The Revenge of Captain Paine

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘That upset you, eh?’

  ‘More than pulling the trigger and decorating the wall behind you with pieces of your skull.’ Pyke poked the end of the pistol harder into his cheek. ‘Who told you about my wife? And what were you doing following me?’ He had other questions, about the old woman in Huntingdon, the actor Johnny and Freddie Sutton and his wife, but he would start here.

  When he moved, Trotter was as quick as a whip. In a single movement he picked up the metal bucket and hurled it as Pyke at the same time as diving for something next to his mattress.

  Pyke aimed and squeezed the trigger. The blast was deafening in such a confined space and the ball-shot tore into Trotter’s flesh, shattering his ribs and peppering his heart. The contents of the bucket, Trotter’s urine, stung his eyes and mouth.

  Trotter fell on to the mattress, a pool of blood spreading beneath him. Turning him over, Pyke stood above him, whispering, ‘Where can I find my wife and child? Try doing one good thing before you die.’ He could smell Trotter’s urine on his face and clothes.

  A blast of fetid air escaped from Trotter’s mouth and blood pooled around his chest. He was trying to whisper something. Pyke came closer. ‘What was that?’

  ‘I hope the bitch and brat die.’ His head lolled backwards and the spasms stopped. Blood continued to leak from the wound but Jimmy Trotter was dead.

  Pyke gave the room a quick search but apart from a knife that he kept next to his mattress there was nothing of interest. Downstairs he found the madam, Mrs Bennett, and paid her five pounds to arrange to have the body thrown into the river. He asked her about Bolter and the dog and whether they had ever visited Trotter, but she shook her head and said she’d never seen them.

  Pyke had shot a man but didn’t feel a thing: neither vindication nor relief, despite the unforgivable crimes that Trotter had committed. Still, as he walked back along Tooley Street in the direction of the river, he thought about what Trotter had said and experienced a sudden flutter in his heart. I hope they die. It suggested to him that Emily and Felix were both still alive.

  At half-past midday he met Godfrey’s lawyer, Geoffrey Quince, a King’s bencher no less, on the other side of Bow Street from the magistrates’ court. He had bought a new set of clothes and had washed himself in a tub of icy water in the kitchen of number forty-four but he could still smell his own sweat. Quince didn’t seem to notice or care and didn’t comment on the bruise under Pyke’s eye or his broken nose. Either he was completely unobservant, Pyke decided, or very diplomatic.

  ‘Did you see Bellows, then?’ Pyke asked, once they had found a seat in the nearby Brown Bear tavern.

  Quince nodded. He placed his stovepipe hat on his lap and adjusted his pale grey cravat. ‘But the man you described, Julian Jackman, wasn’t being held in any of the cells or the felons’ room.’ He glanced disparagingly around the smoky room. ‘To be honest, there wasn’t anyone down there who didn’t look like they belonged.’

  ‘And how was Bellows when you demanded to be allowed to inspect the cells?’

  Quince shrugged. ‘He didn’t seem concerned one way or the other.’

  Silently Pyke cursed his luck. He’d hoped that finding Jackman might shed some light on what had happened to Emily, and now he didn’t know where else to look for the radical.

  ‘Did he admit to playing a role in the raiding of various haunts frequented by the radicals in the East End?’

  Quince paused to consider this. ‘I think he might have smiled a little when I put the question to him but he chose not to answer it.’

  ‘Smiled? As if he was amused?’

  ‘I don’t know. Perhaps it wasn’t a smile. Look, Pyke, I did what you wanted me to do and your friend wasn’t there. Perhaps Bellows had some idea why I was there but then again perhaps he didn’t.’

  ‘And he didn’t come across as nervous, as if he was trying to hide something?’

  ‘I don’t understand.’ Quince stared down his long nose at Pyke. ‘What would the chief magistrate be trying to hide?’

  That afternoon, while he waited for Townsend to see whether there had been any further news delivered to the bank or Hambledon, he paid Barnaby Hodges a visit at his gaming house in Regent’s Quadrant. He was a squirrelly, ferret-faced man with sharp features and a mop of raven-black hair, and he agreed to talk to Pyke only when Jem Nash’s name was mentioned. Pyke also let it be known that he was an associate of Villums. That helped to open doors as well.

