‘And your visitor? I never did find out her name.’
Pyke couldn’t bring himself to look at her. ‘She’s gone.’
‘Oh.’ Jo’s expression was measured, her voice composed.
For a while neither of them spoke. The rattle of wood and iron wheels across cobbles temporarily filled the room.
‘I saw the way you looked at her and I recognised it. It was the same way I used to look at you.’ When he didn’t respond, Jo offered a gentle smile.
Pyke fumbled around in his pocket and produced an envelope. ‘I’d like you to have this as a token of my appreciation for all the work you did for my family.’
Jo took it, peered into the envelope and tried to hand it back to him. ‘I couldn’t possibly accept it, as generous as it is.’
‘Don’t think of it as coming from me. Think of it as a gift from Emily. I’d say you were her best, and most loved, friend. Or think of it as a gift from Felix if that makes you feel any better.’ Pyke looked away suddenly because he didn’t want her to see his expression.
She held out the envelope for him again but he wouldn’t take it. ‘Please, keep it. I’d like to think I’ve done at least one right thing with respect to you.’
Jo sat there for a while contemplating what he’d said and finally put the envelope into her shawl.
‘Will you come and visit Felix again?’
On the front steps, they shook hands and, as their fingers parted, Pyke had to rein in a sudden desire to take her hand and ask her to reconsider. Tying her bonnet under her chin, she turned around and looked at him. ‘Try not to be too hard on yourself, Pyke. For some reason, and I hope you take this as a compliment, self-loathing doesn’t suit you.’
The same night Mary had found out that her father had been killed by Crane, she had come to Pyke’s room. She wore a cotton nightdress that clung to her figure and revealed just enough of her firm, plump calves to elicit his attention. He had been sitting up in bed reading. She had stood by the door and even when he had invited her into the room, and had cleared a space for her next to him on the bed, she had remained where she was.
‘I’m scared, Pyke.’ She stood there unmoving. ‘I’m scared that all this, all that we’ve done, all the lives that have been damaged — that it’s all been for nothing.’
‘I’m not sure what you want me to say. Do you expect me to tell you that everything is going to be all right?’
‘Not at all,’ she said, staring towards the window.
‘What did you mean, then?’
Mary wiped a strand of hair from her eye and took a tentative step into the room. Pyke looked down at the book he’d been reading, trying to ignore his groin and the hammering of his heart.
‘If you’d asked me a month ago, I would have told you how much I longed to be back in Jamaica. To feel the warmth of the sun on my skin, see my old friends.’
‘And now?’ His gaze followed the curve of her cheekbones down to the smoothness of her neck.
‘Now I don’t know what I feel.’ She took another step into the room, and was almost close enough for him to reach out and touch her. ‘Do you know?’
‘What about?’ He tried to swallow but couldn’t.
‘About what happened between you and me.’
She stared at him. But in saying it, in calling attention to what had happened, it was as if some kind of spell had been broken. This time, when Pyke patted the place for her on the bed, she sat down next to him.
‘I’ve been thinking a lot about the few weeks that I spent in Jamaica.’ He hesitated. ‘At the time, it didn’t make sense to me why no one seemed much interested in helping me to find your murderer.’
‘You didn’t ever suspect what we’d done?’
Pyke shrugged. ‘Perhaps I did. Perhaps I didn’t. It’s hard to remember with any degree of certainty what I thought. But that’s not what I’m trying to say.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘You don’t have to apologise. It’s just…’ Pyke hesitated. ‘I was just thinking about a conversation I had with Isaac Webb.’ He looked over at her, but her expression remained blank. ‘I’m sure, looking back on it, he’d been told to kill me. I was becoming a nuisance. If I’d been allowed to return to London, I might’ve discovered the truth and threatened everything. It wasn’t personal — in fact, I think Harper and Webb liked me for some reason. In any case, I pre-empted Webb — I knew what he was going to do and I pulled my pistol on him instead. Thinking about it now, I’m certain he could have followed me and finished the job. I told him that my place was here, with my son. He told me about his son and in the end, I think he let me go because he didn’t want any more blood to be spilled. But as I rode away I remember thinking about home, about London, and how I didn’t belong there in Jamaica.’
