Blackwood’s bank occupied the upper floors of a dilapidated Georgian town house on Sweeting’s Alley, a narrow passageway that ran between Cornhill and Lombard Street. It was not a particularly auspicious home for a bank, and even their most loyal customers complained bitterly about having to climb up a steep, winding staircase to reach the main banking hall, which at one time had been someone’s drawing room. For a while, Pyke had considered moving to better accommodation, but whereas the additional space and a more prestigious address would be welcome, he had grown fond of the old building, of its homely charm and low rent. It had everything he needed, and if it meant the customers had to walk up some stairs then so be it: to earn the high interest rate his bank was prepared to pay for their custom, most would doubtless be prepared to struggle all the way to the very top of the building.
At nine o’clock, Pyke swept into the boardroom only to find that his two partners, Jem Nash and William Blackwood, were already seated. Blackwood was leafing through some documents, while young Nash had his boots up on the table and was reading the personal advertisements on the front page of The Times, as he liked to do each morning. ‘You know what it tells me?’ he had said to Pyke once. ‘That the whole world is for sale. Everything, but everything, has a price. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a child for sale.’ Pyke had told Nash that he’d once seen a baby for sale at the annual Bartholomew’s fair and that piece of information had seemed to delight him further. ‘Isn’t this a great time to live? Nothing is outside the market.’ This time Nash put the paper away, to greet him, while Blackwood murmured ‘Good morning’ as Pyke took his usual seat by the fire and handed the clerk his coat and gloves, making it clear that he wanted them to be left alone.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, before he’d even taken his seat, ‘I have some exciting news to report.’ He told them about the proposed deal with Morris and outlined the likely rates of return. ‘In the first year alone, we’ll earn as much as seven or eight thousand in interest payments.’
Nash smiled and nodded his head. Blackwood, unsurprisingly, seemed concerned. He reddened slightly and stared down at the polished grain of the table.
‘Is there a problem, William?’
‘I was just wondering about the wisdom of taking on yet more risk, especially at a time when we’re already more exposed than I’d like to be.’ Blackwood was a small, timid man with thinning hair and rotten teeth, who crept around the building like an old retainer.
Pyke chuckled bitterly. ‘If you had your way, we’d simply lock up our customers’ money in the vault and leave it there. This business is founded on risk.’
‘The money we invested in General Steel has yet to pay a penny in dividends and, as I’m sure you know, the Grand Northern share price has fallen under ten pounds for the second time this month.’
‘So?’
‘The bank’s most fundamental obligation is to pay cash to all of its customers on demand. If just a quarter of our customers demanded their money tomorrow, and gave us the necessary notice, we wouldn’t be able to pay their balances.’
‘Everyone gets their twice-yearly interest payments, don’t they? People who want to close their accounts receive their full balances.’ Pyke shook his head. ‘Your problem is you’ve got no balls, William. No guts. No courage.’
Blackwood stared at him, aghast at being spoken to in such a frank manner. ‘And you’re nothing but a ... gambler, recklessly speculating with your customers’ money to line your own pockets.’
‘Don’t forget your pockets, William. You earned what last year? One and a half thousand. That’s almost a thousand more than you earned the previous year and the year before that. I didn’t hear you complain then.’
Nash sat back in his chair, grinning. Since Pyke had given him a small percentage of the business, Nash supported him come what may in these meetings.
‘All we need is for a handful of customers to demand their money and we’d be in trouble. This bank is teetering like a house of cards and to make matters worse you’re proposing to take on more long-term debt; debt in a company whose share price has just dipped below ten pounds. It’s sheer madness.’
‘By my reckoning, we’ve currently got about a hundred thousand pounds’ worth of discounted bills sitting in the vault earning three, maybe four, per cent. I’m instructing you to sell them so I can lend that money to the Grand Northern Railway. This way we’ll more than double the return on our investment. Eight thousand per year instead of three. Is that understood?’
