Pyke repeated that he had no intention of hurting either of them. He just wanted to ask a few questions. Mary didn’t even have to answer him directly. She could just nod or shake her head, as appropriate. He asked whether she could manage to do that. She looked up at him and nodded once. Pyke removed his wool coat, bent down and placed it over her shoulders. He saw her smile.
‘From time to time, you’d stay with Stephen and Clare in their room in Miss Clamp’s lodging house.’
Mary nodded. Now, with his view of her unimpeded, she did not look any older than sixteen or seventeen.
‘And Clare was your cousin.’
This time she spoke. ‘She was older than me. My da and hers were brothers. After Mammy died, when I was just a girl, Clare would look out for me.’ Her brogue was soft but distinctive.
Pyke waited for a moment. ‘It can’t have been easy for your family, her running away with a Protestant.’
The surprise registered in her eyes but his comments seemed to embolden her. ‘I can’t say any of us were too delighted by the idea but, then again, we weren’t the problem.’
‘You’re saying it was his family who caused the difficulties?’
This time she held his gaze. ‘You’ve not spent any time in Ireland, I’d wager.’
‘Is it that obvious?’
That elicited a thin smile. ‘I was going to say you wouldn’t understand but I suppose that’d be stupid.’
‘So when his family, Stephen’s family, found out about their . . . attachment . . .’
‘Stephen’s not like them. Weren’t like them, I guess.’ She made no effort to conceal her pain. ‘His da was a big Orangeman in this wee village in County Armagh. So was his uncle and so was one of his brothers. All Orangemen and all bristlin’ with hate. Fact that Stephen turned out to be as normal as he was, that was a genuine, God-given miracle. They’re mean people, Mr Pyke. Full of hate and resentment. Never accept our right to live in our own country. Myself, I don’t much care for any religion.’
‘But they cared, didn’t they? And that’s the reason that Stephen and Clare came to London, to get away.’
Mary nodded. ‘No one would marry ’em in Ireland. For that matter, no one would marry ’em in England neither. Not ’less one of ’em converted.’ She shook her head. ‘Look, Mr Pyke. Even though Clare and Stephen mostly grew up in the country, they came to live in Belfast. It’s a busy town, a port, in Ulster.’
Pyke just nodded.
‘It’s not a bad town, as towns go. Quite open-minded, compared to the country. But even in Belfast, they weren’t far enough away . . .’ Her eyes started to well up. ‘I don’t guess you can ever run far enough away from that kind of hate.’
‘Only his family, the Magennises, they found out about Clare.’
‘Moment that she and your man heard of it, they were on the next steamship bound for Liverpool.’
‘And from there, they travelled south to London.’
Mary nodded. ‘Didn’t tell a soul where they were going. It was like the earth had swallowed ’em up. Then out of the blue, ’bout six months later, I got a letter from Clare, so I did. Tellin’ me where they were and sayin’ I could join up with them, if I wanted to. It weren’t like I had anything in Belfast to give up, apart from a job in a mill . . .’
‘So you left Belfast and travelled to London.’ Pyke waited for a moment before he asked whether she had been followed. But it seemed to upset her, the notion that she might have been responsible for leading members of Stephen’s family to London.
To fill the silence, Pyke asked her to tell him more about the family.
‘So, ’bout a month ago, I saw him, Stephen’s older brother, Davy, in London. In the name of almighty God, I almost died, almost keeled over there and then. Couldn’t miss him. A burly, ugly fellow. Country stock, you know, Mr Pyke. Now you got to understand me. I ain’t sayin’ country folk are all like Davy Magennis. He weren’t ever the brightest boy in the world but, see, he grew up around all these preachers, folks talkin’ about this massacre and that one, Catholics killing Protestants, what happened a hundred years before, like it was yesterday. He didn’t stand a chance, I suppose. He had hate beaten into him. That’s why I said you wouldn’t understand, Mr Pyke. This fear we have of the other lot. Now I’m from Belfast and I grew up around different people. Myself, I wouldn’t want to marry an Orangeman but I wouldn’t want to kill someone, if they felt different. But to Stephen’s folk, papists weren’t no better than whores and rapists.’
