The Detective Branch

by Andrew Pepper

  Pyke had hoped that he wouldn’t get riled by the archdeacon’s manner but already he could feel his stomach knotting. ‘I don’t need your permission to consult the parish accounts. Nor to conduct a search of Guppy’s study and private papers.’

  Wynter wetted his lips. ‘Then why are we having this conversation?’

  Pyke met his stare and held it. ‘I have to say I’m surprised to see you back here so soon after last night.’

  ‘If I didn’t know you already, Detective Inspector, I would be deeply offended by your peculiar insinuation. A highly respected and much loved man of God has been murdered in the most ghastly of circumstances. I’m simply trying to do what I can to bring comfort to those he cared for.’

  ‘You’re quite right about the circumstances. Someone didn’t just kill the rector; they decimated him. It’s my guess that whoever picked up that hammer believed that Guppy had done him a great wrong.’

  ‘That may turn out to be true, sir, but our city is a dangerous and violent place.’

  ‘So you think this might have been a random attack?’ Pyke didn’t bother to hide his scepticism.

  ‘What I think, Detective Inspector, is that you should establish some facts before you jump to any conclusions.’

  ‘Perhaps you’re correct, Archdeacon, in which case I’ll offer you my humble apology. Perhaps an escaped Bedlamite took a hammer to the poor rector for no ostensible reason. But in my experience the way someone commits a murder tells us something about their reasons for doing so. This attack suggests, to me at least, a great deal of anger.’

  Wynter eyed him cautiously. ‘I am just as keen as you are, sir, to see the monster who perpetrated this act facing justice in a court of law.’

  Pyke waited for a moment. He still didn’t understand why the archdeacon had returned to the rectory, having been there only the previous night. ‘I’m intrigued, Archdeacon. What was the precise nature of your relationship with the rector?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Did you know him well?’

  ‘Reasonably well.’

  ‘As I understand it, you occupy the second-most important position in the Church hierarchy after the bishop. The rector of a parish like St Botolph’s is an important man in his own right but I would imagine there would be canons, sub-canons and deans to deal with such lesser mortals?’

  ‘The rector of St Botolph’s is an important post in our Church family, sir. Perhaps you didn’t know that our much-beloved bishop once occupied this very office?’ Wynter allowed himself a faint smile. ‘I have liaised closely with Guppy on matters relating to the administration of this parish.’

  ‘So you would consider him to be a friend?’

  ‘In my capacity as archdeacon I know him well, in his capacity as rector.’

  Pyke nodded. He had to admit it was a good answer; slippery but good. ‘But what does a rector actually do?’

  ‘How long do you have, Detective Inspector?’ Wynter offered him a patronising smile and Pyke had to suppress an urge to slap his face.

  They talked like this for another five minutes but Pyke learned little or nothing that he didn’t already know or couldn’t have worked out for himself. Then, for the following hour, Pyke conducted a fruitless search of Guppy’s study and sought in vain to make head or tail of the parish accounts that Wynter and the churchwarden had set aside for him.

  To his surprise, Wynter was still there when Pyke emerged from the study.

  ‘Your dedication to the pastoral needs of your flock knows no bounds,’ Pyke said to Wynter, while one of the servants fetched his greatcoat.

  The archdeacon smiled, aware that Pyke had been trying to mock him. ‘I hope you don’t feel that your time here was wasted, Detective Inspector.’

  The servant appeared and Pyke took his coat. ‘Tell me. Did your crucifix ever turn up?’

  Just for a moment the archdeacon seemed thrown by this sudden shift of focus. ‘Sadly I think it’s lost to the Church for ever.’

  Mayne kept Pyke waiting for about a minute or two. There was no chair for him to sit on, so he stood, looking around the room, while the commissioner attended to the papers on his desk.

  ‘I believe you went to the rectory at St Botolph’s today and exchanged words with the archdeacon.’ Mayne put down his pen and looked up at Pyke.

  ‘The archdeacon was there and yes, we had a conversation. But I went to St Botolph’s to conduct a search of the dead man’s study.’

