The Detective Branch

by Andrew Pepper

  In fact, it was after eight when Pyke finally heard a carriage stop on the street outside and the front door open. By that time, Pyke had given all of the rooms on the top floor a quick inspection; there were few books, no papers, no personal touches, nothing to suggest that the occupant spent any time there at all. The bedroom contained a bed and a wardrobe, the living room a sofa and a chair. As he contemplated these living arrangements, Pyke thought about the death of Whicher’s child and his wife’s illness and wondered whether the emptiness of the rooms spoke of the man’s inner life; and whether this, in turn, mirrored his own situation.

  Whicher mounted the stairs three at a time and Pyke could see straight away that he had made a discovery.

  ‘Luke Gibb left the regiment three years ago.’ Whicher’s eyes were gleaming with energy. ‘Guess what. He joined the Metropolitan Police.’

  ‘Gibb is a policeman?’

  Nodding, Whicher said, ‘First thing on Monday morning, I’ll go to Accounts. They have records of everyone who’s ever joined the force.’

  ‘We’re talking about a lot of men,’ Pyke said, aware that his heart was beating faster.

  ‘The man I spoke to in the Fourteenth remembered Gibb. He said he was a quiet, competent, articulate soldier. He also gave me the approximate date of Gibb’s inauguration as a policeman. March 1842.’

  ‘That should make it easier.’

  ‘I know, but I’ll still have to go through the names of fifteen divisions, with a couple of hundred men in each.’ Whicher removed his greatcoat and put it on the back of the chair. ‘Have you been here long?’

  ‘Not long.’

  ‘I’m sorry; the train leaving Cambridge was delayed.’ Whicher looked around the room. ‘There’s not a lot to entertain you, I’m afraid.’

  Pyke shrugged. ‘Late last night I went to see Wynter. Someone, maybe Luke Gibb, had just beaten me to it. I found the archdeacon lying on the floor of his room: he’d been stabbed a dozen times in the chest and stomach. I gave chase to a man I saw leaving the place but I lost him in the lanes just to the north of Holborn.’

  ‘So you think it was Gibb who killed the archdeacon?’

  ‘Seems likely, doesn’t it?’ Pyke nodded.

  Gibb had both the motive and opportunity. And it was certainly true that if he had the accounts in his possession, he would know who had been culpable of embezzling the church funds: the men who had, implicitly or otherwise, sanctioned Keate’s arrest and execution.

  ‘One thing’s for certain,’ Whicher said. ‘With Wynter dead, Guppy’s murder can’t now be treated as an isolated incident.’

  ‘What Wynter’s murder also means is that anyone else involved will be scuttling for their holes. Palmer among them.’

  Whicher considered this for a while. ‘Usually I’d say you were right.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘I’m told he still plans to attend this event on Monday evening at the Guildhall. They’re giving him the freedom of the city. It’s the highest honour a man of his rank can expect.’

  All of a sudden, Pyke felt exhausted. ‘Palmer’s barely ventured out of his house in the past month. This is too good a chance for someone to pass up.’

  ‘Someone like Gibb?’

  ‘In his uniform, it’ll be easy for him to slip through the police lines without being noticed.’ Pyke waited a moment, debating whether to tell Whicher what he’d just found out. ‘Wells is implicated, too.’

  Whicher listened while Pyke outlined what he’d discovered about Wells’s likely involvement with Guppy, Hogarth, Palmer and the rest of them. When he’d finished, Whicher sat down in the chair and stared wordlessly at the fire.

  Pyke could understand Whicher’s reaction; he had been taken in by Wells, too. He had written him off as a man used to following orders, not giving them. In fact, Wells had played a careful double game, quietly conspiring with Pierce to engineer Pyke’s downfall and allowing Pyke to think he was sympathetic and that Pierce had orchestrated the arrest from the beginning. Whether Pierce was wholly innocent of everything Pyke had believed him guilty of remained to be seen.

  ‘So all along he’s been trying to divert attention away from the activities of the Churches Fund?’ Whicher said eventually.

  ‘If Guppy died with forty thousand in his account, I don’t doubt Wells has accrued as much if not more. In the end, this has been about money and greed, simple as that.’

  ‘So what do we do now?’

  ‘You mean about Wells? If it was just him, it might be simpler.’

  ‘There are others?’

  Pyke thought about the slum clearance that Wells had overseen. Maybe some of these officers had been used on other details; maybe some had even killed on Wells’s command.

  ‘It looks that way.’

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Whicher’s face had turned a pale grey. ‘I assume you haven’t got any proof of this.’

  ‘Not at the moment.’ But Pyke suspected that Luke Gibb still had the Churches Fund’s secret accounts or knew where to lay his hands on the ledger.

  ‘Which means you can’t go to Mayne.’

  Pyke nodded. ‘Assuming Mayne’s not involved, too.’

  ‘No, that’s impossible, Pyke, and you know it. One thing I’d swear to. Mayne’s as straight as they come.’

  ‘So is Peel but he’s on the Fund’s executive board. I was told by his private secretary - who also happens to be a friend of mine - that the prime minister won’t allow the Fund to be mired in suspicion.’

