The Revenge of Captain Paine

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘You’re saying that Johnny read something in the letters and decided to dramatise the material in his play?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ He thought again about Peel and the fact that the Tory leader despised the duke as much as everyone else. But there was also the small matter of Peel’s visit to Huntingdon in person to inspect the headless corpse. Did he know or suspect it belonged to Johnny?

  ‘But that still doesn’t explain how or why Cumberland and Conroy are now on the same side.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ Pyke hesitated, to gather together his thoughts. ‘But if Johnny did read the letters and dramatise their contents, it might explain why someone wanted to kill him.’

  ‘And let the play continue for almost a month?’

  ‘Perhaps the one who was looking for him, the glass-eyed man, didn’t wait around to watch the show.’ Pyke paused, and added, ‘And the fact it was shut down by the police suggests the involvement of some important figures. That kind of order would have come directly from Scotland Yard.’

  Skin wrinkled at the corners of his uncle’s eyes. ‘Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?’

  Pyke shrugged. ‘I just don’t think we can rule anything out. If I’m right, whatever was written in those letters has the potential to blow the current arrangements right out of the water.’

  Godfrey took a gulp of air. ‘Even so, decapitating someone is a bit much, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not if whoever ordered it wanted Johnny dead and gone for ever. After all, it’s not easy identifying a man without a head.’

  ‘You managed.’

  Pyke shrugged. ‘The man who killed Johnny and Kate Sutton’s parents won’t stop there, if he hasn’t already found the letters.’

  Colour drained from his uncle’s cheeks. ‘It doesn’t augur well for Kate’s safety, does it?’

  ‘Not just Kate. I’d say you might be in the firing line. Me, as well.’ Pyke thought about the threat the glass-eyed man had made against Emily.

  ‘But those men only roughed me up. They didn’t try and kill me.’

  ‘Who knows what might have happened if I hadn’t shown up when I did.’

  ‘I know, dear boy. I know I’m in your debt.’

  ‘That’s not why I mentioned it,’ Pyke said, with a sigh. ‘I just think we both need to take extra precautions. Freddie Sutton wasn’t a threat to anyone and yet someone slit his throat as though he were no better than a tubercular pig.’

  ‘Quite.’

  Pyke stood up and squeezed his hand. ‘Will you be all right?’

  ‘Me? I’ve never been better,’ Godfrey said, gloomily. ‘In case you wanted to have a little chat with him, I know Conroy lunches every Friday, without fail, at the Travellers’ Club. But be careful with him, my boy. If you push him too far he’s liable to explode.’

  ‘And that’s supposed to put me off?’

  Godfrey acknowledged Pyke’s remark with a tilt of his head and a glint in his eye. ‘By the way, those handbills detailing Rockingham’s cruel practices are currently heading for Newmarket, even as we speak.’

  Pyke couldn’t help but smile. ‘You wrote them yourself?’

  ‘In my best Marquis de Sade prose.’

  ‘He’s not going to like it, is he?’

  ‘You mean, when one of them gets posted through the door of the president of the Jockey Club?’

  It was a moment of light relief but outside, when Pyke hailed a hackney coachman and asked the driver to take him back to Hambledon, he was still thinking about the glass-eyed man and the nonchalant way he had drawn his blade across the throat of the priest.

  Emily was playing with Felix on the floor of the nursery when Pyke got home, and for a while he watched from the threshold; Emily had such an easy manner with the boy, Pyke thought with pride, and anyone could see that he adored her. When Pyke coughed, to draw attention to himself, Felix looked up and raced across to greet him. ‘Mummy was just tickling my feet,’ he said, as though the crime were a serious one.

  ‘Really?’ Pyke said, winking at Emily. ‘And do you think we should tickle Mummy’s feet?’

  That made Felix squeal with delight and he raced back across the room to where Emily was sitting. ‘We’re going to tickle your feet,’ he boasted, ‘and it’s going to hurt.’ Pyke joined them, bending over to give Emily a kiss. ‘Why are you kissing her?’ Felix wanted to know.