  Mayne nodded, as though he already knew this to be true. ‘Would I be correct in assuming you don’t much care for the established Church?’

  ‘Whether I care for the Church or not is beside the point. I’m investigating a murder.’

  Mayne glanced down at the pile of papers on his desk and then back up at Pyke. ‘I’m just asking you to treat men like the archdeacon with some sensitivity.’

  Pyke didn’t want to give Mayne any indication of the anger he could feel building inside him. ‘Are you telling me, Sir Richard, that the affairs of the deceased are somehow not relevant to this investigation?’

  ‘There are ways and means, Pyke, ways and means,’ Mayne said, not bothering to hide his frustration. ‘If a high-ranking figure in the Church is displeased, his displeasure will be made clear to figures who, in turn, have dominion over my operations here at Scotland Yard. Do you understand my predicament?’

  ‘Some might understand that as interfering with an official police investigation,’ Pyke said, perhaps too quickly.

  Mayne’s expression remained distant but Pyke could tell from the hardness of his mouth that he was disappointed. ‘It isn’t often a member of the clergy is murdered, and in such dire circumstances. More particularly, the public’s appetite has been whetted by reports of the manhunt conducted yesterday in Whitechapel and Bethnal Green.’

  Pyke waited and said nothing. Mayne continued, ‘It is imperative we find the brute who perpetrated this act as quickly and, may I say, as efficiently as possible. As such, I have decided to make Superintendent Wells and his men available to you for the investigation.’

  This was a humiliation that Pyke had hoped to avoid, but ever since Wells’s meddling on the night of the murder he’d known it was a distinct possibility. ‘Superintendent Wells is to take charge of the investigation?’

  Mayne gave him a hard, dispassionate stare. ‘I am hoping that the two of you will work together.’

  ‘May I ask why you’ve taken this decision?’ Pyke waited for an answer but Mayne had already turned to the papers in front of him.

  ‘You do know that by constantly drawing upon the assistance of the Executive Branch you run the risk of undermining the autonomy of the Detective Branch?’

  This time Mayne looked up at him, his brow furrowed. ‘That will be all, Detective Inspector.’

  At the door of the Detective Branch’s main office, Pyke listened as Lockhart and Gerrett teased Frederick Shaw about a woman he had apparently met at a dinner hosted by one of his father’s friends. ‘I hope her mind was as ample as her figure, Frederick,’ Lockhart was saying. Gerrett just guffawed. Hearing footsteps in the corridor, and not wanting to be exposed as an eavesdropper, Pyke opened the door. The office suddenly fell silent and Pyke was surprised to see not just Shaw, Gerrett and Lockhart but also Whicher and Walter Wells. Wells was grinning, enjoying the good-natured banter in the room. The idea that his detectives were more comfortable talking to one another in front of Wells than him baffled and disappointed Pyke in equal measure. ‘Find out anything new at the rectory?’ Whicher asked.

  ‘Nothing I didn’t already know.’ Pyke turned to Wells. ‘Superintendent. I believe we’ll have the pleasure of your company on this investigation.’

  The others nodded in agreement. Billy Gerrett made a point of telling Wells how much he was looking forward to working with him. ‘I’m presuming you will be in change of the investigation as superintendent,’ he added.

  If anything, Gerrett had put on even more weight during t
he autumn. It was the fat under his neck which most repulsed Pyke; the fact that his chin had all but disappeared into a mound of stubbly flesh.

  Wells glanced over at Pyke and smiled. ‘I’m merely here to assist Detective Inspector Pyke. That is all.’

  It was a gracious concession and it made Pyke wonder whether he’d judged Wells too harshly. But almost immediately, Wells said, ‘I’m presuming our first task will be to determine how to conduct the search for Hiley?’

  ‘It’s certainly one avenue we need to pursue,’ Pyke said, wondering whether Wells had briefed the men in his absence.

  ‘There are others?’ Wells asked.