Pyke smiled at Mary. He decided she was older than he’d initially supposed. Older and more intelligent.
‘Tell me what you know about Davy.’
‘He was one of the first to join up to the new police force, the Irish Constabulary, when it was first set up in Ulster, ’bout seven years back. According to Stephen, your man was specially chosen. All it was, some fellow came visitin’, said the new force needed good strong Orangemen like Davy. I guess his da pulled a few strings. Made Davy feel important. Way of getting the boy out of the house. Stephen didn’t talk a whole lot ’bout his brother, Mr Pyke, but when he did, he spoke in a quiet voice, like he was terrified . . .’
‘And this Davy fellow, he’s been in the police ever since?’ Her expression darkened. ‘For a while anyhow.’
‘He’s not any more?’
Mary shook her head. ‘They had to discipline him. In the end, they threw him out just last year.’
Pyke asked what had happened.
‘I don’t guess you read about too much news from Ulster in your London newspapers, do you, Mr Pyke? This all happened last autumn. There’s a fellow, Jack Lawless, a journalist in Belfast, one of O’Connell’s lieutenants in Ulster. You heard of O’Connell?’ Pyke nodded. Mary continued, ‘And you probably know, us Catholics, we’re in the minority in Ulster. Well, last autumn, Lawless announces he’s going to raise a force in the south and enter Ulster, march from town to town holdin’ meetings and the like, raisin’ support for Catholic emancipation and collectin’ Catholic funds. So Lawless gathers up maybe eighty thousand men and crosses from County Monaghan into Ballybay, which is nearly all Presbyterian and full of about ten thousand Orangemen with pitchforks and scythes ready to defend their town. All of the army and police in the whole area rush to the town. At first, they manage to get Lawless to avoid Ballybay and travel via another route. But then the two sides come face to face on the Rockcorry road and all hell breaks loose. There’s a pitched battle and the police wade in, too. According to Stephen, in front of a thousand witnesses, Davy beats this Catholic fellow to within an inch of his life. Normally that kind of behaviour would go unpunished but there were witnesses. After that, there wasn’t nothing that anyone could do for him, even if his da was a well-respected preacher. Stephen just said his brother had dropped out of sight. No one knew what happened to him.’
‘He didn’t go home?’
‘Not as far as Stephen reckoned.’ Mary sat up a little and stretched her arms. ‘Though his family hold on to much hate, they still think of themselves as respectable folk, friends in the right places. Those friends like their violence to be carried out under the cover of darkness, not in full sight of a thousand other men.’
Pyke liked her analysis. ‘And that’s how you think Davy got the police job in the first place? Because his father had friends in high places?’
‘That’s what Stephen reckoned. Reckoned the da was friends with this fella, John Arnold, owns the biggest mill in Belfast, both of ’em up to their necks in Orange business.’
‘I take it you can’t remember any other names. Did Stephen ever mention specific names?’
Mary frowned. ‘What kind of names?’
‘For a start, the man who came calling to the home, recruited Davy into the police in the first place.’
‘Not that I can remember.’ She winced a little. ‘I’m sorry . . .’
‘I have to ask, Mary. Did you see any of what happened?’
‘You mean to Ste
phen and Clare and the wee baby?’ She was shaking, perhaps not just from the cold.
Pyke nodded.
A tear escaped from Mary’s eye and rolled down her cheek. ‘It was a small room. I didn’t always stay there. I didn’t like to get in their way and in the last month I had a room elsewhere . . .’
She did not want to elaborate and he decided not to push her. ‘You didn’t see anything, then?’
‘No,’ she whispered, staring down at the ground. ‘I just heard about it later. I heard about it and panicked. I collected up a few things and hid out with Gerry in his room but even there I didn’t feel too safe. I knew someone would want to talk to me but I didn’t want him to find out. Davy. Gerry knows a man who works on this farm in the spring and summer. We’ve been here a few days now. It’s brutal cold, too.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘In the name of Jesus, it was just a baby. Would you think it was even possible?’ She was crying now. Gerry sat down next to her, trying to offer comfort.