  ‘If you like, I’ll kiss you, too,’ Pyke said, trying to grab his son.

  Felix, though, was too quick for him. ‘Kissing’s for girls,’ he said authoritatively. ‘Girls and old people.’ Chasing after Felix on his hands and knees, Pyke caught up with him just as he was about to disappear under his bed and scooped him up into his arms, showering his head with kisses. Eventually Felix managed to wriggle free and demonstrably wiped both cheeks. ‘That was disgusting,’ he added firmly.

  When Pyke next looked up, Milly was standing in the doorway, clutching her blanket.

  ‘Do you want to join us, Milly?’ Sitting up, Pyke held out his hand.

  For a moment it looked as if she might take him up on his offer but her fortitude seemed to desert her at the last minute and she scurried back into her room.

  When Pyke poked his head around her door, he saw that she had climbed back into bed. Stepping into the room, he told her that she didn’t need to be afraid, but she scuttled over to the far side of the bed and pulled the blankets over her head. Tentatively Pyke sat down on the edge of the bed and waited for a few moments. Finally Milly’s head emerged from under the sheet and she stared at him, perhaps trying to work out whether he posed a threat to her or not.

  ‘Do you like it here, Milly?’ He hesitated and looked around at the room. ‘Do you like your new room?’

  After what seemed like an eternity, she gave him a very brief nod.

  ‘Do you want to stay?’

  Again, another nod, this one more emphatic than the last.

  ‘You do? Because everyone here seems to think you’re unhappy and that I should take you back to your other home.’ He paused for a short while. ‘Are you unhappy here?’

  This time she shook her head.

  ‘Can you talk, Milly? Because I want you to tell me what you saw that night ...’

  She stared down at the blanket, her head not moving.

  ‘Did you see the man who hurt your mama and papa?’

  Milly looked up at him, a tear rolling down one of her cheeks. Pyke opened up his arms and the girl shuffled nervously across the thin bed. He gave her an awkward hug and told her that she didn’t have to say anything if she didn’t want to. She began to sob harder and before Pyke knew it her entire body was shaking in his arms, her arms clutching hold of him as though her life depended on it.

  Later, Royce opened a bottle of claret and poured Pyke and Emily a glass each in the drawing room.

  ‘Did you think about what we talked about at the hospital?’ he asked, as he sat on the sofa next to her.

  ‘And what was that?’

  ‘About maybe spending more time here at Hambledon, until I’ve had the chance to determine what threat the man I told you about poses.’

  ‘I’m not going to be made a prisoner in my own home.’

  ‘And I’m just suggesting for a week or so.’

  Emily put the wineglass down on the side table and turned to him. ‘I can’t do it. Not now. Not right at the moment.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because there are things that I’ve committed to; things I want to do, things I need to do.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Just things.’ Emily shook her head angrily.

  ‘Things you can’t tell me about?’

  ‘It’s not that I can’t tell you,’ she said, sounding pained.

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘Don’t use that tone with me,’ Emily retorted, quickly. ‘It’s not as though you tell me everything you do, whether that’s fighting alongside the navvies or sniffing around an old acquaintance.’


  ‘That’s nothing by comparison.’

  ‘Nothing? An old lover suddenly becomes our closest neighbour and I’m meant to dismiss it as nothing?’

  ‘This is about your safety, your life. You think I’m just going to stand by and watch someone harm you?’

  ‘And I can’t just give up what I’m doing.’

  ‘This man killed a priest for no other reason than he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Think what he might be capable of, if he put his mind to it.’

  ‘All right,’ Emily said, finally giving a little ground. ‘Just give me a couple more days to tie up some loose ends.’

  ‘And then you’ll stop for a while?’

  ‘For a while.’ She reached for her glass and took another sip of claret.

  ‘But you won’t tell me what it is you’re working on?’

  Emily sighed. ‘Don’t put a pistol to my head. I’ll tell you in my own time.’