‘But those bills are as good as cash. We need some funds at short notice in case of claims made against us.’
‘Nonsense. We keep too much in reserve as it is. Dead money that’s earning no interest for the bank.’
Blackwood’s face reddened still further. ‘It’s my name above the bank’s door. My name. People are willing to entrust us with their savings because of my reputation and my integrity.’
Smiling, Pyke heaved a sigh. ‘That might have been true when you were running the four country banks in Norfolk but we both know that people here in London entrust us with their savings because we pay them a higher rate of interest than any other bank in the Square Mile.’
They were quickly getting to the nub of the matter. The four banks in question had been run by William Blackwood but only because his brother, Emily’s father, the late Lord Edmonton, had shown no interest in getting involved, apart from greedily collecting any profits that had accrued. Edmonton had owned the banks, lock, stock and barrel, and after his death, the banks had passed into Pyke’s hands as part of his wedding agreement with Emily, who, in turn, had inherited the Hambledon estate. In his new career as banker, Pyke had soon realised that William Blackwood was, indeed, a very competent figure and realised, too, that he’d need the man’s help, if his plan of opening a branch in London was ever to be realised. In order to keep Blackwood at the helm, Pyke had given him a third of the bank’s stock for nothing. Blackwood had always seemed to loathe his garrulous brother almost as much as Pyke did, but this didn’t mean that he welcomed Pyke’s takeover with open arms. In his rather traditionalist view of the world, banking was a risk-averse gentleman’s profession in which bankers provided a service to respectable people and charged them an appropriate fee for doing so. It didn’t involve sharp practices, brickbats and the whiff of violence. But since Pyke had retained two-thirds of the stock, his word was the one that mattered and it was this, more than anything else, which irked William Blackwood. At least Edmonton had never actually intervened in the day-to-day running of the banks, Pyke had once overheard him say. ‘But now I have to listen to, and take orders from, someone who doesn’t know an acceptance from an endorsement.’ Pyke knew about money, though. He knew the difference between a farthing and a groat and, under their twin stewardship, the bank had flourished, but the disagreements and tension in the partnership had never gone away.
The door flew open and the meeting was interrupted by a dishevelled man dressed in tatty clothes who fell into the room, closely followed by the head clerk, who claimed he had been forcibly brushed aside by the interloper.
‘Harry Cobb, at your service.’ The man performed an elaborate bow, his velveteen coat touching the floor.
Amused, Pyke told the clerk to leave them alone for a minute and asked him what he wanted.
‘I’m a humble shoemaker, sir, as was my father and his father, too. I remember a time when we were plump in the pocket but not any more. Not since the sweaters moved in and stole all of our business. It used to be that we’d get paid three shillings to make a pair of shoes, five for a pair of boots. But now there’s this sweater by the name of Groat who’s got all these wimmin and chirren, hundreds of ’em, mostly bilked from the workhouse, to make his shoes, working sixteen hours a day for almost nothing, and none of us folk can’t compete with him, at least not on our own. Not after we’ve paid for our grindery, candles and tools.’
Pyke regarded him with curiosity. ‘So what is it you want from us?’
‘Just the chance to earn our bread.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, sir, I ain’t an unreasonable man, in spite of my barging in on your meeting. I knows youse all want to make a profit like the next man but I heard folk say Mr Pyke’s a good man, not the kind who lends his arse and shits through his ribs, so that’s why I’m here. Me and a few others have got together and we’d like you to lend us some Darby, so we can make our boots and shoes and show ’em direct to the public.’
Nash ran his fingers through his mane of black hair, swept back and held in place by a sticky unguent. ‘Get out, you impertinent beggar.’
‘Let the man finish his piece,’ Pyke said, before turning back to face Cobb. ‘How much do you want to borrow?’
‘I reckon fifty megs should do it.’ Sniffing, Cobb wiped his nose on the sleeve of his coat.
‘And what security could you put up for the loan?’
‘Security?’ Cobb seemed flummoxed.
