Pyke knelt down and showed her the charcoal etching of Mary Edgar. Wincing, she sat up so that she could get a better look at it, and as she did so, she sniffed his skin. ‘You smell good, like soap.’
The room, on the other hand, reeked of human faeces and for a moment he wondered how and where she defecated.
‘Her name is Mary Edgar.’ He put the lantern down next to the drawing so she could see it properly.
‘So?’
‘I wondered if you might know her.’ As soon as it had left his mouth it struck Pyke as an absurd proposition, but he needed to find a way of getting her to talk.
She peered at the etching and laughed without warmth. ‘That why you come here? ’Cos I’m black and she’s mulatto so we must know each other?’
Pyke acknowledged the truth of her observation with a rueful smile. ‘I don’t know a thing about her apart from her name and that she recently arrived from Jamaica. I thought she might have fallen into the game.’
That drew a more serious nod. ‘So how did you find me?’
‘Craddock.’
Jane bit her lip, or what was left of it. ‘That bitch had me there to serve them Lascars and Africans but it was the whites who ask for me because I was cheap and they reckoned they could do what they liked with me.’
‘And as soon as you contracted syphilis she tossed you out.’ Pyke tried to keep any sympathy from his voice; he guessed it would only anger her.
‘She gave me a bottle of mercury, told me that would cover it.’ She touched her bald head self-consciously.
Pyke brought her attention back to the drawing. ‘Have you got any idea where I might start looking for her?’ He paused and then told her that Mary Edgar had been sharing a room at the Bluefield lodging house with a black man called Arthur Sobers.
Jane shook her head. ‘Why are you looking for her? What she done?’
Pyke shrugged. He didn’t want to tell her that Mary Edgar was dead. Nor, for obvious reasons, did he want to reveal that the woman’s eyes had been gouged out. But if the murder had a ritualistic element to it, as he now suspected, he wanted to find out as much as possible about such things.
‘Whether she black or white, it look like she got money. So why you looking for her in a black hole like Craddock’s?’ Jane snorted through her disintegrating nose. ‘And why you think she want to be friends with a nigger like me?’
He felt the anger of her stare. ‘To be honest, I hardly know a thing about the black community in the city.’
This much was true. Whereas forty or fifty years earlier, London had had a thriving black population, buoyed by emigres from the United States who’d fought on the side of the Crown during the revolutionary wars and former slaves who’d earned their freedom and decided to stay and work in the capital, the effects of grinding poverty and falling numbers of immigrants meant there were now probably just a few hundred — or maybe as many as a thousand — black men and women left in the city, in a population of more than a million. Pyke was used to seeing coloured faces around the docks but these men were often sailors and merchant seamen who would spend their shore leave in and around the Ratcliff Highway before leaving for the next port.
‘And you think I do?’ Jane looked at him. ‘I was born in Gravesend. I can point it out on a map if you don’t know where it is.’
‘If you were a black man or woman recently arrived in the city, where would you go to eat and drink?’
‘Anywhere I could afford that would take my money.’ She hesitated. ‘You seem to think there’s one place all black folk go to spend time with each other. That’s not how it is. The only thing black people got in common is being poor and getting exploited by white men like yourself.’
Pyke absorbed her insult. ‘But if I did want to speak to people who might have known Mary Edgar and Arthur Sobers…’
She studied his face for a few moments, deciding whether she wanted to help or not. ‘There’s a beer shop at the bottom of Commercial Road, near the docks. Ask for Samuel.’
Pyke thanked her and stretched his legs, but when he reached down to gather up the drawing, she touched his hand. ‘You want to know something? That’s the first time I touched another human being in a month.’ She looked away suddenly, perhaps because she didn’t want him to see the tears in her eyes.
Pyke went to kiss her on the cheek but at the last moment she turned her head towards him and he had no choice but to embrace her mouth. Her lips were softer and saltier than he had imagined. Momentarily Pyke closed his eyes and put the smell of faeces out of his mind. When he pulled away, he expected that she might say something, but whatever had happened in that moment passed and she was staring up at the ceiling, as though nothing had happened.
‘I lie here trying to remember happier times but when I shut my eyes all I can see are the faces of the men who fucked me.’
