Kill-Devil and Water

by Andrew Pepper

  He found William Alefounder sitting at one end of a table situated in the middle of the room. The sugar trader, who was oblivious to his presence, was chatting to a man next to him. He seemed comfortable in this setting and was regaling his dining companion with a story that required exaggerated gesticulation of his arms.

  From behind, Pyke grabbed a handful of Alefounder’s frock-coat and pulled him to his feet. For a moment the trader struggled to comprehend what was happening to him, and it was only when Pyke whispered, ‘Come with me quietly or I’ll humiliate you in front of these people,’ that he began to grasp his predicament. His companion and some of the other guests frowned at the rough manner in which Pyke had elicited Alefounder’s attention, but when they saw that the trader was following Pyke out of the hall willingly, they reverted to their conversations.

  The first door Pyke could find led to the kitchens. He didn’t care where it took him; he just wanted to get Alefounder away from the prying eyes of the other diners.

  ‘I want to know how well you knew Mary Edgar and when you last saw her.’

  The kitchen was a large room that extended all the way to the back of the building, so most of the cooks and servants were well out of earshot.

  ‘I don’t have to answer your questions, sir.’ But for the moment, Alefounder’s cocksure manner had vanished.

  It was hot from all the coal-fired ovens and pans of boiling liquid, and Alefounder went to loosen his neckcloth.

  ‘I want to know when you first met Mary Edgar, when you first started fucking her and why you strangled her and dumped her naked corpse on the Ratcliff Highway.’

  But if Pyke thought that the trader would crumple, he hadn’t counted on the arrogance of wealth.

  ‘I’ve said all I’m going to say to the people who matter.’

  And when Pyke laid a hand on Alefounder’s arm, the trader went to brush it away, as if it were some kind of annoying insect.

  ‘If you touch me again, I’ll make sure you spend the night under lock and key.’ The skin on Alefounder’s face was as taut as a drum.

  Pyke took a deep breath and allowed his chest to swell to its full girth. Alefounder was unprepared for Pyke’s first punch, which ripped against the side of his face, and was knocked to the floor by the second, a hammer blow that Pyke put his whole body behind and which caught Alefounder flatly on the chin. But if Alefounder believed that that was the end of his difficulties, he was badly mistaken. Pyke pulled him to his feet and dragged him across to a row of metal pots lined up on top of a large stove. There, he took the trader’s hand and held it over a pot full to the brim with bubbling liquid.

  ‘I’m giving you one more chance to answer me truthfully. Why did you meet Mary Edgar from the ship? And where did you take her?’

  Dazed from the blows to his face, Alefounder struggled to remain upright, but still he didn’t respond to Pyke’s question.

  ‘Do you know a woman called Lucy Luckins? She was saved by the Vice Society, only to turn up dead a few months later.’

  Alefounder offered Pyke a bewildered stare. The fight seemed to have left him. ‘Lucy who?’

  Pyke forced the trader’s arm down towards the soup pot. ‘I asked you a question. Why did you meet Mary from the ship?’

  Alefounder tried in vain to wrestle his arm from Pyke’s grip. ‘You have no authority over me, sir.’

  Keeping his own hands out of the scalding liquid, Pyke forced Alefounder’s arm down into the soup and held it there for a moment. Alefounder’s agonised scream carried not only to the depths of the kitchen but also as far as the banqueting hall. Letting go, Pyke watched as the sugar trader fell to the floor, clutching hold of his arm, which was now covered with soup. A small audience had gathered around them, cooks, servers and even one of the major-domos. Their eyes switched between Alefounder, writhing around on the floor, and Pyke; their pity for the trader’s plight quickly turned to anger over the assault that had just taken place.

  Pyke hauled the trader up. ‘If you don’t answer my questions, it won’t just be your arm in that pot ...’

  But now one of the cooks stepped out of the crowd and pulled Alefounder from Pyke’s grasp. Others began to shout for help. Instinctively Pyke knew that his moment had passed and he would leave the banquet hall empty handed. It felt as if he’d failed; as if Alefounder had beaten him. Turning around, he pushed his way through the crowd of bodies. No one tried to stop him, but the sting of failure stayed with him long after he’d found a way out of the building.

  The first gin barely touched his throat, the clean aroma of the drink filling his nostrils. The second went down just as quickly. By the fifth he couldn’t feel his face, and it was only when he’d lost count of the gins he’d drunk that he remembered his promise to Jo. Outside on the street, he watched as a hackney carriage rattled past him; he made no effort to flag it down. She would be waiting for him, wondering where he’d got to. The feeling was a disconcerting one. From the tavern he’d been drinking in, he stumbled across St Paul’s Yard, in the shadow of the great cathedral, to the top of Ludgate Hill, where he found a young woman with dark hair and big hips. Thrusting a five-shilling coin into her palm, Pyke led her into an alleyway that was so dark he couldn’t even see the colour of her eyes. Wordlessly he unhooked his braces and let his trousers drop to his ankles. She had pulled up her layers of petticoats and as she guided him with her hand, he mumbled in her ear, ‘Can I call you Mary?’