‘Something to guarantee the loan. Some property perhaps?’
‘If we owned property, sir, we wouldn’t need to come to you cap in hand begging for Darby, would we?’ He was puzzled more than angry.
‘And unfortunately for you, we’re a business and not a charity. If we were to lend you some money without any security, how could we stop you from pocketing it and then disappearing?’
‘Why would we do that, sir? We’re honest culls just wantin’ a chance to earn our bread.’
Nash leaned back in his chair, resting the heels of his boots on the table. ‘Listen to him. I don’t know whether to pity the poor wretch or throw him out on his ear.’
Cobb looked perplexed. ‘You mean you ain’t gonna lend us a thing?’ Suddenly he seemed on the verge of tears.
‘Get out, you dirty little man.’ Nash stood up and tried to push him out of the door.
‘Jem, let the man be.’ Pyke kept his tone flat and neutral. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Cobb, but we require security.’
‘Go and have a look for yeself. Groat has taken over the whole terrace on Granby Street. Rooms full of young chirren, kept in the dark, their little fingers worn down to the bone.’
‘It won’t make a difference.’
The wind seemed to leave Cobb’s sail. His shoulders sagged forward and his head bowed to the floor. ‘Thankee, sir, thankee. I won’t hold you up any more.’ He shuffled to the door and left without uttering another word.
Pyke watched his young assistant’s face, as hard and unyielding as dried wax. It was one of Nash’s attributes that he saw people only as entries in a ledger book, but while he would doubtless give Cobb no further consideration, Pyke was cursed or blessed by other thoughts. The old shoemaker might perhaps drown his disappointment with a few glasses of gin in a nearby tavern and then trudge home through dark, muddy streets to his lodging house in Bethnal Green, where there would be no food for his family to eat and precious little firewood to keep the room warm. As a younger man he had probably served a long apprenticeship learning the rudiments of his craft and had been assured that these skills would be sufficient to earn a living for the rest of his days, but in recent years the arrival of the sweaters and the hiring of non-apprenticed women and children to make inferior shoes had driven down prices, wages and conditions to such an extent that the old promises counted for nothing.
‘What a pathetic old fellow,’ Nash said, shaking his head. ‘Now let’s get back to this business of the loan to the Grand Northern ...’
Money was the only thing that counted, Pyke told himself. Not honour, not morals, not tradition. Men like Cobb couldn’t feed their families because they had no money, not because they had no honour or morality. Money enabled people to live their lives as they wanted to, not according to the whims of others. Without money there could be no liberty or freedom.
Pyke closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind, but an image of Cobb’s hunched figure and pleading face remained with him for the rest of the day.
There were many different ways to steal from people and many layers to the city’s burgeoning criminal fraternity. At the bottom of the pile were the ferret-eyed pickpockets who trawled the markets, fairs, public houses and crowded pavements for easy marks, and the rampsmen who assaulted people at random with brickbats and cudgels and would kill or maim their victims without any compunction. Then came the mudlarks who scavenged the Thames near the wharves and docks in the East End for items deliberately discarded by their associates who loaded and unloaded the ships. Next were the rushers, who showed up en masse at someone’s front door and forced their way into the home, taking whatever they could and disappearing before the police could be alerted. A little higher up the chain were the receivers and trainers who oversaw gangs of pickpockets from their flash houses and brothels, and the skilled housebreakers who broke into the upper floors of respectable homes and stole cash and jewellery. Near the top of the pile were the so-called cracksmen whose guile and equipment enabled them to break into apparently impregnable safes and strongboxes, and the flash Toms who ran brothels with iron fists and took a cut of all the illegal enterprises on their turf. But right at the top were a handful of figures who presided over a complex network of illicit buyers and sellers and who offered a service that no one else could provide: a way of transforming the proceeds of theft into untraceable notes and coins.