Pyke left her without saying goodbye. He guessed that she would be dead before the end of the year.
THREE
William Maginn’s face glistened like a ham that been soaked in briny water and boiled vigorously until it had turned a burnished shade of pink. He was pontificating about the merits of Shakespeare’s tragedies while imbibing from a hip-flask. Around him, a coterie of admirers hung on his every word. At one time, he had been the most respected and feared journalist in the city, though this had been before he had burned his bridges at Fraser’s magazine and spent time in prison, like Pyke, for failing to pay his debts. Godfrey told Pyke all this while fretting nervously at the edges of the circle, trying to find a way of interrupting Maginn and maybe limiting his consumption of gin, at least until after the speeches.
Hatchard’s bookshop on Piccadilly was full and Pyke was momentarily surprised by the number of people Godfrey had persuaded to attend the event, until he remembered that the book they’d all come to toast had attracted more than its fair share of notoriety in the months following its publication. Figures as worthy as Dickens and Bulwer had described Godfrey’s book as a ‘brutally honest account of wrongdoing’. Godfrey had framed those reviews. But other critics had torn it to shreds. Thackeray, for example, had compared it unfavourably to the ‘already lamentable’ Eugene Aram and had lambasted it as a ‘foul, sordid piece of writing’ that should be ‘consigned to the nearest cesspool’ for fear that ‘it might irrevocably contaminate those whose misfortune it was to turn its pages’. Godfrey had framed that review as well, claiming that a book capable of provoking such hostility had to be doing something right. Pyke suspected that beneath his bluster, his uncle cared very deeply what a man like Thackeray thought and that the review had wounded him more than he cared to admit. It had been something of a surprise, then, when Maginn had written to Godfrey to offer a cautiously favourable verdict, because Maginn and Thackeray had once been good friends, and perhaps still were.
Pyke hadn’t read The True and Candid Confession of an ex-Bow Street Runner, nor did he have any desire to do so. He had talked at length with Godfrey, while his uncle scribbled notes, and he had been as truthful and as candid as he thought appropriate. But Pyke had known from the start that what appeared in print would bear only the slightest resemblance to his own experiences. Godfrey wasn’t interested in virtue and goodness; rather his writing and publishing reflected a preference for the tasteless, sordid, low and morally repugnant. Pyke knew there were things he had done in his past that fitted this description, and that his uncle would doubtless embellish such episodes into something even nastier, but he hadn’t robbed or killed to satisfy his own primal urges. He had done so only when absolutely compelled to and wherever possible he had tried to do what was right, even if this meant hurting other people in the process. But none of this would make it into his uncle’s book; instead it would be a fictional tale that wallowed in its own stench with the sole purpose, Pyke believed, of offending the refined sensibilities of a particular kind of educated reader.
But Pyke wasn’t interested in Maginn’s stories or in helping Godfrey keep a muzzle on
him. He had come to his uncle’s event only to spend some time with Felix, and now he surveyed the mass of faces for a sign of his son, hoping that this encounter would be better than the last one. Perhaps Felix would look him in the eye this time or maybe even allow Pyke to take him in his arms. That was all Pyke had wanted to do when Felix had shunned him at Godfrey’s apartment.
It was Jo who spotted him. When she touched his arm, Pyke spun around and found himself staring into her smiling face. Felix was holding her hand, as though his life depended on it. His hair had been brushed and he wore a clean shirt. Pyke bent down and ruffled his hair the way he used to, but Felix seemed to recoil from his touch. Pyke stood up, trying to conceal his hurt from Jo. She was wearing a plain cotton dress and a straw bonnet, tied under the chin with a piece of red ribbon.
‘We’ve been reading Ivanhoe together, haven’t we?’ Jo said, for Pyke’s benefit, while squeezing Felix’s hand. She raised her eyes to meet his. ‘He really is a demon of a reader.’
Pyke tried to think of something he could say about Scott’s book but nothing came to mind. ‘I’m sure it’s a good deal more uplifting than, Godfrey’s book.’
‘I’ve read that one, too,’ Felix piped up.
They both looked at him. ‘You’ve read Godfrey’s book?’ Pyke asked, appalled by the notion.
