Andrew Pepper - The Last Days of Newgate

‘All I had to do was lead you to Mary Johnson.’

Fox shrugged. ‘For what it’s worth, I took no pleasure in deceiving you.’

‘What about murdering an innocent young couple and their newborn baby? Did you take any pleasure in that?’

Fox seemed aghast. ‘I didn’t kill those people.’

‘But you as good as murdered them.’

‘I wasn’t told about the plan in detail. Of course, I was told there would have to be a murder. But I didn’t know a baby might be killed. I was as appalled by that as you were.’

‘You were so appalled that you carried on as though you were wholly innocent.’

‘None of this was easy for me, Pyke. I did what I did because I thought it would be in the best interests of the Runners.’

Pyke had not expected to lose his temper, nor to react to what he learned from Fox in a violent manner, but as he listened to the old man’s callow, pathetic self-justifications, he felt a heat rising up through his chest, a knotted ball of anger that had been kept in check throughout the previous months but was now billowing up inside him like a squall of wind, clearing the emotional debris from its path.

Reaching Fox’s cowering figure in a few steps and paying no attention to the difference in their respective size or strength, he hauled him to his feet and swung at his face. His fist connected with Fox’s chin and lifted him up off his feet. As Fox crumpled on to his desk, a blast of fetid breath escaped from his mouth.

‘And did you have to kill Lizzie, too?’ Pyke said, wiping saliva from his mouth with his sleeve.

‘Lizzie? ’ Fox still seemed to be dazed from the blow.

‘Why did you kill her?’

Fox pretended to be confused.

This time Pyke slapped the old man around the face, but the threat of further violence was enough to loosen his memory and tongue.

‘I didn’t mean to.’ His face had assumed a ghastly pale complexion. His hands were trembling as well. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t intend it to happen.’

‘Didn’t intend what to happen?’ It was as though Pyke had swallowed shards of broken glass.

Fox stared down disconsolately at the floor. ‘By that stage, it was too late, at least for me. The police bill was set to breeze through both Houses. I’d failed miserably. But Edmonton was cock-a-hoop. He not only believed he could destroy the whole Catholic Emancipation Bill but also felt he could ruin Peel’s career in the process. Meanwhile, Protestant vigilante groups were butchering Catholics right across the city. I just wanted it all to be over. I wanted to ruin Edmonton’s plans without exposing my own culpability. And I knew that, sooner rather than later, you would discover the truth and come after me. So I decided to protect myself from such a fate. I knew if you were no longer around, then the investigation into the St Giles murders would die a natural death and things could return to how they were. And I also knew that if you were dead, Edmonton would not be able to exploit what you would inevitably find out.’

It made some kind of perverted sense. ‘So you dispatched Vines to Lizzie’s place? To drug me?’

‘You mustn’t hold it against Brownlow. He had no idea what I was planning to do. He didn’t know about any of this.’

Pyke was sickened by all of it. He was sickened by Fox, Edmonton, Peel, Swift and even by himself.

Fox crawled off his desk and sat down on the chair, smoothing his moustache with the palms of his hands. ‘I knew you preferred to sleep alone. You had mentioned it to me once or twice before. But Vines, or whoever it was that carried you up the stairs, put you in Lizzie’s room. Later, after everyone had gone, I crept up the stairs. I had one of your knives in my hand. I went to your room, initially, and found it was empty. So I tiptoed across the landing to Lizzie’s room. It was dark. I stood next to your motionless body for what seemed like hours. I had the knife in my hand but I could not bring myself to do it. In the end, my nerve failed me. I’m not going to give a dramatic speech about the closeness of our relationship but, in the end, I could not kill you. I was about to leave when Lizzie woke up. Of course, she recognised me. I tried to placate her, but I had no way of explaining my presence in her bedroom. I suppose she must have seen the knife and then screamed for help, because the next thing I remember, I was trying to grab her, to stop the screaming. That’s when it must have happened. I didn’t mean to, I swear to God. I just remember standing there, staring horrified at the blood oozing from her stomach.’

For a while, neither of them spoke. Pyke thought about the last time he had seen Lizzie alive; the time they had kissed in front of Vines. On that and other occasions he had used her, but he still mourned her death. And he would grieve for her when this was done.

‘But you didn’t just flee the scene, did you?’

Fox looked up at him and sniffed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘You watched Lizzie die. You waited until she was dead and you laid her next to me and you planted the knife that you’d used on the floor by my bed.’ His throat felt arid. ‘It was how the constables you dispatched the next morning were supposed to find me.’

Fox didn’t disagree. He sat there, unmoving, staring blankly at the wall behind Pyke.

Pyke took his pistol and placed it carefully on the desk. Fox looked at it and then up at Pyke. ‘I was good to you once, wasn’t I?’ But there was no pleading or desperation in his tone.

‘You tolerated me because I was a good investigator.’

‘And you looked up to me,’ Fox said, almost dreamily.

‘I was young and naive.’ Pyke pushed the pistol across the desk towards him. ‘Take it. It’s loaded.’ It did not matter what the old man said; it still felt like a betrayal.

Fox stared at the pistol as though it were a poisonous snake. ‘It’s too late for apologies, Pyke, but for what it’s worth, I am sorry.’

As he closed the office door behind him, Pyke heard the deafening blast of the pistol, and felt nothing at all; not anger, nor regret, nor even some kind of perverse satisfaction. More than anything else, he wanted it to be over. He wanted the killing to be over.

Townsend was as good as his word. When Pyke rode up to the entrance of Hambledon Hall, he was greeted by the sight of a hundred or more men, carrying torches and pitchforks. Saville and Canning were among the gathered mob, though neither appeared to recognise him. The mood of the crowd was ugly. Townsend had already told him of continuing reprisals being carried out by Edmonton’s militia against certain villages. Three inns had been ransacked and set on fire. As a response, more threshing machines had been destroyed. Earlier, in a nearby inn, Townsend had paid for as much ale as the men could imbibe and many in the assembled crowd were drunk, and talking openly of violent retribution.

Ahead of them, on the other side of the main gates, Edmonton’s militia were lined up seven or eight deep down the tree-lined avenue that led up to the hall; they would be armed with muskets and rifles, Pyke realised, and would not be afraid to use them. Pyke was not concerned whether the irate mob stormed the front gates and attacked the hall, whether there was a pitched battle or simply a tense standoff. That was their business. He just required them as a distraction, in order that he might slip unnoticed into the grounds.

He had warned Townsend that Edmonton’s militia would be armed. The rest was up to them.

Pyke was not an impetuous man but when he finally laid eyes on Edmonton, sprawled out on his four-poster Queen Anne bed, he had to resist an urge to attack him without further ceremony. Edmonton seemed both unsettled and gratified by Pyke’s intrusion, fumbling to retrieve something he had hidden under the many pillows and bolsters that were propping him up. The bedroom itself was a plush, elaborately decorated affair. Lit up by candles that sat on top of the marble mantelpiece and the mahogany dresser, the gilt-striped wallpaper seemed to glisten in the light.