The Revenge of Captain Paine

by Andrew Pepper

  ‘He told me to tell you he’d be drinking at the Queen’s Head in Battle Bridge until about nine.’

  It was a miserable night: very dark, very cold and very muddy, and a blanket of fog had fallen on the capital. Even the occasional gas lamp did little to illuminate the street and make it easy to see where they were going. They left the road and cut through some carpet-beating grounds and vegetable patches left derelict by the building work, as Pyke followed William Hancock down a steep, treacherous path into the giant man-made ravine created by the railway construction work. As Hancock explained, when it was completed, a vast, stationary steam engine would pull the trains up the steep hill from the railway’s terminus at Euston Square to join up with the railway line at Camden Town. In fact, Hancock had said little to him in the pub: only that he had been instructed to show Pyke something. He wouldn’t say what it was and he seemed nervous, on edge. Now, half an hour later, Pyke wondered about the wisdom of following a man he’d never met before into the bowels of a deserted construction site. Their descent was slow-going, not helped by the ankle-deep mud and the dense wall of fog that made it hard to see more than a few yards in front. After perhaps fifteen minutes of painstaking progress, on their hands and backsides at times, the ground levelled out and he guessed they must have reached the floor of the construction site. He looked back up the slope but couldn’t see a thing. The fog was at its thickest at the very bottom of the ravine, a swirling, freezing blanket of white that made it hard for Pyke to see his own hands, let alone follow Hancock. They stayed close to each other and Hancock skilfully negotiated a path through piles of brick rubble and lengths of iron rails. Finally they came to a halt by a tall stack of wooden sleepers, Hancock turning to him and whispering, ‘Jackman told me to find you, if something happened to him.’ In the fog and the darkness, Pyke couldn’t properly see his expression but his voice sounded feathery and nervous.

  ‘And has something happened?’ Pyke looked around and saw an earth mound and a half-built brick wall.

  ‘You could say that.’ Hancock laughed bitterly and pointed at something behind Pyke. ‘If and when it clears . . .’

  Pyke spun around but couldn’t see anything for a few moments, just a blanket of dense fog. He was expecting the worst, though, his heart thumping, his mouth parched of moisture. Still, in spite of his preparedness, he had to blink twice when the fog did finally clear. His legs buckled and bile tickled his throat. For there in front of him, rising above them in the night sky, was a makeshift crucifix, and affixed to it, with nails that had been hammered through his hands and ankles, was the figure of Julian Jackman. The fog rolled back across the ravine floor, temporarily obscuring the wooden cross, but when it next cleared, Pyke had positioned himself almost directly under the crucifix and stared up at Jackman’s contorted face. Pyke couldn’t tell how recently the radical had died but his blood, which had dripped on to the cross, had now dried. If they’d bound Jackman’s hands and ankles to the crucifix with rope and hammered the nails in while he’d still been alive, Pyke could only imagine the terrible pain the radical must have suffered. Certainly his face was almost unrecognisable: his hair matted to his face with sweat and his eyes, as large as walnuts, almost bulging out of their sockets. The man’s neck was corded with veins, too. In the end, Pyke had to look away, and it was only then he saw the plaque, nailed clumsily to the foot of the cross. Crouching down, he had a closer look. The words ‘Swinish multitude: know thy place and stay there’ had been scratched on to a piece of wood and underneath had been added ‘Captain Paine, RIP’.

  ‘What’s that?’ Hancock asked, bending down next to him.

  For a few moments, Pyke was too nonplussed to speak. The dawning realisation of what Jackman’s corpse meant and who, doubtless, had ordered the crucifixion struck him with the force of a cannonball. There could be no other explanation. The killing was a warning to the navvies. Know thy place. Later William Hancock would confirm what Pyke had already surmised: that Jackman and the Wat Tyler Brigade had been agitating amongst the navvies on the Birmingham railway. But in those first seconds it was instinct which led Pyke’s thoughts in a particular direction. The bloodied corpse was a warning. To whom? The navvies. And from whom? The only possible answer was the owners of the Birmingham railway. The men who would stand to lose most if Jackman’s agitation mutated into strikes and other actions. And who was the chairman and largest shareholder of the Birmingham railway? All roads came back to Gore. Rage, humiliation and consternation assaulted Pyke in equal measure. Gore wasn’t the potential ally he had imagined. Over and over, Pyke kept returning to the same question. How could he have been so stupid and so blind? The events in Huntingdon had just been a distraction. The real fight had been over unionising the navvies working on the Birmingham railway. Gore’s railway. Gore, who had overseen a bloody campaign of retribution and punishment while simultaneously presenting himself to Pyke as a fair-minded, kindly soul. A champion of English liberty and a defender of the right to free speech. It was all a sham. And Pyke had believed him. It was this which galled him the most.

