The Detective Branch

by Andrew Pepper

  Every time Pyke walked through the City of London, he was surprised not only at the number of people on the pavements but also the traffic on the roads, omnibuses seemingly disgorging hundreds of bodies every time they stopped. What surprised him just as much were the new buildings; on every street and at every corner, old lath-and-plaster Georgian edifices were being pulled down and in their place would suddenly emerge monstrous granite structures, soaring upwards into the grey skies. There was always a lot of discussion about the new city that was materialising, and when you walked along a particular street and came across one, two, sometimes three gleaming new edifices, it was hard to deny that progress was being made. But at what cost? Certainly fewer and fewer people lived within the square mile. This was now where the new public companies, flush with money following their stock market ventures, wanted to establish offices that were increasingly grand, each a monument to the ambition and vanity of their chairman.

  Pyke found No. 23 Cheapside easily enough. It was another newly built structure, this one of modest scale and proportions. A fashionable linen draper occupied the ground floor, offices the upper floors.

  The proprietor of the shop greeted Pyke warmly but some of this evaporated when he explained he was a private enquiry agent investigating a robbery that had taken place at the premises about five years earlier. Pyke had changed out of the clothes he’d been wearing and had bathed and scrubbed himself clean, but even so, he could still smell rotten animal flesh on his skin.

  ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t here five years ago, sir, and as you can probably see, nor was this building.’

  ‘Do you own it?’

  ‘No, I’m afraid I don’t. I rent it from the City Corporation.’

  Pyke wondered whether this had anything to do with what Saggers had told him about Hogarth. As alderman for the Court of Common Council, which was an arm of the City Corporation, Hogarth had been instrumental in increasing the number of properties available for non-residential use.

  ‘Perhaps I could ask you just one more question?’

  The draper smiled uneasily. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Do you remember the name of the contractor who pulled down the old building and put this one up?’

  The draper wiped his hands on his apron. ‘I should be able to. I liaised with him about the plans.’

  ‘Was it Sir St John Palmer? Was it his company?’

  Pyke knew from the draper’s reaction that he had scored a hit. The man stared at him, flummoxed. ‘Yes, that was it.’

  Outside, Pyke wandered along Cheapside and came to a halt outside an older, lath-and-plaster building about six doors down from the draper’s shop. At one time it had perhaps been tenanted by one family of means, but now the number of bells and plates on the front door suggested that numerous individuals resided there. Pyke pulled one of the bells at random and, when no one answered, he tried another, then another.

  The man who opened the door was elderly, with ash-white hair, stooped shoulders and poor eyesight. He was also hard of hearing.

  ‘What’s that, cock?’ he said, when Pyke asked him whether he’d known the person or people who’d lived at No. 23 before it was rebuilt.

  Pyke repeated the question, this time almost shouting.

  ‘I knew ’im, not well, mind. But I knew ’im. What I call a God-botherer. ’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘What happened to him? Did he move?’

  ‘He died. Sudden, like. Just keeled over one day. ’Is nephew fancied the old boy would leave ’im the property but when the will was read, turns out the old coot ’ad gone and left everything to the Church. More fool ’im, I say, but it must ’ave been a shock to the nephew.’ The thought of it made him chortle.

  ‘I just called in there; seems the draper is renting it from the City Corporation now,’ Pyke said, trying to rein in his excitement. He knew he was getting close. ‘So the Church doesn’t own it any more?’

  ‘No, they sold it to the City Corporation, as soon as they got their grubby little hands on it.’

  Pyke almost put his mouth up against the old man’s ear. ‘Did you hear anything about a robbery there? Would have happened about five years ago?’

  ‘A robbery?’ He scratched his chin. ‘No, can’t say I did. But you said it ’appened five years ago, eh? That would’ve been around the time the old boy passed away.’

  The garret room Pyke had rented, on Broad Street, was less than a hundred yards from Sarah Scott’s address on Berwick Street, but he had deliberately avoided her ever since his escape because he hadn’t wanted to involve her any further. After all, he hadn’t known for certain that their relationship, if that was what it was, was entirely secret, and there was always a slim chance that one of Pierce’s men, or one of Wells’s men, had followed her after her visits to Bow Street. He had left her a note explaining all of this, but now he felt that perhaps he owed her more than that.

