrey rallied sufficiently for the physician to declare that he was ‘out of immediate danger’. That afternoon, after Halford had departed, his pockets loaded with money, Pyke helped his uncle to a few sips of beer he’d smuggled into the hospital from the Old Red Lion.
‘It’s not gin but I suppose it’ll have to do,’ Godfrey said, as streaks of the brown liquid dribbled down his chin.
Pyke wanted to tell Godfrey how much he meant to him and how scared he’d been at the thought of the old man’s death but somehow the words wouldn’t come. Instead, he explained to Godfrey that the libel charges against him had been dropped. That seemed to cheer him up no end.
‘That’s bloody marvellous news,’ Godfrey said, taking another swig of ale. ‘How did it happen? They seemed to have the bit between their teeth this time.’
Pyke told him about his dealings with Abraham Gore and Gore’s intervention on Godfrey’s behalf.
‘The banker?’ Godfrey didn’t bother to conceal his surprise. ‘Why would he want to help me?’
‘I think he wants me to like him.’
‘And do you?’
‘I don’t know. He’s always been very open and honest with me.’ Quickly he told the story of Gore’s arrival at the coroner’s meeting and the invectives he’d heaped on Sir Henry Bellows.
‘A man after my own heart,’ Godfrey said, laughing. ‘Do you think Bellows knew about his intervention in my case?’
‘Yes, I’m sure he did.’ Pyke thought about it some more. ‘But he was wary around Gore in a way that he wasn’t with me.’
Godfrey nodded. ‘That would seem about right. If I were you, my boy, I wouldn’t underestimate Gore’s influence. I’ve heard he’s a generous man, gives a lot of his money to charity, but he didn’t get to where he is now without cracking a few eggs.’
Pyke absorbed the warning and steered the conversation back to the incident in the shop. Who had the men been, for example?
‘Never seen the blighters before in my life,’ Godfrey said, with clear indignation.
‘But you know who might have sent them or what they wanted?’
‘They kept asking me for the letters, as though I’d know precisely what they were talking about.’
‘What letters?’
‘I don’t know for certain, dear boy.’ Godfrey ruffled his mane of bone-white hair. ‘I think it might have had something to do with the missing girl and the court case.’
He must have seen Pyke’s jaw clench because almost at once he asked, ‘What is it, dear boy?’
Pyke told him about finding Freddie Sutton and his wife in their Spitalfields shack, their throats cut. He also mentioned the young daughter, now recuperating at Hambledon, and explained how, when he had returned to Spitalfields with the police, the dead bodies had been removed. The police, he added, didn’t seem to believe a crime had actually been committed.
Godfrey took the news very badly, as Pyke suspected he might, but the shock was not sufficient to induce further chest problems. ‘And you think the two men who attacked me might have done for the parents?’ He seemed aghast and genuinely frightened by this prospect.
‘Perhaps,’ Pyke said, adjusting his position on the hard wooden chair. ‘I found this on the one who fell under the phaeton,’ he added, retrieving the cravat pin from his pocket and showing it to his uncle.
The silver object glinted in the candlelight as Godfrey sat up in the bed to inspect it. ‘I wouldn’t mind wagering it’s the coat of arms for one of the military regiments. Can I hold on to it for a few days?’
‘By all means,’ Pyke said, thinking about the six dragoons who had chased him on horseback in Cambridgeshire and wondering whether there might be a connection. Certainly Jake Bolter, Septimus Yellowplush and Sir Horsley Rockingham were either affiliated with or had once served in the same regiment: the 31st, which was barracked somewhere near Huntingdon.
Bolter and Yellowplush were brothers in arms, having gone down in the same ship in the Bay of Biscay and lived to tell the tale, and their apparent closeness seemed to shed light on an important aspect of the conspiracy to halt the northward progress of the Grand Northern Railway. They had perhaps acted together to stir up the navvies and hence retard the construction work north of Cambridge, but had they conspired to kill Morris and make it look like a suicide? And, as Peel seemed to believe, was there any connection between their machinations and the headless corpse that had turned up in the River Ouse?
Pyke stood up and stretched his legs. ‘You don’t have any idea what these letters might refer to or be about?’
‘From what I could grasp, the
men in my shop seemed to believe Kate Sutton had stolen them from Kensington Palace and had passed them on to me.’
‘Or left them with her parents,’ Pyke added, grimly.
