The Detective Branch

by Andrew Pepper

  Pyke didn’t remember much as the pallbearers lowered the coffin into the grave, and once they’d done so, no one moved, apparently waiting for him to take the lead. For a moment, he wanted the crowd to swallow him up, wanted to be anywhere else but there at Godfrey’s graveside. Then, as if sensing Pyke’s paralysis, Felix stepped forward, took a handful of dirt and threw it on top of the coffin. Others followed. Pyke put his arm around Felix and whispered, ‘Thank you.’

  Afterwards, in the Turk’s Head, Pyke greeted the mourners and invited them to partake of the food and drink laid out on the table.

  He noticed Jo only once she’d taken off her hood, her flame-red hair visible from the other side of the room. She’d been Felix’s nursemaid, governess and friend for the first ten years of his life. She’d also shared Pyke’s bed for a much briefer period, an attachment beginning and ending in the same summer about four years earlier. Pyke had often wondered about her, what had become of her, and he was surprised at how pleased he felt to see her. It was just the grief, he told himself, as he strode across the room to greet her; anyway, she had been an important part of their lives for a long time.

  ‘You look well,’ he said, shaking her hand. She did, too. Her pale skin was as free of blemishes as he remembered, but now she wore her ginger hair in ringlets, some of which hung down, framing her face.

  ‘I read about Godfrey’s death in the newspaper.’ She waited and bit her lip. There were tears in her eyes. As Felix’s nanny, she had shared Godfrey’s apartment for a couple of years, when Pyke served a sentence for the non-payment of debts, and afterwards when he had travelled to Jamaica, and the two of them had become close.

  ‘Thank you for coming.’ He looked into her eyes and felt a small tug in his stomach. ‘I know Godfrey would have appreciated it.’ In fact, Godfrey had always chided him for breaking off their attachment and had often said that he would never find a better or more loving woman.

  ‘What you said at the graveside . . . It was very moving.’

  They stood there in silence; Pyke thinking about the last time he’d seen her, the tears she had shed. ‘Have you seen Felix? He’ll want to say hello. You won’t believe how much he’s grown up.’

  ‘I know. I was talking to him just now.’

  ‘He still misses you.’ Pyke stopped himself before he added that he missed her too but he wondered whether it was true. He did miss what they had all once shared, especially after Emily’s death. She, Jo, had helped them through a difficult time, and he still owed her a great deal.

  Her cheeks coloured slightly. ‘How are the two of you getting on?’

  ‘Oh, you know . . .’ Pyke hesitated. ‘Felix has discovered truth and beauty. I, on the other hand, represent all that’s ugly and debased.’

  That made her smile. ‘Don’t underestimate how much he loves you, Pyke.’ She waited, her eyes not quite meeting his.

  Other mourners were waiting to offer him their condolences and Jo moved off without shaking his hand or saying goodbye. About an hour later, he saw her again on the other side of the room, this time chatting to Felix. Pyke had had a few glasses of claret, and gin, and felt a little giddy. A pot-boy wearing a black apron passed carrying a tray of drinks and Pyke took one more and poured it down his throat. It caused him to shudder. For a moment he had to hold on to the back of a chair to steady himself. It was funny that he should be thinking about Jo more than Emily, he decided; that seeing Jo should have unsettled him so much.

  Later, he noticed that she was putting on her coat, as if preparing to leave. Outside, it was raining and Jo had pulled a black scarf over her head. Pyke caught up with her in front of the hotel. Startled, she began to say something but Pyke took her wrist and pulled her towards him. Jo tried to wriggle free from his grip and looked up into his face, hot and indignant. He didn’t see it or didn’t care. He cupped the back of her head and pulled her into a kiss. He half-expected her lips to part but they remained closed. Stamping on his toe, she shoved him in the chest and took a step backwards.

  ‘I’m married,’ she spat, her eyes burning with anger.

  ‘Married?’ He hadn’t even bothered to check whether she was wearing a wedding ring.

  ‘An officer in the Fifth Hussars. Peter Hind.’ There were tears in her eyes now. ‘I had a child of my own last year.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t . . .’ He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.

  ‘You always have to ruin everything, Pyke.’ She gathered up her skirt and raced across the street to a waiting hackney carriage.

  As he watched her go, Pyke thought about what he’d just done, the awful humiliation he’d visited upon her and himself, and he wondered why, having hurt her once before, he had felt it appropriate to accost her in a public place and reveal himself to her, once again, in all his unthinking ugliness.