  He entered the building through the back, and when he knocked gently on her door and there was no answer, he picked the lock and let himself in. It was a small space, barely enough room for a mattress, but Sarah had managed to erect an easel holding a canvas which she had yet to start. A few brushstrokes marked the white background but nothing else. Pyke gave the room a quick search but found nothing apart from some paint and a few brushes. The air, he thought, smelled of her; it made him think of the way the skin at the sides of her eyes creased when she smiled. It was late afternoon and Pyke was more tired than he realised. As soon as he had removed his coat and boots and lain down on the mattress, his eyelids drooped and he quickly fell asleep.

  He was woken by a gentle kick, and when he looked up, Sarah Scott was standing over him, wearing a simple white dress and a blue woollen shawl. Her hair was partly held up in a clip.

  ‘So Lazarus rises from the dead.’ She said it with a vague sneer, and Pyke knew at once that he hadn’t been forgiven. ‘It’s nice of you to come and see me. Even though I thought I’d locked the door when I left this morning.’

  Pyke sat up, yawned and scratched the hair on his chin. ‘I left you a note.’

  ‘I got it.’

  ‘When I last saw you, when you visited me, I had no idea I’d have to do something so drastic. I got some news at the last minute which made me realise I’d been set up; that there was no way I’d walk out of that courtroom a free man. I had to make other arrangements; and I didn’t want to involve either you or my son because I knew they’d come after you if I did.’

  That seemed to soften her a little. ‘I met Felix one day outside the station house. One of the clerks told me who he was.’

  ‘Aiding an escape from prison or knowing about it in advance and not contacting the authorities. They can transport you for that.’

  Pyke looked at the way her dress clung to her hips. He also thought about how she had come to his aid during his incarceration at Bow Street. But if she was, in fact, Kate Gibb, she had been wilfully deceiving him for the entire time he’d known her.

  She saw the way he was looking at her and scowled. ‘You didn’t explain how you got into my room.’

  Pyke made space for her on the mattress next to him and patted it. ‘Come on, Sarah. Sit down.’

  In the end she did, reluctantly, but kept at least a yard between them. ‘I thought you were going to die, Pyke. We all did; everyone in that room.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t come to see you sooner. There were things I needed to do.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘If I said scooping shit out of other people’s cesspits, would you believe me?’

  Intrigued now, she looked at him and sniffed. ‘I thought there was a funny smell when I walked in here.’

  ‘You know I told you about a man called Morris Keate?’ Pyke watched her reaction carefully. ‘I needed to find out about Keate’s family, his half-brothers and half-sister. Becoming a night-soil man was the only way I could do it.’

  Sarah regarded him with curi
osity. If she was Keate’s half-sister, she was hiding it well. ‘And did you?’

  He shrugged. ‘Some details. Enough.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you be concentrating on how to get out of the mess you’re currently in?’

  ‘The only way I can do that is by proving other people’s culpability. Believe me, there’s nothing selfless about what I’m doing here.’

  A lopsided smile spread across her face.

  In spite of himself, Pyke found her coolness under pressure alluring. Could she really be Kate Gibb? Suddenly he couldn’t be sure of anything.

  ‘I missed you,’ she said, reaching out and touching him on the shoulder.

  It was hard to tell who had pulled who into an embrace. Their mouths met somewhere in between, their kisses hot and urgent. She had already removed her shawl and he helped her with her dress while she tugged at his trousers. He had always liked her confidence, and her experience as a lover, the ease he felt in her company. Did it matter that she might not be who she claimed to be? This thought left his head as soon as he saw her naked body. He pulled her down on to the mattress, and, as he guided himself into her, feeling her breath on his cheek as he did so, he wondered, if only for a moment, whether he might be using her in some nameless, complicated way.

  Afterwards, they lay in silence and stared up at the dark stains on the ceiling. He had done what he’d just done because he wanted to, because he couldn’t stop himself, because he liked her more than he wanted to admit, but he had done it, too, because he wanted to convince himself that she was who she claimed to be, that physical intimacy was somehow a guarantor of truthfulness. Now, exhausted, he saw this for the lie it was. She had been as ethereal and closed off to him as ever, and he’d used what they’d done as a sly form of interrogation. Where was the truthfulness in that?

  ‘Kate . . .?’ He waited for her to turn around and look at him.

  Eventually she did, but her expression was quizzical. ‘What did you just call me?’

  He felt a slight dampness in his armpits. Perhaps he’d made a mistake.

  ‘Why did you call me Kate?’