  Whicher stood and paced to the other side of the room. ‘Wells will be there on Monday night, as well as Palmer.’

  ‘And don’t forget the prime minister,’ Pyke added. ‘It could make for an interesting night.’

  ‘Wells has no idea Gibb is a policeman?’

  ‘I don’t know. We found out, so it’s possible he has, too.’

  ‘Wells has personally liaised with a superintendent in the City of London police to oversee the security arrangements.’

  ‘I want to be there too,’ Pyke said, firmly.

  ‘There’s no way you’ll get past the ring of officers posted around the Guildhall.’

  ‘Not if I dress like this. But I had a quick look in your wardrobe earlier. I hope you don’t mind. I found your old uniform and tried it on. The trousers are a little short but otherwise the fit is quite good. I’ll take off the buttons giving your old division and number. No one will ever trace it back to you.’

  Whicher folded his arms and scrutinised Pyke’s face. ‘What do you hope to achieve by going to the Guildhall? I mean . . . you must have some sympathy for Gibb, for his position.’ Whicher hesitated. ‘I know I do.’

  ‘I’m a policeman, Jack. I’ve sworn an oath to uphold the law.’

  ‘And when you come face to face with Wells?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Pyke hesitated. ‘For a while now, I’ve been trying to work out why someone wrote me that note directing me to the address on Broad Street.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I think whoever it was was hoping I’d talk to Druitt and dig a little, find out what really happened to the boys. That man clearly knows something.’

  Whicher looked at Pyke waiting for him to elaborate but Pyke had nothing left to say.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The following morning, Pyke woke early but lay on his mattress in the tiny room he’d rented, savouring the quiet. It was a Sunday and the street beneath was almost deserted, just the occasional carriage or cart disturbing the silence. Because he had nothing to read, Pyke reached for the tatty prayer book Felix had given him and started to thumb through it, the words utterly alien to him. Flicking to the first page of the book, he noticed an inscription - Kitty’s name in her own handwriting: Kitty Jones. He froze. Big, looped letters. He recognised the handwriting. It was the same hand that had penned the note sent to him in December, with an epitaph from Blake. Kitty Jones. Kitty? Another name for Kate? The words of the tub-man echoed in his head: Good looking. Strange visions.


  Pyke dressed in a matter of seconds. Five minutes later, having run the entire way, he arrived at the cab-stand on Charing Cross Road to find there were no people waiting and no carriages. He tore across Trafalgar Square to the Strand, where eventually he managed to flag down a carriage. Just as long as Felix was safe, he kept repeating to himself. The streets outside passed in a blur as the traffic was light, and the journey from the Strand to Bethnal Green took less than half an hour.

  Pyke went first to the vicarage, and when he was convinced that no one was watching the house, he slipped around the back and banged on the door. It was answered by one of the servants, who told him that Jakes was at church and that Kitty and the boy had gone out earlier, perhaps to attend the morning service as well. Pyke was not sure whether or not he was relieved.

  St Matthew’s was much fuller than Pyke had been expecting; every pew was packed with bodies, and there was standing room only left at the back of the church. If the building had seemed gloomy when it had been empty, it was now utterly transformed. Almost immediately Pyke could feel the sense of outrage that Martin Jakes, who was standing up in the pulpit wearing neither gown nor robe, was doing his best to stir up.

  ‘If you were to listen to our Church fathers,’ he was saying, his arms raised before him, ‘you would come away thinking that the single most pressing issue of our times is whether to side with Newman’s Tractarians and pay a higher regard for the sacrament, whether to light a candle on the altar and put a cross and flowers alongside it. Meanwhile, I say to you, and I say it because you know it to be true, thousands of men, women and children are perishing in our city every day either from starvation or disease or a general hopelessness borne of poverty and inequality.’ There was a loud murmur of approval. ‘Our Church fathers are wrangling among themselves about issues that are, at best, trifling, while honest folk can’t afford to put bread on their own tables. Of course, these same men have worked to ensure that churches like this one have been built and for this we must be grateful. But if they also want me to stand up here and tell you not to be concerned about this life, to trust and love God and wait for your reward in the next life, I will not do it. If all we do is endure our suffering, if we are passive in the face of the ills of the world, then nothing will ever change. For if we accept and endure, then those who exploit us for profit, those who feed off our misery like leeches, grow fat off our travails. Should I tell you to endure? Will God listen to your prayers and put food on your table? This I cannot say. But if Jesus did exist as flesh and blood, and if the gospels are even partly true, we can say that he did not passively accept his lot. He railed against the established Church and he threw the moneychangers out of the temple. He made it clear that the hypocrisy and sometimes even corruption of our supposed betters cannot and should not be tolerated.’

  Almost in unison the congregation broke into an avalanche of applause. Pyke surveyed the faces in the crowd for any sign of Kitty or his son, and as Jakes brought his sermon to a climax, he thought about what the man had achieved: yoking the righteous fury of the poor to a message about the relevance of the Christian faith. It was an almost impossible task, and yet somehow Jakes had made it work.

