Kill-Devil and Water

by Andrew Pepper

Crane just shrugged. ‘I can’t see why a criminal like Field would be interested in a squalid little political ... what did you call it? Political action.’

  ‘At least Field knows what he is.’

  ‘And I don’t?’ Crane seemed amused by this notion.

  Pyke took a step towards Crane and saw Sykes and the other man stiffen. ‘I’ve upheld my end of our agreement. Now I want to know what took you to Thrale’s lodging house.’

  Crane wetted his lips. ‘But have you? For all I know you’ve just plucked something out of the air.’

  ‘Why did you go and see Mary Edgar and Arthur Sobers?’

  ‘It was nothing really. Sobers had been harassing this woman he’d slept with. The brothel owner, and a friend of mine, asked for my assistance in putting him straight.’

  ‘And that’s it?’

  Crane’s stare was empty of sentiment. ‘I’m sorry if you were expecting something more dramatic.’

  ‘You’re quite sure about that?’

  ‘Quite sure.’

  ‘In which case,’ Pyke said, holding out his hand, ‘perhaps we should shake hands and go our separate ways.’

  Crane exchanged a glance with Sykes before offering his hand. It took Pyke just a few seconds to twist Crane around, retrieve his knife, put his head into a lock and hold the serrated edge against the pornographer’s neck. ‘One move and I’ll slit your throat, and not give it a moment’s thought,’ Pyke whispered in Crane’s ear.

  The quickness of Pyke’s move had caught Sykes and the other man by surprise and neither seemed to know what to do.

  ‘That understood?’ When Crane didn’t say anything, he added, ‘Is that understood?’

  ‘Yes,’ was all Crane managed.

  ‘Now tell your two apes to back off and not attempt anything rash.’ He dug the blade into Crane’s neck and drew a few spots of blood. ‘Do it.’

  ‘Do what he says,’ Crane hissed. The two others did as they were told.

  ‘Now tell me what really took you to Thrale’s lodging house.’

  Crane squirmed a little in his grip but Pyke kept the knife to his throat. ‘You’re a dead man, Pyke,’ he whispered. ‘You kill me, you’re a dead man. You don’t kill me, you’re a dead man.’

  Pyke dug the edge of the blade deeper into Crane’s neck. ‘I just want the truth.’

  ‘I did it as a favour for a friend. They wanted to frighten Sobers and Edgar into leaving the country.’

  ‘Your friend’s name.’

  ‘You’ll have to kill me before I tell you that.’

  ‘Elizabeth Malvern.’ Pyke felt Crane’s body stiffen. ‘I’m right, aren’t I?’

  ‘If you knew that already, why are you even here?’

  ‘I need to know why she asked you to try and intimidate Sobers and Mary Edgar.’

  ‘I don’t know. You’ll have to ask her.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I will.’ Pyke could smell the acrid scent of Crane’s body odour. ‘But right now I’m asking you. Where can I find her?’

  ‘She’s not here.’

  ‘So it’s true she’s gone to the West Indies?’

  ‘If you know all about her, why do you need me?’

  ‘Why did she go?’

  ‘Something to do with her brother. That’s all I know.’

  ‘What’s someone who volunteers for the Vice Society doing with a pornographer like you?’

  ‘You may as well cut my throat now,’ Crane whispered, ‘because that’s as much as I’m going to tell you.’

  Pyke could see that Sykes was preparing to take matters into his own hands. Wheeling Crane around so that they were blocking the door, he released his grip around Crane’s neck and pushed him into Sykes’s path. As they collided, Pyke bolted for the entrance and was all the way across the yard before Sykes could raise the alarm.

  ‘Don’t you understand, Pyke? Your son was caught trying to pick a gentleman’s pocket on Camden Place. If I hadn’t been in the vicinity, and hadn’t spoken on behalf of the boy and offered to make amends to the injured party, they would have hauled him before a magistrate, perhaps even sent him to prison.’

  Pyke stared at his uncle, still trying to take in this news. ‘Is he here?’

  ‘Upstairs in his room. He wouldn’t say a word to me. Jo’s tried to talk to him but he won’t talk to her, either.’

  ‘I’ll try.’ His words sounded hollow.

  Godfrey shook his head. ‘Your place is here with him, Pyke. Now more than ever. Not gallivanting off to the West Indies in pursuit of this phantom.’ He stroked his white mane and looked across at Jo, who had just entered the room. She and Pyke exchanged an awkward glance. ‘How is he?’ Godfrey asked.

  ‘He still refuses to say anything.’ She looked at Pyke. ‘I think we can assume he was led astray by the older boy you saw him with the other day.’

  Until now Pyke had assumed that travelling to the West Indies in pursuit of Alefounder, and perhaps Elizabeth Malvern, though arduous and potentially costly, would not harm his own interests. Without really thinking about it, he knew instinctively that it was something he had to do. But here was the clearest of indications that his absence might do more harm than good. For how might Felix react if he knew what Pyke was planning? Perhaps Godfrey was right; perhaps the sensible thing to do would be to abandon his plans to travel to Jamaica. After all, he would have to bear the cost of the trip himself. He considered this, as he watched Godfrey and Jo. Yet he knew that he couldn’t give up the investigation. He had come too far; he had given his word. It was true - no one else cared about Mary’s death.