Felix stared at him, still gripping Jo’s hand. ‘At the end, I thought they should have hanged him by the neck for all he’d done.’
Pyke felt dizzy. Felix had read a book purporting to be an account of his life as a Bow Street Runner. Would the lad have known this? Not having read the book himself, Pyke didn’t know what claims it made, but knowing his uncle, he was quite sure it wouldn’t make for a comfortable read.
‘You understand that it’s all made up,’ he said, adopting what he hoped was a suitably stern tone.
‘Then why does it say it’s a true and candid confession?’ Felix replied defiantly.
Pyke glanced over at Jo for assistance but she gave him an apologetic shrug, as if this was the first she’d heard of it. ‘What I meant,’ he said carefully, ‘was that it’s not based on any one person’s real experiences.’
‘But weren’t you a Bow Street Runner?’
Pyke tried to hide his consternation — and anger — that his son was speaking to him in such a manner. ‘That’s beside the point, Felix.’
Thankfully their conversation was interrupted by Godfrey, who told Pyke he needed help. Maginn was steaming drunk and, even worse, he’d seemingly now taken against the book. Godfrey delivered this last piece of news in such a grave tone that Pyke felt he had no choice but to help. He told Felix they would resume their little chat in a moment.
‘I’ve already paid him a king’s ransom to be here and now he’s savaging my book to all and sundry,’ Godfrey said, as they made their way across to Maginn’s growing coterie.
Maginn was still in full flow. ‘This book is meretricious,’ he was saying, holding up a copy of Confessions, as though giving a sermon, ‘because it wilfully misleads its educated readers by purporting to tell the truth about low types. I say purporting because it never tells the whole truth, nor could it hope to because it is written by a morally suspect man about a dishonourable scamp who is equally devoid of moral purpose.’ His Cork brogue was unmistakable.
‘Can’t you stop him?’ Godfrey whispered to Pyke, a note of desperation in his voice.
‘What? Hit him over the head and drag him out of here by his feet?’
‘If you have to, dear boy. And make sure you hurt him in the process.’
Maginn had spotted Pyke and his uncle and he acknowledged them with a thunderous stare. ‘In the tap, the slop-shop and the ken, thieves and blackguards, and to this list we should add Bow Street Runners, might display occasional moments of boldness and courage, but this does not mean they should be the subject of literature, nor should we be dragooned into caring for their cut-throat sensibilities and self-serving justifications.’ He addressed this final remark to Pyke.
‘And yet you have written elsewhere,’ Pyke replied, ‘that all successfully drawn characters are necessarily a mixture of good and evil and what motivates wickedness can be the same thing that produces the noblest of actions.’
‘Ah, yes. But then I was writing about Hamlet or Lear, and you, sir, are far from being a noble prince or fallen king.’
‘Perhaps in your drunken state you failed to take proper notice of the preface, in which my uncle makes it clear that Confessions is a work of fiction and should be treated as such.’
‘Is that so?’ Maginn boomed, his voice thick with condescension. ‘And yet it describes a daring escape from Newgate prison; a feat, if I’m not mistaken, that you, sir, undertook with help from willing accomplices — or should I say lackeys.’
‘So?’ The skin tightened around Pyke’s throat at this reference to Godfrey and, indeed, Emily, who had assisted his escape.
Maginn waved over a pale young man and put his arms around him, as if to suggest they were friends. ‘Allow me to introduce Mr Peter Hunt. Perhaps the name is familiar to you, sir?’
‘Should it be?’ Pyke allowed his gaze to settle on the nervous young man whose rouged lips and powdered face made him seem grotesque rather than fashionable.
‘His father was the governor of Newgate prison on the night of your escape.’ This time Maginn’s smirk turned into a grimace. ‘We met earlier in a tavern and discovered we were both intending to grace this event with our presence.’ He had his arm clasped so tightly around the younger man’s shoulder that Hunt couldn’t move.
Pyke searched Hunt’s eyes but saw nothing: not fear or anxiety or hate. And the young man certainly had reason enough to hate him. Pyke looked around at his uncle and saw that he’d also grasped the precariousness of the situation. For if Hunt was carrying a weapon, a pistol perhaps, and chose to take it out, anything could happen.