  Pyke suddenly felt very foolish. He had expected, or perhaps hoped, that having been addressed by her real name, she would turn to him instinctively and answer him. Now all he’d done was given her a reason to be angry at him.

  ‘Did I just call you Kate? I’m sorry.’

  She pulled the sheet up over her shoulders and turned away from him. ‘Now you’ve got what you came for, Pyke, I think you should go.’

  ‘I said I was sorry, Sarah.’

  She turned around suddenly, her eyes blazing. ‘If you call a woman by another name after you’ve just made love to her, it’s never well received. But this was something else. I could hear it in your voice. It wasn’t a mistake.’ She sat up, folded her arms.

  He thought again about Matthew’s description of Keate’s half-sister and made a split-second decision. It had to be her. ‘Come on, Kate. You don’t need to pretend any more.’

  Pyke saw the disappointment register in her eyes and knew at once he had been wrong. She seemed both bewildered and angry.

  ‘I mistook you for someone. I made a mistake. I think I should leave.’ Pyke couldn’t bring himself to look at her.

  Sarah sat there quietly, trying to take it in, then shook her head. ‘Do you want to know why I came back here?’

  Pyke stood up and found his trousers.

  ‘The main reason was that I didn’t want you to find out anything about me that would cast me in a bad light.’ She bit her lip.

  ‘And what might I have found out?’

  ‘It all seems so silly now. I should never have been worried about what you thought of me.’

  Pyke buttoned up his trousers, thinking about what she had just told him. She had liked him and he had just ruined whatever may have existed between them. He felt sick and empty.

  But Sarah’s anger hadn’t yet abated.

  ‘Jesus Christ. Did you even believe I lost my child? Probably not if you thought I was this Kate person.’ She wiped a tear from her cheek. ‘What kind of monster do you think I am?’

  Pyke could feel the sweat pouring off him. Had he been swayed by Druitt? But there had been inconsistencies in her story; one moment she hadn’t wanted Druitt’s name mentioned, even in conversation, the next she’d admitted to quite liking him. And she hadn’t testified against Druitt at her trial. That had always bothered him.

  ‘If you were certain that Druitt had murdered your child, why didn’t you testify against him?’ When she didn’t answer, he added, ‘What is it you didn’t want me to find out?’

  She was silent for a very long time.

  ‘He . . . he didn’t kill my boy.’ Tears were now streaming down her face. ‘Brendan did. Brendan did it.’

  Pyke was too flabbergasted to speak for a few moments. ‘Then why was Druitt tried and convicted? Why did Brendan tell the court that Druitt killed your son?’

  Almost whispering, Sarah said, ‘Druitt had driven Brendan almost insane with jealousy. I didn’t know so at the time, but for months Druitt had been insinuating to Brendan that he and I had been cuckolding him. James, my son, was Brendan’s child, or so I always thought. But when James started to grow, it quickly became apparent he looked nothing like Brendan. It was also apparent he was the spit of Druitt. This was impossible, as far as I was concerned. He and I hadn’t even kissed, let alone made love. But there it was. The proof was incontrovertible. And one night, after we’d all been drinking, Druitt told Brendan that he was the father - all you had to do was look at the child to know it was true. This was when the two of them were alone; I only found out about it later. Brendan went in to wake up James. I was asleep at the time. He lifted him out of his cot and inspected him. I don’t know what happened next. I don’t know if Brendan ever understood why he did what he did, whether it was an accident or not. But the result was the same. My dear, sweet, beautiful boy fell to his death. The fall, the thud when he hit the landing floor below, woke me up. I ran down the stairs to him but he was already dead. I do remember looking up at that moment. I could hear Brendan sobbing but Druitt was staring down at me and he was smiling. He was smiling, as if the whole thing was a big joke.

  ‘Afterwards, I remembered this night some time during the previous year. Brendan was away and it was just me and Druitt in the apartment. I felt ill and Druitt was kind to me. He brought me something to drink. I slept well that night but the next morning there was soreness between my legs.’ She paused and wiped her eyes. ‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time, and even after James had been born and looked nothing like Brendan I still didn’t make the connection. But that night, before we called the police, I confronted Druitt. He told me as calmly as you like that he’d drugged and raped me and that James had been born nine months later. It was almost as if he was glad to tell someone what he, in his sick mind, regarded as his triumph. That he’d destroyed not just one life but three.’

  Pyke wanted to take her in his arms, but it was as if an unbridgeable chasm had opened up between them. ‘And you had no idea?’