  Addressing Jo, Godfrey said, ‘Have you heard about Pyke’s plan to travel to Jamaica? Now of all times.’

  Briefly Jo met his gaze and then looked away. ‘No, I wasn’t aware of that.’

  ‘I’ll only be gone for a couple of months.’ It might and probably would take him longer, but he didn’t like to admit this. If he travelled by steamer, he’d been told the crossing could take as little as three weeks.

  ‘Don’t you see how much your son needs you? What he did today was stupid but it was a cry for help. And now you’re going to abandon him again.’ Godfrey’s face had turned the colour of beetroot.

  ‘I’m sorry, Godfrey. I just can’t let this thing go. I have to see it through to the end.’ It was an inadequate answer, but it was the truth, too.

  ‘Look, don’t misunderstand me, dear boy. I’m sorry this mulatto woman was murdered but isn’t that the point? She’s dead. Your son isn’t and he needs you here.’

  ‘Don’t you see - I’m doing this for him. In part, at least. So I can look him in the eye and say this is what I did. So he can see what I do and be proud of me. I can’t just walk away from it now.’

  ‘Let the police sort the matter out,’ Godfrey said, sighing.

  ‘I was there when they buried her.’ He hesitated. ‘It was just me at her graveside; me and the two gravediggers.’ Pyke stole a glance at Jo, wanting her to see that he was capable of such feeling. ‘I close my eyes at night and I can see her face, how it was mutilated.’

  Godfrey regarded him with a mixture of pity and frustration. ‘Your wife is dead, Pyke, and nothing you do now is going to bring her back.’

  ‘And that’s what you think this is?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  They stared at one another awkwardly. Out of the corner of his eye, Pyke could see Jo squirming. But Godfrey hadn’t quite finished. ‘What if you’re laid out with yellow fever or your ship is attacked or goes down in a storm. What will I do with Felix? I’m an old man.’

  ‘Two months; I’ll be back in two months.’

  ‘I can’t get through to him,’ Godfrey said to Jo. ‘He just refuses to listen. See if you can talk some sense to him.’

  ‘Felix is almost ten,’ Pyke said, trying to rein in his frustration. ‘I lost my father when I was barely eight; he needs to learn to stand on his own two feet.’

  ‘I shan’t give you a penny. You won’t get a single penny
from me to fund this absurd venture.’ Godfrey left the room muttering. ‘Pig-headed man.’

  Pyke waited until he was gone before saying to Jo, ‘Do you think I’m as reckless and pig-headed as Godfrey seems to?’

  For what seemed like minutes she stood there, her arms folded, refusing to answer the question.

  The hackney carriage dropped them by the Theatre Royal on Drury Lane just as it was getting dark. Just him and Felix. The boy hadn’t wanted to go with him at first but Pyke had forced the matter. The light was fading and the lamp-lighters were strung out along the street. The odour of rotting food and faeces was pungent in the breeze. Pyke took Felix’s hand and told the lad to hold on to him ‘at all costs’. Felix hadn’t uttered a word to him during the short ride from Camden. They entered a narrow alley just past the Theatre Royal not wide enough for carriages to pass along. Two roughly dressed men stumbled out of a brothel. Through the door, Felix caught a glimpse of the interior, lit up by the red, smoky flame of a grease lamp. He seemed transfixed by it. They passed a swag and slop-shop, tailoring hovels and a gin shop; a man was lying face down in the gutter outside. They stepped over him and continued into the heart of the rookery.

  At the next corner, they came across a man dressed in a monkey jacket and oilskin cap who was whipping a donkey. Felix wanted to stop but Pyke tugged on his hand and pulled him onwards. On either side of the alleyway, disembodied faces stared at them through shattered window panes; in doorways, barefoot children watched them pass. Some uttered obscenities, their harsh, guttural accents echoing down the intricate web of alleyways and courts; but most were silent. Pyke felt Felix’s grip tighten around his hand. At the next corner, they stopped for a moment outside the door to an underground slaughterhouse; Felix stared down at a mound of quivering entrails. Next door, a stream of liquid refuse from a tripe scraper and scum-boiler leaked into an open cess trench. The rookery was where Pyke had grown up, had been his home until his uncle had rescued him, and he wanted Felix to see it in all its unvarnished nastiness. They passed a toothless man who stood half naked in the street. He giggled as they stepped around him and then followed them, his trousers around his ankles, hands outstretched for coins.

  At the heart of the rookery was a dilapidated building that stood on the foundations of an old leper hospital. It was called the Rat’s Castle and its walls were buckled, its windows patched with rags and paper. At one of the entrances, paupers fresh from oakum picking and bone grinding tugged on Pyke’s coat sleeve, begging for money; Pyke pushed them to one side and led Felix into the darkened interior. A long passageway took them into the bowels of the building, past rooms where men and women scolded, fought, swore and copulated with one another. At the top of a corkscrew staircase, a man wearing a torn shooting jacket and a billycock hat jumped out of the shadows. Felix recoiled but Pyke pushed the man backwards; pushed him so hard he toppled on to his backside.