  That drew a throaty laugh. ‘You paid your money, you call me anything you like.’

  Later, when it was finished and Pyke was pulling up his braces, she touched him on the face and asked why he’d been crying. He had already paid her and her expression was merely curious. Pyke stared at her, not even aware that he’d been upset.

  ‘You asked if you could call me Mary.’ She was peering at him through the gloom. Pyke nodded vaguely. ‘So why did you keep saying you were sorry over and over to a woman called Emily?’

  As the shame scalded Pyke’s cheeks, he turned around and retraced his steps back to the street.

  In the morning Pyke bought a baked potato and a mug of sludgy black coffee from a street vendor near the market and ate the potato sitting on the pavement. He could still taste the gin in his mouth and even the thick coffee did little to take the taste away.

  The market was thronging, and the noise and stink - of animal dung and meat left too long in the sun - was sufficient to make him retch. Producing nothing but bile, Pyke wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his shirt and waited for the feeling to pass. Ahead of him in the field, long-horned Spanish cattle were being herded into drove-rings, each linked by wooden tracks, by drovers and their dogs. The cacophony of barking, grunting and lowing was almost too much for him to bear. Even worse was the plague of black flies which hovered and buzzed around the animals. The ground had dried in the sun but this, in turn, had produced its own problems. As the cattle moved across the field, they kicked up clouds of earth and dust into the air so that it was difficult to see more than a few yards in any direction.

  He had slept in his own bed - he had been too inebriated to consider going anywhere else - and was surprised, given what he’d done the previous night, that no police officers had roused him during the early hours and dragged him off to answer Alefounder’s charges. Nor were there any officers waiting for him when he returned to his garret after breakfast.

  With Copper, Pyke spent the rest of the morning traipsing along the Ratcliff Highway, still looking for Arthur Sobers. He moved cautiously through the dense warren of narrow, windy lanes, always looking behind him for footpads and stopping only to ask people about Sobers - and the missing mudlark - when he was sure that all those in the immediate vicinity had heard Copper growl and seen the size of his jaws. Underfoot, and in spite of the hot weather, the ground was spongy and damp. On either side of the street, in the broken windows of buckling, timber-framed houses, white eyes and smudged faces stared back at him as he walked past. At one corner, he passed a m
an openly defecating in the street; at another, twin boys barely older than Felix, their limbs bowed from rickets, held out their hands for money.

  Aware that he’d made no progress in his hunt for Sobers or the blind man known only as Filthy, Pyke left Copper back in the vicinity of Smithfield and, still curious as to why he’d received no visit from the police regarding his treatment of Alefounder, quietly asked after the trader both at his place of work and the apartment Harriet Alefounder had told him about on The Strand. At the former, he was told Alefounder had not come into work that morning. At the latter, there was no answer. With nothing else to do, and no further clues to chase, Pyke hailed a carriage and told the driver to take him all the way down to Richmond.

  ‘You’ve just missed him,’ Harriet Alefounder said, red eyed and slurring her words slightly, even though it was still the afternoon.

  Pyke looked around the well-furnished drawing room. ‘So he was here?’

  She gave him a peculiar stare. ‘Oh yes. He was here.’

  ‘I need to speak to him.’

  ‘That might be difficult, I’m afraid.’ She gave a hollow laugh.

  ‘Why? As I told you before, I suspect he might be involved in the murder of a young mulatto woman.’

  What sounded like a snort emerged from her mouth. ‘In that case he’s slipped through your fingers, sir.’ Pyke couldn’t work out whether she was pleased or upset by this notion.

  ‘Do you know where he’s gone?’

  ‘He came here from some dinner he’d attended, packed a suitcase with some of his old clothes, and left in a carriage bound for the West India Docks.’

  ‘He’s going to Jamaica?’ The skin tightened around his temples.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, irritated. ‘Where else would he go?’

  Pyke contemplated this for a moment, trying to adjust to the shock. ‘You know Elizabeth Malvern has recently sailed for Jamaica too.’

  From Harriet Alefounder’s expression, Pyke could tell she hadn’t known, and upon hearing this she fell on to the sofa and began to sob.

  He watched her, not knowing what to do, whether to try to comfort her or just leave. ‘I am sorry ...’

  Still sobbing, she looked up at him and spat, ‘Get out of my sight.’

  ‘Do you know which ship he’s due to sail on?’

  Her eyes glowed like lumps of hot coal. ‘The way he was talking last night, the ship was due to leave first thing this morning.’

  ‘The Island Queen?’