Pyke wondered whether Mary was telling him the truth. There was no doubt she was terrified. But was she keeping something from him?
‘Are you certain there’s nothing else you can tell me?’
This time she looked away. Gerry put a protective arm around her shoulder and glared at him.
He waited for a while before saying, ‘Do you think Davy killed them? Was he capable of doing something like that?’
‘Do I think he was capable of it?’ Mary said, wiping her eyes with the sleeve of Pyke’s coat. ‘I wouldn’t imagine anyone was capable of doing something like that.’
‘But you do believe he killed them?’
Mary shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Honestly I don’t.’
‘But it’s possible that he did it?’
Her stare was devoid of emotion. ‘I fancy it is. The longer you live, the more you realise that anything’s possible. Even something as terrible as what happened.’
Once Pyke had deposited a bedraggled Mary Johnson and a grateful Gerry in a guest house in Isleworth, paid for a week’s accommodation and warned them not to go anywhere or talk to anyone without his consent, he told Gaines to return him to Bow Street. As he sat in the carriage on the journey back to the city, Pyke considered what Mary had told him and thought about the implications for his own investigation.
He was close, now, to finding the real killer, not the unfortunate lunatic who was currently being held by Hume. For a lot of reasons, Davy Magennis seemed to be the likely candidate. From the start, Pyke had believed that whoever had murdered Stephen, Clare and the baby had known his victims. Nothing about the scene suggested a random attack. It had been premeditated and, Pyke had felt all along, motivated by hate. And now, according to Mary, Davy Magennis had been sighted in London: Davy Magennis, who was uneducated, physically strong and driven by hate; a man who had perhaps lost sight of familial links to his brother.
Mary Johnson was intelligent and credible. Pyke believed everything she had told him.
Pyke was now certain that Charles Hume and his investigative team had arrested and charged the wrong man. But he didn’t necessarily believe that Hume was corrupt. Pressure for a quick arrest had, no doubt, been forthcoming from Peel and charging an escaped Bedlamite was politically expedient. So how might Hume, or for that matter Peel, react to Pyke’s news? It was hard to judge. Or rather Peel was hard to judge. Hume would reject his claim outright and would threaten Pyke, should he continue with his own investigation. Peel, though, would have to be sensitive to the political implications associated with convicting and, doubtless, killing the wrong man. For Peel knew about Pyke’s relationship with Fox and would be only too aware that Fox continued to wield enough political clout to cause him considerable embarrassment.
Peel could not afford to ignore his claims.
Pyke thought about taking his discoveries directly to Fox but he was concerned that Sir Richard simply wanted to use the investigation as a stick to beat the government with. Fox didn’t care about the dead. Nor did Peel or Hume. But out of all of them, Peel was the one who could assist or damage Pyke’s cause and, for this reason, Pyke made up his mind to present his findings, in the first instance, to the Home Secretary, and give him the chance to pull Hume into line.
Pyke leaned out of the window of the carriage and shouted at Gaines, the driver, to take him directly to Whitehall. Outside, the branches of the trees were just beginning to thaw and the first signs of green were starting to show themselves. As he blew into his cupped hands to keep them warm, Pyke thought about the dead baby, more than anything irritated that it continued to unsettle him in a way he did not understand.
Pyke knew it would be hard to secure an audience with Peel himself, at least in the first instance. Peel, after all, had instructed him to deal either with Hume or Fitzroy Tilling.
Still, he did not imagine it would be quite so difficult to convince the guards outside the Home Office to even ask inside the building for Tilling. None of them seemed to know who Tilling was. Pyke explained that he was Peel’s private secretary and offered them a brief description. He introduced himself as a Bow Street Runner working at the behest of the Home Secretary himself. He said he had urgent business to share with Peel. He said they would have to shoulder the responsibility, should his news fail to reach Peel, via Tilling. It was only when he made it clear that it was a matter of the utmost importance to the security of the state that they were provoked into action.