Ned Villums was such a figure, and every Monday afternoon without fail he was ushered up to Pyke’s office, where he would deposit two sacks filled with stolen coins and notes. After they’d talked, Pyke would go downstairs to the vault, withdraw an equivalent sum of money, minus his commission, and return it to Villums.
Pyke had known Villums for a number of years and trusted the man unequivocally. It helped, too, that they both knew what the other was capable of and went out of their way to be fair minded. Pyke had once seen Villums feed a man he’d caught stealing from him to a bear tied up outside his tavern and used for sport.
‘Does anyone else apart from you know about our arrangement?’ Pyke asked him, as he prepared to leave.
That drew a sharp frown. ‘I know the rules as well as you do, Pyke.’ He shook his head, as though irritated he’d been asked the question. ‘Has someone been blabbering?’
‘Not that I know of.’
‘But you suspect someone?’
Pyke shook his head. ‘Not at this end.’
‘But you suspect that someone knows? And you’re fishing to see if one of my lads might have talked?’
Pyke shrugged. ‘Is that a possibility?’
‘No.’>
They exchanged a cold stare. ‘Then there’s nothing to worry about.’
‘Good.’ Villums stood up and pulled his short, double-breasted jacket down over his belly. ‘I’ll show myself out.’
‘Ned?’
Villums turned around at the door. ‘Yeah?’
‘Let’s both try and be even more careful in the future.’
Villums left without saying a word. Pyke wondered whether he had unnecessarily antagonised a man with a history of and propensity for violence.
FIVE
The magistrates’ court at Bow Street was located at the front of a tall, narrow, box-shaped building on the west side of the street, and by the time Pyke had pushed his way through the throng of law clerks, Bow Street Runners and lawyers assembled either on the steps at the front of the building or in the entrance hall and corridors, the hearing was about to start. Formerly the parlour in a private house, the room had long since abandoned any claims to respectability, and now the general air of dreariness, fostered by many years of neglect, had become institutionalised. Pyke knew it well, of course. As a Bow Street Runner, he had proffered testimony on many occasions from the witness stand, and it was the smell of the room, a musty odour of mildew, unwashed clothes, dried sweat and cheap tobacco, which carried him back to an earlier moment in his life. There were still one or two people he recognised from the old days but they either ignored him or refused to meet his s
tare: back then his reputation meant that few people had been willing to cross him and even fewer had sought him out as a friend or confidant.
Pyke’s uncle, Godfrey, stood alone in the dock, an elevated platform in front of a large mirror with a wooden rail running around it, while the chief magistrate, Sir Henry Bellows, conferred with the man who would be presenting the evidence against Godfrey. The point of the hearing was to determine whether the charges against the accused - in this case, criminal libel and possibly also sedition - merited a trial in a higher court. Once the evidence had been presented by the Crown’s barrister, Godfrey would be allowed to ask questions both about the evidence and the witness statements made against him in the hope of exposing contradictions and lies in the Crown’s case. On the Crown’s part, it was hoped that Godfrey’s testimony might be used against him if the case came to trial.
Wearing a blue, double-breasted Spencer coat with polished brass buttons over a cream embroidered waistcoat and frilly white shirt, his uncle did not look like a common criminal. He greeted Pyke with a hug and took a swig of gin from his flask before casting an eye across the crowded room. ‘A sniff of scandal and the jackals come running. They could have charged on the door and still packed the room three times over.’ He was a tall, broad-shouldered man approaching seventy years old, overweight, with a face as red as a beetroot and a shock of bone-white hair.
Pyke looked at the row of well-fed, smartly attired men sitting alongside Bellows on the bench. ‘Which one is Conroy?’
‘The silver fox with the coiled moustache. The bulldog next to him is his lawyer, Charles Frederick Williams, a King’s bencher no less.’ Godfrey took another swig from his flask and belched. ‘I know this poison will kill me in the end but who would want to live in an age of moral propriety?’ He shook his head with disgust. ‘That’s what I heard someone call it the other day.’
The Revenge of Captain Paine Page 5
