Andrew Pepper - The Detective Branch

‘What is it?’ Dry mouthed, Pyke looked into his son’s face and felt his entire world tilt on its axis.

‘I thought you’d want to know,’ Felix said, flatly, as though the issue were an academic one. ‘Godfrey passed away in his sleep last night.’

Bunhill Fields

DECEMBER 1844-JANUARY 1845

Almost a week passed between Godfrey’s death and his funeral, and although he had requested a simple, private affair, such was the level of interest that it took Pyke almost that long to send out funeral cards, liaise with the undertakers and make arrangements for the burial. True to his uncle’s request, and much to Felix’s chagrin, there was to be no religious aspect to the ceremony.

All of the snow that had fallen the previous week had long since melted, and on a dull Monday morning, the hearse, pulled by four horses and accompanied by the undertaker and six pallbearers, left their home in Islington. Pyke and Felix followed in an open-topped phaeton, behind them the assorted vehicles of the other mourners. Pyke wore a plain black cloak over his frock-coat and cravat and an unadorned black hat. Felix was similarly attired in plain black clothes. They sat apart, each lost in his own thoughts, oblivious to the breeze and the drizzle, barely noticing the people on the pavements, their solemn faces and their hats removed as the procession passed by. For days after Godfrey’s death, Pyke had wandered around their house, numb, not quite able to comprehend that his uncle had really gone. Then the night before the burial, he’d come across the book Godfrey had written, loosely based on Pyke’s exploits as a Bow Street Runner. The True and Candid Confessions of a Former Bow Street Runner had upset readers with its frank portrayal of an anonymous man seemingly unconcerned by moral strictures. It wasn’t the book which caused Pyke to break down, though — it was Godfrey’s simple inscription. ‘ To my dear boy, who has made my life immeasurably richer. ’ Pyke had taken the book with him to bed and had read it over and over, until his tears had run dry.

From the Angel, they proceeded west on City Road, as it curved around what had once been the northern reaches of the metropolis, and was now a ribbon of factories, warehouses and brickyards. They passed the pavements crowded with commuters heading to work in the City, turned on to Bath Street just past the City Basin and followed it across Old Street on to Bunhill Row. Bunhill Fields, adjacent to the narrow street bearing its name, had once been called Bone Hill. Originally a plague pit, it had become a final resting place, just beyond the city walls, for nonconformists, non-believers and religious dissenters.

As the hearse pulled into the burial ground Pyke squeezed Felix’s hand and leaned over to kiss him on the head. Godfrey’s death had brought the two of them closer, but he worried about the future, how they would get along without the old man’s reassuring presence.

Felix seemed bewildered by the scene that greeted them, the sheer volume of people, a seething mass of bodies, all clad in black and wanting to pay their respects. Later, Pyke heard that Harriet Martineau, Francis Carlyle, Charles Dickens and the booksellers John Chapman and John Tallis had attended the burial.

‘Godfrey knew a lot of people,’ Pyke whispered, by way of explanation. ‘He was loved by a lot of people.’ Felix smiled and gripped his hand more tightly.

It was a simple affair. At Godfrey’s instructions, there were no feathermen, with their trays of black plumes, or mutes carrying wooden staffs dressed with black weepers. The coffin was lifted and carried by the pallbearers, Pyke and Felix following closely behind. They made their way slowly along a path, graves on either side, eventually coming to a halt at a freshly dug plot. The pallbearers laid the coffin down at the side of the grave and the mourners assembled around them. With no vicar to orchestrate proceedings, Edmund Saggers had agreed to assume the role of master of ceremonies, and one by one he invited various speakers to offer their thoughts. John Fisher Murray, a sketch writer, read a piece Godfrey had penned for Blackwood ’s about the ill-effects of overindulgence, which, as Pyke had hoped, elicited a few laughs, and Francis Place read a piece Godfrey had written for an unstamped magazine about the terrible suffering of the Spitalfields weavers. This drew a round of applause from the Chartists and trade union leaders who had known Godfrey in his rabble-rousing days. Saggers gave a witty account of one of his prodigious lunches with Godfrey and then invited Pyke to address the mourners.

Pyke cast his gaze around the crowd gathered by the grave, and waited for a few moments. The sky was sealed with thick, grey clouds and the wind whipped at the hats of the mourners, some of the women having to hold on to their scarves and hoods.

He thanked everyone for coming and invited them to join him and Felix afterwards at the Turk’s Head Coffee House and Hotel on the Strand.

‘I was going to give a long speech about Godfrey Bond’s extraordinary life as a writer, journalist, publisher, radical and general thorn in the side of the establishment.’ He waited for the murmur of approval to subside. ‘I was going to commend his skill as a writer, the fact that you were never bored by anything he’d penned, his eye for a good story, his willingness to take on pieces that no one else would publish, his love of the grotesque and the low, his belief that the published word could excite men’s minds and change the way they perceived the world, his refusal to back down from a fight, his willingness to take on the establishment, whatever the cost to him personally.’ Pyke felt a tide of sentiment well up inside him and took a deep breath. Godfrey really was dead. That thought struck him with all the force of a sledgehammer.

‘I was going to say all these things about the man I called my uncle, the man I loved and respected above all others.’ He turned to face the coffin. ‘I was going to give a speech about your death being the end of an era, and in many ways it is. You were always a man out of step with our more sober, moralistic times.’ He felt his voice begin to crack and looked over at Felix, saw the tears rolling down his cheeks. ‘But in the end I just want to say this: you didn’t judge me, you didn’t desert me, you put a roof over my head and food on my plate; you read to me, you educated me, you nursed me, you made me laugh, you let me do what I wanted to do, you wept with me. You counselled me, you forgave me, you came to my rescue more times than I can remember and you loved me. I owe my life to you and I will never, ever forget you. You were the best of men and my life will be immeasurably poorer now you’re gone.’

Pyke didn’t remember much as the pallbearers lowered the coffin into the grave, and once they’d done so, no one moved, apparently waiting for him to take the lead. For a moment, he wanted the crowd to swallow him up, wanted to be anywhere else but there at Godfrey’s graveside. Then, as if sensing Pyke’s paralysis, Felix stepped forward, took a handful of dirt and threw it on top of the coffin. Others followed. Pyke put his arm around Felix and whispered, ‘Thank you.’

Afterwards, in the Turk’s Head, Pyke greeted the mourners and invited them to partake of the food and drink laid out on the table.

He noticed Jo only once she’d taken off her hood, her flame-red hair visible from the other side of the room. She’d been Felix’s nursemaid, governess and friend for the first ten years of his life. She’d also shared Pyke’s bed for a much briefer period, an attachment beginning and ending in the same summer about four years earlier. Pyke had often wondered about her, what had become of her, and he was surprised at how pleased he felt to see her. It was just the grief, he told himself, as he strode across the room to greet her; anyway, she had been an important part of their lives for a long time.