  ‘I talked to the curate of a neighbouring church. He’s known Hiley for much of his life and told me he didn’t believe the man was capable of such a cold-blooded murder.’

  ‘And yet, according to the superintendent here, all of the evidence would seem to point to the contrary.’ There was a note of confrontation in Gerrett’s tone and Pyke wondered what had emboldened him.

  Wells must have seen Pyke’s expression because he smiled apologetically. ‘I should have waited, I know, but I talked to the police constable who saw the man in the churchyard. The description he gave exactly matches one provided by those who know Hiley.’

  ‘But did he actually see this man attacking Guppy?’

  Wells shook his head. Pyke exhaled loudly. This wasn’t new information and yet Wells had presented it to the men as exactly that.

  ‘The question surely is,’ Lockhart said, to Wells rather than to Pyke, ‘if Hiley is innocent of all wrongdoing, then where is he? His flight is surely indicative of his guilt?’

  It was a good point and almost impossible to refute. Gerrett and Shaw nodded briskly. Feeling cornered, Pyke said, ‘It’s true we need to find Francis Hiley as quickly as possible, but we also need to establish or disprove his culpability. In that sense, we need to know as much as possible about him.’ He turned to Lockhart. ‘I want you to visit Coldbath Fields, see what you can find out about him there; what kind of a prisoner he was, whether he received any visitors.’

  Lockhart nodded. Pyke then shifted his attention to Gerrett and Shaw. ‘I want you two to consult the court records. Hiley was found guilty of manslaughter but he was only sentenced to two years in prison. Maybe there were others, in addition to Jakes, who spoke up for him.’

  Wells nodded approvingly at Pyke’s proposed course of action. ‘I will lead the operation on the ground. Even as we speak, twenty of my finest men are scouring the streets of the East End for witnesses who might have seen Hiley on the night of the murder.’ He paused and added, ‘If he’s out there, if he’s hiding, I predict he’ll be in our custody by nightfall.’

  Later, after the others had departed, Whicher handed Pyke an envelope that had been left for him earlier that morning. Pyke inspected it. There was no indication of who had sent it.

  ‘I take it you have your doubts that Hiley is the killer?’ Whicher said.

  Pyke shrugged. ‘I just don’t like the way everyone is already measuring him up for the noose.’

  Almost as an afterthought, he added, ‘Do you know if Gerrett and Lockhart are still on friendly terms with Pierce?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Whicher took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘They both seemed to like him when he was head of the Detective Branch.’

  Pyke nodded, trying to assess where their loyalties now lay. ‘And Shaw?’

  ‘Frederick would never turn against you. He’s too beholden to hierarchy and you’re his superior.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘It’s probably nothing. It’s just I’ve noticed he’s spending more time with Gerrett and Lockhart after hours.’

  ‘Is that such a surprise? Given they all billet in the same quarters?’

  Whicher shrugged. ‘I think maybe you should keep an eye on him. Lockhart, too. That’s all.’

  Pyke looked down at the envelope in his hand. The words ‘Detective Inspector Pyke’ had been written in careful, looping letters. Retrieving a letter opener from his desk, he slit it open and pulled out a piece of writing paper. It looked like a poem; indeed, the words were vaguely familiar. He read and reread the lyrics: Now the sneaking serpent walks / In mild humility, / And the just man rages in the wilds / Where lions roam. Still puzzling over the poem, he almost didn’t see the address penned at the bottom of the page.

  28 Broad Street.

  ‘Broad Street.’ Pyke handed Whicher the note and added, ‘How good’s your knowledge of London?’

  Whicher took the note and studied it. ‘Better than my knowledge of poetry.’

  EIGHT

  Broad Street was typical of the district; a ramshackle place with two irregular rows of terraces facing one another. It had once been a respectable, even fashionable, address, but its wealthy residents had long since crossed Regent’s Street to Mayfair and the once grand buildings had now been carved up into apartments and rooms that were let, sublet and sublet again until upwards of fifty people might be crammed into the same space. No. 28 stood at the junction with Marshall Street. To get there, Pyke had to walk past a row of shops and businesses: a grocer, apothecary, machinist, tailor, bonnet-maker, beer shop and an ironmonger. The building itself was a stucco-clad terrace house from the time of Queen Anne and, as with the other buildings on the street, there were numerous plates and bells next to the front door. Pyke picked one of the bells at random and pulled it, waiting on the front step while the chimes echoed somewhere in the belly of the building.