  SIXTEEN

  Two days after the funeral, Pyke returned to work at the Detective Branch. He’d been gone for almost ten days but somehow it felt longer. For him, it was as though the whole world had crumbled. Meanwhile, in terms of the investigation, little or no progress had been made. Hiley was still at large and the coroner’s verdict in the matter of Charles Hogarth’s death had not yet been overturned, although now it was hard to see how this might happen as Pyke had learned from Whicher that Hogarth’s body had been stolen from the family’s mausoleum in Kensington, apparently by resurrectionists. He had also found out that the coroner, and the porter who had discovered Hogarth’s body in his office on Gracechurch Street, were both missing and had been for several days. Pyke didn’t believe for a moment that resurrectionists had broken into the tomb, but without a shred of evidence to the contrary, he had no choice but to hold his tongue. He couldn’t even dispute the cause of death, at least not officially, because to do so would be to incriminate himself. Instead, at a meeting with Lockhart, Shaw, Wells and Whicher (who was the only one he had told about the crucifixion marks), Pyke told them they were now to treat Hogarth’s death as suspicious.

  ‘It’s my working hypothesis that, like Stephen Clough, Charles Harcourt Hogarth was murdered and that to spare the family any shame, and perhaps to obscure the man’s involvement in our current investigation, the coroner was persuaded to record the death as he did. I can’t prove it yet and I’m perfectly happy to be proved wrong on this matter, but I’d like us to proceed as though Hogarth died in suspicious circumstances.’ Pyke looked at Wells and then Lockhart. ‘At least until the coroner has been found and can determine otherwise.’

  Pyke knew he had to be careful: he couldn’t come out and definitively state that Hogarth had been partially disembowelled and crucified. But at the same time, and given that Hogarth’s corpse, the coroner and the porter had all suddenly disappeared, there was sufficient evidence to at least raise questions. Charles Hogarth had been killed in one of the most horrific ways imaginable and yet his death certificate suggested he’d died of a heart seizure. How had the true cause of death been kept quiet? More to the point, who was sufficiently motivated and resourceful enough to be able to cover this kind of thing up?

  ‘Hypothetically, I’d also like us to proceed on the basis that the murders of Guppy and Hogarth might be linked. Jack, you’ve done some preliminary work to try to determine whether the two men knew one another.’ Pyke looked hopefully at Whicher.

  ‘It’s not out of the question, of course. Guppy was rector at St Botolph’s and Hogarth’s office was just around the corner on Gracechurch Street. But at present I haven’t been able to establish any connection. I asked a few discreet questions and it certainly doesn’t seem as if Hogarth had any business with the church or even went to church himself.’

  Pyke nodded. ‘I’d like you to keep looking into Hogarth’s affairs - as discreetly as possible. I don’t want his family complaining to Sir Richard, at least not yet.’

  Whicher’s face was lined with worry. He knew that someone - Lockhart, Shaw or Wells - would relay this hypothesis back to Pierce and maybe Mayne, b
ut there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘Is it merely a coincidence that Guppy and Hogarth died, or were killed, on exactly the same dates as the two boys, Johnny Clough and Stephen Gregg? Perhaps. But let’s not forget that Guppy and Clough were both beaten to death with a hammer.’ Pyke hesitated, deciding not to say anything about the precise manner of Hogarth’s death. ‘Frederick here worked on the investigation five years ago and he assures me it was a meticulous and thorough affair. He also assures me that they got their man. Morris Keate was tried and found guilty of killing those boys.’ Pausing, Pyke looked up at Shaw and saw him nod in agreement.

  ‘Keate was a Catholic by birth but the prosecution at his trial also intimated that he was a Satanist. The second victim, Stephen Clough, was nailed to the door of a stables used at the time by a Catholic priest called Brendan Malloy as a mission to hold mass and hear confessions. At the time, Malloy was well known for the exorcisms he performed.’

  Shaw held up his hand. ‘While you were away, we did manage to track down Keate’s mother, or we very nearly managed to.’

  Pyke looked up at him, interested.

  ‘Eddie and I were able to trace Josephine Keate to an address on Poland Street. We went there and were told by a neighbour that a man and woman had turned up a few nights earlier and moved the old woman out, without leaving a forwarding address. That wasn’t the end of it, though. Apparently the next day, three or four ruffians forced their way into the building with knives and pistols looking for the old woman and ended up ransacking her home.’

  ‘When was this?’

  This time it was Lockhart who spoke. ‘We did the calculations and worked out that the man and woman must have come for Keate’s mother on the same night that Charles Hogarth died.’

  ‘You’re sure about that?’

  ‘Certain,’ Shaw said. ‘Of course, we don’t know whether the two things are related,’ Shaw said. The youngest member of the Branch, Pyke noticed, had become more confident about stating his views in meetings.

  Lockhart acknowledged Shaw’s concern with a frown. ‘Let’s just think about it for a moment. What if Guppy’s death upset someone - the fact that Guppy was killed on that date in particular and in the same manner as the boy five years earlier? It might have made this person, or persons, uneasy. Then Hogarth dies or, as you say, Pyke, is killed. Let’s assume there’s a connection between all the deaths. What happens? Immediately some men are dispatched to Keate’s mother to see what, if anything, she knows. But someone has already foreseen this and moved the mother to another place.’

  Whicher cleared his throat. ‘So what you’re suggesting, Eddie, is that someone might have suspected the involvement of Keate’s family in the reprisals, if indeed that’s what they are, against Guppy and Hogarth?’

  ‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it?’

  ‘We need to find out why those men came looking for Keate’s mother - and who sent them,’ Pyke said, aware of both Whicher’s caution and the fact that he was siding with Eddie Lockhart.

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Wells said, screwing up his face. ‘Why would someone want to rough up an old woman?’ It was the first time he’d spoken since the meeting had started.

  ‘Let’s assume, and this is still a very big assumption, that Keate didn’t do what he was found guilty of five years ago. Someone close to him finds out and sets about trying to right this particular wrong.’ Pyke hesitated and looked up at Wells, whose frown had deepened. ‘There are too many connections for us to ignore, Walter. If the Keate family are not involved in any of this, why did someone dispatch three or four men with knives and pistols to talk to the mother?’

  ‘So what do you suggest we actually do?’ Wells asked.

  ‘Keep looking for Keate’s mother, the two brothers and the sister.’ Pyke addressed Shaw and Lockhart. ‘Did any of the neighbours see the man and woman who came to collect Keate’s mother?’

  Lockhart shook his head. ‘Not a good look anyway. The woman was wearing a headscarf and the man a cloak.’

  ‘And the men who turned up with knives and pistols?’

  ‘As yet, no one’s been willing to offer us any descriptions,’ Lockhart stated. ‘I’d say they were afraid of retaliation.’

  ‘Then bring the neighbours in here and lock them up if needs be. If we can trace those men, perhaps we can find whoever dispatched them.’ Pyke looked around at his team. ‘Someone is worried enough about what’s happening to want to kidnap an old woman and make Hogarth’s body, the coroner and the porter miraculously disappear.’

  The meeting broke up and everyone, except Lockhart, who Pyke had asked to see, drifted out of the room.

  ‘I just wanted to thank you for staying with my son when he came here to find me,’ Pyke said once they were alone.

  ‘I just did what anyone would have done in the circumstances. I could see the lad was upset.’

  ‘He spoke highly of you, Detective Sergeant. It made me wonder whether I might’ve misjudged you.’

  Lockhart loosened his collar. ‘I . . . I have to . . .’ He took a deep breath and looked around the room. ‘I admit I was angry at you for not trying to save Gerrett’s position.’

  Pyke noticed he hadn’t accused him of deliberately trying to engineer it. ‘If I’d rated Gerrett’s abilities as a detective, I would’ve fought for him. I still might not have been able to save him, though.’

  Lockhart conceded this point with a curt nod. ‘I haven’t told anyone this. I wanted to talk to you first.’ He took out his handkerchief and wiped his forehead. ‘I’ll be honest with you, Pyke. I do think you could have done more to help Gerrett. But what’s done is done. I also think you’re a good detective and I think you’re right about these murders. While you were away, I went to try and find the coroner. I didn’t succeed but I did manage to talk to one of the clerks who worked with him. I could see he knew something so I pushed him around, threatened him a bit. In the end he admitted he’d sneaked a look at Hogarth’s body.’ His face was now flushed with excitement. ‘Do you know what he told me?’

  ‘That Hogarth didn’t die of a heart seizure?’ Pyke hesitated, wondering how much he should say to Lockhart about what he’d seen in the mausoleum.

  Lockhart looked at him and nodded. ‘You know what you said, about Hogarth’s death and the boy’s, Stephen Clough’s, being linked?’

  Pyke nodded.

  ‘Well, this man told me he saw marks, holes bored into the hands and feet of Hogarth’s corpse.’ Lockhart wetted his lips. ‘He also told me the man’s stomach had been cut open.’

  Pyke stared at him for a moment, trying to comprehend the gift Lockhart had dropped into his lap. ‘You have this man’s name?’

  ‘Tom Challis.’

  ‘And he’s willing to say this in front of a judge?’

  Lockhart looked sheepish. ‘He’s afraid of what will happen to him if he does. He’s afraid of what I’ll do to him if he doesn’t.’

  ‘Bring him in, I’d like to talk to him.’ Pyke waited. ‘Do it quickly and quietly and don’t tell anyone else what he knows. If I’m not here, put him in my office and stay with him.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t need to tell you this is first-rate detective work. More than that, I can now take this to the commissioners.’ Pyke waited and added, ‘You said just now you hadn’t told anyone about this?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘No one in the Detective Branch and no one in the police as a whole?’

  This time Lockhart’s eyes narrowed a little, as he sensed perhaps that his honesty was being questioned. ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘You did the right thing.’ Pyke reached forward and tapped him awkwardly on the arm. ‘And thank you, Eddie.’

  Later Wells came to offer Pyke his condolences; he had also sent a wreath to the house, which Pyke had already thanked him for. It felt strange, thinking about the funeral, the fact that Godfrey had died. At times, when he was occupied with other things, Pyke could almost forget about what h
ad happened. It was the same for the first few moments when he woke up in the morning. Then the reality of the situation would sink in and Pyke would feel despair descending on him once more. Could it really be true that he’d never again see or have a conversation with his uncle?