  ‘I’m presuming Villums explained that your boy owed my establishment just over seven thousand pounds when he was killed.’

  ‘Don’t get excited,’ Pyke said, staring at Hodges across his desk. ‘I’m not here to settle his debt.’

  Hodges wrapped his spindly fingers around a glass of whisky and brought it up to his lips. ‘I heard you’d made him a minor partner in the bank. I talked to my lawyer. We would be within our rights to claim our debt against his share of your profits.’

  ‘If you want to try, be my guest.’

  Hodges drank some more of the whisky. ‘Ned Villums warned me about you. Said I should be especially careful in your company.’

  ‘I just want to know whether you or anyone sent by you had any contact with Jem Nash on the night he was killed.’

  Hodges sat back in his chair and looked around his small office. ‘Like I told Ned, I sent one of my best men to chivvy Nash along a bit. He disappeared around the time that Nash was murdered.’

  ‘And you haven’t seen or heard from him since?’ Pyke regarded him sceptically.

  ‘That’s right.’

  Abruptly Pyke stood up and pulled down his frock-coat. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time.’

  ‘If you hear something from my lawyer,’ Hodges called out after him, ‘try not to take it personally.’

  But when six rolled around Townsend brought him no further news. Jo had passed word from Hambledon that no ransom letter had been delivered there. Nor had there been any word from Gore.

  It had been more than four days since the abduction and Pyke was still no closer to finding Emily and Felix.

  For an hour or so after Townsend had left, he wandered up and down the staircase of the enormous house, both to keep warm and to try to think of anything he might have missed. The Ionic columns of the first-floor mezzanine and the cut-glass chandelier that hung from the roof seemed to mock his pretensions, and the architectural flourishes, which he had initially found so entrancing, now seemed to be no more than bloated monuments to his vanity. As his footsteps echoed right the way up into the dome he tried to reassure himself with the thought that he had only paid a deposit and hadn’t committed himself for the whole year.

  In the grand chamber room - that was what the agent had called it, anyway - Pyke built a fire using the last of the kindling wood and tried to warm his hands, but the flames were weak and the wood quickly burned down. To replenish the fire, he ripped down the velvet curtains so carefully installed by the upholsterer, tore them into strips and fed them to the fire. Gleefully he sat cross-legged in front of the blaze and inspected his work. But the curtains didn’t last long. Before long he had broken up the Hepple- white table and chairs and loaded them on to the burgeoning fire, and soon after that there was nothing left in the room to burn. As he stared into the flames, Pyke retrieved the bottle of laudanum from his pocket, removed the cork stopper and pressed it to his lips. He drank until the sickly clear tincture was gone.

  It was dark and now he had burned the velvet curtains he could see outside to the square. The trees were bare and it had started to rain, little drops beating against the glass window. He stared into the darkness. Somewhere out there was Emily, pregnant with his child. And poor, frail little Felix. Settling himself by the fire again, he tried to get warm but the blaze had dwindled to nothing and he was soon shivering. Even the gin he drank on top of the laudanum failed to combat his shakes.

  At ten, when he knew that sleep was beyond him, Pyke collected his greatcoat from the e
ntrance hall and stepped out into the rain. The pavement in front of the house was wet and slippery from the fallen leaves. He walked briskly over to the other side of the square and then followed Berkeley Street to Piccadilly, where he crossed the road into Green Park. The park was deserted and the ground was marshy and sodden. In the dark sky, the yellow moon came and went behind clouds like a gargoyle. Pyke followed a track southwards towards Birdcage Walk, the outline of the new King’s Palace just about visible in the distance. From Green Park, he crossed over into St James’s Park and skirted around one end of the shallow lake. From there, he could see the army barracks, but when he finally reached Birdcage Walk there were no prostitutes or dolly mops idly patrolling the pavement in front of the barracks. The rain must have driven them indoors.