Godfrey considered this for a short while. ‘Do you think Conroy might have sent them?’
‘Let’s assume for a minute that Kate Sutton really did steal some letters from him, letters of great significance, letters he desperately needed to get back…’
‘Desperate enough to kill for?’
Pyke studied his uncle’s jaundiced face. ‘What else do you know about him?’
‘Conroy?’
Pyke nodded.
‘He’s originally from Ireland, County Roscommon, I think. He served in the Royal Artillery before becoming the Duke of Kent’s private equerry. After the duke perished, he slipped into the dead man’s shoes in more ways than one. Became the duchess’s lover and comptroller, if Kate Sutton’s to be believed. I’m told he’s handsome, charming and totally unscrupulous. And quite a hothead, if his reputation is to go by. Perhaps he reckons that when Victoria becomes queen, as she soon will do, he’ll be the puppet-master pulling the strings of the young woman and her mother.’
Pyke rubbed his chin. ‘Perhaps there’s something in the letters that threatens this possibility.’
Godfrey fell back on to his flimsy mattress. ‘I feel I’ve brought this whole situation upon myself. After all, I gave encouragement to the girl’s attempts to sell her information regarding Conroy. She seemed desperate for money.’
‘Don’t blame yourself for other people’s cruelty. You didn’t put a knife to Freddie Sutton’s throat.’
This did little to improve his uncle’s mood. ‘Actually, now I think of it, there was something else. Something one of them said.’
‘In the shop?’
Godfrey nodded. ‘I’m fairly sure I heard the taller, burlier one tell the other one, “He won’t be happy,” when it became evident I didn’t have the letters. Except he didn’t say he.’
‘So what did he say?’
‘I don’t know,’ Godfrey said, scratching his head. ‘To be honest, it sounded like he said H.’
‘As in the letter?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So whose name begins with the letter H?’
‘I’ve racked my brains and I can’t come up with a soul.’
They talked in this roundabout manner for another few minutes before reaching a dead end. To fill the silence, Pyke asked Godfrey whether a young lad had come to the shop asking for work as a delivery boy. Godfrey shook his head, said, no, he didn’t think so, and forced Pyke to tell him about the circumstances surrounding the lad’s escape from the sweatshop. When he’d finished, there was a glint in his uncle’s eye. Changing the subject, Pyke asked him whether he’d heard any rumours about Sir Henry Bellows buying up land in the vicinity of New Road.
Godfrey shook his head but said that he would look into the matter. Gloomily, he added that, even though the libel charges against him had been dropped, he still felt duty bound to keep looking for Kate Sutton.
‘We know Bellows is friendly with Conroy,’ Pyke said, thinking out loud. ‘But we also know that he has, or rather had, an interest in declaring Morris’s death a suicide. Is there a connection?’
Godfrey looked up at him frowning. ‘What sort of a connection?’
Shrugging, Pyke told his uncle about his suspicions about a conspiracy involving Bolter, Yellowplush and Rockingham, and then about the anonymous note he’d received warning him of Rockingham’s arrival in the capital.
‘So someone wanted you to follow him and perhaps see who he met and what he did?’
Pyke nodded. It had already crossed his mind that someone had meant him to see Rockingham in Bolter’s company. It also struck him that he hadn’t managed to determine why the landowner had visited London: the visit to the gaming tavern had surely just been a brief diversion.
‘You have any ideas who might have wanted this?’
Pyke shook his head.
‘I’ve heard of this Rockingham chap. An ex-slaver from the West Indies, made his fortune from a sugar plantation and has, subsequently, tried to buy respectability with the proceeds.’
Nodding, Pyke told him about Rockingham’s Queen Anne mansion and thousand-acre estate.
‘You want to get under this fellow’s skin, you hit him where it hurts.’ Godfrey sat up, grinning. ‘What does he most like doing? What gives him the respectability he seems to crave?’
Pyke considered this for a moment. ‘He has a stable of thoroughbred racehorses.’
‘And you say his estate is just north of Huntingdon? Then he’ll be a member of the Jockey Club at Newmarket.’
Shrugging, Pyke said he didn’t know this for certain.
‘If he owns and breeds racehorses, he will. Trust me.’ Godfrey’s cheeks glistened with excitement. ‘What we do is knock up some handbills that make certain humiliating claims about the fellow, and then pay someone to circulate them in and around Newmarket.’