  At the end of the service, Pyke pushed his way through the congregation, eager to say a few words to Jakes and shake his hand. It took the curate a few minutes to field the handshakes and slaps on his back, and by the time he finally joined Pyke, the church was almost empty.

  ‘Where is my son?’ Pyke asked.

  ‘He’s out with Kitty.’ Jakes seemed puzzled by his concern. ‘I assure you he’s quite well, Detective Inspector.’

  Pyke showed Jakes the name scribbled in the front of the prayer book Felix had given him. ‘That’s the same hand that penned a note sent to me in December. Why didn’t you tell me that Kitty’s real name is Kate Gibb and that she’s Morris Keate’s half-sister?’

  ‘She isn’t.’ Jakes smiled kindly. ‘Morris’s half-sister, Kate, died from the pox two years ago.’

  Thrown by this revelation, Pyke took a moment to recover his stride. ‘Then whose writing is this?’

  Jakes looked searchingly at him. ‘Mine.’

  Helpers were clearing things away from the pews. Jakes led Pyke to an alcove, where their privacy was assured.

  ‘I suspect that you and I are quite alike in one respect, Detective Inspector,’ he said, sitting down. ‘We both find it hard to countenance the hypocrisy of those we purport to answer to.’

  Pyke rubbed his forehead while he considered what Jakes had just said. ‘When did you find out that money had been embezzled from the Churches Fund?’

  ‘In the summer, just before Johnny was killed in the pawnbroker’s shop.’

  ‘You knew the Gibb brothers?’

  Jakes nodded briskly. ‘They came to see me some time last year; told me they knew for a fact that Morris hadn’t murdered those boys.’

  ‘How did they know?’

  ‘Because they’d found a woman who’d spent the whole night with Morris on the date he was supposed to have killed the second boy. She said he hadn’t left her side for a moment. She also said she’d given this information to a policeman and that he hadn’t wanted to know - that he threatened to lock her up if she persisted with such claims.’

  ‘Did she have a name?’

  Jakes shook his head. ‘I suppose I’d never really believed that Morris could have done what he’d been accused of. After the Gibb boys left, I felt a deep sense of shame. I promised myself I’d do all I could to see that those responsible for inflicting such misery on Morris, and those two boys, would suffer. I won’t pretend my thoughts were especially holy.’

  ‘You told me before that you knew the Gibb family, and Keate, from your time as the vicar at St Luke’s.’

  Jakes nodded. ‘And I saw what it did to the family, thinking that Morris had done the things he was accused of. I saw how it tore them apart. And I did nothing. In effect, I colluded with the wrong that had been done to them. I hid behind my robes. In my naivety, I assumed that the police could, and would, never make a mistake on what was a life-and-death issue.’

  For the first time, Pyke could hear the sting of anger behind his words. ‘You told me before about Guppy’s interest in Morris Keate.’

  Jakes gave him a wary nod. ‘But it was the archdeacon who came to talk to me about Morris. I assumed at the time his interest was purely a doctrinal one; whether it was appropriate that a man christened into the Anglican Church should’ve undergone an exorcism performed by a Catholic priest.’ He gestured to one of the helpers, who was waiting to be dismissed. Turning back to Pyke, he said, ‘Shortly after Keate was executed, I received word from the archdeacon that I was to be moved from St Luke’s to become perpetual curate of St Matthew’s. I didn’t want to move, but then again, I could hardly refuse to go. Later, of course, I realised I’d been moved here so that Guppy could keep an eye on me.’

  ‘You didn’t suspect an ulterior motive?’

  Jakes shook his head. ‘At the time, I assumed I’d fallen out of favour with the Church authorities. Believe it or not, I’ve never been their favourite son. Not that my sermons were always as unconventional as the one you heard today. I won’t deny that the last year or so has radicalised me in ways I can barely explain to myself.’

  It was hard not to see the truth in what Jakes had just said. ‘And what did you think when you heard that Guppy had been murdered?’

  ‘I learnt about what had happened from Francis Hiley. He turned up on my doorstep that same night. He’d seen a man attack Guppy with a hammer and he’d been too afraid to do anything about it. But then, when he’d gone to see whether Guppy was alive or dead, a policeman had spotted him and shouted at him to stay where he was. He told me he’d run because he knew they’d try to blame him.’

  Pyke regarded him sceptically. ‘You didn’t know at the time that Luke Gibb had been the one who’d carried out the attack?’

  ‘Not immediately, but when Hiley desc
ribed the man he’d seen, I did wonder.’

  ‘But that didn’t stop you from giving Francis Hiley shelter and then lying to me about not knowing his whereabouts.’

  ‘I sent him away to a friend in the West Country.’ Jakes looked at Pyke and shrugged. ‘I knew he was innocent and, after our little conversation, I also knew that some of your colleagues would try to hold him responsible. I couldn’t let that happen again.’

  Pyke felt he would have done the same thing in Jakes’s position. ‘So what did you do then?’

  ‘I went to find Luke.’

  ‘And were you successful?’