  There was a solitary carriage parked about a hundred yards farther back along the walk, and when he looked around, he saw the door swing open and heard a voice through the rain. Later, Pyke would find out that Marguerite had been following him for much of the day and had shadowed him to Birdcage Walk from the house on Berkeley Square, but at the time he followed the voice as if in a trance. There was something familiar about it.

  ‘Pyke.’

  Someone was calling his name.

  ‘Pyke.’

  He walked around the two black mares, both tossing their heads and snorting, and nodded to the driver.

  Slick with perspiration and illuminated by a gas lamp, Marguerite’s face looked as though it had somehow drifted free from the rest of her body, the whiteness of her skin set against her black cloak and the dark furnishings of the carriage.

  Pyke climbed up into the carriage and the door swung closed after him. His hands were still trembling. He felt a little feverish, despite the dampness of his clothes.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Gently she touched the gash under his eye and winced, out of empathy. ‘My poor darling.’

  They were sitting next to each other on the horsehair seat, the floor covered with wet straw.

  She pulled him towards her and kissed him on the mouth. It was like opening the door on to another time. For many years after she had left for Paris, he had thought of her almost every day, wondering what she might be doing and whether she still thought about him. With the passage of time, these thoughts had faded and dwindled to almost nothing. Or had they? Because the moment their lips touched, Pyke wanted to kiss her again, only harder this time, as Marguerite threaded her fingers through his coarse hair and pulled him still closer, their tongues intertwined in a sticky embrace. Now, all these years later, Pyke could taste only her sadness, and he wanted more of it because it spoke to a feeling locked up inside him that he couldn’t find any other way of touching. Pyke drew the curtains and grappled with the layers of her petticoats, too far gone to care about what he was doing or who he was with, but afterwards all he would remember was a blur of unfulfilled desire. Trousers around his ankles, he pulled up her petticoats and took her there in the carriage, the creaking vehicle rocking back and forth on that wet, deserted street as he finished in a series of jolting, painful spasms that made him feel simultaneously alive and yet one step from death.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  As the first shards of watery daylight leaked through the muslin curtains, Pyke was jolted from his sleep by a pungent smell that seemed as deeply familiar as his adolescent memories. He lay there for a while, the thought of what he had done flooding back to him along with the guilt. Next to him, the quiet murmurs of Marguerite’s breathing reassured Pyke she was still asleep, but he hardly dared turn his head to make sure, in case he woke her up. Where were they? He looked around the unfamiliar room, guessing that they had returned to Cranborne Park. He blinked and opened his eyes. Yes, he remembered now. What they had done in the carriage and then again in the bedroom. Was it shame he felt most acutely or guilt? he wondered. And what was the difference? Taking care not to disturb her, he slid from underneath the sheet and realised he was naked. Various items of his clothing were strewn across the floor. He had just put on his trousers when Marguerite called out, ‘You don’t have to creep around on my behalf, you know, Pyke.’ Her tone was warm and playful.

  Perhaps there had been news about Emily and Felix. He had to make his excuses and go. Turning around, he saw she was sitting up in the bed, the sheet pulled up around her shoulders, to cover her nakedness. She smiled. ‘I’ve often imagined what it would be like, waking up next to you again.’

  He picked up his shirt from the floor and started to put it on. ‘What happened last night shouldn’t have happened, Maggie.’

  ‘But it did, didn’t it?’

  Pyke couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

  ‘Do you regret it?’

  ‘I’m married to someone else, Maggie. I love my wife.’

  ‘Then why did you fuck me?’ she said, her tone becoming harder. She coiled the sheet a little more tightly around her body.

  ‘Because ...’He looked over at her and hesitated, not sure what to say. There were so many reasons he couldn’t fathom them all. And he detested having to make excuses for something he’d done. Accept, learn and move on. That was usually the way he did things. He wondered what he might learn from this.

  ‘Let’s face it, Pyke. You fucked me because you wanted to,’ she said, rearranging her hair. ‘You always did try to over-complicate things.’

  ‘And you’re the same old Maggie Shaw. Nothing ever got to you, did it?’

  ‘Is that what you thought?’ She stopped fiddling with her hair, her face quizzical rather than angry.