‘What kind of claims?’
‘I don’t know, dear boy. Use your imagination. Perhaps he fucks his grooms or his horses or his daughter. Take your pick.’
‘And if the allegations are entirely false?’
Godfrey shook his head vigorously, as if Pyke had missed the point. ‘That’s never stopped me in the past. Listen, am I right in thinking this blackguard had something to do with Morris’s death?’ When Pyke muttered, ‘I think so,’ Godfrey added, without changing his tone, ‘So rattle his cage, hit him where it hurts and see what he does. You unsettle him enough, he’ll make a mistake. Smoke the rabbit out of his hole and wait around to mop up the mess.’
EIGHTEEN
As he walked along the Waterloo Road, Pyke was stopped at almost every street corner by women with painted faces propositioning him. Some did so from the steps of their ramshackle dwellings, others called out to him through broken windowpanes. It was early evening and the air had turned so cold he could see his breath in front of him. This was one of the grimmest streets in London with its open cess trenches and pervasive stench of poverty and despair. But worse still was New Cut, a street that ran perpendicular to Waterloo Road, where the daily market left a stink of such immense magnitude that it was hard to negotiate its pavements without being sick. In one short stretch, Pyke counted five ginneries, a beer shop, four brothels, three slop shops and a dozen doss houses. In front of each, dishevelled men and women guzzled home-brewed gin straight from the bottle and would do so until the early hours, because the alternative, lying on open floors while rats nibbled their frostbitten fingers, was too unattractive a prospect. Above them, the smoke from the breweries and factories that clung to the south bank of the river had turned the skies black.
This was also the street where Maggie Shaw had grown up and where her parents had once tended a barrow in the market.
Looking at the piles of rotting vegetables and offal lining the gutters, it was hard to believe that Maggie had once graced this street. It was hard to believe she had really moved among the rickety barrows stacked with cagmag, oilskin caps, rancid fish, soiled clothes, mildewed boots and second-hand corduroy coats, and hard to believe that she had once belonged to the same tribe of people Pyke now passed — drunken, toothless creatures who would slit your throat in a minute if they believed you had money and they could get away with it. Perhaps Maggie was right. Perhaps she had never really belonged there, just as he had never really belonged in St Giles. Having lifted themselves out of poverty, they had found security and prosperity in their middle years, but this wealth did not necessarily breed a sense of entitlement and, for Pyke at least, the feeling that it might at any point be snatched from his grip remained with him constantly. Maybe it was the same for Maggie, he mused.
If the opera and ballet represented the most rarefied ‘arts’ experience in the capital, attracting a predominantly aristocratic audience who would clap politely and share gossip in the intervals, the theatre wa
s a generally more rambunctious affair. This didn’t include venues like the Theatre Royal in Covent Garden and those on Drury Lane and Haymarket: these establishments still catered to gormless gentlemen and their ugly wives. But throughout the capital, there were hundreds of smaller venues staging bastardised versions of Hamlet or loose adaptations of popular novels and fables, and at any of these actors could expect to be abused and harangued from the pit by members of the public who might be sodden with drink. At such establishments the actors were rarely if ever professional, in the sense that they earned money from their craft. Rather they were clerks, shop boys and milliners who trod the boards in order to escape from the grim tedium of their everyday existences. Kate Sutton’s beau, Johnny, was apparently such a figure, but his domain was a good deal less salubrious even than these ‘low’ venues. The so-called ‘penny gaffs’, which tended to be situated in the poorest parts of the capital, represented the grubbiest, bawdiest and least refined stage experience of all. It was not unusual to be mugged or robbed in such venues, often at the behest of the management, and children as young as twelve copulated in their dark corners.
There were four penny gaffs on New Cut, and when he eventually found the right one, having followed directions given to him by Freddie Sutton, it turned out to be little more than a warehouse, an empty shell of a building with exposed joists and damp walls. The stage, if it could be called that, comprised a few planks of wood nailed to a collection of overturned wooden beer barrels, and the only lighting was provided by an assortment of tallow candles, haphazardly arranged at the back of the stage in different-shaped wooden holders.
Pyke found the performers sitting on wooden crates at the back of the stage. They were drinking gin from the bottle and one of them, a tall, brutish man dressed to resemble a monarch or prince, was smoking a pipe. They looked up in response to his question and the king told him to get lost.
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