  They continued along another passageway; eventually it opened up into a much larger room where children as young as six or seven, orphans and runaways mostly, lay head to toe on the rotten floorboards, with not even a rag to sleep under. One boy was sobbing; another was being sick. A man and a woman were openly copulating in front of them. No one paid the newcomers much attention at first, but then an older boy, perhaps thirteen or fourteen, sidled up to them and asked Pyke how much he wanted ‘for the boy’. He inspected Felix as if he were a slab of meat. Grabbing his son’s hand, Pyke led Felix back along the passageway, ignoring the older boy’s protestations. At the stairs, a couple of men were waiting for them; Pyke could see from their eyes they meant business. With his free hand, he withdrew his Long Sea Service pistol from his belt and brandished it in their faces. They fell back and let them pass. Outside the building, they retraced their path out of the rookery. Felix didn’t say a single word to Pyke until they were safely ensconced inside a hackney carriage bound for Camden Town.

  ‘That was all I knew until Godfrey offered to take me into his home.’ Pyke waited. ‘I don’t want that life for you.’

  From the bench on the other side of carriage, Felix just nodded.

  ‘What you did today was foolish but, worse than that, it was unnecessary. Those people we saw just now; they steal because they have to. If they don’t steal, they starve. We should never forget how lucky we are.’

  Felix stared down at his boots. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Reading stories can give you some insight into other people’s lives but they never give you the whole picture.’ Pyke paused to gather his thoughts. ‘People tend to do things because they have to; when they don’t have a choice. Often it isn’t about right or wrong. It’s about surviving.’

  Felix seemed to consider this. ‘Is that why you did some of the things you did?’ he said, in a quiet, deliberate voice.

  ‘In Godfrey’s book, the character is presented in a certain way to shock and appal the readers, or at least that’s what I’m guessing because I haven’t actually read it.’

  Felix stared at him, open mouthed. ‘You haven’t read it?’

  ‘All I’m saying is that there are always reasons why characters are drawn in the ways they are. They’re there to teach us, scare us, entertain us. It’s not the same as what you saw just now at the Rat’s Castle; there, people do what they have to in order to live. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?’

  Felix looked through the glass at the darkened street but didn’t say anything. They rode in silence for a few minutes, the clatter of wheels on cobblestones filling the carriage.

  ‘I have to go away for a while,’ Pyke said quietly.

  He waited for Felix to react but the boy just sat there, then nodded. ‘I heard you talking with Godfrey.’

  ‘And what do you think?’

  Felix looked up at him. There were tears in his eyes, but he was trying not to cry. ‘How long will you be gone?’

  ‘Two months, maybe a little longer.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Jamaica.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need to find the man who killed that young woman.’

  Felix turned for a moment and looked out of the window in silence. ‘I won’t ever steal again, unless I have to.’

  Pyke reached out and ruffled Felix’s hair, the way he used to do when he was much younger.

  *

  Later, after Pyke had put Felix to bed, he joined Jo in the front room. His uncle had already turned in for the night. Collecting a half-full bottle of claret from the kitchen, he poured out two glasses. Jo took one reluctantly. They sat down on either end of the sofa.

  ‘Do you think I’m abandoning my son?’ He stared into the empty fireplace, then turned to face her.

  ‘Why are you asking me?’ Her tone was gentle but measured.

  ‘Because I value your opinion.’

  Her expression remained inscrutable. ‘But nothing I say will make you change your mind, will it?’

  ‘So you do think I’m abandoning Felix.’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ She took a sip of wine and then put the glass down on the floor and retrieved what turned out to be a purse from the folds of her skirt. Putting it down in between them on the sofa, she added, ‘Here. Take it. Pay me back when you get the chance.’

  Pyke looked down at the bulging purse and then up at Jo’s face. ‘You’d really do that for me?’

  She shrugged, as though the offer wasn’t a generous one. ‘There’s seventy pounds. If you need it, it’s yours.’

  ‘I can’t.’ Pyke tried to swallow. ‘I couldn’t possibly take your money. But I’m touched more than I can say. That you’d even think about offering me your life savings is ...’ He couldn’t think how to finish the sentence.

  ‘Felix will be all right. Godfrey and I will keep a close eye on him. I promise.’ This time, when she looked at him, her eyes were glistening in the candlelight.

  He picked up the cloth purse and held it out for her to take. As she did so, their fingers
brushed against each other. It was just the faintest of touches. Pyke didn’t dare look into her face but noticed that she hadn’t withdrawn her hand. She let the purse fall back on to the sofa. Neither of them moved. Finally he raised his eyes to meet hers. He felt a pull in his stomach. Extending his fingertip, he touched one of her knuckles. She didn’t flinch.

  ‘Pyke ...’

  Their fingers were coiled around one another; he could feel his heart thumping. ‘Yes?’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  He edged towards her, close enough to smell her sandalwood musk, and see the line of her creamy smooth neck. ‘I don’t know. Do you?’