Her jaw tightened a little. ‘And by that you mean I don’t belong here?’
‘I didn’t mean that. I just meant that Webb and I seemed to come to an accommodation. Over there was his place.’
‘But it isn’t his place. Isn’t that the whole point? It belongs to Silas Malvern, and when he dies it will be sold to another white planter. It will never be our place unless we’re prepared to do something about it.’
Pyke absorbed the heat of her gaze but his silence seemed to make her angrier. ‘Here in this room, in this house, what you have is all yours. You can do as you please. You have no idea how lucky you are — and how many things you take for granted.’
Pyke nodded, to concede the point. He knew what he had to say but the words seemed to catch in his throat. ‘There’s a…’ He hesitated and tried to swallow. ‘There’s a steamer leaving from Southampton in two days. I’ve booked your passage as far as Kingston.’ He couldn’t bring himself to look at her but he sensed her body going rigid.
‘Just like that?’ There was still a small spark of hope in her voice. She reached out and touched his hand and he had to bite back an urge to pull her towards him.
‘I’ll accompany you as far as Southampton, to make sure you take up your cabin.’
That drew a hollow laugh. ‘A cage with golden bars.’
‘Better that than a prison cell here in London.’
‘And Silas Malvern?’ She gave him a hollow look. ‘What will you tell him?’
‘I’ll tell him the truth.’ This time he looked directly at her and sighed. ‘That’s all I can do.’
Picking up the half-full bottle, Fitzroy Tilling leaned across the table and poured them both a glass of claret.
‘You know what I think?’ he said, chewing a piece of bread. ‘I think, in the end, there isn’t a great deal that separates us. I’d even go as far as to say there could be a place for you in the New Police if you wanted it. The political winds are shifting. There’ll be an election within the year and Peel will win it. The current Liberal administration is a spent force. I’ve talked to Peel about your ideas vis-a-vis detection, rather than just prevention, of crime. He seems keen on the idea of a detective bureau and I think he might offer you a position. What would you say to that?’
‘Me? A police officer?’ Pyke started to laugh.
‘A detective. And remember you were once a Bow Street Runner.’ Pyke took a sip of claret. He would have to think about Tilling’s offer, but it was true that he enjoyed the work. Sitting back in his chair, he looked at the man across from him and wondered about their similarities.
‘Did anyone ever connect you with the attempt to break Morel-Roux out of Newgate?’
Tilling looked up from his food, a grilled lamb chop, and shrugged. ‘They investigated, of course, and found that a PC William Dell and I left the prison through the main gate at a quarter to ten.’
‘You know, I got him as far as the chapel window. All he had to do was climb down the rope. But he froze. He was terrified of heights.’
Tilling put down his cutlery and exhaled. ‘We did all we could, Pyke.’
‘Do you really believe that?’ Pyke could tell that Tilling was still troubled.
‘If I had the chance to do it again, to try to rescue Morel-Roux, I wouldn’t. The law’s the law. It’s the only thing that separates us from beasts.’
‘But the law is also the means by which men like Silas Malvern have accrued their fortunes.’
Tilling chewed a piece of meat and washed it down with a mouthful of claret. He didn’t have an answer. One of the things Pyke liked best about Tilling was that they disagreed so fundamentally on so many different things but somehow managed to keep those disagreements at bay. He wondered what this said about their friendship.
‘I had lunch with the governor of the Bank of England today,’ Tilling said, breaking the silence.
‘Oh?’
‘In light of what happened, they’ve just completed an audit of their bullion reserves.’
‘And?’ Pyke pretended to concentrate on what was on his plate.
‘Twenty gold bars have gone missing.’
‘Just twenty?’
‘Indeed, given what might have happened, he seemed rather relieved.’
‘Could’ve been a lot worse.’
‘And he knows he has you to thank for that.’ Tilling wetted his lips. ‘You were the one who foiled Crane’s plans, after all.’