  ‘Whoever killed him believed that Jackman was Captain Paine.’ Pyke stood up and waited for Hancock to do likewise. When Hancock offered no response, he added, ‘Who found him?’

  ‘A couple of the navvies came to our safe house earlier today and told us about it.’

  Pyke nodded. ‘I’m guessing this was left here during the day.’

  ‘For everyone to look at,’ Hancock, said trying to hold back his tears. ‘Apparently one of the navvies demanded that someone take it down and he was beaten by the ganger with a truncheon.’

  Hundreds of navvies would have seen it. Gore would have wanted it that way. This was meant to be a warning, after all.

  ‘What were you trying to do here?’

  ‘Who, me?’

  ‘The Wat Tyler Brigade.’

  Hancock stared down at his boots. ‘Next week, Jackman was going to tell the world that more ’n three-quarters of the navvies working on the Birmingham railway had sworn their oaths and they were going to call a strike demanding more money and better working conditions. Once that news had broken, Jackman was going to announce that the navvies working on the Great Western, the Grand Northern and the Brighton and Greenwich lines had joined the strike as well: one big union joining the navvy men together up and down the whole country.’

  ‘And that’s what you’ve all been working to do, these past few months? Gather signatures and give the navvies reassurance, moral support ...’ Pyke already knew that Jackman and his crew had been agitating among the navvies but, even so, he was taken aback by the scale of their plans: what they had been able to do and how close they had come to achieving their ambitions.

  ‘And money,’ Hancock said, quickly, looking down at the mud, perhaps realising he’d said too much.

  ‘That’s where my wife, Emily, came in, I presume.’ He paused, and added, ‘With her money.’

  Hancock shuffled awkwardly from leg to leg. ‘It’s been an expensive business, sir, travelling the length of the country. We also promised the navvy men money to keep ’em in food and ale while they striked.’

  ‘Lucky for you my wife has deep pockets.’

  But Hancock shook his head, apparently angered by this insinuation. ‘No, sir, that weren’t it at all. Not at all.’

  ‘Then how was it?’

  ‘We weren’t taking money from her pocket like you just said. She wanted to give it, sir.’

  Pyke shook his head, irritated. He didn’t want to be having this conversation with a stranger.

  ‘You still don’t understand, sir. All of this was her idea. All of it. She weren’t just a little rich girl giving us her money.’ There were tears in his eyes now.

  Pyke’s legs buckled. The shock was palpable. But Hancock hadn’t finished, not by a long chalk. He dug his hands into his pockets and said, in the same frightened tone, ‘You see, she’s Captain Paine, sir. She has been from the very beginning. Not Jackman or
no one else. It’s always been Mrs Emily.’ Hancock had finished his speech but he couldn’t bring himself to look at Pyke.

  For a few moments Pyke wandered around in the shadow of the crucifix in a daze, the news he had been given too overwhelming to take in. Emily was Captain Paine. Still the idea refused to sink in. Was it possible? He took a few gulps of cold air and tried to focus his mind.

  ‘The arson attack on the Granby Street terraces?’ Pyke racked his brains for other snippets of information.

  Hancock nodded. ‘That was Mrs Emily. Some of us helped clear out the houses, though.’

  ‘And the fire at the warehouse near Birmingham?’

  ‘That was us, too.’

  ‘Emily picked up a bruise,’ Pyke started, still too dazed to think clearly.

  ‘We were ambushed by a couple of watchmen and had to fight our way out of the warehouse.’