  ‘What I thought fifteen years ago doesn’t really matter now, does it?’

  ‘Maybe you should have looked a little more closely,’ she said, with a small shake of the head.

  ‘Would it have made a difference?’

  ‘You tell me.’ Marguerite waited until she was certain he was listening and added, without changing her tone, ‘You know I was carrying our child when I left for Paris all those years ago.’

  Her tone had been so matter-of-fact that it took him a few seconds to comprehend what she’d just told him. He hadn’t known, of course. And yes, it might have made all the difference. He had to sit down on the end of the bed, his head suddenly alive with useless possibilities.

  ‘I had it in Paris,’ she said, without shifting position in the bed.

  ‘A boy or a girl?’ Finally he managed to look at her, not sure whether he wanted to hug or beat her with his fists.

  ‘A boy.’

  ‘Is he still ...’

  ‘Alive?’ Marguerite shook her head, her eyes empty and sad. ‘He died just before his fifth birthday.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant when I left London.’

  ‘But why didn’t you send me a note from Paris once he’d been born?’

  ‘I didn’t have an address.’

  ‘But you knew where Godfrey lived. Where Godfrey still lives.’ He heard himself getting angry.

  Perhaps that’s what she wanted, Pyke thought, trying to make sense of the opaque expression on her face.

  ‘Would it have made a difference if you’d known?’ This time her tone was gentler and more conciliatory.

  ‘He was my son.’ Briefly Pyke thought about the burial ceremony he’d witnessed, Marguerite and Bolter standing over the freshly dug grave. Had that been him? The grave had surely been too small. The boy, if he’d lived, would have been fifteen or sixteen years old. And Marguerite had just told him that he had died when he was five, the same age as Felix, some time in the twenties: 1826 or ’27.

  ‘He was my son, Pyke. You’d already chosen a different life.’

  ‘And this was your way of punishing me for that decision? Keeping me from my own flesh and blood?’

  ‘It wasn’t about you. Don’t you understand that? I didn’t have time to think about what was right or wrong. In case you didn’t know, raising a child in a foreign city on your own isn’t an easy task.’

 
Pyke nodded, not wanting her to see he was as angry as he was. ‘So what was his name?’

  ‘James.’

  ‘James.’ He repeated the name. Saying it out loud didn’t make him any more real.

  ‘He was the most beautiful boy you’ve ever seen. White-blond hair and the bluest eyes.’ She was crying now but Pyke didn’t feel like trying to comfort her.

  ‘How did he die?’

  Marguerite sniffed and dried her eyes on the sheet. ‘He caught a fever. He fought it like a little tiger but, in the end, the fever spread to his lungs.’

  ‘Why tell me about it now? I mean, what fucking purpose has it served, telling me after all these years, apart from rubbing my nose in it?’

  ‘I thought . . .’

  ‘You thought what?’

  She stared at him, shocked by his anger. ‘God, you’re a cold, self-centred bastard. I thought last night meant something.’

  ‘One fuck and everything is just as it was before. Is that it?’ Pyke shook his head, already sorry he’d said it. ‘I have a family, Maggie. I have a wife and I have a son.’

  For a moment he wasn’t sure whether she’d cry or scream. In the end, it was something between the two. ‘Well, I fucking don’t.’

  ‘Is that what this is about? Punishing me because I have what you want?’

  ‘Do you think I want you? Eddy may have been a molly but he was still twice the man you’ll ever be ...’

  ‘What did you say?’

  Ignoring him, Marguerite said, ‘After James died, Eddy picked me up out of the gutter and took care of me. I always felt safe with him, Pyke. That’s something I never knew with you.’

  ‘You said Edward was a molly?’

  ‘What?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Didn’t you know? Pyke, the once famous detective, didn’t know my husband was a mandrake?’

  Pyke stood up and walked across to the window. She was right. All the signs had been there. He’d just missed them: her offhand references to a Platonic marriage, Morris’s outburst on the night of his death when, apparently, he’d called himself a ‘dirty monster’. Rationally Pyke knew it made sense but it didn’t alleviate his shock.