  A stout, middle-aged woman wearing a cotton dress and a woollen shawl opened the door. Pyke introduced himself as a police detective and explained that an anonymous note had been passed to him bearing a few lines of poetry and that address.

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’m just trying to determine why someone might have sent the note.’

  Still blocking his path into the building, the woman looked at him and sighed. ‘When you told me you were a policeman, I assumed you were here to rake over what happened in the summer.’

  Pyke looked past her into the entrance hall. ‘And what exactly did happen in the summer?’

  Crestfallen, the women lowered her voice and said, ‘A young child died. Poor mite fell to his death. It was said that one of the lodgers who resided on the top floor deliberately dropped him over the banisters. There was a trial and the man was found guilty. I don’t know any more about it than that.’

  ‘Who lives up there now?’

  ‘No one, as far as I know.’ The woman looked at him and sniffed. ‘No one’s lived there since it happened.’

  Pyke found out which room the woman rented - her name was Mrs Morris - and told her that he’d like to talk to her further, after he’d taken a look upstairs. The air in the hallway smelled of stale food and mildew and paper was peeling and flaking from the soot-blackened walls. He ascended the creaking staircase two steps at a time and paused for a moment on the first-floor landing. The building was absolutely quiet. Perhaps, he surmised, the residents were all working. The stairs leading up to the top floor were a little wider and, as he mounted them, Pyke wondered whether this was where the child had fallen - or been dropped. He did remember reading about the incident and the subsequent trial but that was all. On the landing there were three doors, all closed but none of them locked. Pushing the first one open, he waited on the threshold and called out, ‘Hello?’ No one answered. Light flooded in through two large windows and there were some pieces of old furniture but otherwise the room was deserted. The other two rooms were also empty. It was just as the woman had said: no one had lived up here for months.

  Having got the name and address of the landlord from Mrs Morris, Pyke stood outside on the pavement and looked up at the building. Who had sent him the note and what were the few lines of poetry meant to suggest?

  Jabez Sylvester ran his practice from the ground floor of a building in nearby West Street. After a brief conversation with one of the clerks, Pyke was shown into
the lawyer’s office, where Sylvester was sitting at his desk reading, a selection of leather-bound volumes lining the bookcase behind him. He was sixtyish, and had grown plump on his modest success. He dressed like a gentleman and greeted Pyke with little enthusiasm. With some cajoling Pyke finally managed to elicit the full story of what had happened at No. 28 and later that afternoon he was able to corroborate the lawyer’s account with the official record of the trial.

  Brendan Malloy, a former Catholic priest from the west of Ireland, had been the main witness for the prosecution, alleging that on the tenth of June a man called Ebenezer Druitt, who also lodged in one of the upstairs rooms at No. 28, had deliberately and with malice aforethought dropped a ten-month-old child down the stairs to his death. During the trial, Malloy had alleged that Druitt had committed this ‘vile, wicked act’ out of jealousy over his own attachment to the infant’s mother, Sarah Scott, also a resident in the building. Druitt had pleaded not guilty to the charges and during cross-examination had sought to paint the former Catholic priest as a Devil worshipper and a man who’d been forced to leave the Church as a result of perverse sexual desires. In the end, the judge, Mr Justice Parks, had ruled that ‘intent to kill’ had not been proven and the charge was reduced from murder to manslaughter. After an hour of deliberation, the jury had found Druitt guilty of ‘fatally mishandling’ the infant and the judge had sentenced him to five years’ imprisonment in Pentonville. During his summing up, the judge had remarked on Druitt’s sneering indifference to the fate of the child and to the suffering of the mother, Sarah Scott, who hadn’t been called as a witness.