‘What is it you want?’ Pyke addressed Hunt directly, but the younger man wouldn’t look up.
‘What does he want?’ Maginn’s roaring laugh could be heard throughout the shop. He held up his copy of Confessions. ‘In the lily-scented world you’ve created, sir, his father must still be alive because the escape is achieved through boldness and stealth — picking locks and scaling walls — rather than cold-blooded murder.’ The smirk on his face vanished as he rounded on Pyke. ‘For, in truth, didn’t you stab the governor in the neck with a dagger and then throw him out of a window?’
A ripple of astonished gasps spread quickly through the room. This was exactly the kind of thing people had come to hear. Pyke looked around, to check whether Felix was within earshot.
‘I was cleared of any wrongdoing by an official investigation and pardoned by order of the Home Secretary himself.’
But Maginn seemed more concerned by what he had read in Godfrey’s book. ‘ Ex parte truth-telling, the worst kind. One tells the whole truth or nothing.’
‘What is it you want?’ Pyke repeated, looking directly at Maginn. ‘I know for a fact you’ve already been paid well for attending this evening.’
‘What do I want?’ Maginn took out his purse and threw it dramatically to the floor. ‘I spit on your uncle’s thirty pieces of silver. I want satisfaction for young Hunt and for being led astray by this monstrosity.’ He was still brandishing a copy of Godfrey’s book.
‘What kind of satisfaction?’
‘Satisfaction.’ He removed his torn shooting jacket and started to roll up his sleeves.
‘You intend to fight me?’ Pyke tried to keep the incredulity from his voice. Maginn was tall and rangy but his body was devoid of muscle and his arms were as thin as pipe-cleaners.
‘I don’t intend to fight you, sir. I intend to shoot you.’ With that, he retrieved a wooden box and opened it, to reveal two duelling pistols. ‘One shot in each but one shot is all I’ll need.’
‘You’re challenging me to a duel?’ Pyke looked for Godfrey, but he’d been swallowed by the crowd.
/> ‘Is that a problem?’
‘Look at your hands. You couldn’t hit a cow if you were standing two yards away from it.’ They were shaking so badly it looked as if he were suffering from some terrible disease.
‘You’re afraid, sir. I can see it in your eyes. Cowards usually are. I don’t expect you’ll be man enough to accept.’
At twenty paces the chances of Maginn firing and hitting him were so remote that Pyke found himself contemplating the challenge. Certainly there didn’t seem to be any way he could get out of it, not without losing face. What worried him more was Hunt — a man who’d lost his own flesh and blood could do just about anything, especially if he felt his actions were justified. But it had been ten years since Pyke had killed his father. Could he still be sufficiently angry to attempt some kind of revenge?
‘You’re not going to accept this lunatic’s challenge, are you?’ Godfrey said, appearing at Pyke’s side.
‘I don’t see I have any choice.’ Pyke looked around the shop but Hunt had disappeared. He wanted to find Jo, to tell her to take Felix home, but she was nowhere to be seen either.
The air was cold outside but perhaps not cold enough to sober up Maginn; having insisted that they fight there and then, he stumbled around in the dark, waving his pistol in the air and talking to himself. The whole thing was ridiculous; a parody of a duel.
Pyke had already inspected his pistol and was happy with it. In fact it was a much more carefully crafted weapon than his own Long Sea Service pistol, and the feel of polished walnut was reassuring in his hand.
‘Gentlemen, are you ready?’ The adjudicator called out to them both. ‘On my count, you will take your first step.’ They had already determined what the rules of the contest would be: ten steps, to be taken at the adjudicator’s prompting, then turn and fire. Pyke hoped Maginn would fire into the air.
‘One.’
With his back facing Maginn’s, Pyke took his first step and looked around the deserted street. A nearby gas-lamp hissed and flared, producing a dull light that barely illuminated the area directly beneath it. At the man’s count, he took another step and then another, trying to clear his mind and concentrate. The whole thing was absurd, but someone was about to fire a loaded pistol at him in anger and thus the potential for danger remained. Briefly he thought about Felix and Jo, wondered whether they knew what was happening or not.
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