  A brief silence hung between them. ‘I’d like you to pass on a message to Jackman. Tell him I want to meet.’

  ‘What do you want with him?’ There was a sharpness in Emily’s tone that hadn’t been there before.

  ‘Can you arrange it or not?’

  ‘Not until I know why you want to see him.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Emily, the man saved my life in Huntingdon,’ Pyke said, angrily. ‘Did he tell you that? Someone was about to pull the trigger on me. He intervened. I think I have a right to see him and express my gratitude.’

  From Emily’s expression, it was clear that Jackman hadn’t told her and some of her resolve left her. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’

  ‘So you’ll arrange a meeting?’

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  For the rest of the night they barely said another word to each other, and when it came time to go to bed, they gravitated towards their separate bedrooms without having to articulate their need to be alone. As he lay in his bed, Pyke listened to the branches of the trees swaying in the wind and thought about what to do. It was no longer a question of being nice or accommodating. If he couldn’t guarantee Emily’s safety, either in public or, for that matter, at Hambledon, then he would have to find another place for them to live, if only temporarily. At least until he’d tracked down the glass-eyed man, which was now his top priority.

  NINETEEN

  The sky was low and grey and reminded him of why he detested this time of year, the prospect of a long, cold winter ahead, months of damp coats, coal fires, sodden earth and seasonal chills. Pyke was waiting at the bottom of Park Lane with Green Park on one side of him and Hyde Park on the other. The location meant he had little protection from the squally wind, and as the leaves fell from almost denuded trees and glistened underfoot, a carpet of wet slime as smelly as it was treacherous, he was put in mind of funerals. This was the time of year when his own father had been killed, the victim of a crowd stampede in the vicinity of Newgate prison, a herd of frightened, angry people pushed into a space that couldn’t accommodate them as they waited for the execution of two men found guilty of killing a botanist. Even now the smell of wet leaves conjured memories of that moment when his father’s calloused hand had slipped from his own and he had stumbled and been swallowed up by the terrified mob, a clutched fist disappearing into an ocean of contorted faces. Some thirty years later, he might see a glimpse of his father’s dark, weather-beaten face in a dream or, fleetingly, in a crowd, but it was never enough to sustain a picture of him in his head. Often Pyke wondered how his life might have been different, if his father hadn’t lost his footing and fallen to his death under the boots and shoes of people as poor as him.

  Ned Villums shuffled into view, a black, woollen muffler around his neck and a greatcoat pulled tightly around his waist. ‘Come on, let’s walk,’ he muttered as he came up alongside Pyke. He was carrying a newspaper under his arm. The Times or the Morning Chronicle.

  ‘Any news about the leak at your bank?’

  Pyke was about to say the leak couldn’t have been at his end but stopped himself at the last minute. Why? Perhaps Villums was correct. Perhaps someone at the bank had passed information on to the Tory leader. ‘The matter’s in hand,’ was all he said.

  ‘Good.’ Villums headed into Hyde Park and Pyke followed him.

  ‘Any news on the man I asked you about?’

  They had walked twenty or thirty yards into the park when Villums turned to face him. ‘His name’s Jimmy Trotter.’

  ‘What can you tell me about him?’

  ‘He’s a nasty one, that’s for certain.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You name it, he’s done it. Theft with violence, larceny, embezzlement, burglary, assault, housebreaking, pick-pocketing. ’

  ‘Murder?’

  ‘You tell me.’

  Pyke pointed to the newspaper. ‘Did you read about the priest who was killed in St Paul’s?’

  Villums’ face hardened. ‘That was Trotter?’

  Pyke told him what had happened, including the threat Trotter had made against Emily.

  ‘Your business with him is your business, but if you want my advice I’d get my family as far away from him as possible.’

  ‘You know where I can find him?’

  Villums started to walk, his hands dug deep into the pocket of his coat. ‘I heard he was working for a man called Field in the East End. Embezzling money from shopkeepers and small businessmen.’ He paused to clear his throat. ‘Actually there’s a story about that you might want to hear. Or not, as the case may be.’