Pyke accepted the compliment. ‘What’s he going to do?’
‘Any more than twenty, I’d say he would have called in the City of London police.’
‘But a man in his position wouldn’t want to advertise that even one single gold bar had gone missing, would he?’
Tilling pushed a piece of meat around his plate with a fork. ‘The hole leading up from the sewer came out directly in front of the guard room. To get in and out of the bullion vault, someone would have had to be fairly sure that no guards would be present. That’s what Crane was counting on. But what if someone knew, for example, that on the Sunday morning before the robbery, a meeting had been called in the governor’s chamber, involving all the soldiers, and hence the entrance to the bullion vault would have been left unguarded for at least half an hour?’
Pyke took a sip of wine and held Tilling’s stare. ‘That’s quite an elaborate story. But I don’t know what it’s got to do with me.’
Tilling’s eyes narrowed. ‘It pleases me to hear you say that. Because if I thought you’d used me, I’d do my utmost to see you prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.’
Pyke said nothing.
‘Listen, I mentioned this idea of the detective bureau earlier because I think you’re the most tenacious, gifted investigator I’ve ever known. I think you enjoy it, too. But these are changed times. Any slip-ups, any vague flirtations with criminality, and Peel won’t touch you with a ten-foot stick.’
Pyke assured Tilling that he would think about what he’d said.
That afternoon, Pyke collected Felix from Godfrey’s shop and took him back to the house, where they rescued Copper from the back yard. They walked to the fields just to the north of their street. It was a warm, late summer day and, away from the maw of the city, the air smelled clean and refreshing. The sky was an unbroken panoply of blue, and the ground underfoot had been baked hard by the sun. Copper limped contentedly by their side and, as they walked, Felix discussed the good and bad points of the new nanny, mostly in terms of how she was and wasn’t like Jo.
The field to their right had been portioned up into allotments and Pyke had taken one of the plots and had started to plant his own vegetables. He liked the idea of working a small patch of land and showing Felix how particular foods arrived on his plate. There was a small shed in one corner of the allotment from which Pyke collected a shovel before digging down into recently cultivated earth. Felix and Copper looked on without much interest. Eventually, the end of the shovel struck the top of the trunk. Pyke cleared a space around it and invited Felix to join him in the hole.
‘I want you to see something,’ Pyke said, putting his arm around Felix’s shoulder. ‘I was hoping you could open up the trunk for me.’
‘Why? What’s inside?’
‘Why don’t you open it and see for yourself.’ Pyke stood back while Felix unfastened the catch and lifted up the lid.
The eighteen gold bars were just as he’d left them. The reflection from the sun made it hard to look at them for any length of time.
For days, Pyke had agonised over whether to tell Felix about the bars or show them to him. The risk of doing so was great: Felix might turn against him or, worse still, denounce him as a common criminal. That said, considering the way Felix had dealt with Eric, the pickpocket, Pyke had seen something in his son, an indifference to the finer points of the law, and it was something he liked. That suggested to him it might be time to trust the lad a little more, show him something of the world Pyke actually inhabited. Let him be proud of his father; proud of his rougher edges and daring, rather than of his willingness to serve the very letter of the law.
Felix didn’t know what to do. ‘Are they real?’ he asked, afraid to reach out and touch them.
‘Try lifting one up. You’ll need both hands.’
Felix did as Pyke suggested and tottered unconvincingly under the weight of one of the bars before letting it drop back on to the pile. ‘Where have they come from?’ he asked eventually, still adjusting to the wonder of it all.
‘That doesn’t matter. What matters is they’re ours. Yours and mine. This is our secret. I want you to shake my hand; then we’ll both swear we’ll never tell another living soul about it.’
They shook hands and made the pledge. Pyke lifted one of the bars out of the trunk and put it in a satchel he’d brought with him. The market price was something in the region of eight hundred pounds; Ned Villums had offered to pay him half that. But it would be more than enough to settle his debts and pay his bills for the foreseeable future.