  Not knowing whether to feel angry or proud, Pyke looked at the half-naked figure of Jackman, hanging from the crucifix. No, he felt stupid. That was it. He felt stupid and betrayed. How could he not have noticed? And how could she not have told him? Didn’t she trust him enough? But as the sheer shock of Hancock’s hammer blows started to wear off, Pyke found himself thinking about other, even less palatable possibilities. If Jackman had been nailed to two planks of wood for his part in this business, what might lie in store for Emily, especially since, if Hancock was to be believed, she had orchestrated the whole thing? That possibility made him feel sick, and he tried to reassure himself, perversely, with the thought that Cumberland had arranged her kidnapping and she would be safe in his protection for as long as he believed that Pyke had Conroy’s letters. The fact that the duke had snatched her, rather than someone else, might be what kept her alive, he thought, savouring the irony. His pregnant wife. And Felix. He couldn’t forget about his frail little son.

  ‘So what will happen now?’ Pyke asked, staring up at Jackman’s hollow, bloated face.

  Hancock looked at him and shrugged. ‘I’d like it if you could help me take this thing down and bury Jackman’s body.’

  ‘I meant with the plans to get the navvies to swear their oaths and call a strike?’

  ‘Word of this will have spread as far as Birmingham by first thing in the morning. Do you really think anyone will want to strike now?’

  Pyke put his hands around the foot of the crucifix to see how deeply the stake had been driven into the ground. ‘In which case Jackman will have lost his life for nothing.’

  ‘Not for nothing, sir. He died a hero, a martyr, and by the time we’re finished, folk up and down the coun’ry will know his name and his sacrifice.’

  ‘And Emily?’ Pyke’s mouth was still dry and his head dizzy. ‘You have any news about her?’

  Hancock stopped trying to loosen the crucifix and looked over at Pyke. ‘She told us she was giving it all up for you and your son. Because it’s what you wanted.’ His tone was cold and accusatory. ‘These last few weeks had taken it out of her. She said that once the strike was announced, she was going to withdraw from her role: spend more time with you.’

  ‘That might have been her intention, but she was abducted five days ago, together with our son.’

  Later, after they had taken Jackman down from the cross and buried him, using a pick and spade Hancock had brought with him, Pyke followed the radical back up the side of the ravine, but one question, more than any other, dominated his thoughts.

  Did Gore know that Emily was Captain Paine?

  It was a ten-minute walk from the top of the Hampstead Road to Godfrey’s apartment in Camden Town, and once there Pyke proceeded to tell his uncle everything he had found out.

  When he had finished, Godfrey poured them both a glass of claret and asked him how or whether this new revelation affected the search for Emily and Felix. Pyke told him about the ransom demand he’d received from the Duke of Cumberland and said that the safest place for Emily and Felix right now was in the duke’s care.

  ‘But Gore now knows that she’s been abducted,’ Godfrey said. ‘Perhaps he’ll be looking for her, too.’

  Pyke conceded the point and again kicked himself for having taken Gore into his confidence.

  ‘I heard back from this fellow I’d asked to look into Bellows’s recent activities in the property market.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It seems the chief magistrate started to buy up derelict buildings along the New Road at the beginning of last year. He now owns ten or so properties, all within spitting distance of Euston Square.’ There was a spark in Godfrey’s eye. He’d already reached the same conclusion as Pyke.

  ‘The terminus of the Birmingham railway.’

  ‘Exactly, dear boy. But if you remember, at the time, the plan was for the railway to terminate just around the corner from here, not down the hill in Euston. The buildings nearest to the proposed station were snapped up by developers. The plan was to turn them into a railway hotel and boarding houses.’

  ‘Then in June or July, an Act of Parliament comes along authorising the extension of the railway line to Euston.’

  ‘July,’ Godfrey said. ‘And the company pushed hard for it. They had to go back to Parliament because the extension is going to cost another four hundred thousand pounds. They’re building this monstrous contraption just down the road from here that will pull the trains up the hill from Euston. I’m told the company reckoned a terminus there would be more convenient than one in Camden.’

  ‘And in the meantime, let me guess. The price of property along the New Road in Somers Town has soared, and Bellows has made himself a small fortune.’

  ‘I think it’s fair to assume that Bellows was forewarned about plans to move the terminus to Euston.’