  ‘What story?’

  ‘A cabinetmaker in Bow wouldn’t pay, so Field sent Trotter to persuade him. Trotter saw the man’s wife was pregnant and when the cull refused to pay, he tied him up and went for the wife with a red-hot poker. According to my source, Trotter knocked her down and shoved the poker right up inside her, if you know what I mean, with this cully looking on, helpless. It killed the baby straight away and, after a long, painful illness, the wife, too. The cabinetmaker disappeared shortly afterwards, as well. After that no one in the East End ever refused to pay Field again.’

  For a moment neither of them said anything. The gusting wind rustled the tops of the trees. In the distance, they could hear the sound of horses’ hoofs and carriage wheels clattering past Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner.

  ‘Does your source have an address?’

  Villums nodded. ‘A former crimping house on the river, just along from Cowgate. After the war, it was turned into a convalescence home for soldiers wounded in action but the funds ran out a few years ago and now it’s been overrun by petty thieves and the likes of Jimmy Trotter.’

  ‘And Field?’

  ‘He owns a slaughterhouse near Smithfield.’ Villums’ expression clouded over. ‘But I wouldn’t go there if I were you. Not if Field was the last man alive.’ He looked up at the army of jackdaws perched in the treetops. ‘Listen, Pyke, I’m well aware you don’t need my advice and I’ve seen with my own eyes that you can take care of yourself ...’

  ‘But?’

  ‘We both know you haven’t been out there for a while. All I’m saying is take care with Field. If you’re going to tackle him, make sure you’re unfailingly polite and careful about what you say.’

  They walked back to Hyde Park Corner and ‘Rotten Row’, where, despite the foul conditions, men and women dressed in the finest clothes, attended to by liveried servants, rode up and down on magnificent groomed horses, as they had always done, past the Duke of Wellington’s Apsley House.

  ‘A few years ago, I wouldn’t have dared to show my face at a place like this one. I’m sure you were the same.’

  Pyke shrugged. But it was true that, until recently, he’d had little need to visit the West End.

  ‘I used to think folk riding horses like those ones owned the city and everything in it. But you know what I think now?’

  ‘That it actually belongs to people like you and me.’

  ‘It’s what I’ve always liked about you,�
�� Villums said, beaming. ‘You always seem to know exactly what other people are thinking.’

  After surveying the front page of The Times for houses to rent in the vicinity of the park, Pyke spent the rest of the morning sizing up the potential options. The one he liked best was, unsurprisingly, the most expensive, an enormous terraced property on Berkeley Square that rented for just under a thousand pounds a year and which contained within its walls the most extravagantly ornate marble staircase and domed ceiling he had ever seen. The agent who showed him the house, number forty-four on the west side of the square, explained that it was one of the finest eighteenth-century residences in the city, adding that the inside had been planned and designed by the renowned architect William Kent and that its ‘baroque theatricality’ perfectly matched the scale of the building. Pyke thought it looked a little like a Roman bordello but liked the fact that a house that looked quite normal from the outside contained so many architectural wonders within. For a start, the white marble staircase extended up through the full height of the building, almost up to the domed roof, which put him in mind of St Paul’s. There were also the marble columns on the first-floor mezzanine and the great chamber room with its panelled walls and hand-carved Italianate ceiling.

  The agent informed him that the house was available immediately and, if he paid a deposit of a hundred pounds, he could move in right away. The remaining balance would be due within a month. The house was already furnished, too, which meant less expense for him. His plan was to take it and stay there just for a month. In the light of his financial problems, Pyke couldn’t justify spending a thousand pounds on rent, but if he managed to resolve matters and settle his dispute with Blackwood, and if they liked the house and the new location, then what was to stop it becoming a more permanent move? Pyke knew that Emily would take one look at it and dismiss it as too grand and indeed too large for their needs, but if she could see its advantages - its proximity to the city and to Hyde Park - she might be talked around. He told the agent he would have to think about it but in his own mind he had already decided to take it.