‘What are we going to do with them all?’
Pyke smiled at the speed with which his son had accepted his ownership of the bars. ‘Keep them here. From time to time I might sell one. But this is our future. I promised I’d try harder. This is the start of it.’
‘But what if someone else comes and digs them up?’
‘No one else knows about them. As long as we don’t tell anyone else, they’ll be more than safe right here.’
Later, as they walked back towards the house, the sun was setting in the west and the entire sky was washed with streaks of orange and gold. Copper trotted ahead on his three good legs and Felix walked next to Pyke holding his hand.
It took Pyke another month after he had seen Mary on to the steamer at Southampton to summon the necessary fortitude to face Silas Malvern in his own home. He was ushered in by the same butler into the same greenhouse he had visited three or four months earlier. This time, though, Malvern almost seemed pleased to see him and even made the butler fetch two glasses of his best cognac. He also ordered the man to bring a chair for Pyke and put it close by so that they could talk without being interrupted. He seemed to be in good spirits and, if anything, his health had improved slightly since Pyke had last seen him outside the Sessions House.
‘Now, sir, to what do I owe the dubious honour of this visit?’ he asked, once the butler had returned with the chair and the brandies.
‘You once expressed a desire to be reunited with your brother, Phillip. I’m sorry to tell you he’s dead.’
Malvern’s expression crumpled and his top lip began to quiver. ‘I see.’ He tried to regain control of his mouth. ‘Can I ask where and how he died…’ Closing his eyes, he went on, ‘and what has become of his body? I should like to honour him in death in a manner I wasn’t able to in life.’
‘He fell in with the wrong people. It’s likely his body will never be found.’
‘Will you at least tell me about the circumstances of his death and the identity of these people you refer to?’
‘On certain conditions.’
Malvern licked his lips. ‘Such as?’
‘I want you to own up to what you did. An innocent man was sa
crificed to preserve your family’s good name.’
Malvern paused and then nodded his head slowly, as though acknowledging the truth of what Pyke had just said. With a lazy movement he waved his hand, as though swatting an imaginary fly. ‘What would be the purpose of raking over old ground?’
The almost casual manner with which Malvern had admitted to his part in the plot to fabricate the evidence against Morel-Roux took Pyke’s breath away.
‘You’ve clung on to your honour and fortune and Pierce has been promoted to the rank of superintendent. But a good man is dead for no other reason than he was poor and foreign and therefore expendable. Is that something you want to take to your grave?’
‘If I ever felt the need to confess my sins, I’d do so in the presence of a priest, not a common thief.’
‘I’m not talking about making a statement before the Church or even the law. I know you’d never do it. I just want you to admit what you did to me.’
‘Why?’ This time Malvern seemed genuinely curious. ‘You already seem to have made up your mind anyway.’
‘Because I want to hear the words come from your lips.’
The idea of exacting his own justice had crossed Pyke’s mind, but such an act would only play into the hands of the Jamaican conspirators. He wondered what he had really hoped to achieve by confronting the old man.
When Malvern didn’t answer, Pyke added, ‘I realise that some vague information about a brother you haven’t seen in more than twenty years is perhaps insufficient inducement here, so I’m prepared to sweeten my offer.’
‘Sweeten in what sense?’
‘I also have some information about your daughter.’
That made him sit up straighter. ‘What do you mean? What information do you have about my Elizabeth?’
Pyke pretended not to have heard him. ‘But you see, I’ve changed my mind. I’ll tell you what I know only if you’ll agree to make a confession in front of Sir Richard Mayne and Fitzroy Tilling.’
He sat back and watched the old man’s bewilderment, enjoying it until he considered his own motivations for doing what he was about to do. Until now it hadn’t been clear to him, but suddenly it was: he wanted to ruin Pierce and break Malvern. Any hint of wrongdoing on Pierce’s part would bring about his dismissal and the truth about Elizabeth Malvern would surely send the old man to his grave. What Pyke was doing had nothing to do with justice, with avenging the Swiss valet’s death.
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