One of the guards said he would go and make some enquiries. The other, meanwhile, led Pyke into a dingy antechamber, set off the building’s main entrance hall.
Pyke waited for almost two hours for Tilling to rescue him from the stares of the two guards. The burly man greeted Pyke without warmth and led him in silence through the main hall, past the same cantilevered staircase he had seen previously on his visit to Peel’s offices and down a flight of stairs, to a room in the basement of the building. It was furnished with two chairs and a wooden table. A gas lamp hissed quietly in the corner of the room.
Tilling told Pyke he could spare him ten minutes. He wore a well-cut jacket over a silk neck stocking and styled dark trousers. Though he possessed neither beard nor moustache, his sideburns were thick and as dark as the hair on the top of his head. He seemed agitated and distant, as though the prospect of spending even a few minutes in Pyke’s company was the last thing he wanted.
He listened, evidently bored, while Pyke explained what had happened and recounted, as briefly as he could, the course of his investigation.
While he spoke, Pyke wondered whether Tilling, as someone who knew Ireland well and had served under Peel while he had been under-secretary there, would be in a better position to comprehend the nuances of his account. He wondered, too, whether Tilling had Irish blood in him. He didn’t speak with a brogue and if he was, in part, Irish, then it was almost certain that he belonged to the Anglo-Irish planter class. This would, of course, influence the way in which he made sense of Pyke’s tale of Protestant bigotry and violence. Tilling might be hostile to the assumptions behind his claims. But in the end it was just a name that seemed to rouse the man from his indifference.
Pyke could not, of course, be certain that the name ‘Davy Magennis’ had registered as forcefully as he imagined, but it was also true that, as a rule, he rarely misread other people’s reactions.
Afterwards, Tilling’s demeanour did become more agitated and he stopped listening to Pyke’s account and fidgeted in his chair. His manner did not become obviously aggressive but almost at once, and without warning, he stood up and told Pyke that he had important business to attend to. Assuring Pyke that his claims would be properly investigated, he thanked him for his efforts.
Tilling left him with the two guards and did not bother to issue any form of farewell.
TEN
It was a long time since Pyke had spent any real time in his gin palace and it struck him what an unpleasant place it had become. Perhaps he had deluded himself when he had first bought and transformed the b
uilding, hoping it would become a sophisticated drinking venue, with a better class of customer attracted by brilliant interior gas lights that shone through large plate-glass windows. Pyke’s own reputation may have been successful in deterring society’s dregs from regularly drinking there - the scavengers, petty thieves, coal-heavers and prostitutes who gravitated towards the neighbourhood’s less salubrious alehouses and drunken ex-sailors who preferred the gin shops on the other side of the river. But offers of cheap gin were enough to lure all types of working men and women to the bar: porters from St Bartholomew’s, animal drovers, stable boys and meat cutters from the market and traders who sold fruit and vegetables from their barrows, all of whom wanted to get fall-down drunk and didn’t care about the ornamental parapets or the fact that the drinks were served in glasses rather than clay pots or pewter mugs.
Pyke had no affinity with his customers and showed little interest in the daily running of the place. It was an investment and it gave him a modest additional income. And if Pyke had no affinity with his paying customers, nor did he have anything in common with the people who worked for him. Aside from Lizzie, who was upstairs in the attic room tending to George, the faces were unfamiliar or hostile to him. But Pyke did not expect gratitude from his staff: those who worked behind the bar, the glass collectors, the cleaners, the ex-bare-knuckle boxer who policed the bar and the three kitchen hands who served up a simple menu of chops, baked eggs, hot eel and pea soup. The pay was low, the work hard and at times dangerous, and the hours were long. He exploited them but he felt no guilt for doing so. If they wanted to work elsewhere, he never tried to stop them.
Pyke sat on an overturned barrel at one end of the zinc-topped mahogany counter and looked at what his gin shop had become. Somehow the term ‘palace’ seemed too absurd for words. He looked at the painted barrels behind the bar, signs advertising ‘The Real Knock-Me-Out Firewater’ or ‘The Devil’s Own’ and the wooden floor covered with sawdust and vomit.
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