  Pyke nodded, his fists clenched into balls. ‘One presumes by Abraham Gore.’ He thought about Gore’s intervention in Godfrey’s libel trial and the violent words he had exchanged with Bellows at the coroner’s meeting. These, Pyke supposed now, had merely been cynical ploys to win Pyke’s friendship and favour and to distract his attention from what was really happening. All of which threw fresh light on to Morris’s death and, in turn, cast suspicion back on to Gore. Had he conspired, after all, to murder his ‘oldest, dearest’ friend? The thought was almost too monstrous to imagine. If Pyke hadn’t seen Jackman’s body nailed to the crucifix, he might not have believed it possible. But who knew what a man like Gore was capable of?

  ‘Gore and Bellows,’ Pyke said, gritting his teeth. More than anything else he wanted to confront the banker and beat the truth out of him, but a more subtle strategy was required.

  ‘Gore, Bellows and Conroy,’ Godfrey corrected him. ‘Don’t forget the egregious comptroller.’

  Pyke took a sip of wine and felt the excitement building in his stomach. Godfrey was quite right. The three of them were tied up together. Everything was starting to make more sense.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  It was after one o’clock in the morning by the time Pyke made it up to Hampstead Heath and hammered on the front door of Fitzroy Tilling’s home. The worst of the fog had cleared but in front of the stout, red-brick property, mist-covered allotments and denuded apple trees shivered in the freezing temperature. It took a number of thumps to arouse Sir Robert Peel’s private secretary, and when he finally opened the door, wearing a gown and carrying a lantern, and saw it was Pyke, he wearily shook his head, muttering, ‘I might’ve guessed it would be you.’ Rubbing his eyes, he invited Pyke into the front room. As he did so, a ginger cat bolted past their ankles into the warm house. ‘I see things haven’t changed much,’ Pyke commented, as he settled into one of the uncomfortable horsehair chairs and watched as Tilling poured them both a glass of brandy, the cat coiled around his leg. It didn’t take much to revive the fire and, with a little brandy inside him, Pyke quickly felt sensation returning to his fingers and toes.

  ‘God, you look like shit, Pyke,’ Tilling said, peering at him from the other side of the hearth. He was, by no means, a good-lo
oking man, with his receding hairline and bug-like eyes, but his olive skin and ink-black hair glowed in the flickering light produced by the candle and fire.

  ‘You mean the bruise?’ Pyke rubbed his cheek and smiled. ‘I got into a tussle with a bareknuckle fighter and lived to tell the tale.’

  ‘Should have seen the other man, eh?’

  ‘I ripped off his scrotum.’ Pyke hesitated and shrugged. ‘I don’t imagine he’ll be adding his progeny to the human race.’

  Tilling took a sip of brandy, not reacting to the story. ‘Why don’t you tell me what brings you to my house at half-past one in the morning?’ With a nimble leap, the marmalade cat jumped up into Tilling’s lap.

  ‘I need to talk to Peel.’

  Tilling waited for the cat to settle down in his lap. ‘Peel’s convalescing at Drayton Manor. He caught a fever and isn’t planning to return to London for at least another week or two.’

  ‘You’ll forgive me if I don’t pass on my condolences.’

  Tilling regarded him carefully. ‘I take it you have a particular gripe with Peel?’

  ‘A gripe. Hmm.’ Pyke considered this for a moment. ‘You could say that. Do you remember the radical, Julian Jackman? Peel certainly knows him.’

  Tilling didn’t answer but rather waited for Pyke to continue, stroking the purring cat.

  ‘I found Jackman about two hours ago nailed to a cross on the construction site of the Birmingham railway near Camden.’

  If the news was a surprise to Tilling, he didn’t show it. ‘And that’s what you woke me up to tell me?’

  ‘Is that all you’re prepared to say? A man was crucified. Six-inch nails were driven through his ankles and hands. He died the most horrible death imaginable.’

  Tilling nodded, acknowledging Pyke’s outrage and anger. ‘Perhaps you should tell me how you think any of this relates to Peel.’

  ‘About a month ago, he called me to his office at Westminster and persuaded me, you might even say blackmailed me, to perform a dirty little task for him. He wanted me to prove or disprove that Jackman was Captain Paine.’