  ‘Yes, that was the name he mentioned, I think.’

  Harold Field’s home occupied four storeys of a Georgian town house at the northern end of Harley Street, and when Pyke presented himself at the front door, the following day, he was escorted up to a room on the third floor and told to wait for Field there. It was a far more refined home than Pyke had expected and, to pass the time, he studied Field’s book collection, whose treasures included all twelve volumes of Plato’s Republic and Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. In fact, with its sofas, thick striped wallpaper, high ceilings, gilt mirrors and large bay window overlooking the street, the room could have belonged to any well-to-do English gentleman.

  ‘To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?’ Field was immaculately dressed as usual, in a knee-length, dark blue frock-coat, a fawn waistcoat and matching trousers, and a white satin cravat tied loosely around his neck.

  ‘I thought I’d let you know that I intend to travel to Jamaica. A suspect in the murder investigation I was telling you about has absconded there, perhaps to join his mistress.’

  Earlier that morning, Pyke had found out from the Admiralty that a steamer was due to depart from Southampton for Kingston at the end of the week.

  ‘And what? This is simply a courtesy call to inform me of your decision?’

  ‘I went back to see Crane. He assured me that he’d let Bessie Daniels go home.’

  Field assimilated this piece of information. ‘She hasn’t been in contact with me.’

  ‘Would she have done so, if Crane had let her go?’

  Field’s stare told him all he needed to know.

  ‘In which case, I’ll go and see him again,’ Pyke said. ‘Demand to see her.’

  ‘And what?’ Field raised his eyebrows. ‘Then you will have paid off your debt to me?’

  ‘Whatever we decide, you’ll not stop me from going to the West Indies.’

  Field considered Pyke for a few moments. ‘Try as I might, I find you a difficult man to comprehend.’

  ‘In what sense?’

  ‘For a start, why do you care what happened to some faceless mulatto girl?’

  Pyke shrugged. ‘I don’t know; perhaps because no one else does.’ There were other reasons, of course, but in the circumstances this seemed as good an explanation as any.

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me,’ Field said, smiling. ‘I find your dedication to this particular task admirable.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But you still have a job to do for me.’

  A moment’s silence passed between them. ‘Last week, before we were interrupted and I had to make my escape, Bessie Daniels gave me a name.’

  Field’s irises contracted slightly. ‘And you decided to wait until now to inform me of it?’

  ‘I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Or I didn’t know what to think.’

  ‘But you still kept it from me.’

  ‘Jerome Morel-Roux.’

  ‘Just that?’

  Pyke nodded. ‘That was all she said.’ He waited. ‘You know he’s the valet awaiting trial for the murder of Lord Bedford?’

  ‘I’m aware of that fact.’

  ‘Do you know why Bessie Daniels might have wanted to pass on this name to you?’

  ‘I have absolutely no idea.’ But something about the way Field said this told Pyke he was lying.

  Pyke looked around the orderly room, still trying to reconcile it with his sense of Field. ‘I’ve done what you asked me to do.’

  The only noise in the room was the rattling of iron-shod wheels and clip-clop of horses’ hoofs outside on the street.

  ‘What’s this man’s name?’ Field asked, fiddling with his moustache. ‘The one who’s absconded.’

  ‘Alefounder. William Alefounder.’

  ‘And the mistress?’

  ‘A woman called Elizabeth Malvern.’

  Field looked up at him. ‘Could you repeat that name for me?’

  ‘Elizabeth Malvern.’

  ‘That’s what I thought you said.’

  Pyke looked into Field’s eyes. ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘No, not personally,’ Field said, waving off a fly. ‘But if you were to ask Crane the same question, he might well give you a different answer.’

  It took Pyke a few moments to comprehend what Harold Field was trying to tell him.

  ‘Where’s Bessie Daniels?’

  Pyke had followed Crane through the shop into a dirty yard and then on to a dilapidated printing room. There, they were joined by Sykes and another man Pyke had never seen before.

  ‘As I’ve told you before, I let her go.’

  ‘She hasn’t returned home.’

  ‘You know that for a fact?’

  ‘What have you done with her?’

  ‘I’m getting a little tired of repeating myself.’ Crane shared a brief look with the hulking Sykes.

  Inside his pocket, Pyke brushed his finger over the sharp end of his sheath knife. ‘Field thinks you’re involved in some kind of political action relating to the trial of a Swiss valet, Jerome Morel-Roux. ’ This was just a guess - and a wild one at that - but Pyke couldn’t think of any other reason why Crane would be connected with the plight of the Swiss valet.

  Crane’s hooded eyes glittered. ‘A political action, eh? Like storming the barricades?’

  ‘So you don’t deny the basic truth of what I just said?’

  ‘I’m certainly intrigued to know how he reached this particular conclusion, even if it is utterly wrong.’
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  ‘It’s not true, then?’